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

[starfishstar]

Post-canon fics that touch on the need to build a better society, and how all is not better just because the war is over... This accidentally ballooned into a bunch of links, because there was no one obviously choice I could pick, but obviously I don't mean that you should look at all of these! But maybe from the description one will jump out that interests you. (It's a little hard to point to one, I realized, because the theme of “there’s still a whole lot to do to rebuild wizarding society” mostly comes up as one thread within larger fics.)

Looking at it now, I suppose a lot of my post-canon fics are about characters dealing on a more personal level with the trauma of the war, e.g. More Than This World Can Contain, which focuses on various secondary characters (Cho, Dean, Viktor, etc.) rebuilding their lives after the war. Or Chambers, which is about Ginny doing the same – but also has Hermione right at the start of her arc of figuring out how to tackle the underlying prejudices that led to the war.

My headcanons about especially Andromeda and Hermione working hard to change the culture that led to the war(s) come up in various places, for example in Saying Yes (my Andromeda post-canon story). Or mentioned in the drabble collection Twenty Years On.

Or, If You’ve Got a Lantern Hold It High revisits some of the werewolves Remus met during my version of HBP, still facing prejudice but now embarking on the slow work of integrating werewolf and human society. (A werewolf child goes to Hogwarts!)

[paulamcg]

Thank you for your bunch of links! I admire you for having delved into various canon characters. I think I can understand what you mean with not knowing exactly where to point me to look for the theme we talked about. Over the years I’ve been happy to mention – and happier when a reader has mentioned – some significant themes (related to the society) in my fic, but the post-OotP novel is basically about Remus’s personal and social development, which leads him to defend his fellow creatures’ rights, too, while he’s dealing with his hardships and losses.

Yes, I’m addicted to Remus, and I couldn’t resist picking first your last link. I’ve already read the first chapter, and I’m not disappointed to see that this fic’s actually about other werewolves and about multicultural life after his death (as I must accept that in your seven-books-consistent world he had to die in 1998). I’m going to post a comment on AO3, but I want to say here that I’m ever more thrilled. The wonderful new fandom friend with whom I can have these discussions writes fiction, too, excellently. Do I dare hope you’ll have time to read something by me so that we could discuss both your fic and mine?

[starfishstar]

Thank you so much for checking out that fic! That one, and the characters in it, are dear to my heart. Thank you for all your kind words!

And yes, I absolutely want to read some of your fic. I'm just trying not to make any promises about how soon/quickly I'll be able to do the things I want to do, because my available time is so unpredictable right now. (As you can probably see from how sporadically I'm answering or not answering these comments...) In November I was writing a lot to meet a writing goal, and as a result getting particularly excited about a lot of fandom things, including re-finding this fest...and now it's December and I really ought to be turning my attention back elsewhere, but meanwhile both this fest and another one I care about a lot are posting simultaneously, and I feel I should be reading and commenting on everything but in reality don't have time for anything. Yikes! The perils of loving too many things. :D

But BTW meanwile I'm going to add you as a friend here on DW – we clearly have a lot in common. :-)

[paulamcg]

Thank you for adding! I’ve added you back – and today on live journal, too, although I understand you don’t use it much, and I’ve now decided to post my fic to AO3, starting with the recent ones. Oh, a mention in your lj profile made me think you might like to start (whenever you do that) from a fic by me about Luna and Remus, Challenges Like These (set in December 1993, and only 1350 words), if not from my Small Gift.

I’m happy to get to know characters dear to your heart – because when a writer doesn’t just play with characters (those who were originally Rowling’s, or OCs) but treats them with compassion and lets them have dignity, they can live in my mind and reach my heart, too.

I suppose I’m also happy with not too many promises. It’s been fun to say hi to everyone here and to comment on gift fic and some other stories by people I’ve met, but I must persevere and continue to love my own writing myself, even though I believe that fiction and all art should be interaction.

[starfishstar]

Excellent, thank you! I was actually going to ask if you wanted to link to a short story, since unfortunately I just don't have time to tackle a novel-length fic right now. (I haven't yet read a SINGLE thing in Small Gifts OR in the other fest I love that's posting right now, argh! Things that I love and want to shower enthusiastic comments all over, but life just isn't allowing for it right now.)

Added you back on LJ too! (Though it's true that at this point I pretty much only use it to automatically mirror all my posts from Dreamwidth. And that mostly out of nostalgia, because LJ is where I started in fandom, so I just couldn't bring myself to delete it even when everyone else was switching to DW and deleting LJ.)