marzipan77

Challenge #9

In your own space, promote at least one canon that you adore (old, new, forever fandom). Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

My forever fandom, OG Stargate SG1.

It's team as family - dysfunctional family. It's heroes in this world without superpowers, people like me (only bet-ter!) who have to make horrible decisions and carry the weight of the world. It's many different people coming together to make it work. It's clever, commanding Jack O'Neill, questioning, sincere Daniel Jackson, brilliant, stubborn Samantha Carter, and strong, guarded Teal'c. It's Hammond of Texas and Master Bra'tac who calls earthlings footstools. It's a tale of human loss, grief, and how friendship can heal wounds. It's aliens and time travel and ingenuity. This show grew, it expanded, it told stories about slavery and trafficking, sacrifice, and standing your ground even in the face of your best-loved friend putting himself on the Other Side.

It's Jack and Daniel. At the heart of it - two very different men who argued and fought and laughed and always had each other's backs. They MADE IT WORK.

Stargate SG1 gave me my non-blood sisters in this world. My chosen family. We still do rewatches, we argue about the meanings behind words, the trivia that no one else notices. We love each other across the miles, over oceans, and pray for struggling children and aging parents. We are different and are anchored by love. Just like SG1.

Give some stories a try. Watch some episodes. For those of you who have lived within the Stargate fandom at one time, warmed by the virtual hugs and nourished by the cookies, come back! Read, leave kudos, send some encouraging feedback. And WRITE. Write a short piece that has been on your mind for years. A tag that you always wanted to see. A behind the scenes snippet. Give us the gift of your fannish heart - vid, art, anything you love.

We're still here. We're still watching and listening.

Challenge #6

In your own space, make a list — anything between one and ten things is a sweet spot, but don't feel constrained by that! - of things that you wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, or that you'd like someone to make for you. Are you dying for podfic of your writing? Do you need icons for a character that doesn't get much fanart? Is there a story you want to read? Are you looking for new canons to get into? Would you like a collaborator for a project?

I'd love to see:

More Bros
More Friendship fics
More Team as Family
Fewer Romances, stories that exist simply to get two MCs together with no other plot
More Plots

I'd love more Harry Potter fics that focus on his friendships, on the adults' teamwork and friendships, on getting the job done without sidetracking into any love life. I'd love more Harry and Severus interaction, more Harry and Draco interaction. If you know of these fics and where is the Gringott's vault in which they are hidden, please, please point the way!

I'd love more episode-like SG1 stories. Take the team through the wormhole and give us all a ride without goo-goo eyes of any type or flavor. I miss this show, the team, the characters and stories, so having that back would make me do a Snoopy dance.

Marvel stories wherein the MCs forbidden love is not the central issue. Give me smart-sh!t Barton dealing with Captain Honesty, leading Thor on wild rides through NY, and variously fighting/bonding with Stark over their distrust of authority.

Thank you to all the fanfic authors who have stoked my enthusiasm for great Bro stories in the past. It is my sweet-spot and it is harder and harder to find them.

Day #2: My Fannish History, or, A Crippling Home-life Leads to Wish-Fulfillment

Dark days. Long nights. Anger. Cursing. Hitting. Cutting words. Belittling. Which kid wouldn't want to live somewhere else, with other people. People who were heroes, who saved others, who put themselves in danger time after time to help the hurting. And who, so very often, were wonderfully, handsomely, heroically hurt themselves? (And looked exceptional doing it!)

Okay, yes, there were some hormones wrapped up in it as well.

My heroes:

Ilya Kuriakin, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., 1964 (David McCallum)
Spock, Star Trek, 1966 (Leonard Nimoy)
Steve Burton, Land of the Giants, 1968 (Gary Conway)
Pete Cochran, Mod Squad, 1968 (Michael Cole)
Paul Foster, UFO, 1970 (Michael Billington)
Johnny Gage, Emergency!, 1972 (Randolph Mantooth)
Gil Foley, Chopper One, 1974 (Dirk Benedict)
Ken Hutchinson, Starsky and Hutch, 1975 (David Soul)

Those were the foundation days of my fandom interest. Yes, I wrote fanfic. Mod Squad and Star Trek and S&H. I wrote with a blue bic pen in my school notebooks. I lay in bed at night and dreamed about what I would have written instead of the episodes I'd just seen. I wrote better endings, more meaningful conversations, deeper friendships. I wrote H/C, Angst, and team as family. That is what ties all those shows together. Team.

Because, as a child, that's what I wanted. I wanted a family that was closer, better, kinder, more loving than my own. And, more than hormones, more than pretty people doing daring things, I LOVED the team-as-family dynamic of my favorite shows. Ilya and Napoleon. Spock and Kirk and McCoy. Pete, Julie, and Linc. Johnny and Roy. Gil and Don. S&H. I hated the episodes that broke that friendship; that set up reasons for the men and women of these found families to betray each other, to hurt each other. Because I already knew that life - and I knew it wasn't The Way Things Were Supposed To Be.

College didn't leave a lot of time for fandom, but that was okay because I'd discovered a real-life found family. Escaping from home to live at school revealed all of life's colors, deeper and richer than I ever suspected. I found my soulmate. Learned about love (still learning) and started that family of my own.

