have been unavoidably detained by the world

So, I've been on tumblr more than I want to be in the past few days for Reasons. (Reasons = I have too much free time on my hands and I'm not home so I don't have my normal distractions.)

The good (?) news is that someone reminded me of fandomsecrets so now I'm back in JULY and I have like ten tabs open of secrets I don't want to forget and I'm even enjoying reading the comments, that's how much I crave LJ-style communities lololol

You know what?

I miss LJ.

I mean, I say that all the time, but there was an Arisia panel about "Storytelling Platforms*" (read: fanfiction platforms mostly) and ahhhhh I miss LJ.

My favorite part of being in fandom was just talking about it. Talking about fic, talking about meta, having these long rambly conversations with a handful of people...it's my favorite.

And I liked that on LJ things didn't get too big. Thirty people could have an AWESOME amount of threads and conversation and spin-off threads and ideas and fic. Tumblr is too big and it gets impersonal and crazy and there aren't conversation on tumblr, there are reblogs which is not remotely the same thing.

I haven't logged into my tumblr account in...a year now? I locked both of my twitter accounts back in 2019. Most of my fandom conversation is happening on whatsapp these days, which is great, but only two people want to talk my fandom with me and I feel incredibly guilty because whatsapp is a demand platform - I can't post and then rest to see if they want to talk to me. I have to actively approach them for conversation and it's a lot harder for them to turn me down if they aren't interested. And people are allowed to drift away from fandoms! But it's just...harder. And of course, it's impossible to meet new fan friends on whatsapp.

I still have discord, but I find discord a LOT HARDER to use. It's so fast-paced, and you miss stuff, and there's no easy way to link back to an earlier part of the conversation and there are no threaded conversations and I find it pretty impersonal and difficult. I haven't made any fandom friends online since...gosh. A long time.

Anyway, the panel was amazing, and I enjoyed every minute. But I ached with missing LJ. Honestly, the panel made me interested in checking out Wattpad for the first time, because they have some conversation tools and that just...so hard to find.

(I recognize as I say this that I'm on Dreamwith. And I ADORE Dreamwidth! It's just not where my fandom conversations are and it's fandom I'm looking for, I have to be honest.) (Although man, I love you guys here. I'm working on logging in more, and checking my flist more too ♥)

( *Actual description of the panel below )

So I think I'm finally reaching the tipping point.

For all of my fandom life I have tried to keep fandom and real life separate. For lots of reasons. One of them is the law professor who looked me in the eye when I was just a college student and told me that "fanfiction is illegal." One of them is that when I started this fandom journey that was NORMAL; we weren't selling our data to big companies for the right to use websites regularly and everyone agreed it was safer to keep your real name hidden. Right now it's because I don't want to be the odd one out in my professional workplace, where it's ok to be into fantasy football (which is OBVIOUSLY not gambling lol) but only two people know I'm a Harry Potter fan and neither will ever be told how much. (I haven't even mentioned Torchwood.)

So basically, I prefer it this way. VASTLY PREFER IT THIS WAY.

Then I made the stupid, stupid mistake of getting into a theater fandom. It's a fandom where meeting people in person is THE NORM. So when I meet someone I want to stay in touch with, I have to freeze. What username do I use? My real ones (on facebook and twitter) where I try to avoid fandom unless absolutely necessary? My fandom ones (twitter, tumblr, instagram, dreamwidth, AO3, ff.net, livejournal...) where I Very Much Do Not Want it connected to my real name??? And this isn't even talking about chatting with actors on social media, which is something that is a huge part of the fandom right now (and is something I both crave and fear. WTF self)

So I feel like I need something in between and new. Something "nerdy" where I can associate with my real name. It would be another life subdivide, because again: No fanfiction connected to my real name. That's the hard line. And sure, I haven't posted fic in a while, but I have three Torchwood fics lined up to go, and I've been quietly writing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child fics since *cough* 2016. They just need a beta.

