THANK YOU FOR ALL THE BIRTHDAY GIFTS! AND IF I HAVEN'T ALREADY THANKED YOU - I CAN BLAME LIVEJOURNAL

[red_satin_doll]

Firstly: Thank you everyone who sent me the wonderful birthday wishes last week in the form of messages or as gifts in your journal. It really meant a lot to me, and made turning 46 a lot more fun than I'd anticipated. It was a lovely, low-key day: my sweetie took me out to the new Thai restaurant in the area we'd recently heard about; and she bought me a tin of one of my favorite teas from Harney and Sons, "Bankok" (green tea with lemongrass, ginger, vanilla and coconut flavors.) A cup of that before bed is now my nightly ritual.

If you posted birthday wishes or a gift on your journal and I have not thanked you yet, it means one thing: LJ is SCREWING UP notifications and I don't know about it. (I've gotten a grand total of one notification in the last 30 days.) I thought it was just me until I just happened to see that velvetwhip posted a complaint about it on her LJ, just happened to find a lovely birthday message and graphic that she posted for me; and then just happened to see comlodge make a remark about having trouble posting a gift banner (which is utterly gorgeous) she'd made for me, and I'm thinking, "What? What is this gift we speak of?" Then today I just happened to see kikimay's birthday graphic for me with a cap of Buffy receiving her umbrella in The Prom which gives me so many feelings, as well as several other times she name-checked me, and that's not counting the times other folks like eilowyn or kwritten have name-checked me, etc.

Folks, I'm all for "happenstance" and "serendipity" - but not on a social networking site. Not when people are making me gifts and wishing me happy birthday, or giving me free PR by referencing my posts. I want to know about this stuff because to NOT stop by and say "THANK YOU" is just plain damn rude, IMO. That said, I know that children are starving in Africa - starving all over the world in fact - and I'm sitting her whining like a priviledged American white gal. (Which I happen to be, but nevermind.)

If kerkevik_2014 hadn't PM'd me about a completely charming and sexy Tara/Faith drabble he wrote for me, I never would have known about it. Sweet, sexy, taking-command Tara is pure catnip to me - and being the gentle guide for a suddenly-shy and insecure Faith? OH YES PLEASE.  It's easy to forget that Tara possessed a core of strength and confidence even if we rarely saw it before S6. Remember, she is the one who pursued Willow - NOT the other way around. I was a just-out lesbian in the '90's, just before the show came on tv and I know how much courage that would have taken at that time (and probably still does.)

SO - if you've mentioned me or have made a prezzie for me, or just something you think I might like to see, please don't be shy about PM'ing me until this notification nonsense gets straightened out.

SECONDLY: comlodge told me that the aforementioned Buffy tribute banner she made for my birthday was inspired by my recent "happy birthday Buffy" post and that in itself is the best present. If I can make someone else see Buffy and her world through my eyes even a little, not by shouting or arguing or arm-twisting, but simply by loving her and sharing what she means to me, then that makes me incredibly happy. comlodge's banner reflects what so much of what I love about Buffy - the girl, the woman, the warrior; daughter, sister, friend and lover. Her's is an incredible journey.

Speaking of incredible journeys: kwritten posted an insanely gorgeous Buffy, Anya, Willow, Dawn/Faith fic, "Oh, You're Here Too?" set immediately post-Chosen. Anya offers Buffy friendship and solace after the battle. Not AU. She wrote it for a prompt from kikimay but it reflects so much about how I see Buffy in that immediate period about 1000X better than I could hope to. It's a short story but it takes the reader on a complete journey that feels novelistic, in a series of short scenes: from Buffy's trauma and dissociation, the fatigue and inability to process everything after the battle in the Hellmouth, to a place that feels "warm, (un)finished, (in)complete" as Buffy contemplates the "the unknown future" before her, in the company of beloved friends and family.

Comments

[ruuger]

Happy birthday, if belatedly (I haven't been online much the last few weeks and I'm trying to catch up). Your posts are always a pleasure to read, even though I'm not very good at remembering to comment, and I'm very glad that you decided to join LJ and Buffy fandom :) *hugs*

(As for the notifications not working, have you tried searching for your username? That might uncover more mentions that you've missed)

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the kind words, sweetie! I'm very glad to have found this fandom *hugs you back*

BTW - I really don't pay attention to my DW like, at all. So did you do another Big Damn Love Fest and I missed it, or have you just been busy this year and it didn't happen?

(As for the notifications not working, have you tried searching for your username? That might uncover more mentions that you've missed)

I didn't even know I could do that - YOU ARE THE BEST, THANK YOU!

[ruuger]

I'm planning on running BDLF again this year, but I haven't gotten around getting the ball running yet. For one, I need to renew my DW account to be able to put up a poll to see if there's even any interest :D

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

What about running it on LiveJournal? I got a LOT more responses to the version I posted here on my journal than at DW. I guess it depends though on where the people submitting stuff mostly hang out? (I keep hearing "go to DW, LJ fandom is dead etc etc" but the convos I'm having here and everything I see tell me differently.)

[ruuger]

Yeah, for me it's the other way around - I get a lot more responses on DW than on LJ (although these days by 'a lot more' I mean 5 comments on DW vs 1 on LJ). Also, I find DW to the the more stable platform and have other reasons as well why I prefer it as well.

But I have thought about having the fest on LJ as well, since Buffyverse folks on LJ seem terribly hostile towards change, and in my experience often refuse to even consider participating on other platforms - I've seen people complain about how there isn't any [insert pairing here] fic written anymore, and then when I've recced stories on AO3, they've have told me that they only read fic on LJ. And I just don't see the point of it. Where fandom goes, I go.

(or at least try to go - my dalliance with Tumblr lasted bit over a year before I grew bored :D)

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I think human beings are resistant to change, period. (The term "glove compartment" f.ex. is a holdover from 100 years ago, even though no one puts gloves in them anymore! and remember the Susan B Anthony and Sacajewa dollar coins? Of course, if the government hadn't made them look and feel EXACTLY like quarters people might have actually used them. *lol*)

I did set up the DW account because Snowpuppies recommended it. I find for myself, it doesn't work so well with my ADD and distractability to try to manage two accounts, then have two sets of comments to answer, to groups of "readership/audience" to try and build and so forth. And cross-posting from DW to LJ was never as easy as it was supposed to be but I guess I didn't take the time to master it. (I'm not lazy and impatient, nope, not me.)

I've seen people complain about how there isn't any [insert pairing here] fic written anymore, and then when I've recced stories on AO3, they've have told me that they only read fic on LJ. And I just don't see the point of it.

People are strange. (Keep in mind I came into fandom via moulin rouge on ff.net and various sites ten+ years ago, so I guess I'm familiar with the idea that not everything is in one place. ff.net was the ONLY place to go for mr fic, then you needed another site for general discussion etc.)