Rapid Independent Fire Commence Commence Commence!

Despite making this post in August, this post spikes in brief periods throughout the year, depending on when folks like to start.

Reading all the cool costume projects people are working on

I am not uptight about privacy because I'm hiding something. I'm uptight about it because the people who dismiss my right to privacy are dangerous to you and me and our families, personally, all the time.

when i work in preschools, the hand signal kids make for phone is a flat palm, their fingers like brackets. i still make the pinky-and-thumb octave stretch when i "pick up" to respond to them.

the symbol to save a file is a floppy disc. the other day while cleaning out my parents' house, i found a collection of over a hundred CDs, my mom's handwriting on each of them. first day of kindergarten. playlist for beach trip '94. i don't have a device that can play any of these anymore - none of my electronics are compatible. there are pieces of my childhood buried under these, and i cannot access them. but they do exist, which feels special.

my siblings and i recently spent hours digitizing our family's photos as a present for my mom's birthday. there's a year where the pictures just. stop. cameras on phones got to be too good. it didn't make sense to keep getting them developed. and there are a quite a few years that are lost to us. when we were younger, mementos were lost to floods. and again, while i was in middle school, google drive wasn't "a thing". somewhere out there, there are lost memories on dead laptops. which is to say - i lost it to the flood twice, kind of.

when i teach undergrad, i always feel kind of slapped-in-the-face. they're over 18, and they don't remember a classroom without laptops. i remember when my school put in the first smartboard, and how it was a huge privilege. i used the word walkman once, and had to explain myself. we are only separated by a decade. it feels like we are separated by so much more than that.

and something about ... being half-in half-out of the world after. it marks you. i don't know why. but "real adults" see us as lost children, even though many of us are old enough to have a mortgage. my little sister grew up with more access to the internet than i did - and she's only got 4 years of difference. i know how to write cursive, and i actually think it's good practice for kids to learn too - it helps their motor development. but i also know they have to be able to touch-type way faster than was ever required from me.

In 1890, everybody rode horses, used candles to see at night, and communicated through letters.

By the 1920s (only 30 years later!), everybody had automobiles (or access to another form of 'self-driving' transportation like busses or trams) and nobody had horses. Nearly everyone had electricity in their houses. Nearly everyone had a telephone, or access to one.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine growing up, being taught by your parents all about how to ride horses and care for them and hitch them to a wagon, only to...not ever use that knowledge as an adult, because you have a car? Can you imagine learning how to make candles, finally getting good enough at it to be useful to your family as a teenager, only to flick a switch to turn on a light bulb as an adult?

I feel like that last huge change in technology is the same thing we are going through. I know how to read a paper map. I will never need to use this knowledge. But it's still in there; including the many patient hours my mother spent teaching me, and a lot of fond memories I have of her doing it. I know how to research a topic in a paper library, with actual books. Pretty sure I will never do that again. I memorize phone numbers, 'just in case'. In case what? The automobile (smartphone) gets un-invented? But I hold that knowledge in my head. It's there. It's part of me.

I wish I could speak to my great-great-grandmother, who had her first baby in 1900. To ask her, if what Millennials now are going through is what it was like for her Centennial generation. The absolute whiplash, from one way of life to another.

And all the way through the rescue Biggles is all ‘I don’t care if you want to walk away now, go run off into the forest if you want, it doesn’t matter to me at all what you do. Also are we going too fast, do you need to rest, are you okay, no you are absolutely not allowed to be the suicidal rearguard, I want you alive and well so shut up and let me protect you.’

I just started following the blog @ao3commentoftheday

As somebody who has been writing fic since 2001, I thought I could write something about comments, and the power of commenting, so here it is:

1) So, I started writing fan fic as a dyslexic teenager who went to special ed to dictate her academic writing, because I couldn’t even spell “simple” words like friend. I never once received positive feedback on my writing before I started producing Star Trek Voyager fic. I ended up being an English lit major because people supported my terrible early writings. Every comment on my dear old 2001 fanfiction.net account is a cherished and life changing comment. If you see an author with messed up grammar and spelling, but maybe a couple interesting ideas, it’s worth taking the time to leave a compliment, I swear.

2) That time somebody went through all of my fics in every fandom I’d written for, commented, and then went on to my original stories and did the same. That was way more than a decade ago, and I still remember the user name.

3) The times when commenting on fic turned into friendship. The person whose house I stay at every time I visit New York started out as somebody who commented on my fan fics. We’re not really even in the same fandom anymore, but she’s so important to me. A lot of fic writers are trying to reach out and find other who like the things they do. You’d be surprised what can happen.

4) The times when a commenter has turned into a co-writer or RP buddy. Many many of those!

5) The times where a fic has gotten a comment literally years after I posted it. My brain just fizzles and turns into a stream of happy exclamation points. It’s like a random act of kindness, because when I first write a story, of course I’m constantly refreshing my email and hoping for commentary, but when a comment on an old fic shows up it’s just this random unexpected thing that brightens my entire day.

6) The times somebody left a long, analytical comment that totally got everything I was going for.

7) This one time where somebody left a long, analytical comment that completely misinterpreted what I was going for. I got this comment from somebody, much younger than me, who had read one of my stories, and it was a long, kind, gushing comment about how much a certain character in the story cared about another. What I’d actually been going for was that said character was messing things up and not doing enough. This person’s comment was what led me to revising the story into one of the best fics I’ve ever written. What I’m trying to say is, if you feel like going on about themes and motifs, but are afraid that they will be wrong, do it anyway. It might give the writer some food for thought, and if it is kindly written, it should be kindly received.

8) “Can I write a fan fic of your fan fic???” It’s happened to me twice, and yes??? Oh my god yes!! I’ve done a lot in my life, but I still consider that a pinnacle life achievement. Also, if I’m writing certain things about the characters, it’s almost certainly because I want to read certain things about said characters. (Disclaimer: probably ask first if you want to do this).

9) I drew art of your fan fic! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!

10) So, I had this one fic I wrote between 2009 and 2012. It was epic, and I had this one reader who commented on ever chapter over the course of years. Amazing! In mid 2017 she decided to reread the story, and went back and commented again on her favorite chapters. Best thing ever. So good. Pure happiness that could conquer anything during the days that those comments rolled in.

11) “so I was talking about this story with…..”. YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT THIS STORY??? WITH A PERSON?

12) Rec lists. Recently showed up on one of those for the first time ever (outside of Yuletide). Authors search their names and get excited when they see them.

Something like Breaking Bad, for example, has low squiggability (that’s what I’m calling this quality). It’s tightly written, the characters are consistent, there’s little left to interpolate or extrapolate. Obviously, people DO write fanfic of Breaking Bad, but it still has a low squiggability score. Whereas something like Supernatural has a high squiggability score. Fantasy and science fiction often have high squiggability scores. This suggests squiggability could also be related to worldbuilding and potential for people to borrow a premise or setting.