Fandom Snowflake: Challenge 15 Experience

[ysabetwordsmith]

Challenge 15?!? How are we at the end already?!?! Whether you’ve been here posting every other day, or every other week, or going good there in the beginning and then petered out with dreams of finishing one day *raises hand* we hope you got something from the experience. We’d love to hear about it.

Challenge #15

In your own space, Talk about Your Snowflake Experience. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

What did you come into it thinking or wanting? Did you get that? Did you get something else? Did you learn anything new about fandom, others, yourself? Are you glad you did it or thought it a waste of time and energy? You can tell us. We’re all here to learn and grow. What did you learn? How did you grow?




What did you come into it thinking or wanting? Did you get that?

I wanted to meet people and hopefully make a few new friends. Introduction and Interact are helpful for this, as I typically go through all the Introduction posts and contact the people who seem most compatible. I have met plenty and seen some drop by my blog. It remains to be seen if any of them stick around.

One of the most frustrating things about Snowflake is how many people blog only during this event. There are so many interesting folks whose posts I love, but most of them disappear at the end and I won't see them again until next year. :(

As an information dispensary, I love turning people on to new things. I always get to do that during the Wishlist, Recommendations, and Resources posts, sometimes during other ones. During the Wishlist, I recommended communities, New Year's resolution tips, and recurring posts to people who wished for more interaction or easier blogging, and I think those stuck for at least a few folks. Plus I got a cover picture for one of my fanfics, and a podfic of another, which was awesome. Resources got a lot of traffic this time as people told me how useful it was. \o/

I'm always looking for new things to read, so the Recommendations post is a favorite. The usual challenge to list some of your own fanworks got rolled into Brag this time, which I haven't had time to go through yet because I'm still reading through Recommendations, so I don't know how much fanfic is actually in there.

Make Your Own Challenge is a favorite because I love encouraging people to do things. I try to present a range of easy to challenging options.

Create a Fanwork is always a hit with readers, and sometimes brings in new fans. This time it was obvious what to write, because I had recently posted "Coming in from the Cold: Monday: Renovations" in which Part 5 and Part 6 touch on the growing asexual relationship between Clint Barton and JARVIS. Per request by audience acclaim, I wrote the JARVIS POV of those relationship dynamics, "Everyone Should Be Free to Choose."

I was kind of hoping to find a few folks to host new fests on allbingo about fandoms we haven't seen before, but I don't think that has happened yet. Does anyone want to run a bingo challenge about your favorite fandom? Let me know.


Did you get something else?

I was surprised and pleased to see one of my fans inviting a bunch of my characters to dinner during the Dinner Party challenge. :D 3q3q3q!!!

In the Wishlist challenge, two different people offered up donations to charities chosen by the first five responders. tielan sent $20 to Pine Ridge and tsuki_no_bara split $20 between two different bison charities, on my behalf. \o/ I thought this was so awesome and I hope the idea spreads farther next year too.

In Make Your Own Challenge, I found two challenges that I liked well enough to echo on my blog: Desserts by shipperslist and Tags by vaysh.


Did you learn anything new about fandom, others, yourself? What did you learn? How did you grow?

The fannish responses to "Everyone Should Be Free to Choose" here and on AO3 indicated that there is not only a great dearth but a huge demand for acepr0n. So if you want more attention on your fanworks, consider writing scenes of deep, nonsexual intimacy. Ace, aro, and demi folks tend to be as excited about characters rubbing their emotions together as sexual folks are about rubbing bodies together. I suspected some of this, but the response was a lot stronger than I expected.

Since one of the main ways I use fanfic is mining it for what people love most, so I can load those ideas into my original canons, I will definitely be writing more acepr0n in the future. :D New input for writing is always useful. I encourage interested readers to drop by my blog during any relevant prompt call and request more of this, since it is something that I have been writing occasionally all along. Next up will be the Poetry Fishbowl on Tuesday, Feb. 2 with a theme of "Cultural Differences." You might also like dialecticdreamer who hosts the prompt call Feathering the Nest mid-month, always with a theme of "Nonsexual Intimacies."


Are you glad you did it or thought it a waste of time and energy?

Yes, I managed to do all the challenges, although some I did enthusiastically and abundantly while others I barely scraped by. It depends a lot on what things I normally do and how (or if) I record those things, which influences what I can find and post quickly.

