Anyone still out there?

[sacrilicious13]

So.

It’s been awhile.

It’s funny. I never consciously chose leave fandom. And honestly, I don’t even consider that I “left.” Life just happened and got busier and busier, and one day I realized that it had been far far too long since I posted.

I’ve always been one of those people that has a hard time returning to something when I’ve been gone a long time. Whether it’s getting back in contact with a friend that I haven’t spoken to in ages or picking up a hobby that fell by the wayside.

I always feel like I’ll get the confirmation that no one noticed my absence. Or my return.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

You all might remember Joe. Wonderful, sweet, perfect for me Joe. We’re only a few weeks past our 6th anniversary (April 17.) On our 5th anniversary he proposed. He actually picked a ring almost identical to the one on my secret Pinterest wedding board. All on his own!

We sold our house in Austin in December and moved to North Carolina. MASSIVE mistake. Asheville is a nice enough town, but after almost seven years in Austin, I’m a city girl through and through. I am not cut out for Appalachia. When we head back to Austin in October for our wedding, we’re moving back permanently.

Life has been tough for the past six months. I lost my three closest friends due to some ridiculous drama that one of them started. The three girls who were supposed to be my bridesmaids, including Duia my best friend for a decade.

I came to Texas for her, and she hasn’t spoken to me for five months. If anyone wants to hear the whole sordid drama, I can spin quite the epic novel.

Anyway, fandom was a home for me once. Despite being dumped by my closest fandom friend in the cruelest way possible, fandom will always be home. I don’t know how many of you are still out there or if fandom has migrated to other places, but if you’re still here say hi.

I miss this. I miss having someone to squeal about the newest SPN ep with. I miss fanfic. I miss my easy season one world.

Comments

[darkmagess.livejournal.com]

I'm here! I still watch SPN. :)

A lot of fandom stuff happens on tumblr now, but I sort of miss how organized LJ is. Comment threads. Amazing.

[sacrilicious.livejournal.com]

Tumblr is one of those things that I just can't figure out! Any recommendations?

[darkmagess.livejournal.com]

I mean pretty much the entire culture revolves around hitting the reblog button on things you like and writing your comments either in the post field or the tag field. People communicate a lot through the tags.

You really have to curate who you follow, though. Tumblr makes Social Justice Warrior a bad term. There are a lot of young fans and they are vicious about policing other people. There are also a whole lot of delicate flowers who have no emotional resiliency at all. That being said, they produce an enormous amount of content.

So if you want to wade into that...

For SPN stuff I follow thevioletcaptain and cupidsbower for like episode metas and reaction posts. I follow an assortment of other people who reblog gifsets, just to beef up my dashboard with things to look at.

I don't search the tags, which is something a lot of people do. If you click on a tag, it'll give you a dashboard of all the posts with that tag. Apparently this is something a lot of people do, because they get super mad when something they disagree with is in that tag. But I think it makes more sense to follow individuals who post things you like.

I would definitely install The New XKit and a bunch of the plugins, mostly so you can blacklist things. Tumblr will be 100% spoilers after anything airs, so if you care about that, you should blacklist tags.

[sacrilicious.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info! I've definitely heard about the Social Justice Warriors on Tumblr. (There's a whole sub on Reddit making fun of them that I frequent.) How about fit? Tumblr seems like it would work well for the whole gifs and short comments thing, but fix seems like it wouldn't work at all.

[darkmagess.livejournal.com]

People post fic all the time. Generally one of two ways:

1. The entire fic is in a single post. As you might imagine, this puts multi-chapter works right out. BUT this style does get lots of reblogs, so has a good chance of getting high viral reach. "Tumblr fic" is actually a thing that people will then put on AO3 if it seems popular enough to archive.

2. Links to AO3. More suitable for multi-chapter works. Generally, though, you won't get as big an audience unless you've already got followers or can get a fic rec blog to rec you or a BNF to reblog you. Posting chapters over time seems to be helpful in gaining an audience, as the higher number of posts increases the chances that someone sees you in the tags and reblogs.

I've not personally been hugely successful at it. I was more successful on LJ, where you could just post to a community and everyone would see it. But some people are crazy successful.

[sacrilicious.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recs! I love good meta so I'm going to dive right in!

[taralyngrady.livejournal.com]

Welcome back! I sort of drift in and out myself, though Spn is one I don't think I'll ever totally leave. Sorry for all the drama you've been through, but congrats on the wedding and return to Texas (I'm in Amarillo myself😀 ) I recognize your name from when I was staying properly caught up on things, but for the life of me I can't remember what I'm trying to connect you with😕 Will have to do some searching on why I remember you😀 Anyway, welcome back again, and hope things get better for you.

[sacrilicious.livejournal.com]

SPN is one that I can never totally leave! Not sure where you remember me from either but back in the olden days of season 1-3 I vidded, and I was one of the founders of the crack_impala rec group.

[taralyngrady.livejournal.com]

Ah, must have been the vids. I'm a crazy vid fanatic and would grab all that came out. Has been very sad the last several years-where there used to be several posted every day, now it's more like a couple a month-maybe😢 Hope now you're back you'll start bidding again, fingers crossed.😀