A Fan's Playground

It's fascinating sometimes to look back at my own history of fandoms I was once obsessed with, and notice the wide variety of possible current feelings about them.

Mostly there are three axes of note: do I ever bother to seek out fanworks for it or see myself doing so in the future, or am I no longer moved to do so? If a fanwork that looks like it has promise happens to cross my path, will I read it/watch it/look at it, or just scroll on by? Do I think of the fandom with fondness and nostalgia, or do I think to myself "well glad THAT'S out of my life now"? Within these three spectra, many options are possible; and there are even some special fandoms that break the system!

A tour of some of the big ones that fit my main schema:

• Sutcliff fandom; Les Miserables; sparklefandom (hungarian musical theatre): no longer actively seek out, but I still love it dearly, and if I find myself reading a good fic for this fandom again, allllll my feels return instantly and I go feral over it again for at least the length of time it takes me to read the fic


• The Witcher: Remember it fondly, and every now and then feel moved to go searching for more content because it's what I happen to be in the mood for, but if I'm not in the mood I won't bother to read the things that happen to cross my path


• Highlander; Man from UNCLE (both original tv series and the movie remake); Star Trek; Star Wars; Yuri on Ice: won't seek out, but if something fun crosses my path, I'll take a look with pleased nostalgia


• Bandom; Due South; Good Omens; Hamilton; American Idol RPF; Inception; The Sentinel; Stargate Atlantis; White Collar: won't seek out, unlikely to read even if something crosses my path, but I remember it with fondness


• Teen Wolf: won't seek out, won't read if it crosses my path, am glad it's out of my life, and yet still remember it fondly


• Hockey RPF; Sports Night; Supernatural RPF: yeah no.

Special cases:

• Fairy tales: my first and forever fandom, I will never not care about it. I read folk tale collections semi-regularly still, and am always delighted to find good fanfic for any particular tale or for the genre in general.


• Harry Potter: won't seek out, won't promote without major caveats, probably won't read, but if something unusually interesting crosses my path, I'll take a look with a sort of exhausted knowledge that it's the fandom that made me and it is dug deep into my psyche


• MCU: totally burnt out on, will no longer read the fic, can no longer even put myself in the headspace of how I could have once cared, and yet still have a lingering fondness for Thor and the Thor movies


• Fake News: ahahaha oh god. the horror of american politics since then makes the heyday of jon stewart's daily show and stephen colbert's colbert report feel like a different world, one I can no longer access


• Doctor Who: Once upon a time it broke my heart in a very real way which took me years to get over, but now I have a very reasonable relationship with this show as my ex. I remember the good times fondly, and smile when I see a gif go by on tumblr, and am happy to hear that it has been doing fun and interesting things in recent times, and I scroll on by.

OKAY HERE'S SOMETHING CHEERFUL.

remix_redux X happened! And fics got released! And mine is out in the wilds of the internet but I can't share it with you yet because it's anonymous at the moment, but I had THREE remixes done of fics of mine! How exciting! Pretty much I think the idea of remixing is the coolest ever, because DUDE, FANFIC OF FANFIC, HOW CAN THAT NOT BE AWESOME? And THREE PEOPLE did remixes of me!

So here, let me share with you the remixes!

What Dreams May Come (The BWV 140 Remix), a remix of my fairy-tale fic The Death of Each Day's Life. Here the anonymous author takes my fairy-tale fic and reimagines it as a part of a Snape/Hermione fic, which is super cool and not something I'd ever have thought of! I love the way that the theme of dreaming and waking and sleeping gets even more tangled up in the remix.

I Must Wait for the Sunrise (the Death of Each Day remix), also a remix of my fairy-tale fic The Death of Each Day's Life. This one is a switch in viewpoint from Sleeping Beauty to her husband the prince, and though it's very short it rings true.

Call Shotgun on my Rocket (A Pirate's Life For Me Remix), a remix of my bandom fic Call Shotgun on my Rocket. This acts as a sequel to my Pete/Mikey space pirates fic, takes it in COMPLETELY a different direction than I would have taken it, and does a glorious job at it -- I absolutely loved this. (and I just about died laughing at the epilogue)

So here's the post I was ACTUALLY planning on posting today!

I'm gonna do that Snowflake challenge, extremely late, BECAUSE I CAN and because it is super awesome.

( DAY ONE: post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. )

( DAY TWO: post a rec for at least three fanworks that you did not create. (with focus on fanworks less likely to be praised) )

DAYS THREE AND FOUR: Accomplished!

