Entry tags:
Fannish/personal updates; Snowflake Challenge #11, 12, 14
And here's the fannish and personal updates post. I think I'm also going to use this as my last Snowflake Challenge post this year too.
For February/March/April, I've been taking it pretty easy in terms of fanworks, focusing more of my time on nonfiction writing and trying to prioritize pushing out overdue Dreamwidth posts. Most of my efforts the past couple of months have gone into running events and modding stuff:
Ever since I wrapped up Quodo Mini-fest, I've basically spent most of my free time getting a bunch of other projects started. This took me quite a while but I've finished most of the admin now, so I think it'll be pretty easy from here on out. The main projects I've been working on since February are:
✅ Starting a Proship Quodo Discord server. Because I made a promise to myself to avoid antis in Quodo fandom this year, I decided to make my own Discord server where I can control the privacy and vetting of members and how the server gets advertised. It took a while to set up because I had to do a lot of research on what is and isn't possible to do in Discord and write up a lot of blocks of informational text, but it's been going really well! Basically all the people I invited to join have joined and I'm just really much happier and more comfortable there now.
✅ Starting a "Quodo in Every Episode" challenge/activity. A while ago,![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
SirenOfTitan made an AO3 challenge called Garashir in Every Episode, where the aim was to find or create a Garashir fic set in every episode of DS9. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
weaverofwords suggested to me to do a Quodo version, but I was kind of busy last year and couldn't run it, but I figured now was a good time. I decided that running it on Dreamwidth instead of AO3 would be a better choice, though, because AO3 has some limitations, namely (1) it's difficult to create a very clear, easily-browsable masterlist ordered by episode on AO3 (you can use tagged bookmarks but... it's just not the same), whereas Dreamwidth excels in this kind of freeform information organization, and (2) I generally try to avoid asking people to add works they didn't make for X event to a collection created for X event, because AO3's collections give the collection maintainer a somewhat frightening level of control over the works contained in a collection (namely, the ability to hide works or turn the work anonymous). Obviously, collection maintainers generally DON'T do that unprompted, but I do think it's good practice to decline adding works to collections you don't maintain UNLESS you specifically made that work for that event. That's my thinking anyway, so I'm running this on Dreamwidth. The setup took a while, but now it's about an hour of work each week, which is not too bad. This one is a very slow, low-effort project.
✅ Running a Quodo summer event. This one also took me a bit to set up, especially since it involved having people vote on the format of the event. But we decided to make it a WIP-finishing event, and I'm really excited about that! This one also took a lot of setup but now that it's in motion, it should be pretty low-modding-effort. The main time-consuming thing left is just finishing the project I signed up with. ^^; I'm running this one on a lot of websites simultaneously. I made a Carrd website for the first time, and it was pretty fun! The layouts are pretty customizable and WYSIWYG, and I like that you can define styles and reuse them later to keep things looking consistent. And if you later change something in the style, it updates every element using that style, which is neat. I fell down a rabbithole trying out fonts, lol. XD
✅ Running a mid-year round of![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
latetreatbonanza. After the first round finished, I asked the community if people would like to have one round per year or two, and most people said two, so I knew I needed to prepare another round timed for around June this year, which imposed some urgency in terms of when I needed to get things rolling for this one. One thing I wanted to try this year was make a spreadsheet of who has signed up to make it easier for interested treaters to browse through requests. In particular, I wanted to see if I could automatically extract some helpful information about people's requests to make it easier for treaters to search and filter requests. This could be done if I could scrape the AO3 Automagic App user pages (yep, scraping a scraping tool!). After doing some thinking in a notebook, I decided to just stick with extracting a list of fandoms for each signed-up user this year... which turned out to be harder than expected so I'm glad I didn't make plans for anything more complicated than that. Fandoms are sufficiently complicated even just to maintain from round to round that I think I'm just going to entirely scrap my ambitions to provide any information other than a list of fandoms per user.
