Questions: treehouse reversebang, tumblr, hockey

[pentapus]

Some questions
1. Is anyone interested in another Treehouse Reversebang round? What if the fandoms were reduced to Avengers, Hockey RPF, and Books of the Raksura? (Ok, and maybe Naruto. And Methos... crossovers.)


2. Is there some kind of idiots guide to Tumblr fandom? Because I do not understand this strange medium. And how much of fandom is over there? i.e. how hard should I be trying to understand this thing?

Oh yeah, and is there some equivalent of the lj user icon? I like to draw chibi icons, but is there some kind of equivalent in-demand graphic for Tumblr?

3. Is there an idiot's guide to Hockey RPF fandom? I don't mean the pairings I mean... where the fandom is. I am discovering that I am really out of practice at being in a current fandom. *facepalm*


Thank you, flist, for taking the time to answer all the queries I come up with. I feel extremely lucky to be able to just ask when I can't figure it out myself. :)

Comments

[tucuxi]

1. YES YES YES! I will jump up and down in glee at another Treehouse Reversebang. The suggested fandoms sound great to me. :)

2. I am very new to tumblr. As far as I can tell, it's all about tags. So, um, blunder around until you find likely tags and then watch those tags and see lots of fun content?
I think we can tell I am not the person to ask for advice about tumblr. This is the advice I got when I asked about tumblr. Some of it is really quite excellent.

3. I am completely out of the loop for Hockey RPF, sorry.

[pentapus]

Thanks for linking to your post. Those comments are a pretty good resource!

[siegeofangels]

I am interested in hearing answers to 3 also. The way I hockey fandom is:

The Hockey RPF tag on AO3
The hockey tag on Pinboard
A Twitter list of a few media types: https://mobile.twitter.com/slip_stitch/lists
A couple of tumblrs--svmadelyn and monanotlisa, I think?
Following some hockey fannish types on Twitter
Actual hockey blogs Puck Daddy and Backhand Shelf (and the backhand shelf podcast, which I really like)
YouTube searches, honestly

Idk, I think what I do is really decentralized and not super interactive and am not sure if it is a way that makes sense to others or will work for you, but...here you go?
I am on my phone right now so don't have links to hand for mostof these, sorry.

[kinetikatrue]

Seconding most of what siegeofangels said, though I don't really interact much with PinBoard or Tumblr. Aside from Subtle Like Seabrook.

That said, following actual hockey players on twitter can be great or terrible, depending on the player and the day. And in additional hockey blogs, I recommend Down Goes Brown and if you're into goalies, The Goalie Guild (who also do a podcast). And on the subject of podcasts, the guy who runs Puck Daddy is also half of the podcast Marek vs Wyshynski.

Otherwise, I've been watching a TON of hockey.

[pentapus]

Haha, that is a great sum up of following Hockey players. I hadn't considered twitter, so everyone's tips have been really helpful. Thank you.

[siegeofangels]

Oops, wrong mona lisa--the one I follow is monalisasnmadhatters on tumblr.

I also like http://www.whatsupyasieve.com/

I guess it depends on how much time you want to spend/what platforms you're comfortable with/whether you care about the non-RPF kind of fannishness/which players or teams you like.

If you do want to follow games and don't/can't get video, there is usually streaming radio online, e.g., here is the Penguins station: http://www.iheart.com/live/2033/?autoplay=true . I love the radio feeds because old-school hockey commentators are the best to listen to, and you also get hilarious local commercials. (DQ: the official ice cream cake of the Pittsburgh Penguins!)

[pentapus]

I hadn't intended to ask for a place to get more canon/content, but now I realize there were lots of hockey sources I didn't know. Thank you for the list! What I'd been focused on when I posted is that I have no idea where to talk to Hockey RPF people... if I want Hockey RPF prompts or wonder if there are ever any Hockey RPF challenges, I had no idea where to go. I only know where to find the end product - AO3. But it sounds like there isn't really any good place to find those things.