Using power tools is a hell of a lot of fun. Especially using an air nailer. Just saying! (also, it's kind of hilarious when an acquaintance of your Dad's drops by and is all astonishment to discover that the person in the basement using the extremely impressive-sounding saw is a daughter. I kind of wanted to get annoyed about gender stereotypes but I was too busy just having fun with the saw. I HAD SUCH POWER.)

Anyways, on to the point of this post, which is that I am once more ensconced in my apartment and everything is back to as normal as it gets, except for the alarming amount of catch-up I have to do around here after my absence. Maaaaybe I'll be pretending that doesn't exist for a while. We'll see.

Actually, the real point of this post is that I WROTE FIC. Plural, actually!

Fic One: my extremely belated Yuletide reveal. I was assigned to write for pauraque, and was extremely pleased to write a Hark! A Vagrant fic about the Mystery Solving Teens for him. It was a lot of fun and I am pleased with what I wrote, and he seemed to like it, and other people seemed to like it too, so yays all around!

I Never Said This Job Was Easy (1270 words) by sophia_sol
Fandom: Hark! A Vagrant
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Mystery Solving Teens
Summary: One person he'll tell he loves, and five he won't.


Fic Two: I wandered over to one of those commentfic fests that pop up on people's journals with some regularity, because it's fun reading the fics that come out of them. And because quite often the prompts act as handy spoilery summaries for the fics that follow, and you know how I feel about spoilers :D

Except at this fest (the Bandom Missed Connections Fest) a prompt blindsided me, and I wrote an entire fic for it in just a few hours during the one free afternoon I had in the last week and a half. I do not usually write fic that fast! IDEK what happened, but possibly it's a sign that I need to get around to posting a rec-set of fic about public transportation, because dude, it's such an awesome trope.

Scenarios (2510 words) by sophia_sol
Fandom: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Spencer Smith/Brendon Urie
Characters: Spencer Smith, Brendon Urie
Summary: Written for the Bandom Missed Connections Fest, for the prompt: "Brendon always sees this guy during his commute--he gets in a few stations after Brendon, and he's always reading the newspaper, and he always gets out the same station as Brendon. Brendon's never talked to him, but he means to. And then that guy isn't taking the commute anymore."


And now it is time to scare my tabs into submission! They kind of proliferated out of control during the last week and a half when I've been kind of exhausted and not interested in dealing with that sort of thing.

(ooh, I have an icon that is, like, relevant THREE TIMES OVER for this post! Hark! A Vagrant -- check! Musician -- check! Gratuitous references to Canada (...okay, so I set Scenarios in Toronto. Brendon works at the ROM. SO SUE ME) -- check! \o/ Although I wonder if it's one of the icons I have on both DW and LJ...))

Betas are wonderful magical beings of whom I could sing praises forever, or at least a very long time. In this case, kiki_eng was the marvelous person who helped make this fic so much better than it would have otherwise been. Thank you!

Title: Like Drinking Salt Water
Fandom: Bandom (Panic! At the Disco)
Characters: Brendon/Jon and Ryan
Length: ~2.3k words
Content notes: swearing, kissing
Summary: "Ryan!" Brendon gets up from the table at Starbucks where he's been lurking and waiting and distractedly watching the cute barista dude. He bounds over to Ryan, and attacks him with a hug. "I haven't seen you for ages!" (A college AU)

Read it on AO3

( Read it here )

A recs-set of space AUs! Because they're ridiculously awesome. And to make it a challenge for myself, I'm doing it only of fics that aren't actually set on spaceships. Just because I can!

The extremely AU nature of these means that most of the following fics are quite welcoming for people who are unfamiliar with the fandoms. In fact, I'd say that all but the last one are.

(and, er, I'm terribly sorry, but a disproportionate number of these are bandom, because I didn't do a very good job of tagging for space back in my pre-bandom days...)

Bring me that horizon, by cupiscent. Bandom; Pete/William. This is the fic that inspired me to do this post, because it's just so fantastically imaginative in its SF setting. I love it dearly and would happily read a novel set in this universe! In which William is the translator assigned to the new owners of a planet.

Robots Need Love Too, by toft. Mythbusters RPF; Jamie, Adam. A space AU recs-set would be incomplete without this fic, because it is super amazing in all the ways. In which Jamie and Adam are neuro-atypical elementary school kids in space, and everything is heartwarming forever.

Concatenation, the Birth of Babel, and Other Acoustic Rebellions, by swanswan. Bandom; Pete/Patrick, Andy, Joe. Oh my god, ALL THE FEELINGS. Remember my post a few days ago about how much music means to me? Yeah. THIS FIC. Feelings about the importance of music are WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. In which Fall Out Boy comes together in an act of musical rebellion against the way that music has been regimented and controlled and stifled.

The Light from Our Bodies Precedes Us, by mxtape and fleurdeliser. Bandom; Gerard/Frank. Okay, this is a space AU in a slightly different way, in that it's historical fic about NASA. What, THAT STILL TOTALLY COUNTS. And it is excellent. In which there are nerdy scientisty types! Yays!

With The Stars In His Eye, by ptahrrific. Fake News; Jon/"Stephen". Just a short fic, but totally adorable! In which "Stephen" scores the last ever tourist trip to the International Space Station.

...DUDE. I just realized I haven't really posted about bandom for like TWO WEEKS. Hah, no, this does NOT mean my obsession has abated at all. I'm just...slowing down on New Exciting Things I need to share? Or something. At the very least, I'm getting over how ~amazed~ I am at how amazing everything about bandom is. (For example, the fact that Gerard Way gives me all the feelings is not news. And everything I read about him, whether him the actual person or him the fictional character, just gives me further feelings. But I'm mostly not actually surprised by this anymore. (mostly.))

So have some bandom Things!

Thing One: Today I discovered that since having read this excellent fic about Panic's song Nine in the Afternoon, the song is no longer a cheerful song for me. Huh. Apparently it was a very convincing fic!

Thing Two: The other day I successfully recognized a Cobra Starship song on the radio! I was very proud of myself. Operation: Learn Popular Music is at least partially successful!

Thing Three: So now I like at least one Gym Class Heroes song, as I continue to spread my acquisitive gaze further and further across bandom. I'm not a fan of all their stuff, though. I listened to Stereo Hearts and was like DUDE UNEXPECTEDLY AWESOME, and then I listened to Cupid's Chokehold and was like, I guess that's okay, and then the next two songs I tried were both songs where I did not appreciate the portrayal of women. So I gave up. But I actually and genuinely love Stereo Hearts. And this is not a genre of music that I ever thought I would enjoy! So that's kind of mindblowing.

Thing Four: Have some bandom recs! Because I like to share the love! (and yes, the fic I mentioned in Thing One is also a rec. You should read it too!)

Timê, by airgiodslv. William/Gabe. AU, historical, set during five different time periods. In which William and Gabe have a long-standing musical competition, and everything about it is amazing zomg.

O Canada, by emilyenrose. Patrick/Fraser. Due South crossover. In which Pete finds Canada in Chicago, and I die laughing. (alas, this one is very short. I dearly wish I could read the whole story of what would happen after this!)

Don't Fear the Reaper, by dancinbutterfly. Gerard/Frank, but mostly about Gerard. In which Gerard meets Death, and this fic is just a world of lovely.

Making Other Plans, by skoosiepants. Mike Carden/Kevin Jonas. Disney RPF crossover. In which Kevin quits showbiz, gets a divorce, goes to college, starts a band, and gets adopted by crazy people, and I can't stop grinning for the awesome.

So, blame michelel72 and tei for encouraging me, because here's the fic I was totally not going to write. But, er, thanks! Because now I have a third kink_bingo fic written!

Thanks to justiceturtle for betaing!

Title: My Mind Is A Safe
Fandom: Bandom (Fall Out Boy)
Character: Patrick Stump
Contains: Mind-control. Also, crack.
Wordcount: ~800
Summary: There is a reason Patrick always wears a hat, and it is not the reason you think.

Read it on AO3

(ugh, I do not know bandom well enough to know what comms to crosspost a fic announcement to, and my searches are not being productive. Ah well.)

Jack Layton is dead. I can't even.

Other people are saying far more eloquent things than I could, so I will leave it there.

Here, have a recs-set of HAPPY THINGS:

every aching old machine, by longtime_lurker. Bandom; Pete/Patrick. OLD MEN IN LOVE.

Dolphin-Borne, by carmarthen. The Eagle/Dinotopia; Esca, Cottia, Marcus. DINOTOPIA FUSION.

The Adventures of Lily and Severus (BEST BUDS), by theopteryx. Harry Potter; Lily, Severus. ADORBS WEE COMIC.

Public Displays of Affection, by philomytha. Vorkosigan; Cordelia/Aral, Alys/Simon. MIDDLE-AGED PEOPLE IN LOVE.

untitled, by dakotaaaa. Doctor Who; Amy/Rory. ADORBS DRAWING OF KISSING AND BUNKBEDS.

Choice of Broadsides. NAPOLEONIC WAR CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE, WHERE BEING QUEER IS AN OPTION. ALSO IT IS RIDICULOUSLY FUN.

Lose My Breath, by deirdre_c. White Nights; Kolya/Ray. Vid, to a source you don't need to be familiar with (and it's not just me saying this). TWO DUDES. DANCING. IT IS AMAZING.