begin again

[regndoft]

I have for a while now been meaning to dust off this account, and every time I'm held back by the simple fact that I'm not sure anyone here even remembers who I am, and a re-introduction seems like a very complicated and awkward thing. My last entry was in 2015, and the irony of me lamenting that I need to post here more often is not lost on me.

Here's what changed: I lived in Uppsala for five years before moving back last september and I miss it every single day. I did get my BA in religious studies, and am still working on an MA in Cultural Anthropology; something I should've been done with years ago, but turns out I have ADHD and a global pandemic isn't super conducive to studying anyway. Still grappling with that and what I want to do with my life. Since I married my girlfriend (!!!) and moved back to Stockholm I am technically a housewife, and thus spend most of my time on chores, going to therapy, and fighting off existential ennui.

Fandom-wise I'm still writing, and after a decade I might even be kinda sorta decent at it. I got back into anime and manga again, something I honestly didn't think I ever would (though I'm not actively keeping up with anything atm). Barring those two weeks in summer 2020 where I listened to literally nothing other than Les Misérables cast recordings and spent three months rereading the same j/jvj fics, I've mostly been dabbling in MXTX/danmei fandom for the past couple of years. Right now I'm having a great time with the Malevolent podcast and reading Weird Fiction.

I still care very much about Nordic folk culture and inflicting my extremely niche taste in music on unsuspecting bystanders, too.

Tbh I don't know if I'll be very good at updating here now either. But after spending almost a decade on Tumblr and Twitter, where I have for various reasons (including but not limited to being in some fandoms with major harassment problems) posted less and less of my own thoughts and works, the idea of going back to what is essentially Journalling In Public is very appealing.

Comments

[regndoft]

AWWWWWW (TT_TT)♥ I do recognise your icon!! Name escapes me but I do know who you are, haha.

Thank you! We're celebrating our second anniversary in October so it still feels pretty recent tbh. We'd talked about it for years but it seemed kinda daunting while we were both still studying and not open to my family. Then my parents separated and Covid happened and it felt like the right time to put something together instead of breaking apart (plus it gave us an excuse to make it small and uncomplicated lol).

HAHA I started The Brick too (and I think I prefer novel-canon fic overall tbh) but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't mainly the musical that got me into it. In hindsight I feel like I SHOULD have been super into Les Mis back in 2013-2014 when it was still big on Tumblr, because it is many things that I adore, but somehow it completely passed me by then. I suspect this is because I watched the movie and didn't much care for it.

HUH Scum Villain was my first danmei novel back in late 2019, and I was most active in 2020, so we really must've been around at the same time :o SVSSS is probably the novel I love most and have consumed most fanworks for (esp since my wife wrote a bunch of fic for it too lol), but somehow I got stuck writing post-canon SQX/HX longfic despite them not even being my TGCF OTP. *shrug emoji* I do love those books, but overall MXTX fandom was kind of a mixed bag for me-- ate a lot of good food, had fun writing, but there's nothing like creating fanworks for a big fandom on twitter to make you feel very isolated and alone.

[straightforwardly]

Back then, I went by Kits! And I'll still answer to that name. <3 I answer to "straightforwardly" too these days, though admittedly that's both less name-like and more of a mouthful, haha.

and it felt like the right time to put something together instead of breaking apart oh, that's such a lovely sentiment!! And makes me feel so sappy on you and your wife's behalf. I wish you two many years of happiness. ♥

I did watch the movie version of the Les Mis musical around 2013 too, and I did genuinely like it, but I didn't fall headfirst into fannish feelings for it back then either. Though I think I did read some Javert/Jean Valjean fic for it at the time. Weirdly, I didn't get into Les Amis (and didn't even know who any of them other than Enjolras were, lol) at all until I read the novel, whereupon I had too many feelings. But yeah, I loved the novel both fannishly and as a work of literature, and even now a part of my heart flails when I think about what that first experience of reading it felt like.

It sounds like I had a pretty different experience with the Scum Villain fandom, in that it was easily the best fandom experience of my adult life? I was really social in a way I hadn't been in fandom for a long time. But maybe timing plays a role in that: I got into danmei in general around May 2018, but didn't get fannish about any the novels I was reading until Scum Villain in January 2019. So not in the very beginning days of the fandom, but at the time right as it really started to grow.

It does make me happy to hear that Scum Villain is the novel you love most, because I feel that way too. It has so much of my heart. ♥ I loved TGCF too, though unfortunately I can't say that I'm into SQX/HX. I enjoy Hualian well enough in canon, but don't really feel an urge to read fic about them; most of my fannish interest in TGCF is gen-focused, actually.

