intro post

[necessarian]

hi! welcome to my journal, where you might see me post about how i'm trying to use it more often...

basics:

• ren, ao3 user renaissance
• she/her
• fandom antiquity, prolific lurker, avid collector of minor characters
• my main icon (francis abernathy!) was drawn by nautilics
• you can read my transformative works policy, mini bio, and a broad list of my self-recs here
• i also have a fic sampler of my best works
• i do harry potter fic recs with ceu at potterwatch (currently on hiatus)

fic:

• currently writing:
  • you might belong in hufflepuff part 5, To The Victor - the end of hufflepuff draco's 4th year at hogwarts
  • A Colder War, a massive wolfstar canon divergence AU fix-it thing
  • on the backburner: turning long for this world (a merthur modern with magic AU romcom) into a one-shot
• these days, you'll mostly find harry potter fic on my ao3. i've been writing hp fic since 2005. for many years now, my engagement in this fandom has involved an awareness of jkr's bigotry and an active commitment to writing fic which upholds my principles of leftism and social justice. as jkr has escalated her bigotry, and it becomes more explicit in extended canon, i now consider myself to be a "fan" of the fandom itself; i have been immersed in the fandom for so long that i expect to keep reading and writing hp fic for some time still. however, i don't seek to defend my continued participation in the hp fandom, and i respect anyone who needs to keep their distance because of that.
• i used to write for a lot of other fandoms; i might return to some of them now and then, but don't expect any more fic for asoiaf, haikyuu, the raven cycle, and yuri on ice.

friending policy:

• feel free to subscribe and chat to me in the comments! i like to make new friends, but you may not be interested in my journal if we have no common interests. i mostly journal about fandom, including WIP amnesties, meta, and fic recs.
• incidentally, i have a journal where i do bookkeeping for my fics. if you're interested in that sort of thing you're welcome to have a poke around ravenclawtower, where every post is public.
• if we've talked even a little or met via a friending meme with common interests, i'm happy to grant you access. i don't have any specific access filters. most of my access list only posts are a little bit vent-y, and i mention my Top Secret Real Life sometimes, so i'm hesitant to say i'd add anyone, but "some people" is a pretty broad category :-) if you're unsure, leave a comment below.
• i am a lurker-type, so if - based on anything in this post - you think i might be interested in subscribing to your journal, you are cordially invited to let me know in a comment on this post.

Comments

[paulamcg]

Hello, I’d like to add you. I’ve found my way here through another Remus/Sirius fan’s journal. I’ve just been participating in a friending meme, so here’s something about me. you can check if you like to know a bit of who I am. Having been active on DW for only a few months, I’m happy to see that there are HP fans around, and I’d love to friend you as we share love for this eternal pairing.

[necessarian]

hi!! i would be happy to friend you! i'm not writing much remus/sirius at the moment, but i'm still hanging out at the periphery of the fandom - plus, i'm reading your about post and it seems like we'd have a lot to chat about :D

[paulamcg]

Yay for friending and chatting! And there’s R/S fic by you waiting for me to read while I’m waiting for the time when you write more.

[necessarian]

ditto for yours! i've finally been catching up on fic after months of reading nothing, so i'm excited!

[paulamcg]

Having seen that you don’t hesitate to self-rec and write about your own fic, I assume you understand that I’d love sharing. For starters, I’m now getting excited about full moon twofold.

[necessarian]

i've just seen your comment on it, so i'm off to reply! do you have any of your own fic you'd particularly self-rec?

[paulamcg]

I’ve just replied to your reply!I’ll be overjoyed if you want to read a fic by me and say something about it.

Let’s see… This is not a canon-divergent story (as all my fic is Rowling’s-first-five-novels-compliant), but there was some challenge in fitting everything together.

Sense of Strategy (Severus, James, Peter, Poppy, Albus, Remus and Sirius, 5800 words) New strategies are indispensable at February’s full moon in the Marauders’ sixth Hogwarts year.

[necessarian]

i appreciate your thoughts on full moon twofold so much :') i've had a busy week so i'm just about to read the fic you linked! i'm keen!

[paulamcg]

What can I say to show you how much I appreciate… The comment you’ve left at AO3 is a dream come true – and more, because you praise aspects I didn’t dare hope anyone would notice and some I hardly noticed myself. I’ll enjoy composing a proper reply to post over there. And here… If you looked around, you also noticed that I’ve hardly got any comments or kudos at all on any of my fics. It can be partly because I’m new on DW and AO3, but perhaps also exactly because of the bias against the use of first person. Can you think of a way for me (or you) to let other people know that at least you think I’m able to handle my first person?

