Fandom is gay

Signal Boost: how to download old icons that are being held hostage by photobucket

2020-05-13T19:44:55Z

tozka posted: how to download old icons that are being held hostage by photobucket

Ever since Photobucket started charging for 3rd party image hosting, all of the old icons and graphics from pre-2017 fandom have been mutilated with a huge watermark across the middle of them.

People might find this useful, especially if you're in older fandoms and go searching through the old icon communities. I know I will use this in the future.

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Partially overdue linkspam

2019-12-03T01:27:16Z

In this week's linkspam, I'm going to be including more than just fandom meta. I want to be sharing links of posts, articles, conversations and news that I found personally interesting, amusing or useful. While I assume that most of the people who follow me have at least somewhat similar interests, I'm aware that all of them do not overlap (and that's fine). I'll do my best to shortly describe all links in a way that allows everyone to make their own decisions on whether or not they want to read more.

I actually started working on this post last January, so one of the links is very old...

First, Archive.org is having a 2-to-1 Matching Campaign, so if you have any money to spare, please consider donating! As it says on their website, they're building a digital library of everything on the internet, and they pay special attention to books with a mission to provide universal access to all knowledge. (You might know them from the Wayback Machine.)

Last January, shirasade wrote an interesting post about internet privacy which inspired me to make a few changes to my e-mail and browsing habits back in January when I read it. Back then I swapped to Firefox, but then for some reason which I can't recall, I went back to Google Chrome. But lately I've been spent more time thinking about security issues, so I switched back to Firefox. I've also worked on replacing my gmail accounts with Protonmail, at least when it comes to important emails.

On a similar and more recent note, alisx shared an NY Times article about changes to Google's privacy policy through the years. It really makes you think about how much we let corporations like Google get away with now that we've gotten used to Google services being involved with everything we do.

Here's an eye opening video about Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground laws by Renegade Cut. It's illustrated via the medium of the Home Alone movies, which are Christmas staple from the 90s. I don't know what to say, because the video left me speechless. (CW: violence, death, USA politics.)

Another video by the same creator is a little less dark, titled How to Survive Your Office Job, which I heartily recommend as well. It's pretty topical, considering that Finland just had a postal strike, because the top decided to reduce 700 workers salaries by 30%. Unions are your friends (unlike your bosses)!

On the fandom site of things, anneapocalypse wrote about fandom history and purity culture on the internet. This definitely made me reflect on my own history and the early teenage years I spent in fandom spaces, and how all of that has drastically changed for the newest generations since then.

xparrot wrote a thoughtful piece about negativity in fandom, while an article on the The Mary Sue speculated about the popularity of Discord fandom discord servers.

And more discussion about fandom purity culture in muccamukk's signal boost of Ann Leckie's "Purity: or Will No One Think of the Children". Both posts have comments worth reading.

OTW announced its relaunch of Fanhackers. Their aim is to make fan studies research more accessible by building a fan studies bibliography among other things. I'll definitely keep my eye on this website, since I've considered making my first BA's thesis about fandom and transformative fiction.

And last but not least, Billy Dee Williams came out as genderfluid! Here's a short quote from the article:

“And you see I say ‘himself’ and ‘herself,’ because I also see myself as feminine as well as masculine,” Williams tells Esquire Culture Editor Matt Miller. “I’m a very soft person. I’m not afraid to show that side of myself.”

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a brief update on my life

2019-11-29T16:26:58Z

I haven't really been on here in ages. Been really busy this autumn, I moved to another city and I've been working on two degrees at the same time (English and Japanese). This city's winter hasn't even properly started yet, although we got a pitiful attempt at snowfall today. Mostly it's just been dark and damp.

Something fandom meta related on tumblr reminded me that this website exists and that I've often read very interesting discussions here, which doesn't happen that often on tumblr.

It will definitely take me a while to get used to the layout of this website again.

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Good Omens discord server

2019-06-17T12:13:12Z

After I made a post on tumblr and mentioned how our LGBT+ discord server was streaming Good Omens, we received several messages asking for an invite to “the Good Omens discord”. We realized that there was a need for a separate discord just for fandom stuff.

And thus, Tea at the Ritz was founded.

It’s an LGBT+ safe discord server with channels for sharing memes, art, fanfic… There’s even a separate channel for talking about the cast, and more.

Come discuss the show, the book, and things between (like the radio drama). Click here to enter!

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I'm in such a good fandom place right now

2019-06-05T03:50:29Z

Please, come yell with me about Good Omens.

I've been a fan of it for years ever since my friend got me to read the book. Although I was a bit scared of the TV adaptation at first, I'm so happy this fandom has gotten somewhat revived now.