Overall, writing the script wasn't too hard, but I wasn't able to fully automate the process, so I ended up having to go through ~100 sign-ups from last year and do a semi-manual process of (1) download each person's app page, then (2) run the scraping script on that file, and then (3) copy the list of extracted fandoms and paste it into a spreadsheet. It's not a lot of work per person, but trying to do that for 100 people took quite a long time. Now that it's done, the workload has become much more manageable because the flood of sign-ups has dried up, so doing one or two of these at a time takes maybe 5 minutes total, but for the next round, I might try augmenting my Python script to make it so that I am able to fully automate the process.
There are two main issues with doing this: The first is a technical one, which is that the actual HTML content of the AO3 Automagic App pages I'm using is fairly minimal and generic -- JavaScript is used to load all the data and completely replace the contents of the page after the page loads. So I need something with a JavaScript engine that can run all the page's scripts and THEN extract the page's DOM after all the scripts have run. Apparently, Selenium is a website automation tool that can do this, so I'd need to figure out how to use it to do this.
The second issue is more tricky -- it's that some people have specific details in their sign-up that narrow the set of things they're requesting. These are usually of the form, "I am not interested in [list of fandoms]" or "I'm not interested in requests before [year]" or "I'm interested in everything except [list of events]." The last two require me to manually delete certain requests before running the fandom-extracting script, while the first one requires me to manually delete fandoms from the fandom list AFTER I run the fandom-extracting script. These things are specified using freeform text, which makes them very difficult to automate; everything has to be altered and checked by hand. This problem is much more difficult to get around, and if I'm not able to fully automate the process, then things like refreshing everyone's fandom list every time I run Late Treat Bonanza (you know, to account for the fact that people might have requested new fandoms since the last time they signed up) goes from being a trivial thing I could easily do every round to being a "nope, out of the question" level of effort. And I DON'T really think I can get around this issue, unfortunately, which means that I need to figure out a way to try to refresh people's fandoms that is relatively quick albeit not fully automated. I think what might work best here is if I write some scripts that allow me to easily find the differences between two extracted lists of fandoms. This would help me both detect which fandoms I purposely removed from a list; to only look at fandoms that are new; and to make it easier to union two sets of fandoms while removing duplicates.
✅ Oh yeah, not an event, but another thing I ended up having to do in March is revamp my Quark-x-Odo dA group to the new layout. It's mostly done now, although I just need a Quodo-themed cover image.
Current creative projects
Creatively, I am taking it a bit easy at the moment. I have made significant progress on all the WIPs I was asked to work on for the last WIP meme, and will maybe do another WIP meme after I finish up the set of fests with deadlines I'm doing that are making it obvious which WIP I should work on (so maybe in August I might revisit my WIP list again?).
However, at the moment, I am fully focused on just one project, which is my Quodounconventionalcourtship fic, which I'm hoping to finish up by the UC deadline this year, which is sometime in June. I'm also doubling up and using it as a project for the Quodo WIP-finishing event; if I finish on time (i.e. in June), I will pick an additional project to work on in July for Quo-do the Thing. I created a very rough chapter outline (where I put one or two major scenes/plot points into each chapter), estimating at least 12 chapters will be needed for this fic, and I did some calculations to conclude that I need to finish at least one chapter per week if I want to finish by the end of June. :| Also, the writing on this fic is quite difficult in terms of plotting and worldbuilding, so I expect the first draft to be a bit rough and need heavy revision. So ideally, I would like to finish a little bit earlier than my deadline to allow me to send this to a beta, maybe. (Or maybe I can just go "people are getting a Nanowrimo project" on this one and decide the first draft is the only draft, as rough as it is.)
