snowflake_challenge '25: Set some [fannish] goals

I fulfilled last year's goal to freshen my journal's header and default icon -- thus Bradamante-at-dawn replacing Toronto-at-night! And I made a little progress at reinforcing my antique userpic icons... but I want more freshness, so I'll renew my goal to bring my userpic icons into the current decade.

I made partial progress on my goal to take control of which fandoms show "above the fold" on my AO3 dashboard. As you know, that list orders by quantity, and if several have the same count, their order is random (not alphabetical). So I'll renew my goal to ensure that all 5 "above the fold" fandoms show my major/current fandoms, by writing more fanfic for those that I love more but have written less. (One new BtVS story? Two new TLOZ pieces!) (FK, HL, D&DC, and BSG78 are my top four, of course.)

Speaking of writing fanfic, this year I'd like to set a goal of coming to terms with, and giving myself permission to, post more short pieces. I read and enjoy short pieces! But I always feel that I, personally, am shortchanging the reader when I write them -- that I'm not giving her a fair return on the attention she generously invested. Also, relatedly yet separately, I feel that I, personally, am not giving the characters due respect, building the worlds and experiences that TPTB left hanging or harmed. (I wonder if this is partially because I've largely lived in out-of-production fandoms? Or many other more personal reasons.)

Finally, I'd like to post more here on my journal, in comments on others' journals, and in recommendation communities. I love it here on DW and I want to help build up our community. ♥

snowflake_challenge '25: A fannish opinion that changed over time

I'll share one opinion and one practice.

Changed opinion: Lacroix. Back when I was a fandom newbie and watching Forever Knight backward -- that is, from S3 in syndication, to Nth-gen S2 VHS tapes generous folks mailed me for the cost of materials and postage, to Nth-gen S1 VHS tapes from different generous folks -- and there were yet episodes that I had not seen, I... founded the Light Cousins and Faithfuls. Sorry! My ill-founded opinion at that time was that the Lacroix character could feasibly and usefully be approached as capable of reform, ideally through his feelings for other characters, especially Fleur and Nick. I was wrong. That's not a useful or supportable approach to the canon story structure or the character's role within it. Of course individual fan writers can and should create such stories as excellent fanfic! But for myself, I reject and disavow that approach. It is not my cup of Ribena. Lacroix is and should be a villain, both a metaphorical representation or mechanism of whatever real-world evil canon is grappling with that week and a practical plot lever to impede or inform Nick's long, hard road toward eventual heroic victory.

Changed practice: Disclaimers. While I always include endnotes on fanworks -- temporarily refraining in anonymous exchanges -- they've shortened greatly over the decades and, in my most recent three works, I've finally found a fully satisfactory substitute for the ancient "Disclaimer" opening. To back up, coming out of paper zine days, it was customary to state that TPTB owned the IP (and no profit was being made, etc.). (Few do that anymore. TPTB know what fanfic is now.) But that's only one of three reasons I've always been such an endnotes fiend. The second, you can guess: academia trained me to cite my sources and to feel anxiety about not doing so accurately and comprehensively. The third ... back in '96 -- two years before Google would be founded, when search was barely a function -- when I had shared all of 2 or 3 short fanfics on FKFic-L, and had given the original FTP Site archivist permission to host them, that was when a stranger who shared my wallet surname -- which was on those posts then because (a) I didn't yet know better and (b) my university, also not yet knowing better, used our wallet names as our email addresses -- searched up those stories and emailed me assuming that I believed in vampires for real and other upsetting things. Long story short, one lesson I took away was to clarify on fanfic that I know the difference between fiction and reality. I've continued all these years, through various boilerplate formulas. My newest, simplest, endnotes opener is: "I wrote this fanfic of [IP] in [Month / season / event]." I'm pleased with this approach. We'll see how it wears.

A few times a year, I check in on Dungeons & Dragons (Cartoon) fanfic on the AO3, hoping to find a new story to enjoy in this dear fandom that is so small at this end of history. I almost always find something added. Yet I much more rarely find something I, personally, want to dip into, and I've been pondering how much of that is for a curious fandom-specific reason and not just my own idiosyncratic pickiness.

I find that in the modest haul of new D&DC fanfic each year, there's consistently what feels to me like a disproportionate need for pre-screening for the fandom itself.