They handled the adaptation really well in my opinion, and I'm constantly amazed at Michael Sheen and David Tennant's performances as Aziraphale and Crowley. I hadn't seen Michael Sheen in many roles before, and I think I ended up liking him even more than Tennant, who I already had lots of love for because of Doctor Who and Broadchurch (and once having seen him live in Richard II).

Overall, the show is probably the best book-to-screen adaption I've ever seen.

Here's a headcanon I came up with when watching the show...

So you know that scene where we see Crowley’s stash of sunglasses in his car? I’ve been wondering about something since I first saw the scene.

What if Crowley keeps those handy because he feels (only a little bit) ashamed of being a demon. He’s shy about his eyes because they mark him as a fallen angel, unlike Aziraphale who just looks like a human. So he wears sunglasses “even when he doesn’t need them”.

Just imagine... Aziraphale realizing why Crowley keeps wearing the glasses in his presence, and then saying something like, “I quite like your eyes.”

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Why I prefer Dreamwidth over Twitter

2019-03-08T13:33:09Z

I've been kinda lurking on twitter lately, because Hannibal fandom seems to be kinda focused on there after December's tumblr purge. And apparently there was some drama happening over there. I glanced at it as it was happening, but I probably wouldn't have thought much of it if a friend of mine hadn't mentioned it again later, because she knew the original poster of the tweet that started it and seems like it was causing big waves inside the fandom (at least on twitter).

And this kind of stuff just reminds me why I'm not big on Twitter. It's too public, and people don't realise that posting on there means anybody can see your tweet, including people who don't share your sense of humour and will misunderstand your meaning.

It ended up being about stuff which is regularly fought over on tumblr as well whenever AO3 is mentioned in regards to "problematic" tags and pairings, mainly if some ships are problematic and if fiction affects real life.

This is why I'm mostly a lurker. I don't see a point in yelling about this stuff on somewhere like twitter, unless you mostly use a private account and heavily moderate people who you allow access to. I saw a what I think was an unrelated tweet that pointed out how fandom as it is, is not a safe space, because anyone can be in a fandom. But you should absolutely create your own safe spaces within your own fandoms, by curating the people you follow and interact with.

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Wisdoms by Snufkin and Moominmamma

2019-02-27T15:02:41Z

Probably all my Finnish followers know that the Moomin franchise recently got a new TV adaptation. The first episode of the show was broadcast in Finnish and Swedish this Monday, so it got me into a rather Moomin mood.

Despite always having loved the Moomins, I had never read Tove Jansson's books. That is, until today.

I read the first one this afternoon (it was very short), and I'm over halfway through the second one. It's a shame I never read them when I was younger, but then again, I might not have really understood or even liked them that much as a kid. I'm truly enjoying reading them now, though.

‘Must you be so poetic?’ said Sniff. ‘When we were in the valley you only talked about how wonderful other places were.’

‘That was different,’ said Moomintroll.

‘But it’s true,’ said Snufkin. ‘We’re all like that. You must go on a long journey before you can really find out how wonderful home is.’

— Comet in Moominland by Tove Jansson

At first Moominmamma was frightened, too, but then she calmed down: ‘I think it's a very small creature. Wait, and I'll shine a light on it. Everything looks worse in the dark, you know.’

— The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson

I definitely recommend the Moomin books to anyone who wants to read adorable, creative, and exciting stories about wondrous creatures and adventures. And so far there's seems to be deeper themes to these books as well, which is something that I really appreciate when it comes to children's books. And the comics, which I have only briefly looked at, are totally worth a read as well. To my knowledge both the books and the comics deal with quite dark issues.

In my honest opinion, the new series show seems okay, once you get past the odd look of the 3D animation. The background sceneries are especially breathtaking. I just wish they had gone with a more traditional 2D style. The English version will be broadcast around Easter, and its voice actor cast includes stars such as Taron Egerton, Rosamund Pike, Matt Berry and Richard Ayoade.

It's definitely worth a look!

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Dostoyevsky, and steps towards polyglotism

2019-02-16T20:47:16Z

I'm currently reading Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Let me be honest with you... I'm starting to get real tired of the dialogue in this book! People will start rambling and sometimes they go on for pages and pages without taking a damn breath and it becomes really hard to understand what they're trying to say. (And the names are confusing, but that's another matter entirely and has more to do with Russian culture than the book itself.)

Otherwise I'm enjoying it. The main character seems to be sweaty and delirious for most of the story, with an added 20% of "oh what's the point" and then sudden "no wait, i'm gonna make it!" moments. Something about that really appeals to me as a fellow human disaster.

Anyway... Couple of days ago I decided I'm going to learn Italian.