Also, this fic is very "works for slow burn" in its premise, so the middle chapters (what I have put down as chapters 5-8 in my outline) could easily expand depending on how many ideas I have and how long it takes me to write non-relationship-advancing plot. I also expect chapters 5-8 to be more difficult/slow to write, and chapters 9-12 to be easier (those chapters are emotional-beat-heavy and I have key scenes for those chapters already written), so I'm expecting there to be a somewhat difficult "hump" in the next four chapters, after which it should be smooth sailing.
This writing pace is quite ambitious/faster than I normally work, so I've been doing daily writing sprints since the start of April, and so far I am on track -- I have finished two full chapters (roughly 4k words) in the past two weeks. I'm currently nearly done with a third chapter, Chapter 5, which will be another 2k words. I hope I can keep this up!
On the art side, I am surprisingly out of art projects with deadlines for the first time since maybe May of last year, so I've switched over to personal projects. Currently at the top of my pile is a piece featuring some of my favorite JRPG flirt characters. After that, I might have time to think about my KiSS dolls again.
My art this year has been turning out surprisingly well. I guess this shouldn't be really surprising, but it seems that doing a lot of drawing last year has improved my art skills? I'm always grumpy when I find out firsthand that the Most Obvious Improve-Your-Art Tip of "uhh... just draw a lot?" actually turns out to be super effective. orz Anyway, this is to say that everything I've drawn this year has felt surprisingly effortless, and I'm hoping things stay that way!
I don't think I'm going to do any of the art late treats I have in my backlog for the Mid-year Late Treat Bonanza (I don't know, I might do one if I'm feeling one of the half-finished drafts I have), but I'll try doing at least one project for the End-year Bonanza (since one project is very Christmas-themed).
Reading
I've also been doing a lot of reading this year because I was invited by one of my partner's colleagues to join a book club. I don't really understand the story behind how this book club formed, but it seems to consist almost entirely of feminist Asian women (even though the books themselves have no theme), and in particular, most seem to belong to a network of friends/acquaintances who used to live in Hong Kong until recently. So far, having to read a book each month hasn't been too bad -- the books picked out tend to be pretty light/easy reading, and this year, I have had to go into school a LOT, so I've had a lot of opportunities to read while on the tube or walking around.
However, having to prioritize reading these books on a deadline has definitely been interfering with my ability to get caught up on my fic backlog! So yeah, I am very behind on that at the moment, unfortunately.
So far, the books haven't been too interesting/I don't have much to say about them, but I might write up like a VERY brief book round-up at some point.
Challenge #11: In your own space, create a fanwork.
I'm going to count this as checked off. I've made some art for Quodo Mini-fest and also forphoenixdown_ex, I wrote a Quodo fic, I made a Quodo vid, and I've also been making graphics for the various events I'm running, so yeah, I'm tired. XD
Vid:
Graphics:
Challenge #12: Tell Us about a Personal Win.
My personal win I'd like to talk about is that I have already been doing really well on the goals I made this year (friendslocked).
- Days of writing: As expected, this is not an issue/I'm well ahead of the number of days I need by this time of year to be on-track.
- Try making a vid: Done -- see above.
- Work on the 5 WIPs I'm into, which got put on the backburner last year: I've worked at least a little bit on all of these except my Altdea Emma one, and I've made big progress on TOM Angela Love Triangle and Quodo UC II, so that's exciting.
- Media reviews: I already published two posts this year. I need to keep going, though, in order to keep on top of this (in particular, need to push out some TV reviews, and then more films again...).
- Write two standalone, single-topic essays: I've already done a 100 Things post this year, and maybe will be able to do something forpromptmepromptly? In general, greater focus on nonfiction stuff in my tracking is really helping me with pushing out posts this year.
- Periodic Quodo/deadline project break: Hm yeah, I forgot about this goal, to be honest! ^^; But I did take a much-needed break from fic writing as a whole over the month of March (I only did 12 days of writing, mostly dedicated to Dreamwidth posts). It looks like April, May, and at least some of June will be dedicated to Quodo writing, though... Well, maybe I can take at least a bit of a break in June. I am liking having the chance to prioritize non-fiction every so often.
