Fandom 2014 Year in Review Meme + 2015 Resolutions

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 15:46:12 GMT

I literally spent several straight hours last night out dancing, and then danced some more with my dad after crashing at my parents' in anticipation for our big family dinner today, because of all the jazz being played on NPR on the drive home. Remind me to look more into Cab Calloway. As a consequence, I was out like a light when I got into bed and slept better than I have all month. Hopefully this will be good motivation to be more busy and active. It makes me a lot happier. Anyway, my belated 2014 fandom reflection courtesy of selenak :

Your main fandom of the year? I haven't had any new ones, but I have been indulging very deep in three old ones: Star Trek TOS, Starsky & Hutch, and Star Wars (mostly original trilogy).

Your favorite film watched this year? Newly released? Guardians of the Galaxy by default (because I only watched three new movies this year). Old but new-to-me? Double Indemnity. Love it so much. Would've tempted me to go on a noir kick if I had the time :)

Your favorite book read this year? Don Quixote volume I. Basically dying of laughter on every page, which I did not expect because you know, old wordy translated tome of satire that was topical in 1605. I only bought the books because they were ancient (undated, but god knows how old given the physical state they're in) copies of an 1847 translation and I cannot resist stuff like that, and I only started reading it so I could truthfully tell people that I read part of it. I didn't expect them to be actually hilarious to me.

Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?: There are only three newly released songs I even know the names of off the top of my head: The River by Son Little, Yellow Flicker Beat by Lorde, and All About That Bass by Meghan Trainor. IDK.

Your favorite TV show of the year? Haven't been watching any new TV, but I did rewatch a lot of Star Trek TNG in order during the summer when I was staying with my family after graduating, and I swear it just gets better every time (and more ridiculous, but I can't begin to articulate how little I care about that.)

Your best new fandom discovery of the year? I wouldn't say I discovered fanlore.org this year, because I've known about it since 2011 or 2012, but I only recently discovered what an amazing resource it is for information about old fandoms. Hence my in-depth revisiting of the three 2014 fandoms listed above ;)

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year? I...can't think of many. Perhaps, simply a dark aspect of my best new fandom discovery: getting a nasty kick in the teeth on the subject of just how nasty the character-bashing fights in Star Wars fandom in the early 1980s, before and after Return of the Jedi was released were. I mean, I knew it by hearsay, but never read through the kind of ugliness it consisted of.

Your biggest squee moment of the year? In September, buying a fanfiction zine that was first published in 1977 on ebay. I don't recall ever being that excited and squeeful - heart pounding, unable to sit still - about anything fandom-related since I was 16 or 17. Have you ever planned out a day carefully to be perfect in order to enjoy something you were anticipating? It was like that for me. I ordered it so that it would arrive when I had a half-day at work, made sure to have the afternoon and evening free, and then in order to savor it all alone in perfect solitude, I parked in a quiet spot and spent about half an hour just looking at the little details of it, the crumbling yellow pages and peeling faded ink, before even reading the stories. Because I am a dork.

The most missed of your old fandoms? This is going waaaay back, but I've been recently thinking about M*A*S*H a lot. M*A*S*H was one of my very first online fandoms ever, and the first one where I regularly participated in a discussion and interaction-heavy way, rather than only reading other people's fanfic. I was 14-15 years old (wow, 8-9 years ago, really?) and I participated and discussed and fanned on the bestcareanywhere.net forums. We had an amazing tight knit lively little community there, and I lied my ass off about my age (I think I said I was 20) and we talked about everything, absolutely everything, there were episode discussions, character discussions, fanfic reviews, general topics, off-topic/personal, and people would bring up and post new topics and activities almost every day. There was a completely insane guy (or probably a troll, but I was 14 and didn't get it yet) named John Cooper II aka Radar's Election Campaign Manager who wrote all characters' names in ALL CAPS and wrote the most befuddling posts and fic (google it and you might find some stuff about it) that we all mocked to death. I think forum style was probably even then (2006) getting outdated by LJ, and it saddens me that it has mostly gone by the wayside.

The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to? Specifically, I think The Americans. I've heard so much good stuff about it. More broadly, next year's Yuletide. I've been eavesdropping on my flist and other members of my communities' participation in it closely, and scooping up recs by the handful. But I am commitment-phobic and also too fucking lazy to ever learn the rules for exchanges and fests, so I've never actually done anything in it. Next year!

My Vaguely Fandom-related Resolutions

Daily
Write for either at least 40 minutes or at least 500 words, depending on the nature of the writing

Weekly
Make at least one DW post
Comment in more than one of my flist/circle's journal posts
Edit/revise a discrete section of something I've written so that the section works as a readable excerpt

Monthly
At least one new-to-me movie watched
Either one short fic posted or 3 chapters (or the equivalent length) of a long fic written

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Fandom 2014 Year in Review Meme + 2015 Resolutions