Entries tagged with meme:snowflake

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Snowflake Challenge 2025 #7 (Wishlist)

snowflake_challenge '25: Create a list of at least three [fannish] things you'd love to receive.

Dungeons & Dragons (Cartoon, 1983):

Fellow fans: I would love for the fandom to receive, and me to enjoy, a fantastic, character-driven, plot-rich, Diana-centric fanfiction. The ultimate would be for this story to come from an author who shares Diana's background and can weave that in seamlessly and meaningfully (though of course all authors can research and imagine and strive).
TPTB: I would like Super7 to start pre-orders for the second set of action figures. They're doing one set per year (the first was two good guys, Sheila and Hank, and two bad guys, Shadow Demon and Dekion), so, at this rate, I feel I can afford to treat myself.

The Legend of Zelda (all games):

Fellow fans: I'd love to find a couple of thoughtful folks interested in reciprocal fanfic beta-reading, who know some canon and "the sense of the fandom" so it's not "the blind leading the blind" (I've read and watched much more than I've played, but I'm a canon nut, so: ZeldaUniverse and Zeldawiki.wiki) -- and, most of all, who have the time and space and spoons and interest.
TPTB: I'd like a superb remaster of Twilight Princess for the upcoming Switch 2, with some gameplay mechanics re-optimized but the story, of course, untouched (unless they want to please spiff up the Twilight Realm a la Lucas's second go at Cloud City and implement some intended but cut interactions with ordinary Twili there, as shown in the art, for which I am very much on board).

Assorted:

I hope that everywoman, the exchange featuring female characters, runs again this year. Counting its direct reincarnations from Rarelywritten and Rarewomen, and its relation to its cousin femme_fic, it's the biggest, most venerable fanfic game I participate in -- my Yuletide, if you will.
I hope that we see an exchange in the spirit of 90s_channel_tv_exchange, myoldfandom, retrotvexchange, and their relatives this year. (I suspect that these are extremely difficult to run, given how many fizzle out after just one round.)
I'd like The Fantastic Four: First Steps to be awesome in every way, smart and emotional and exciting, character-driven and clear-plotted, accessible to mass audiences and satisfying to fan audiences, and to just knock everyone's socks off and show decisively that the MCU is back and better than ever. Please.
I hope that Hasbro re-examines its numbers, re-trains its marketing department, and gives Transformers One and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves the outstanding sequels they deserve. Especially Transformers One.
A new Penric & Desdemona installment, or otherwise any richly themed new tale in "The World of the Five Gods," from Lois McMaster Bujold by the end of the year would be lovely, if she feels like it.

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Snowflake Challenge 2025 #6

snowflake_challenge '25:- Share [a] favorite piece of original canon

One favorite is a single page of Marvel Team-up Annual #5 (1982) by Mark Gruenwald (script & "breakdowns"). It's available inside the Thing: The Serpent Crown Affair anthology, as well as digital and the original paper. None of the surrounding story is important to what this page accomplishes for the characters or how it clicked with my imagination (not in c.'82 when it somehow came into the household, possibly for a long car trip, but in c.'84 when I imprinted on it).

Memory only:
A bald man and a curly-haired woman in ordinary clothes, together in a dark, crowded movie theater, enjoy Raiders of the Lost Ark. Suddenly, ghostly snakes writhe out of the screen! The woman gasps, recoils, stands, and heads down the row of seats. Only she sees the snakes. Concerned, the man follows her to the lobby, where the lights reveal that his skin is red -- literally, artificially, synthezoid red -- and he asks her if she's all right. As she tells him about the snakes and her suspicions, she gestures and transforms her ordinary clothes into a scarlet and magenta super-hero costume with a swirling cape and peaked headband. "I will come with you," he volunteers. "No," she puts her hand on his arm. "This is a job for the Scarlet Witch. You enjoy the movie. If I'm not back by dawn, gather the Avengers and come running!"

Double-checking:
It's one page + one facing panel. The costume transformation is unseen, elided with a "Soon, outside..." transition. And the final lines are actually: "The Scarlet Witch must find out why!" / "You do not want me to come with you?" / "No, my love -- your strength must be kept in reserve. If you do not hear from me within twenty-four hours, notify the Avengers and come running!"

