Life things

Do you ever go through your old fic/art and feel like you can touch the progress you made since then, mental-health wise?

I’ve been going through my (unfinished) series of FrostIron letters Rumor Has It, and holy fuck does’t it fit with how I felt back then. I mean, pretty much everything I wrote/started in 2012 is filled with people feeling absolutely shitty about themselves tbh, but RHI was a special case bcause it’s

a) epistolary, and therefore written almost exclusively in first person

and b) meant to end on a sad/tragic note. I don’t think I’ve ever written anything angsty that wasn’t meant to have a sort of happy ending before I started RHI, and I definitely haven’t since (yeah, even my monster WIPs that are still unfinished were always meant to end on a positive note)

It’s weird to se all those things I wrote from late 2011 through 2012 and think ‘woah, I really don’t want to go back to that headspace’
(I have an entire RP character that I loved & whom I still find interesting, but whom I don’t feel I can ever play again. She was way too inspired by how shitty I felt for that to be a viable option. She was an occasion to vent off some steam, but honestly I’m kinda happy leaving her behind forever in that respect, and preserve the good memories.)

Idk it’s a strange sensation for me–but also really a relief, and it helps sort of put my bad days in perspective tbh. Doesn’t always work and sometimes I still do feel shitty, but when I look back at those works and look down at my tattoo, at least I can say I’ve gone forward and things are better now.

and honestly I’m both a little emotional and pretty proud about that.

Thesis things

So I’m still working on the thesis, and how writing fanfiction (plus all surrounding activities) can help people get better at writing and understanding a foreign language (in this case english because it’s where we can get the most data, lbr). For now what I need to focus on are:

• Ways to implement a fanfic workshop in a school context (as an after class activity, but with a possibility of making it be a bonus for students’ grade) which includes
  
  
  • Thinking about the organization thereof
  
  
  • Figuring out ways to encourage people who might not be familiar with fanfiction to try their hands at it (Drabbles could be very helpful for that)
  
  
  • Figuring out where to post stories so that students can get feedback on them & therefore interact with people in english (this is mostly a matter of platform tbh. I’m thinking either AO3, LJ or Tumblr collective account for now, but the management thereof still needs to be worked out)
  
  


• Gathering a corpus of texts aiming to demonstrate that people progress in english during their stay in fandom via two methods:
  
  
  • A corpus of several fics from the same author spread over a period of months, possibly years. (Kind of wish I could use my own fic for that but I doubt it’d be ethical). This is going to require some kind of official post in the next few days (I still need to email my supervisor to check the method)
  
  
  • Possibly a corpus of several text posts from Tumblr with the same idea in mind (tbd)
  
  
  • A survey allowing people to anonymously tell me about their experience writing fics in English as a foreign language (when they started, whether they studied english before/at the time, etc.) and whether or not they feel it helped them learn English and how (again, that’s going to require some help from volunteer fic writers, but the exact shape of it remains to be determined)
  
  

I’ll also need to have at least one section of my research dedicated to presenting what fandom is, how it was born, how it works, etc. which I want to start planning this week and write as soon as I get Fic back.

My priority is to have the workshop thing thought-out and ready ASAP so that I can maybe contact high-schools to ask if they’d be willing to try the thing out with me (legalities of the thing to be worked out, but if it’s possible it’s better to start with a full project) and then put out the surveys so I have time to gather as many answers as possible (because more data=more credibility)

I’m not gonna lie, I’m hoping you guys will help out with the data-gathering when I put the official starting info out xD (I’ll make puppy eyes, promise!)

Life things

Okay but seriously the most racist, xenophobic, sexist, antisemitic and homophobic French political party came out first during the 1st turn of the latest elections (for regional representatives) and at this point I’m genuinely disgusted with people’s decision. I wish I could say I’m surprised, too, but I’m not.

Idk, to me this is really symptomatic of two things: one, the rise of xenophobia and islamophobia (as well as other types of discriminations) for the past few years in my country, and the disengagement of people where politics are concerned. It’s just… really worrying tbh–less than half the people on the voting lists voted (43,01% to be precise) and the numbers are even lower for the people between 18 & 30yo.

I’m not going to pretend I have a solution, honestly. I started voting super late imo, and only because I ended up getting scared for my country. But nowadays I’m really starting to question that and the reasons behind this situation because it’s taking frankly scary proportions :/