[chibifukurou]

I could swear I used to know where there was a great in-depth Hokey RPS guide on Ao3, but I can't find it to save my life. This is what happens when half of your bookmarks live on Ao3.

These are the two that I still have/could locate links too:

http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/160117.html
http://www.pervpackssmutshack.com/2013/03/perv-packs-fandom-primer-hockey-rpf.html

I always enjoy your Treehouse Reversebang posts!

[pentapus]

Thank you for the links. I had seen the first but not the second, and I love reading intro/guides that tell a good story and give recs.

My question had been intended get at where to find Hockey RPF fans, but instead I got a lot of great blog and rec links... hardly a bad outcome. In SGA, I knew exactly how to get some SGA fans to give me SGA prompts to draw. In Hockey RPF, it's like there's a lot of mysterious wizards working behind the curtain, the results of which appear eventually on AO3...

[opusculasedfera]

(I hope you don't mind randoms answering? I'm a fan of your art, but I mostly lurk...)

Sadly, Hockey RPF is incredibly scattered. AO3 is the only really consistent place to find it. There are comms at hardtothenet, home_ice and hockeypedia, but only the last of those three is particularly active right now. (There's also a fairly active anonmeme hockeyrpfanon, but I don't know how you feel about those.) There are lots of people on twitter and tumblr who talk about it, but it's hard to find them among all the general hockey fan stuff, plus a lot of the rpf twitters are locked. I can give you some actual names, if you want, but it'll inevitably be a pretty random list, and someone else would probably have a different one.

[pentapus]

Thank you for the info. I'd been hoping for an easy answer - the secret hideout is HERE - but it's good to know I wasn't a total failure for not being able to find it. What I'd been focused on when I posted is that I have no idea where to talk to Hockey RPF people...e.g. if I want Hockey RPF prompts for art or to find out if there are any Hockey RPF challenges. I only know where to find the end product - AO3. But it sounds like there isn't really any good place to find those things.

Also, I would be interested in some names to follow just as a starting point! Thank you for taking the time to explain what you know. :)

[opusculasedfera]

No, there aren't a lot of good places for that, which is a shame, because I know people wish there was more art in this fandom.

Do you want general hockey names, or would you prefer more team specific ones? (The many teams being the other reason this fandom is distressingly scattered...)

[pentapus]

Well, being new, I am familiar with only the most accessible parts of the fandom, and I like the Pens best, but if there's some general hockey stuff that's great, I'd love to hear it. To a certain extent, I'm just looking for neat things I should check out.

[opusculasedfera]

A random selection of people that I follow on tumblr then: mistfarer, hontology, oflights, salvamisandwich, and aggressivebutterfly all talk about the Pens quite a bit. witchspell, boldmatter, bestliars, puckling, and elqiao talk about mostly other hockey things, but interestingly (bestliar is also active on DW, which I appreciate because mostly this fandom is not.) This is only a tiny fraction, but these people are fairly active, and you can poke around and find other people from there, which seems to be the only functional way to get things to happen in this fandom.

I am not really a fan of tumblr myself, but that seems to be the only way to know what's going on, so I have succumbed. Hope this is of some use to you; I'd also check out the non-rpf specific places other commenters mentioned.

[james]

I would do a reverse treebang for hockey rps! A lot of the hockey rps fandom I know of gathers around individual journals or tumblrs, which is frustrating because you can never know about all of them and yet people will do things like post fic in the comments to a post and then never report it to an archive.

On DW there is theyretotallypucking but it isn't very active, though it does have a great master list to primers for teams, pairings, and players. On LJ there is also 2mins4slashing which has fic only, but is a good place to read a lot of older stuff from before AO3 became big.

The only solution I've found has been to follow a few select tumblrs and read the awkward conversations that occur on tumblr and mostly not feel involved until I post a story, then a couple days later I no longer feel involved because there's no conversation happening.

[pentapus]

Haha, your last sentence is often how I feel in fandom. Thank you for the mini-rundown on Hockey RPF fandom. It makes it a lot easier to interpret to hear from somebody more involved than me. :)

(also Hockey RPF reversebang interest noted! Glad to hear it!)

