karanguni | Entries tagged with challenge: fandom snowflake

I did a whole bunch of cleaning this weekend, but other than that laid low because I feel a little bit laid low by the intensity of, ah, 2018 as it has begun. I certainly hope it doesn't mean to carry on in the same fashion...

Things:

* I flailed my way through my Chocolate Box signup and letter. Too out of it to be more verbose this weekend, but I'm going to get some edits in before assignments go out. FFVII in a fic challenge? What!
* I'm reading the Bedlam Stacks and quite enjoying it. Possibly because I enjoy anything related to ruthless bastards and the East India Company a bit too much for someone who comes from an ex-British colony. Someone, EIC history RPF with me!
* I'm trying to get more in practice with Japanese again this year.

yhlee, if you're still interested, I think I'm going to start pumping out Japanese lessons or at least meta again. Including a post on translating classics, I hope.
* I need to get my ass back to the gym, stat.

Snowflake 7: In your own space, create a love meme for yourself. Let people tell you how amazing and awesome and loveable you really are.

Er, go ahead! Or just take this as an opportunity to come say hi. Or tell me if there are things you'd like me to write or blather on about in our shared fandoms/interests. Or just talk!

I am bracing for some not-great news at work (as in something in which outcomes are going to not be as good as expected as opposed to a net negative, but I've been promised good things for so long that not getting them is going to make me deeply dissatisfied) on Monday and it's put me more or less in mental trench. I'm trying to decide where my thresholds are for staying at my current position versus looking for greener pastures when the local microcosm of my superiors is good in spite of a hatefully provisioned evil mega corporate umbrella. Do I stay for the opportunity, or leave for more industry-standard salaries but potentially shitty co-workers? I just don't know. But I know I'm tired of being undervalued in monetary - if not social/work clout - terms.

Snowflake 5: Recommend a fannish or creative resource.

I like writing in WriteMonkey on Windows. I don't really have any particular resource - that's all fandom dependent. I have plenty of coding related resources, but...

Life update:

* Life-crushing news from yesterday, after medical evaluation, nowhere near as crushing as feared. Sigh of relief here
* Last big travel ticket for the next little while settled with bosses at work. Cue second sigh of relief
* Learnt how to start knitting socks. I am to knitting as most emperors are to farming. This is not a natural activity for me, but there is something deeply satisfying about watching something form (become deformed?) beneath my hands
* Signed up for Chocolate Box, but I'm pretty much overwhelmed by the sheer breadth and volume of options. My signup is skeletal; I'm waiting till the weekend to try and... make sense of it.

Snowflake 4: In your own space, create a fannish wishlist.

* Something The Culture. Anything The Culture. Meta, fic, someone reading it for the first time... COME TO LIFE, LITTLE FANDOM O' MINE.
* Fic recs in fandoms I don't know - preferably fic that are dense enough in themselves to get me into a fandom
* Fandom recs: I find it enormously hard to get into anything anymore without people getting on my back about it
* More people talking in general, whether about fandom or not :)

I was trying for a longer journal entry, but I am just spent today, apparently. Huge thanks to everyone who dropped in yesterday to distract me - so, so appreciated.

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

Truth be told, I am having a downright awful day, so I'm going to phone this one in with my Yuletide recs and a request that people just... leave a comment and talk about something. Anything.

Why am I doing Snowflake?

Every year Yuletide reminds me that I like having an online presence in fandom, and every year I try to Snowflake a little to get to know more people. I'm going to try to be really committed to some fandom/writing NYR goals this year, so it dovetails nicely. /waves to everyone new

In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom

Everything that's ever ended in a collaboration. One of my longest, most important, and most creative friendships came from randomly joining an RP when I was fifteen (?!) I was humbled and elated to co-write with people like Nyx not much later than that - long, long streams of back-and-forth across multiple media types. I've been incredibly lucky to have had work that I've done be transformed into art (D, pere, and of course Crim, who made a whole! doujin! for Executive Reform) and into podfic (Rhea). Fandom has been a consistently generous - if erratic - source of creativity and productivity in my life, and I'd be a much duller "real life" person without it, methinks.

