The Marci Rating System

I love being subscribed to AO3 fics and authors. Every day I wake up and my email inbox has updates in it. Do I remember all of these fics? Nope. Does that impede my enjoyment of them in any way? Absolutely not.

It's especially fun with a very active fandom like the hockey boys right now, because I'll have six new chapters in my inbox, absolutely zero recollection of the context for any of them, and I'll just read them all in a row. No plot, just vibes.

(There are multiple authors I subscribed to when they were writing a lot in a fandom I was also in, and then they start writing in a different fandom. I still love seeing their updates! I don't always read them, but I'm thrilled that they are creating and sharing those creations. Sometimes we circle around to match fandoms again and it's like 'fancy meeting you here, what a delightful surprise!')

One of the library's Winter Reading Bingo squares is "tell a friend about your favorite author or book." I'm... not sure I have a favorite author or book? Picking just one seems like a lot of pressure. I like different things at different times! It depends what kind of mood I'm in!

(I could probably set up some kind of 'overall state of my mood' tracker based on what fandom I'm reading the most in at any given time. But I'm not sure I want to know.)

(PS: It's been very interesting watching the hoopla app try to recommend things based on my previous reading. There does not seem to be a way to actually tell it anything, nor does 'supernatural space romance, but funny' seem to be a current literary category. But that algorithm sure is trying!)

For reasons I don't entirely remember, I receive a daily email from the New York Times (it's called "The Morning"). It's generally a roundup of headlines, and since I'm not subscribed to the NYT, I can't actually read any of them, but that's fine. There's also a puzzle at the end which is A+ great.

More importantly, on Saturdays the email includes the full text of whatever op-ed article got selected -- generally something calm and Saturday-worthy, like 'making a summer playlist' or 'why I love daylight savings time,' that sort of thing. (LOL when I went to link the author's page on NYT [Melissa Kirsch] I realized that apparently they are always the Saturday writer. WELL THAT EXPLAINS SOME THINGS!)

And THIS week (September 7, 2024), the article was about tennis. Or more accurately, tennis fandom. (I was much more interested when I realized it was more the second than the first.) It's a conversation that comes up again and again in fandom -- how much are you a fan of the thing itself, and how much are you a fan of the community that builds up around it. It was also about the joy of enjoying things -- not uncritically, but enthusiastically nonetheless.

I can't actually link to the article itself, but this is the concluding paragraph, and I thought it was worth remembering.

If we define ourselves by who and what we love, and I think we should, then it’s valuable to love as many things as we can, to accumulate enthusiasms and lean into them, to hold onto passions when we discover them and not let them fall away. This way, our identities become rich, multidimensional, expansive. Sometimes it feels like there’s more to dislike than to like, more to disdain than to embrace. My longing for tennis feels like an opportunity, a reason to open my arms wider, to take more of the world in. I’m going to seize it.
-Melissa Kirsch, "Love All"

I've been reading a lot ::cough:: A LOT ::cough:: of Star Wars fic recently, and there are a few that I've been trying (somewhat haphazardly) to find again, because of specific scenes that stuck in my head without any context.

Over the weekend I got the brilliant(???) idea of looking back through my own AO3 history -- SURELY, I thought, that would be much easier than trying to guess my way through recreating my tag searches to find things. And it probably is? But it's still FIFTY-EIGHT pages of fics, which -- what? How did that happen?

(Plus side: it's all fics I already thought would be interesting! I've had a great time so far looking back and going 'ooh, yes, I want to re-read that one.')

So it turns out Star Wars fandom is, at the very least, ready to fight for the title of PEAK time travel fix-it fandom. And the fics are SO LONG!

At the very-very least, they may win the title of most content available in english, though to be fair, I've spent a certain amount of time trying to figure out if words actually are in english, or maybe are typos, or possibly they're just Like That in the SW universe.

(I assume part of this largesse is because, um, there are so many things to fix? And also there is a lot of time to choose from?)

Me, with five separate tabs of series pages or bookmarks lists open at once: I swear I don't even go here! ::shakes fist in a begrudgingly impressed way at the SW universe in general::

I was reading on tumblr yesterday (as one does), and came across a post by laundrybiscuits that's mostly about Stranger Things and the intersection of canon and fandom, and also included this bit that really resonated with me:

"what I personally enjoy about ST is the stories its components let other people tell"

And I was like 'yes!!! yes, that's it exactly!' (Despite my flash of confusion about 'ST' not meaning 'Star Trek,' lol.) That's my experience of fandom in general, which is why I read in so many fandoms that I've never consumed the original media for. And I didn't want to lose the quote, so I'm putting it here!

I was pretty sure I started reading Untamed fic around the start of the year, so I went back searching through my AO3 history. Sure enough, based on my entirely unscientific search, Untamed stories started showing up significantly on December 29th, 2019. Which was, uh, 165 pages deep in my history. ::clears throat awkwardly:: Well, 2020. ::handwaves away the fact that probably every year has that many pages::

ANYWAY the point is that the Untamed fandom is a gift that keeps on giving, and I appreciate it. I have never seen a fandom where enormous amounts of new content are generated so consistently (and for such a long period of time!). There's so much! And the VARIETY!

After a year-ish of reading, it feels like I have met so many versions of these characters, and enjoyed getting to know them all. Everyone is shaped by their circumstances and their choices -- change one or both, and the story kaleidoscopes out from there. And really, when *couldn't* I benefit from reading these messages over and over?

*It matters that you tried, even if you failed.

*It's worth it to love, even if you lose them.

*Every individual has the power to choose.

I love the 'subscribe' feature on AO3, but I don't usually remember if I've subscribed to a story, a series, or an author. (Okay, I usually don't remember subscribing at all. Isn't that the point of subscribing? So that I don't have to remember to go check for updates?)

So every time I get a notification I'm like 'what's this? was I reading this fic? what's it about?' Usually I just read the new chapter, and sometimes I remember the context as I go, and other times I have no idea what's happening. But I have fun anyway!

I figure once I've read enough in a fandom, there's a sort of, I don't know, context cloud. And after that, everything I read has all this potential backstory and context and subplots that my brain just fills in around the text. (Also applies to reading or viewing actual canon! Makes movies so much more fun!)

I don't really know how to explain it. But fandom is great! Way to go, fans!

So I was pondering the 'aliens, demons, superpowers' challenge for the Brush & Lantern community. Also I'm going hiking in less than two weeks. And my brain was moseying right along on these two tracks, when suddenly it hit me:

*aliens
*mountains
*spaceships
*maps
*twins with cool powers
*a journey
*older, adultier adults who say cryptic things

Guardian fandom, where are my eleventymillion Escape to Witch Mountain AUs???

I’m three episodes from the end of Guardian, so my brain is pretty much in an ‘all Guardian, all the time’ mode right now. I have two (2) questions, as of episode 37.

ONE: I’m — confused, about what the plan is. Is it still time travel? Because I don’t understand why they would need the wick for that; the lantern clearly worked fine to open a wormhole before without one, right?

TWO: After an important family discussion about sleeve garters, my understanding is that their intended purpose is to make sleeves the right length. As in, you shouldn’t then need to roll your cuffs up? Logically, my brain can understand that perhaps the sleeve garters are for making sleeves the right length under a jacket, and then once the jacket comes off, the sleeves get rolled up. This genuinely seems like a lot of work for someone who can magically transform their outfit, though. And they’re clearly not a ‘blending in with the locals’ thing, because *no one* else has them. So yeah, what’s up with that?

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.