#I've been reblogging others' pitches on my main blog btw

[hxhhasmysoul]

Since you‘ve been into the fandom space due to hxh and jjk…

Which is very valid btw, sometimes it’s takes a while to jump into a community, especially since fandoms are such a mixed bag.

…Have you made some friends/mutuals that you never expected to be friends/mutuals with?

When I joined the HxH fandom was quite insular. There were some very visible big name fans who just engaged with one another. And when you look at fic recs here for HxH you still get the echos of that. You will see certain names repeated over and over again. Actually having someone rec my fics recently made me cry because if my friend Subdee wasn't on a given day on tumblr often when I posted my writing here no one would even leave like on it. I had mutuals literally scroll past my writing and reblog from me fics or ao3 links authored by the popular HxH and not even leave a courtesy like on my fic that was posted around the same time as the reblog.

And this was the situation several years after I joined. For a long time I felt I won't make any friends in the fandom. I actually made my first friends in the fandom when I participated in 2018 HxH big bang. After that event I befriended some people, and I even became acquaintances with some of the popular HxH blogs, even mutuals with some. So yeah, all the friends I made in the fandom were unexpected.

And honestly the HxH fandom here on tumblr is really cool and that's mostly thanks to @shalnarkonice who's the true hero of the fandom. Shal runs the hxhbbs, reverse bb, several other events and a thriving discord server, we made a zine together as in I pitched the idea to Shal and she just fucking put a team together. I had never expected that I would do a huge year long project with Shal. But generally Shal probably brings at least half the fans here together, facilitates so many friendships. HxH fandom really lucked out that it has Shal.

In the JJK fandom on the other hand I hadn't expected to make any friends because the JJK fandom is a fucking dumpster fire, generally, and here in particular, though from what I've heart twitter is worse. Compared to HxH which is a fandom in hibernation, JJK is alive and vibrant. But unlike the HxH fandom, it's full of people who hate read the manga, people who are in the fandom to shit on it, to post their bad faith takes. Or people who just want to write that they don't understand what's going on, lol. Or sometimes just write takes to prove that they really didn't pay attention to anything in the manga. Or just post thirst, and like.. I like some thirst, like this nice dessert to the fandom experience. In JJK it's the main course and it's just too much for me. And there is some art, but mostly of characters I care little about. And it's completely disorganised, there is not Shal who gives the fandom structure so that you can engage with others at this low emotional stakes level by just doing stuff next to each other in an event and get closer if you notice that you vibe together.

No, you have to do direct engagement and that's scary. But I found amazing people in it too. There's cursedvibes and his meta is so good, actually he's my subdee in the JJK fandom. They are both meta royalty plus they are just super neat to talk to in private about anything and everything. I also befriended the wonderful yuujispinkhair, and this is very much wow.