Day 9: Send feedback to two fannish people — they can be anyone you want. Done and done.

Day 10: In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme.

Oh, I don't think you're ready for this jelly... /laughs Actually, that's not true! I'm a big fan of tropes and trope inversion, but I don't actually write a whole lot of it, which is something I'm hoping to change in the coming year.

Segue: in terms of writing, it's hard to look back and pick out patterns sometimes. I've been in fandom more than half my life at this point, and I've been creating for a vast majority of it. And as much as it sucks to watch the years tick by, what's fascinating - on a meta-level - is looking back at your own fannish history and seeing how you've changed. In some ways, it's deeply embarrassing - there's a lot of stuff in my journals that I want to lock or delete or bury deep in the ground - but there's also growth (as a human being, as a writer) and constancy (the more things change, the more things stay the same). I feel crazy lucky to be able to have the benefit of this kind of geological record of myself.

Meta aside - motif-wise, I can't escape from urban and structural landscapes. Just slapping on a "worldbuild is my kink" bumper-sticker isn't quite true: I love worldbuilding when I'm co-writing, but when I'm on my own I think it's the cityscape or the office-entity-scape that I like to poke at. The fuck-you-structural things. Of the stuff I've written, the one fic I love best is all about urban development; the one fic that AO3 loves best is a finance-firm AU.

It's enormous fun to play with the larger picture and see how that affects characters. I think it's why I deeply like characters like Rufus (FFVII) and Balthier (FFXII) and Gregor/Simon (Vorkosigan). They're all integral to or deeply affected by their superstructures: Rufus, by virtue of being Shinra, is the superstructure. Then there are structures themselves: the Turks, the Judges, ImpSec. Prince of Tennis is divided up into schools; Hikaru no Go and Rakugo Shinjuu are all set in and around some sort of association. Homestuck's 100 made up Structural Things, especially relationship structures, are why I've read a lot of fic in that fandom without caring much at all about the canon proper.

*g* I think I'm going to cut myself off before I keep ranting. Got a trope you love? Talk about it in the comments! I'd love to, uh, comment worldbuild...

Day 08: In your own space, make a list of at least 3 things that you like about yourself.

I write decently; I've got lots of executive function; I write in British English.

/sniggers That last one is the cross I'll die on, apparently.

The household has been battling intense exhaustion; I think it may be some sickness, but it's hard to tell when there's so much general Stuff That Makes Us Feel Exhausted. At least it's a long weekend!

snowflake_challenge Day 06: 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.

A remix!
Someone to illustrate a project with me. Any project at all!
Someone to co-write something with.

On that note, if y'all did a day 6 and have requests - link me, please! I'll include stuff in my Pay It Forward challenge if there's anything I can possibly accomplish. :)

All righty. I'm throwing together some weekly learn Japanese stuff for

yhlee, and I'm posting it here for anyone who wants to play along.

This week's post is about hiragana and katakana. I'm going to focus more on drilling and just getting vocabulary out there than how to memorise the shapes and forms; there are many good resources available on Google for that.

In general, I'm going to try to convey what was useful to me as a learner and the methods I used to help brute-force my way to reading competence.

I'm going to try to keep the kid gloves off and throw in real words, with real difficulty, sooner rather than later. The faster we jump into the hot pan of reading real sentences, the faster we'll get to the kick of getting a mental reward for our efforts - without which learning is kinda hard.

( Hiragana, Katakana, and Drilling )

Day 5: In your own space, post recs for at least three fanworks that you did not create.

This time around, it's going to be fanart!

exp1bds draws the best Tseng I've ever seen. Seriously, I could drool all day.

My utterly amazing friend Crim adapted Executive Reform into doujinshi format. I'd say it's cheating because I'm technically reccing something I helped bring to life, but seriously - Crim did all of the work here, and it's entirely their own, and I can't even begin to express how amazing it is. Giant robots, giant monsters, amazing Hojo.

Meanwhile, for all that I've never quite managed to love the atmosphere of DA:I in terms of its writing - the art it generates is so fantastic, like some crazy, angular, gilted-up world of magic. Which I suppose is what it is.

