summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2014-08-14 08:35 am
summercomfort) wrote2014-08-14 08:35 am
Guess it's not just a phase.
When I came out of the Captain America: The Winter Soldier movie, I thought it was "eh" -- I wished that Bucky was revealed earlier as the Winter Soldier, I wished there was more hard-hitting politics in it, I wished the final third of the movie didn't just devolve into a giant fight scene.
And then I somehow got involved in the fandom. Well, I started following notyourplayground on tumblr, and she recced a fic, and it was super good so then I started following the fic author, which lead me to more amazing fics. (It helped that it was spring break and my hand was busted so I couldn't draw, so I spent a lot of time reading fic.) The fics gave me so many feelings that I also did that thing where I did a search for "steve rogers" and "bucky barnes" in that tumblr search thing (first and last time I used it) and saw some absolutely stunning fanart, so I started following *those* people. And finally, I started thinking through some scenes in the movie that didn't quite make sense (why did Steve drop his shield? why did Bucky fetch him and then leave him?), and instead of dismissing it as bad writing, I did that thing where you decide to justify it by reading more deeply into the character and then writing about it. But then I felt super not-confident about my writing, so I drew a little doodle to go with it, and posted it on Tumblr. And that was it, I entered this fandom.
It's been 4 months. Four months where I've been spending 3-4 hours a day either creating fanart, reading fanart, or scrolling through tumblr. Sometimes more. That's a lot of time to squeeze into my already-busy life, and it had its consequences. To begin with, there's the simple matter of how do you find an extra 4 hours in a day? Some of it is positive -- I'm spending less time just idly putzing on the internet looking at miscellaneous stuff and procrastinating. But my pace for drawing Tisquantum halved, I've been talking less with my husband, and I've been sleeping less.
This is not to say it's all bad -- I feel creatively connected to a creative community for the first time in 10 years, I've been getting better at art and writing and comicking. And while imperfect, tumblr also somewhat re-captures the heydays of LJ where it's not just fandom, but interesting discussions about representation and identity also come across my dash. (It's harder to engage in an actual conversation about it, and instead you do this weird thing where instead of writing several long paragraphs about it instead you reblog 3-5 different things about it to express your message, each reblog with a few opinions embedded in the tags). I don't do chat, and I don't do forums, whereas the stroll/reblog/comment thing feels relatively natural. So this is as close to having an internet social life as I've gotten since probably 2006.
That's why this isn't a phase, I don't think. I *like* having a low-stakes channel for creativity (things that I can finish in a few hours or a few days instead of a few years.) I *like* having an online social life again. I *like* having something approximating friends again. But I also like sleep and interacting with real life people, and right now the intersection of my tumblr and people I interact with on a regular basis in real life is one, and it's not Jono. The intersection of my *fandom* tumblr and real life people is 0. I think it's one of the things that's been pushing me to stay awake longer into the night -- it actually reminds me a bit of high school, where there was no one at home who I could talk to about these things, so I'd just stay up late interacting with people on the internet.
But I don't think Jono gets it. He talks about not having time to hang out with friends and I'm like, you chat with Googleshng and Blurds and Ben all the time. Every Tuesday night he goes do Warmachine gaming with Dave and those other 2 people. He spends time interacting on the Warmachine forums. He talks science with my brother, and talk life goals with your career counselor. You know what I used to do during that time? Sit alone and draw Tisquantum while watching trashy tv. I might hang out with a non-mutual friend maybe once every few months. Sure, much of it is by choice -- chats and forums just don't make sense to me. But now I spend that time on tumblr and he doesn't get it. He keeps expecting me to stop, somehow.
It started with a look of indulgent disbelief, like "It's cute that you have all these feels that you have to express, I don't get it at all but you go do your thing." But lately it's become this look of active concern and resignation, like "Why is it the first thing you look at in the mornings, and you're always going to bed an hour or two later than I am. Is this going to stay a thing now?"
I can't help but feel that part of his criticism is true -- it *shouldn't* impact my sleep and my interactions with him. I need to more consciously maintain the social and physical health of my life. I need to sleep earlier, do more focused work, and spend more time just being with my husband. These things are worth more than these pseudo-interactions I have online via these strange "mutuals" where we follow and reblog each other but never really speak directly.
But on the other hand I also wish I had more real life support and understanding of how much this *does* mean to me. Not just an intellectual/abstract understanding of "these are the reasons it's important to my wife" that he recited to me this morning, but a more emotional understanding for my enthusiasms. I guess the parallel example I would use is warmachine. I don't go to the game store with him and I don't play the game with him. A part of me used to feel like he could be doing something more productive, but after I realized that it's a great creative and social outlet for him I've stopped doing that. Instead I try to understand the joy he finds in it -- the excitement of coming up with an awesome strategy that successfully captures the enemy warcaster. The pride in completing a model and adding just the right paint flecks. I try to learn enough about the general feel of the game and the different warcasters so that I can be properly appreciative and supportive when he talks about the army lists that he's making. We've started making up silly names for the models so that there's an aspect of it that's *ours*.
If this tumblr/fandom thing isn't going away, if it's staying a "thing," then it needs to be sustainable and properly integrated into my life. I need to stop sacrificing sleep and real life relationships for it, but I also need some acceptance/appreciation/support *from* real life relatioships for it. It needs to stop being something that happens between midnight and 2am while everyone else is asleep, and instead be something I can talk about in the evening times without feeling like I'm being a burden or a bore.