- Do a programming project: Done! And I hope I have time during the summer to do another, but I'm pleased that I already hit this goal so early in the year!
- KiSS doll: Has not happened yet, but it IS a good sign for this goal that I've started digging into my personal art project pile again. I think after this current piece (which is kind of like 4 mini-pieces), I should be able to crack open my KiSS doll again.
- Use helpful fest deadlines to finish WIPs: Well, I'm RUNNING a fest this year for this purpose. XD I think a lot of my WIPs at this point are kind of monster projects, so I kind of appreciate that Quo-do the Thing allows for partial completion of a project to be considered an accomplishment worth celebrating. In the future, I would definitely appreciate more events that allow incremental progress on WIPs to be used as part of the event, rather than require participants to deliver complete fic only, because I think I'm going to need more events like that!
- Get through the year only offering art (well, more like non-fic) in exchanges: Working out for me so far! This is actually turning out to be a good strategy for solving my Exchange Problem, because it means I'm pretty heavily reliant on the existence of good requests -- namely, people requesting art in a fandom I'm passionate about, which happens less often than fic requests! -- before I'm allowed to sign up for an exchange.
Challenge #13: Make a rec list of fanworks!
I'm going to skip this one. I AM intending to make a Quodo or DS9 rec list once I'm caught up on the tag, but I'm still very behind and I don't think I'll catch up anytime soon to want this challenge hanging over me.
Challenge #14: Try something new.
Done. As I mentioned above, some things I've tried out for the first time this year include:
- Making a vid.
- Making a Carrd website.
- Writing an HTML-scraping script (it's the first time I've done this!). Also, trying out a lot of Excel and/or Google Sheets functions I've never used before like XLOOKUP, FILTER, and IMPORTRANGE.
Hell yeah.
Challenge #15: Fandom Snowflake Challenge's 2023 Fandom Wrapped!
I'm skipping this one because I've basically already done this / already do this each year independently. Friendslocked: 2023 Fandom Retrospective and 2023 Writing/Fanworks Roundup.
For February/March/April, I've been taking it pretty easy in terms of fanworks, focusing more of my time on nonfiction writing and trying to prioritize pushing out overdue Dreamwidth posts. Most of my efforts the past couple of months have gone into running events and modding stuff:
Ever since I wrapped up Quodo Mini-fest, I've basically spent most of my free time getting a bunch of other projects started. This took me quite a while but I've finished most of the admin now, so I think it'll be pretty easy from here on out. The main projects I've been working on since February are:
✅ Starting a Proship Quodo Discord server. Because I made a promise to myself to avoid antis in Quodo fandom this year, I decided to make my own Discord server where I can control the privacy and vetting of members and how the server gets advertised. It took a while to set up because I had to do a lot of research on what is and isn't possible to do in Discord and write up a lot of blocks of informational text, but it's been going really well! Basically all the people I invited to join have joined and I'm just really much happier and more comfortable there now.
