Ramblings...

I've come to the conclusion that the X-Files without Duchovney doesn't work for me. Not at all. I think it's the fact that I've only seen 2 eps so far, with 3 on tape, and I have no desire to watch them. Not that I don't like Doggett - I'm probably one of the five people left who does like Doggett, but it was the Mulder/Scully relationship that I enjoyed - or lack of or speculation thereof - so without Mulder, it's just not the same show. ::sniff:: So I feel the need to find a good MSR that I can sink my teeth into; the last one I tried wasn't quite what I needed - not on the same scope as say "Dance Without Sleeping" or "Iolokus." So I guess what I'm looking for is another fic like that. Unfortunately, without Chronicle X to steer me in the right direction, I may have to grit my teeth and head to the NGs to see what's good and what's not.

Have I mentioned that I love rec sites?

Everyone has a Livejournal these days. It's so strange - I wondered if I started at a random journal (in this case, Sio's - link on the left), would I end back here? So I clicked on Sio's friends and about 9 clicks later, voila, I was back at Christine's journal, which leads right back here. Interesting, huh? And most of these people, I believe, are fanfic writers (from what I could glean from their journals) so it probably means that fandom isn't quite as big as everyone thinks it is - which means we all know each other as we drift from fandom to fandom. Or if we're not writing in those fandoms, then we're reading in them and occasionally ::gulp:: doing the FB thing.

The other thing I came across was the discussion of cliques. Honestly, I have no idea what an online clique looks like or acts like. Yeah, there were cliques in high school, but when you're a flakey artistic athlete, cliques don't apply to you - you're kind of like the Visa card of the high school, accepted everywhere. But anyway, reading lots of discussion about cliques and private lists and I never really thought about it before. Yes, I can tell when X is friends with Y - you get the from reading author's notes or looking at their link list. They pop-up on mailing lists together, bring their friends with them, and then there are in the in-jokes and references to things that happened in other fandoms. And there are other people who are friends, but you'd never guess it from the way they behave online in "front" of other people - and then one day, it's like, "Oh, so they *hang out* together!" If you could actually "hang out" on the Internet. but that's a topic for another day.

Anyway, so it's a strange thing - this online friend thing. I've got several very good online friends - some of whom I've mentioned here, some of whom I haven't. Not all of them belong to fandom (one I met through our mutual love of ice-skating and good, short fiction) and others are FBers who didn't know what they were getting into when they wrote to me. In one case, it was me giving the pages of FB and then voila. But it's funny how you become online friends - sometimes you click, sometimes you don't. Sometimes it's a one email stand, other times you've got pages and pages of emails. It's gotten to a point when I know when I download my email who the email is from - without even looking at the name. I know X usually writes around this time and that Y takes about two or three days to respond. Z usually writes on the weekends and so on so forth.

Anyway, back to this online clique thing. Could it be a perceived thing? I mean, who decides who is in a clique and who is not? And then how do you decide who the popular online people are? And why is this even an issue? I'm only asking because people talk about it in their online journals as if it were an issue. The great thing about online - virtual living - is that you can become friends with anyone you want to - well, for the most part. Sometimes, it takes a really long time; it's not like you can say, "Hey, you're cool, let's go get a cup of coffee."

I don't think I'm in a clique. I admit, there are certain people I "run around with" (identities concealed for their protection, but the guilty parties know who they are). I hope I'm not clique-y. I avoided that when I was in high school - which is probably why I'm fairly well-balanced and only slightly bitter about high school (which has nothing to do with cliques). And it is fun to have friends in fandom, I admit that. They give you the support you need, the encouragement, the betas, and the ideas. They make you laugh and they make it worthwhile to stick around. I didn't really strike up a friendship with anyone in "Gladiator" and maybe if I had, I would still be there (the slashy direction of the fandom notwithstanding), the sole Lucilla/Maximus writer out there. But it might have been fun - with friends. But I don't really miss "Gladiator" - it was one of those things that came and went like that.

My Trek friends are a lot of fun. They all have different aspects and know different things - and so maybe I do FB their stories more. Maybe I do recommend their stories more than I recommend others - on private mailing lists, in my links list. They may do the same for me. So that could be clique-y, who knows?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that yes, it is possible to make good friends in fandom and it's hard to be in a fandom when everyone else already has a friend or two; but give it time, and soon you'll find yourself in good company. Then you too can muse about cliques and popular people and what it means in an online context. I certainly have no answers, no, other than that I'm having a great time and I hope that 2002 is as fun as 2001 was.