![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fandom Progression
You know, it weird, but tonight I found myself thinking about how my computer habits have changed throughout my time in fandom. I was shown fandom in 2003, and writing that down, I can't believe it's almost been 5 years....
When I first started poking around, I mostly stuck to the vidding side of fandom. I would search out tons of different vids, and spend hours watching them, and the episodes of QaF, my current fandom. I knew about fanfic from the very beginning, but it held no interest for me. Mostly I just searched out peoples personal webpages and Kazaa for fandom stuff.
I remember first reading fanfic in January of 2004. I liked the first one well enough, bet the second one I read sucked, so I decided that this fanfic stuff was a waste of time. I don't remember how I ended up going back to fanfic, but eventually fanfic and fanvids made up about equal parts of my time. It was about that time that I discovered LJ, and got one of my own (last Sunday was my 4 year LJ anniversary!). I was really slow to get comfortable on LJ, I was really afraid to friend people, and it took me a while to find communities.
Before the end of 2004, I was vidding, and I think that's the point that I really started getting into fandom, and making friends. That's when I met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
carr0ts1979 and we started talking everyday. We'd talk about QaF, and vidding, and the vids we had just seen, or were working on. We'd talk about our flists, and the mutual friends we had, or the various dramas going on in fandom. I think those days were the ones where I was happiest and most comfortable in fandom. From the end of 2004 to about mid 2005. I had a great flist, and was really into vidding, and reading fic like it was going out of style.
Things have changed a lot from those days. I started to fall out of love with QaF, my personal life was falling down around me, and I finally moved out of the country, to China no less. China killed fandom for me for a while. I didn't have a computer for months, just the ones at work, so wasn't able to keep up. I started reading HP fanficraxhel had saved on her computer, and watching Stargate SG-1 in my free time. When I think about my fandom history, I often forget about my time in the Harry Potter fandom. I think that's because I never really interacted with it, as I have other fandoms and my time there was short, less than a year. Also, I was watching Stargate as I was in it, so I think the two kind of melded.
It tookraxhel and I months to get through them all (up to season 9 of SG-1 and season 2 of SGA). I was never in the fic side of the SG-1 fandom, but I did download a bunch of vids for it. Actually, thinking about it, I want to say that I have more SG-1 vids on my computer than SGA, even though, in reality I have like 4X more SGA ones, I think it's because the SG-1 vids I have are better (I went off of the Stargate Music Awards site to get all my SG-1 vids, where as I downloaded a lot more random SGA ones).
I remember living in China, spending nights after work sitting huddled in my bed withraxhel (because, OMG our apartment was cold!) watching Stargate, and then later, both of us hanging out in my room reading fics or talking about fandom. I'd be playing my vids on my computer all night, because I totally abused my laptop and would use the vids as a way of keeping my computer running hot, so it'd add a bit more heat to the room (yes, it really was that cold). It really did do horrible things to my laptop though. So when I came back to Canada, I stopped playing music or vids as I worked/played on my computer.
I've started in the past few weeks though to watch my vids/listen to music again as I'm at my computer, and I'm beginning to realize what a difference that makes in my fannish activities. I think that's the reason why I finally went and made another vid (if I ever finish fixing it up!). Watching some of the vids tonight made me really want to go back and rewatch all the SG-1s. Like really, really want to, anyone want to join me? It also makes me want to download and watch new vids.
I feel like such an old fogy when it comes to new vids though. I hate how streaming has become the new medium for vids. I hate YouTube as a vid hoster. The quality is crappy, and seriously, if I like your vid, I want to *keep* it. When I started in vidding, vidders had a personal website, or begged hosting space off of friends. I miss that. I hate that so many vidders today rely on sites like YouTube and Sendspace, and whatnot to share their vids. And as a result, I hardly ever download new vids. Which sucks, because that's how I used to get my new music. I listen to the radio more now, but still, that's a pretty narrow focus of new music, with vids, you hear so many different types of music, and I find the radio just can't do that for me anymore.
So, this is sort of a round about way of me asking for SGA vid recs.
Also, I want to ask, how do people listen to music/watch vids on their computers? I tend to just use Windows Media Player, and have that little window open on my task bar so the vid will stay ontop of all my other windows. I like that feature, but I think WMP uses a few too many resources for me to be able to have it playing all the time.
Also, I now have a lot of music/vids on my computer, I used to have all the songs and vids rated using the library and star system, so I'd only listen to the ones I was in the mood for, but I had to wipe my computer, and that's a lot of work to go and redo it again. Without the library though, I have to either choose play all, which takes forever to load and really slows my computer down, or I have to make playlists, which really, isn't any less work than using the library (I like setting everything to play and getting an assortment). Does anyone have a suggestion for a different program I could use?