✅ Starting a "Quodo in Every Episode" challenge/activity. A while ago,
weaverofwords suggested to me to do a Quodo version, but I was kind of busy last year and couldn't run it, but I figured now was a good time. I decided that running it on Dreamwidth instead of AO3 would be a better choice, though, because AO3 has some limitations, namely (1) it's difficult to create a very clear, easily-browsable masterlist ordered by episode on AO3 (you can use tagged bookmarks but... it's just not the same), whereas Dreamwidth excels in this kind of freeform information organization, and (2) I generally try to avoid asking people to add works they didn't make for X event to a collection created for X event, because AO3's collections give the collection maintainer a somewhat frightening level of control over the works contained in a collection (namely, the ability to hide works or turn the work anonymous). Obviously, collection maintainers generally DON'T do that unprompted, but I do think it's good practice to decline adding works to collections you don't maintain UNLESS you specifically made that work for that event. That's my thinking anyway, so I'm running this on Dreamwidth. The setup took a while, but now it's about an hour of work each week, which is not too bad. This one is a very slow, low-effort project.✅ Running a Quodo summer event. This one also took me a bit to set up, especially since it involved having people vote on the format of the event. But we decided to make it a WIP-finishing event, and I'm really excited about that! This one also took a lot of setup but now that it's in motion, it should be pretty low-modding-effort. The main time-consuming thing left is just finishing the project I signed up with. ^^; I'm running this one on a lot of websites simultaneously. I made a Carrd website for the first time, and it was pretty fun! The layouts are pretty customizable and WYSIWYG, and I like that you can define styles and reuse them later to keep things looking consistent. And if you later change something in the style, it updates every element using that style, which is neat. I fell down a rabbithole trying out fonts, lol. XD
✅ Running a mid-year round of
latetreatbonanza. After the first round finished, I asked the community if people would like to have one round per year or two, and most people said two, so I knew I needed to prepare another round timed for around June this year, which imposed some urgency in terms of when I needed to get things rolling for this one. One thing I wanted to try this year was make a spreadsheet of who has signed up to make it easier for interested treaters to browse through requests. In particular, I wanted to see if I could automatically extract some helpful information about people's requests to make it easier for treaters to search and filter requests. This could be done if I could scrape the AO3 Automagic App user pages (yep, scraping a scraping tool!). After doing some thinking in a notebook, I decided to just stick with extracting a list of fandoms for each signed-up user this year... which turned out to be harder than expected so I'm glad I didn't make plans for anything more complicated than that. Fandoms are sufficiently complicated even just to maintain from round to round that I think I'm just going to entirely scrap my ambitions to provide any information other than a list of fandoms per user.Overall, writing the script wasn't too hard, but I wasn't able to fully automate the process, so I ended up having to go through ~100 sign-ups from last year and do a semi-manual process of (1) download each person's app page, then (2) run the scraping script on that file, and then (3) copy the list of extracted fandoms and paste it into a spreadsheet. It's not a lot of work per person, but trying to do that for 100 people took quite a long time. Now that it's done, the workload has become much more manageable because the flood of sign-ups has dried up, so doing one or two of these at a time takes maybe 5 minutes total, but for the next round, I might try augmenting my Python script to make it so that I am able to fully automate the process.
There are two main issues with doing this: The first is a technical one, which is that the actual HTML content of the AO3 Automagic App pages I'm using is fairly minimal and generic -- JavaScript is used to load all the data and completely replace the contents of the page after the page loads. So I need something with a JavaScript engine that can run all the page's scripts and THEN extract the page's DOM after all the scripts have run. Apparently, Selenium is a website automation tool that can do this, so I'd need to figure out how to use it to do this.
The second issue is more tricky -- it's that some people have specific details in their sign-up that narrow the set of things they're requesting. These are usually of the form, "I am not interested in [list of fandoms]" or "I'm not interested in requests before [year]" or "I'm interested in everything except [list of events]." The last two require me to manually delete certain requests before running the fandom-extracting script, while the first one requires me to manually delete fandoms from the fandom list AFTER I run the fandom-extracting script. These things are specified using freeform text, which makes them very difficult to automate; everything has to be altered and checked by hand. This problem is much more difficult to get around, and if I'm not able to fully automate the process, then things like refreshing everyone's fandom list every time I run Late Treat Bonanza (you know, to account for the fact that people might have requested new fandoms since the last time they signed up) goes from being a trivial thing I could easily do every round to being a "nope, out of the question" level of effort. And I DON'T really think I can get around this issue, unfortunately, which means that I need to figure out a way to try to refresh people's fandoms that is relatively quick albeit not fully automated. I think what might work best here is if I write some scripts that allow me to easily find the differences between two extracted lists of fandoms. This would help me both detect which fandoms I purposely removed from a list; to only look at fandoms that are new; and to make it easier to union two sets of fandoms while removing duplicates.