[pentapus]

Posted. :)

[thefourthvine]

OMG, I would LOVE to do Treehouse Reversebang for hockey RPF! And, um, most of my hockey fandom interaction comes on Twitter - I just basically followed a couple of people, then followed the people they were talking to, and so on and so on and so on.

There are also a couple of LJ communities; I see a lot of people asking about DW communities, but I don't know if there is one. And Tumblr? But honestly, for me it's just Twitter right now, because I don't have time for Tumblr.

[pentapus]

And I would LOVE to draw you a Hockey RPF prompt. I am, well, an awful commenter, even if I try to claim being out of the country is a reason, but I loved, loved, loved both of your 'inverted cliche' stories. Please write a hundred more.

(Now, for my Hockey RPF life to be complete, please convince thehoyden she should also want to do a reversebang. Or well, anyone else who likes writing Sidney and Geno. :P)

I haven't even thought of using Twitter. Are they RPF twitters or non-fannish Hockey stuff?

[thefourthvine]

Both? The people I read are mostly RPF folks, but a lot of people do both - follow a bunch of hockey journalists and hockey players and etc, and also a bunch of fans. (I follow a few hockey journalists, but mostly I just hope other people will alert me to interesting stuff. And they mostly do.)

I probably can't convince thehoyden to do a reversebang, but I will try! I will try to persuade MANY Sid/Geno writers. (To be honest, I'm not entirely sure I can write to a drawn prompt, but I will do my best, anyway.)

[twentysomething]

Aaaaaaaand she's already convinced me, if you're willing to have me. This is the cutest best idea and I am in love with it (and coincidentally, also your art.)

Re: more sources for hockey things, following club and player instagram feeds is really enjoyable (for example, the time they put up a picture of Flower and Sid doing rock paper scissors for who had to give the phone interview on NHL Network, and it's two frames in one and you know Sid made Flower do enough rounds so that Tanger is in one pic but NOT THE LATER ONE (AND SID STILL LOST AND HAD TO DO THE INTERVIEW) and other things of that nature)

[pentapus]

Haha, yay! I am always so happy and lucky when I realize that people are willing to get into something like this with me. And you are such a lovely writer, I am absolutely willing to have you. :D

I will probably make a post about the Reversebang today or tomorrow. (And I'll ping people who said they were interested if they don't see the post.)

Oh man, that is a lovely freaking detail. I had been kind of thinking I was the RPF fan who avoids the actual people, but clearly I can not do that.

[pentapus]

Posted. :)

[pentapus]

In restrospect, I realized I might have put you on the spot a bit with talk about recruiting. I'm sorry about that. Having just discovered that Hockey fandom is a bit decentralized, it is awesome for me for you to tell even one other Hockey RPF fan. And you already did! Thank you! \o/

Re: depending how worried you are about drawing to a picture, I can show you the sketch before I ink/color to see if that's something you can write to. And regardless, I'll ask you a bit about preferred genres and prompts first. My goal is to create a prompt for the writer, not just for me. :) Anyway, I will post more about it sometime in the next few days.

[thefourthvine]

Not at ALL on the spot. More people who sign up means a) more Sid/Geno ART and b) more Sid/Geno stories! There is no bad here. And it's not like I'm abducting people's pets until they sign up.

(I am not saying I'm always above pet abduction, mind you. I consider that an as-necessary item in the toolkit. I'm just saying I'm choosing not to employ it at this time.)

And woo! I'm looking forward to this. You've never run a Treehouse at the same time as I was actively writing in one of your fandoms, so this will be super exciting.

[pentapus]

Posted. :)

[tielan]

1. Yes. As long as it was at least Maria, and possibly Steve/Maria. :)

2. tumblr takes some getting used to, I think. It's very "ooh pretty pictures" but conversations are much more difficult than they are over here.

