elrhiarhodan

Day 1 - Update Your Fandom Information

Completed. Can be found here

Day 2 - Fandom Origin Story

My fandom origin story is actually an oft-told tale, and I'm not going to repeat it here. You can find it on my very first post on my LiveJournal made when I started my fannish life back in 2010 and imported here on Dreamwidth.

Day 3 - A Fannish Opinion That Has Changed Over Time

Honestly, BBC Sherlock sucks balls. Sorry. I'm an ass and I know it.

Day 4 - Goals

I had a few DW/fannish oriented goals for 2024. How did I do?

1 - Complete a story that had one chapter left. FAILED
2 - Get back on track on another story. FAILED
3 - Post here more often. SUCCESS

Goals for 2025? Stay the course.

I'll continue to post on DW on a regular basis while my epic Star Wars time travel fix-it AU is still on-going. New chapters and a concurrent meta go live every Thursday (the chapters post on AO3, but I post a notification and the meta here on my journal). Right now, I've never missed a week, took off the month of November with advance notification because I needed a break, and have 20+ chapters in the hopper. I'm not bragging, just letting you know that I'm consistent. Lawful good, if you will. Also, chapters are about 5k to 7k in length. It's a meaty story. I'm proud of it.

Day 5 - Talk About What Has Improved in Your Life Thanks To Fandom

With one very dear exception, all of my friends are people I've met through fandom. They make my life worth living. I don't need to say more than that.

Challenge #10

Five Things!

Five lawyers I love to watch on YouTube, a/k/a, the Pro-Democracy gang:

( Under a cut because, well, political... )

Challenge #8

Talk about a current fannish project (fic, art, vid, crochet, funko pop village) (that you are creating or enjoying)


Most of 2022 and 2023, I had a lot of trouble getting momentum going on my writing. In March, 2022, I finished a huge fic that I had been writing serially for just about a year (it clocked in at nearly 190k and had gotten an amazing reception by the fandom) and it honestly knocked the stuffing out of me. I started a bunch of different projects but none of them seemed to gather any traction in my writing brain.

And admittedly, work was, at the time, all-consuming.

My besties in the Braincell have given me amazing encouragement, rooting for their favorites, but none of these projects gripped me emotionally. I’d get to 20k or so and the mojo would just leak out like a punctured tire.

I spent a year like that, and then it happened. I read a fic I hated, but I loved the trope. Oh, I love this trope. And I said, "Self, write this trope."

And I am. But I did something I’ve never done before.

I started OUT OF ORDER.

You’ve got to understand something, this is heresy for me. I’m a pantser, but I am an extremely orderly writer. I start at the beginning and I march forward like a wind up toy soldier, until I get to the end. No deviation. I have the story in my head and I write and write until it’s done, chapter after chapter, building the plot until the climax, and then I get to type "FIN" and I sigh with happiness. It might be three hundred words, it might be a hundred thousand words.

But with this one, I just decided to write a bunch of framing chapters. No, strike that, I decided to write the fun stuff first. And it’s kind of appropriate, since the damn trope is time-travel/fix it.

So, should I tell you about this fic? It’s an Obi-Wan story, of course. And the first chapter is angsty as hell, which is kind of why I hadn’t wanted to start writing there.

( Spoilers Ahoy )



I’m almost done with Part I, which is 12 chapters and about 55k. Most of what I’d written out of order belongs in Part II. The challenge with the fic is that even though it is heavily AU, it is still an in-universe story, and I’m not as well-versed in canon as I ought to be when writing something this complex. I’m spending a lot of time on Wookieepedia and also making up crap as I go. That means I'm making a lot of choices that may require extensive author’s notes. Or maybe not - do readers of fan fic really care about canon compliance?

I probably won’t start posting until I’m finished with Part II and well into Part III.

While writing my big Din/Luke fic was a creative challenge (The Stars Across the Sky Like the Scars Across Your Skin, the aforementioned 189K beast), writing every chapter on a week-by-week basis was too damn hard and burned me out. I need to be able to write and edit and polish and make changes and fix things that don’t work. I need to have more respect for my story. When writing Stars/Scars, I was chasing my tail and trying to keep the story’s fandom happy and satisfied - and while having a massive hit and kudos count is an achievement, ultimately, I feel that I could have respected the story a lot better if I took my time with it.