[necessarian]

ah, i'm so glad! that's the goal of a good comment, i think :D

that's a tricky dilemma. a confession - up until about a year ago i didn't read any first person fic at all. i think in part it's because of how teenagers are encouraged to write at school; much of my writing before the age of 16 was first person, and when i learnt to write well in third person i grew to hate first person because i associated it so much with my young, naive writing. i could read it in novels, but i told myself that was because these authors had honed their craft. i probably could've been reading first person fic too, but kneejerk reactions are weird like that. as it was, it took me many, many years and one very good first person novel that inspired me to write fanfic to shake that. i think what probably needs to happen is for fandom to start changing it's attitude, though i don't know how, given that people still list first person as a "do not want" on exchange sign-ups.

hmm, i haven't checked out all your fics, but have you written any person wolfstar? it's a popular ship, so it would hopefully draw people to your ao3 page, who would then check out your other fic and already have that good experience of your writing. if you have any of those fics, they're the ones i'd suggest showing off!

[paulamcg]

Thank you so much for giving my dilemma some thought.

Hmm, I didn’t know that about how teenagers were encouraged to write at school. I guess it wasn’t like that when I went to school – in Finland. Now I’m curious to check my very earliest writing. At least the “novel” I wrote when I was ten was in the third person, just like my very first fanfic (thirty years later), the post-OotP Remus novel!

I was somehow aware of the bias before my hiatus, too, but because HP fandom in general and R/S fandom were active, I had my readership, and I thought it was rather small also because I wrote borderline gen/slash and never sex. Now I even write sex, but for instance in Sirius Black Fest I got no comments and no kudos for my first-person R/S fic, and I think none of the kudos I’ve got afterwards is from fest participants, and most of it from people who are not HP writers.

Yes, I have some third-person Wolfstar fic, also some with James/Lily, too. In R/S Small Gifts I noticed that two or three sign-ups included first person as “do not want”, and I ruled out those as giftees and also chose to write in third person. Then I wrote three bonus gifts in first person, and (after at least six people had read and liked my official offering) only the mods commented on one of those, and only one of the giftees (and I suspect she didn’t read the whole fic – but that’s my paranoia now!)

While I was experiencing this rejection, I discussed the use of first person on my journal, here. And enjoyed finally having some more interaction in the fandom again. You’ve seen how much I love talking about stories and writing and not only mine, and I miss mutual reviewing and think I’d have something to offer. After expecting some reciprocity, I’ve spent a big part of this fest season struggling against such fears that there’s something seriously flawed in my fic, so that people who have all but promised to read something by me end up back-clicking in embarrassment. That’s why I’m perhaps going overboard with my rambling when someone’s finally found even brilliance in fic by me.

I wonder if I should just go back to writing in isolation (even though my ideal is that art is finalised only by active recipients), now that you’ve helped me still believe in how I’m doing it. Or is it worth still trying something. Founding a community for reccing fic that suffer from discrimination? Perhaps not :) Perhaps just… I’d be happy to read and review more by you, and perhaps if you have time, you could read another fic by me.

[necessarian]

finland - cool!! i didn't factor non-anglophone fic writers into my determination there. i went to school in australia, but my conversations with others abroad in, say, north america and the UK, has suggested that First Person Is For Kids may be a bit of a trend, which is not great.

i'm really interested in your experiences in early HP fandom. i started hanging out in fandom around the same time as you, but i was very young and i hadn't started shipping wolfstar yet, so i moved in totally different circles.

one note about first person that i forgot to mention last time around: i personally won't read smut in first person. i find it really uncomfortable, because it's just too much proximity to the characters. i don't know if that's a general thing among readers or just a me thing, but i thought it worth mentioning.

regarding getting feedback: i honestly think ao3-based fandom is much slower now than it was 3-4 years ago. i mean, i suppose it also depends on how active your fandom is, and wolfstar is always going to be a little quiet because there's no new canon content being released. but, as much as i hate to be negative, i think you've rejoined fandom at a bad time for feedback. younger fans especially are spending a lot of time on twitter and instagram, of all places, which is terrible for anything other than sharing links and snippets. engagement with longer fic has gone down, and in my experience only a few long fics in any given fandom will become really, properly popular.

i think mutual reviewing is something that's really gotten lost in fandom culture. it just doesn't happen anymore, and i wouldn't know where to start in encouraging it, except doing what i currently do, which is leaving long-ish comments on all the fic i read.

but on a positive note - i definitely want to keep reading your fic and commenting! i'm still getting back into the swing of things after some months of hiatus, so i have a lot to read, but i'm enjoying engaging with fandom again. and, well, if enough of us just keep leaving long comments, maybe it'll catch on again :)

[paulamcg]

I’m glad you find it cool that I’m a Finn. My location is mentioned in my DW profile although I can't remember ever adding it there, and I avoid telling people that my mother tongue is Finnish before they've given my fic a try. I'm afraid there's another reason for bias.

