Thank you, and to you and your husband as well. May you have a sweet and healthy year filled with joy and lots of good fic (if that's not redundant).
I've gotten to know people I never would've met in RL ... And they're all "real people", even though I've never met them and I'm not likely to EVER meet them.
Oh, yes. I've definitely experienced a similar thing, though not because of LiveJournal, but rather because of fandom in general. After reading fanfic and lurking for several years, I started actively participating through the conference/convention scene, which often involved chatting with people online months before we met in person. To get into detail would entail a huge post, but suffice it to say that I've made some very cool friends through fandom who live all over the place too, and that's given me the excuse to travel to places like London and Copenhagen (this summer) to visit them. That positive experience does make me want to try to meet some LJ friends at some point in the future, no matter how far away they may live.
Also. I've learned I can write. And apparently it's not too bad ... I still have trouble believing that I can make stuff up, write it down, and complete strangers like it enough to leave comments on it.
See, that's cool. I've thought of myself as a writer since maybe the age of nine, took all the English electives in high school and then went and got two writing-related degrees and now work partly as a writer, so it's always fascinating to me to hear stories about how people -- not kids, that's a different story -- found this hidden talent through fanfic. And feedback can be a wonderful confidence-booster that affects you outside of LJ, don't you think? Even if that ingrained insecurity whispers reasons why you shouldn't take all praise at face value.
What I've found most amazing about the LJ/fanfic scene is, for the first time in my life, being able to write and share the sort of stories the majority of my acquaintances balked at when I wrote them while I was growing up, including the very idea of fanfiction, which they didn't understand, not to mention explicit and/or "twisted" stories, which I now know are NC-17/Mature and non-con and hurt/comfort, etc. Here nobody blinks at it. Other people write and share it. We comment about each other's work with respect. It's like heaven.
I think lately my personal posts have become shorter because I've been writing more.
My personal posts have definitely decreased in frequency since joining House fandom, or rather since people started friending me for my fannish stuff. Which is fine; I started this blog for that sort of thing, not for taking the place of my own paper journal.
Thank you for commenting! And, jeez, for reading all this.
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I've gotten to know people I never would've met in RL ... And they're all "real people", even though I've never met them and I'm not likely to EVER meet them.
Oh, yes. I've definitely experienced a similar thing, though not because of LiveJournal, but rather because of fandom in general. After reading fanfic and lurking for several years, I started actively participating through the conference/convention scene, which often involved chatting with people online months before we met in person. To get into detail would entail a huge post, but suffice it to say that I've made some very cool friends through fandom who live all over the place too, and that's given me the excuse to travel to places like London and Copenhagen (this summer) to visit them. That positive experience does make me want to try to meet some LJ friends at some point in the future, no matter how far away they may live.
Also. I've learned I can write. And apparently it's not too bad ... I still have trouble believing that I can make stuff up, write it down, and complete strangers like it enough to leave comments on it.
See, that's cool. I've thought of myself as a writer since maybe the age of nine, took all the English electives in high school and then went and got two writing-related degrees and now work partly as a writer, so it's always fascinating to me to hear stories about how people -- not kids, that's a different story -- found this hidden talent through fanfic. And feedback can be a wonderful confidence-booster that affects you outside of LJ, don't you think? Even if that ingrained insecurity whispers reasons why you shouldn't take all praise at face value.
What I've found most amazing about the LJ/fanfic scene is, for the first time in my life, being able to write and share the sort of stories the majority of my acquaintances balked at when I wrote them while I was growing up, including the very idea of fanfiction, which they didn't understand, not to mention explicit and/or "twisted" stories, which I now know are NC-17/Mature and non-con and hurt/comfort, etc. Here nobody blinks at it. Other people write and share it. We comment about each other's work with respect. It's like heaven.
I think lately my personal posts have become shorter because I've been writing more.
My personal posts have definitely decreased in frequency since joining House fandom, or rather since people started friending me for my fannish stuff. Which is fine; I started this blog for that sort of thing, not for taking the place of my own paper journal.
Thank you for commenting! And, jeez, for reading all this.