Getting back to my fandom experiences though, I think SGA has been a very different experience again. I have spent a lot of time reading fic over here, and there has been a much smaller focus on vids. I think I'm only just now really beginning to get into the community aspect of the fandom, and that's mostly been because ofparadise_city and maekala with whom I have most of my fandom conversations. They've helped me make my lean towards fandom meta (and isn't SGA a crazy fandom to try and meta in? Lightning fast switches between "Is Rodney McKay fat? y/n" to "Fans are being racist, and the show hates women, discuss").
I've also started hitting walls when it comes to reading fic. When I was in the QaF fandom, I never was short of things to read, which is weird, because it was a much smaller fandom, with less fic, and a lot of that fic falls under the badfic category. SGA has a ton more fic, and a ton more *good* fic, but I've been finding I have trouble finishing fics. My attention span has shrunk to nothing (I used to read *epics* now I get bored by the second chapter of many fics), and I find myself reading a ton of AUs. I'm not sure what this means. I'm still not easily able to be in more than one fandom though.
When I first started poking around, I mostly stuck to the vidding side of fandom. I would search out tons of different vids, and spend hours watching them, and the episodes of QaF, my current fandom. I knew about fanfic from the very beginning, but it held no interest for me. Mostly I just searched out peoples personal webpages and Kazaa for fandom stuff.
I remember first reading fanfic in January of 2004. I liked the first one well enough, bet the second one I read sucked, so I decided that this fanfic stuff was a waste of time. I don't remember how I ended up going back to fanfic, but eventually fanfic and fanvids made up about equal parts of my time. It was about that time that I discovered LJ, and got one of my own (last Sunday was my 4 year LJ anniversary!). I was really slow to get comfortable on LJ, I was really afraid to friend people, and it took me a while to find communities.
Before the end of 2004, I was vidding, and I think that's the point that I really started getting into fandom, and making friends. That's when I met
carr0ts1979 and we started talking everyday. We'd talk about QaF, and vidding, and the vids we had just seen, or were working on. We'd talk about our flists, and the mutual friends we had, or the various dramas going on in fandom. I think those days were the ones where I was happiest and most comfortable in fandom. From the end of 2004 to about mid 2005. I had a great flist, and was really into vidding, and reading fic like it was going out of style. Things have changed a lot from those days. I started to fall out of love with QaF, my personal life was falling down around me, and I finally moved out of the country, to China no less. China killed fandom for me for a while. I didn't have a computer for months, just the ones at work, so wasn't able to keep up. I started reading HP fanfic
raxhel had saved on her computer, and watching Stargate SG-1 in my free time. When I think about my fandom history, I often forget about my time in the Harry Potter fandom. I think that's because I never really interacted with it, as I have other fandoms and my time there was short, less than a year. Also, I was watching Stargate as I was in it, so I think the two kind of melded. It took
raxhel and I months to get through them all (up to season 9 of SG-1 and season 2 of SGA). I was never in the fic side of the SG-1 fandom, but I did download a bunch of vids for it. Actually, thinking about it, I want to say that I have more SG-1 vids on my computer than SGA, even though, in reality I have like 4X more SGA ones, I think it's because the SG-1 vids I have are better (I went off of the Stargate Music Awards site to get all my SG-1 vids, where as I downloaded a lot more random SGA ones). I remember living in China, spending nights after work sitting huddled in my bed with
raxhel (because, OMG our apartment was cold!) watching Stargate, and then later, both of us hanging out in my room reading fics or talking about fandom. I'd be playing my vids on my computer all night, because I totally abused my laptop and would use the vids as a way of keeping my computer running hot, so it'd add a bit more heat to the room (yes, it really was that cold). It really did do horrible things to my laptop though. So when I came back to Canada, I stopped playing music or vids as I worked/played on my computer. I've started in the past few weeks though to watch my vids/listen to music again as I'm at my computer, and I'm beginning to realize what a difference that makes in my fannish activities. I think that's the reason why I finally went and made another vid (if I ever finish fixing it up!). Watching some of the vids tonight made me really want to go back and rewatch all the SG-1s. Like really, really want to, anyone want to join me? It also makes me want to download and watch new vids.
I feel like such an old fogy when it comes to new vids though. I hate how streaming has become the new medium for vids. I hate YouTube as a vid hoster. The quality is crappy, and seriously, if I like your vid, I want to *keep* it. When I started in vidding, vidders had a personal website, or begged hosting space off of friends. I miss that. I hate that so many vidders today rely on sites like YouTube and Sendspace, and whatnot to share their vids. And as a result, I hardly ever download new vids. Which sucks, because that's how I used to get my new music. I listen to the radio more now, but still, that's a pretty narrow focus of new music, with vids, you hear so many different types of music, and I find the radio just can't do that for me anymore.