✅ Oh yeah, not an event, but another thing I ended up having to do in March is revamp my Quark-x-Odo dA group to the new layout. It's mostly done now, although I just need a Quodo-themed cover image.
Current creative projects
Creatively, I am taking it a bit easy at the moment. I have made significant progress on all the WIPs I was asked to work on for the last WIP meme, and will maybe do another WIP meme after I finish up the set of fests with deadlines I'm doing that are making it obvious which WIP I should work on (so maybe in August I might revisit my WIP list again?).
However, at the moment, I am fully focused on just one project, which is my Quodo
unconventionalcourtship fic, which I'm hoping to finish up by the UC deadline this year, which is sometime in June. I'm also doubling up and using it as a project for the Quodo WIP-finishing event; if I finish on time (i.e. in June), I will pick an additional project to work on in July for Quo-do the Thing. I created a very rough chapter outline (where I put one or two major scenes/plot points into each chapter), estimating at least 12 chapters will be needed for this fic, and I did some calculations to conclude that I need to finish at least one chapter per week if I want to finish by the end of June. :| Also, the writing on this fic is quite difficult in terms of plotting and worldbuilding, so I expect the first draft to be a bit rough and need heavy revision. So ideally, I would like to finish a little bit earlier than my deadline to allow me to send this to a beta, maybe. (Or maybe I can just go "people are getting a Nanowrimo project" on this one and decide the first draft is the only draft, as rough as it is.)Also, this fic is very "works for slow burn" in its premise, so the middle chapters (what I have put down as chapters 5-8 in my outline) could easily expand depending on how many ideas I have and how long it takes me to write non-relationship-advancing plot. I also expect chapters 5-8 to be more difficult/slow to write, and chapters 9-12 to be easier (those chapters are emotional-beat-heavy and I have key scenes for those chapters already written), so I'm expecting there to be a somewhat difficult "hump" in the next four chapters, after which it should be smooth sailing.
This writing pace is quite ambitious/faster than I normally work, so I've been doing daily writing sprints since the start of April, and so far I am on track -- I have finished two full chapters (roughly 4k words) in the past two weeks. I'm currently nearly done with a third chapter, Chapter 5, which will be another 2k words. I hope I can keep this up!
On the art side, I am surprisingly out of art projects with deadlines for the first time since maybe May of last year, so I've switched over to personal projects. Currently at the top of my pile is a piece featuring some of my favorite JRPG flirt characters. After that, I might have time to think about my KiSS dolls again.
My art this year has been turning out surprisingly well. I guess this shouldn't be really surprising, but it seems that doing a lot of drawing last year has improved my art skills? I'm always grumpy when I find out firsthand that the Most Obvious Improve-Your-Art Tip of "uhh... just draw a lot?" actually turns out to be super effective. orz Anyway, this is to say that everything I've drawn this year has felt surprisingly effortless, and I'm hoping things stay that way!
I don't think I'm going to do any of the art late treats I have in my backlog for the Mid-year Late Treat Bonanza (I don't know, I might do one if I'm feeling one of the half-finished drafts I have), but I'll try doing at least one project for the End-year Bonanza (since one project is very Christmas-themed).
Reading
I've also been doing a lot of reading this year because I was invited by one of my partner's colleagues to join a book club. I don't really understand the story behind how this book club formed, but it seems to consist almost entirely of feminist Asian women (even though the books themselves have no theme), and in particular, most seem to belong to a network of friends/acquaintances who used to live in Hong Kong until recently. So far, having to read a book each month hasn't been too bad -- the books picked out tend to be pretty light/easy reading, and this year, I have had to go into school a LOT, so I've had a lot of opportunities to read while on the tube or walking around.