That is, there are frequently authors who seem to accidentally misapply this fandom tag altogether; I hypothesize that they're unaware of the 1983-85 cartoon and think they're tagging something else; perhaps the years should be added into the canonical fandom tag. More authors apply it to documentation for their D&D campaigns or fic about their original D&D characters, in which they used one or more of the cartoon's cast as NPCs, or used a concept or location from the show, or something like that. And many wholly legitimately include this fandom's tag on massive multi-fandom crossover sagas in which one or more of this cast cameos briefly at some point in a mega-long pan-universes romp starring characters from fandoms I'm unfamiliar with.

There are so few total "D&DC only"/"pure D&DC" stories each year that they often seem, to me, outnumbered by these more marginal appearances within the fandom tag. As in every fandom, of course, ratings, content, genres, completion/WIP, writing skill, etc. all thin the herd for picking what to read! Yet I'm not personally familiar with any other fandoms that inhabit what feels like such a comparatively small percentage of the content under their own fandom tags.

No, on reflection, that last is not true. I do know one fandom even more poorly represented within its own tag, though it is crowded out entirely by one rival. The tag for Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (1876) is more than 2:1 for the TV show Hannibal versus the actual classic Victorian novel or even the BBC TV series (2002) based on the novel. With ten works total, the math is easy. Perhaps that is a concentrated version of the same phenomenon, rather than a different one.

Every hlh_shortcuts, certain thought trends seem to emerge through the stories, particular themes or questions or canon moments that pop up independently in multiple unrelated, unalike stories that year.

This year, so far, "Richie & Connor after Tessa's death" seems to be a biggie. I have not yet read all the stories released to date, yet I believe I've already bumped into this concept four separate times, one way and another. (See the list of works.) I wonder whether there was a conversation about it somewhere that planted and nurtured these seeds, or whether the thought was carried on the wind long ago and only finally now the conditions for sprouting have arrived. As a trend, I'm certainly enjoying it!

Another trend this year, so far, seems to be very little Duncan. Few appearances, fewer as the perspective character. This is not as new or distinct. I suspect that, at this end of history, many folks find more unplucked story fruit with other characters.

hlh_shortcuts began releasing on the Winter Solstice, Duncan's Birthday, as is traditional, and will continue releasing a few stories per day until they're all shared. Many thanks to our new moderator team for all their efforts! Thanks to them, and to everyone who wrote and beta'd! Time to read:

• Check out all the 2024 stories.
• Revisit out all the stories from all the AO3 years (probably not the LJ years)

The story written for my '24 fest match released on Sunday: "Behind the Story" (~2K words, gen). The anonymous creator chose not to use archive warnings and not to supply a rating; with no disrespect to those choices, I'd rate it "G" and No Archive Warnings Apply. If you're an HL fan, you're unlikely to find anything triggering here; this is what the show is about, I've always thought.

"Behind the Story" follows Randi McFarland in the days after Tessa's murder, how and where it touches her work and her conscience and her heart, culminating in a Randi & Richie scene I never knew I needed. There is so much Tessa here, through their eyes, and I love it. The story briskly opened long-shuttered second-season rooms in my imagination, and, in passing, dropped at least two bonus story ideas on the side.

I shared a longer comment on the story itself. You can read that for more on what in it caught my attention. Or ask! And of course there are many other stories to choose from, if this isn't your personal flavor of HL.

Just curious! In your experience and opinion, what is the intended purpose and actual outcome of the anonymous period that has become typical in fanfic exchanges, the time between when the stories are released and when the authors are revealed? I'm thinking not of events with author guessing games or voted awards, but the baseline anon-and-reveal mechanic.

(As I remember it, anon periods were very cumbersome and rare before the AO3 -- though not unheard of: HLH_Shortcuts did it for years, by writers emailing their stories to the mod, who then posted each one -- but became usual and customary with the rise of Yuletide on the AO3.)

Do you, personally, read more stories, more widely, because they are anonymous, or do you purposefully wait until you know the author to read, kudo, or comment? Do you feel differently about reading anon works when you've participated in an event yourself versus when an anonymous story from an unknown event pops up in your fandom's works list? (I will assume that individual fandoms, and multi-fandom versus single-fandom events, differ. They always do.)

