All I Want is Company (social media, fic archives)
I've been mulling over my relationship with LJ and other social and fic type sites, and have come to the conclusion that I suck at social media.
Not completely. But it's more complicated than I had imagined. I'm certainly not holding up my end with reading others' posts and fics, commenting, or even posting myself. Part of that is my own contra-cyclical nature; when I'm up I can post and comment and connect, when I'm down and need the connection I'm unable to do it. I usually still write; the posts pile up and then wham! Y'all get slammed on the next upside.
The general messiness of life is another reason. Too much real life in my RL lately. And now I'm finding some things I thought would be enjoyable aren't--like the B5 re-watch. I just can not figure out my reaction to that. It's intimidating to me, like a cocktail party full of strangers, or the bad reaction I had to Yuletide last year. So in my inarticulation, I watch along every week, but have been skipping the commentary. I find myself almost dreading babylon5_love this year, to the point of thinking I'll skip it. What's up with that? It feels like this electronic haven is slipping away, but as I'm unable to interpret things objectively when in a down phase, I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude.
I sometimes find posting onerous, especially when I post in multiple locations. But I have a few readers each place, and I hate to leave anyone out. I need to try and simplify things. I have accounts/registrations at jumpnow, LJ, ff.net, Dreamwidth, and Archive of Our Own, and a few others I don't frequent much. Dreamwidth is becoming more popular, I think, although it seems to be a nexus of crazy stuff, and I'm still not sure it'll last. I'll admit I was surprised (and pleased) they survived the attacks on their credit payment partners. I'll always love LJ cause it was my first (insert maudlin strings here). Well, after jumpnow, but I'm afraid that forum is pretty dead, although I tweaked some newbies over there this very week. ff.net has some lovely folk, and the highest concentration of John/Delenn fans I've found anywhere. Archive of Our Own has a nicely uniform and attractive format; I like the idea of an archive for stories only. I thought that posting stories was all I would do at LJ, but I like journaling so the stories are getting lost, even with tags.
What I'm going to do is start adding all my stories to AO3. At a couple a week this will take over a year. Sigh. I want to import my LJ to Dreamwidth and use it as a mirror. Probably I'll end up posting to DW and let them cross-post to LJ. Comments would stay open in both places, as I don't get a lot of comments anyway, and cross-talk is even rarer. I'll read both sites, although it's been hard remembering DW sometimes. At some point stories will be posted at AO3 and FF.Net, with links only at DW/LJ.
I think. What do you think? Would you follow an outside link? Too much trouble? It may be quite a while before I implement any of this, as I am the original Procrastination Girl. In the meantime, the messy erratic nature of my contribution to this crazy online life will continue.
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Note: Of course AO3 may not last in which case I'll be back to having my stuff all over the place. Maybe I should dust off my long-neglected website and get the stuff up there?
Second Note: The ff.net people don't seem to go anywhere else, so I'll continue posting there. I like their comments; some are quite elaborate and well thought out.
Third Note: AO3 is getting my stories posted in alphabetical order, and back-dated to original posting date. Except for re-writes which get the later date. This has been a somewhat interesting process, with a real mix of good and bad. I've cheated a bit; I'm posting the b5 re-watch stories now because they are filed under 'b5 re-watch' on my computer. This allows me to put off posting some really bad ones early in the alphabetical order. They will go up though; I swore to make this an archive of everything, not just the Good Parts version.
In a total aside, I really like that AO3 has both the option of chapters of a story and stories in a series. I write a lot of stories that are part of a series. They're filed that way on my computer, and in my brain. Order is good.
Fouth and Final Note: The title of this post is from the Melissa Etheridge song Company, from the Fearless Love album.