So, I am giving my time-travel fic all of the air it needs to breathe. I’m taking breaks to write "smaller" stories, like WildPeace, the timestamp for writestuff ’s Yooperverse AU, a schmoopy Secret Santa for my friend ell, and drabbles for starwars100, my new community that seems to be going like blasters in a pitched battle.

And just because I need a place to park it, this is a list of the stories I started, but lost traction on:

Modern AU Set in Coastal California - Architect Ben/Artist Qui-Gon (24.6K)
Fae AU Set in Modern Los Angeles - Entertainment Lawyer Ben/Screenwriter Qui/Part-Time Dog Rael (21K)
Stars/Scars Sequel (18.8k) (also may be the worst thing I’ve ever written)

Challenge #4

IceBreaker Challenge! Tell us about yourself.

Fandom Snowflake Day 4 is the challenge I like the least, and I’m caught between being a completist and avoiding it. So I’m a day behind.

If you want to know about my fannish self, you can check out my sticky page here. I also occasionally post random rambles that reveal bits and pieces of myself, so you can scroll through that tag here. But for this challenge, I’m ganking an excellent idea from one of my oldest fandom friends, tjs_whatnot.

You can pick one of the random questions that were generated by the Random Question Generator. I did do a bit of tailoring because I can’t quite help myself.

Once I answer the questions, I’ll paste the answers here in the body of this post.

1. What's the best compliment you ever received?
2. Who is someone you recently thought about that you haven't seen or talked to in years?
3. How difficult is it for you to try new things?
4. What is something that you like that your parents didn’t?
5. If each person had a warning label, what would yours say?
6. How do you entertain yourself when you're bored?
7. What's the story behind your favorite memento?
8. Do you have a moment in your life you wish you could relive?
9. What memory have you been thinking about a lot lately?
10. If you could be anything other than what you are, career-wise, what would you be? And what’s stopping you?

Challenge #2

In your own space, set yourself some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

1. Be more present here on Dreamwidth. That means posting once a week. Posting links to my fic, posting pictures of my jewelry, posting random stuff. I used to be good at that, then I got infected by the Tumblr and became so damn lazy. NO MORE!

2. Finish This is the Time of the Lost and Found. This story has one chapter left. The problem is, there's no real drama left in the story - this fic was an "inset" story in a much longer work, and that story has been done for almost two years now. But I need to finish this, get the boys over the finish line, even if it's just a thousand word epilogue.

3. Get back on the horse with Just One Life, So Many Doors. I got stalled on this for a stupid reason, then I got sidetracked by other stories. I'm still sidetracked - I'm working on a big project and I'm really a one-story at a time writer. But maybe I can slip a chapter or two in every few weeks.

These are doable goals, so I think I'm going to stop here.

Challenge 13

In your own space, create a fanwork. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

It's not complete, mostly just an idea I'm framing out, not sure where it's going.

( And So It Begins )

Challenge #11

In your own space, recommend a fannish or creative resource. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Yeah, these are probably the most common resources, but they are the ones I use the most.

Wikipedia - At nearly six million entries, it's always a shock to discover that there isn't an article about something or someone.

Archive of Our Own - The number one reason why fandom continues to exist. It is free from censorship and through its parent organization, OTW, actively seeks out and rescues fansites from oblivion.

Dreamwidth - It doesn't have the cachet with fandom that LiveJournal did in its heyday, but it is the best place for fannish discourse on the internet. It's where adults can talk and share ideas freely. It is truly one of my favorite things about fandom and the internet.

Pinboard - When Delicious was trashed by its new owners, Pinboard rose from the ashes and gave fandom a place to mark what it liked for everyone (or no one) to see.

TV Tropes - Wikipedia for fandom content. I don't use this too often, mostly because I'm afraid I'll just get lost in my research and die of starvation. It used to be that you warned for links to TV Tropes because of that risk, don't know if it's still the thing.

Duck Duck Go - Yes, "Google" has become the verb for searching the Internet, but you don't HAVE to use Google. I prefer Duck Duck Go because, unlike Google, it doesn't track you or your search history or filtered for the benefit of advertisers.

Challenge #9

In your own space, promote at least one canon that you adore (old, new, forever fandom). Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


I can cheerfully rec old canon for everything I'm fannish about - all of my fandoms either have closed canon or are in a long lull before new material.


White Collar - Although I'm not creating new fanworks for my first fannish love, Seasons One and Two of White Collar will always remain the ne plus ultra of OT3 perfection. The love between the characters and the friendships (and the bad guys and plot) are so rich and so perfect. While I enjoyed almost all of the series (Season 5 never happened, nor did the last fifteen minutes of Season 6), Seasons 1 and 2 are the best.

