Mother of Re-Invention

Challenge #7: Three (or more) things you like about yourself

This is hard. I am actually pretty comfortable with and positive about myself these days, but when I try to think about specific things I like about myself, my mind goes blank. Hmm.

( Okay, I think I've got three )

Challenge #4: Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page

I'll go with the last fannish page I bookmarked: TNG-Picard.com, a beautifully organized collection of TNG and Picard costumes and props, including close-ups of details.

Challenge #5: Create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts.

This is surprisingly hard. Everything top of mind for me right now is something that no one reading this has any power over, and mostly involves the world being less of a horrible trash fire.

I guess to that end, if you have any money to spare, would you consider making a donation to an organization trying to do good in the world? Some that I support are Flatbush Cats, The Wildcat Sanctuary, Doctors Without Borders, Partners in Health, and Feeding America.

If you're artistically minded, I would love mood boards, cover art, or fan art of any of my stories, but especially anything related to Pi'maat or Scenes From Will Riker's War.

This last one is a huge stretch, but if any vid makers out there want to make an Star Trek: The Next Generation ensemble fanvid to We Are Going to Be Friends by The White Stripes, that would be amazing.

Challenge #3: Write a love letter to fandom.

John Green says of going to home games for AFC Wimbledon, "I'm with 8,000 people whose love is oriented in the same direction as mine." That, to me, is fandom. It's a group of people who have oriented their love in a similar direction, whether that's toward a show or an actor or a band or a character or a hobby or something else entirely. (Honestly, love oriented in the same direction might be foundational to almost all human-built institutions, and the problem with some of them is that the object of their love doesn't inspire pro-social behavior, but that's outside the scope of this post.) It doesn't matter what the object of the love is so much as the way that all that love aimed at a similar place amplifies itself, like vector multiplication.

The funny thing is, the way I do fandom these days, It's almost less about the object of the fandom and more about the idea of fandom, the love and the passion it inspires. Which is not to say that I'm not in some fandoms. I'm very active in Star Trek fandom, and love hanging out with people who love it with me. It's always fun to find people who share some of my other current interests like Sherlock Holmes, Murder She Wrote, Superman, and Jane Austen, or to reminisce happily with people who remember the loves that I'm less active in but still remember fondly like X-Files and Stargate.

But there are definitely people in fandom spaces with whom I share no fandoms, and I still enjoy their company, because they're doing the fandom thing too. That is, they're passionate about something, and so passionate that they want to talk about the thing, and make more of the thing, and put their joy and passion into the world so that other people can share it. Elsewhere on this year's snowflake, someone mentioned how much they love seeing someone be passionate about something, even if they don't share that passion. I like that. It is a joy to see humans be happy and excited about things they love, and to be unabashedly passionate about them.

Let people enjoy things has become a meme, almost a cliche, but that's because it so often needs to be said. Fandom at its best is a safe place where people are allowed to enjoy things without mockery or disdain, and in a world where that is all too often not the case, that's a very valuable thing.

"Conspiracy" is a weird episode. I don't know why I got the urge to rewatch it, much less icon the heck out of it, but here we are.

( Onward for 36 icons featuring beardless Riker and Enterprise glamor shots )