dolorosa_12: (sister finland)
a million times a trillion more ([personal profile] dolorosa_12) wrote2020-11-27 11:19 am

Friday open thread: fandom love and community spirit

For those who've just added me through the friending meme and are a bit confused about what's going on, I post an open thread every Friday, with a prompting question to which anyone can respond.

This week's prompt is inspired by the annual holiday love meme. I've never participated in this before — my own anxiety and awkwardness is such that my immediate fear is that I post a thread to the meme, and no one responds, which would just crush me. But this year I've decided to risk it, and so my prompting questions here are twofold:

1. If you want to participate in the love meme, add your thread, and share it in the comments here. I've added me own thread in the link below.

holiday love meme 2020
my thread here


2. Whether you participate in the love meme or not, what is one thing you love about fandom, Dreamwidth, or your fannish community?



The big thing, for me, was the sense of relief at finding people who interacted with stories — with fiction — in the same way that I did. In other words, people for whom the story didn't end when the last page was turned or the credits started to roll, and who didn't see what we were given on the page or screen as being the entirety of the story. I've always been haunted by stories: if they resonate with me, they get into the space behind my heart, between my bones, and don't let me go. Growing up, with a few rare exceptions, I did not encounter any people who shared these feelings about, and reaction to, fiction. So when I did finally go online, and fall into first His Dark Materials fandom, and later transormative fandom more generally, it was like coming home.

I've not been here for as long as some people — just thirteen years so far — but I'm definitely not going anywhere.
forestofglory: E. H. Shepard drawing of Christopher Robin reading a book to Pooh (Default)

[personal profile] forestofglory 2020-11-27 06:29 pm (UTC)(link)
A thing I love about fandom is that it encourages me to learn all kinds of new things. I'm currently enjoying my deep dive into the history of Chinese material culture.