Countdown to Small Gifts 1/3: Introductions

[smallgiftsmods]

Welcome, folks! Every year at small gifts, we start off the holiday season with a series of discussion posts. It's a chance to get to know other participants (or say hi to old friends), meet our readers (hi, readers! we love you!), and while away the hours before the fest begins. We'll have three topics this week, posted Monday, November 25; Wednesday, November 27; and Friday, November 29. Posting begins Sunday, December 1.

Discussion is not limited to participants! Please introduce yourself if you're a reader, too.

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 been in HP fandom? How long have you shipped R/S? Are you a reader? Writer? Artist? Crafter? Do you participate in any other parts of HP fandom? Are you active in any other fandoms right now?

2) Say hi to someone else! We're friendly around here like that.

Comments

[pteropoda]

Hey, I'm ptero. I don't use dreamwidth too much, but I'm semi-around on tumblr at ptarmiganlettercarrier for HP fandom stuff and silentletterwords for my main. I've also got fic on AO3 (SilentP) though not much of it is Harry Potter related yet. I only started actively poking around in the fandom a few months ago, and it's still so big that I haven't branched out much beyond Sirius/Remus content. My fandom tastes have been... uh, eclectic, prior to this, and definitely not as big as Harry Potter. It's been unique, but fun so far. Eventually I'm going to start getting my grubby AI/android loving fingers into some scifi AUs.

I've got a bunch of plans for stories, but fests and gift exchanges are one of my favorite kinds of fandom events, so I'm glad I found out about this one!

[magnetic_pole]

Hi, Ptero!

Eventually I'm going to start getting my grubby AI/android loving fingers into some scifi AUs.

Oooh! There's something you don't see much in this fandom. (Or something I haven't seen much. Sometimes I can't keep up with fandom!) I'd read that in a heartbeat.

Glad you're joining the party this year! Hope you have fun. M.

[pteropoda]

I haven't seen much of it either! There's definitely some, but considering science vs magic as a trope, I'm not surprised. The tone can be tricky to transfer, especially if you're going for a real set-in-space one. But I love some good space operas, and the questions of personhood don't exactly directly correlate from lycanthropy but it's an interesting translation to make.

Thanks! I've definitely enjoyed myself, the waiting for gifts to be posted is the hardest part tbh.

[paulamcg]

Welcome to the fandom, and I suppose I can say, even though I’ve been absent for eight years, to this lovely fest, too!

It’s great to hear you’ve got a lot of plans for fics – and for something different from the almost-canon-compliant universe I’m addicted to in my own writing (in this OTP hole as Maggie called it in another comment). I’ve always enjoyed reading historical Aus and such in this (my only) fandom but never seen any scifi here, while I find various kinds of speculative fiction fascinating.

Slow to follow where the fandom shifts, I haven’t used Dreamwidth much yet, and I’ve put only a few of my fics (all of which are on my lj) on AO3 so far, and I’m not on tumblr at all.

[pteropoda]

Thank you!

I love canon compliant stuff, but once I've read other people's versions of it I have a hard time separating it from canon in my head, and it scratches any itch I've had to write it. So I'm glad other people do that for me! It means I can start doing speculative stuff for myself.

I was only just getting into fandom when the mass exodus from LJ started, though I remember the community I was in at the time making a mass decision to migrate comms over to dreamwidth. Tumblr was a hub for a while, but since tumblr has begun a slow decline of its own, fandom's started getting pretty scattered again. I know a lot of people use tumblr and twitter, and there's stuff on instagram, dreamwidth, pillowfort.social, mastodon... it's lucky we have AO3, honestly. Otherwise it'd be really hard to figure out where to find people.

[mindabbles]

Hi ptero! I’m glad you joined us. Sounds like you’ve got a lot of diverse and interesting ideas. Can’t wait to see what you do. I’ve only ever been in this fandom so I am impressed with people who can wrap their minds around moving about. I don’t think there are enough sci-fi AUs, so I look forward to it.

[pteropoda]

Thank you! Honestly, I'm impressed with people who can dedicate themselves to a fandom for that long, I've always ended up switching interests after a couple years.

[maraudorable]

Ohh, I’m a huge fan of AI/androids/cyberpunk! Would absolutely love to read some wolfstar AUs for that. What have you read/watched from this genre? What inspires you?

[pteropoda]

Sorry in advance, I will ramble about this.

Space operas! Ever the space operas. I'll take a space opera over hard scifi any day, though if a story can trick me into reading speculative technology projected to be possible 100 years in the future I'm all for it. If my icon+AO3 hasn't given it away already I've actually done some stuff with Transformers, which has had a recent comics run that was less of "toy ads for kids" and more "silly adventures in space with some ruminations on the costs of war," and honestly was better than a transformers comic had a right to be. Data from Star Trek: TNG, is another one that drew me in to the whole android character thing. As for books, the ones that have recently set the bar for me are the Ancillary Justice trilogy by Ann Leckie and the novella series Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. I've been low-key searching for anything that fits in the same niche with those for a while. I'm that the original Ghost in the Shell will be right up my alley, but I haven't actually had the chance to sit down and watch it, sadly.

I don't get as interested in the whole "can robots think/can robots feel" question that a lot of scifi in the vein of I, Robot poses. Most of my favorite android scifi fully accepts the anthropomorphizing and just explores that. There's a lot of essays I've seen around about what AI/robots are a metaphor for (and some things miss the metaphor part and just smack you in the face with it, Detroit: Become Human), but my favorite part of an android/AI/etc POV character is the way it's often accompanied by a narrative of learning to connect with and process emotions, or processing information differently from the people around you. It's just kind of a narrative that fits my brain.

I'd probably take it in a direction like that for a wolfstar AU, though Isa's done a really fun wolfstar-turned-ofic version that'd be hard to live up to, I think.

[maraudorable]

Ahh, this is vastly different from my own interests in this genre then. I love hard sci-fi - well, the more hypothetical side of it that still keeps things technical. Star Wars and other popular titles can be considered my only foray into space operas, but they’re just scratching the surface, really.
The AI vs human question of ethics and morality is what originally lured me to it and I still enjoy it immensely. I find the potential for cohabitation and collaboration between the two species very intriguing. And I like exploring the whole “Can androids become sentient?” theme, even though the answer (for me) is a resounding yes.
AI learning to process emotions and information is fascinating, this is where we agree :)
I know, Isa’s Data Flood/Burn-In is basically what my AI dreams are made of.

[pteropoda]

Most of my early forays into hard sci-fi were met with a Tolkien-style lore dumps on the state of the world, which is something I've come to realize I don't like too much. The opening text scrawl from Star Wars aside, I tend to find space operas give me the opportunity to meet the worldbuilding along with the character. If you know of any hard scifi that has a strong narrative component, or a tight focus on characters and emotional arcs in addition to the broader questions of ethics and morality I'd love to take recs there! Whether they're A.I. related or not.

I guess the real question is, are there more people who can walk the fine line that Data Flood/Burn in did in providing the exact middle point in both our interests
|D

[maraudorable]

Wow, hard sci-fi with a strong narrative, focus on characters, and touching upon the question of morality... I’m afraid we can’t have it all, haha. But Altered Carbon comes close, I think, both the book and the tv show. Also Westworld, though I personally couldn’t get past season one. Some episodes of Black Mirror can be considered hard sci-fi, but I honestly couldn’t care less if the technology they’re talking about in the rest of the episodes is unrealistic or unexplained - I love that tv show to pieces, so I’ll take it all.