The Dreamwidth Meme

[krait]

This meme stolen from melannen and extrapenguin, to help repair the lack of posts in my journal lately.


1. Why did you sign up for Dreamwidth?
Back during LJ's Boldthrough drama, when Dreamwidth was being launched/promoted as a fan-friendly alternative journaling service, I created an account and began crossposting. I was also crossposting to Insanejournal, Journalfen, and GreatestJournal - multiple backups seemed wise. Over time, as LJ proved less and less trustworthy, and several of the alternative sites ran into maintenance issues and fell by the wayside, DW became my main and then my only fannish journal site.


2. Why did you choose your journal name?
My "first" (for certain values of first) journal name was the victim of my own stupidity; I accidentally used it on an RL friend's journal and had to rapidly change it! I wanted to keep the best features of my old name (fannish by association, but not tied to a particular fandom; animal-related; fairly unique) and at the same time take the opportunity to improve less-liked features (length, special characters). Once I had some options, I put up a poll, and that was that! :D


3. Do you crosspost? Why or why not?
I don't crosspost anywhere, now. I have a few nominal presences elsewhere, including a Tumblr which I don't post in at all, and an Imzy account which I just started last week and haven't had the time to play with yet.


4. What do you do online when you're not on DW?
I play Dragon Cave, read fanfic, look at some fannish Tumblrs (I keep a bookmarks folder of 20-30, and check about 15-20 every other day or so), check email, think about posting on DW, and (very) occasionally post to my RL journal account!


5. How about when you're not on the computer?
I work, sleep, drink an unwise amount of tea, draw, do beadwork or other crafts, go out to eat on Sundays with a friend. My RL existence is terribly boring, I'm afraid: one reason it doesn't get mentioned much here.


6. What do you wish people who read your journal knew about you?
That there's an ask post for anything they might want to know! Also that I really miss the LJ heyday when fandom was a pretty tightly-knit community, so I'm very open to meeting new people and starting conversations. You don't have to be a familiar face here; despite the username, I don't bite and I like to be pestered about fannish stuff. :D


7. What is your favorite community on Dreamwidth?
Tough question. dragoncavers is one my own communities, and it lives up to the description - we're a pretty communicative and friendly bunch, which makes me really happy. Among communities that aren't mine, I'm always pointing people to kinkfinders, because the more people there, the better the recs will be!


8. What community do you wish was more active?
Pretty much all of them. :D I admit to some bias, however, toward communities related to whatever my most current fancy happens to be; right now, I'm really wishing that utena_revolution had any kind of life to it at all...


9. Are there two people on your reading list that you think should meet?
This is not my forte - I try very hard to avoid the Geek Social Fallacies, including the fourth (Friendship Is Transitive), and I don't know my rlist in namespace. The best I can offer here is to return the question, by suggesting Please browse my reading list yourself and see if anyone on there strikes you as interesting!


10. Tell me about your default icon.
It's a (sea) krait. I drew it! I love pretty much any kind of blue wildlife, so the sea krait is my default icon even though I also have a self-drawn icon of a common krait.


11. What features do you think Dreamwidth should have that it doesn't currently?
I wouldn't mind a limited form of image hosting. Back in the LJ days, i.e. when I was younger and had more spare time and Photobucket wasn't a pile of junk doused in hatred, I enjoyed doing photo memes and "what am I reading" photo posts. If DW had some form of photo-upload ability for paid accounts, I would probably make an effort to do more things along those lines! (Bring Back The Photo Meme 2k16?)


12. What do you consider the six most "telling" interests from the list on your profile?
Fanfiction, slash, sci-fi and fantasy, xenobiology, ykiok. I think that pretty much covers the major realms of what do I like to talk about, what might scare you off, and what do I expect from you as a reader!


13. Do you have any unique interests on your user profile? What are they? How'd they get there?
Lots! Most are pairings I like; I guess fewer people on DW list favourite pairings in their interests, compared to LJ, or else my pairings are unpopular, or I've listed them in a peculiar way. (Probably six of one, half a dozen of the other.) The rest seem to be tropes/kinks, warnings, or personal references.

Tropes/kinks: gender role rejection, unequal character dynamics, power imbalances, intergenerational relationships, interspecies romance.
Policies/warnings: ykiok, there is no one true pairing.
Personal references/jokes: ritsuka is the seme - a reference to some meta I posted in a beloved LJ community; complaining about honor harrington - a gentle warning that I like the series, but will not be 100% positive when talking about it; moirallegiance is my favourite romance - a heads-up that Homestuck troll romance concepts are going to be a component of my recs, and of the pairings in my Interests list.