I don’t expect great leaps to fluency any time soon, since I’m really busy with majoring in Japanese, but at least Italian doesn’t require learning a whole new writing system. Even though I really ought to be brushing up on my Swedish, I’ve wanted to take up a new European language for a while now. French seems too difficult and I don’t really like German for some reason, but Italian at least seems relatively simple in pronunciation and it's very close to Latin, which is something I've always had a vague interest in.

Additionally, to an art & history geek like me, Italian is really tempting because of the cultural history, since so many notable Renaissance era artists were from Florence.

Look… I’m not saying I picked Italian because of Hannibal.

But I totally did.

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If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye...

2019-02-12T22:01:21Z

I want to get interested in reading published books again, because I'm still contemplating what I want to do as my career and literature has sort of always been there in the background, tempting me and calling my name and whatnot. I don't have a problem with reading per say, but I mostly read fanfiction these days. I used to read a lot when I was in middle school and high school, but then I just sort of... lost interest in reading published books, because fanfiction was just more up my alley. The tagging system on AO3 makes it so easy to find stories I know I'll actually enjoy.

I decided I should start chipping away at my reading list, or at least try to get more educated about "the classics" in some other way, if possible. This led to me watching John Green's Crash Course on Literature.

This afternoon I watched the two videos on J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Now, I've had this book on my hella long reading list for ages since I know it's an American classic, but I've never really been in the mood to read it. But the videos aroused my interest, so I downloaded the ebook and started reading.

And to my surprise, once I started reading, I couldn't stop. The only breaks I took were because I wanted to bake some bread from a recipe I had found few days earlier, but that only took couple of short breaks. The recipe required almost 3 hours of just waiting around for the dough to rise and it to bake in the oven, so I managed to read the whole book in one evening.

I actually really enjoyed the book and found myself heavily empathizing with the main character. I also highlighted some passages which I found especially good, so I thought I'd share two of them with y'all.

First this:

I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.

And then another one:

“All right, name something else. Name something you’d like to be. Like a scientist. Or a lawyer or something.”

“I couldn’t be a scientist. I’m no good in science.”

“Well, a lawyer - like Daddy and all.”

“Lawyers are all right, I guess - but it doesn’t appeal to me,” I said. “I mean they’re all right if they go around saving innocent guys’ lives all the time, and like that, but you don’t do that kind of stuff if you’re a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys’ lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys’ lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn’t.”

That's about it. I don't really have any analysis or anything for these bits, I just really liked them.

What ended up happening after I read the books is that I realized how short most published books actually are. I've been thinking that they're really long because that's how they felt when I was a kid, but these days I regularly consume like 400,000 word long fanfiction in almost one sitting. Bolstered by this realization, I ended up making a new account on GoodReads and set myself a challenge of reading 50 books in 2019.

Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to eat some of that bread.

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Where has this magnificent comic been for all my life?

2019-02-01T22:08:15Z

I was watching a video about The Evolution of Queerbaiting by Rowan Ellis and then re-watching the older video about queer-coding, and the latter video mentioned a comic called Check, Please! as a positive example of queer coding. I recognized the name since I had seen it on the fandom lists of a few people here on Dreamwidth, so I got curious, and googled it.

Despite being a Finn, I've never been into ice hockey (which is pretty much considered treason, along with not liking Finnish baseball), but the comic had a cute art style and the main character seemed interesting. So I started reading it.

And I can't even.

This. Is. Amazing.

Just wanted to let y'all know. Going back to reading it now.

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Forced Web Etiquette, Self-doubt and the Pressure to be Original

2019-01-29T21:22:29Z

Last week I shared kore's post about not needing something worth to say in order to post on Dreamwidth and muccamukk's post about dogpiling. Afterwards, these two posts stayed in the back of my mind and I came to a somewhat unpleasant realization.

I agree with the point that Dreamwidth, like any other platform, is what the users make of it. But despite this, I also constantly feel like I need to be be eloquent in the text that I produce. These feelings often culminate to the point where I will often refrain from writing a post or a comment, because I feel like everyone else has already said what I wanted to (usually better), and I feel like I don't have a single original thing to add to the conversation.

In order to dig deep and explain the cause for these feelings, I wanted to share some of my history on the internet, and list some of the things which cause me anxiety when taking part in discussions, sharing headcanons, or even when writing fanfiction.

Me and The Netiquette — d0nt sp34k l1k3 th1s!!

The following experiences probably aren't very universal. Firstly, because I spent a good amount of years on the Finnish side of the internet before venturing onto the "true" World Wide Web, where people mostly write in English. And secondly, because I spent my early teenage years on very specific niche of websites. However, my experiences do partly explain the pressure I feel when writing something I unconsciously deem as more "formal", such as blog posts, websites, forum posts or comments.