There were a couple of glitches in the Snowflake this year, but when I alerted the moderators, both got fixed quickly and competently. <3 Yes, I have a competence kink. :D

I am glad that I did the Snowflake Challenge. It's my favorite of the year, the most fun, and the most bang for buck in terms of Energy Return On Energy Invested. Thank you all for making this possible.

Comments

[fuzzyred]

I have never hosted a bingo fest before, but I do believe you're rubbing off on me again *laugh* :D

When I read the bit about looking for new hosts and less seen fandoms, my mind immediately jumped to NCIS, one of my favourite shows. If you're not familiar with it, it's a procedural crime show about the division that deals with Navy personnel. It has characters I really like, not a lot of fanfic, and enough elements that will allow for diversity in stories; either with the canon characters or with original characters and/or settings.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I've heard of it. I don't think we've had a fest about it before. I'm sure that prompts for NCIS would generalize well to other cops-and-robbers fandoms. :D It would easily break down into prompt lists for "crime and punishment," "characters," "settings," etc. if you wish.

Instructions for hosting a fest are on the Community Calendar page.
September and November are still open, or you could double up with one of the seasonal fests that have been done before.

Thoughts?

Re: Yes ...

[fuzzyred]

>>I'm sure that prompts for NCIS would generalize well to other cops-and-robbers fandoms.<<

That was my thinking, yes.

>>It would easily break down into prompt lists for "crime and punishment," "characters," "settings," etc. if you wish.<<

Oh! Those would be really good categories, and it's not something I would have necessarily thought of myself; thanks for ideas!

>>Instructions for hosting a fest are on the Community Calendar page.<<

I will definitely be checking out those instructions. Manuals are helpful :)

>>September and November are still open, or you could double up with one of the seasonal fests that have been done before.<<

Doubling up seems like it might take some of the pressure off running a fest for the first time, though I am also willing to fill in one of the blank spots. If doubling, I'd prefer something April or later, just to give me time to plan and prepare. If filling in a blank, I'd like September. That gives me time to prepare but not so much that I forget about it. It also has the benefit of being when shows usually start back up again, and a fest that aligns with that beginning is appealing.

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Oh! Those would be really good categories, and it's not something I would have necessarily thought of myself; thanks for ideas! <<

Look in previous allbingo fests or the Bingo Card Generator for examples of fests with multiple categories (you can see the categories for Valentines on the generator). If you are familiar with NCIS fansites then you might also search those to see if anyone has posted a list of prompts or motifs that you could use for inspiration.

>> Doubling up seems like it might take some of the pressure off running a fest for the first time, though I am also willing to fill in one of the blank spots. <<

I suggest that you read the instructions, do a little poking around in search of prompt ideas, and then decide what you'd like to do.

>>That gives me time to prepare but not so much that I forget about it.<<

I try to remind the monthly hosts if the intro post hasn't gone up by the first day of the month. If you watch the community, you'll also see the listing shift through "this month we had" and "next month we will have" in the monthly posts.

>> It also has the benefit of being when shows usually start back up again, and a fest that aligns with that beginning is appealing.<<

Well reasoned. That's a logical choice for a conventional television show.

[tsuki_no_bara]

the resources challenge resulted in some really great links, i have to say, and your post specifically was super thorough. and tielan's charity idea was such a good one i'll have to remember it for the future.

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> the resources challenge resulted in some really great links, i have to say, and your post specifically was super thorough. <<

I'm happy to hear that.

It helps that I have certain things set up to facilitate this. I know from experience that Snowflake customarily includes:
* reccing your own work
* reccing other people's work
* listing resources
* posting a new work

So I'm set up to deal with that. I've always had my work and certain types of resources pretty well organized for easy searching. I started tracking favorite fanworks of the year so I could simply use those as recs, which saves me half an hour to an hour of dredging my files. \o/ I've also learned to have a work in the can so I don't have to write it on the random day when that challenge appears; I can just go straight to upload so fans get it faster.

I almost crashed and burned on "rec a remix" this year because it isn't a regular challenge or a type of fanwork I routinely seek out, so I didn't have any way of sifting it out quickly. I had to rely on things I remembered well enough to find them, and I was lucky that a couple of fans had just made things for me based on my work.

So I would recommend that anyone who struggles with a customary challenge should think ahead and plan for that one. Do you need extra time? Prep it in advance or update a previous year's version. Does it require gathering things? Doing that over time might help.

>> and tielan's charity idea was such a good one i'll have to remember it for the future. <<

Agreed. That was brilliant. I believe it's new this year because I've done Snowflake for several years and I always read the Wishlist challenge thoroughly to fulfill as many wishes as possible.