Fandom engagement

[jasmasson]

The article The Endless Appetite for Fanfiction by by Elizabeth Minkel on fansplaining.com was linked by amalthia and was very interesting. Very much mirrors my experience of fandom.

Without doubt, the best time I had in fandom was in the LJ days, where fanfic and fandom were together, but in fairness AO3 is a much better reader experience and fanfic repository than lj ever was, but as the author argues it makes it a pure reading experience rather than an engagement with a fandom.

Not sure that’s ever going to get better, however, in the spirit of ‘being the change you want to see in the world’ my New Years resolution is to comment on any fic I like enough to bookmark, and kudos any fic I like at all. I could do better, I know, but NY resolutions are all about achievable goals, right?

I’m doing https://www.tumblr.com/fanfic-reading-challenge (again, if you like reading fanfic, enjoy spreadsheets and feel a great sense of satisfaction in ticking items off a to do list you should give it a try, it’s great) and one of the comment tasks was to comment on at least 10 chapters of a 20 chapter or more fic and I rather enjoyed doing that. I don’t believe I’ve ever commented more than once on a fic before and it was rather fun - I’ll definitely do it again!

And finally every time I rec a fic, I’ll drop a comment to the author saying I did so; that’s always nice to hear, right!

Fannish 50: #2

Comments

[jasmasson]

Thanks! That sounds like a great idea- hope you can pull it off. Perhaps you can get a group together at Escapade? 🤔

[amalthia]

I was hoping to brainstorm ideas on how such a challenge or community would work. I've never run a challenge community before but it seems like if I want something like this to exist I may have to start it myself. :)