Snowflake days 5 & 6 + fandomtrees
Challenge #5: In your own space, talk about an idea you wish you had the time / talent / energy to do.
This turned out to be an interesting question...
I mean, "talent" is easy -- like so many others, I'd love to be able to draw. I mean, I realize it's a learnable skill, and I've gotten to watch friends advance through practice, and it's really cool! But I want the skills without the work, magic wand style. There are some ideas -- lots of those AUs/fusions I mentioned back on day 3, or crossovers, where I think art would be a more fun way to engage with the parts that are interesting to me, which are "I fused / crossed over a thing! Look at them wearing Hogwarts robes / standing next to each other". Alas.
I'd also like to have perfect recall of all my canons. Some of the fandoms I'm most passionate about are long and complex ones, with large casts of characters and a lot of worldbuilding detail. I don't feel comfortable trying to write in them without a near-perfect command of canon detail, and that's just not going to be something I can hold fixed in my mind. I realize that's not, rationally, a requirement to write fic, and there are ways around it -- focusing on a smaller segment of canon, leaving a placeholder and going to research a specific bit -- but that wouldn't feel fun to me in these canons, I don't think.
In slightly more achievable desires, I might also like to learn to write shippy things. Not for the eyeballs or because that's what fandom prefers, but because some of my ships, especially the crossover ones, are so niche, they are very unlikely to exist any other way. And I know that's something I could learn, too -- there are tropes and beats and vocabulary, and it's really no different than learning to write a villanelle or a mystery -- but that hasn't happened yet. I guess a strong enough impetus hasn't come along to put in the amount of effort required.
Something I feel like I've probably missed out on, due to how timelines aligned, is participating in a journal-based RP, especially a multi-fandom sandbox. I followed a LJ/DW based RP game for a while, and read through bits of others when chasing fannish content for my tiny fandoms, but I only discovered the existence of such a thing as journal RP when I was an adult with a job and young kids and was like, damn, if I were in high school/uni and had that kind of time/flexibility, I'd be all over this! (I do know people who participated extensively in RP with a job and/or young children, so I know it's possible but I couldn't see a way to make it work for myself.) So as it was, I briefly set up a tiny one with just me and a RL friend and mostly original characters, and even that tiny experiment in making up journal names and selecting icons and RPing threads was really fun -- but just enough to whet my appetite for the real thing. But also, this is something I'd love to be able to do obsessively, and I just don't have the time to do something obsessively in fandom that involves coordination with other people.
Really, what pondering this question kind of crystallized for me is that what I want out of fandom at this stage in my life is kind of on the instant gratification + community side of things rather than working through a major project or something that requires a significant time commitment. And that's fine. That's why I really enjoy low-key things like Snowflake, or things I can pick up and drop as I need to, like memes, or more intensive/commitment-y but once-a-year stuff like Yuletide.
My actual I-hope-I-really-get-to-this goal in fandom-adjacent space is to put together a poetry chapbook at some point. I've been kicking around this idea ever since Print On Demand and websites that let you lay out a book became a thing, i.e. for many years, but in the last couple of years I've actually stepped up doing things with poetry -- I did a couple of rounds of NaPoWriMo, did some rounds of submission, and I think it's getting close to the right time to put together a collection if I'm going to do it. (I was hoping to get to it this year, figuring I'd have more free time once the kids left for college, but all the free time I'd been looking forward to has been eaten up by work (supply chain! *shakes fist*) and real estate paperwork and pandemic uncertainties... but hopefully at least some of those things will clear up soon and leave me some time for a project like that.
Challenge #6: In your own space, Create something.
I thought seriously about "cheating" and just sharing the two poem-type things I wrote for
fandomtrees, but that was a week or so ago, and I do like to try to make a thing specifically for the challenge. And given the number of times I've talked about Encanto on LJ/DW in the last couple of weeks, I figured I needed an Encanto icon.
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fandomtrees reveals happened!
I got some yummy cookie recipes and two lovely fics:
- A Duv Galeni drabble, Story Time by
desertvixen (for my Duv + fatherhood prompt), and
- Witch Crossing by
gullwhacker, about the further adventures of Granny Weatherwax in Ankh-Morpork
I had been hoping to do more, but it appeared that my brain had not really grown back from Yuletide. I scattered some book recs, betaed a thing (<3), and wrote two little bits of doggerel:
An Ivan Vorpatril limerick for
james for Vorkosiverse:
A charming young Vor lad named Ivan
Barely had any funds to survive on;
All his peaceful dreams
Wrecked by someone's mad schemes --
What is there for the poor man to thrive on?!
And a ???? (honestly, I have no idea what this is) for
sysann for Dragaera:
The choice of a witch's familiar
Is vital to future success:
For instance, what could be sillier
Than to choose a jhegaala? I guess
A phoenix will flare up and smoulder
And need fireproof places to land;
A jhereg will sit on your shoulder
And eat kethna scraps from your hand.
A chreotha will tangle trip hazards,
An athyra will drive you insane,
An orca would make hard to gather
On land, which would be quite a pain.
A dzur or a dragon is bolder,
A lyorn more loyal, sincere,
A jhereg, though, will sit on your shoulder
And -- venomously -- nip your ear.
A tiassa will get bored and wander,
Who knows what a tsalmoth might do,
A teckla will likely crawl under
The bed and be eaten, 'tis true.
A hawk will observe the whole world or
Alert you if something is wrong,
But a jhereg will sit on your shoulder
And snark in your mind all day long.
A vallista is hard on your budget,
An issola is pointy and loud,
An iorich, however you judge it,
Is too vicious to bring in a crowd.
A yendi will sleep when it's colder,
Like the world's least trustworthy shoelace... --
A jhereg, now, will sit on your shoulder,
And be your best friend all your days.
(ugh, I always forget where Brust puts the stress on "jhereg" and it would work better if it were the other way, but ah well...)
Anyway, yay
fandomtrees! as always [it and its predecessors were] a nice chaser to Yuletide and companion to Snowflake :)
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1164420.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).