I’m the diode, you’re the kerosene

[reflectedeve]

Happy New Year, folks. I’m starting off 2019 jet lagged and disoriented, but happy. I missed England so much; the visit was way too short, but lovely.

Yuletide reveals are up, but before I talk about what I wrote, I'd like to mention the three lovely stories I received:

Snapshots, by evewithanapple (That Inevitable Victorian Thing)
A lovely, sweet look at life a few years after the book; cozy polyamorous domestic bliss hidden away from the public eye, but incorporating and transforming the (inevitable) publicity itself.

Good Morning, Ruby Crowns, by smolder (Wayward Children series)
A look at the denizens of the Maine house—the one inhabited by the children who did not wish to return to their other worlds—with some very familiar residents. Takes the two cherished prompts I’ve had in mind since first reading Every Heart A Doorway, combines them, and paints an especially poignant picture of an angry, unbowed post-Narnia Susan Pevensie.

In The Long Ago, by tablelamp (Wayward Children series)
Another take on crossover characters at the Maine house! Includes cross-time mirror travel and a grande dame Alice Liddell, caring for the other lost kids across the years and miles. Delightful.

My own assignment was a delightful blast from the past! I wrote Mina de Malfois and the Changing of the Guard (gen with a bit of Mina/Arc on the side), bringing the eponymous Mina into the contemporary fandom landscape, as well as imagining a bit about her future authorial career and relationship with Archivist12.

It was a pretty fascinating process to write, actually, so I’m gonna ramble about it a bit. The thing about writing Mina de Malfois fic in 2018 is that it wasn’t just a nostalgia trip for the Minaverse itself, but really for fandom, and my fannish experience in my teens and twenties. And you know, on everything that’s changed!

Obviously (if you've read them), the original Mina stories primarily dealt with drama in and around the Harry Potter fandom in the early ‘00s, as well as some more panfandom events (specifically some of the ones reported on by Fandom Wank, and partaking of the culture around the wank communities, anon memes and such). It’s so very in-jokey that I have no idea whether it would be comprehensible to a reader who wasn’t part of at least some of those specific parts of fandom culture. Reading it now is a bit like like reliving my college and early post-college days,which for me means that it holds up rather well, on the whole. Also, I’ve read a lot more Wodehouse now (where I was mainly familiar with the Jeeves & Wooster tv series at the time), so I appreciate the pastiche elements of the earlier stories even more now, I think.

So I suppose it was inevitable that if I was going to write Mina, it would be a rumination on more recent fandom culture from the perspective of someone older, someone of that more previous generation. I thought about revisiting the rest of the cast, a sort of "where are they now," but, well. Some elements of the later chapters, especially around "Joshen," were troubling to me even back in the day, and while I admit that I did fall down a bit of a "research" spiral around the fan who most recently called himself Thanfiction (previously known as Jordan Wood, Victoria Bitter, etc), I decided it wasn't something I wanted to stir up again, even fictionally. Besides, speaking of research spirals, I kept pausing to refresh myself on original Minaverse references to real-world fandom and getting hit all over again with how much has changed. (And how much hasn't - I'd forgotten just how much argument over "chan" and "thinking of the children" was featured back in the day.)

Whatever one's feelings on the late Fandom Wank, I have to say, it's a lot harder to track down records of recent fannish drama these days ... and god, how much do I miss metafandom?? All of which is germane to, you know, pondering the changes in fandom over the last decade or so, but not terribly helpful. I found that Fanlore did have more entries than expected on various Tumblr kerfluffles that I'd been tangentially aware of when they were happening, although I get the impression that this record-keeping has seriously slowed down over the last few years. As a result, a lot of the story is really more fandom circa 2014-16 or so (especially around the ageism stuff), but the Mina stories always did fudge the details anyway.

Because many of the big changes we've undergone have their roots in platform shifts, especially to Tumblr, it probably would have made the most sense to tell a story that happened largely online ... but because I wanted to show glimpses of Mina/Arc (Judy)'s evolved real-world relationship, which certainly wouldn't be conducted digitally, a convention seemed like the next best choice. That made Dashcon a pretty obvious reference; the closest you were going to get to Tumblr in the real world and all that. I have to say, though; when Tumblr made their adult content announcement, the temptation to scrap things and play with history-repeats-itself (the last few original Mina stories came out in the midst of the LJ exodus/partial shift here to DW) was intense! Shame there wasn't time to touch on that.

So I wound up with a slightly wry nostalgia trip, and a sense that the sensible older fan who has been through everything before might be best served by stepping back and observing the mess, unless there's something concrete to add. (YMMV, obviously!) Though I do hope Mina, having reconnected to a point with her former community, might start posting the occasional fic under a pseudo-pseudo-nym, maybe just during annual holiday exchanges. ;)

I'd have loved to get carlanime's take on the matter. It's a shame she seems to have vanished so very thoroughly.

Sorry, that was very self-indulgent! But if anyone out there wants to talk about Mina de Malfois or the changes in fandom, etc etc, the whole experience has left me a bit hungry for discussion on those subjects. ;) It seems especially pertinent, with the question of platform all up in the air again (although having been mostly out of commission for the last nine or ten days, I have no idea if there have been any new developments in that area). And certainly, it's all making me want to interact with fandom more directly again. I wonder where people are posting their meta these days ...