Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 5 & 6
Jan. 16th, 2012 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nenya_kanadkaDay 5
In your own space, share something non-fannish you are passionate about with your fannish friends. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
I love languages. I am sadly a monolingual anglophone, but I am utterly fascinated by the ways in which human beings communicate with each other.
I grew up surrounded by people who spoke second languages: my parents (who'd lived in Japan for two years when I was tiny) would carry on conversations in Japanese when they didn't want us kids to overhear them; my mom read French; my dad read Greek and Latin; my science teacher had lived in Guatemala for a number of years and spoke Spanish (and often had friends from across Latin America visiting); my music teacher was Armenian; and in my early teens a family from Kazakhstan (who spoke Russian and German) stayed with us for a summer and for the next few years we'd go visit them every few months.
I decided I wanted to learn Russian, so I sent away for a high school correspondence course, which I worked on for a year or so. Between being bloody deaf and not really having anyone to practice with, I didn't get much further than that (though I took another introductory course again in college, and found that I remembered almost everything from the first time around), but it still delights me when I see something written in Russian that I can understand.
For a while, my family would read the Christian Bible in the evenings, and each of us would pick a different translation--the kids would pick various English translations, Dad would read Greek if it was the New Testament, Mom would read French, and I'd read the Russian half of my English/Russian Bible. It was so much fun, seeing what was the same and what was different across different versions of the same passage. It gave you a much wider perspective than just reading it in the NIV or KJV.
And that's why I like languages: How do people think? How do we put this idea or that idea into words? Does this idiom translate into another language, and if so which languages? What other ways are there to express this idea? What things can you say in Maori or German or Hebrew that you can't quite--without taking a paragraph to explain--say in English? Vice versa?
Perhaps being deaf or having artistic inclinations makes me fascinated by writing systems as well. There are almost infinite ways of putting down language onto paper, and most of them are really really beautiful--at least, if the writer's got good handwriting. (And if they don't, that's interesting, too.) Even writers of English write differently depending on age and school system and country: letters I got from my Irish pen-pal in the 1990s look very different from letters from my American grandmother or my South African boss.
And then there's conlangs, like the Enafy hani script (I finally found it!) and language that Spence Hill created based on CJ Cherryh's Chanur novels. A language for people whose bodies are built along feline lines (the way human bodies are built along primate lines)--and an alphabet for people with claws!
Day 6
In your own space, rec at least 3 fanworks you thought you wouldn't like (because they weren't your fandom or they pushed against your boundaries or you thought you just wouldn't be interested) and that you ended up loving.
1) Fanvids in general.
For the longest time, I simply didn't watch videos on the Internet. First it was because I had dial-up, and then it was because I'm so deaf that I can't catch dialogue or lyrics from audio alone. Eventually, I discovered that most movies and TV shows that I can download I can also get subtitles for. But by then I was so used to writing off video as a lost cause that I kind of side-eyed fanvids. What was I going to get out of a bunch of random clips from TV shows? Wasn't that kind of...derivative, anyway? It wasn't like fanfic where you were coming up with your own words and stuff! Plus, I was never a member of the MTV generation despite being the right age--music videos just weren't something I was literate in. This just wasn't for me, I thought.
How wrong I was. I'm still slower to watch fanvids than I am to read fanfic (force of habit & bandwidth still influence me) but WOW, there is a lot you can say with a well-chosen video clip, particularly juxtaposed with other clips for comparison or contrast. You can do meta pointing out issues with a show (like the well-known vids about sexism and racism), you can show your interpretation of characters or a relationship between characters, and you can do all kinds of clever things with editing and the music you choose. It takes a lot of creativity and it's pretty awesome. Give me two seconds with Google to find the lyrics for your song--or, like the song below, supply subs yourself!--and we're good to go. :D
Don't Tell Me Where You've Been (Just Show Me What You Know) bylaurashapiro, a River Song/Eleven fanvid of squee. "River Song, ladies and gentlemen. And also, Eleven and his adorable face and body made of rubber bands. And also also, hot sexy funtiems."
2) RPF/RPS.
This one is all![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
rahmbamarama's fault. Okay, let me back up--originally, it was all johnxjohn's fault.
