Witch's Familiars

PSA: LiveJournal may be about to geolock to Russia. If you have shit there that you like, and want to see again without visiting Russia, now's a good time to save it. Here's a long bluesky thread about it by denise, which includes ways to export LJ to DW and/or to your drive. IDK how people are saving LJ scrapbook.

I'd say pass it along, but I think it's pretty widely broadcast by now. Pass it along to spaces where one can find LJ people are who aren't on DW?

Anyway, on with the show.



Challenge #1: The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

Hi! I'm Muccamukk or Mucca. You may know me from Age of Sail, Stargate, Babylon 5, Marvel Comics, Band of Brothers or Top Gun fandoms, plus an extremely random selection of others across twenty plus years in online fandom spaces. I used to write fic and comment quite a bit, though I've been less active the last few years.

My pinned post and profile seem to be in good order, and I do still post link lists, book reviews and music from time to time.

I helped mod Snowflake for a few years there, and am taking this year off (mostly), so I'm looking forward to slightly lower-stakes participation, and maybe digging up some old memories/meeting new friends.

If you want to play an ice breaker game, check out my 2025 Media Tracker and ask me for a hot take on any albums, movies or shows on there (I think I've reviewed all the books up to December, which I'll cover in the next few weeks, but other media not as much).


Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom: Loosely defined! Post about your pets, pets from your canon, anything you want!

Somehow, the only pet I can now think of is Darwin from seaQuest: DSV, who isn't strictly speaking a pet. The talking robot dolphin was a lot of fun, though.

Instead: here's a list of fic I've written that include significant pets (canonical or otherwise), because writing pets is really fun, given they're often (very cute) chaos goblins designed to throw plans awry. (Presented in order written):

Unstinting
Fandom: Marvel 616 (Captain America)
Summary: Sam Wilson, downtime.
Pet Content: Sam Wilson's canonical cat, Figaro.
Read on DW | Read on AO3

Found Sleeping
Fandom: Band of Brothers
Summary: After Replacements, Bill and Johnny look for Bull.
Pet Content: Original mama cat and kitten characters.
Read on DW | Read on AO3

To Say Nothing of the Tiger
Fandom: Hornblower (TV)
Summary: Admiral Pellew wants a favour. Horatio wants to do anything to help. William just wants to spend time with Horatio.
Pet Content: Admiral Pellew's [historically] canonical tiger.
Read on DW | Read on AO3

A Dog's Eye View
Fandom: Band of Brothers
Summary: How Trigger sees the events of "Crossroads."
Pet Content: The dog that Tab probably stole found in Holland.
Read on DW | Read on AO3

Also, here's a picture of my cat, who is a fandom pet insofar as she's named after Kaylee from Firefly.( Read more... )


Challenge #3: Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

I have a vague memory of a History of Psychology class some twenty years ago, where the professor was talking about the uncertainty of knowing if the world you perceived with your sense and senses was even remotely similar to the world anyone else perceived. He described philosophy (which is more or less what psychology was for most of history) as being like creating an image of the world, and holding it cupped in your hands, then opening your hands to show it to other people, and inquiring if that matched their image of the world, a process which bagged a number of questions for future philosophers to attempt to unpack. (Some of all of these details may be incorrectly recalled, with apologies to Professor C.)

This is how I feel about art in general, and fandom specifically: that need to articulate how one understands the world, and see if anyone else feels the same. And, yes, that does often involve a lot of pornography, but the point of transformative works as a form of philosophical communication remains.

I see a story out in the wide world, and it sparks something in me: resonates with a life experience, and emotion, something I want and don't have, an aspirational or cautionary way of moving through life, a new idea, something that just really pisses me off. The story speaks to me about how I perceive the world, and I wonder if that's true for anyone else, too.

So I take that story, and say to a friend and peer, "Hey, did you see that? Did it inspire/intrigue/inflame you too?" And someone else comes back and says, "Yes, but also..." or "Yes, and this too..." or "No, because..."

(or they don't, ask me about being in a fandom of one...)

And that communication can take the form of edits, or discord conversations, or meta posts, or pic spams, or setting the story to music, or rewriting it into a new story. (In some ways, those reaction fic, that just retell a scene in a show or movie from the PoV of the author's blorbo are the most immediate form of this.)

As a form of philosophy, it's imperfect, and often shallow, and inherently biased, but holding my fannish heart between two cupped hands and showing it to others has gone a long way to formulating how I interact with the world, and often made me feel less alone.

And for that, I'm grateful.