Have you read my fannish history in this long post?

Oh, thank you for telling me that about smut. I still don't write smut and I don't think I ever will (because it makes me feel uncomfortable regardless whether it's first-person or not, and this is due to my asexuality, and I want to make it clear that I absolutely do not condemn it or people who like to read or write it). Now I wonder if the small sex scenes (mature/R-rated, I guess) I've learnt to include (never as the focal point or conclusion of the fic) are somehow off because of the first person. (I do have experience of sex – and, as proof, three adult sons I've given birth to). I'd love to hear your comment, if you read one of those.

When starting to write again after eight years, I didn't expect a good time for feedback (for first-five-novels-compliant Wolfstar fic). I just suddenly felt like continuing my work on the extensice story, and enjoyed composing one-shots for myself to read, and kept posting them on Livejournal, where there seemed to be nobody left in my fandom corner. Now that I've learnt where new and young fans are most active, and you've explained what their activity is like, I'm determined not to go to those platforms. But when I participated in two or three fests and looked around and saw that there is good, (and not only sex-wise) mature writing that gets comments, I started feeling the need of recognition and interaction.

At the moment I feel that there's some potential for a community on DW. You've truly saved me from feeling lonely and rejected when saying that you'll read more by me. And now your fannish-goals post has made me ever more hopeful. There are others on malenkayacherepakhas Snowflake post who like the goals of reccing more and, on the other hand, writing whatever they want. Perhaps we can build a community where we resurrect a culture of reviewing and reccing and supporting each other in all our diversity.

[necessarian]

ah see i read your history there but i didn't notice it on your profile :)

i'm definitely interested in reading one of your mature fics to see how they work in first person, and i'm happy to offer any critique, if you want. can you point me in the direction of one?

i agree that DW is where it's at. i spent some time on twitter and tumblr and all i felt was burnt out. i think some of the problem was that those sites made it so easy for people to have quick and direct access to your life - and a little too easy to share it oneself, too. that kind of connection with my readers in real time was really stressful! admittedly, it was good for feedback, especially tumblr. but, yeah, i think if the kind of community you're after will spring up anywhere, it'll be here. DW skews older, and more verbose, and i just find it so much calmer!!

[paulamcg]

Thank you for telling me more about your experience of Twitter and Tumblr. The Remus Fest I’ve started writing for is on Tumblr, but I’ve hardly been over there, because whenever a link takes me there, I feel lost. (We’ll see if I submit the story, as – despite the third person – I’ve written what I want and now realised that Remus himself has been asleep almost all through the 1600 words and it’s been mainly about Sirius and now James has entered, and thanks to the fest requirement of Remus as the main character, and your goal post, this amuses me.) I’m old, and I’ve always been verbose and slow. I’d better stick to DW. I’ve just written about a community in my wish list for Challenge # 6.

And I’m thrilled to point you in the direction of a mature fic, and I’ll be grateful for any feedback, concrit, too. Let’s see… My two latest first-person fics with R-rated sex (as long as I rated correctly) were betaread for fests, so perhaps I don’t need to worry so much about those. Hmm, there’s even less sex than I remembered. Maybe you could have a look at this (beta’ed) fic, where there’s a short sex scene close to the beginning: There Is Some Hope. There are two perhaps even less complete sex scenes in This Little Oyster, which I can post on AO3 today.

[necessarian]

great!! thanks for your recommendations! i'm really excited to dip into both of them :)

[paulamcg]

Thank you! I’ve just noticed The Colder War and started to read immediately, excited. Why haven’t you told me you’ve written a new story starting in the aftermath of “The Prank”! I’m curious to hear whether you started it before or after reading Sense of Strategy. Of course, our takes are quite different in contents and style, and that’s why I find it particularly fascinating to read yours. I wonder if you’d be interested in My True Disillusion (Remus, 2000 words) or It’ll Be All Right (James, also James/Lily, 4420 words), which are set a few days after “the Prank” (perhaps instead of the fic with first-person sex).

[necessarian]

hah, i'm afraid i got out of the habit of posting about any new fics - or rather, i never did it on dreamwidth. a good reminder!

i've had a crazy-busy week, but next week i'm hoping to have a lot more time to sit down and dip into some fic :)

[paulamcg]

This Little Oyster, too, is now up at AO3, here. I've never got any feedback on that one, and I'm glad and grateful if you've got the time and interest and read it.