14. Did you have a gateway fandom? Still in it? Why or why not? Is there a community for it on DW?
Gundam Wing was my gateway fandom in terms of really entering internet fandom proper; I remember browsing web rings and slowly succumbing to the yaoi side. :D Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was my gateway fandom to the idea of fandom as more of a community, with a huge fanbase, a dedicated archive, mailing list chatter amongst fans, and my own first efforts at writing! TPM was where I really started to establish a fannish identity that persisted beyond an emailed comment on fic, with a fandom-relevant name and a 'record' of interaction beyond some fic feedback in my email outbox, signed with whatever internet pseudonym I happened to like best that day.


15. What's your current obsession? What about it captures your imagination?
Well, I fell into Utena fandom a couple of months ago, all the harder for having a 20-year climb up to it. :D I wish it was still an active fandom, but it mostly seems to be quiescent. Other than that, I'm currently fandom-hopping, with frequent fic-binges in various older fandoms. This week it's been Homestuck, a fortnight ago it was Fullmetal Alchemist, and a month ago it was Captive Prince.


16. What are you glad you did but haven't really had a chance to post about?
Caught up on askerian's fic Midnight on the Demon Patrol! I knew it had updated with new chapters, but hadn't found the time to go and read them until last night. Major developments have happened, and I'm on the edge of my seat now waiting for more!


17. How many people on your reading list do you know IRL?
None. One day, however, I'd like that to change!


18. What don't you talk about here, either because it's too personal or because you don't have the energy?
Well, I don't discuss my RL here much, both because this is a fannish journal and that's not what people are here for, and because it's mostly deadly dull. Fandom is my escapism; I don't want to bring my mundane existence into it. Even when it's exciting, it's just not something that I think of in the context of this journal.


19. Any questions from the audience?
Ask me in the comments, or on the ask post!


20. Yes, but what are your thoughts on yaoi?
I was there for that meme. Old!fan is old. :D


21. What's your favorite thing about Dreamwidth?
The fact that it's still around! Because that means that fandom hasn't 100% drifted beyond my reach onto Tumblr, which I just can't find it in myself to embrace. It's so nice that there are still fen who want to communicate in words, and even paragraphs, rather than in picspam or Tweets or gifsets or rambling tags tacked onto same.

I also appreciate its lack of advertising; I've had a paid account as long as I've been here, because I firmly believe that if you're not the paying customer, you're the product - and the opportunity to be the former is one of the things that really sets DW apart from other fandom-heavy sites.

Comments

[gramarye1971]

Gundam Wiiiiiiiing. ^_^ I keep telling myself that one of these days, I will take out the patterns and muslins for the Lady Une costume that I set aside ages ago, and finally complete the damned thing. I keep running into the problem of finding the right fabric for her jacket, because it's this obnoxious shade of wine red that doesn't translate well into real fabric -- everything I find is too orangish or purplish, or too shiny/satiny and not military-looking enough. One of these days!

[krait]

Oooooooooh! That sounds awesome! I wish you good luck with the fabric hunt. :D

I'm hoping to talk my RL friend who watches anime with me into going through GW at some point, even though it's not quite her style; it's been too long, and having finally found The Fics My Heart Was Yearning For has reawakened the love with a vengeance!

[gramarye1971]

I wish that the ongoing Gundam Wing Endless Waltz: Glory of the Defeated manga was being translated into English, because so far it's doing a very good job of incorporating just about all of the backstory and tangential canon material from the various side stories into a single running plot. The artwork's gorgeous, too. I don't know if anyone's scanlating it, though, but it's worth looking around for. Based on where the most recent volume (11) of manga left off -- around EP 40 of the anime, after Relena's coronation -- there's at least three more volumes' worth of material to go through.

[krait]

That would be nice! :D

I may have to poke around for a scanlation, at some point.

Man, I am so out of touch with the online animanga world nowadays. I don't even know who does scanlations these days or how to find them.

[extrapenguin]

Hello! :D

Firstly, your icon is pretty. There, now that I've said that, I can continue on with the rest of my comment:

I, too, share your attitudes on RL posting – I suppose my life might not be deathly dull in other people's opinion, but I don't want my pseud to be linked to my wallet name. I also never had an interest in diary-writing; life is transitory, and if something deserves to be remembered, it will be remembered. I forced myself to diary for a week when I was 10-ish, and all the entries were so petty and mundane. Things worthy of writing down don't happen every day. Also this way I won't be reminded of the stupidity of my younger iterations.

I'm also interested in the LJ heydays – I missed those by a good few years. (I've always been the youngest member of the fandom, and still sort of consider myself a young fan, though by Tumblr fan standards, I'm old enough to vote and thus positively ancient...) I missed all the good memes, and would be interested in a concerted attempt to revive some.

