Time flies when you're goofing off on the internet
Much to my amazement, today marks my 5th anniversary on LJ. Wow. Five years since I first discovered this crazy fannish space and begged thamiris for an invite code. (Yeah, we actually needed invite codes back then. That makes me positively ancient in LJ terms, doesn't it?) Back then, I was still living in NY, working the Corporate Job From Hell, and the whole insane idea of being an oceanographer hadn't even occured to me yet. My main fandom was still BtVS, though I was starting to take first hesitant steps into HP. The Winchester brothers, I suspect, weren't even a gleam in Eric Kripke's eye yet. That's a hell of a lot of changes in a relatively short space of time, when you really think about it.
To celebrate, I've put up a new LJ banner. Not only is it pretty and shiny (if I do say so myself), but it also has a nice wintery look, appropriate to the season. And as a bonus, I'm going to throw in
1. No matter how bland and inoffensive you think your fannish opinion is, somebody somewhere will be deeply offended by it. There's no escaping it. You could make a post saying that the sky is blue, and someone will immediately accuse you of being an insensitive bigot who's opressing all the poor people who live in cloudy climates.
2. No matter how insane and offensive you think your fannish opinion is, somebody out there will share it and love you for expressing it. Trust me on this. You may think you're the only person in the entire universe who lays awake nights wishing there was more Dean Winchester/Dolores Umbridge genderswap non-con mpreg wingfic with purple zombie unicorns, but somewhere out there somebody is already starting a community and contemplating running a ficathon.
3. Your fandom will always be overrun by crazy people who don't like what you like. Your favorite character will be underappreciated, your fic won't get enough feedback, your favorite stories won't get recced enough, your ship will be unfairly attacked. Whining about this never helps. Posting lots of good fic, meta and recs yourself may help if the fandom gods are with you. But don't hold your breath.
4. You are not too intellectual/literary/honest/feminist/satirical/politically enlightened/morally or philosophically advanced/otherwise superior to get along with the rest of your fandom. It's theoretically possible that you actually possess one or more of these qualities. However, I absolutely guarantee that if people don't like you, that's not the reason.
5. There will alway come a time when you will notice lots of other fans behaving in a way you disapprove of, and you will be tempted to post your theory about what must be wrong with these people in order to make them behave that way. If you take all the creative energy you would've put into that post and put it into writing a fic instead, fandom will have one more good fic and one less wank.
6. There is no number 6.
7. Nobody in fandom owes you anything. However, if you ask nicely, you stand a pretty good chance of getting it.
8. The likelihood that you expressed yourself badly is much higher than the likelyhood that everyone else read your wrong. The fact that your bestest friend in the whole world knew exactly what you were saying is irrelevant. Most people in fandom aren't your bestest friends, and don't have the inside knowledge to correctly interpret every subtle nuance of your phrasings.
9. When all else fails, post some pictures of your pets. That's always good for a nice, happy-making stream of squeeful comments.
10. At the end of the day, fandom is a do-it-yourself project. That means you make your own fun. As with any DIY project, sometimes it doesn't come out very well. But nobody else is going to do it for you.
To celebrate, I've put up a new LJ banner. Not only is it pretty and shiny (if I do say so myself), but it also has a nice wintery look, appropriate to the season. And as a bonus, I'm going to throw in
1. No matter how bland and inoffensive you think your fannish opinion is, somebody somewhere will be deeply offended by it. There's no escaping it. You could make a post saying that the sky is blue, and someone will immediately accuse you of being an insensitive bigot who's opressing all the poor people who live in cloudy climates.
2. No matter how insane and offensive you think your fannish opinion is, somebody out there will share it and love you for expressing it. Trust me on this. You may think you're the only person in the entire universe who lays awake nights wishing there was more Dean Winchester/Dolores Umbridge genderswap non-con mpreg wingfic with purple zombie unicorns, but somewhere out there somebody is already starting a community and contemplating running a ficathon.
3. Your fandom will always be overrun by crazy people who don't like what you like. Your favorite character will be underappreciated, your fic won't get enough feedback, your favorite stories won't get recced enough, your ship will be unfairly attacked. Whining about this never helps. Posting lots of good fic, meta and recs yourself may help if the fandom gods are with you. But don't hold your breath.
4. You are not too intellectual/literary/honest/feminist/satirical/politically enlightened/morally or philosophically advanced/otherwise superior to get along with the rest of your fandom. It's theoretically possible that you actually possess one or more of these qualities. However, I absolutely guarantee that if people don't like you, that's not the reason.
5. There will alway come a time when you will notice lots of other fans behaving in a way you disapprove of, and you will be tempted to post your theory about what must be wrong with these people in order to make them behave that way. If you take all the creative energy you would've put into that post and put it into writing a fic instead, fandom will have one more good fic and one less wank.
6. There is no number 6.
7. Nobody in fandom owes you anything. However, if you ask nicely, you stand a pretty good chance of getting it.
8. The likelihood that you expressed yourself badly is much higher than the likelyhood that everyone else read your wrong. The fact that your bestest friend in the whole world knew exactly what you were saying is irrelevant. Most people in fandom aren't your bestest friends, and don't have the inside knowledge to correctly interpret every subtle nuance of your phrasings.
9. When all else fails, post some pictures of your pets. That's always good for a nice, happy-making stream of squeeful comments.
10. At the end of the day, fandom is a do-it-yourself project. That means you make your own fun. As with any DIY project, sometimes it doesn't come out very well. But nobody else is going to do it for you.