The Flash - It's a pity the show was cancelled fifteen minutes before the end of the last episode in Season 2. That's all I'm gonna say.

Kingsman: The Secret Service - I love the the fandom noped so hard about Harry Hart's death that the sequel brought him back. Pity Matthew Vaughn fucked everything else up. I'm at the point where I don't consider The Golden Circle canon, just a really bad and homophobic fanwork.

Morse'verse - Technically, since Endeavour has just finished filming Series 7 and is renewed for S8, canon isn't closed. But Endeavour is a prequel to Inspector Morse, and we know what happens, just not the details. Now, if someone gets their act together and signs Laurence Fox and Kevin Whatley to an Inspector Hathaway series, we'll get open canon.

Challenge #7

Promote/Rec/Sing the Praises* of Yourself! Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Of course this is the challenge I hate the most, talking about myself in a positive way. So much easier to run myself down and point out all of my horrible flaws (of which there are legion).

But, in the spirit of the challenge, I will point out three things about myself that make me proud to be me.

1 - I am good at running fandom challenges. I find them satisfying and energizing, even when some of the participants behave in disappointing ways. I especially love writing rules and FAQs, getting the framework set up, encouraging the players to do their best. Sometimes, the wrapup can be a bit tedious, but if I remember to set a date that this must be done by, I can usually meet it. In my years in fandom, I've had some pretty awesome co-mods - looking at you, ladygray99 and anarchycox, and many thanks for either bringing me in or coming along for the ride.

2 - I write A LOT. I've kept track of all my writing since I started and I've never had a year without at least 250,000 words published. Most years are in the 300k range, and twice I broke the 400k barrier. Never did a nano on purpose, but I have had numerous months where I've written 50K+ without breaking a sweat. Now, I'm not saying those stories aren't crap ...

3 - I enjoy being creative. I love creating things - if it's not stories, it's jewelry. And sometimes it's fanart. I like improving my skills and leveling up. Learning new things is always a joy and provides immense satisfaction.

Challenge #4

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I'm not really one for resolutions, which always seem to be unobtainable or forgotten by February. But goals are a different story.

For 2020, I've already made my fannish goal - to spend the year writing for myself. 2019 was the year of challenges and exchanges and I burned out so hard at the end of August that I wondered if I'd ever write again. This year, I am not signing up for any exchanges and the one challenge I have committed to us extremely low-stress and one that I love. Yeah, I'll miss the rush that comes with the challenge, but for this year, I need to give them a pass.

In your own space, talk about your fannish history. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

My fannish history, at least the start of it, is pretty well documented on my journal, but I've never gone into a deep dive of my the rest of my fannish history.

I'd been peripherally aware of "fandom" for a long time, since high school. There were the Star Trek nerds and I think a few of them would pass around 'zines and giggle about Kirk and Spock (I was naive and didn't quite understand what they found so funny, at least not until I read the novelization of ST: The Movie). I also knew about 'zines from the back pages of the early Darkover novels (and yes, I have absolutely disowned any affection from MZB's body of work), where fans of the series were invited to subscribe to a printed newsletter and write stories in the Darkover universe (and where a lucky few every year were chosen to get published in an official collection). I do remember asking my mom (I was in high school) if I could get this with my allowance and baby sitting money (a check or money order was required) and she didn't think it was a good use of my money. I probably could have signed up for it when I got a checking account in college, but Darkover slipped off my radar (thank goodness?).

I didn't really hang out with a fannish crowd in college - I had a rather insane academic schedule, so free time was limited. Then came law school and career building and my interests went in different ways. When I read for pleasure, it was mostly romance novels. I didn't watch a lot of television, and I don't recall ever getting totally gripped by movies. Yeah, there were a few things I jonesed over, but nothing ever really grabbed me (okay, The Pretender tugged at me hard).

Until Farscape.

God, did I love that show. I lived for it, breathed for it. I haunted the show's official website waiting for news about new episodes. But oddly enough, I didn't find a fandom community (although I bought almost all the official Farscape magazines). It never even occurred to me to look!

After Farscape, nothing pulled at me like that. Not until White Collar and a strange confluence of illness and a post in a slash writer's blog about Peter/Neal smut on LiveJournal (see the first ever post on my Journal) that I truly discovered fandom.

