forestofglory

For the first time I'm offering to create something for the Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction! I'm offering to create an annotated bibliography related to Chinese history. If you ever wished I would go down a research rabbit hole and tell you about it now is your chance!

See more here

I had a lot of fun doing fandomtrees last year so I decided to sign up again this year. My tree is here

Yesterday was katzenfabrik's birthday and in celebration ve did a fic commentary meme and asked vir friends to play too.

The meme is
Let's play a game: pick one of my fics (or a chapter/paragraph/line of one of my fics, as you like) and I'll write you a dvd commentary on what I was thinking when I wrote it

So far I've been asked about two fics and I wanted to save what I wrote somewhere more permanent feeling than Mastodon

( To Live without Regrets )

( End Racism in the OTW | Desk Tour: Dr. Jiang Yanli )

If you'd like to ask me about another fic of mine I'd be happy to rammble on for a bit.

This year I've actually been taking part in the Snowflake Challenge but most over on Mastodon. But I started writing up this wish list and it got a bit long so I'm posting it here.

My sign up for fandomtrees covers most of the fanworks I'd like to receive

Other than that:

I would love to receive fanart or graphics for any of my fic, not just the ones in fandoms I requested for fandom trees!

I want more people to watch The Long Ballad and yell at me about their feelings

I would love some sources (in English) about the material culture of the First Turkic Khaganate. I've found basically nothing and it would be really helpful for the fic I'm writing!

I want advice on which stories in the Taiping Guangji I should try reading with my Classical Chinese tutor

I'd like more time and energy and less hand pain so I can write more

I'm heading to WisCon latter this week!

I'll be on two online panels on Friday:

The Social life of Recs
Online Zoom Room 1 • Fandom as a Way of Life • Fri 1:00 PM–2:15 PM
Recs (short for recommendations) play an important social role. Recs can be a way to share joy and build community. Talking about the things you love can help connect with other people who have similar taste. However recs can sometimes be a problem as well. What happens when you don't like the thing your friend recced? Let's talk about the social role of recs.

Imaginary Book Club
Online Zoom Room 2 • Fandom as a Way of Life • Fri 7:30 PM–8:45 PM
Five panelists discuss books they've read in the last year—even though those books (technically) do not exist—and improvise commentary with each other. This year's subjects may include: a newly discovered eighteenth-century robot romance, the Complete Animorphs as annotated by Thomas Pynchon, and an office-worker horror anthology called "Break Room".

And I'm also moding one the new Roundtables on Monday.

Epistolary Fiction
Conference 4 • Reading, Viewing, and Critiquing Science Fiction • Mon 10:00 AM–11:15 AM
Roundtable discussion. Epistolary Fiction, or stories that consist of letters and other artifacts, have a long history. In an age where distance seems smaller every day, why does epistolary fiction still have an appeal, whether it's emails, text messages, social media, or book reviews? Is there something unique about the format that allows for a different type of storytelling? Are we just powerless to resist the implicit intimacy reading others' correspondence implies? Come join a discussion of the appeal, and challenges, of reading and writing epistolary fiction.

If you are going to be there and want to meet up let me know!

2022 was a year where I struggled to focus on reading and watching things. The pandemic and my own health issues both contributed. Even though tendentious is physical ailment, I found dealing with it very stressful and that affected my ability to focus

I'm going to discuss first the books I read and then the shows I watched.

( Books )
( Shows )

My main goal going forward is to enjoy media when I have the time and energy to do so. I hope I'm more able to focus in the coming year.

Whatever you choose to read and watch in 2023 I hope it brings you joy

Here's the last week or so of DecRecs form me!
( Read more... )

Since I have some new people in my circle and I’ve been seeing other people being more active here I thought it would be good to (re)introduce myself.

Hello! I’m Forest or Anna. I use this journal mostly to talk about media I’m consuming and my daily life. I also write for ladybusiness and sometimes write fanfic

I’m a white woman in early 40s and I’m a lifelong SFF reader and a more recent reader of fanfic. I’m a mom with one kid. I’m currently unemployed but have an academic background in ecology and urban planning.

For the last few years or so I've been dealing with tendonitis in both of my wrists, and that's been an adjustment. I also have an auditory processing disorder. I often find my disables very frustrating!

I love cozy SFF, worldbuilding, material culture, history, Chinese dramas especially wuxia, intersectional criticism, mentorship, fictional moms, and tea. Since discovering Chinese dramas a few years ago I’ve been reading a lot about Chinese history. I post-semi regular media roundups where I talk about things I've read and watched recently.

