schneefink

It's 2020 and time has no meaning, but nevertheless, mostly because it might be fun to look back on one day, a brief timeline of how I absolutely did not mean to get interested in Hades. Oops.

August: eglantiere posts about this game she really enjoys. Sounds like fun but I don't play computer games. (Video games? Not sure what the difference is.)

~ 2 months ago: This guy I see art of on Tumblr sometimes does kinda look like AU Karkat ^^

~ 6 weeks ago: Yeah, no idea why a game about trying to escape from the underworld would possibly appeal to people right now.

~ 4 weeks ago: Apparently many people enjoy this game a lot. The art is pretty, and the romance options sound like fun.

~ 2.5 weeks ago: Youtube recommended me a Hades speedrunning video for some reason and I'm bored, might as well watch it. It is pretty, and a fun distraction. I could watch a few more.

~ 2 weeks ago: I'm watching scene compilations now. Good thing I don't play computer games, otherwise I'd be tempted. But I probably wouldn't enjoy actually playing it and anyway I don't have time for this.

~ 10 days ago: Hm, no inspiration for my daily writing practice, why not write a Hades snippet.

~ 7 days ago: Somehow I'm watching a 5-part documentary about the making of Hades now. And game reviews. I wonder if there's fic. (There is.)

A few days ago: I don't play computer games but I can complain to my flatmate D about finding this one so interesting even though I have so many other things to read/watch/listen to, and also Yuletide fic to write.

Two days ago: I've talked about it enough that D is mad at me for getting her interested in the game. Success.

Yesterday: Hey, I could watch a Let's Play from the beginning, then I'll get all the narrative content without actually having to play it and probably lose interest.

Yesterday, two hours later: I now have many thoughts and theories about builds and tactics. Uh-oh.

Today: …okay let's at least wait until January.

(I might lose all interest by January, or I might get impatient and start playing next week, who knows.)

If I had had to guess yesterday what would most amuse and distract me today, I would not have guessed Supernatural. I wasn't even in that fandom! (I mean I did read dozens of fics and watched some vids etc., but that barely counts, pretty sure that's just normal levels of fandom osmosis with a huge fandom like that.)
( spoilers for - it's 15x18 by now, whoa. )

Saturday was con.txt, and it was a lot of fun. I only found out about it last minute (well I'd heard about it before but somehow never made the actual connection that this was an event I could participate in, not until DD told me about it.)

I actually only caught very little of it. I wanted to watch the "Financial Crimes for Fun and Profit" panel (by caorann and celli), but my connection was bad so it kept freezing and throwing me out every few moments. I thought about switching to the other room where DD was watching "Canon, Fanon, Fever Dream" (by corbae and marina) because I kept hearing her laugh, but didn't in the end; though I was happy to hear that apparently multiple people guessed wrong about my TMA submission "A giant crab lives beneath the Archives." (Why no cloning *sighs*)

Then for the second panel I persuaded DD to watch it with me, so I got to see the entire thing without interruptions: "Werewolf Torts and Undead Annuities III", by alpheratz and v. greyson. It was great :D
( some quotes )

Apparently this is a regular panel, which makes sense because it is brilliant. (I found notes by bironic for the 2014 panel here.)

Then I left to play D&D, and I came back in time to try and watch the "I, Murderbot" panel (by everyfragment, la_dissonance & v. greyson) but again the connection was bad and I missed more than half of it. Uugh I really need to figure out my internet problems.

So now the plan is to read through all the Discord chats, all the recs etc. - I'll have plenty of time if I keep procrastinating like this ^^

By now there are quite a few fandoms I've lost interest in. Sometimes it was very sudden – The Magicians, for example – and sometimes it was long and drawn-out, like with hockey (RPF). Sometimes the reason is something to do with canon, sometimes I just got distracted by other things. But there usually is a reason, which is what makes "Guardian" so strange, because I don't really know what happened.

I watched Guardian in mid-2018 and enjoyed it a lot. So many beautiful tropes I love! I knew pretty much from the beginning that it'd never be a fandom I'd be very active in in terms of fic-writing, there's just too many plot holes and I'd find that too frustrating, but fortunately other people are less bothered by that. I enjoyed the pretty gifs and the amounts of great h/c fic and the discussions etc. and I was excited when more people got into the fandom. After a while I stopped seeking out new Guardian fic, and I thought I was in the cool-down phase of a fandom crush and the slow fading-out would continue as usual.

