Countdown to small gifts 1/7: Introductions!

[smallgiftsmods]

Welcome, folks! Every year at small gifts, we start off the holiday season with a week's worth of discussion posts. It's a chance to get to know other participants (or say hi again), meet our readers (hi, readers! we love you!), and while away the hours before December 1. We'll have one topic per day until November 30.

Today: introductions!

1) Leave a comment letting us know who you are as a fan. (Leave your Tumblr name/AO3 name as well as your DW name, if they're different.) How long have you shipped R/S? Are you a reader? Writer? Artist? Crafter? Do you participate in any other parts of Harry Potter fandom? Are you active in any other fandoms right now?

2) Say hi to someone else!

Comments

[ruinsplume]

at the time i was also a closeted trans gay boy and struggling with it because at the time i also didn't know that gender could be fluid + i was dealing with a lot of the 'compulsory heterosexuality' that comes with being socialised as a woman etc etc.

When people talk about literature being meaningful (or, as part of that discussion, complain about how no one reads anymore)

exhibit A is like what you said here:

i suddenly had access to all kinds of queer stories, made friends (all of whom turned out to be queer), unlearned a lot of toxic bullshit (not all at once, mind), and also, over time, managed to slot the pieces of my identity together in a way that made sense, and that i'm comfortable with.

Like, you got that from LITERATURE. And of course the community and friendships that go with fanfic; the fandom itself. But there is no fandom without the stories. Stories are so powerful. I'm 20 years older than you but had a really similar experience a couple of years ago, where entering fandom made me realize how starved I was for queer narrative and queer community and queer self-recognition...all of which I had really lost for a while there. Finding it again involved changing some things about my physical presentation in the world and making a much more concerted effort to be OUT and not just "out." And like you said, I managed to slot pieces of my identity together in a way that made...more sense, if not perfect sense.

I forget which famous writer said these wise words: "A first novel is like a first pancake. You have to throw it out." Onward!

[nerakrose]

Yes, the stories are really key here! My local library had FIVE gay books on the shelf, as in, those were what I could find in the database with the "homosexuality" tag, and of those five only three had actual gay main characters and only one could be said to be positive. I was really hungering for..more. Just more. In hindsight I'm really impressed that my tiny local library had that much but I also really hope that there's a LOT more to go around these days. I just found out the other day that Adam silvera is a popular YA author in Danish translation as well (he was at BogForum in Copenhagen, even!) which I'm really happy about - I haven't read his books (yet) but I'm glad they're in libraries all over th country. I could've used them, back when...

Anyway, yes. :) stories are powerful. And I'm really glad that fandom exists not only to provide me with stories to read, but also as an outlet for me to pour my own stories into. It means a lot to me when I put something out there that's maybe a bit more personal than I'd like to admit, and readers can see themselves in it.