That launched the Scarlet Witch as my favorite superhero. And it made Wanda and Vision not only one of my very few OTPs -- fight me, Marvel -- but an enduring image of a complementary, companionate relationship between healthy adults, as later dwelt on in Steve Englehart's The Vision and the Scarlet Witch Volume 2 limited series (1985-86), which is the basis of Wandavision, despite all the misuses and mischaracterizations since. (Mr. Byrne, you were wrong; Vision is not a toaster; Wanda is not mentally ill for loving him; how could you not see the metaphors? Or did you see and acted to veto?) (DC physically fridges its heroines. Marvel psychologically fridges them.)

Yes, I have wondered whether Jac Schaeffer (head writer of Wandavision; producer of Agatha All Along; sadly no longer attached to the upcoming Visionquest) also imprinted on that page or an equivalent in her own way, in her own time.

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Snowflake Challenge 2025 #4

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. ♥

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Snowflake Challenge 2025 #3

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.

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Snowflake Challenge 2025 #2

snowflake_challenge '25 #2: Share your fannish origin story.

I'm interpreting this prompt as my connecting with others in fandom. (I've behaved fannishly on my own as long as I can remember: fanfic before I knew what fanfic was, making media-inspired toys out of clay, etc.)

Even so, as a prelude, a montage of selected mini-flashbacks:

Without ever being part of fandom himself, my father has loved Star Trek since he watched the original on the communal dorm TV in college, and I grew up watching it with him, first TOS reruns, later TNG. That's one.
Another milestone, in late junior high or early high school, was an event at a mini-mall in a neighboring town; it was more a sidewalk-sale by the local comic shop and a collectibles-and-games store I didn't previously know existed than the "convention" they advertised, but I remember it. Late in high school, in a different state, was my first "real" convention, a Trek con; Marina Sirtis was the top featured guest.
Also late in high school, I discovered that a certain local bookstore held monthly Saturday viewings of vintage recorded-from-PBS Doctor Who in a back corner, and folks were free to come and go and watch and chat all day on folding chairs.
In college, I found folks to share the communal dorm TV with for DS9, and then HL, and then got my own TV-and-VCR combo unit, and a particular friend would come over to share new Trek between the two of us, no more struggles for the common TV. Once, when it was my turn as a member of dorm government to sponsor a social, I hosted a Highlander marathon with my recorded-from-TV VHS tapes; the event was surprisingly successful far beyond what I presumed was the target audience.

This brings us to Forever Knight. I discovered the show in December of season three, on the USA cable channel, was reeled in ("brought across," folks used to say) by "Night in Question," and began gobbling up the reruns (of season three only; which is now by far my least favorite season) that USA was rerunning in blocks during the holidays, and found the "real" syndicated airings on a local station. I looked up FK at the public library to read about it in Starlog back issues and newspaper articles... and very soon discovered -- from a newspaper article written by a local TV critic in the local paper! oh, I miss well-funded local papers -- that FK was facing cancellation and fans were trying to save it. From there, I learned to use the infant World Wide Web specifically to learn more about SOS-FK, which led to the FK email lists, which were, of course, my entry point to actually being part of the fandom community we all share now.

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Snowflake Challenge 2025 #1

snowflake_challenge '25 #1: Update your fandom information.

I updated my profiles not too long ago, just in June, when I refurbished my journal's banner and default icon to feature Bradamante at dawn instead of Toronto at night. But there's always room for a polish! My DW profile remains a bit longer than my AO3 profile, because of the AO3's prudent word-count limit and my tendency to blither. ;-)

( Copy/pasted text of my DW profile bio )

( Copy/pasted list of interests from my DW profile )

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Snowflake challenge #10 (2024): "Make a list"

Challenge #10: Five things... or, you know, whatever you want.

The movies I saw in a theater in the past calendar year, in reverse order:

December: The Boy and the Heron
November: The Marvels
August: Blue Beetle
July: Barbie
June: The Flash
June: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
June: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
May: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
April: Suzume
March: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
February: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Crowded June!

(I do still wear an N95 in theaters. It could be overkill, but I don't eat theater food, anyway, so it's no trouble -- at least, not since I found the fantastic 3M style that doesn't fog glasses.)

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Snowflake challenge #9 (2024): "Rec your newest thing"

Challenge #9: Rec your newest thing -- enthusiasm, obsession, fandom, earworm, etc.

Yesterday, I read an impressive Journey to the West AU fanfic, told from the dragon-horse's perspective, in which Monkey is mute. (This is a sober re-imagining, not the bonkers humor I often go for in JttW.) This change makes humanity (and Heaven) take him even less seriously (though Buddha treats him exactly the same). Removing his voice swallows his patter and boasts and exposes his foundational motivations in new, evocative ways. Killer final line. "Spring Unheard" by

Idonquixote (T, gen, ~8K words).