Day 04: Comment to someone you haven't ever interacted with before or introduce yourself to someone you've interacted with and friend/follow them.

/goes to friending meme

So I'm trying hard to make each of these

snowflake_challenge posts a little bit useful or broadly interesting. Resolutions are a pretty hard one! I've found, ironically, that the major times I've been able to keep up new habits are under extreme duress (schedule is too full, running on empty, head on fire, heart in pieces) or extreme boredom. Funny how that works.

Fandom-wise, pretty much the only time I've been successful at writing at the last couple of years has been with challenges.

yuletide and

notprimetime aside, anyone have favourites they want to share?

( Day 03: In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. )

Another day of

snowflake_challenge. As part of it, I'm going to do my damnedest to comment on everyone's entries who are on my reading list. If you've dropped in recently and want to expand your circle, drop me a subscribe and I'll do the same.

Under cut: Le Guin's Left Hand.

( Day 2: In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. )

On a separate note, I'm going to ping off of

yhlee's Pay It Forward meme:

Let's start 2017 off in a positive way with a Pay It Forward meme. The first 6 people to comment (and more if I can manage it) will receive a surprise from me at some point in 2017 - anything from a book, a ticket, something home-grown or made, a postcard, absolutely any surprise! It will happen when the mood comes over me and I find something that I believe would suit you and make you happy.

(If you don't like surprises and would rather have something off a wishlist and/or some warning, let me know in your comment. The goal is to make you happy.)

If you can, post this in your own journal and pay it forward. Let's do more kind and loving things for each other in 2017, without any reason other than to make each other smile and show that we think of each other.

I would be more than happy to buy The Left Hand of Darkness (or one of Le Guin's short story collections featuring the Hainish Cycle; it's not that I don't like Earthsea - I've just never read it) - physical or digital - for someone as part of it.

It's that time of the year again!

snowflake_challenge time, that is. Hello to anyone who's randomly drifting by.

If you want to read about: translations, Japanese language stuff, intertextual rubbish - clicky! I talk less about my fics (of which I've picked 2) and more about the background behind their canons and how they're consumed: rakugo stories and the Tale of Heike.

( Day 1: In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created )

Rounding back on some

snowflake_challenge prompts:

Day 4: Post a fanwork

Out of nowhere, a year or more since its last update, comes a new chapter for Executive Reform: A. Seismology

Executive Reform is my strange Pacific Rim/FFVII fusion, most of it about, well, executive reform: a world in which Shinra accidentally ends up fighting for the good of the Planet instead of its bottom line. It doesn't make them automatically good people; but it's an interesting ride trying to find out where they go.

The main chunk of Executive Reform focused on the latter-days of the war against the kaijuu, when resources are running thin. It's probably my favourite AU universe: Junon in pieces, Midgar also in pieces, Edge not much more than a Shatterdome and slums while all the rich and connected have fled over the plains and into mountains. It's about how Turks and scientists and weapons engineers and megalomaniacal businesspeople turn into war strategists and war heroes and – really – war veterans who learn the price of things.

The alpha (as opposed to numeric) chapters as listed on Tumblr are going to be about the earlier parts of the War: back when SOLDIER was fighting and winning, and fighting kaijuu almost seemed like a PR and propaganda gift from the heavens.

We shall see where it goes! I never plan for any of ER, but it always ends up being some of my favourite stuff – I've gone and played in the sandbox for literally millions of words in a private back-and-forth co-writing freefall.

Day 9: In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

Non-fannish (this quarter):

Lose 5kg by end of March, negotiable if I gain muscle mass

Lift 80kgs by then

Finish reading two coding books (one historical, one practical)

Make and achieve some goals for learning Angular.js 1.5

Finish reading at least 2 fiction books

Write at least 8K of something original

Fannish (this year):

New icons on DW for my current fandoms

Get to 700 kudos this year

Rec at least 3 canons (Rush, Chicken Rice Wars, Baru Cormorant?)

Write a 15K+ fic

Write for Vorkosigan, Clone Wars, Hikaru no Go

Redeem myself for notprimetime and participate this year

Participate in at least 2 other comms

Meet some new people! Write with some new people!