However, having to prioritize reading these books on a deadline has definitely been interfering with my ability to get caught up on my fic backlog! So yeah, I am very behind on that at the moment, unfortunately.
So far, the books haven't been too interesting/I don't have much to say about them, but I might write up like a VERY brief book round-up at some point.
Challenge #11: In your own space, create a fanwork.
I'm going to count this as checked off. I've made some art for Quodo Mini-fest and also for
phoenixdown_ex, I wrote a Quodo fic, I made a Quodo vid, and I've also been making graphics for the various events I'm running, so yeah, I'm tired. XDVid:
Graphics:
Challenge #12: Tell Us about a Personal Win.
My personal win I'd like to talk about is that I have already been doing really well on the goals I made this year (friendslocked).
- Days of writing: As expected, this is not an issue/I'm well ahead of the number of days I need by this time of year to be on-track.
- Try making a vid: Done -- see above.
- Work on the 5 WIPs I'm into, which got put on the backburner last year: I've worked at least a little bit on all of these except my Altdea Emma one, and I've made big progress on TOM Angela Love Triangle and Quodo UC II, so that's exciting.
- Media reviews: I already published two posts this year. I need to keep going, though, in order to keep on top of this (in particular, need to push out some TV reviews, and then more films again...).
- Write two standalone, single-topic essays: I've already done a 100 Things post this year, and maybe will be able to do something for
promptmepromptly? In general, greater focus on nonfiction stuff in my tracking is really helping me with pushing out posts this year.- Periodic Quodo/deadline project break: Hm yeah, I forgot about this goal, to be honest! ^^; But I did take a much-needed break from fic writing as a whole over the month of March (I only did 12 days of writing, mostly dedicated to Dreamwidth posts). It looks like April, May, and at least some of June will be dedicated to Quodo writing, though... Well, maybe I can take at least a bit of a break in June. I am liking having the chance to prioritize non-fiction every so often.
- Do a programming project: Done! And I hope I have time during the summer to do another, but I'm pleased that I already hit this goal so early in the year!
- KiSS doll: Has not happened yet, but it IS a good sign for this goal that I've started digging into my personal art project pile again. I think after this current piece (which is kind of like 4 mini-pieces), I should be able to crack open my KiSS doll again.
- Use helpful fest deadlines to finish WIPs: Well, I'm RUNNING a fest this year for this purpose. XD I think a lot of my WIPs at this point are kind of monster projects, so I kind of appreciate that Quo-do the Thing allows for partial completion of a project to be considered an accomplishment worth celebrating. In the future, I would definitely appreciate more events that allow incremental progress on WIPs to be used as part of the event, rather than require participants to deliver complete fic only, because I think I'm going to need more events like that!
- Get through the year only offering art (well, more like non-fic) in exchanges: Working out for me so far! This is actually turning out to be a good strategy for solving my Exchange Problem, because it means I'm pretty heavily reliant on the existence of good requests -- namely, people requesting art in a fandom I'm passionate about, which happens less often than fic requests! -- before I'm allowed to sign up for an exchange.
Challenge #13: Make a rec list of fanworks!
I'm going to skip this one. I AM intending to make a Quodo or DS9 rec list once I'm caught up on the tag, but I'm still very behind and I don't think I'll catch up anytime soon to want this challenge hanging over me.
Challenge #14: Try something new.
Done. As I mentioned above, some things I've tried out for the first time this year include:
- Making a vid.
- Making a Carrd website.
- Writing an HTML-scraping script (it's the first time I've done this!). Also, trying out a lot of Excel and/or Google Sheets functions I've never used before like XLOOKUP, FILTER, and IMPORTRANGE.
Hell yeah.
Challenge #15: Fandom Snowflake Challenge's 2023 Fandom Wrapped!
I'm skipping this one because I've basically already done this / already do this each year independently. Friendslocked: 2023 Fandom Retrospective and 2023 Writing/Fanworks Roundup.
no subject