Instead, from one day to the next I completely lost interest in Guardian fic. Well, probably not literally, but that's what it felt like. People were still updating WIPs I'd loved and posting new fics with tropes I like and I had zero desire to read them. Which is very strange especially considering that I have no problem reading fics for fandoms I feel neutral about or don't even know, and if it's an author I like sometimes even for fandoms I dislike. And I don't dislike Guardian canon - I don't have strong feelings about it anymore, but I still have fond memories, I still enjoy screenshots when I happen to see them on my Tumblr dashboard, and I might even rewatch a few of my favorite episodes at some point. I just don't feel like reading fic about it. No clue why. It's weird. Not really bad – there's more than enough other stories to read, so it's not something I have a desire to "fix" somehow, and I was never deeply enough in the fandom that I miss it, though I did sometimes almost wish I was because it was nice seeing friends so excited about it. Just odd. Maybe it'll change again at some point, who knows. One of the things I've learned is that I can never predict which fandom will catch my interest next. (Makes life more exciting.)

I'm home! I had an amazing vacation, but now I'm also very glad to be back again. Which is how it should be.

I finally have time to write about my fantastic time at Worldcon! It was so great, I'm so glad that I went, and I'm already looking forward to going again one day. Aaaah I don't even know where to begin. So many great panels, and games and concerts etc., and it was so wonderful to just look around and see all these people in nerdy t-shirts (and some in cosplay!) and know that we're all here because of similar interests. So many brief meetings and conversations with interesting strangers, and great authors - and, most importantly, friends! I met up with dhampyresa and dolorosa_12 and extrapenguin and naye and doctorskuld, it was wonderful. And I even kept unexpectedly running into them despite the size of the convention, which was very nice.

I brought back some souvenirs – a d20 necklace, and an "I don't believe in humans" unicorn coaster for DD, and a print of Finding Fantasy by the very nice Rob Carlos which is now hanging in our kitchen, and the Myriad Lands anthologies which I have not had time to read yet but am already happy about because the covers are gorgeous (illustrations by Likhain). I also got some books signed, and I'll keep my name badge with the ribbons. Unlike some people, who collected dozens of them, I "only" have five: "My First Worldcon", "Volunteer" (though I only volunteered for two hours on Sunday), "Endor Scout" (from the TinyD6 Guardian RPG game I played one evening, as a stuffed toy bear wizard), "Murderbot doesn't love you, it just wants to watch its shows" from a panel with Martha Wells, and "Complete & Total Wordo" from someone I happened to share a hostel room with.

The hostel was only a 10-15 minutes' walk away from the convention center btw, which was very convenient. Apart from one short walk through Trinity College and the science gallery on Wednesday after I arrived, and walking between the locations and looking for food, I saw pretty much nothing of Dublin, but that's fine, I wasn't there as a city tourist. (That came later, in England.)

I made very detailed notes on all panels I visited. I'll probably (more realistic: maybe) type them all up eventually, but in the meantime, I'll post a list of panels/activities here (you can look up more detailed descriptions in the program) and if you're interested in hearing more about particular panels and/or want the notes, tell me. (extrapenguin also posted very detailed notes for the panels she visited, and naye and dolorosa_12 also posted reviews.)

( Panels etc. )

And that was it :) There were plenty of other panels that I wanted to go to but couldn't, either because they overlapped with other things or because the queue was too long and I didn't get in. To my own surprise, I even got enough sleep throughout, because when I came back to the hostels in the evening my head was too full to do what I usually do in the evenings, i.e. read and/or procrastinate. Maybe I should do that more often…

Another very nice thing at the con: I was often asked "are you a writer?" The first time I replied "No, I just write fanfic," but every.time. I was then told that that counts, so by the end of the con I said "yes, I write fanfic" and it felt very good. In general, even though I haven't written anything in weeks, after the convention I felt really encouraged about my writing, and motivated too - let's hope that it lasts!
The acceptance of fanfic in general is changing, as also demonstrated by the AO3 winning, but for me the most surprising proof of that was when two authors separately told me that yes, they read fic for their work and they love it. Which is cool! (And I've been meaning to write something for those books anyway…)
(Odd moments: when people talked about "fandom" and meant all kinds of fans gathered at the con - I'm so used to using "fandom" for transformative fandom! Probably also why, at first glance, I was so surprised to see so many men there ^^ )

Overall it was a fantastic experience, A+ :D And I got so many book recs - so many books, so little time...