I find it hysterical that in my first post, I wrote:

I'm not sure I'm cut out for writing fic...I do write and write well (if I may say so myself), but one of the things that makes my writing good is an intensive and obsessive attention to research and detail - and I just do not know if I can turn that off enough to write with the dramatic intensity I would want. But you see, I have these plot bunnies coupling in my head - they don't let me sleep - so I may just have to try.

God, I sounded like such a fucking twat. The thing is, I write for a living, basically, and I've achieved amazing things, professionally, with my words. That doesn't mean I would be any good with creative writing, though. But you never know until you try.

It took me another month before I started my first story. Wait, no - that's not true. It might have been a week. I'd posted a prompt on the WC Kink Meme and no on filled it, so I started to fill it myself (prompts and fills were author!anon for the kink reasons). My first story, under my own LJ handle, was published on March 9, 2010. I was SO proud of that little piece of shit, and remained so for years. I am almost afraid to re-read it - it was preachy and meta and I'm pretty sure it will push all of my humiliation squicks big time.

But regardless of quality, it got me started. And the White Collar fandom was just so lovely and kind and welcoming. That first year, I wrote so much. According to the spreadsheet I've been keeping since the beginning, I'd written 176 stories, although a bunch of them were multi-chaptered things and a lot were ficlets and drabbles, but still, the wordcount for my first year was pretty impressive - 266k.

Over the years, I discovered that I am intensely mono-fannish. There are a few drabbles and ficlets for other fandoms - one or two West Wing stories, a handful of Sherlock things, a few MCU ficlets, but the only time I left the White Collar universe for something longer than 500 words was for Inspector Lewis. I might have strayed more permanently, but I had so many close friends in WC and there was no active fandom for Lewis in the same way that I never really gave it my all.

Perhaps the most beautiful thing about White Collar was the community I found. I think it helped that the show was New York based and there was a strong community here on the East Coast. People would get together very regularly, and even the more far-away fans would come in for a visit (one year, I hosted a gathering and there were representatives from France and Poland). When the show ended, it took a few years for the fandom to fade away, despite everyone's best efforts to stay close. It happens - the fandom was the glue and people do move on, but I really do miss that community. And as I've said elsewhere (my FSC Day One post), I am unutterably grateful for the connections that remain.

My first post-White Collar fandom was The Flash. It was also the fandom that pushed me nearly full-time onto Tumblr. Nothing was really the same, though. Tumblr, as a medium, is image based and seems to cater to people's worst impulses. The Flash, as a comic-based show, also attracted a much younger (age and emotional) set of fans who I had little in common with. I didn't stay too long and left when the show took a turn I didn't like. I'm fond of saying that it was cancelled fifteen minutes before the end of the second season. But one very good thing came out of it - I formed a close and dear friendship (ironically, my friend actually lost interest in The Flash before I did).

Kingsman came next, and only because in late 2016, a friend from my White Collar days was visiting and she's casually mentioned that she's gotten sucked into Kingsman fanfic. I'd heard of the movie but hadn't seen it, but had made a mental note of it. In mid 2017, I found the DVD on the sale rack at Target and thought, why not?

I watched the movie on a Saturday afternoon and spent all night reading fic. It took a few weeks, but I got my start with a series of cross-over ficlets with White Collar. It seemed like a natural fit that Neal Caffrey had once been a Kingsman recruit, and that explained so much of his unbelievable skills. These little fics (most were under 3k) whetted my appetite, but I'd been working on a long Flash AU that had absolutely nothing to do with the show, and kept on writing it for another few months, only taking a break with the cross-over stories. But I slowly started turning my Tumblr away from The Flash and towards Kingsman and it's cast. I didn't actually start writing Kingsman full-time until after the second (and terrible) movie came out, and I wrote a fix-it for my ship. Of course, that started the ball rolling and been pretty much Kingsman-committed ever since. It helps that I have made good friends there, too. That is what keeps me going, after all.

I probably should mention that when it comes to fannish activities, I am a stereotypical Aries. I like to run things or help run things. Almost since the very beginning, I would host prompt-fests on my journal (and some of those produced some pretty amazing stories). I also ran, or helped run many communities, like White Collar 100 with ladygray99, the White Collar Big Bang, the White Collar Reverse Bang, and White Collar Pairings. That urge continued with The Flash, except that that fandom had no presence on LJ/DW and little interest in being here.

But the need to organize and promote didn't die, and as a result of one of last year's FSC posts where I'd mentioned that I'd like to start a Reverse Bang for Kingsman, my dear friend anarchycox hopped on board and helped me get the ball rolling (and she has been the most awesome co-mod ever).

