Snowflake Challenge #4

[ratcreature]

Challenge #4: In your own space, make a list of things that you wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, and/or that you'd like someone to create or do for you.

The first wish I can think of is for more (and new) reccers to sign up for fanart_recs. The comm always has had at least a few recs every month since I started it in 2010, because there's a core of dedicated members, who rec frequently, which is awesome, but more recs would be even better.

Another vaguely rec related thing, I wish everyone on AO3 would use the bookmarking feature (and let them be public). Obviously what I really miss is having more rec pages, but considering that I've abandoned mine, that would be a bit hypocritical. But browsing somebody's bookmarks is really useful too, and unlike maintaining recs, it's almost no effort.

A rather unrealistic general wish is that newer fandoms I've become interested in would also happen here on DW? I never got into Reddit, and while I subscribe to some people on Twitter I find its use for fandom even more bewildering than Tumblr. And I have no idea how to even find whatever is going on with Discord (and never really was much for chat type of interactions).

I don't know whether it's my increasing age or the changes in the internet landscape, but I find it much harder to find and enter a new fandom than it used to be when fandom spaces were on newsgroups, mailing lists, message boards, and eventually LJ (which I resented for quite a while, initially).

There used to be primers you could find for new fandoms, pointing you to where the fandom was. Like newbie pages, or a list of popular mailing lists, that kind of thing. I miss those.

Comments

[ratcreature]

I'm into some Rusty Quill podcasts, and from what I understand the popular Reddit spaces are moderated by the creators? Which isn't my preferred fandom setup. There apparently also was a Discord that they had to shut down because of some sort of drama, that passed me by entirely except that I saw some vaguely baffling tweets...

[mllesatine]

Oh yeah, I was confused by a popular magnus archive tag that specified that a fanfic shouldn't be archived in the official archive (or something like that). Even reading about the possibility that a creator might read fanfic makes me uncomfortable.

Not sure about the moderation part but yes, reddit has a reputation for creators reading along especially when it comes to theories about certain plot points. And I also heard that creators then change the outcome because fans figured stuff out and we can't have that.

[ratcreature]

As a long time comic fan (whose first fandom experiences in the pre-internet days were comic cons and zines) I'm somewhat used to creators also being fans, but for me it starts to feel weirder with anything involving actors, because you kind of fantasize about their bodies along with a character fantasy, and to some extent that's even true for voice actors with podcasts. And with the actual play podcasts like Rusty Quill Gaming their RPG characters are kind of intertwined with the actual people who play them.

Like way back in comic fandom somebody reposted a slash artwork I had done on a message board that was frequented also by DC comic writers and I was really annoyed about the reposting without permission (and they removed my sig, iirc, and also it was done by obnoxious comic bros who found Batman and Nightwing kissing funny and mocked it, but whatever) but that didn't feel awkward. Whereas when I hear of fans shoving slash art at actors in a fandom I'm in, it makes me cringe, even if I had nothing to do with it.