Also, hi new fandom snowflake people! Please do come say hi!

Played squash today for the first time in a... half decade? And it felt glorious.

So behind on

snowflake_challenge, but here's a shot:

Day 11: In your own space, make a list of at least 3 things that you like about yourself.

I seem to write all right?

I'm pretty quick on the uptake?

I, er, try not to be an ass to others?

Day 12: What makes you fannish? And by that we mean, what is it about a tv show/movie/book/band/podcast/etc that takes you from, "Yeah, I like that," to "I need MOAR!!!" Is it a character? A plotline? The pretty? Subtext that’s just screaming to be acknowledged?

In your own space, tell us what it is that gets you to cross that line into fandom.

Hm. The more I think about this, the more I think it's seeing other people be fannish? I've had a lot of interest in things beaten out of me, whether by school or brain problems or life or exhaustion. But reading great things by inspired people, or hanging around a group of excited folk – that helps me get into things.

On a more tropeish level: incomplete things make me fannish. It's supremely hard for me to get into fan stuff for canons I feel are pretty complete on their own – The Culture, for example, or a lot of Le Guin's stuff, even though I've tried hard to write for them. But things with a lot of potential that are badly executed or abbreviated ping me: Prince of Tennis (the former) and Hikaru no Go (the latter) are examples. Strong concepts, strong relationships – it's why I like reading Homestuck even if I can't be arsed with its canon.

I've struggled to get into fandom these last few years, so this is a particularly hard question. I'm still waiting for a fire to get lit beneath me – I honestly do think a few too many years scraping the bottom of the depression barrel has to do with this. But there's nothing a good fic won't solve... *g*

Day 10: In your own space, post a rec for fannish and/or creative resources and spaces. Tell us where you go to dig up canon facts for your fandom, or where you get all the juicy details about your favorite ship. Where do you like to hang out and squee like a squeeing thing?

Resources:

I'm a writer, and by and large my biggest resource is... other fic in that canon. I rarely do research outside of canon except in technical spaces, and that's all Google. That said...

Hikaru no Go: I read the Ki-in's Japanese website, and (am very belatedly) collating some of the more interesting (admittedly Iyama Yuuta related) stuff on this Tumblr tag.

Vorkosigan Saga: the wiki, with caveats that I only trust it as far as I have time to throw on the books.

Speaking of Tumblr – it is satan's asshole for many things, but it is extremely useful for gathering random facts/pieces of inspiration. I tag that stuff as useful.

I adore writing for prompts or challenges, and while I haven't written for a comm in a long, long while, I always try to do Yuletide. I also check out

kink_bingo and related comms for inspiration when I need it. TV Tropes is a natural secondary source. *g*

Back when I was really active on DW/LJ? I had some great people in my circles who would write amazing fandom manifestos.

darkeyedwolf is one that springs to mind at once.

Ships:

I love echoing fanon, so this is entirely a recs list for some of my favourite fandom writers:

elvaron: FFVII, Vorkosigan Saga

roachpatrol: Homestuck

thehoyden: Hikaru no Go, hockey RPF

lightgetsin: FMA, every single damn thing they write

ship_manifesto is another great place. Like for this Tezuka/Fuji piece of great hilarity.

Hangouts:

I haven't for ages, so if anyone has chatty DW comms? Please tell me! Yulechat is really all that I hang out on, and only at EOY. The entirety of The Culture fandom seems to live there, so.

Day 8: Comment to someone you haven't ever interacted with before or introduce yourself to someone you've interacted with and friend/follow them.

Done and done, and hello to anyone new! My space is your space &c. *g* If you want to ramble about anything at all, the comments are always open. (Tumblr folks, say hi if you haven't before!)

I'm also eternally taking prompts for any fandoms I know, and any fandoms I don't know that someone's willing to shill to me... :D

snowflake_challenge Day 5:
Leave feedback for a fanwork. Or multiple fanworks. It can be as simple as I liked this to a detailed list of all the things you loved about the fanwork. The key is to leave some sort of feedback.