Right now, the Kingsman fandom is very quiet. I don't think it's going to die out, the prequel "The King's Man" will be out in the fall and that looks promising. And Taron Egerton has all but confirmed that the third Eggsy movie is getting under way very soon.

I do confess that at the moment, I'm delicately flirting with the Endeavour fandom, which is the prequel to Inspector Morse and Lewis, but I don't see myself going there full time. There is a Discord, but I don't find it an easy way to be a fan - the way I want to be fannish. So, while I will continue to enjoy canon and create as the mood strikes, I don't think I'll ever consider myself part of those shows' fandom.

(Takes a breath, re-reads) Holy crap, I have gone on far too long, seriously. Seriously.

If I have to sum up my fannish history, I'll say this - the best kind of fandoms are ones that give me a strong sense of community. If I don't find a way to connect with at least one other person, the fandom brings me no real joy. I've been lucky, though; I've found people who have reached out or answered my outreach, and we've forged connections beyond our fannish interests. I may talk with these people daily or weekly, or sometimes months will go by between connections, but these relationships sustain me and bring me joy.

Thank you.

EDIT This entry originally had a cut-tag, but scrolling through other posts for Day 2, I am astonished (!) to see that my 1600 or so words is somewhat brief. This is an amazing topic and I love how many people are taking the time to commit their fannish histories to words. Thank you to everyone for sharing.

In a reversal of the usual Fandom Snowflake process (post here, link on the comm), I posted a friending meme thing on the Fandom Snowflake Friending Meme. You can find it here, on the snowflake_challenge community.

Even if you haven't participated in any of the Fandom Snowflake challenges (especially if you haven't), you should do this one thing. It's fun and easy and will bring new people to your door.

Day 14

In your own space, talk about what you think the future holds for fandom. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I hope, with the migration away from Tumblr, we'll start to see a more community-based fandom experience, again. I don't think it will ever rise to the heights it had been in the days before the disasters on LJ (strikethrough/boldthrough) and the rise of insta-blogging/micro-blogging on Tumblr and Twitter, but I think that if there are a few dedicated souls in each fandom who are willing to put in the time and effort to build the necessary structures on Dreamwidth, and others who will help with the heavy lifting (promotion, signal boosting, etc.), Dreamwidth can be a centralized home for fannish activity.

tozka has been posting their thoughts about fandom and it's future on their journal, and I don't want to reiterate their ideas here (read: steal), and I urge anyone who is the least be interested in the future of fandom on a journal based platform to go read their posts (this one and this one).

Between Doctorsidrat's meta and the last three Fandom Snowflake challenges have really gotten me to think about why it was so easy for fandom to migrate to Tumblr and why it's going to be difficult to rebuild it here on Dreamwidth.

Time. (Queue up Simon and Garfunkel's Hazy Shade of Winter)

It's easy and quick to set up a blog on Tumblr. Tags don't belong to you, they are Tumblr-wide. You don't have to do much to keep people in the loop other than keep hitting the reblog button.

Creating a community on DW is a much more deliberate action. It requires a lot of thought and you need to make some pretty serious choices. Tagging is community specific and for it to be effective, the comm owner needs to set up a tagging system (my experience is that the comm owners should pre-create the tags and not allow members to create their own tags). Signal boosting means you have to reach out to other community owners and ask for permission to post the boost, you have to corral friends of the comm to boost on their journals, and if you're lucky, you'll get someone with a lot of friends who'll see those posts.

All of this effort takes time. It's not easy. Good, well-run communities have clearly spelled out rules that are easily found (it's surprising how many comms don't use their profile page at all and don't sticky-post the rules or put a link to the rules in the sidebar). Things that you think are obvious still need to be spelled out and sometimes, in great and tedious detail, especially for challenges and fanworks exchanges.

Fandom on Dreamwidth will grow again through good, well-maintained and regularly moderated communities, all of which take time and dedication and a handful of people who are able to give that.

Day 12

In your own space, create your own challenge. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

This one's easy!

Kingsman Reverse Bang.

There's a Kingsman Big Bang, a Kingsman Stocking Stuffer Exchange, a Kingsman Secret Santa, Kingsman Fic Wars, but there is no (at least that I've seen) Reverse Bang for the Kingsman fandom, and yet there are so many incredible visual artists who create Kingsman fanworks (is it surprising with a cast comprised of Colin Firth, Mark Strong and Taron Egerton?), that could inspire us word artists.

