Introduction Post

[merricatb]

I signed up for an account to join the smallfandomfest, but now that I'm here I guess I should post something? Anyway, I'm MerricatB and I'm seriously hyperfixated on Sense8 right now so any additional content is good content. I started writing fanfiction for the first time ever in March 2025 and have since published 23 fics! So you can find me on Ao3 if that's your thing. Or if you want to chat about Sense8, hit me up and I'll respond.

Comments

[maevedarcy]

Heyyyy! Welcome! if you want somewhere to start getting the hang of things, may I recommend the following things?
- Join communities and comment on things! Commenting is kinda a Big Thing on DW. Some recs for communities that might be up your alley: polyamships, fourormore (I mod for both of those polyam comms), addme_fandom (for finding people with similar interests in fandom), justcreate (creative community where you can check in once a week with your creative endeavors), recthething (for recs), sunshine_revival and snowflake_challenge for seasonal journaling prompts, yuletide (winter exchange for small fandoms), and obviously newcomers (for all the hot tips on how to make the most out of DW)

- You don't have to decide what to make your journal about. It can be about everything and anything and then some. If you only want it to post fics, that's definitely an option. If you want to use it for journaling, that's also an option. If you want to use it to talk about your fics in a "behind the scenes" sort of way, that's also fine. For the longest time I thought I needed like a "theme" for my journal and it turns out I don't lol

- If you're feeling ambitious, I'd say you should totally try to complete goals_on_dw's Fannish 50 in 2025 (if you decide to make it about your fics, you already have half of the posts covered)

- Also icons! You can make icons and upload them to your profile so you can use different icons for commenting on different things. If you want, I can totally make sense8 icons for you to get started, I love making graphics <3

I hope you have fun in here! People are nice I promise :)

[merricatb]

OMG you are the absolute sweetest person in the world! Thank you so much for this warm welcome and making it a little less overwhelming :) I will definitely check everything out. Anything that feeds the sense8 brainrot is most helpful lol.

[maevedarcy]

I love feeding the brainrot and making people find ways to put that brainrot into other things as well!

That reminds me, if you want, you can subscribe to the sense8ao3feed_feed and everytime someone posts a new sense8 fic to AO3 you will see it in your Reading page. To see your reading page, just click where it says "Reading" under your username on the top left corner of the page. That's where you'll see evrything you've subscribed to. It's like your tumblr dashboard.

Also, you can go to communities and add /read at the end to see what all the memebers in that comm are posting on their journals and see if you get ideas on what to post or comms to join. No one told me this trick when I joined and I remember being so happy to see there were ways to find more people with similar interests!

Additionally, if you make a post to your journal about a fic you published, you can definitely crosspost to other communities following their formats. For example, you can make a post on your journal with your latest Rajalangang fic, but also make the same post to polyamships and promote the fic there as well. Most comms will have templates already for you to use so things are even easier for you!

And finally, the character limit on DW is HUGE, meaning you can definitely, totally write endless rambles and/or fics on DW itself.

Okay, that's it. I'll let you discover things on your own, but I honestly stumbled into using DW for more than just exchange letters and I wish someone had told me there's so much to do and explore if you just click on things lol

[merricatb]

Oh you mean not everybody just refreshes a filtered AO3 search for sense8 20 times a day for new content like I do? LOL That's very good to know, thank you!

I'm beginning to realize DW is much more vast than I initially thought. I have no idea how active I'll be here but I'm so, so excited about any fests with sense8 options and prompts. I appreciate you suggesting it and being my tour guide here. If you enjoy making them and want to give me some icons (and probably tell me what to do with them too lol) it would be most appreciated. :)

[maevedarcy]

Some (admittedly simple) sense8 icons for you. You can just upload them where it says "create" and now you have different icons to show some personality when you comment or something. You can see that now I selected a different icon to comment to show that you can stay in your same account but have different fannish interests ready to go.

[maevedarcy]

oopsies I screwed up the icons sorry. Here they are

[merricatb]

OMG thank you so much! Ok I'll figure out how to use these and keep exploring. There is so much to learn here!

Welcome!

[ysabetwordsmith]

newcomers has lots of resources about how to use Dreamwidth and where to find things you'll enjoy here. If you're coming from Tumblr, soc_puppet is posting tutorials for that angle.

The Follow Friday Master Post has lists of active communities by topic where you can look for some based on your interests. Many bloggers use recurring posts to pin down their key interests and maintain activity, which is also a good source of inspiration if you aren't sure what you want to post yet. The current big event is the sunshine_revival in July.

I couldn't find a dedicated community for Sense8 but there is tvfanfiction.

Re: Welcome!

[merricatb]

Thank you!