Coming soon: posts about the second part of my vacation in Oxford&London, "The Untamed", and "oh no I left my D&D party alone for two weeks and Things happened."

I've had a few spectacularly unproductive days. Today, for example, I spent almost the entire day reading ASoIaF fic – I only ever read the first book and didn't like it much, and I never watched the series and don't intend to, but there's some good fic. And by "some" I mean "quite a lot," and a lot of it very long, which is dangerous for people with poor self-control like me.
(I'm currently working on my D&D character for our next campaign. It's wish-fulfilment, so the first thing I put under "strengths" was "self-discipline.")
I did manage to eat something and do a little bit more than nothing, which is, well, better than nothing. Generally it feels like it's getting worse again -.- Tomorrow I'm at work again, which usually helps. (No classes last week and this one, which is never good for my productivity.)

Apart from this, Easter was great! We painted beautiful eggs (my favorites of the ones I painted were the bouquet of daffodils and the Very Hungry Caterpillar eating cherries, an apple, and a pineapple), and then on Sunday we had a great family breakfast, then an outing in a beautiful garden/park, and then more good food. Not religious at all for me this year (I also still have leftovers from the two (!) cakes we had at the D&D session on Good Friday) but I didn't miss it. The spring weather is beautiful.

I love it when people have many bookmarks on AO3, it's a wonderful and very convenient way to find new stories in a variety of fandoms. It will be even easier now with the new bookmark filters! More people should use the bookmarks feature.

- says me, the total hypocrite with zero bookmarks -.- I have a word document with 43 pages of fic links (and a separate one just for SGA), transferring that would be way too much work, but just switching now in the middle would also not be ideal, and I'm probably too lazy to use both. (Also, one advantage of my simple list is that I can order however I like, so roughly in order of how much I like them, while AO3 just lets me sort by date bookmarked or date updated. I guess I could use some kind of ratings as a bookmarker's tag, but that would be public.)

On the other hand, I could probably use bookmarks as a shorthand for recs that I never get around to, which I have a lot of. I guess I could just start somewhere? Eventually? *sigh*

In other news, I'm still procrastinating on unpacking the last boxes, but at least yesterday and today I did it by continuing to write my WIP for the first time in months, so that's a silver lining. This weekend we might end our 2.5 year long D&D campaign, which is very exciting, and in the meantime the others are already busy creating characters for the (shorter) campaign I said I'd run afterwards. I have ideas I like but they're still in the development stages, I don't even have names for the country and city yet and they're asking me about the tax code... it'll be exciting and stressful and hopefully fun.

I signed up for fandom_stocking again, in a victory against self-doubt. My stocking is here.
And I reminded myself that even if I don't finish even half the treats I wanted to write, I'm sure people will still be happy to receive gift fic months later. Also I try to remember the two cakes principle. I almost finished completely rewriting my Yuletide fic and I like it better than the first version.

I didn't request Hockey RPF, not because I don't still enjoy reading hockey RPF fic but because I signed up late and in that moment I couldn't think of (not-angst) requests. (Of course I thought of things afterwards, it always works like that.) I still enjoy following the Penguins, and it's always especially fun when they're on a win streak. Sometimes it's harder than other times to focus on the narratives that I enjoy (like Sid's incredible goal-scoring, last year's rookies doing well, next year's rookies looking good) and not those that make me sad (Fleury), but the memory of the Cup win last season makes everything better. Also nice feel-good pieces like this one about how happy Schultz is in Pittsburgh and how well he is doing and how much Gonch is helping the defensemen.

Every time I get into a new fandom I'm a bit worried about annoying everyone with how much I talk about it, on- and offline. By now, after several years, I assume everyone got used to me talking about hockey a lot. Now I've started talking about D&D a lot - I've already explained the game to my mom, told LB and DD about my odd familiars, and I enjoy making "best of last week" posts on DW. Another fandom of a type I'm unfamiliar with, but I'll figure it out.

