Penfold_X's Fandom Journal

I bought a ridiculously adorable shirt at Shore Leave 37:

Save the Galaxy

What getting a hotel room at the MediaWest*Con host hotel this year looked like:

Spent quality time today texting mrwubbles about rate of decay in the human corpse.


For science art!

I'm in the process of tearing my house apart as I declutter and re-organize in anticipation of hopefully redecorating my house in a style beyond Impoverished Law Student (a subset of the Broke Period). Per usual, I'm having difficulty sorting through two categories of items: mementos of events and media (exactly where my fannish hobbies collide).

Donating or tossing mainstream books and music is fairly easy, now that the internet and the digital revolution have exponentially lowered the cost of storing vast amounts of media and locating replacement hard copies of even out-of-print books and music. Exactly how many copies of the Holmes canon do I need, anyway? (Turns out the answer is three.*) Can I donate those official tie-in novels that I didn't enjoy very much for a recent fandom I'm no longer really into? Absolutely. Fan-created media is a different story. My fanzine collection is the one thing I currently track and organize in excruciating detail. Even with websites and email groups dedicated to selling and trading fanzines, it can be very difficult to replace a zine I toss or sell, so I just shrug and clear another shelf.

My grey area is less categorizable fandom notions. What to do with the boxes I have full of various trinkets: promotional items, key chains, magnets, stickers, patches, odd-sized photos, artwork? Some of them are rare or unusual (for example, a limited promotional item from Comic Con), some are fan-made and represent creativity and effort. Do you keep these types of items, and if so, how do you organize them?


Illustration of dilemma by Jim Hensen

I also need to make some decisions about whether I really want to collect certain items, such as cast photos, specialty magazines (many of which I had to purchase from foreign distributors and contain most of the available photos, information and interviews for pre-internet fandoms), clothing and games. My trouble with these items is that they also tend to cross into the other category that's difficult for me: mementos of events. I purchased the item at a convention, received it from a friend, or otherwise have particular memories (emotions) tied to it. My logic-brain says "This item doesn't need to be displayed in your home;" while my emotion-brain counters "But that's the Hebrew-language Episode One promotional disc gimmelgirl brought from Israel for you!"** I've decided to keep my convention programs: they're a great record of events I attended, the panels I participated in, the guests I saw, and (for MediaWest and Eclecticon) zines published, and blessedly easy to store. Everything else is... throwing a wrench into my plans to have all my items sorted by January 1.

*One copy of Baring-Gould, one copy of Klinger, and one easy-to-read trade paperback.
**Genuine example. Multiply this by scores. I'm currently considering just setting my house on fire.

Oh, look, more fannish entitlement, destroying something nice. Who'da thought?

LJ has begun rolling out changes to the comment system, as part of a larger upcoming site redesign. wendymr describes the changes and implications to fandom here. I use a customized S2 style, so apparently the changes don't apply to my personal journal (yet), but I do participate in fandom prompt memes and other comms that use elements of the comment system that have been disappeared. Thus far, I am not happy with the changes, but I'm especially not happy with how dismissive LJ representatives seem to be of users' expressed concerns (see, e.g., this news update, in which LJ fails to acknowledge the subject line issue, even just to say "We've considered your feedback, but are not going to make any changes.").

There have been a lot of complaints about the DDOS attacks. I'm sympathetic regarding the assaults LJ has endured, and consider riding out the DDOS my contribution to supporting freedom of speech in a quasi-oligarchy. Re-designing the site in a manner that ignores the feedback of current (especially paying) users is, to me, another thing altogether.

I've been a paid user of LJ for over ten years. I'd really rather not move off of LJ. Many of my fandom activities are LJ-centered. Most of the comms I enjoy are here. I'd really rather work with LJ to figure out what changes really are going to benefit users and how site changes can be rolled out with minimum disruption for all. Unfortunately, right now, I'm not getting the sense that LJ wants the same things.

In the meantime, I've registered a Dreamwidth account for my username. If you've got some advice about how to best execute a backup of my journal without accidentally unlocking old posts or otherwise messing up my current settings, I'd appreciate it. If things on LJ get too hairy, I plan to use the mirror update feature at DW I see some of my friends using, and let this account lapse into basic status.

In other backup-related news, please ignore any texts or emails I may have sent you about how Delicious has been restoring old functionality. Sadly, the restoration was short-lived. Delicious has gone back to forcing a picture-laden, white space-heavy format on users, while removing bulk edit functions and minimizing the ability to navigate via tags. Like LJ, Delicious seems to think the future is lots of pretty pictures with a minimum of text. Eventually, the entire Internet is going to look like a celebrity gossip magazine.

I've signed up for Pinboard, using my Delicious username. I'll set my Pinboard and Delicious to mirror each other, for the forseeable future. I like having all of my fic recs organized and easily sortable (text-heavy Pinboard seems like the best current provider for this function), but I also really enjoy using the social aspects of Delicious to discover other reccers with similar tastes, so I'm going to try for the best of both worlds.

I won't be maintaining the Diigo account. Diigo imported all of my bookmarks with the original settings--not surprising, since most of my recs run along the lines of "Sherlock is scratched by a kitten; John puts a bandaid on his wound and then they talk about their friendship." However, Diigo appears to have severe link description restrictions (incompatible with the degree to which I want to squee about certain stories), and Diigo's content restrictions don't work for those with more catholic tastes (effectively torpedoing the social aspect of reccing).

Batten down the hatches, ladies and gents.

Build your own robotic dalek pumpkin.

Completely awesome 13-minute "trailer" for a Third Doctor adventure, by a talented and dedicated fan. Three lands in near-future Japan, presumably on the hunt for the Master. Daleks andCybermen arrive with separate dastardly plans, and proceed to give Tokyo the Godzilla treatment. Contains some nods to anime conventions and serials (probably more than I actually caught). What are The Brig and an American detachment from UNIT doing in Tokyo? How are Delgado!Master and Ainley!Master working together? Was that a Sontoran? Don't ask stupid questions, and just enjoy the swordfight: