2 posts tagged “me”
My weekend was full of revelry, as befits a carousing classicist. I will post two photos, one of which has, like, totes gone up for my facebook photo omg!:
My mask glowed in black light, which means that at Renn Fayre, I am going to freak all the candyflippers out hardcore. And...
Nick, who was a pretty pretty princess for part of the night, but then he stole someone's sunglasses and ended up as a 1970s woman? I don't know. I like the glasses though.
Nick, who was a pretty pretty princess for part of the night, but then he stole someone's sunglasses and ended up as a 1970s woman? I don't know. I like the glasses though.
So, if anyone's interested, a book about the intarwebs in which I am interviewed has come out. It's called Convergence Culture, and it's by Henry Jenkins, who is pretty much the only scholar who writes about the internet that I think actually gets it. (Please note that I am willing to be convinced, but have not so far felt so good about people's opinions/ideas about fandom in particular).
It's funny to think about how much "the internet has changed my life." When I was twelve I got involved with Harry Potter fandom and that gave me the intellectual outlet to survive high school, basically. I met my roommate Allie through fandom (she fangirled me in commons the first time we met, a fact which I continue to be charmed by). Fandom took me to my first academic conference, to Florida and New York, where for the first time I interacted with adults in person as if I were one of them. I was sixteen.
When I was thirteen, fandom allowed my writing to be judged on its quality and not by my appearance. I can't tell you what a boon that was. If I had been in an audience of my peers, I would never have learned to write the way I do now. The fact is that fandom stretched me, put my writing in comparison with college students', and I didn't always come up wanting. I woke up in the mornings and wrote before school started and I came home and coded websites until my eyes hurt. Then I went to sleep and did it again. And I'm not sorry for not having a traditional social life -- what I had matured me and taught me to write and made me who I am today.
Anyhow, I'm babbling and getting a little maudlin. But if you're interested, you should pick up Professor Jenkins' book. He's a genuine authority, a good guy, and a great writer. Look me up in the index as "Flourish" (the pen name which, up until my freshman year of college, I still answered to in real life: Flourish or Flo, it was all the same.)
It's funny to think about how much "the internet has changed my life." When I was twelve I got involved with Harry Potter fandom and that gave me the intellectual outlet to survive high school, basically. I met my roommate Allie through fandom (she fangirled me in commons the first time we met, a fact which I continue to be charmed by). Fandom took me to my first academic conference, to Florida and New York, where for the first time I interacted with adults in person as if I were one of them. I was sixteen.
When I was thirteen, fandom allowed my writing to be judged on its quality and not by my appearance. I can't tell you what a boon that was. If I had been in an audience of my peers, I would never have learned to write the way I do now. The fact is that fandom stretched me, put my writing in comparison with college students', and I didn't always come up wanting. I woke up in the mornings and wrote before school started and I came home and coded websites until my eyes hurt. Then I went to sleep and did it again. And I'm not sorry for not having a traditional social life -- what I had matured me and taught me to write and made me who I am today.
Anyhow, I'm babbling and getting a little maudlin. But if you're interested, you should pick up Professor Jenkins' book. He's a genuine authority, a good guy, and a great writer. Look me up in the index as "Flourish" (the pen name which, up until my freshman year of college, I still answered to in real life: Flourish or Flo, it was all the same.)