If there's anyone out there who's listening and who's interested, please hit me up. I've run Reverse Bangs in the White Collar fandom, as well as Big Bangs, holiday exchanges, writing fests, prompt fests, so I have experience in how to do this.

Day 9

Commit an Act of Kindness. In your own space, share what you’ve done, talk about what you’ve done, or simply leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I did the thing a few days ago, rec'ing some media with a low violence quotient to teaotter. You can find the recs here.

Day 7

Stretch yourself a little and try something new. Go play in a new fandom or with a new pairing. Try working in a new medium. Or check out some fanworks that are new to you. (The recs from Day 2 might be a good place to start.) Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


I don't know what propelled me here, to Elizabeth Enright's Melendy Quartet. Those books had been amongst my childhood favorites, and I'd never considered that there could be fanworks for them.

Not that there's a lot to pick from, a grand total of five stories on AO3, and the most recent one is almost five years old. But I thought it worth a shot and I absolutely do not regret reading Wendelah1's story, Good As New.

It brings together the whole family and the secondary characters, a few years into their future. It's been decades since I read the books, but the characters and voices, particularly Miranda's, feel very real and authentic.

Day 5

In your own space, promote three communities, challenges, blogs, pages, Twitters, Tumblrs or platforms and explain why you love them. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Since I'm playing catch up, I'll keep this brief (ha!).

trope_bingo - Round 12 Sign Up Post

Why Do I Love This Community/Challenge: I especially love this round of Trope Bingo because they are letting you use old cards from prior rounds and even better, letting you create your own bingo cards from the community's list of prompts. So, you get to pick your top 24 prompts and put it in the generator to create the HTML for your own card. And the rules for what is a sufficient fill have been changed - 100 words for a fic, down from the usual 500 words (and there are across the board reductions for all kinds of fanworks).

For me, this is a big deal. Since my days participating in the White Collar 100 challenge, 300 words had been my sweet spot for telling a complete story. If I had to go to 500 words, I'd write a thousand or more. Part of my 2019 writing goals is getting back to a shorter form of storytelling, where I have to force myself not to include every f**king detail.

poetry_fiction - 2019 Featured Poet

Why Do I Love This Community/Challenge: I've been participating in this challenge for quite a few years, and I think that some of my best writing has come from the inspiration provided by the assigned snippets. The challenge is extremely low key, no one gets barred if they fail to post their fanwork. If you don't like your prompt, you can always request a new one. The featured poets are always diverse, and the closest they've come to being part of the Western Canon is selecting Pablo Neruda for the 2016 featured poet (and no, I'm not saying the Neruda is part of the Western Canon, but he was widely recognized and often considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century).

The mod has a knack for picking great snippets that are filled with imagery, and the participants fill with a wide range of fandoms and original works. The fill requirements are low - I think 1000 words is the requirement for a fill, although I suspect that a lower wordcount will not get you tossed - since nothing can get you tossed. In July of each year, the mod posts an open challenge, one poetry snippet a day for anyone to fill. There's always an amnesty (although it briefly closes for the new challenge period).

chocolateboxcomm - Signup Form on AO3 (Note: signups close soon, on January 7th)

Why Do I Love This Community/Challenge: Chocolate Box is one of the great pan-fandom exchanges. Unlike the venerable Yuletide, there's no bar to nominating a fandom (Yuletide is ostensibly for small fandoms with less then 1000 works on an archive), so you can find both mega-fandoms like HP and MCU and LOTR and Star Wars along side of microfandoms like you might find in Yuletide. They also allow crossover fandoms (nominated by pairing) and original works (over 500 different prompt/pairings). The challenge requires the fanwork to focus on relationships - which means family and friendship, not just romance (despite the name and the time of year).

Like most pan-fandom challenges, you have to have a few fandoms you're willing to offer fanworks for and are looking to receive, but the fulfillment requirements are low (300 words, a 500x500 pixel artwork on unlined paper), so this could be a chance to stretch yourself with a new fandom without committing to a long story/complex artwork.

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These three comms / challenges are ones that I've participated in regularly, and I recommend them to everyone, even novice creators. They are all exceedingly well managed, with responsive mods (Trope Bingo has a new mod this round and Chocolate Box has added mods because it's gotten so large). Perhaps the most "challenging" of the challenges is Chocolate Box, if just because of the intricacies of the signup process. If there is something they could do better is explaining how the nomination and signup process works, especially how to nominate crossovers. Anyone with reasonable intelligence can figure it out, but for a newbie, a little hand-holding would be nice.