I'm guilty of bookmarking without commenting quite a bit, even though I know how incredibly frustrating it is to sort-of-see someone enjoy your work but not quite tell you about it. I'm trying to work through that backlog, and I'll leave y'all with these three wonderful stories that were part of it:

po22iible compliicatiion2 (9674 words) by jottingprosaist
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sollux Captor/Karkat Vantas
Characters: Sollux Captor, Karkat Vantas
Additional Tags: Helmsman Sollux Captor, Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Future Fic, Multiple Orgasms, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Quadrant Confusion, Overstimulation, Deepthroating, Fingerfucking, Aftercare
Summary:

Your systems have almost been recalibrated to properly interpret the analog data. The pain and arousal get sharper and more overwhelming with every passing second. Oh, god, you know what the problem is.

You have approximately the most ridiculous case of gold globes in the universe.

Bookmarker's Notes:

This is the perfect worldbuild for me; exactly the right kind of buttons pushed; also best Sollux.

Live and learn (or die and teach) (3106 words) by mira_mirth
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hikaru no Go
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Shindou Hikaru, Fujiwara no Sai, Touya Akira, Waya Yoshitaka, Isumi Shinichirou
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Friendship, Podfic Available
Summary:

An AU in which Sai has a passion for teaching go rather than playing it, Shindou befriends terrifying Koreans, and Touya wonders how this became his life.

Bookmarker's Notes:

Shoves a wonderful amount of character development into a very tight space and succeeds at doing it - one of the best 'what if? scenarios I've read. Hikaru's voice is bang on.

A Different Sort of Friends (7828 words) by shadow_lover
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cala Athmaza/Deret Beshelar/Maia Drazhar
Characters: Maia Drazhar, Deret Beshelar, Cala Athmaza, Csethiro Ceredin
Additional Tags: Threesome - M/M/M, Power Dynamics, Dom/sub, Voyeurism, Anal Sex, Masturbation, Size Kink, Consensual Nonmonogamy, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Yuletide Treat, Praise Kink, Yuleporn
Summary:

“Now,” Cala said, as something clicked in Beshelar’s hands. The lid of a jar twisting off. “Open him up for us." The use of the plural had never rung so hot through Maia’s ears.

Day 4: In your own space, create a fanwork. Make a drabble, a ficlet, a podfic, or an icon, art or meta or a rec list. Arts and crafts. Draft a critical essay about a particular media. Put together a picspam or a fanmix. Write a review of a Broadway show, a movie, a concert, a poetry reading, a museum trip, a you-should-be-listening-to-this-band essay. Compose some limericks, haikus, free-form poetry, 5-word stories. Document a particular bit of real person canon. Take some pictures. Draw a stick-figure comic. Create something. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I was going to write a pimp post for Chicken Rice Wars, thereby shoehorning some local pride and hilarity onto my flist. But then I saw this, and there is just. No. Nope. I had to share it, because if we're talking about creating fanworks, there's nothing QUITE LIKE THE SENTIMENT EXPRESSED IN THIS AMAZING VIDEO:

"" (Watch on YouTube)

WATCH IT. STOP EVERYTHING YOU ARE DOING, AND WATCH IT.

Streets are filled with --

Picking up what others have left behind

[Snowflake] Meme

[Snowflake] Resources

Life, [Snowflake] Wishlist

[Snowflake] Recs

[Snowflake] Days 1 & 2

Fandom Snowflake: tropes

Fandom Snowflake 08: love yo-self

Fandom Snowflake 06: requests

Japanese 101: hiragana and katakana

Snowflake Challenge 05: Recs

Snowflake Challenge 04: make friends

Fandom Snowflake 03: resolutions

Fandom Snowflake 02: share a canon

Fandom Snowflake 01: Self-Rec

Snowflake Challenge: Day 4 (fanwork) and 9 (goals)

snowflake challenge - idek anymore

fandom snowflake - day 10 (resources, recs)

snowflake day 8 (+people)

fandom snowflake: day 5 (feedback)

fandom snowflake - day 4, interlude (FANWORK GENESIS META GO)

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