It's so nice that there are still fen who want to communicate in words, and even paragraphs, rather than in picspam or Tweets or gifsets or rambling tags tacked onto same. Yeah, this. I guess that for fen of primarily visual media, it's nice to be able to picspam, but it's all fleeting and flash-in-the-pan. From what I've noticed from my dash, the picspammed fandoms change often; the book fandoms are more permanent.
And, as I said in my reply to your comment, one of the things that IMO brings value to DW is that it's not mostly minimum-effort "hey look" stuff. Posts are longer and contain more than just [5 gifs of Reylo wielding a lightsaber and smiling] or "remember to drink water!!!" or whatever. Tumblr posts tend to have one thought at most, if they aren't just squee. DW posts tend to be more thought-out. Now, this might be due to different average maturity levels of the user base, but it affects the whole site.

I also have a passionate loathing of reaction gifs! :D

[extrapenguin]

Oh, and I totally think there should be more complaining about Honor Harrington. I mean, I love her wholeheartedly, and she was exactly what I needed at that point in time, but boy does the series have some problems. And not just with the AWOL editing.

[krait]

Yeah, I think fully half of my complaints about Honor Harrington are really complaints about David Weber. :D

[krait]

Thank you!

Hahaha, yes, I tried keeping a diary/journal in my younger years, and fell out of the habit. I encountered the Internet right in that short period between "nobody realised you shouldn't put your real name on the Web; fanfic authors often used their full legal names" and "Facebook and LinkedIn and other social media have normalised the use of wallet names on the Web," when the cultural zeitgeist was a piquant combination of Stranger Danger and new awareness of the potential of the Internet. The Internet is full of strangers! Never share your details online! Use pseudonyms and never meet online friends in person! was the creed by which I first ventured online, and I've mostly kept to it. (I have a mostly-unused LinkedIn account for my real name, just to give future employers something that proves I exist.)

concerted attempt to revive some

They'll take "but what are your thoughts on yaoi" from my cold dead fingers! Fond memories, man. I'm somewhat less fond of the fact that we're still rehashing the same tired debates about whether women deserve to write what they want without being cross-examined by outsiders with a list full of pre-drawn conclusions, but what can you do.

Posts are longer and contain more than just [5 gifs of Reylo wielding a lightsaber and smiling] or "remember to drink water!!!"

AAAAHhhhh you have hit upon my Internet Nemesis, which is 'people spreading misinformation about water intake.' I don't even know why it makes me want to screech at people, but I do, and every single time I see those awful "you need to be drinking eight glasses a day! Helpful tip: stash bottles of water everywhere! Remember tea and soda dehydrate you!!" posts I have to bite my tongue. FALSEHOODS ALL, STOP THAT AT ONCE!

I don't mind reaction gifs, in most cases, though. Some of them are so useful that we've textualised them, which argues well for their functionality. :D (People can now reply with "nope.jpg" or "*insert popcorn gif*" and we all know what they mean! It's a fascinating interplay of language, visual media, and shared culture!)

[extrapenguin]

I think I joined right on the tail end of the "never, ever, ever tell anyone anything beyond maybe the continent you live on, if even that" phase? I do have the requisite LinkedIn and FaceBook etc to communicate with people who don't use IRC for whatever reason, but I certainly don't do anything fannish with them.

same tired debates about whether women deserve to write what they want without being cross-examined by outsiders with a list full of pre-drawn conclusions
Umm, yeah, about that... You might want to stay off Tumblr. :P
I think a lot of it's born of internalised misogyny - on tumblr especially, it looks like young teens who haven't had the time to examine their assumptions come across SJ and then end up being rather misogynistic in their anti-racism/pro-trans representation/anti-fetishization/etc crusade. (Also occasionally homophobic.) A lot of people have said it better than me and made better points; I'll see if I can dig up any in the evening.
I'm also pondering doing a thing on the US-centrism of internet SJ and the rise of Winterfox.

IIRC caffeinated drinks do dehydrate their drinkers mildly, since caffeine is a diuretic? In any case, I'm a firm proponent of people having different optimal intakes. And wouldn't the water in stashed bottles, like, go stale? (My primary beef with that sort of thing is how infantilizing it is - I already know that I should consume some baseline amount of water! I've known that since I was six!)

Ooh, reaction gif meta. I don't actually mind the text references, but the actual gifs are annoying. Constant movement! Half the time, I have no idea what it's supposed to represent! #Aspie problems

[krait]

I draw the line at LinkedIn; you couldn't pay me to touch Facebook. At least not under my real name; I admit, I sometimes toy with the idea of setting up an account under a false name, for purposes of work-related stuff or wank rubbernecking. Can't be bothered, though - the interface is so counterintuitive to me that I can't imagine I'd really use it after setting it up.

