phantomtomato | Fannish Friday

I've gained a lot of new people in my circle this week, so: hello! Lots of migration to DW right now; I'm happy to see it.

senmut put together a post with some resources and tips for using Dreamwidth over here. There's some great communities and resources listed there! Some of my favorites are vriddy's series of tips for using DW and this roundup of major DW events.

Following my Bartimaeus Sequence reading adventure, I began writing fic for it. There are some new-to-me themes in this and I'm not sure how I feel about them yet, though I know they're right for the story. In particular, I've decided on my happy ending—I always prefer to write towards an ending—but it's something that sort of squicks me. And that's an odd position in which to be! This is definitely the risk of opening up a new fandom with a mid-sized project rather than diving into a more isolated romance or smut scene. Ah well. Something that I'm not conflicted about in the project is the experience of writing attraction to a human by a nonhuman—I am such a fiend for very physical descriptions of bodies, and this is apparently the best excuse for it!

One of my older fics, something written for rarepairshorts two years ago, is getting a lot of love this week. I'm just so warmed by that—getting such kind comments is lovely, of course, but I'm also very tickled by the idea that I have old-enough fics for this sort of rediscovery. Since stepping back from Harry Potter as my primary fandom, I've come to appreciate the long tail of being a rarepair author in a large fandom a bit more. It's a brutal thing to be a part of as one's only focus, I stand by that. And in many ways I am still wistful about having the interest and energy to write for my beloved HP rarepairs each week, as I used to do—it's hard to accept that the characters I love are no longer active in my hands. But given that this is my position, it is a joy to get that rare comment notification for a finished, older fic and relive some of my initial excitement for the work through a new reader's eyes. (This fic was the first time I wrote first person POV, apparently! I have a note in which I am clearly nervous about that! How two years changes things!)
It also reminds me that I should get on something for this year's Summer Wishlist Event over at RPS. I don't miss quarantine, not really, but I do envy past-Tomato their scads of free time!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm very curious if the migration is actually from reddit, and if so what effect that would have on communities! I feel like DW comms are actually a pretty decent replacement for subreddits (at least better than what would be offered by tagging-based sites), so an influx of people who really want that feature in specific would be awesome.

Right? I’m also very curious about where all of this migration is coming from. I wonder if the events being catalogued over at

synonymous have something to do with it, too, since that’s probably also referring people to the site.

I used to mod a subreddit of ~500 users and I could see translating it to a DW comm very well! The lack of image hosting is probably a barrier for some, but back in my day everyone maintained a separate Imgur account because Reddit didn’t offer hosting yet. A fixed set of tags would work just fine for someone coming from Reddit-style tagging, and discussion is so much easier to manage. (We found a way to create DW’s flat comments view across a whole subreddit, which was a trip, let me tell you! And gave posts more than a single day of life on a platform that tried so hard to make things die after 24 hrs. I was proud of that.)

But modding energy is probably always going to be the most precious ingredient, and goodness knows I’m as guilty of lacking that as anyone.

That's true! And many of the discussions on otw volunteering stuff took place first on FFA, which is one of the few DW spaces that is, hm, rabidly active in the way that might cause Tumblr or Twitter users to want to hop on a platform.

rabidly active in the way that might cause Tumblr or Twitter users to want to hop on a platform

A very elegant way of putting it!

Yes, I suspect that FFA will feel a bit… uneven for a little while, until the dust settles. But I very much appreciate that there seems to be at least some attention towards namespace DW as well, since I like and value both of these parts of the site!

Yes, same! I think having anonymous spaces is good in general, even if not everything that gets posted in them is to my taste.

Just read your Bartimaeus post - thanks for sharing, loved these thoughts! lots—in regards to worldbuilding, characterizations, narrative voice and tone etc—to take, adapt, or leave when it comes to writing or reading fic of YA fantasy books. especially intrigued by what you mentioned about /conflict/ - you always have such interesting things to say, such novel perspectives, I can’t wait to see :)

such a mood, btw, about quarantine-related free time. <3

Well, and I have such a messy relationship with narrative conflict, at that. I admit that over my years of being a cantankerous navel-gazer in public spaces, I’ve maybe come around to acknowledging that stories do need conflict in order to have an arc, but… I still don’t like high conflict, and I have perhaps been sensitive to the tendency to dismiss low-stakes conflicts as not being conflict at all. It’s a matter of precision, I suppose.

It still feels daring to disregard a new thing: a new piece of canon, content in a new-to-me canon, etc. There is such an undercurrent of reverence for canon! It is the thing which binds us all together as fans of a property, after all. I get over it and write what I want anyway, but I’m not sure I’ve found the solution to avoiding doubt.

Thank you for linking to those tips, glad they can be of use :D :D

It's lovely that new people are discovering your old fics and rarepairs :) I always feel a special sense of connection with anyone who finds and enjoys the fic for my lil' rareships, haha.

Thank you for writing them! :)

Yes, the wonder of a rarepair life is that there might be fewer chances to connect within it, but when you do, those moments are so much dearer. ❤️

Hello from a non-Reddit new person in your circle! :)

And not new to DW, either! Just a fun new-to-me face. :D

Hehe
That's true. I've been hanging around here for some time. :)

Fannish Friday

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