sab

1. Don't have a Dreamwidth acct yet but plan on buying one in May, just for namesquatting slash exit strategy. But I ain't leaving LJ. I like it here. Also Dreamwidth is Dth in my head, not DW, which is and will always be Doctor Who. Any chance of starting a trend? So... who's got a Dth invite? *g* Use it learn it love it! Use it three times and it's yours! Woo!

2. Though I do a lot of my brain-spewing over on Twitter... I was suspicious of folks who ship their twitters to LJ until I realized it's for archival purposes, not just noise, and then it made lots of sense. Twitter isn't searchable and doesn't have any useful archive properties. Which is to say I'll probably be shippin' my tweets here but will keep 'em behind a cut once I figure out how. So, people, what's your favorite tweet-shipper?

3. I forgot what 3 was for.

4. In re: mini XF renaissance, and without getting into a whole to-do... canonically it's safest to assume Mulder and Scully started sleeping together somewhere between "Orison" and "all things", yes? I mean, it was pretty blindingly obvious this time through, much as my fannish brain can of course put it anywhere -- around "Anasazi" is good, as is, of course, before "Never Again." But in canon, this time through, I don't even think it was subtext. Or maybe I'm giving them too much credit, or maybe David and Gillian just took over, but I think it's pretty clear there is some commencing-of-sexual-relationship just after Orison and from there through Requiem. My guess is that David and Gillian consciously played it that way. Does anyone (frey_at_last) have any interview material, etc, to back this up?

5. Speaking of post-Orison, do what I did, and go back and read Anyone with a Gun, the Orison post-ep runpunkrun and I wrote as our combined cool-headed alter ego, V. Salmone (a professional and well-educated woman from Corpus Christi, TX, in case you were wondering; she has a backstory and everything... and a desk). Not to toot our horns, but when Punk and I put our heads together, sometimes good stuff comes out, and in this case, somehow, it was just right. At least in terms of my most current XF rewatch. Felt good, is what. High fives all around.

6. I fell asleep outside in the sun and my retinas have not yet forgiven me.

7. Who watches "Hell's Kitchen"? What a car crash of a show. But yet I can't look away.

Things I'm not working on right now, 19:37, 11/27/05:

1. WBC homework, times four. Functional slacker. (For Richard Linklater's "Slacker," see 'slacker (disambiguation)'). I'm on chapter headings and battle scenes, over here; character misbehaviour and want and need. This is USEFUL homework; if only I were a less disambiguous slacker.

2. The story where Ronon is an 18-year-old lazy-ass wisecracker in military school.
3. The story where Rodney is put on a forced exercise regiment and is super embarassed and doesn't tell anyone until John starts noticing Rodney's getting all cut and svelte, and Rodney's like, "it's probably a tapeworm, don't worry about it!"
4. The BUGMASTER.

Instead, I'm contemplating WORLDWIDE FANNISH REVOLUTION. So here's my question:

( fandom (disambiguation) )

Things I know about yesterday: Donnatella Moss didn't die. I learned that on AIM. Then I learned about denialcorp on AIM as far as SV's concerned, and I share the following: EVERYTHING'S FINE. Then I saw Angel and lots of people died, but since it was the APOCALYPSE and also most of them were demons I'm pretty sure that's not a spoiler. Seriously, it's not a spoiler, I'm just being cavalier about mortality.

And in that spirit, I give you raincitygirl's denialcakes LJ entry, full of distracting comedic links and Jon Stewart's commencement address at William & Mary College. The latter is really damned good.

*

I'm living in a place where I don't really have a participatory fandom; where my diversity is manifest as dilution, or the center cannot hold, something like that. Babylon 5's the deepest of my current wading pools, and, I say again, dude, any fandom where ff.net's the go-to fic archive (Enemies & Allies, being specialized, and having under 20 stories, not withstanding, of course) is a sorry state of affairs.

But B5's representing in a big way. There's a loud and energetic group of girls here on LJ, and over at t_m; folks like barkley and andrastewhite are watching the episodes anew and we're having character discussions and some fearsome debates. Totally not sneezing at the B5 fandom, of whose ranks I am proud to be a member: I love you all.

But I was thinking about the experience of fandom, of *a* fandom (rather than fannishness in general), and I do kinda miss being part of a big meaty one. For the purposes of this argument, "Big Fandom" describes a group of people who largely know one another's names and reputations, where there's BNFs and where people can be identified by writing style, where there's a dozen specialized fic archives and fan sites that people know by name or acronym, where there's flamewars and aggravation and community -- all around one specific show/book/medium.

Maybe LJ and the current tread toward polyfanism has created a dilution of the big-ass fandoms, but they're still around. You can see it in HP, for one thing, in SV, in the Buffy/Angelverse still, even. In the comicverse/Batverse/JL-verse too, at this point. And there's probably still folks participating in the West Wing fandom, though I don't know the state of it at the moment. CSI and Alias both seem to have considerable community followings. What else? Where's the Big Fandom, nowadays?

I had it last in Farscape, before that was WW, and to a degree in SN, though Sports Night never had the same kind of community feel as other Big Fandoms. Before that, of course, was XF, the One Big Fandom To Rule Them All, and before that, I had Trek, the One Big Fandom To Birth Them All.

Now -- I have B5, and we're the fannish equivalent of the kiddie table. We're trying our damndest, but at the end of the day, there's maybe a dozen of us total, t_m and ff.net. Jeremiah never got off the ground, though the Samwise and Markus fans are representing over on valhalla_sector like troopers. Band of Brothers will never be a fannishy fandom, because, oddly, we've got too much respect for it to take it to that loving/mocking place. camp_toccoa is an awesome community, and a great crowd, but, you know, not the same thing.

And then there's Firefly, which, as Punk commented when we were discussing this, is a side-dish fandom. Everyone's got a lump of Firefly on the side, next to their main-course Angel or HP or SV or Farscape. Firefly -- there's no there there, despite the fact that it surpasses, in sheer numbers, all three of my other fandoms combined.

So, what's the buzz? Am I alone in this? Are other folks noticing a fannish diaspora that's caused a dilution in the concept of Big Fandoms? And for you kids who are still in Big Fandoms -- where are they? HP, SV, Alias? How're they workin' out for you?