Snowflake Challenge #2-4

[chacusha]

I'm skipping Challenge #1 for now because I don't really want to do blog maintenance at the moment.

Challenge #2: In your own space, set yourself some goals for the coming year.

Already done 🔒here (friendslocked).


Challenge #4(a): IceBreaker Challenge! Tell us about yourself.

I might split this into two posts with a post later on introducing some real life aspects of me. But for now, basic intro:

• Basics: Tako / she/her / American expat living in the UK / 35 years old (at the time of this writing).
• Fandoms: Star Trek is the big one at the moment (my focus is mostly Quodo but I think I can talk intelligibly about all of the series, although not the films which I largely have not watched yet). I also have some forever fandoms like Soulcalibur and the Mana series (especially Trials and Sword of Mana). I've played most of the Kingdom Hearts series and various Final Fantasy games (I, VI, IX, X, XIII, Tactics, Mobius, Dimensions, Unlimited (anime), and parts of IV, VII, X-2, and XII). Bravely Default is also a game I like and am fannish about, but the fandom is kind of dead. Older fandoms I like talking about but I'm not sure the fannish creative drive is there anymore: ASOIAF, Disney.
  • Some more minor things I love but aren't big fandoms for me: Gunnerkrigg Court, Old Kingdom series, The Prisoner (60s TV show), Revenge (TV), Ghibli movies, Satoshi Kon's filmography, various CLAMP series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Chrono games, Puyo Puyo games, Princess Maker games, lots of western animation including A:TLA, Codename: Kids Next Door, The Dragon Prince, Miraculous Ladybug, ReBoot, Steven Universe, and Young Justice. Nina Paley's filmography (she is a huge TERF, though 😭).
• Fanwork media: Used to be more of an artist, but I do a mix of fanart and fanfic nowadays. I also like writing meta and making icons, although I don't often have time to do the latter much anymore.
• Other hobbies/interests: Personality quizzes and typing systems (I also just have an interest in psychology in general), dress-up games/KiSS dolls, making games (super time-consuming, though), blogging, watching movies/TV shows, reading fiction and nonfiction books, playing video games (struggling to find time for this recently, though).
• I always like taking requests and making gifts, but I generally have, like, psychological issues doing commissions/making fanworks for money, so I don't do them. But I am always open to requests.

Also, here's a little icebreaker game: Ask me some questions about my fandoms or tastes! Some options:

• Make me choose [between two things A and B].
• My favorite / least favorite thing in [category].
• Rank all of the [x].

Challenge #3: Create a wish list of fandom things (podfic, graphics, playlists, canon recs translations, research help, vids, sky's the limit!) that you'd like to receive.

1. Recs/self-recs - Rec me something you don't think I've seen/read yet but which might be to my interests. For self-recs, rec me something you've made that I might not have seen yet -- could be a journal entry or a fic you've written that you think might be relevant to my interests or you're interested in my thoughts on.

2. Questions for the above game.

3. Icons - I'd love icons for any of the fandoms listed above (or recs of existing icons!), especially for canons or characters I don't have any icons for, such as the Old Kingdom series or SanSan, but I think I'd especially love Star Trek icons with meaningful quotes on them? Or even just suggestions for memorable Star Trek quotes/moments that would be nice on an icon.

4. Advice - I've been thinking recently about prompt/kink memes, like the type that used to be popular in LJ and kind of died when LJ collapsed and DW failed to get the same level of traction. One thing I've noticed about prompt memes is that you kind of need to see other people's prompts in order to get inspiration for more prompts, which is a bit of a bootstrapping problem.

I have an older prompt meme I'd like to revive, and part of that is that I would like to encourage people to leave more prompts so that there's more of a pool for people to work with. I was thinking about having like a prompt-leaving event where I encourage people to leave a bunch of prompts. I was thinking of having some prompts for prompts to get people's ideas flowing (e.g. leave a prompt for a ship that doesn't exist on AO3 yet, leave a prompt for your favorite kink, leave a gen prompt, leave a prompt involving a minor character, leave a prompt matching a fic/work you have already written/created or plan to write/create, etc. etc.), plus some kind of incentive for people to leave a lot of prompts like making the prompts worth different points and goals point thresholds to hit or a bingo card or something to ensure people try to leave as many prompts as they can think of -- like achievements but for prompting.

But the problem is that I don't want the prompts people leave to be TOO identifying, you know what I mean? I don't want any one person leaving a bunch of prompts to be super identifiable (because that might discourage them from leaving a bunch of prompts at once), nor do I want it to be obvious from the prompting pattern whether it's just one person leaving all the prompts or multiple people leaving some prompts -- it should be underdetermined from the set of prompts left how many people are playing.

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to run this event. In order to make it anonymous, for example, things like scoreboards would be out -- it'd have to be more of an honor system how many prompts someone left. I would probably also want to announce the event and the prompt prompts/achievements in advance, and then maybe have like a really short period for leaving the prompts (e.g. a 48-hour period) so that it's slightly more likely that people will time their prompts in a way that mixes with other people's prompts?

Anyway, I'd love some thoughts/feedback/suggestions on how to run this and whether you think it would work, or things I need to think about if I want this to succeed.

Comments

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Thank you for the thoughts/advice! <<

I'm happy I could help.

>> I'll need to consider it because the kink/prompt meme I want to revive is for a small fandom and so doesn't have much Dreamwidth presence at all.<<

There are several communities devoted to small fandoms in general. That way they can maintain a regular audience so it's easier to run an event than if you had to start from scratch. Frex, small_fandoms is a multipurpose hosting site for events based on various small fandoms.

Similarly, allbingo has an audience of several hundred members who pick from a wide variety of events. Anyone can volunteer to host a fest on any topic they like. It's a good place for small fandoms because other folks can just use the prompts for their own purposes, but the prompts are likely to be fresh -- quotes are especially popular. If you get to the stage where you're calling for prompts, come over to allbingo and post about it. We're open to occasional crossovers from other prompt-based events like prompt tables, and gosh I haven't seen a prompt fic meme in so long, I imagine other folks would be happy to see the format revived.

>> I could reach out to the few people who have (e.g.) requested that fandom in exchanges or are watching the comm and see if they're interested in participating, but yeah, I'll need to think about it. <<

That's an excellent plan. Lots of people like to be asked.