But do I want to do that? What platforms get the Liminal Username treatment? Am I sure I want this??? Maybe it's better to keep being a lurker in theater fandom, because do I want this to haunt me in the future????

Ahhhhh.

It's really frustrating when I have a fandom idea that is definitely tumblr-sized: short, funny (to me, at least), rebloggable, etc. The problem is that while I have no inherent objection to peeking back into tumblr, I have very, very little motivation in figuring out how to do community in tumblr. And I know if I post there I want to talk to people. ON THE WORST CONVERSATION PLATFORM. UUUUGGGHHH.

I mean, I'm a 3L but I don't have unlimited free time.

I am having THE BEST TIME talking about fanfiction in class. I'm auditing a non-law class. When I have the time.

Topics I brought up:

~The artificiality of "fanfiction" considering the history of reinterprative words including Shakespeare. (Someone else brought up the ridiculous number of Sherlock interpretations. I love this class.)
~Fanfiction as female dominated spaces and how moving to a commercialized economy (out of gift economy) may affect that.
~The existence of fanfiction posted on non-commentable platforms and the fact that there is a debate on AO3 to turn off the comment function.

And we talked about the way that a site is designed affects the type of discourse coming out of it. AND THEN. THEN WE TALKED ABOUT TUMBLR. AND THE WAY IT FAAAAIIIILLLSSSS AT DISCOURSE.

Comment of the day: "If you want to look for the polar opposite of [tumblr], it would be something like 4chan." (Where the usage of names is frowned upon in discussion as opposed to worshiping a main post in tumblr.)

4CHAN GUYS. THIS IS MY CLASS. ♥

I'm no locking this because the odds of anyone finding it are direction related to the people using LJ/DW. So...impossible.

Swinging by tumblr in the law school library is the most exciting thing I do every day.

IT'S LIKE RUSSIAN ROULETTE WITH PORN. Inception fandom has a lot of fanart and manips. ANYTHING can happen.

Mind you, I'm still waiting for the day someone actually reads AO3 over my shoulder while I frantically try to click away right after I open my computer every morning. Got to stop falling asleep reading fanfic.

I want to post more. So, here is to more posts, less second-guessing, less editing *cough* and the five people left on LJ/DW that aren't in online RPGs.

I realized over this Dragon*con that I'm not remember the usernames of new fandom people as well. I've always had a pretty hard time with names (and faces) and fandom can be kind of an overwhelming place with so many active people that it can be confusing. I normally take a looooong time to get into a fandom, which can give me time to distinguish individuals as I go.

But I've been lurking around Inception for, gosh, over two years now, and I've still only remembered dozen or so names.

I think it's a little bit from the new fandom platforms. I used to remember people using a lot of visual cues, like their default user icon, their journal layout, etc. Tumblr users don't utilize userpics the same way, and the layouts are either super-plain or horrible.

But even more important, AO3! I think the layout to AO3 is fabulous and the downloading options are the best thing ever, but there is very little to distinguish the author while I read. Just the username on top, which I TOTALLY skim by sometimes.

I think there's a cultural shift that comes from putting the fic in a seperate place from the meta, the journal, the messy thought and the unbetaed flash fic. It's not necessarily a bad thing! AO3 is, for lack of a better term, a lot more cleaned-up than LJ. It's easier to find the fic you want and just zoom past all the other junk.

On the other end of the spectrum, tumblr is so jammed with junk that even when I know that people post flash fic or ficlets or dabbles and what-have-you on their tumblr, if I'm not constantly checking and saving (and I'm TOTALLY NOT) I won't find it again. It can feel that if it's not "clean enough" for AO3, it won't get archived.

There's a part of me that even misses the really messy ff.net days, when for lack of anything else, people basically wrote journal posts as Authors Notes at the beginning of their fic chapters. I would sometimes know a lot about the writer's personality, thought process and sense of humor (remember when authors used A/Ns to reply to comments? :D) before even reading the next chapter.

