scrubjayspeaks

Snowflake Challenge! A thing I definitely did not forget existed until I started receiving new post notifications again! Yay!



Challenge #1: In your own space, introduce yourself!

I'm reusing last year's intro, mostly to save compiling all those links again!

The Basics: I'm Joyce Sully, aka freshbakedlady. (They/them pronouns, please.) I write fic and record podfic, not as often as I would like. I also publish original fiction; some of it is free. I'm chronically ill. I have a lot of animals and even more plants. I have a day job in manufacturing, and I used to work in a restaurant.

I'm on tumblr, where I mostly reblog photography, social commentary, weird stories, and fandom stuff.

I'm on dreamwidth, where I mostly post microfiction, art and photography, life updates, and fandom commentary.

I'm on AO3, where I mostly post traumatized superheroes, found family, and hurt/comfort.

I'm technically on twitter, where I mostly don't do shit because twitter is terrifying.

I'm on my own website, where I mostly sell original fiction.

Fandoms: I've accepted that my fandoms are, for now at least, mostly in cryostasis. I read very occasionally, I make sure I do one podfic a year, and I trust that I'll get active again when the time is right. So the following list is fandoms in which I am some level of conversant, even if I'm not active in any of them just now.

MCU, Teen Wolf, Yu Yu Hakusho, Gundam Wing, Stargate Atlantis, Harry Potter, Supernatural (early seasons only), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sailor Moon, The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, Leverage, Losers, Mad Max: Fury Road, X-Files, Sherlock Holmes (various iterations), Captive Prince, Jurassic Park/World, Pirates of the Caribbean, Good Omens, Studio Ghibli movies (various), Pokemon, The Old Guard (the new kid on the block)...

It occurs to me, looking over this, that I engage with meta a lot more these days than I used to and more than I engage with anything else. That list has a lot of entries for which I have read hardly any fic, but I can think of multiple pieces of meta/commentary that really excited me when I encountered them. I live for LotR meta on tumblr, frex. I do love me some media analysis.

I should look into making audio versions of entertaining meta...hm...

Challenge #2 In your own space, talk about your fannish history.

I suppose my fannish history looks a lot like that of other people in my age bracket--(mid-to-late) 80s brats--insofar as I first got meaningfully involved as a tween, there was a lot of anime influence, the college years were pretty dry, and adulthood brought a renewed and broadened interest. Oh, and being fannish and being queer ended up inextricably linked. This, as far as I can tell, is not an unusual trajectory.

I was present on a lot of the early internet platforms, but a) my timing usually brought me there just as that platform was fading, and b) I was almost always a lurker more than anything. So while yes, I was there, Gandalf, for things like egroups and webrings, the geocities era of websites, livejournal and ffn, it always seemed to be the last days before the fall of Rome. And I didn't have any significant interactions online. (With the exception of a furry-adjacent Yahoo group, the less said about which, the better.) I taught myself HTML to code a Yu Yu Hakusho fansite that no one, as far as I know, actually visited.

In hindsight, it occurs to me that I was...not completely hopeless, considering I really was out there in the goddamn Wild West, teaching myself coding and design and image editing just because it was fun.

I was lucky to have a brickspace group of friends who shared my fandom interests, so there was a lot of printing out stories we wrote and passing them around at school and such. Sailor Moon and Gundam Wing and Yu Yu Hakusho were more than fandoms; they were a kind of social structure to build my life around. We fit ourselves into our shared fandoms as a way of relating to each other. Because god knows, we were some awkward pups back then and needed all the help we could get.

Perhaps that's why, actually, the college years largely dried up my fandom connections. I lost contact with all but one of my high school friends. Fandom become something...preserved, for me. Trapped in amber. Read the same fic from a decade earlier. Live in nostalgia. There were only a handful of active authors I read during those years, and fandom very much felt like something Other People did and I merely observed.

Then I ended up in the Avengers fandom, circa 2012, and suddenly things were ALIVE again. I liked so much of what I was seeing, and I read voraciously. It was one of those rare bits of luck that life throws my way, to counteract my generally cursed status, because then my life fell apart in 2013. Fandom was the only thing keeping me alive for a year and a half.