Things that happened last D&D session:( familiars with personalities, surprise dragon, and other fun stuff )

Tomorrow I'm going on vacation visiting my grandparents for a week with LB. We'd talked about it for a while but never specified a date because LB's summer plans were so fluid, so when he called me on Friday (right after I came back from grocery shopping) and suggested next week, it was a surprise. I'm looking forward to seeing my relatives, but I don't think I'll stay long because I currently feel comfortable in Vienna and like there's a lot of stuff I want to do here. How is it already the middle of July? Weird.

I wanted to post this yesterday, but then I got distracted by the Pens-Caps game. It was a fantastic hockey game, except for when the Caps got frustrated and started taking it out on Pens players: Weber started punching Rust who was just lying in the ice, Oshie punched Sid in the head while Sid was lying down pinned without his helmet, Weber boarded Rust, ugh. I hate that part of the sport. (I expected something like this against Philly, not the Caps!) I only watched two periods before I decided my nerves had enough (and also I was very tired) and was very happy and relieved to wake up to a 6-2 win. The Rust-Cullen-Kuhnhackl line was fantastic.
What a weekend, decisive wins against the Flyers and Caps and giving up 35 shots total. Fingers crossed Dumo is not too badly injured, fucking injuries.


March posting meme: What makes you stop being fannish about something or have you ever just quit, cold turkey, a fandom? If you haven't, what do you think would make you quit?
I've never, that I can recall, suddenly quit a fandom. In every case it was because I gradually lost interest. Sometimes because there were fewer people to talk to, sometimes because canon became worse, sometimes because I ran out of canon and fanworks, sometimes I discovered something else I liked better, sometimes I didn't even know why.

The question is currently particularly relevant for hockey (rpf) fandom. If something like what happened with Patrick Kane this summer – he was accused of rape and his team, the Chicago Blackhawks, and the league handled the situation terribly – happened with my team, could I continue being a fan of them? On the one hand I don't think so, but I'm not sure where I'd draw the line. If it's just one guy, I think I could deal with it. After all I already do my best to ignore Mario Lemieux. But what if the management & the organization support him, is that a deal-breaker, or only if my favorite players support him too?
And I don't think it will happen, but what if Patrick Kane gets the Masterton trophy this season, awarded to the player "who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to ice hockey"? Would that be a league I could support? On the one hand I wouldn't want to, but it'd be hard because I'd still be attached to my team, and the hockey is so pretty; and it'd likely be possible to rationalize away because the league already does many shitty things -.- I'd probably try not to give them any more money, at least.
(Hm, would also be interesting how that would affect the hockey/hockey rpf fandom overlap/line. I'll get into that some other time maybe.)

Things other current canons could do to stop my interest (apart from stupid things I can't foresee):
- The 100: I'm already less interested than I was now that they ( spoiler ) There are fewer characters that I like and am interested in than there used to be, and when the number goes down to zero I'll stop watching. Currently it's at around 5, if I add up some halves.
- Killjoys: I'm very curious what the second season of Killjoys will look like, they basically changed the entire premise. If Dutch and Johnny die I'm not interested anymore, but that won't happen. If Dutch and Johnny's friendship is permanently ruined in a bad way, that would also be a dealbreaker.
- MCU: I'm already only watching the movies people are saying are good, Age of Ultron killed a lot of my enthusiasm. If CA:CW is as bad as Age of Ultron I probably won't bother watching the next few movies.

Fandom reasons that would make me quit a fandom: Fortunately that hasn't happened yet, because in several instances I've been lucky to be a corner of fandom that's less wanky. (Now especially because I'm not really involved in fandom on Tumblr or Twitter.) I've heard several stories that if they happened in a fandom that I was very involved in I would probably have quit that fandom, often coinciding with questionable canon developments. I'm not sure how much, but bad fandom wanks definitely would affect my interest in canon, especially since interest in canon & interest in fandom are usually related.
(I thought about examining that more closely and playing through a few scenarios, but it always came back to how glad I am that I was never in Blackhawks fandom and could mostly avoid that mess in fannish spaces. No need to relive that mess.)