moon

I managed to fix the Aerith cosplay with my extremely amateur skills and plan. Thankfully, everything was done in the back, so it's not noticeable how wobbly my stitching was LOL. Since I was hand sewing, I'm not surprised about how it turned out. This made me realize that I should really learn how to use a sewing machine one day. I think sewing would be a fun hobby for me to learn. Having little to no knowledge about it made me so stressed, but I'm glad it wasn't disastrous. 

I also started posting that FFVII fic to ao3 that I was working on. There is a curse upon me that always makes me fall for rarepairs, so it's about Cloud/Vincent. I need to kick my own ass to finish the other chapters and post them. I've been trying to use my getyourwordsout pledge to encourage me to work on it often, but sometimes my brain just isn't with the program. This fic is basically my interpretation of how they get together post-canon though. I will get my thoughts out about them if it kills me.

In other news, I think when I'm less busy, I might post more about my vkei-related interests. I'm surprised I haven't yet, because that's like a good 90% of what music I listen to. I've been meaning to listen to more Plastic Tree lately, and instead, I've been looping one (1) song from them. It just... scratches my brain right.

Sometimes I think about a FFVII essay I read a few months ago by an author who grew up in the fandom. There's a part where they described the discontent some fans felt toward Advent Children when it released. This stuck with me I guess because I was a literal child when it released lol, so I wouldn't have known what the consensus was back then. But, this has been very thought-provoking to me so I have some word soup about it.

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In your own space, talk about one of your fandom firsts.

I talked about a few of my fandom firsts in my fandom origin story. But, another first I thought of that I didn't already talk about was how I got into stageplays. I'm not sure why, but I wasn't ever really interested in stageplay adaptations. I didn't think stages were something I'd ever be into until I became active in the UtaPri fandom.

UtaPri was a fun idol series to be into, because the first mobile game, Shining Live, had an event/story rotation in place that allowed for every combination of the guys to have interactions. Aside from the game, it was also common for the guys to be "shuffled" together for songs outside of their unit work. In-universe, it was implied that they would sing some of these songs for drama/movie or stage appearances, because in real life, they were either paired with a drama track or they were to have an accompanying stageplay in the first place.

All of this made it pretty fun to ship basically whoever you wanted. I was really into a ship that was considered a rarepair– Otoya and Ranmaru. Someone I talked to for a short time in the fandom showed me a stageplay that featured them as two of three main characters: Pirates of the Frontier. Otoya's character was the captain of his own ship, and I forgot who Ranmaru's character was exactly, but he was basically like his right hand man. It was a very heartwarming story, and Otoya/Ranmaru's characters were very close in it. I wasn't sure that I was going to enjoy the singing as much since they were obviously not played by the seiyuu, but I was very wrong! The actors were really great and brought the characters to life so well. Despite the fact that they were doing acting-ception, you could just tell that they got Otoya and Ranmaru's mannerisms down. This experience single-handedly made me really like stageplays and be much more open to viewing them. 

In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme.

I guess something I always really like is light and dark or sun and moon themes for duos/ships. There's just so much symbolism that can be done with them. For one, they show how a duo compliments each other since they're polar opposite motifs. I'm also just a sucker for symbolism that's deep and represents a character's inner struggles, so characters with the dark/moon theme are always right up my alley. One of my absolute favorite things that tends to happen, especially with the light and dark characters, is that both can apply to either character usually. Also, the fact that they can symbolize how the other really views them. For example, the "moon" character may seem gloomy, but to the "sun" character, they are actually warm and inviting like sunlight. So, in each other's eyes, they may be associated with the opposite motifs.

My brain feels like a disordered filing cabinet lately because my partner and I have been kinda turning our house upside down. We've been doing a lot of cleaning, and I've been helping him finish his one thousand decor projects. Since he has ADHD, he decided that this year he's going to get to all the things he's been putting off lol. He's very picky about decor whereas I'm not, so that's his job. I try not to care that much, even if he puts a lot of pastel abstract art in gigantic frames on the wall. (Abstract art has never been my thing, but he's happy so that's all that matters to me.) 

So I've been tired and executive dysfunction has been kicking my ass as per usual. Making lists is fun and exciting for some reason though, so here's all the things I want future me to remember to get to:

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Talk about what has improved in your life thanks to fandom.

Fandom has allowed me to make a lot of meaningful connections with people! Which is generally very difficult for me to accomplish. Most people I talk to now are actually people I've met in fandom spaces, including my partner. I met many of them because of Ensemble Stars. I quite literally don't think I would have met my current partner, or a lot of online friends, if I wasn't into Enstars when Valkyrie's Eternal Weaving music video dropped. This is why my AO3 user (eternalweaving) doesn't match my other socmed— it's incredibly sentimental to me.

Aside from that, I think my writing has improved a lot. I started writing fanfiction with the intention of just trying to write more so I would get a little better at it. Although I still have much to work on, I think I've come a long way. Writing fic/roleplaying with friends has felt rewarding as well. I was even involved in a fanzine once, which reminds me that I should have more confidence in my writing abilities. (I struggle with imposter syndrome often.)

In your own space, talk about a fannish opinion you hold that has changed over time. 

When I first discovered fannish communities, I very much understood the concept of "Ship and Let Ship." However, I was young and impressionable, so the rise of anti-shipping made me believe there were certain things in fiction that couldn't be justifiably enjoyable. There was a distinct ship I liked at the time that allows me to kind of pinpoint when it all started for me.

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And, this is a pretty good TL;DR for this answer: I don't care what you ship. I don't care how you ship it. And, I really don't care what you choose to draw or write and choose to read. If I see something I personally don't want to see, I know how to see myself out. 

This turned into more of a narrative than I wanted it to be, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I especially find it hard to befriend people in fandom anymore due to all of this. I either see people who just simply are not okay with dark or problematic fictional content, which I can respect, or I see people who basically only talk about dark content. I'm a person who is in the middle: there are some dark things I enjoy, but honestly, a lot of it is not my cup of tea. Most of my interests also tend to lie therein what "antis" are more likely to enjoy (I find it really hard to make Hypmic friends anymore because my favorite ship is considered an "anti" ship over there). I fear that it's difficult to find other people who don't care that much anymore. 

In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story...Whether you've been in fandom for a while or just discovered fandom, we'd love to know how you came to fandom! Was it that one book or a TV show or movie or anime/manga or a band/song that gave you that first spark? Or a character or characters that you wanted more of but the canon material just didn't have enough of them? Or were you introduced to fandom by someone?

I discovered different aspects of fandom in a few ways! Under the cut is a short narrative of how I came to be in fandom through some of my fannish "firsts".

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I signed up for Fannish 50, and this post is likely going to turn into a masterlist for it!