contrarianarchon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
contrarianarchon) wrote2019-08-08 11:26 am
contrarianarchon) wrote2019-08-08 11:26 am
Entry tags:
Storytime!
People are talking about lack of content on dreamwidth and also trying to lower the barrier to "This might be interesting" so let me tell you a story about ... arguably how I got into fandom?
Okay, so teen-me didn't really get fandom or know it's existence. This is because I follow trains of media and recommendation mostly rather than trying to find my own stuff. I'm always open to recommendations for stuff people like, and I find that ones friends and internet-blogs and tv-tropes crawls generate plenty of recommendations for cool things to read without needing to, like, actually search for media. (I'm working on developing that skill, but it's *hard*. How do people do it?). I still mostly work this way, but I have friends in fandom now (and also friends in fandoms, which is kinda not the same thing?), so I get fanfic recs as well as other stuff.
SO yeah! Back, maybe ~3 years ago, I was recommended To The Stars. This, for people who don't know, is a high-scifi story set in the distant future of the PMMM universe. I knew exactly two things about Madoka at that point - that it was dark, and that the fluffy familiar could not be trusted. This recommendation also came with the advice that everyone except the blue-haired girl was gay. (and she was bisexual). This was not helpful, because To The Stars assumes you know what the characters look like. I did not. Nonetheless! It was a good fic! I enjoyed reading it greatly. It's a very compelling mystery story when you have no idea who this "Homura" person is or what their thing is. (Or any of the other character backstories or motivations).
This continued, and in combination with who I get recs from, I now am in a weird state of being in near-total disjunction between "Works I really like" and "Works that I read fanfic for". (Worm is in the latter case - I read lots of wormfic, am even considering writing some, but would never touch the original myself. Ditto with RWBY)
To be fair, I'd read fanfic for my favorite stuff if it existed. But there are like three fics on Ao3 each for PGTE and TGAB, so what am I going to do? (SV has a couple for each as well, which I do read, but they're mostly Worm crossovers.)
Okay, so teen-me didn't really get fandom or know it's existence. This is because I follow trains of media and recommendation mostly rather than trying to find my own stuff. I'm always open to recommendations for stuff people like, and I find that ones friends and internet-blogs and tv-tropes crawls generate plenty of recommendations for cool things to read without needing to, like, actually search for media. (I'm working on developing that skill, but it's *hard*. How do people do it?). I still mostly work this way, but I have friends in fandom now (and also friends in fandoms, which is kinda not the same thing?), so I get fanfic recs as well as other stuff.
SO yeah! Back, maybe ~3 years ago, I was recommended To The Stars. This, for people who don't know, is a high-scifi story set in the distant future of the PMMM universe. I knew exactly two things about Madoka at that point - that it was dark, and that the fluffy familiar could not be trusted. This recommendation also came with the advice that everyone except the blue-haired girl was gay. (and she was bisexual). This was not helpful, because To The Stars assumes you know what the characters look like. I did not. Nonetheless! It was a good fic! I enjoyed reading it greatly. It's a very compelling mystery story when you have no idea who this "Homura" person is or what their thing is. (Or any of the other character backstories or motivations).
This continued, and in combination with who I get recs from, I now am in a weird state of being in near-total disjunction between "Works I really like" and "Works that I read fanfic for". (Worm is in the latter case - I read lots of wormfic, am even considering writing some, but would never touch the original myself. Ditto with RWBY)
To be fair, I'd read fanfic for my favorite stuff if it existed. But there are like three fics on Ao3 each for PGTE and TGAB, so what am I going to do? (SV has a couple for each as well, which I do read, but they're mostly Worm crossovers.)
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After reading most of the "No Driver's License" recaps, I was amazed to find that even just "knowing what an Incubator is" was enough to open up so many jokes and references that were going on around me, and that in some cases I had not even previously realised were referencing *anything*.
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>>I find that ones friends and internet-blogs and tv-tropes crawls generate plenty of recommendations for cool things to read without needing to, like, actually search for media. (I'm working on developing that skill, but it's *hard*. How do people do it?).<<
IME, searching your own stuff is a stopgap skill for people who aren't networked well enough to have plenty of recommendations already. I haven't needed to do it much for quite a while.
(Sometimes you just wander through the bookstore/library/AO3 and see if anything catches your eye?)
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Yeah, I've definitely read fics without being familiar with the canon. For that matter, there have been times where I *later* got the canon and went "this is pretty mediocre, its existence is useful only because of the fic it's inspired". *cough*BBC-Sherlock*cough*
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Fair. If I actually had access to a unfiltered list of all the good stuff in the world then I think I'd collapse out of the compulsion to read it all.
>> Sometimes you just wander through the bookstore/library
Clearly at some point I could do this, because of all the fantasy-novels kid-me liked to read, but I can't do it now. Well, Ao3, maybe, but a bookstore? I just stand around and look for titles I recognize. I think AO3 has me spoiled with the whole "tags that actually work" thing.
>> For that matter, there have been times where I *later* got the canon and went "this is pretty mediocre, its existence is useful only because of the fic it's inspired".
I haven't actually had that reaction, but I know there are works which I refuse to consume because I know they're bad but which I still devour fic of (Worm being the one that comes to mind)