And then I somehow got involved in the fandom. Well, I started following notyourplayground on tumblr, and she recced a fic, and it was super good so then I started following the fic author, which lead me to more amazing fics. (It helped that it was spring break and my hand was busted so I couldn't draw, so I spent a lot of time reading fic.) The fics gave me so many feelings that I also did that thing where I did a search for "steve rogers" and "bucky barnes" in that tumblr search thing (first and last time I used it) and saw some absolutely stunning fanart, so I started following *those* people. And finally, I started thinking through some scenes in the movie that didn't quite make sense (why did Steve drop his shield? why did Bucky fetch him and then leave him?), and instead of dismissing it as bad writing, I did that thing where you decide to justify it by reading more deeply into the character and then writing about it. But then I felt super not-confident about my writing, so I drew a little doodle to go with it, and posted it on Tumblr. And that was it, I entered this fandom.
It's been 4 months. Four months where I've been spending 3-4 hours a day either creating fanart, reading fanart, or scrolling through tumblr. Sometimes more. That's a lot of time to squeeze into my already-busy life, and it had its consequences. To begin with, there's the simple matter of how do you find an extra 4 hours in a day? Some of it is positive -- I'm spending less time just idly putzing on the internet looking at miscellaneous stuff and procrastinating. But my pace for drawing Tisquantum halved, I've been talking less with my husband, and I've been sleeping less.
This is not to say it's all bad -- I feel creatively connected to a creative community for the first time in 10 years, I've been getting better at art and writing and comicking. And while imperfect, tumblr also somewhat re-captures the heydays of LJ where it's not just fandom, but interesting discussions about representation and identity also come across my dash. (It's harder to engage in an actual conversation about it, and instead you do this weird thing where instead of writing several long paragraphs about it instead you reblog 3-5 different things about it to express your message, each reblog with a few opinions embedded in the tags). I don't do chat, and I don't do forums, whereas the stroll/reblog/comment thing feels relatively natural. So this is as close to having an internet social life as I've gotten since probably 2006.
That's why this isn't a phase, I don't think. I *like* having a low-stakes channel for creativity (things that I can finish in a few hours or a few days instead of a few years.) I *like* having an online social life again. I *like* having something approximating friends again. But I also like sleep and interacting with real life people, and right now the intersection of my tumblr and people I interact with on a regular basis in real life is one, and it's not Jono. The intersection of my *fandom* tumblr and real life people is 0. I think it's one of the things that's been pushing me to stay awake longer into the night -- it actually reminds me a bit of high school, where there was no one at home who I could talk to about these things, so I'd just stay up late interacting with people on the internet.
But I don't think Jono gets it. He talks about not having time to hang out with friends and I'm like, you chat with Googleshng and Blurds and Ben all the time. Every Tuesday night he goes do Warmachine gaming with Dave and those other 2 people. He spends time interacting on the Warmachine forums. He talks science with my brother, and talk life goals with your career counselor. You know what I used to do during that time? Sit alone and draw Tisquantum while watching trashy tv. I might hang out with a non-mutual friend maybe once every few months. Sure, much of it is by choice -- chats and forums just don't make sense to me. But now I spend that time on tumblr and he doesn't get it. He keeps expecting me to stop, somehow.
It started with a look of indulgent disbelief, like "It's cute that you have all these feels that you have to express, I don't get it at all but you go do your thing." But lately it's become this look of active concern and resignation, like "Why is it the first thing you look at in the mornings, and you're always going to bed an hour or two later than I am. Is this going to stay a thing now?"
I can't help but feel that part of his criticism is true -- it *shouldn't* impact my sleep and my interactions with him. I need to more consciously maintain the social and physical health of my life. I need to sleep earlier, do more focused work, and spend more time just being with my husband. These things are worth more than these pseudo-interactions I have online via these strange "mutuals" where we follow and reblog each other but never really speak directly.
But on the other hand I also wish I had more real life support and understanding of how much this *does* mean to me. Not just an intellectual/abstract understanding of "these are the reasons it's important to my wife" that he recited to me this morning, but a more emotional understanding for my enthusiasms. I guess the parallel example I would use is warmachine. I don't go to the game store with him and I don't play the game with him. A part of me used to feel like he could be doing something more productive, but after I realized that it's a great creative and social outlet for him I've stopped doing that. Instead I try to understand the joy he finds in it -- the excitement of coming up with an awesome strategy that successfully captures the enemy warcaster. The pride in completing a model and adding just the right paint flecks. I try to learn enough about the general feel of the game and the different warcasters so that I can be properly appreciative and supportive when he talks about the army lists that he's making. We've started making up silly names for the models so that there's an aspect of it that's *ours*.
If this tumblr/fandom thing isn't going away, if it's staying a "thing," then it needs to be sustainable and properly integrated into my life. I need to stop sacrificing sleep and real life relationships for it, but I also need some acceptance/appreciation/support *from* real life relatioships for it. It needs to stop being something that happens between midnight and 2am while everyone else is asleep, and instead be something I can talk about in the evening times without feeling like I'm being a burden or a bore.