I'm currently studying Classical Chinese with a tutor. I love it so much, something about the way the language works just makes my brain happy! I post the occasional translation at foreststudio

I don’t tend to grant access to people who I’ve just met, but I also rarely post anything access locked.

Over in fictional_fans melannen asked about definitions of fanfic. I thought my answer might be of interests to some of you so I'm reposting it here:

I'm not going to come up with a definition, but I will ramble about definitions and what I think they are good for. I don't think drawing hard and fast boundaries around genres is useful, that way lies nitpicking and gatekeeping. (See for example various conversations about what is Science Fiction featuring definitions constructed exclude most things not written by cishet white men)

Which isn't to say that I don't think we should define genres! Two ways of looking at genres that I have found helpful and lead to interesting conversations are 1) genre as works in conversation and 2) genre as setting reader expectations.

Both of these seem to have potential to offer us insight into fanfic. Fics are very much in conversation with each other both within and across fandoms. Think of the many many cross-fandom tropes, and also about how characterization and fanon develops across fics in the same fandom. Looking at works as in conversation is useful for understanding them in context and for seeing change over time.

I think fic is also doing interesting things in how it sets reader expectations. Obviously fic at least on AO3 provides a lot more metadata to set expectations, but there are also unspoken conventions. It would be interesting to how expectations get set across genres.

2021 was not the best writing year for me, a lot of the time writing was difficult, and I was only able to write small amounts at a time. Nonetheless those added up, and I wrote some things I’m proud of.

I wrote four pieces for Lady Business:
Short & Sweet: Very Short Fiction
Short & Sweet: Blast from the Past
Adventures in Classical Chinese
The Layered Pleasures of Alternative Universe Fic

Two of these posts were for Short & Sweet, my column about short SFF. Sometime in the middle of the year I realized that I was not reading enough short SFF to continue writing about it regularly, which is a bummer! I like short SFF and I think it doesn't get talked about enough. However I just haven’t had the focus to read it since the pandemic started.

Then I wrote about my new fandom adjacent hobby of learning Classical Chinese. And finally I wrote about AUs! It was fun to write a critical essay about fanfic, and I’m especially proud of that piece.

Another writing milestone for 2021 was that I was long listed for the Best Fanwriter Hugo! It’s an honor that I was not expecting at all.

Over the year I kept up with a couple of recurring series here. One was Observations my twice monthly posts about natural and built environments. I also posted Media Round Ups at least monthly where I talked about things I had been reading and watching recently. Over the year I managed to post here at least once every week.

As well as writing criticism I wrote fanfiction as well. In 2021 I posted seven fics and 39,372 words of fic to AO3.

The first four of the fics I posted where for The Untamed:

Gone to the Other End of the Sky
(5,168 words, Gen Space AU) This was part of the longer space AU project that I started and abandoned. This section works ok on its own, so I cleaned it up and posted it.

Family Economy (10889 words, Jing Ling & Luo "Mian Mian" Qingyang) The third story in my series “Your Life Again, Your Life Anew”

Letters (1633 words, gen) After reading Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China by Antje Richter I wanted to try writing letters in the format mentioned so I asked for prompts on Twitter.

To Live Without Regrets (16,341 words, Teen, Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian) I wanted to write a fic exploring Lan Wangji's Chief Cultivatorship, and his post-cannon feeling about justice and I was finally able to do that here.

Then I wrote three short Word of Honor fics. These are all a bit structurally weird, but I enjoyed writing them!

Knowing Everything in the World (1393 words, Gen, Chengling focused) I wrote this mostly to play around with the idea that Drunk like a Dream is memory enhancing drug.

The River Moon is Waiting (2260 words, teen, Space AU told in vignettes) I had a lot of worldbuilding ideas for this Space AU but not a lot of plot ideas, so I wrote this to play around with the world.

Correspondence (1688, Gen, Zhang Nianxiang centric, epistolary) I really love writing epistolary fic, and it was fun to play around with some minor characters that I like.

This year so many people encouraged me to write, spitballed ideas with me, helped me with research questions, read and commented on drafts, and copy edited my work. None of this would have been written or posted without help. Thank you so much to everyone who supported me!

Overall, 2021 was a year of slow but steady writing for me. In terms of criticism I was not as prolific as in 2020, but I still wrote some good pieces. I posted slightly more fic in 2021 than in 2020. I hope that in this new year I’ll be able to find more time and energy for writing. I'm excited to write more criticism about transformative fandom, and to work on my story crafting skills.