#arathe talks

[arathe]

I can’t sleep, so I’m going to try and get some work done on Strange Company instead.

[arathe]

You know, it’s interesting. I’ve been writing fanfic since before I knew what fanfic was, when I was around twelve and so fascinated with the books I was reading that I needed to have more, even if I had to write it myself. I’ve been posting fanfic online since I was fifteen (sixteen years ago, yikes!), and fandom was a totally different world back then.

Fanfiction.net was still in its infancy and widely unknown. Fandom existed largely on mailing lists, and if your fandom was large (Gundam Wing, anyone?), some days you’d come home to a thousand emails a day or more. There were a few fandom-specific archives around, one I maintained myself, but mostly if you wanted fic you had to go to a writer’s individual website to find it.

There was a greater feeling of community back then, I think. Maybe I was just more sociable as a kid, but maybe something about the format fostered interaction in a way that tumblr doesn’t. I do know that if it hadn’t been for the friendly encouragement from the folks back then, I never would have kept writing. These days if you write some bad fic, you post on AO3 and it goes mostly ignored. Back then, the list regulars almost always had a kind word no matter how terrible the fic (and I wrote some really bad fic, let me tell you), and I have no doubt that’s what kept me in the game long enough to gain a little confidence and a thicker skin.

I don’t mean for this to be a ‘back in my day’ post. I just think it’s interesting how I’ve watched fandom evolve over the years, from mailing lists to Livejournal to tumblr, and how it seems to be harder to meet people and make friends than it used to be. I’m right in that age bracket where I’ve had the opportunity to watch the evolution of the internet first hand from nearly the beginning, and seeing how much things have changed in such a short span of years, and how fandom has adapted to those changes is just.

It’s really fucking cool, man.

[arathe]

I was always on board with the idea of a Black Widow movie on principle, but after getting that glimpse into her backstory in Age of Ultron I NEED HER ORIGIN STORY LIKE BURNING

[arathe]

So I’m 95% sure I don’t actually believe in paranormal stuff, but doing things like that Charlie game just seems like tempting fate, yo.

[arathe]

I hate it when I get random pains in my left arm. I know I probably just flailed weird and tweaked a nerve or something, but my brain is always like

okay that’s logical

but

what if

it’s a HEART ATTACK

[arathe]

So, occasionally I get into some pretty facepalm-worthy conversations with my husband on social issues. He’s not a bad guy (or we wouldn’t still be married), but he is definitely a product of his non-minority, upper-middle class background.

I try to set him straight whenever these things crop up, but it’s pretty frustrating sometimes, because I’m not very articulate and I’m basically trash at presenting a good argument. So a lot of times it feels like I completely fail to get the point across.

Yesterday we had another conversation that fell into this category. He was expressing frustration over colleges having to fill a minority ‘quota’, so that deserving students were losing out to people with substantially less academic achievement, “people who could basically write ‘fuck you’ on the application, but they have to take them to fill the quota.” Which I’m pretty sure isn’t actually how it works, but since I know fuck all about the system, I couldn’t really argue that point.

We kicked it back and forth for a bit, but like I said I didn’t have nearly enough information on the subject to really make a good argument. So eventually I said, “Look, let’s assume you’re right, and racial minorities really do have an advantage over other applicants. Why is that a bad thing? We have the advantage in almost every other aspect of life, why can’t they have one?”

He didn’t have a good answer for that, and the subject died for a bit. A while later he comes to me, a little uncertain and says, “I have a lot of respect for your sense of morality, and sometimes when we have conversations like this it makes me wonder if I’m a bad person.”

Which was both flattering, and a sign that even when it doesn’t feel like I’m getting through to him, my words are still having an impact. Trying to get him to critically examine his opinions can be an exercise in frustration, but it’s nice to know that he takes the things I say to heart, even if he’ll spend three hours arguing about it first.

[arathe]

You know, I have decided that from now on I’m not going to go anon when sending asks (unless they’re like, personally embarrassing or something). Because 99% of the time, the stuff I say is friendly and/or harmless, and it’s kind of silly to get all shy over attaching my name to that stuff, especially since it can be nice for the recipient to know who’s talking to them.

I’m also going to do literally every ask meme I see unless I’m two days back on my dash, because those go ignored for a lot of people and it’s a nice feeling when someone takes an interest.

[arathe]

It’s 7pm and I’ve done literally nothing all day. Losing another whole day on this costume is going to come back to bite meeeeeeee