fannish argosies

David gave himself a cramp laughing about it. Yuna was at first horrified but then also amused.

OpenAI scraped the entire web. All of which had been a labor of love from humans. Wikipedia is the backbone of a lot of LLMs, and that was volunteer human labor. They stole it and now they're selling it back to us.

Recently I was reminiscing with some friends in my current fandom about BBC Merlin - a show I greatly enjoyed to start with but never finished watching because (a) I heard the quality declined steeply, and (b) I didn't want to watch Arthur die. There was a stunning fanvid that gave me a lot of foreboding tragic Arthur feels, which coupled with all the great fic that that fandom produced, honestly probably greatly fed that desire to peace out before he met his tragic end. (I never wanna see my faves die. This is not the only show I never finished because of this aversion!).

I loved that vid and I wondered if it was still up anywhere. I managed to remember the name of the song and lo and behold, I found the vid! It's "Red" by obsessive24 from 2008, set to the song by Elbow and still embedded on livejournal and up on vimeo (password: merlin).

And despite the 2008-level video resolution - 360p! - it really holds up. A beautiful song with beautiful editing and effects. I dunno how many times I watched it back then. And I found an lj post from another fan who loved it so much they did a very in-depth review complete with timestamps and screenshots! One fan crafted the vid as a love letter to Arthur and his tragedy, and another fan wrote a detailed analysis as a love letter to the vid. I love fandom so much sometimes.

Scrolling through the vidder's youtube channel and looking at all the canons she's vidded, it really hit me what a golden era of fandom that late 2000s-early 2010s felt like to me, such a beautiful blossoming of communities and fanworks fertilised by improving technology and a diversity of fan cultures. Improved home computers, editing software, DVD ripping and torrents meant that more people could make vids; broadband internet and sites like youtube and vimeo enabled easy streaming and sharing (as opposed to downloading a whole vid to watch before you knew if you'd even like it!); portable mp3 players encouraged the proliferation of podfic and fandom podcasts (I loved hearing the diversity of accents of my fellow fans from all over), and themed playlists (I got so many amazing music recs from those things!); and tumblr boosted appreciation for beautiful and creative gifs and gifsets as well as other visual arts.

Seeing generative AI content spreading in fandom - AI-written fics are in my tiny fandoms on AO3 now and it makes me very sad - and having started writing my own fic recently (better late than never!), I've been thinking a lot about creativity and why we do what we do when sometimes it's really hard work. And it really does come down to love - for a canon, for a character or ship, for our fellow fans, for the sheer joy of creation.

I don't have many answers to how to discourage AI in "fanworks" (in quotes because if a fan didn't actually make it is it a fanwork? I think not!) but I really hope it doesn't become an entrenched norm. I would much rather read baby's actual first fanfic or a fic that is full of SPAG errors but is written from the heart by a fan who loves their canon - or got extremely pissed off at it and wrote the fic to right some wrongs - than perfect but soulless prose written by a machine that can only churn out what it does because other people stole fan- and published works and fed them to it.

Can fandom please keep on being creative and DIY? Don't make a computer program write your fic or make your edits, please. Fandom is about imperfect love for imperfect canons and people, not about churning out pixel-perfect content for the content gods.

This time I have some thoughts about this scene and what Shane specifically is thinking.

Starts out innocently enough. Ilya finds a nice segway to his question; do you like girls? (In his roundabout way since he couldn't ask a direct question to save his life) And you can literally see how tense Shane is immediately. Like as soon as Ilya says it. He does NOT want to be thinking about women. He JUST got dicked down for gods sake. He's already weirded out by how this day is going (they've never hung out before. Never just sat in the same room not doing something either hockey related or sexual). But now he also has to contend with the whole not-being-into-girls thing and his feelings around that AND his feelings about Ilya. So he shuts down.

AND THEN. Even worse! Ilya brings up a specific girl. Possibly his girl. He "likes her very much."

And everyone sees Shane's face as jealous here. And that isn't wrong. But I don't think it's all of it. He had finally kind of settled. Was starting to have a regular conversation, only to be YANKED back into reality. That this is strange and unusual for them. He is so out of his element.

And then MORE EVEN WORSE. Mystery girl Svetlana is interested in him! And Shane could not be less interested. He is NOT into this conversation. The jealousy of having to think about Ilya with someone else, the weirdness or the day, and now the ever-familiar pressure to be interested in girls when he just isn't . He doesn't look just upset. To me he looks tired. There is a lot going on for him in this moment.

Now Ilya, on the other hand, is pleased. His question hasn't been answered but he at least knows that Shane is not interested in Svetlana. And he enjoys riling him up, of course. Maybe he enjoys knowing Shane gets jealous about him if he really clocked that it was jealousy. Ilya's still fairly in the dark about Shane's feelings as well. And maybe it's a minor confirmation that Shane doesn't just fuck anyone who lets him. Less other people to worry about.

NOW THIS PART I'VE BEEN DYING TO TALK ABOUT. Look at how he doesn't look at Ilya when he asks this. I've seen people say how jealous he looks (not wrong) BUT I've never seen this particular take: He's asking if she's his girlfriend. The underlying issue here is NOT just "is there another person in your life you fuck like you fuck me?" (Because he can ignore the nameless hookups he only hears rumors about) But is she your GIRLFRIEND? ARE YOU CHEATING ON HER WITH ME? Shane does NOT want to be the side piece (he wants to be the main piece). Does not want to think about Ilya being serious with someone else. Does not want to be put in a position where someone could find out about them and possibly be vindictive with that information.

And Ilya says no.

I spent my Sunday looking at butts instead of doing chores, and I regret nothing. Please enjoy some Hollanov themed silliness set to a very silly song indeed.

Source: Heated Rivalry, Peloton and Verizon ads

Music: Melocoton by Subwoolfer