When I first started actively using the internet, I mostly spent time on fandom forums, text based role playing forums, and art websites. To my knowledge, the user bases of these sites consisted mostly of kids, teenagers and younger adults, but I'm sure there were plenty of older adults as well. But as a 12-14 year old kid who wanted to be seen as an equal, it was very important to show that you were just as mature as any adult. And that was directly tied to writing with correct grammar and punctuation. Doing otherwise would make you an object of ridicule, or depending on the website, you might even get a warning.

For the purpose of writing this post, I asked around in my immediate circle of friends for their experiences. One of the four people I questioned admitted to feeling similarly pressured to write correctly and appear older and more mature than they actually were. Two hadn't felt pressured at all outside of school, and the fourth one admitted to paying more attention to writing clear and correct text when creating blog posts, but never having felt excessive pressure to do so. I suspect the main difference here is the types of websites we all used to visit, because the one person who admitted to feeling pressured mentioned a website which is similar to my most frequently used sites from back then.

In junior high school, my use of English speaking websites such as FFN.net increased. However, I didn't start communicating on English speaking interactive websites until tumblr, where the forced grammar rules had seemingly flown out of the window.

To quote myself from an earlier discussion:

Then came tumblr... and people were just writing like they wanted to??? No capitalization, no punctuation was necessary??? -- Sure, tumblr has its own unwritten rules about how to write readable text, but it was nothing like the Real Grammar Rules. Gosh, I remember most RPG's having an entire pages dedicated to grammar rules that the players had to follow... And I feel like that just wouldn't happen on tumblr or twitter these days.

I'm aware that some people on tumblr write with proper grammar and punctuation, but that's the point! You could do what you wanted to. After years of paying attention to my writing, and then it suddenly being okay not to capitalize every sentence or even use punctuation was weird. But eventually I got used to it, and developed another writing style which mixed in well with the locals. In fact, I got so used to writing in this informal way that even now I need to kind of take a step back and switch gears when I want to switch between writing "chat speak" and writing "properly". And both are equally difficult to switch off.

As I was writing this, I came across a podcast that talked more about code switching between writing mediums, and I pretty much agree with what was said in it. On certain platforms it just feels unnatural to use formal language, and on others the opposite is true. In the end it's a very personal matter which depends heavily on your background and habits.

"You're a copy cat" — Is it even possible to be original?

I used to have my own text based role playing game until I grew out of the hobby around high school. And I suspect that many of my current precautions and feelings about coming up with ideas or expressing my opinions come from having to deal with quite bit of drama during my role playing years.

I was friends with another RP game's founders and some of our players were members in both games, so it worked nicely for a while, we even had affiliate links going on. However, some time later I was accused of copying their new idea for a plot arc, which resulted in them shit talking about me on their public forum and then sending me threatening private messages on other platforms. I tried to defend myself and explain my points, but kids can be cruel, so my arguments were largely ignored. This drama caused a lot of friction and even broken friendships within our partially shared friend circle.

Looking back, both of our ideas were horribly unoriginal, so I still don't get what the fuss was about.

Bit earlier when I was in 5th or 6th grade, one of the fan forums I was part of started a movement to weed out copyright violations around fan & art websites. Their mission was to report copyrighted images on various websites to get them taken down, but they also cracked down on people who made web comics with unoriginal, or "stolen" ideas. This usually resulted in a large group of people dogpiling on kids or teens who didn't really know or care that they had uploaded a picture they had no rights to, or had been inspired by someone else's story or comic. At the time, the movement was spearheaded by some big names in the communities in question, so I ended up agreeing with them and going with the flow to a certain extent and being really strict about copyrighted content. (As a result I was never really targeted by them.)

These days most people on the internet really don't care or even know much about copyright (just look at memes), but I have to admit that being in that kind of environment left its mark on me. That, in combination with having been accused of copying someone else's ideas, and now being constantly warned about the real life consequences of plagiarisation in the academic circles, well... Let's just say that even as I'm writing this post I'm wondering if I unconsciously stole the idea from someone else.

Deep down I know that cliches are cliche's because they work, most ideas are the same old ideas but with a new angle, and there's really nothing new under the sun. But still I worry and strive to be original, and suspect I'm not the only one.

Why would someone care about my opinion / work?

I'm sure that most, if not all, tumblr refugees agree that tumblr (and similarly Twitter & Facebook) is dependant on the fact that people would rather share someone else's opinions than their own. "Hey, look this person said something I also think, but in a funny way," leads to a reblog and a like. On the contrary, trying to make your own post might lead to nothing, unless you have enough followers and/or the stars are in the right position.