After raising my daughter - the best fandom buddy of all - having various work families, church families, and neighborhood families, I found myself in a dark place again. Alone. Laid-off/retired. Daughter finding her own family at college. We were transferred to a new place without the comforting, loving presence of work or neighborhood or church families. Depression. Dark thoughts. Hopelessness.

And then I found fan fiction.

Surfing the net, lying in bed, refusing to get up, to live, I found fanfiction.net. I read stories about those friends and family I'd loved all those years ago. I cried. A lot. And, eventually, I started writing my own stories about them. One decision made the difference.

I hit "post."

And people sent me feedback. Other fans. Women - mostly around my age - who had found their childhood heroes again, just like me. And those people, those other fans, those strong, beautiful-souled women, saved my life. Literally.

C-san. OneofAradia. Sallye. iiiionly. Lyn. DebC. DennyJ. Holly. Jenn. Kelly. DebA. SamAntilles. Annejackdanny. Diana. So many others.

Heart-sisters. Fandom twins. Sharing on-line stories spread to physical meetings, to hugs, long discussions, strong shoulders to cry on and hands to hold. Giggling and drooling over our heroes? Of course! And stories.

Face, The A-Team, 1983. (Oh, look! It's Dirk Benedict again!)
Daniel Jackson, Stargate SG-1, 1997. (Michael Shanks)
Severus Snape, HP movies, 2001. (Alan Rickman)
Tony DiNozzo, NCIS, 2003. (Michael Weatherly)
Spencer Reid, Criminal Minds, 2005. (Matthew Gray Gubler)
Ianto Jones, Torchwood, 2006. (Gareth David-Lloyd)

Team-as-family is still my jam. Because, while I found lots of families over the years to supplant my dysfunctional one, I still crave that closeness. That sense of the deepest devotion. Being understood all the way to my center. And I have that with my fandom sisters, too.

Are you struggling? Doubting that life is worth the pain? Hopeless? Have you been abused, hurt, abandoned? Reach out. Hit "post." We are here. We are waiting, anxious to help. To tell you that you are NOT alone. We don't have answers, but we have hands to hold and shoulders to cry on. And we understand how much you ache for connection.

Fandom Heals.

It begins tomorrow! I'm going to brush off the snow and take a seat on that bench and wait for you there!

Title: Child of Fire, Child of Ice, Rated T
Author: marzipan77 
Fandom: Harry Potter
GEN, no pairings
Warnings: one description of torture, warning in chapter
Summary: AU of Goblet of Fire wherein Harry does not accept his fate happily, but, instead, goes to adults for help. With Snape's help, Harry realizes that Parseltongue is not the only skill he shares with Voldemort. Redemption fic, smart, capable adults, and old magic.

archiveofourown.org/works/18545986/chapters/43957327

 My first response was laughter - I think that's a healthy sign that I no longer take snarky, arrogant reviews for stories as personally as I once did. Of course, my reaction did not stop there. Sigh.

I've been writing quite a bit in the Harry Potter fandom, and I'm pretty obsessive about trying to keep characters' speech true to the character. Snape sounds very precise and enunciates strangely. Dumbledore likes long .... dramatic ... pauses. Hermione is a bit lectury. Etc.

So, today, I received feedback talking about how ridiculously Americanized my latest HP story is. Now, the reviewer (on fanfic.net) is a Guest, so I have no opportunity to tell them to take a hike, or a stroll, or perhaps a British ramble, but, hey, that's what people do on the internet - they shout at you and then click off, feeling very pleased with themselves. After this initial nasty paragraph, they did go on to say they enjoyed the story and thought it was unique and interesting, so kudos for that, but, still. The tone bugs me.

Here's the paragraph: "So far my only complaint is the blatant Americanisms in the story. Remember, this is a British story, we have mums not "moms." I'd advise you to maybe look up some British vs. American terms to get out of this habit sooner. Only other thing is the chapter length - could be longer."

Apparently, these hundreds of blatant Americanisms revolve around one word - mom. I have a few things I'd have responded: 

1. British people, depending on region, culture, and upbringing call their mothers many different things, including mum, mom, mother, momma, mama, mummy, amma, eema, etc. I'm sure the reviewer might call their mother mum, but others don't.

2. Is the reviewer aware that there were two different versions of Rowlings' books published and distributed to the USA? One English and one Americanized? In the Americanized version, trainers were sneakers, pudding was dessert, and many, many other words were changed in order to help the American children who were the target audience understand more easily. I mean, come on, even the title of the first book was changed.

3. Do you suppose the reviewer is reading HP stories in other languages telling them to write only in British English? It would be a shame if other cultures in other languages were forced to write only in the language of the story's country of origin.

As for the paragraph length, that is frankly stupefying. I'm sure the reviewer writes to professional authors and instructs them on chapter length all the time, since he/she is, apparently, the expert on this subject. 

Sheesh, people! M'I'right?

/rant

 C'mon Stargate peeps, let's give our boys another great round of fics! I'm here as your cheerleader, shoving my pom-poms down your throat. Any gathering of Stargate fans has my heart, as always. If you'd like to participate (1000 words? You can do that!) please see this post by the lovely princessofgeeks  and leave her a message.

princessofgeeks.dreamwidth.org/931469.html

 For 7 days, post the cover of a book that is a favorite for one reason or another without explanation.

 Book Cover Challenge - Day 5: post the cover of a book. Pick a favorite, pick one that influenced you, pick one that is loved from childhood. No explanations.

Going fandom today. My copy is signed by the awesome writer.