By contrast, AO3 notes tend to be fairly minimal, sometimes to frustration.

Of course, ff.net also had the "lack of distinguishing visual characteristics of the fic layout" problem, and I memorized very few writer names on ff.net, and I was never much active in fandom there either.

But at least people filled out their profiles on ff.net. On AO3 and tumblr, I may never know anything about anyone!

__

OH! I also want to post about LJ BNF culture. I had some really interesting discussions.

Today’s XKCD is spot-on. The ability to curate and control your own feed should be essential in any social media platform. LJ/DW has a pretty good system in place although some features aren’t exactly well-used. Tumblr has extensions that a lot people use. Twitter doesn’t have a system as far as I can tell, BUT neither does twitter reorganize your feed by some unknown algorithm.

Essentially, Facebook exerts a great amount of control over how you socialize. Which means to me, at least, that it’s a failure of a social media site, isn’t it?

Online communities are so complicated. Interesting, but complicated.

I say, writing this on a small and dying platform. Woot?

I get the sinking feeling that if I don't get a post out before I leave for home, I won't post today. And we're not even ten days in! That's unacceptable! I have nine pages of topic ideas!

...that I have no energy to dig through. Bleh, bad day.

So I'll take today to make a confession: I've been doing some tumblr lurking. Not logging in or anything, but I know that lots of people are basically only posting on tumblr now, and sometimes I actually wonder how you're all doing. (Losing touch with internet friends -- a topic I would like to explore more.)

So, you know. I swing by.

***

Do you know what the most frustrating thing about going through tumblr is?

A WILD META APPEARS. And I spend half an hour piecing together the thread of conversation by opening up new tabs for each comment and scroll slowly and squint past the tiny text on pink background with my mouse icon turning into a unicorn farting rainbows and when I finally finish reading it all...I scroll down to see the same discussion, slightly shorter, reblogged a dozen times.

*headdesk*

I have been saving some interesting meta for potential future topics, though. I've stumbled on to a lot of random stuff. \o/

Last night I met a fairly prominent (read: VERY prominent) comic/geek blogger. At one point she mentioned tumblr and twitter as ways to get in touch with her and I made a disparaging comment about the stilted options of communication on tumblr.

She responded, "Yes, I know, but it's better than twitter."

And I said, "Um, yes, but everything good anyone has ever said to me about tumblr, I have always been able to respond 'Livejournal did it better and Livejournal did it first.'"

She laughed and said, "Yeah, for you and George R. R. Martin."

And I said (deadpan) "Yeah, and we're totally biffles."

I mean, deep down I know that Livejournal will never overcome its reputation among older geeks (I'm looking at you, John Green,) despite the fact that the most active communities I've been browsing off-flist recently are non-geek communities.

And of course, the power of social media rests entirely within the userbase. I mean, I was really passionate about Diaspora but I don't know a single person using it. And my LJ flist is dwindling (I know that's partly my fault. Um, sorry? I have things to write, I just don't have time to organize said things! This post is a mess!).

On a personal level, I'm actually starting to spend more time browsing through the active userbase communities on Dreamwidth because it's becoming a conflict of "go where I am comfortable vs. go where my existing fandom is." And as anyone can tell based on my spotty and horrid use of tumblr, that question seems to be answering itself. Although as someone a little nervous of the role-playing side of, Dreamwidth is kinda...quiet. Oh well.

NEW LIFE MOTTO: Anything Tumblr does good*, Livejournal did better. But Dreamwidth is frankly kicking them both out of the water

___

*The one long-standing caveat is that tumblr did find a creative and unique way of dealing with trolls by forcing reblogs. I admit, it's clever, but I also find that it limits actual good conversation too much for me. Sorry tumblr-creator-dude. Good idea, but I can't get behind the eventual execution flaws.