Not sure about equivalent of the lj user icon. There's the user icon/avatar thingy that appears besides people's posts. However, if you want to draw chibis for specific fandoms/characters/pairings, there will be plenty of reblogs of your work! Being as graphically oriented as it is, tumblr is great for artwork and drawings, as well as photos and gifsets, etc.

However, be warned, you're also rather likely to find people on tumblr who'll save your graphic, and post it without attribution or linkage back to your tumblr, so they're the ones who get the notification of reblogs.

I tend to just keep an eye on the people I follow and the tags for the female characters I like best. Which right now is pretty much "Maria Hill".

[pentapus]

1. Haha, you know me, I want it to be Natasha, Natasha, Natasha. We'll see! I probably owe you for last time, I guess. :P

Thanks for the Tumblr tips. I've been wondering if I should start signing my drawings in the corner with a little pentapus because of Tumblr's lack of attribution...

[tielan]

Well, there's a lot of Natasha-love out there already. I'd like to see more Maria-love myself.

[pentapus]

Oh, totally, as far as coverage, Maria gets the short end of the stick. I'm lucky that in this case my character of interest is quite popular.

[tielan]

I think the closest I've been to my character of interest being popular would be Sam Carter of SG1, and even that was mostly in the context of her relationship with Jack O'Neill.

[flamebyrd]

I would do a Treehouse Reversebang! :D For the first time ever, but I'm trying to get back into the writing game.

I have no useful advice on the other two fronts. :/

[pentapus]

No worries. I got lots of good advice for 2 and 3 already. Interest noted! Which fandoms would you want to do, do you think?

[flamebyrd]

I can't do Naruto and I'm not certain I'd feel comfortable writing Hockey RPF (although I do read it, cough), but the others are fine. :D

[everbright]

Do you follow impertinence? She writes a bunch of stuff and recs and she's been in hockey RPF fandom since the Vancouver Olympics gave it a huge boost. She tends to have friends and talk about other fandom people in hockey RPF, so it's a good place to start stalking peopel from. Uh, she's got a comm. over on LJ too, http://hardtothenet.livejournal.com/ which tends to be variably chatty, and then the more serious business hockey comm. is http://ontd-pucking.livejournal.com/

[pentapus]

I don't follow her. Thank you for the links! I can't believe how many different hockey comms there are.

[chococat]

I don't know if you'd be interested but the hockey big bang is going on and it'd be wonderful to seeyour work there.

[steammmpunk]

Hi! Sorry to butt in, I'm not even sure you'll remember me since it's been so long XD. But I'd like to put in my 2 cents for #2 since I've been using tumblr for awhile now and generally like it better than DW/LJ. It is quite different, some fandoms are rather big (avengers is one of the big ones I think, and I keep seeing hockey RPF as well, but I'm not sure that's big).

Following works similar to friending/adding to your circle thingy, if you login to tumblr your main page (dashboard) will show the posts from the blogs you are following (like your reading/friends page).

Navigating is part tagging and part following community type tumblr blogs (where they gather certain fandom contents by reblogging). If you search for tags, only the first 5 tags on original posts will show up (for example, if you post your own art or fic/ficlet and put identifiable tags - like avengers, black widow etc. - within your first 5 tags it will show up when people search for it. If you reblog it and add tags that will not show up on search.

There is a equivalent of the lj user icon, it shows up small but people make it bigger and I have seen people post icons for others to use (and there is definitely a demand, but depends on fandom).

Communication is not as easy, but you can leave comments in some cases and you can answer them by making new posts with your replies if you like. People use ask as well, you can either privately or publicly answer (or not). Feedback is mostly likes and reblogs and that will show up as # notes.

I'm not sure if this helps at all, but I'd love to see your stuff on tumblr even though we are not in same fandoms anymore (I was actually talking about seeing my favorite fanartists from LJ/DW days on tumblr today and came to DW in ages and saw this post haha). There are lots of fanarts there, one of the reasons I like. So let me know if you have more questions, or if you decide to join tumblr and stuff. Take care! (oh, I am steammmpunk.tumblr.com there if you like to check it out)