This is where we come to another thing thing I've lately realized about myself: I often feel like my opinion just isn't valuable, so is there really any point in expressing it? At a certain point, isn't that just shouting into the void and expecting it to answer back? Other can probably do it better and they have better arguments. Other people can write books and produce TV shows and draw comics, and they'll do it better than me. And on top of not feeling good enough to produce content, what if my opinion is just... plain wrong?

I don't want to be controversial

Often I find myself avoiding making direct statements in order to avoid conflict. I might say "I love this", or "In my opinion, I think character X is Y", but I'll go round and round just to avoid being blunt in what I say in order not to offend anyone who might disagree. Because if someone does end up disagreeing with me, it's surely inevitable that I'll end up hearing their craftily written arguments (and in my head they're always craftily written), and that in the end I'll just end up looking like an idiot. I have no idea if this is the result of the constant call out culture that tumblr and other social media sites are so fond of, or if it's just a realization of my general lack of self-confidence, but it sucks. It really does.

Largely, most of my anxiety concerning writing and producing content just come down to one thing: fear. Fear of being wrong or unoriginal, fear of being ridiculed, fear of people getting angry at me (which can lead to highly unpleasant things like doxxing) either for my opinions, political alignments or simply for existing as I am. Some time ago I largely stopped really using Facebook because of these fears, and I still have a profile only because I need it for school related announcements. I don't want continue being online on a website like Facebook, which is chock-full of people with wildly different ideas about constitutes as a human right, and who probably wouldn't stop and think before trying to ruin my life in creative ways.

(TLDR; Now this is pretty far-fetched, but if you're familiar with the Broadway musical Hamilton, I would like to be like Hamilton himself, but I'm probably actually more like Aaron Burr. Just saying, because I often listen to one of the songs and feel like it's about two of my last brain cells yelling at each other.)

And your point is...

I don't know. I didn't write this to prove an argument or point. I just needed to vent out some thoughts, because isn't that what we've been saying about the ongoing comparison between Dreamwidth and tumblr, and about how on tumblr you could just shitpost to your heart's content, yet people feel the need to be so goddamn serious on Dreamwidth for some reason? How about we stop de-valuing our opinions and creations and just write what we we want to share with the community, whether it's just a sentence or a 20-page ramble about our favourite character's luscious hair.

Dreamwidth can be what we want it to be, and at the moment it's a platform where I feel relatively safe to express myself in this half-reminiscing, half-rambling way. Because Dreamwidth exists, I was able to write and ponder about my general feelings of inadequacy, which stretch out into all of the various fields which interest me, including writing.

In conclusion, there are plenty of people in the world who can do things better than me, and that has created an unfortunate habit of me comparing my content to other people's. And I have a lot of conscious and unconscious fears about creating said content. But that's completely okay, because acknowledging the fears and working on them might be the only way forward.

Maybe 2019 can be the year of conquering some of those fears. Starting by hitting that post button.

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mr. sandman, bring me a meme ♪

2019-01-28T00:39:27Z

I saw this meme going around earlier, so I thought I'd take part as well. I have couple of tropes I always return to, so I'm curious to see which tropes y'all want me to rate & rant about. If you can't think of tropes, here's handy list by trope_bingo, or if you have unlimited time to spare, you can check out TV Tropes.

Send me a Trope and I’ll rate it!

Meme provided by journalmemes.

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I should be sleeping, but...

2019-01-27T03:35:59Z

I've been getting back into the swing of things here on Dreamwidth, so I wanted to link some posts and discussions which I found interesting. There's some good points regarding adult content warnings, advice on making your profile and journal inviting for potential followers, and funnily enough, discussion about linking as a practice.

Firstly, melannen wrote about Dreamwidth's adult content warnings, and why you should think twice before marking your journal as adult content. This also applies to other websites.

Secondly, kore wrote an excellent reminder about the endless comparison between Dreamwidth vs Tumblr and why your posts don't have to be super serious. Y'all, be silly! Post fun and short things!! Post "useless" things! Post whatever you want! Just because this place isn't as fast paced and memeable as tumblr (and the latter point is seriously debatable), it doesn't mean we have to be boring.

Then there's the post by silveradept, in which they list things they look for in deciding whether to subscribe to someone. I personally found some helpful tips to keep in mind for editing my profile and sticky posts.

As said, lately there's been some discussion regarding links.

muccamukk wrote a post about linking and dog piling which I think is worth a read. (To my understanding dog piling is what happens when someone disagrees with a post/tweet/whatever, links it elsewhere to start a discussion and the negative comments from the secondary source spill over to the original source. I agree that it's generally a good policy not to engage with the original post in these kinds of situations.)