[regndoft]

YES I remember now!! I can't even remember if I had a nickname I went by back on LJ or just used my real name. :Ta Nowadays I mostly go by Kry/Kree but I don't mind if anyone remembers an older name I've gone by.

Thank you~ It's already been nine years of Relationship so if nothing else I feel fairly confident we'll stick together for a longgg time to come lol.

I have such mixed feelings about the 2012 musical-- there's lots of things I like about it but also things that make me yell "WHY" into the night. It is objectively very funny that they brought back Tom Hooper to do Cats 2019 though. I fell off my reading of the novel because it's so long, but it definitely has the distinction of being one of few novels I've scribbled notes in the margin of.

HAHA I'm happy for you, my wife also had a great time with it and is still active in one or two Discord servers for it!! I think it was a mixed experience for me because I got into it after spending years in a fandom with a lot of drama that permanently altered how I used social media (I went on a tumblr hiatus for two years and have only recently started tweeting more of my thoughts on twitter again instead of releasing the odd fanfic into the wild before disappearing), but where I also made a lot of friends. So coming into MXTX, I suddenly felt kind of isolated and alone. And unlike my wife I'm really bad with Discord servers, sigh.

SVSSS always felt kinda shafted by the fandom to me and I'm not sure why!! I think it's true that, being a parody, it doesn't go quite as in-depth into the side characters and the tragic aspects as MDZS and TGCF, but those elements are still definitely there? Plus it has a very fun and interesting meta-narrative about authorship, transformative fiction and slash fandom. Also, unlike Wangxian and Hualian Bingqiu actually have conflict, which automatically makes them the most compelling main couple to me lmao.

[straightforwardly]

I'm not great with Discord servers either, so I feel you there. It's just too fast-paced for me. Surprisingly, despite me being initially very skeptical at the idea of Twitter being used for fandom, that ended up working really well for me. It's not slow-paced either, but it's more manageable for me than Discord has ever been, and there's just more people there than over here on DW, as much as I love DW. I feel like a combination of DW + twitter is the fandom interactions that make me happiest at the moment.

Poor Scum Villain, always the relatively unloved older brother. Though, while I fully agree with you about the how interesting the meta-narrative is, I think that could also play a role in why it's not as beloved. So much of it is in conversation with its genre and the other elements you named, and combining that with SQQ's role as a narrator (and how he both fails and succeeds at perceiving the world around him) gives it much of what fascinates and charms me about it, but also could possibly limit its broader appeal to readers not as familiar with the concepts it's engaging with.

And then there's Bingqiu, which seems to be pretty divisive in a way that Wangxian and Hualian aren't. Which is a shame, because yeah, easily my favorite main couple too! And, honestly, just a favorite ship in general; I don't think I've ever shipped a pairing harder than I did with them at the height of my fannish SV-related passion. Their dynamic is just so fascinating and so good, and offers so many different storytelling opportunities depending on where in canon a fic is set.

[regndoft]

Discord servers move very fast and I tend to become saddled with a pretty bad case of FOMO. I wish I COULD find one I felt chill with, because I like the idea of talking to people?? But in practise it hasn't worked out for me. And I agree my best time with Twitter was when I used it as a complement to Tumblr, as an isolated social media platform I think it's too hard to find and archive stuff for it to work for me, but it was a nice way to interact more casually with authors and artists I like haha.

I wonder if it's also because it hasn't had a hugely successful adaptation tbh?? I read the novels first, but I've got the impression I'm in the minority in that regard-- MDZS got a lot of attention with donghua, manhua and live-action, and I saw a lot of people get into TGCF through the donghua and then use the manhua as a start-off before tackling the (admittedly hellishly long) novel... SVSSS has a cancelled manhua and a donghua that's not exactly aesthetically appealing to the average anime/manga fan lol (plus it's the hardest story to adapt under censorship).

BINGQIU IS SO GOOD they're the only mxtx main couple I've actively searched for fanworks of. TT0TT

[straightforwardly]

lr, as an isolated social media platform I think it's too hard to find and archive stuff for it to work for me, but it was a nice way to interact more casually with authors and artists I like haha yes, this! in my previous comment I was struggling a little with putting my feelings about twitter for fandom into words, but this is exactly it. I value it for the ease of interactions, but imo it definitely works best in conjunction with another site.

Oh, that's a good point about the adaptations! I wasn't even thinking in that direction because the short-lived Scum Villain manhua is the only MXTX adaptation I ever checked out, but you make a good point about the other two novels both having multiple accessible points of entry and being easier to make a censored version of than SV.

Bingqiu... ♥ The number of fics I wrote for them are in the double-digits, and that's not including the horde of unfinished WIPs I still have hanging around in a folder somewhere. They're so inspiring!