See, back in the 2004 US presidential election, John Kerry ("Big John") and John Edwards ("Little John") were running mates and there were jokes going around about how huggy and handsy they were while campaigning. Someone started a LJ community for it, and there was silly PG-rated slash (and femslash for their wives even, I think). When Bush won the election, the comm members were naturally devastated.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
doubtful_salmon wrote a supremely cracky story called Kerry Takes Washington about Kerry and Edwards's supposed post-election shenanigans, and it helped some of us through the initial post-election depression.
Four years later, Obama and Biden were even slashier, and the communityjoebama was created. Then Obama hired Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff and a horde of fangirls came out of the woodwork (and you'd better believe they made puns on "chief of staff"). rahmbamarama was a fascinating combination of capslock comm and serious political interest comm. And there was fanfic. Oh yes, there was fanfic.
Four years after that, when Obama's been in office and had his share of fuckups, the cheering fangirl in me has been tempered by political reality, but I have to say I enjoyed my time in that community. The community members were all wonderful, funny, clever, kind people. And now I know what it's like to read and write RPF--though I still don't really get doing it for actors.
3) Doctor/companion romance.
I wasn't really in Doctor Who fandom during the heyday of Rose/Doctor shipping (I only really started watching the show in 2010), but I've always been kind of meh about it. The Doctor is ancient, and a little crazy, and on the one hand he's probably completely on a different wavelength than young humans and on the other hand, most of his companions can probably do much better than him as far as having a partner who gets them and is going to be there for the important events in their lives. In any case, I'm far more interested in the companions than I am in the Doctor, most of the time, though he can be pretty fun to watch too.
better_with_3 however has some lovely sexy Doctor/Rose/Jack fic. One I remember in particular from a few years ago (I've lost the bookmark in all my computer crashes) had the Doctor topping Rose who topped Jack, which I thought was an intriguing and quite sexy combination. Anyway, I like OT3s in my fiction, and that community delivers.
The other way I can see the Doctor being with a companion romantically, of course, is River Song. Again I'm far more into her than I am into him really, but the show this season and the fic that's come out of the sixth season of new!Who has had some really wonderful River and River/Eleven moments, and it's sold me on the River/Eleven ship.
(Though really, I still want River Song/Sarah Jane Smith. I think they'd be awesome as a time-travelling duo. With or without Madame Vastra and Jenny, who also need their own spinoff show, or at least virtual series!)
In your own space, share something non-fannish you are passionate about with your fannish friends. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
I love languages. I am sadly a monolingual anglophone, but I am utterly fascinated by the ways in which human beings communicate with each other.
I grew up surrounded by people who spoke second languages: my parents (who'd lived in Japan for two years when I was tiny) would carry on conversations in Japanese when they didn't want us kids to overhear them; my mom read French; my dad read Greek and Latin; my science teacher had lived in Guatemala for a number of years and spoke Spanish (and often had friends from across Latin America visiting); my music teacher was Armenian; and in my early teens a family from Kazakhstan (who spoke Russian and German) stayed with us for a summer and for the next few years we'd go visit them every few months.
I decided I wanted to learn Russian, so I sent away for a high school correspondence course, which I worked on for a year or so. Between being bloody deaf and not really having anyone to practice with, I didn't get much further than that (though I took another introductory course again in college, and found that I remembered almost everything from the first time around), but it still delights me when I see something written in Russian that I can understand.
For a while, my family would read the Christian Bible in the evenings, and each of us would pick a different translation--the kids would pick various English translations, Dad would read Greek if it was the New Testament, Mom would read French, and I'd read the Russian half of my English/Russian Bible. It was so much fun, seeing what was the same and what was different across different versions of the same passage. It gave you a much wider perspective than just reading it in the NIV or KJV.
And that's why I like languages: How do people think? How do we put this idea or that idea into words? Does this idiom translate into another language, and if so which languages? What other ways are there to express this idea? What things can you say in Maori or German or Hebrew that you can't quite--without taking a paragraph to explain--say in English? Vice versa?
Perhaps being deaf or having artistic inclinations makes me fascinated by writing systems as well. There are almost infinite ways of putting down language onto paper, and most of them are really really beautiful--at least, if the writer's got good handwriting. (And if they don't, that's interesting, too.) Even writers of English write differently depending on age and school system and country: letters I got from my Irish pen-pal in the 1990s look very different from letters from my American grandmother or my South African boss.
