I made 42 wallpapers all in all last year! A lot of tv and movies I’ve wallpapered a lot before such as Game of Thrones, Jeri Ryan, Oded Fehr or The Mummy movies but also some rarer ones such as The Expanse and Star Trek TOS. Dynasty/The Colbys and The Last Kingdom was completely new!
These are answers to questions from lirazel @ Dreamwidth
+ What’s your most productive fandom? What fandom have you written the most words/fics or made the most graphic/icons or whatever for?
The Mummy/The Mummy Returns by far! None other comes close. Over two decades I’ve made 60+ wallpapers, 130+ icons and 4 fanfics and a few FocusWriter and WinAmp skins. Plus spent hundreds of hours capping the movies, creating a Mummy fansite and maintaining it for many years. The Mummy also gave me two of my most favorite actors – for whom I also had fansites for more than a decade: Oded Fehr and Rachel Weisz. Also took over two Oded Fehr fanfic sites (where Ardeth Bay from The Mummy/Returns got the most fic), which I eventually combined this year as they were imported to AO3 via Open Doors – that Collection is still open for new works! I associate Oded Fehr and Rachel Weisz to the Mummy movies, and so also count wallpapers and icons I’ve made of them as themselves and in other roles as sort of part of my Mummy experience. The only fics I’ve ever been able to finish were for Ardeth Bay from The Mummy movies, and one for another Oded Fehr character. Ardeth Bay is my very most favorite character ever, and Rick and Evy as a couple are pretty much the only couple I’ve ever cared about.
The Mummy and The Mummy Returns were the motivation I started to look into capping HDR 4K (which was and is a bitch) five years ago, when they came out in that format. I always want the caps in best possible quolity!
So The Mummy and The Mummy Returns definitely stand out in my fandom history. I was obsessed with the movies and the characters and the world… but also The Mummy/Returns as well as the Oded Fehr fandom, while tiny, were very vibrant for several years in the early/mid 2000s, and fanart and fic got a lot of feedback back then so it was easy to be inspired and motivated to create sites/icons/wallpapers/fic.
+ Is there a particular fandom where it’s always been easy to produce lots of art and/or meta? One where the inspiration just kept bubbling up?
Yeah, The Mummy/The Mummy Returns! LOL I still love them as much as ever, and love doing wallpapers even though I can’t seem to find a fandom anywhere anymore. But that’s true for all fandoms these days – that I can’t seem to find them. But The Mummy/Returns is always something I can turn to and trust I’ll enjoy working on it and that inspiration and motivation happens! If the fandom still existed as it was in the early/mid 2000s, I’d be so happy and produce lots and lots of stuff.
+ Is there a fandom you just keep coming back to over the years even as other come and go?
Can you guess what my answer is…? The Mummy/Returns LOL I think I’ve probably done something The Mummy/Returns most years ever since The Mummy Returns was released in 2001 and I got sucked into fandom head first! I’ve been thinking I should do more FocusWriter themes now that the program’s theme making is a bit more developed than it was when I made the first themes, and I’m more practiced at it too! And sometimes I just feel nostalgic and like doing something with Ardeth or Evy or Anck-Su-Namun/Meela, so every year or every few years I do a new wallpaper or two.
(Although to be quite honest – I never leave my fandoms. I only gain new ones. Fandoms just die around me eventually as people move on to newer, shinier fandoms… combined with fandom platforms dying and fandoms fracturing to social media because of that. After Livejournal fandom went, I haven’t been able to find a true fandom community for any of my fandoms – either they’re old enough and small enough not to have survived LJ’s demise, or went to Tumblr which is like shouting into a void, or I guess, went to Discord which good luck finding a server and good luck being being in a timezone convenient to real-time chat servers. Also, I find the real-time chat format too demanding – I’m in a timezone where usually everybody is online and talking when I’m sleeping and vice versa. LJ/DW and forums worked much better for all timezones IMO. So I’d still be an active part of The Mummy fandom if it existed.)
The import of Oded Fehr fanfic archives Weaver Of Dreams and Land Of Dreams to AO3 via the Open Doors project is now complete, and the old URLs (https://oded-fehr.so-obsessed.com) redirect to the AO3 Collection: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/weaverofdreams/
I’ll continue as the Weaver Of Dreams admin, and the Collection is open for new works and updates to existing works! If you wish to share/update your works centering around Oded Fehr and/or his characters, just sign up (https://archiveofourown.org/invite_requests) for AO3 and while posting a new work, select “Weaver of Dreams (weaverofdreams)” as the Collection.
I think posting to AO3 is very easy, especially if you’ve posted to fanfiction.net or efiction software before. But AO3 has detailed FAQs on all this at https://archiveofourown.org/faq?language_id=en and this is the Posting & Editing FAQ: https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tutorial-posting-a-work-on-ao3?language_id=en
If you’d rather watch a video about how to post, just google it – there are many videos about it, such as this one
In the last year, especially for the last several months, it feels like not a week goes by that I read a childhood/teenage hero of mine has died! Many of them not even that old! Most recently Nichelle Nichols, Olivia Newton-John, David Warner and yesterday I learned that Jussi Hakulinen also has died. He was only 57!
Jussi Hakulinen was one of the most talented and famous Finnish song writers and musicians, and one of the founding members of Yö (Night) which is Finland’s 10th best-selling music artist of all time. He wrote and composed Joutsenlaulu (Swansong) which is one of the best loved Finnish songs ever. Joutsenlaulu to me is personally perhaps the quintessential Finnish song and probably my THE favorite Finnish song of all time.
Someone uploaded a video with both the Finnish lyrics as well as English translations of them to Youtube:
Can’t believe it’s been four months since my last wallpaper! Made two new ones today, featuring Zahn McClarnon in Longmire and Barkskins.