Snowflake days 10 & 11
Challenge #10: In your own space, rec a fanwork (fic, art, vid, playlist, anything!) you did not create.
Ooh, there have been a couple of things I'd been meaning to rec and then lost track, so this seems like the perfect time to do it:
The Princess Bride: vehigadta (and you shall tell)
roga (3k, gen, Simon Morgenstern, Narrator) -- this is a gloriously, gloriously meta fic, beautifully fitting the framing narrative of the book and its blend of real life and fantasy/AU history-treated-as-reality. It is a fic that's emblematic of the wonders of Yuletide for me -- it takes a tiny fandom and an unexpected character and it does something unexpected and poignant and so fitting the spirit of the canon with it -- it's a wonder.
Asimov's Robots: Training Data by
kalirush (3k, gen, Susan Calvin, Original Characters) -- a very neat original robot mystery which feels true to the scientific spirit of the original stories while adding a layer of something new.
The Serpent Gates: can't train a moth by
LuckyDiceKirby (2.5k, Teen, Tal/Sethennai) -- the tag "local worst elf makes the worst choices" says it all! No, really, perfect Tal POV, hilarious and painful at once, and just an incredibly believable missing moment from canon.
A Marvelous Light: Lovely fanart of Robin and Edwin by
hey_vickiii. I'm not sure if it's the first fanart for the series -- it's the first fanart I've seen -- and it captures the two characters perfectly, along with some cool worldbuilding detail.
Also, it suddenly occurred to me out of the blue that, for a person the bulk of whose AO3 output is (still) formal poetry, I've never done a formal fan poetry rec list, and I should! (Not mentioning why I'm reccing individual pieces -- I'm reccing them all because it's awesome that formal fan poetry exists at all, and is this great.)
19th Century Paleontology RPF: The Ballad Of Cope And Marsh (Edward Drinker Cope / Othniel Charles Marsh) by
ankaret, complete with sing-along
Deadpool: The Ruba'iyat of Wade Wilson (ruba'iyat, duh) by
DangerousCommieSubversive
Fandom -- Fandom: A Different Art by
china_shop (villanelle, sort of), where I'm just going to quote the summary: "The art of tagging’s not too hard to master"
House MD: A Typical Day in Diagnostics (sestina) by
bironic (with several other sestinas that can be found here)
Murderbot: Inheritance (Murderbot & ART & Murderbot 2.0, sonnet) by
minutia_r
Original Work: Original Librarian Character/Original Ghost Character: File under: BF1444-1486 (Teen) by
Kiraly. Not an established form but following the the structure of John Donne's "Song" ("Go and catch a falling star"), used to great effect.
Sherlock: A Jumper of John's (Sherlock/John, a ghazal) by
alltoseek.
Vorkosigan Saga: has had an entire Poetry Battle (including sonnets, limericks, clerihews, double dactyl, a villanelle, sestinas), of which my favorite is Declaiming Revolution (sonnet) by
minutia_r, which started it all.
The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot: The Yule Land by
raspberryhunter. OK, I've recced this just a few weeks ago, since it's part of the latest Yuletide crop, and also it's a pastiche rather than an original formal poem, but it is brilliant and I couldn't leave it off the list.
**
Challenge #11: In your own space, Interact with someone.
As the Snowflake post itself says, by this point in the challenge this one is kind of a gimme, because I've been doing it ever since Snowflake started. Actually, I got curious (you know me and data) and went to see what the numbers said:
Over the course of January so far, between the DW Circle meme and Snowflake and Yuletide reveals and
fandomtrees, I've picked up 5 new flisters, and my DW (+LJ, but it's overwhelmingly DW) inbox has over 100 comments from non-flisters (from over 40 distinct people, looks like), which is so cool! Not all of these are people I haven't talked to before ever -- in fact, one of the fun things about Snowflake is that there is this cozy aspect of "bumping into" the same people in Snowflake year after year and touching base on shared fandoms or new things we've picked up meanwhile -- like an extended family reunion or Back to School Night :) But some people are absolutely new (in pursuit of hard data, I searched my comment email history to confirm that, heh) -- and I'm looking forward to bumping into them year after year in future Snowflakes :) And it's also great to see more posts from people who *are* on my flist but haven't been posting much, or people posting about things they generally don't post about, so I get to learn cool new things about them and, like, the world in general.