And then there's conlangs, like the Enafy hani script (I finally found it!) and language that Spence Hill created based on CJ Cherryh's Chanur novels. A language for people whose bodies are built along feline lines (the way human bodies are built along primate lines)--and an alphabet for people with claws!
Day 6
In your own space, rec at least 3 fanworks you thought you wouldn't like (because they weren't your fandom or they pushed against your boundaries or you thought you just wouldn't be interested) and that you ended up loving.
1) Fanvids in general.
For the longest time, I simply didn't watch videos on the Internet. First it was because I had dial-up, and then it was because I'm so deaf that I can't catch dialogue or lyrics from audio alone. Eventually, I discovered that most movies and TV shows that I can download I can also get subtitles for. But by then I was so used to writing off video as a lost cause that I kind of side-eyed fanvids. What was I going to get out of a bunch of random clips from TV shows? Wasn't that kind of...derivative, anyway? It wasn't like fanfic where you were coming up with your own words and stuff! Plus, I was never a member of the MTV generation despite being the right age--music videos just weren't something I was literate in. This just wasn't for me, I thought.
How wrong I was. I'm still slower to watch fanvids than I am to read fanfic (force of habit & bandwidth still influence me) but WOW, there is a lot you can say with a well-chosen video clip, particularly juxtaposed with other clips for comparison or contrast. You can do meta pointing out issues with a show (like the well-known vids about sexism and racism), you can show your interpretation of characters or a relationship between characters, and you can do all kinds of clever things with editing and the music you choose. It takes a lot of creativity and it's pretty awesome. Give me two seconds with Google to find the lyrics for your song--or, like the song below, supply subs yourself!--and we're good to go. :D
Don't Tell Me Where You've Been (Just Show Me What You Know) by
laurashapiro, a River Song/Eleven fanvid of squee. "River Song, ladies and gentlemen. And also, Eleven and his adorable face and body made of rubber bands. And also also, hot sexy funtiems."2) RPF/RPS.
This one is all
rahmbamarama's fault. Okay, let me back up--originally, it was all johnxjohn's fault.See, back in the 2004 US presidential election, John Kerry ("Big John") and John Edwards ("Little John") were running mates and there were jokes going around about how huggy and handsy they were while campaigning. Someone started a LJ community for it, and there was silly PG-rated slash (and femslash for their wives even, I think). When Bush won the election, the comm members were naturally devastated.
doubtful_salmon wrote a supremely cracky story called Kerry Takes Washington about Kerry and Edwards's supposed post-election shenanigans, and it helped some of us through the initial post-election depression. Four years later, Obama and Biden were even slashier, and the community
joebama was created. Then Obama hired Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff and a horde of fangirls came out of the woodwork (and you'd better believe they made puns on "chief of staff"). rahmbamarama was a fascinating combination of capslock comm and serious political interest comm. And there was fanfic. Oh yes, there was fanfic. Four years after that, when Obama's been in office and had his share of fuckups, the cheering fangirl in me has been tempered by political reality, but I have to say I enjoyed my time in that community. The community members were all wonderful, funny, clever, kind people. And now I know what it's like to read and write RPF--though I still don't really get doing it for actors.
3) Doctor/companion romance.
I wasn't really in Doctor Who fandom during the heyday of Rose/Doctor shipping (I only really started watching the show in 2010), but I've always been kind of meh about it. The Doctor is ancient, and a little crazy, and on the one hand he's probably completely on a different wavelength than young humans and on the other hand, most of his companions can probably do much better than him as far as having a partner who gets them and is going to be there for the important events in their lives. In any case, I'm far more interested in the companions than I am in the Doctor, most of the time, though he can be pretty fun to watch too.
better_with_3 however has some lovely sexy Doctor/Rose/Jack fic. One I remember in particular from a few years ago (I've lost the bookmark in all my computer crashes) had the Doctor topping Rose who topped Jack, which I thought was an intriguing and quite sexy combination. Anyway, I like OT3s in my fiction, and that community delivers. The other way I can see the Doctor being with a companion romantically, of course, is River Song. Again I'm far more into her than I am into him really, but the show this season and the fic that's come out of the sixth season of new!Who has had some really wonderful River and River/Eleven moments, and it's sold me on the River/Eleven ship.
(Though really, I still want River Song/Sarah Jane Smith. I think they'd be awesome as a time-travelling duo. With or without Madame Vastra and Jenny, who also need their own spinoff show, or at least virtual series!)