And I got lucky again, because tumblr was the place to be at that moment, and it was a low-impact way of actually engaging. I had never had any fandom platform where interaction seemed within my capacity. (See above re: awkward pup.)

I know tumblr has some serious problems. I know it's fashionable to shit on it. Valid. But you know what? I never would have had the guts to leave comments or send messages or post fic again or collaborate on podfic, if not for that first baby step of liking a Clint/Coulson gifset someone else had reblogged. I wouldn't have the friends I have now.

So. Let's hear it for low-impact options and easy entry points.

While my reading has not dropped off quite as sharply as it did in college, I still think I'm in one of those lulls again. I haven't been writing in fandom for a few years now. Podtogether gets me one new AO3 entry each year, but that's been it. I read a couple people, mostly friends. Sometimes I worry that I'm broken, that my fannish impulse has gone fully and forever. But then I look back at the peaks and troughs of fandom across a couple decades for me, and I see that nothing is new in the world.

I'll come back eventually. I'll sync up again. It'll be at exactly the right time. It'll be in exactly the right format. That's how I'll know it's time again. And it'll be fun. And it'll be worth the wait.

questionoftheday asks: How do you think you would get along with clones of yourself? Would your clones be able to get along with each other?

My answer: I have thought about this way too much! Like, I have an unrevised novel draft about, well, not clones technically, but alternate universe versions of a person all stuck together because reasons.

In my case, we would probably fight ceaselessly, because I am really bad about despising other people when they share my flaws. My self-hatred runs so deep, it comes out as hatred of others. Charming!

That being said, I suspect we would all hit the point of saying to each other: look, can we all just shut up and cuddle? We are all dying of skin hunger, so let's just...deal with that for a while, yeah? But seriously, no talking right now. After that, we might have a chance in hell of having a real and useful conversation and making efforts to take care of each other. Because who else is going to?

This week on thefridayfive:

1. Do you enjoy receiving books as holiday or birthday gifts?
God, yes. Generally, if it's fiction, it's something I asked for or at least an author on my "always buy" list. Nonfiction, on the other hand, might be a surprise. Mum often gives me books about language (puns, quotes, amusing misuses &c.) or odd history topics.

I mean, it needs to be someone who knows my tastes and interests. I have received some...unfortunate books in the past from people who seem to think I'm likely to have a lot of overlap with, say, the Oprah book club.

2. What book are you reading (or, what is the last book you read)?
The Ruin of a Rake, Cat Sebastian. Because arsenicjade is the sort of dangerous friend who will recommend to me comedy of manners historical gay romance and throw in the BLATANT TEMPTATION of chronic illness. This is not a genre I read. Was not. Is now, apparently.

3. Are you enjoying (or, did you enjoy) that book? Why or why not?
Ugh, YES, and I am outraged about it. Outraged, I say. *shakes fist* There are references to a past of taking in stray animals, more snark than you can shake a swordcane at, and currently, the delicous threat of a recurrance of malaria hanging over someone's head. It's just--there's a lot going on here, and it is somehow all calculated to please me.

4. About how many books do you read in an average year?
I have no meaningful way of answering this. I have, in the past, tried to keep track of my reading habits. It has gone poorly. I read a lot of nonfiction, but I don't necessarily finish those books cover to cover? I read a bit to get whatever information I was after, or I read until my interest in the subject wanes a bit, then it goes back to the library. (I use the library A LOT.)

I don't read as much fiction as I would like. Fandom has managed to fill up a lot of my fiction diet, for a start. Also, I'm in a long-term mental state where I am...reluctant to trust new stories, because I am not emotionally prepared for disappointments. I do a lot of rereading of safe favorites. Eh. I don't love this arrangement, but it's where I am at the moment.

5. What are some of the books on your to-read pile (or list)?
Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3), Seanan McGuire. Lock In, John Scalzi. Truly Devious, Maureen Johnson. Space Opera, Catherynne M. Valente. (Aaaand I just made the mistake of looking in the to-read book basket. There's...a lot of books.)