Day 3

In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

The Flash, Season Two, Episode 17 - Flash Back

This episode is probably the best of the entire season, and maybe even the best of the series. Barry goes back in time, to a moment when he had still been ignorant of who Harrison Wells really is, for the purpose of learning how to run faster. He plans to interrogate his mentor, learning some speed secrets (The Man in Yellow was always that much faster than Barry). Of course things don't go as planned, Wells/Eobard figures out that the Barry Allen he's talking to isn't his Barry, and we end up with the EoWells/Barry Bondage Scene. It's a two-hander filled with quiet menace, massive rage, gamesmanship, and an incredible amount of sexual tension.



The rest of the episode is stellar, too - EoWells dragging his chair like a security blanket, Cisco having a not-so-quiet freak-out at the appearance of TWO Barry Allens, the redemption of Hartley Rathaway, the first appearance of the Time Wraiths, and the off-screen hatesex between Barry and Eo.

If only The Flash had been able to maintain this quality - writing, acting, characterization - the show might not have been cancelled.

In your own space, talk about your Happy Place—the things that give you joy, calms you or keeps you sane.

The circle always closes...

I remember participating in the first Fandom Snowflake event, and quite a few thereafter, but I'd drifted away from it as my fandom locus moved to Tumblr. But now that I'm back on an adult blogging platform, I thought it would be a good (and healthy) way to re-establish the habit of posting regularly.

Once upon a time, I'd have said, without qualification, that fandom is my happy place, a place of loose and tight connections, where I can find like-minded people to discuss the things I love. But the migration away from a journal-focused platform made making those connections difficult. But I have persevered and forged some wonderful friendships, which have sustained me through difficult times.

But fandom, as a whole, doesn't fill me with the same level of joy it once did. Times change, fandoms change, people (myself, specifically) change, and so, what gives me happiness changes. At this moment (and perhaps always), it's the act of creation that gives me joy - whether it's writing or crafting or worldbuilding with friends - that's what has become my safe space, my haven from the world and its troubles.

(Note: first use of my Year: 2019 tag. Happy New Year everyone.)

In your own space, post recs for at least three fanworks that you did not create.

One.

I've already rec'd kyele's The Marriage Bargain in an earlier post, so I'm not going to re-recommend it here, but I am going to recommend another fanwork of theirs that grabbed me by the throat and kept me on the edge of my seat for several weeks:

Tempus Fugit, and the summary (which is very accurate) doesn't do justice to the brilliant complexity of the story:

Nora is dead. The Barry from the future – the Flash from the future – is gone. If Barry wants answers, if he wants to know why his future self had waved him off of saving his mother, he’s going to have to get them from a different source. Fortunately, he knows exactly where – or, rather, when – his answers may be found. April 25, 2024.

There is also a deliciously porny timestamp, Olim, which is all about Eobard and Barry's first time on the path to their happily ever after. It's porn, yes, but deliciously achy and angsty and beautiful.

Two.

One of the most talented people I'm honored to know is kanarek13, who fell in love with White Collar and became an artist because of that love.

She does masterful photomanipulations that take my breath away. And in the past few months, she's started creating GIFs. I can't wait until she discovers viding (hint, hint)

And she is so amazingly prolific that it's next to impossible to rec a single work, but there is one that she's created that cuts me to the bone every time I look at it: Louis, based on a comment Anne Rice made about casting for the remake of Interview with a Vampire. It's exquisite and I find myself thinking about changing out my phone's lock screen for this image (my phone's lock screen is another Kanarek masterpiece).

Three.

The third rec is for a story that is a beautifully original work and a delicious twist on Beauty and the Beast – Icarus_Chained 's Logistically Complicated. Again, the summary, though brilliant, doesn't fully encompass the wonder of the story:

A tiny bit of a reverse Beauty & the Beast. The beautiful scholar prince of a conquered country is given in marriage to the monstrous warrior queen of their conquerors, in an effort to keep his family and his kingdom safe. It's possible that his new wife didn't expect him to be quite as pragmatic about it as he is, though. To be fair, his family didn't either.

Please take a few minutes and look at the fanworks I've rec'd here. If you like them, please leave feedback for the creators. Feeding back is such an important part of participating in fandom, and we don't do it often enough.


There are many other wonderful fanworks to rec, but time is not my friend today, so I'm limited it to three. If anyone wants personal recs for White Collar and The Flash, please don't hesitate to ask.

