Or are you like me and (for the most part) don’t?
I have one community which is on Discord I take part in on occasion. It’s nice with the occasional fandom event, like my upcoming rarepair week. Yet I don’t have a lot of places where I can talk about my preferences for my fandoms outside of the comments on my fics.
I mostly engage through fanworks (commenting and replying, though I am sometimes super late with my replies). I don’t frequent any specific fan space, but I will get into discussions with friends who share the same story interests. Even if we differ in terms of our HCs, it can be fun to discuss the broader story, how the creators convey things and the various aspects we enjoy or find troubling.
I actually love it when people just toss ideas out there and say “I would love to see someone run with this” because so often I’ll stumble upon fanworks that my brain would love to expand on, but I never would because it would feel like stealing someone’s ideas. It can’t hurt to generate a wish list for content. You never know!
For most fandoms I don’t really chat with others. I’ll have fun looking at works and putting stuff out there but don’t have the urge to converse further.
For everything else (yes 90% of it is Pokémon) is ComicFury, the occasional spots on Discord, and once upon a time, Reddit (hello kbin). Before covid there was a lot convention stuff but thanks to being sensitive to the vaccine among other things… that has fallen off more than I like. But what else can I do?
Not to say I haven’t looked into other sites like Dreamwidth and stuff, but goodness if the UI doesn’t grab me immediately it takes a stupid long time for me to really get into a location- regardless if its digital or offline.
Alas if you do not also take part in a current huge community. Not like I share a lot of commonly held fandom beliefs, so I guess I should cut my losses? Just sort of wish there were more people putting out the kind of works I really want.
I very rarely share the popular headcanons too. But I just have fun hearing and helping others figure out how to tell their stories. As long as they aren’t possessive/cultist about their headcanons I can have fun even if I think their ideas are OOC. It helps that at large one of my favourite things is fixing plotholes (which Pokémon has in all forms) and its just so fun to hear how people decide to fix things.
There is something special when dealing with fandoms as big as Pokémon. A lot of niché ideas have a chance to have their own subfandoms. My biggest fancomic project is full of stuff the fandom at large does not care about and have seen 90% of the subfandom declare they hate BUT here I am in a couple of Discords! (though I largely only talk in one because it’s smaller and I get overwhelmed when there are too many people chatting at once despite it being in separate channels lol hhhh). When I was on the subreddit, I too often had a take considered a little too spicy at times. Oh well!
However, when a fandom is small enough usually people tend to be so thankful for content that they will check out genre/ideas they wouldn’t usually if there was a bigger buffet. But often enough the small fandoms I get into are so small that I’m still the only fanfic writer for that fandom. The only conversations I’ve had about Dino Run have basically all been people who read my fics fandomblind lol.
So yeah, 100% me too on wishing there was more of the kinds of works I want to read.
used to lurk in a variety of subreddits (most notably kirby and deltarune)! and now i’m actively participating in !kirby and to a lesser extent !deltarune. well, not as much in the past few days due to being busy with other stuff
Are those communities welcoming to fanfiction writers/readers? I know in places like Reddit, some people couldn’t mention fanfiction in their fandom communities, because some were rather aggressive against the hobby.
neither community is particularly active. in c/kirby, i’d say there’s only two people, including me, who regularly post or comment. i’ve posted two fanwork-y things to c/kirby; the first wasn’t very well received for some reason, the second was reasonably well received. so i don’t really know! they’re not really big/active enough communities to have a specific stance on fanfiction, i think
but if c/kirby gets more active, i’ll do my part in fostering a welcoming spirit towards fanfiction!
(…i know that r/kirby wasn’t particularly fond of shipping, as far as i could tell.)
For the most part, I don’t.
I have friends who are into the same things I am (mainly horror, sci-fi) & I often nerd out to them about those topics but not the fanfic side. I think I’d be at risk of massive info-dumping if I did & I’ve been steadily reining in that aspect of myself over the years (there are only so many glazed-over looks I can take 😂) & push that energy into my writing now instead. Plus I like writing smutty romance & most people who know me IRL don’t link romance to me so it would involve getting over that to move forward with the conversation.
Overall I’m pretty happy with that approach. Writing is a solo activity for me & lets me recharge my batteries. Inviting others into it would make it seem social & that would take the fun out of it.
I’ve been chatting with another writer in comments on their fic & they mentioned Tumblr a few times & I’m half contemplating joining it to see what the fandom is like there. Don’t know if I want to get that deep into discussion of it though or just use it to advertise that my fics exist further afield than AO3.
I thought about Tumblr once too, but the instant I made an account I couldn’t see half the accounts I’d been eyeing when not logged in. As I wanted it mainly to like fanart and the like, the fact I couldn’t leave likes/reblogs/comments made me give up on it immediately.
No one else I know with Tumblr has a problem with it though. Despite people also calling it a hellsite, it seems most people are using the term with affection. (Or maybe for lack of a better site?) I don’t know. If you decide to sign up, I’d be interested in hearing how you find it.
😂 So long as it’s a better Hellsite than Twitter, I’d be happy. The only thing I’m wondering about it is whether it will suit me as I don’t do original or fan art - all my creative stuff is writing. I guess I’ll see how it goes.
Odd re not being able to see a bunch of accounts. Sounds like a weird glitch!
I’m starting to understand the affectionate hellsite attitude. Although I feel like I’m in the honeymoon phase with Tumblr right now & this comment is going to bite me in the ass in a month’s time when it turns out it’s an actual hellsite.
