Thoughts on Dreamwidth
Aug. 17th, 2021 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
themorikelifeI grew up in the age of LiveJournal but I never had one. I also grew up on the periphery of fanfiction but I never really wrote it as a teenager, nor did I actively seek it out for the fandoms I was in.
As a teen, my interest lay in canon content, so fanfiction that explored the characters in other settings or took liberties with the canon that I didn't agree with was a hard no. I preferred to daydream about my own things and keep them as daydreams. That being said, my brief foray into fanfiction was for Gundam.
I remember one fic where I read a single chapter. It was a Duo/Marquese fic; something about them arriving at a mansion and then finding a kid that, in hindsight, was an obvious self-insert of the author's. I did not read a lot of it, but I did learn SOS in morse code because of that fic. I remember that as one of my earliest forays into fanfiction.
I also remember a couple other fics, one from Gundam Wing and the other from Gundam Seed. Can't tell you specifics other than they were both somehow superpowers alternate universes and that was somehow acceptable to my flailing teenaged tastes.
All this to say, this was my introduction to fanfiction when I was young and impressionable.
Fandom in college mostly consisted of trolling Tumblr for fanart for Young Justice and Avatar: The Last Airbender. I did not check out any fic, but I have a feeling I have friends who did. At some point, a friend sent me fanfiction of a Twilight re-write, where Bella was presented as a smart and actionable young woman. The fic had two parts. Part one was Bella's love with Edward and taking control of her agency to marry and have a child young. The second part was from the POV of Renesmee as a teenager, where Bella had spent the past fifteen or so years on the run. I did not finish that second fic, but I think about it often.
Fell out of fandom for a while, until I read The Locked Tomb Trilogy by Tamsyn Muir (Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth). This is where I truly started to engage with fandom as a whole.
Fandom has evolved since I was young, as it often does. Nowadays, it's mostly on Tumblr or Twitter and properties like Dreamwidth are not commonly used. My impression is that the "fandom olds" are more likely to keep engaging through Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. I can see the appeal--here I am completely anonymous unless you are familiar with my username and profile picture. The posts are probably more evergreen, at least what little I have seen. Everything sticks around for longer too. I can write something now and it might still be relevant five years from now.
I'm still learning how to customize my page and profile, so if you're reading this in six years when I am a Dreamwidth/fandom master, I'm probably still learning then too. :)
Thanks for reading and for coming on this journey with me!
<3
As a teen, my interest lay in canon content, so fanfiction that explored the characters in other settings or took liberties with the canon that I didn't agree with was a hard no. I preferred to daydream about my own things and keep them as daydreams. That being said, my brief foray into fanfiction was for Gundam.
I remember one fic where I read a single chapter. It was a Duo/Marquese fic; something about them arriving at a mansion and then finding a kid that, in hindsight, was an obvious self-insert of the author's. I did not read a lot of it, but I did learn SOS in morse code because of that fic. I remember that as one of my earliest forays into fanfiction.
I also remember a couple other fics, one from Gundam Wing and the other from Gundam Seed. Can't tell you specifics other than they were both somehow superpowers alternate universes and that was somehow acceptable to my flailing teenaged tastes.
All this to say, this was my introduction to fanfiction when I was young and impressionable.
Fandom in college mostly consisted of trolling Tumblr for fanart for Young Justice and Avatar: The Last Airbender. I did not check out any fic, but I have a feeling I have friends who did. At some point, a friend sent me fanfiction of a Twilight re-write, where Bella was presented as a smart and actionable young woman. The fic had two parts. Part one was Bella's love with Edward and taking control of her agency to marry and have a child young. The second part was from the POV of Renesmee as a teenager, where Bella had spent the past fifteen or so years on the run. I did not finish that second fic, but I think about it often.
Fell out of fandom for a while, until I read The Locked Tomb Trilogy by Tamsyn Muir (Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth). This is where I truly started to engage with fandom as a whole.
Fandom has evolved since I was young, as it often does. Nowadays, it's mostly on Tumblr or Twitter and properties like Dreamwidth are not commonly used. My impression is that the "fandom olds" are more likely to keep engaging through Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. I can see the appeal--here I am completely anonymous unless you are familiar with my username and profile picture. The posts are probably more evergreen, at least what little I have seen. Everything sticks around for longer too. I can write something now and it might still be relevant five years from now.
I'm still learning how to customize my page and profile, so if you're reading this in six years when I am a Dreamwidth/fandom master, I'm probably still learning then too. :)
Thanks for reading and for coming on this journey with me!
<3