As mentioned in the post, I do have a Tumblr, and I do read there - but there are many good reasons why those two activities aren't linked. :D I'm sticking to DW (and maybe Imzy) when it comes to interacting beyond a quick askbox note! People who want to attack me are free to try it here. I was around for but what are your thoughts on yaoi? and I am more than happy to yawn in the faces of people who think that screaming it louder makes the question new.

I do think it's funny how often the "teens" of Tumblr get the blame for whatever's wrong with the site, though. Median user age on Tumblr is somewhere around 34! Which doesn't mean the median age of the wankers is 34, of course, but still. Why assume that all of the wank is coming from the young? If fandom (and MsScribe) has taught me anything, it's that immaturity knows no age limits... *wry grin*

IIRC caffeinated drinks do dehydrate their drinkers mildly, since caffeine is a diuretic

Yep, caffeine is a mild diuretic; however, drinking small amounts of caffeine in large amounts of water (also known as: soda, tea, most coffee, sports drinks, energy drinks, etc.) is still going to have a net positive effect. You're not going to pee out 21 ounces of water after drinking a 20-oz Coke! Plus, regular caffeine intake builds up some resistance in the imbiber, so if you regularly drink the stuff you're going to lose even less water than a total n00b Coke-drinker. (This is me: I drink enough tea that any caffeine effect is pretty much minimal.)

Agree 100% on the infantilising angle! I really, really do not visit the Internet in order to be told how to drink water and wash behind my ears by people younger than me who evidently know less than Google or Snopes does! Did Not Do The Research (But Gave The Lecture Anyway) is my least-favourite internet personality type. D:

the actual gifs are annoying. Constant movement!

Ah, yeah, that would be irritating. I think most of the reaction gifs I've seen have been pretty short/smoothly animated, so I hadn't thought of the "obnoxious rapid motion/flashing" angle. That makes sense. :D I'll stick with the classics, then! Except for NOPEtepus, that one is newish but can stay anyway.

[extrapenguin]

I'd love to be able to not use Facebook, but unfortunately ALL the discussion about the local $hobby happens on Facebook, so. Ugh. I wish I could exist, Facebook-free.

yawn in the faces of people who think that screaming it louder makes the question new
:D

I've personally spotted most sources of concern troll wank coming from people who self-declare to be teenagers, if they state an age at all. Now, this might just be sample bias, but teens generally also have more free time and haven't yet grown a layer of cynicism, so there's also the chance it might not just be sample bias. Or perhaps all those 34-year-olds who are wanky lie about their age on the profile bars?
Then there's also the hope that if it's just teens, they may outgrow the concern trolling and wankiness.

So, caffeine makes one pee out the water faster, basically? Since all water'll be pissed out eventually.

NOPEtopus is a good gif! My issue is with all gifs, though: they're all move-y and distract the eye towards them, and I'm :/ at that. Interrupts my focus.

[krait]

Oh, dear. Too bad about the local hobby! My workplace uses FB, but I still refuse to join; I just let my boss update me on anything I really need to know. :P

There do seem to be a number of self-described teens in the fray, in recent kerfuffles I'm aware of! (I do wonder how many of them are lying. After all, if your chosen wank platform is "teenagers are pure and innocent and don't want to be exposed to sexuality!" then I suspect it has been a long time indeed since you were a teenager... but of course saying that you are one gives your argument more legitimacy, boosting it out of the secondhand "But Think Of The Children" into "Self Defence"! From what I remember of being a teenager, well. I used to read smut on the Web and write sex scenes into all my fanfiction, and sneak into quiet corners of the library to read the middles of trashy romance novels. And I'm asexual!)

[extrapenguin]

With the teens in the kerfuffles I know of, I hope that it's just that they've been raised very conservatively and haven't yet taken the leap of questioning the assumptions hammered into their brains. One nonnie on FFA did look back at a teenage anti's Tumblr, and discovered that either they were a very erudite 10-year-old or lied about their age, so people who lie about their age do exist there.

As an European, the idea that teens should not be exposed to sex is headscratchy. Not forced to watch, yes, but not allowed to? Like, wanting to not have to answer little kiddies' questions, fine. But... all teens know what sex is. And, being teens, they're probably going to look at porn.

And, as someone who is still a teenager, my experiences are yours. Right down to the aceness.

[extrapenguin]

Oh, and the first link to the ask post and the link to the Imzy just link to this entry.

[krait]

Thank you! I had left a space in the HTML, intending to look up the URLs before posting, and forgot. Turns out that if you leave the URL empty, DW will refer it back to the post itself.

Fixed now. :D

(Also: yay, horse icon!)

[extrapenguin]

*considers URLs* I'm on the fence as to whether that's the most useful feature that I've not yet realized, or a reasonably elegant solution for handling fail.

And yay, animal icons!