So, this is sort of a round about way of me asking for SGA vid recs.
Also, I want to ask, how do people listen to music/watch vids on their computers? I tend to just use Windows Media Player, and have that little window open on my task bar so the vid will stay ontop of all my other windows. I like that feature, but I think WMP uses a few too many resources for me to be able to have it playing all the time.
Also, I now have a lot of music/vids on my computer, I used to have all the songs and vids rated using the library and star system, so I'd only listen to the ones I was in the mood for, but I had to wipe my computer, and that's a lot of work to go and redo it again. Without the library though, I have to either choose play all, which takes forever to load and really slows my computer down, or I have to make playlists, which really, isn't any less work than using the library (I like setting everything to play and getting an assortment). Does anyone have a suggestion for a different program I could use?
Getting back to my fandom experiences though, I think SGA has been a very different experience again. I have spent a lot of time reading fic over here, and there has been a much smaller focus on vids. I think I'm only just now really beginning to get into the community aspect of the fandom, and that's mostly been because of
paradise_city and maekala with whom I have most of my fandom conversations. They've helped me make my lean towards fandom meta (and isn't SGA a crazy fandom to try and meta in? Lightning fast switches between "Is Rodney McKay fat? y/n" to "Fans are being racist, and the show hates women, discuss").I've also started hitting walls when it comes to reading fic. When I was in the QaF fandom, I never was short of things to read, which is weird, because it was a much smaller fandom, with less fic, and a lot of that fic falls under the badfic category. SGA has a ton more fic, and a ton more *good* fic, but I've been finding I have trouble finishing fics. My attention span has shrunk to nothing (I used to read *epics* now I get bored by the second chapter of many fics), and I find myself reading a ton of AUs. I'm not sure what this means. I'm still not easily able to be in more than one fandom though.
no subject
Oh, I totally agree. Just one of the reasons we instigated the hosting policy on Kawoosh! and The Impala.
And I have a small bunch of SGA vids kept in a file at home - vids that made me desperate to watch SGA before I'd even seen the show - so I can let you know what they were tonight when I get home if you like =)
no subject
*runs away*
no subject
As for a music player, I listen to music using itunes. I don't think it's a perfect player, but I like the search function, and I have a lot of playlists saved, so it works me for. I usually just use VLC media player to watch vids.
no subject
re: SGA vids: I have a few saved here, but that's not nearly all of the ones I love a lot. Also:
no subject
For watching vids, I'd REALLY recommend using VLC (http://www.videolan.org/). It has all the codecs loaded on it so you never have to worry about them and it's very simple and easy to use. You do have to make playlists and I usually stick with iTunes for playing music but VLC is perfect for any video playings. One cool feature is you can have it play a directory like your vid folder so then that doesn't require any work.
SO true about SGA and meta lol. For SGA recs try here (http://cathexys.livejournal.com/186568.html). It has a lot of fanfic and the vids/multimedia section is great too. You may be aware of a lot of these but as person who dabbles in the huge fandom of SGA, I find it really helpful.
no subject
I love our meta. It just works. Plus we don't automatically jump to the wrong conclusion if we say something that could be interpreted more than one way.
Watching some of the vids tonight made me really want to go back and rewatch all the SG-1s. Like really, really want to, anyone want to join me?
Are you planning to rewatch all the SG-1 vids or all the eps? I know I keep telling myself I'm going to rewatch all ten seasons one of these days and meta the whole thing. Plus I have a whole list of pairings that I want to have another look at the timeline for.
no subject
As far as fic goes, I'm wondering if the shuffle theory applies to fic reading as well. It seems like people enjoy having a variety of choices, but there's a critical point where there are too many choices and people become overwhelmed and stop making choices. It's like people who have a ton of songs on their iPod and can't decide what they want to listen to, so they just set it to shuffle. There's so much fic in SGA fandom that, while it caters to nearly everybody's preferences, it's hard to find good fic in a style you prefer, so you just stop reading or lose interest where you might have done so had there been fewer fic choices.
I don't know that this necessarily applies to you, because our reading tastes are different, but I think it might apply to some people.
Also, interesting observations in your entry and in comments about relative age in fandom. We didn't have internet access in my area until 1998ish, and even then it wasn't available residentially. I didn't have internet access personally until I went to college, and I wonder about how much of the fandom experience I missed out on simply because I didn't have the technology. I wish I'd been able to be a part of XF fandom, for example, while I was watching the show. That would have been a trip.