wanderings

( How it's been going for me - almost entirely under the cut because I'm assuming that where a lot of other people are these days is uninterested in reading anything related to J.K. Rowling. )

I think at this point, if you're actively engaging with HP fandom and you haven't written something in support of the trans community, that your support of J. K. Rowling and her aims is implied and real. Your silence is a cacophonous violence.

Where I am with HP fandom these days is inimically divorced and angrier than I've ever been. I'm not reading it, so I'm not reccing it. I'm continuing to use people's reactions to J.K. Rowling's name as a barometer of their stance on trans issues, and I am also so fucking sick of hearing her name, which is the reason that it's taken me about a year and a half to post this.

When Donald Trump was elected in 2016 I stayed up into the early hours of the morning, drinking wine and Skyping with a friend of a similar level of investment and an increasing amount of despair as the evening wound down. Next day's morning transit felt isolating, funereal, but as that day and all of the days progressed there was this thing that kept happening: people would make asides and vent.

The same thing happened when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022: people kept making asides about it. There was this assurance that other people also thought that it was fucked up. There were suddenly Ukrainian flags everywhere. There still are.

There aren't any Palestinian flags where I live. Nobody's talking about this, and it feels incredibly awful. The only acknowledgement I've seen has been in the queer and leftist spaces that I frequent, with unsurprisingly much more support in the leftist spaces. In the general spaces of my life there are crickets.

This week Canada voted in favour of the UN General Assembly resolution for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire", so there is some progress, nationally, but: children are dying, people are being bombed in the places they are told by their bombers to go to be safe, sanitation and medical care have collapsed or are collapsing, people are dying.

I don't feel that "no, really, you should stop killing people" is a particularly complex or controversial statement, and yet. (Crickets.)

Having the place that I see the most support for Gazans be social media is deeply unpleasant. My meatspace-linked instagram feed is full of posts and reels about the conflict from too few people and organisations, and it's also a format that is designed to be absolutely terrible with links (have fun finding sources for anything ever), so it's incredibly susceptible to propagandizing and stirring further division.

My Dreamwidth is quiet in general, and I've cultivated a reading list over the years that leans heavily fandom rather than meatspace-focused. I don't see a lot of political content in general. I also don't see those asides that were happening 7 years ago.

The people who I see speaking up are - not exclusively, but - overwhelmingly women of colour. And, you know, wow, it is so weird that there seems to be this, like, racial correlation happening here.

There are all of these cricket-filled spaces in my life right now that feel racist and awful. Though, to be fair, it's also Christmas time, so the experience of going, like, most places, is like being bludgeoned repeatedly by a tinsel-covered baseball bat wielded by the dominant culture.

hollowhearts asked, "what's been your favourite experience in fandom thus far?"

SGA was my first real social fandom and easily the closest I've ever been to being monofannish. readbystarlight and I were in the same corner of fandom, reading the same fics, and sharing that was a joy.

We got together one day with a couple of friends and played Taboo, which is a game where you're given cards that have a word that you need to get your partner to say, and you're not allowed to say that word or a short list of related words. You try to get through as many words as you can before the timer runs out, and everyone takes turns being their team's clue giver.

readbystarlight and I were partners, and we cleaned up. More significantly, playing together was joyful. All of the McShep fic that we'd read had given us a slew of shared reference points. It was a real manifestation of that shared lexicon and the kind of delight and fun of being immersed in a fandom together.

I think that "John Sheppard is a-", yielded "pilot!" I think that "penguin"'s clue was just "crack!fic". It was a creative and collaborative volleying back and forth that was a lot of fun, if perhaps a somewhat unfair advantage over the opposition.

A lot of what I love about fandom is that collaborative creative shared joy, and I love the ridiculousness of harnessing that to win a word game.

The Jonas Brothers waited until I was done with Femslash February* to release a new single, Sucker, after teasing it on Carpool Karaoke with James Cordon.

The Jonas Brothers were how I got into bandom, and I watched a lot of random episodes of JONAS (at questionable hours, mainly), and the Camp Rocks along with a couple music videos. I remember the acting as kind of delightful and the music as kind of terrible, and the fact that I have those kinds of opinions is very non-typical for me for a fandom; most of the time I never touch the canon. So I have clearly been fannish about these people.

Skippy and these three were probably my main fandom for a while, even, and the new music video is not great**, but it has Kevin riding something sheep-like and in a sequin suit, implications of voyeurism in Nick's relationship, Joe in suspension that looks kinda inadvisable as a long-term thing, and general rich person shenanigans with their wives including butlers and so many macarons. I feel like I should be excited but I just feel a kind of sad nostalgia for fannish times of yore.

Everyone is married now and Kevin has a tattoo so clearly they're not Disney Kids anymore. (There's some kind of alcohol sponsorship in the video, also.) I'm not sure that there would be an appropriate acting vehicle available for them now that would make me happy, or even what would make me happy. (Faux tour doc with a buddy-cop feel and a retro vibe maybe? IDK. Hallmark, probably, because that's pretty clearly the adult version of the Disney Channel.)

I'm disappointed there wasn't, like, an alpaca and a bathtub full of croissants*** in this. I miss the absurdity. There were pool chairs indoors for no reason and an excess of rabbits and a tea party with a congo line and a pointless TV display and ridiculous hats and I feel nothing. I think they've lost that caricature element that they had?

I miss it and I am full of this fierce longing for times gone by and the fannish moment that was Skippy and I don't think this is a feeling that I've had before. I feel like someone remade my show and I don't like it, only it's RPF, so IDK. I've never been a fan of their music, though, so I am not entirely sure how I managed to have expectations for them to disappoint? *hands*

Do other people have similar tales of sad-tinged fannish nostalgia or a take on the Jobros thing?

*which was a thing that I observed the letter more than the spirit of as I seem to be on a general fanwork hiatus right now; every fanwork I consumed in February was female-centric gen or femslash. I think I watched two vids total, though, and I suspect March will be pretty similar.
**I think it's better than their old stuff, though, so there's that. Also I've been watching, like, Beyoncé recently, and that is a bar they will never approach. IT IS AN EXTREMELY GENERIC AND PERFECTLY ADEQUATE POP MUSIC VIDEO. (Let's go have some fun and shoot it in a fancy manor like a Taylor Swift video they said, awesome they said, and then executed it with no real artistic direction.)
***I feel like a bathtub full of croissants would be a series of terrible sensations and also that it and the alpaca sound more like a Fall Out Boy video, but still.

ETA: There is a director's cut now and it is significantly better.

In your own space, post a rec for fannish and/or creative resources and spaces. Tell us where you go to dig up canon facts for your fandom, or where you get all the juicy details about your favorite ship. Where do you like to hang out and squee like a squeeing thing? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

The following is probably roughly what I would send someone who showed up in my inbox going Hi, I'm new to fandom and you seem nice - help?

( Links )