There's more talk about linking in another thought-provoking post by sylvaine. It's certainly raising some discussion in the comments.

Last but not least, if you're interested in keeping up with fandom meta, I recommend subscribing to thisweekmeta, a fun meta newsletter. Earlier this month, its founder doctorisdrat wrote a post about fandom meta which generated quite a lot of discussion.

EDIT: I posted this around 5:30 am, but the time stamp at the top of the post stubbornly says 1:24. Do any DW veterans know what causes this? Does the post editor lock onto the time of day when you first start writing a post, and then doesn't change it even after publishing? The issue was fixed thanks to kind commenters.

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Someone read my IronDevil fanfic... out loud!

2019-01-26T17:14:53Z

When I got a link for this, I literally flailed over it. In public. On the train back from the airport.

Some time ago, I came across a post on r/fanfiction where a person asked for users to link their fics in order to read them out on their new youtube channel, Fun Fiction. Unable to refrain, I linked one of my stories, a series of short fics called Food Items in the Style of Tony Stark. It's an on-going, tooth rottingly fluffy series focused on an canon divergent world where Tony Star and Matt Murdock meet before Tony's fateful trip to Afganistan. I've been meaning to write a third story for ages... but, well. Maybe later this year.

Fun Fiction recorded a reading of the first story Coffee couple of weeks ago, and it's awesome. I especially enjoyed Matt's voice.

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Mood for 2019

2019-01-26T15:07:45Z

So I went to Japan for a month, and had a really lovely time. I saw not one, but two Takarazuka musicals (they were beyond awesome), and spent most of my budget on trying out Japanese food and snacks. However, the highlight of the trip was probably our day in Universal Studios Japan, where we spent the whole day in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Another thing I absolutely loved about Japan are all the second hand book stores. And the books are cheap. Of course, being unable to resist such stores selling cheap manga and books, I ended up returning with enough Japanese reading for years and years. Unfortunately the trip also came with a side of a really miserable cold.

Now it's been nearly three weeks since I came back, and I think I'm finally starting to get used to Finland and my apartment. And of course, I've been going to lectures again. I somehow managed to pass our Japanese exam on the first try, despite being sick with the cold and therefore unable to study for it at all. Small miracles, huh.

Even though I had a really cool start for the new year in Japan of all places, my mood for this year has pretty much been "perpetually exhausted". ~~Eddie Brock is mood for 2019.~~ This damned winter darkness just leeches all life from me, and our course we recently found out that our course load effectively doubles for the spring. Ugh. There goes all my plans for writing more fanfiction this year.

What about everyone else? How has your new year started? I was without my laptop for 30 days and thus didn't really keep up Dreamwidth much, so I feel kind of out of the loop. What are peeps talking about here these days?

Now, if you excuse me, I'll go sleep for a week.

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Fic: Gaining Time: Chapter 1/?

2018-12-07T20:17:46Z

Title: Gaining Time
Author: saxonvoter
Chapter: 1/?
Words: 698
Fandom: Hannibal
Pairings: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Canon violence & themes, cursing

A/N: My attempt at a basic time travel fic, because this fandom doesn't have nearly enough of them. Wanted to have this first chapter out before my trip, so don't expect me to update until late January at the earliest. Sorry.

Summary: Will falls, and then wakes up.

Chapter 1

Will Graham falls with his eyes closed.

Hannibal’s arms are around him, caging him, protecting him. Unlike so many times in the past, he welcomes the embrace. They break the surface of the dark water together, Hannibal’s hand in his.

But the impact throws them apart. Will reaches and reaches, but he can no longer find Hannibal’s hand.

The darkness closes up around Will, and his last breath catches up in his throat in a desperate effort to shout for Hannibal’s name.

Will opens his eyes.

“Where did you go, Will?” Hannibal asks, sat across from him in his usual seat in the office.

Will blinks at him, beyond confused. “I...” he trails off, his eyes hungrily taking in the familiar scene from so long ago. He often returned to this time and place in his mind, but it was never quite this vivid. He’s almost convinced that if he wanted to, he could reach across the space and touch Hannibal.

And Will does want to touch Hannibal, so he gets up and walks across the short distance, barely registering the fact that he’s no longer aching from all of his wounds. He raises his hand to Hannibal’s face, and Hannibal’s breath catches in audible surprise.

His own breath catches in return as his hand connects with actual flesh and bone. This is either real, or an incredibly vivid hallucination. Will honestly cannot say which one he would prefer right now. He’s half convinced he’s dead or dying, and this is his brain’s last ditch effort at a high lights reel before it shuts down.