Thanks!

Adapted from used_songs, who got it from shipperslist:

Of 128 fanfiction works...

Under which 3 ratings have you written most?
63 Teen and up audiences
60 General audiences
05 Mature

In which 3 fandoms have you written most?
87 Forever Knight (TV 1992)
17 Highlander: The Series (TV 1992)
06 Dungeons and Dragons (Cartoon 1983)

Which 3 characters have you tagged the most often?
57 Nick Knight
43 Natalie Lambert
40 Lucien LaCroix

What are your top 3 additional/free-form tags?
24 Post-canon
24 Historical
16 Flashbacks

Did any of these surprise you? If so, which?
I had genuinely forgotten that I'd written all of 5 "Mature"-rated stories, and had to check. Yep. 5. Huh. I did indeed write those and rate them as such.

I personally, as a fan reader, don't choose to read fanfic works in progress (WIPs). When I was new to fandom, in mailing-list days, I did try to follow some WIPs, but even those by established, respected, skilled authors, who had previously posted complete, well-crafted, novel-length stories, all eventually petered out, unfinished. I felt ill-done-by as a reader and decided not to engage with WIPs anymore. Even with professionally published series, I can sometimes be wary; I've seen planned trilogies never get their subsequent volumes, and if the first one wasn't written to be sufficiently complete unto itself, that can be frustrating. (And when I learned how George Eliot felt about publishing Romola serially, I felt even more justified. Serial releases are not for every author, not even when they're the custom.)

To be clear, truly complete stories posting a chapter per day, week, month -- those can be excellent! I love serial delivery! But how far can one trust that they are truly complete and edited... (obviously, I also won't read anything declaring itself unedited, eeeek; of course one can't always engage someone to help, but one can always strive to self-edit, and declaring proudly that one didn't bother drives me off).

On the other hand, what I do love to follow, as a fan reader, are recommendations. ♥ A strong, thoughtful recommendation for a well-crafted story, with interesting insights, canon-resonant characterizations, new ideas... chef's-kiss! Some folks post recommendations in their journals. Some make them via the AO3 bookmark feature. Some post them in recommendation communities like fancake and het_reccers. If you do any of those things, thank you! Thank you very much! If you know more recommendation communities for me to follow... recommend them? :-)

Posted so far this year. I've managed to complete and post 2 "just because" fanfic stories so far this year. I'd hoped to complete a third this month and post about them together -- "3 things make a post?" -- but it doesn't look like I'll make it, so the unmatched pair can be this installment.

My deep and wide thanks to Skieswideopen and Sharpest_asp for beta-reading and sharing questions and recommendations for improvement, and to Malinaldarose for reading and commenting. ♥ Speaking only for my own, stories are so very much better after they've been mirrored back through a reader's/editor's eyes and encouragement to hopefully find and fix the wrong angles. And a great thing about "just because" stories, as opposed to fest stories, is the time available to make those fixes.

• Pokémon GO: "No Wish For Such Triumphs"
  (G, gen, 1.2K words). When Candela defeats Giovanni in a pokémon battle, he rewards her. But his gift is bait in a snare.
• Battlestar Galactica (1978): "Allow Me To Demonstrate"
  (G, gen, 2.5K words). On one of her first missions with Blue Squadron, Sheba feels she has something to prove.

Of course these are short, few, and trivial when compared to what many people -- including many of you all! -- regularly share. I'm not trying to suggest otherwise. I'm only saying, I wrote these; they're more than I've accomplished on this front in many years; and I felt okay about both of them having something different and worthy to offer anyone in their respective fandoms who chooses to read them.

WIP sentences. Various WIP memes always seem to be running around. Here's a mild crack at one of those memes: The currently drafted earliest and latest sentences of all my seriously-in-progress works-in-progress: ( Read more... )

In other fanfic news, we have a fkficfest '23 schedule now. Check it out. Nominations open on March 31. You don't have to intend to write to nominate. Come play?

On Thursday, celli shared a 33-question "AO3/fic" meme and said she'd like to read others' responses. Here's my take. (I'm attempting to type without a brace on for the first time in almost 3 months; we'll see how it goes.)

( Read more... )