Challenge #12: Create a Rec Countdown.

I've decided to rec: 5 icon communities, 4 media featuring women on a ruthless revenge quest, 3 direct-to-DVD Disney movie sequels I think are actually good, 2 communities for finding fannish events, and 1 movie I'd rec to everyone (which is extremely uncommon).

( Rec countdown )


Challenge #13: Interact with someone in fandom you haven't talked with before.

(Skipping this one.)


Challenge #15: Talk about an unexpected joyous moment you experienced last year.

Well, I was really delighted to get a late treat for my Quodo-as-exes prompt in Quodo Mini-fest! And a vid too! I don't think I really realized this about latetreatbonanza until after I'd run it the first time, but nothing much matches the surprised delight of getting a late present out of left field (I mainly made the community from the creator's perspective of just wanting motivation to finish up my own late projects). But I've noticed it in the way the recipients react to their gifts -- it is definitely SUCH a joyous experience getting a surprise gift! So yes, that was an unexpected joyous moment for me last year.


And I'm done with snowflake_challenge, reasonably on time this year!

Challenge #11: In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme.

Since I wrote my Bravely Default canon promo last year, I've been meaning to post a discussion about trios that strongly fit a ( Sun/Moon/Star aesthetic )


Challenge #12 is giving me a bit of a hard time and I might need to meditate on it a bit more. And I might be too shy for Challenge #13 -- in any case, giving it a bit more time seems like a good idea. So I'm going to just skip ahead to Challenge #14?


Challenge #14: In your own space, create your own fandom challenge.

I feel like in this year's challenge, there wasn't really a lot of opportunities for people to talk about specific characters they like in fiction, so I'd like to ask a question related to characters. So feel free to answer any of: Do you have a character you used to be obsessed with and no longer are, or a character you've encountered recently that you're like, "Younger me would have LOVED this character"? Which character do you find yourself thinking about the most / rotating in your mind lately, and why? Do you have a character you feel has been done dirty by fandom, and if so, in what way? Do you have a canon that you think does a particularly good job at establishing its cast of characters, and if so, what would you say is its secret to success?

Challenge #9: In your own space, create a fanwork.

Well, kind of inspired by hamsterwoman's colorbars, I decided to make an icon set for the current challenge of lgbtrainbow.

( Various graphics under the cut )

Challenge #8 - In your own space, write a promo, manifesto or primer for a beloved character, relationship or fandom.

Ack, so this is kind of late (I was hoping to do one of these per day, and this took me three days to write!), but since I am a pinch hit in fffx, I thought it would be nice to write some canon promos for some of the more niche canons I'm requesting. For this exchange, the fandoms I was requesting were: Bravely Default (canon promo already written); Kingdom Hearts; Pinocchio (canon promo already written); Soulcalibur; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; Star Trek: Discovery; and Trials of Mana. Of those, Kingdom Hearts and the Star Trek shows are already pretty popular fandoms and they're also huge/sprawling canons, so I don't think writing a promo to encourage people to pick them up for my pinch hit really makes sense. So that just left Soulcalibur and Trials of Mana. It took me a really long time, but these are now up over here: Soulcalibur promo (2613 words) and Trials of Mana promo (1776 words)

My pinch hit has apparently already been claimed, though, so once again I am too late with these Snowflake Challenges!! Ah well, I assume canon promos are those kinds of things that have long-term payoff rather than short-term payoff, so it's nice to have these up for the future.

Continuing to churn these out...

Challenge #6: Share your favourite piece of original canon.

( Favorite piece of original canon )

Challenge #7: In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a wishlist of sorts.

( Wishlist )

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 )
( Current creative projects )
( Reading )



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. XD

( Vid and graphics under the cut )

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).

( More on this )


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.

February sure went by in a flash... phoenixdown_ex sign-ups close tonight (I am signing up to do art only -- about 60% done with my sign-up...) and there is also a Final Fantasy Kiss Battle going on, for those interested!



Huh... Remember how I was doing these? ^^; It is becoming increasingly unlikely I'll be able to do these, but maybe I'll try a couple more and call it a day (...a month, a year...).


Challenge #7: Make a list of fannish and/or creative resources.

I don't really have that many resources to give that I haven't mentioned before, so I'm just going to link my DW profile, where I link some Dreamwidth communities I think are neat. They range from fannish events, writing/art/icon support communities, and rec comms.


Challenge #9: Rec Us Your Newest Thing.

Very much NOT my newest thing, but this challenge mentioned that "You can absolutely use this space for that manifesto or fandom promo that you’ve always wanted to pen," so I decided to use it to try to finish up some fandom promos I've been writing up for my more obscure/hard-to-get-into fandoms and which I've been sticking in the bottom of my generic exchange letter. But they're NOT my newest thing because all the possible fandoms I could write a promo for are really old ones for me. And then unfortunately, doing just ONE of these promos took wayyy longer than I expected, so... here's my Bravely Default promo -- that's all I've got. It's... apparently 1558 words. I hope people looking to pick up new canons are willing to read mini-essays... (To be fair, most of it is just a list of things I tend to request in exchanges, which can be easily skipped.)


Challenge #10: Five Things! The five things are totally up to you.

I've decided to write up my top 5 ideas for a BFE (bangs, fests, exchanges) type multifandom event. These ideas are all too much for me to mod so I'm putting them up for adoption.

