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]

Hi everyone! I'm ruinsplume everywhere--that is, on dreamwidth, AO3, and tumblr. I have been in fandom a little under two years. I didn't even know fandom as such existed until one day in 2015 I was re-watching movie!POA and thought, wow, that is really the most homoerotic scene I've ever seen in a kids' movie. So I googled, "Is Remus Lupin gay" and the rest is history. I fell very, very hard. Wolfstar remains my ship of choice, though I do sail with all sorts of other HP pairings as well.

I'm always curious about how people chose their pseuds. Mine is an anagram of a certain person's name.

I love this fest and am really pleased it's on dreamwidth this year.

[nerakrose]

I never realised your username is an anagram of "remus lupin!" Everytime I see your username I always have to think of like...a plumage of ruins :'''D

Mine is boring in comparison. I made it when I was 15, and it's just my name backwards + my middle name in English. Because karenrose was taken everywhere... :'''D

[ruinsplume]

I quite like “nerak”! That is impressive that you joined fandom at 15. Do you think it has shaped you as a person?

My pseud was a toss up between ruinsplume and puremuslin, but the latter just seemed wrong for the kind of writing I do. :D I think of my pseud as meaning something like, “ruins the plume of the pen in an overly enthusiastic flourish.” But I adore what you said, “a plumage of ruins”—that’s a great description for Sirius, actually!

[nerakrose]

i think so, yeah! when i joined fandom it was mostly on national (danish) message boards (this was around 2003 lol) and i didn't write fic as i was still writing original stories at the time, i did fanart and graphics and discussions and off-topic discussions, etc. (i didn't start writing fic until 2006 when i was...18? math is hard). shortly before i joined fandom at large i'd finished writing my first ever novel. it was terrible for many reasons but i was unhappy with it for one reason exactly: it was a love triangle because i didn't know at the time that one could be poly and that not having to choose was allowed. you can have both! so i felt i had to kill off the girl so the two boys could be together, when what i REALLY wanted was for the main character to have BOTH. but it wasn't allowed! etc. i struggled with that a lot. (i ended up deleting the novel off my harddrive a year later because i couldn't stand knowing it existed. :'D) 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.

joining fandom at that age meant 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. so yeah, i'm about to turn 30 so i have spent half my life as an active participant in fandom at this point, and i honestly wouldn't trade it for the world. it's given me SO much.

puremuslin sounds like something a dedicated housewife whose favourite novels are jane austen might choose as a username :'D they wear a lot of muslin dresses in those novels, is my impression :'''D i like your meaning for it! though my brain still can't let go of the impossibility of a plumage of ruins... XD

[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.

[museinabsentia]

Oh my god, I relate to this sooooo hard. Fandom helped me work myself out, too. Finding my way into fandom and finding out there were so many more options than I had originally thought there were. It took me until I was 30 years old to figure out that you could be asexual without needing to also be aromantic and that's why I was so damned uncomfortable with myself... because I was in fact one and not the other. Fandom and the people I met through it (as well as a lot of fic exposure) helped me come to terms with that about myself and I am much healthier mentally for it.

[nerakrose]

I'm glad fandom has been such a positive experience for you as well :) I consider myself demi on both the sexual and romantic spectrums, but lately I've been thinking I'm probably actually ace. Writing a bunch of fics about demi and ace characters (as well as reading them!) has definitely helped me figure that out.

[museinabsentia]

I honestly had a fandom friend mention the ace spectrum in a fic I was doing beta work for and didn't want to look unaccepting by not even understanding, so I went and looked it up and then read the article like six more times like, holy fuck there's something that explains me!

Of course, now I totally headcanon Harry as ace.

[nerakrose]

!! I'm glad it worked out :D

I'm writing Harry as ace in my H/D Big Bang fic. :)

[rj31]

Hello, I didn’t realise that it was an anagram either, that’s brilliant! My pseud snakeowls started off as takeowls - two random words that I chose out of an HP book. Then I decided to change it to snakeowls because I’m a Slytherin and I like snakes and owls, so it was perfect!

[ruinsplume]

I love snakeowls--both very resonant animals in so many ways.

[shaggydogstail]

You have the best anagram, hands down. My username is obviously a pun (the lowest form of humour, and therefore my favourite). It also contains three slang sexual expressions and kinda refers to Sirius, which is a bonus.

So I googled, "Is Remus Lupin gay"

*gigglesnort*

[ruinsplume]

Puntastic! I love it. But what is the third sexual expression? I got shag and tail... oh, is dogging tail a thing as well? Like bird-dogging? I just love that we can call you “shaggy.”

[shaggydogstail]

Dogging = people meet up in laybys/carparks/woods to have sex while being watched by strangers and/or watch strangers having sex. It's common enough that lots of people could tell you where the nearest dogging spot is, although I've yet to meet anyone he will admit to doing it! ;D wikipedia has more.

I honestly identify with "shaggy" more strongly than my own given name!

[ruinsplume]

Ooh, I love learning a new thing. Especially this thing. I promise that if I ever get the chance to do it (as a watcher) I will absolutely admit it to you. Just have to find the nearest dogging spot!

shaggy is a great nickname. are you shaggy (haircut-wise) in person?

[shaggydogstail]

Yay! Please do keep me updated on your dogging adventures!

Sadly, my hair is not shaggy. This is a grave disappointment to me, but we all have our cross to bear.

[maraudersaffair]

lmaooo you stumbled on fandom from googling that?? that is so great and funny xD

[ruinsplume]

The google search that changed my life!

[mindabbles]

That is a fantastic story of getting into fandom!! See, you just knew. Love your name as well. Mine is a RL nickname that a childhood best friend called me and the shortened name of a certain badass professor, the ‘Min’ part that is. The “dabbles” is literally that — my dabbling, just for fun.

I am so glad you found us on DW and joined it again.

[museinabsentia]

Okay, I seriously never realized your username was an anagram. That's a fabulous way to have come up with it, actually.

Mine is... definitely more boring. It was a bit of a twist on my working in a law office... legally the term in absentia is the length of time one has to be missing before they can legally be declared dead, which where I am is 10 years. It had been 10 years since I had had any inspiration to write anything, so I was declaring my muse dead in its absence.