Snowflake Challenge - Day 02

In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.

I'm enjoying my last day of vacation and still in the mood to overachieve, so I'll put down a few influences for things that greatly influenced me this year:

Fanwork: The Marriage Bargain by Kyele. It takes the best parts of the Season One version of the relationship between Eobard Thawne (in the guise of Harrison Wells) and Barry Allen and turns it into a no-powers modern Regency. The characters are lovely and stunning and there's plenty of drama and romance set in a truly unique world constrained by legally codified notions of class and power.

Book: I will confess that I read a hell of a lot of forgettable novels, and this year is no different. But one really stands out for me. Correction, it's actually a pair of books: His Royal Secret and His Royal Lover

By rights, these should have been eminently forgettable - an AU of modern England, where the reigning monarch is not Queen Elizabeth but a very elderly King with failing health, and the Prince of Wales is his grandson, James, a deeply closeted man in his very early 30s. What had initially attracted me to the story was that the object of James' affection was a Jewish man of Israeli descent, but that became the least of it as I read the first story and the sequel. The characters weren't archetypes or poster-board cut outs, but had real feelings, issues and decisions to make. The villains were real, too - not over-the-top crazies.

These stories are - like the fanwork I recommended - excellent examples of world-building, character development and thrilling story-telling.

Music: This one's a little harder to rec, because I generally don't get inspired by a particular song. And honestly, I almost have no interest in current music. So there's nothing new to me from 2016 to rec as inspiring, but I have no qualms about digging out and offering up Peter Gabriel's Don't Give Up:



The lyrics to this song were the inspiration for a very recent fic, Whatever May Come, Whatever May Go (don't give up)

Movie: Again, kind of a total fail this year - I think I only saw four movies in 2016 and none of them have really stayed with me. But, there's a very interesting scene in Casino Royale, when James and Vesper meet and are sparring on the train, when James suggests that Vesper's an orphan and she turns the tables on him. Which then reminded me of another James Bond movie, Goldeneye, when James and Alex talk about how ripe orphans are for recruitment to MI6.

This has directly inspired my current major work in progress, which will be a spy AU but is currently a university AU. And since it's a WiP, I'm not saying much more about it.

Other than the first fanwork rec, I can't say that any of these other recommended items have "changed my soul" but they all have deeply influenced my creative process.

Day 13 was posted yesterday, celebrating the awesome artist, kanarek13. Here are the remainder of the entries for the 2015 Fandom Snowflake Challenge.

( Day 12 )

( Day 14 )

( Day 15 )

And that wraps up the 2015 version of the Fandom Snowflake Challenge. Thank goodness.

I've been sick. Not deathly, but annoyingly so and have had little energy and less headspace for fandom stuff (I think I've written 300 words in the past 5 days and most of those are garbage). But I do want to catch up with this challenge.

( Day 7 )

( Day 8 )

( Day 9 )

( Day 10 )

( Day 11 )

Day 5 – In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. How did you come to fandom, why did you choose your fannish name, do you have more than one secret identity?

I've told my fandom origin story so many times, it doesn't even seem real anymore. But the very first place I told it was in my first real LJ entry.

A few things to note, Tim DeKay had a shirtless scene in Pilot. It just went by so quickly it didn't even register until the ten or twentieth time I watch Pilot.

And how's this for a hoot, in case you don't want to go back and read that entry:



One Million Seven Hundred Thirteen Thousand words later, I'm still not sure I'm cut out for this fic writing thing.

Day 2 - In your own space, create a list of at least three fannish things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a fannish wish-list of sorts. Maybe you will grant a wish. If any wishes are granted, we'd love it if you link them to this post.

Continuing in my mono-fannish, White Collar obsessive ways...

1 - I've been making this wish for many years, here on Fandom Snowflake, and in other venues. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE a vid of Peter Burke to the song What a Man sung by Linda Lydell (link to a vid on my Dropbox). The En Vogue (retitled "What a Mighty Good Man") version doesn't quite meet my vision of Peter Burke, but I'd be cool with that, too.

2 - I would love a story about Peter and Hughes - could be slashy, could be friendship, could be anything as long as the two of them get a chance to be awesome together.

3 - And lastly (and I feel SOOOO greedy), I'd be forever grateful for more people to do self-recs on wcredux. There are so many wonderful stories in this fandom and having a chance to revisit the older ones - ones that I might have missed - is such a joy.

Thank you!