And
muccamukk's mini-challenge to comment on a fanwork with 0 comments reminded me that, actually, I also commented to/interacted with a lot of new folks on AO3 as a result of all the recs people have been posting, compiling my own recs (where in some cases I realized I'd never commented on the thing I was going to rec, either because at the time I discovered it, I did not have an AO3 account yet or because I'd read the thing from my phone and forgot to go back and comment once I had an actual keyboard), or found additional fun things to read and comment on by wandering AO3 tags.
Basically, Snowflake is great! (although I definitely don't think I could sustain this level of engagement the entire year. But it's a great way to start off a new year!)
But also, while I chatted with a bunch of Snowflake folk (Snowflolk?) today, I'm not sure I've talked to anyone brand-brand new since the challenge was explicitly posed, so taking a leaf out of some other folks' pages:
Here is an open invitation to comment and say hi. Want to ask me a question? I'm still happy to answer any fannish top 5's (general or specific to fandom list here). Want to answer a question? Tell me your favorite fish, mineral, fruit/berry, chemical element, and/or punctuation mark.
**
Meanwhile, my fannish top 5 meme in the previous Snowflake post has lead to some super fun discussion in the comments, that I'll link from here for ease of my own finding it later:
- top 5 fantasy books by time spent (LJ)
- top 5 Blake's 7 episodes
- top 5 Avon (B7) moments
- top 5 Buffy the Vampire Slayer Big Bads
- top 5 Dragaera Houses
- top 5 Vlad Taltos scenes and Vlad/Morrolan moments
- top 5 MCU women characters
- top 5 Vorkosigan books/novellas
*
And a meme stolen from
corvidology (and some other folks):
How big are your fandoms? List them in order of the number of works posted for them at AO3
A Song of Ice and Fire -- George R.R.Martin: 45,683 works
(5 of these are mine, all written while the fandom was still Yuletide-eligible, before the show, although posted after, IIRC.)
Lord of the Rings -- J.R.R.Tolkien: 20,773 works
(1 of them is mine)
Raven Cycle -- Maggie Stiefvater: 8615 works
(1 of them is mine)
Vorkosigan Saga -- Lois McMaster Bujold: 3064 works
(1 of them is mine)
Periodic Table Anthropomorphic is synned to Object and Concept Anthropomorphism: 2688 works
(1 of them is mine)
Rivers of London -- Ben Aaronovitch: 1066 works
(2 of them are mine)
Temeraire -- Naomi Novik: 1030 works
(1 of them is mine)
The Murderbot Diaries -- Martha Wells: 717 works
(1 of them is mine)
The Goblin Emperor -- Katherine Addison: 526 works
(1 of them is mine)
Machineries of Empire -- Yoon Ha Lee: 149 works
(1 of them is mine)
Dragaera -- Steven Brust: 99 works
(2 of them are mine)
Понедельник начинается в субботу - Стругацкие | Monday Begins on Saturday - A. & B. Strugatsky: 44 works (8 in English)
(1 of them is mine)
The Serpent Gates -- A.K.Larkwood: 12 works
(1 of them is mine)
Hamster Princess Series -- Ursula Vernon: 7 works
(3 of them are mine) <-- I was happy to see the hamsters canonized this year when doing my Yuletide noms :)
That's actually more works for Vorkosiverse and less for Object & Concept Anthropomorphic and Machineries of Empire than I was expecting, huh!
*
And, random link time:
sineala linked to Absurdle, an adversarial version of Wordle, and it's pretty damn addictive!
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1165591.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).