Hannibal looks up at him, something hungry and indescribably tender in his gaze.

No matter what is actually happening, Will doesn’t want to let go. “This might not be real,” he says quietly, unable to stop his hand from caressing Hannibal’s face, his thumb brushing over his cheekbone.

Hannibal leans into the touch and his hand is suddenly on top of Will’s, gentle and warm.

“Does it matter?” Hannibal asks.

Will pauses. “What?”

“Does it matter whether this is real or not?” Hannibal repeats, and his mouth curves into a tiny smile. “Reality is only what we make of it.”

“It does matter.”

“Why?”

Will drops his hand, and Hannibal lets him. Will tilts his head and regards the man in front of him. His hair was longer, like it used to be before... before. The three piece suit he’s wearing is impeccable and stylish. Will has to tear his eyes from Hannibal’s form to look at the room around him.

Nothing is out of place in the office.

In fact, everything is exactly like it used to be. Before.

Will looks back at Hannibal, who isn’t suddenly sprouting antlers or other alterations that are common occurrence in his dreams and hallucinations. Hannibal remains the same, and impossibly, possibly real.

Running a hand through his hair, Will barks out a humourless laugh. “If this isn’t real, then I’m probably dying right now.”

There's a shift in the room's atmosphere, as Hannibal stiffens up and his eyes narrow just slightly. Will suddenly feels slightly smug of his ability to read Hannibal's micro expressions and body language, even if it's all just in his imagination. It used to be much harder to read him back in the day, but now he’s like an open book.

But only to Will.

“Would you care to explain your reasoning?” Hannibal asks slowly.

Will smiles. He sits back in his chair and regards Hannibal for a while before speaking. He crosses his right leg over his left leg, mirroring Hannibal even as he lets the man sit there without an answer.

In the end, Will answers the question with a question.

“Do I still have encephalitis?”

Hannibal tilts his head, as if he’s weighing his answer carefully. There’s something distinctly predatory about the movement.

“No,” Hannibal says, and pauses. “Why? Are you losing time again?”

Another, unspoken question is buried within Hannibal's answer. If Will's encephalitis has been completely cured, then what in the world was happening to him now.

Feeling the smile on his face widen, Will looks at Hannibal, and silently hopes this is real.

“I didn’t lose time,” he says. “I gained it.”

comments

incoherent screaming

2018-12-07T04:40:53Z

It's finally here!! Bioware announced their next Dragon Age project!

We’ve gathered our strongest team yet and are venturing forth on the most epic quest ever!

Matthew Goldman, Creative Director

comments

Recommendations for new users

2018-12-06T17:47:13Z

It's currently Independence Day here in Finland, a day for good food and company. It's tradition to watch a three hour movie about the second World War, and then continue to a live broadcast of famous people who stand in line for hours in order to shake hands with the President. I'm not one for either of those, so I'm just indulging in my favourite holiday foods before I travel to Japan for the remaining month. And of course, I'm spending time here on Dreamwidth, which goes for good company in my eyes.

Since I've seen people recommending useful journals, communities and posts, so I thought I'd do the same and share the ones I've found particularly useful.

* Shows newly added links, last added 01/27/2019

User guides

How to Dreamwidth: A Primer by farfromdaylight
Welcome Back to Social Journaling by siderea
How To Move To Dreamwidth And Like It by promethia_tenk
How To Make Discussion Happen On DW by melannen
Scheduling posts by miome
How to make Dreamwidth mobile friendly by kitewithfish and star-anise
How to Filter Out Tags (works only for paid users) by kore
Dreamwidth Starter Kit by bisharp
Dreamwidth Tips and Tricks by sylvaine
Quick DW tip (for re-posting Tumblr posts) by greywash
Markdown tutorial — for easier formatting on Dreamwidth
* HTML Basics for Dreamwidth Posts by sylvaine
* Signal Boost: SignalBoost✔ bookmarklet by melannen and astolat

Find your people

dw_community_promo

Community for promoting your communities.

The Friending Meme by snickfic

People post their information, fandoms and such, and then go through the comments to find other people they'd like to follow.

addme_fandom

Same basic idea as the friending meme, but this one is a community you can follow for new posts and thus read them on your reading page.

the_great_tumblr_purge

Community for all Tumblr refugees.

Tumblr Find Me directory by copperbadge

A huge list of tumblr blogs and their other accounts across the web. You can add yours on here. Be careful, because you cannot edit or delete your info afterwards!

Dreamwidth Community Listing by pigeonfancier

Useful list of communities tumblr users might find interesting enough to follow or join.

A variety pack of fandom communities by erinptah

Another list of fandom communities.