( 1: Telephone Fictionary )
( 2: One Trope Only )
( 3: One True Character )
( 4: Team-up Exchanges )
( 5: Reverse prompt/Prompting-for-prompts meme )

This is a post I intended to make last year -- I watched the latter two Descendants movies and the Z-O-M-B-I-E-S trilogy back in 2022, held back my reviews of them because I wanted to write a longer essay type thing for my 100 Disney Posts challenge, and thought I would write up my thoughts sometime in 2023, but then it didn't happen. So here it is. And you know what? I'm also going to go with my long tradition of bending the prompts of Snowflake Challenges to fit whatever it is I was going to talk about anyway, so this also counts for Snowflake Challenge #6:



Challenge #6: In your own space, share a favourite piece of original canon (a show, a specific TV episode, a storyline, a book or series, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.

Note: This post contains light spoilers for all the movies discussed here (HSM, Descendants, and ZOMBIES).

( Intro: High School Musical )
( Descendants 1 / 2 / 3 )
( Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 1 / 2 / 3 )

---

You can suggest topics for future posts for this meme over here.

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.

( Intro + icebreaker activity )


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.

( My fandom wishlist )

Challenge #13 - In your own space, rec three fanworks that you did not create.

Some random recs (all art) that are NOT Quodo (I might post a Quodo recs round-up in quodo later if I have time):

• I found this series of Disney princesses wearing furisode by Sunnypoppy -- I like the way the original colors have been incorporated in the kimono and how heavy/winter-appropriate the getup looks. The Elsa and Anna ones look great, and I'm also a fan of the short skirt and long sleeves on the Tinker Bell one, and the Pocahontas design just looks really nice/classy.

• This series of (watercolor + color pencil + digital, I'm guessing?) pieces featuring Star Trek characters as mermaids by Mackoonzie (mostly Enterprise characters but some DS9 and TOS as well) -- I really like the coloring and sea lighting, and the various designs/choices of sea creatures to use as the tails are great!

• Some belated Multifandom Doodle recs?? There was so much good stuff in the last round's collection, but in particular, I loved these ink portraits of Spock and Lando Calrissian by cherryontop, and the fantastic (animated!) pixel art by ElAurianBarkeep, especially Gotham at night and Trucy and Phoenix Wright on a bridge at sunset.


Challenge #14 - In your own space, do the Fandom Wrap Challenge.

( Top 5 lists )

Challenge #15 - In your own space, opine on the future of fandom.

The prompt here focused on the Twitter explosion, so I guess I'll talk about platforms in a kind of rambling, disorganized sort of way.

( What platforms to use for fandom in the future )

Challenge #9 - In your own space, celebrate a personal win from the past year.

I mean... It's got to be writing a complete(!) novel-length(!) Quodo fic.

It's true that I have definitely gotten more confident in my writing each year since joining getyourwordsout (which is especially true when it comes to Quodo, which for some reason has consistently been easier for me to come up with longer plots for and draft than any other fandom/pairing I've gotten into ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). But... at the same time, it is still a bit difficult for me to believe I pulled this off. First, while my writing skills HAVE gotten stronger since 2019 when I first joined GYWO, it must be said that I joined GYWO because I specifically wanted help finishing off two multichapter WIPs... and noticeably, NEITHER of those fics are finished yet, and both of them are STILL shorter than that Quodo fic (they're at ~27k and ~20k).

So basically, I am very aware that writing multichapter fics (especially with a plot) is hard. So I am really surprised and proud of myself for pulling off a finished fic WAY longer than anything I've ever done -- and it is a fic I like a lot too!

(Of course, now that I'm aware I have it in me to write novel-length Quodo fic, I find that I'm eager to write more this year. I have one Quodo idea that could easily be novella-length (20-30k words maybe) and another that will definitely be novel-length if I finish it (it's currently ~24k words and maybe 1/3 done).)

Challenge #10 - In your own space, create a fanwork.

So I decided to make some icons, of Bravely Default (a fandom I was hoping to get some icons for in fandomtrees but didn't, so need to go make them myself) and also icons from my own art. Oh, also I finished up an old Trials of Mana icon I started.

( Cut for images )

Feel free to take any of them if they are relevant to your interests! Also, I've finally archived these and a whole bunch of older icons I made for requests at my icon journal:
- 48 drawn art icons (video games, animanga, my fanart)
- 46 live action icons (TV and film, mostly Star Trek)

Challenge #11 - In your own space, Talk about your favorite trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme.

Okay I swear before I even saw hamsterwoman's entry, I was also going to talk about Five-Man Bands.

( Five-Man Bands )

(Where's Challenge #6? I've decided to do it later when I have more time and am less panicked about work.)

Challenge #7 - In your own space, interact with a community or a fic.

Done. This one is always easy for me because commenting on fic tends to come quite easily to me. Also, I am really behind on the Quodo tag on AO3, so there's plenty of works for me to comment on at the moment. I am kind of rushing through my reading so I didn't leave as many comments as I liked, but I did leave comment on three different people's works, and I'm still in January in my backwards-moving fic backlog. I hope to leave a few more.

Challenge #8 - In your own space, create a quiz or a poll (or tell us your thoughts about answering quizzes/polls).

I was a bit inspired by hamsterwoman's general ramblings about personality quizzes to share some of my thoughts on what I think make good and bad "What X are you?"-type personality/sorting quizzes.

( Ranting about uQuiz ahead )

Once again, I haven't been participating regularly in this, but I was thinking today about something that fits the topic anyway so I decided might as well:



Challenge #13: In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom: the first time you got into fandom, the last time a fanwork touched your heart, wild times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone.

( Talking about joining AO3 for the first time )

I haven't been participating in the Snowflake Challenge up until this point, but I appreciated the nostalgia factor of the one today and I was recently reminded of something I could use for it, so here we go:



Challenge #12: In your own space, resurrect an old meme. Have fun with it! Which is the goofiest meme you can think of? Put on your party hat and be silly!!

( My answer )