Illusion, remember? People see what they want to see...

For the fourth year in a row now, it's time for Small Fandom Summer! Join me for Small Fandom Summer! It's real easy to play:

Make a fanwork for something that has fewer than 1000 English-language works on AO3

Post it to AO3

And then you've done it! You've made a thing and you've diversified the fandom ecosystem! You're basically a hero.

Q: The fandom I want to create for has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but the specific pairing I want to write for has fewer than that. Does that count? A: Yes! Q: What if it has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but, like, just barely? A: Okay! Q: What if it actually has a lot more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but it still feels small? A: Sure! Q: What if I don't want to post it to AO3? What if I don't even have an AO3 account? Can I post it somewhere else? A: Wherever! Q: What if-- A: Just do a thing, friend. Make a thing. Share the thing. This is not meant to be restrictive; this is meant to be inspirational. Create the fanworks you want to see in the world. Make a stranger happy by appealing to their niche interests. Bring joy.

And if you want to give yourself some silly little Steam-like achievement badges to commemorate your accomplishments, well, you're in luck! I've made a bunch of them right here! You can grab the ones that apply to your work and paste them wherever you like and feel good about what you've done. Here's a few of my favorites:

So you see? This is meant to be silly and fun.

There's nowhere to sign up. There's nothing to commit to. There's zero pressure. You just do it if you do it, and don't if you don't. But if you do want to play (yay!), tag your stuff with #small fandom summer so we can all swoop in and appreciate everyone else's efforts.

I think Bernadette was the first trans person I ever saw in media. I first watched Priscilla, Queen of the Desert when I was about 5 & it immediately became one of my favourite films. My love for it has evolved over time ofc, but it's been a favourite for over 30 years now.

By today's standards having a cis-man playing a trans-woman may be considered inappropriate, but for the time I'm still impressed with how sensitively she's portrayed.

Terence Stamp made Bernadette a real person, she's strong, feminine, beautiful, bitchy, kind, stern, complex, & compassionate. She's fully realised & authentic, so much so that I didn't even realise she was played by a man until I was well into my teens (probably too late tbh 🙈). The way she reacts to Adam dead naming her stuck with me forever, it imprinted that it was wrong to do that before I even knew a word for it.

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Question: Are Frodo and Sam in love? Did you play them as if they were in love?

Sean Astin: 100%

Elijah Wood: I mean, yeah.

Needed a clean graphic for a project, and figured while I was vectoring I would put sex and magic back in.