Other

Welcome to Dreamwidth, Tumblr folks! by denise

A warm welcome.

State of the Migration: On fannish archival catastrophes, and what happens next by greywash

Truly interesting post about the future of the fandoms.

Fan is A Tool-Using Animal by Maciej Cegłowski (the Pinboard Guy)

Interesting text on fandom and migration.

Fandom Platform of the Future

Google Doc set up by pearwaldorf and editable by everyone.

Two final thoughts for a busy night by kore

Why you should consider getting a paid Dreamwidth account and donating to archive.org.

December meme: look I posted this one before midnight! by melannen

On Dreamwidth's full-text site search, kudos and predicting the future of fandoms.

post_tumblr_fandom

Community focused on discussing the future of fandom spaces.

Other resources

Nickpic

For your image hosting needs. Non-profit. Allows mature content as long as you mark it as NSFW. 8 MB is the maximum file size. No upload limit.

icons

All the icons for your icon hoarding needs.

fandom_icons

Even more icons, especially fandom specific!

dwrp_icons

Yet more icons.

comments

The Rise and Fall of Tumblr

2018-12-04T12:56:27Z

Actually, just the fall.

I'm writing this as a sort of introduction in case people come across this journal and want to take a quick look at who I am and what I do.

I'm not a native user of LJ or DW, so you'll have to excuse me if I take my time learning how to use this website. I was on Tumblr for so long that it feels surreal to try to change platforms like this. I'm not outright deleting my Tumblr, but if things stay as they are, I predict that most of the fandom side of Tumblr will migrate either over here, or on some other sites like Twitter and Pillowfort.

I'm a 25-years-old student of Japanese language from Finland, and fanfiction is my life.

I really liked Tumblr, despite the hellsite that it is. There was always something in need of a fix, but the dashboard, tagging and reblogging systems were simple to use and switching between main and blogs was easier than changing your socks.

What am I looking for in a new platform? On Tumblr, I mostly reblogged things I found interesting and funny. Occasionally I would create my own posts, whether that was about my personal life or fandom. I often posted updates of my fanfiction on there as well, along with snapshots or ideas of fanfics I wanted to write (or more often than not, wanted someone else to write so I wouldn't have to), so I'll definitely post some fic relate stuff here in the future.

I know that Dreamwidth isn't the same as Tumblr, and I don't expect it to be. However, if Tumblr is really going down, I'd like to find new communities on here and other sites that will allow me to connect with similar people, to admire their art and writing, and of course, laugh at ridiculous memes. We can't forget the memes!

To help you decide whether my journal is interesting, I've devised a list.

My Top 5 Fandoms from the past year

1. Good Omens
2. The Witcher
3. Dragon Age
4. Hannibal
5. Doctor Who/Torchwood

On top of that, I'm into Animal Crossing: New Horizonz, Venom, Tolkien, various anime series such as FMA:B and Yuri On Ice. I also like Brooklyn 99, The Magnus Archives, Welcome to Nightvale, Kingsman, Avatar the Last Airbender, Teen Wolf, Marvel Cinematic Universe (mostly Tony, Steve or Bucky centric), Star Wars, Star Trek, Sherlock, Hamilton, Merlin, and Supernatural. However my activity in these fandoms varies a lot.

I'm also generally interested in literature, history, art and languages.

About Commentings, Privacy and Linking

Please do comment. I welcome all kinds of comments from everyone, ranging from epic length to something as simple as "+1", "I like this", "YAAS" and so forth. And feel free to start up discussion threads with other commenters as well.

You're free to link all of my public posts as long as you carry no malicious purpose. Of course I appreciate if you let me know where you've linked my post, but I don't demand it. Don't quote, screenshot, link or otherwise share any private posts without my explicit permission.

+ Check out my Recommendations for New Users. It's a list of useful Dreamwidth related links which I update every now and then.

comments

Fandom is gay

Signal Boost: how to download old icons that are being held hostage by photobucket

Partially overdue linkspam

I actually started working on this post last January, so one of the links is very old...

a brief update on my life

Good Omens discord server

I'm in such a good fandom place right now

Why I prefer Dreamwidth over Twitter

Wisdoms by Snufkin and Moominmamma

Dostoyevsky, and steps towards polyglotism

If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye...

Where has this magnificent comic been for all my life?

Forced Web Etiquette, Self-doubt and the Pressure to be Original

mr. sandman, bring me a meme ♪

I should be sleeping, but...

Someone read my IronDevil fanfic... out loud!

Mood for 2019

Fic: Gaining Time: Chapter 1/?

*incoherent screaming*

Recommendations for new users

The Rise and Fall of Tumblr

About Commentings, Privacy and Linking

incoherent screaming