A few days ago, I finished watching the five episodes of Echo, the latest MCU show on Disney+, the first officially under the "Marvel Spotlight" imprint for standalone, don't-need-to-know-canon, adult-aimed productions (Werewolf by Night belongs there, too, imo, if they're willing to relabel it). The title sequence -- theme song and graphics -- is absolutely fantastic, ten out of ten. ( Further opinion is a high-level spoiler )

I'm presently spacing out the final few episodes of season one of My Adventures with Superman because I don't want it to be over. This is my kind of Superman! A very good guy being good! This is a show that deeply understands why Superman must rescue the cat. The story is so clearly told by people who love the characters, and who change them only in ways that make them more essentially themselves for today's audience. I adore how they addressed and subverted certain tropes, like Lois finding out Clark is Superman. Fundamentally, this is a story where he is Clark to the bone, and Superman is just his work clothes, his "customer service voice," and I am there for that. (I think that the "my" in the title is Clark's.)

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Snowflake challenge #7 (2024): "Fannish creative resource(s)"

Challenge #7: Share a fannish creative resource.

Journey to the West Research is an archive for Jim McClanahan's research into the historical, religious, and folklore origins of the classic Chinese sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West.

( If you're into JttW, read on... )

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Snowflake challenge #3 (2024): "Fannish wish list"

Challenge #3: Create a wish list of fandom things that you'd like to receive.

If you know where I can legitimately purchase a set of the fabled limited-edition Young Blades (TV, 2005) DVDs, please do let me know! I believe these exist because, first, there was a rumor soon after cancellation, and, second, Euro-length versions of the episodes were once loaded to YouTube. (They haven't been there in years; sorry.) I imagine that copies were given to people who had worked on the show and not actually sold to the public, or that there was a canceled run and the DVDs manufactured were mostly junked, but I don't know. I do have a copy of the Polish DVD squishing several episodes into a "movie" (which has a lovely Photoshopped cover photo, of a period army in front of a castle in bright sunshine, irreconcilable with the show's canon/budget ~grin~) (I do have an old region-unlocked DVD player because of the German FK season-one DVDs).

I sure would enjoy a dedicated fanwork event for D&DC or BSG78, coordinated by someone with reach into those fandoms! I'd also be enthusiastic for a generic event in the line of Oldschoolfic and Myoldfandom.

I hope we have another fanwork event in the line of Everywoman, Rarewomen, and Femme-fic again this year.

I wish that all of us here will find our fandom communities hospitable, joyful, comforting, respectful, inspiring, and safe, and that we uphold and spread that goodness as much as we can. ♥

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Snowflake challenge #2 (2024): "Set some fannish goals"

Challenge #2: Set some [fandom] goals for the coming year.

I would like to fully overhaul my userpic icons. They're almost all quite old (and old-fashioned). More to the point, they're just not what I want anymore. Step one, a new naming system for the icons I have! So that I can smoothly add new ones in an organized, findable, usable way. (If you have a favorite icon community, let me know? I'd like to see what's current and developing.)

I would like to achieve and maintain control of what appears "above the fold" on my AO3 dashboard. As you know, the "collapsed" fandoms list shows the author's 5 most-written fandoms. For me, that's currently FK (85), HL (16), D&DC (5), BSG78 (4), and then a random pull from among several fandoms in which I've written 3 pieces. I don't feel particularly called to write in any of the fandoms for which I currently have 3 stories (though, of them, most likely Pokemon GO); I just don't enjoy the default list appearing differently, often unrepresentatively, each time. To truly stabilize, I'll need a sixth D&DC, fifth BSG78, and fourth something else.

And, of course, again, I would very much like to write some "just because" stories this year -- stories not for any event or exchange, but just because. I have several D&DC WIPs, one HL/MCU WIP, a bunch of little JttW sketches... we'll see!

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Snowflake challenge #1 (2024): "Update your fandom information"

Challenge #1: Update your fandom information.

I'd updated my DW profile last year, but it turns out that I hadn't updated my AO3 profile since I joined it in 2011. Oops. Both are now updated as follows...

My Pseud: My online fannish journey began in email-list days with Forever Knight. I was a "Knightie" (a partisan of the hero) and the "Bright" means that while I love serious and sad stories, I side always with hope and salvation, never despair or destruction (in FK's specific metaphor, that's always humanity, never vampirism).

My Fandoms: My dearest fandoms — Forever Knight (1992-1996), Highlander (1992-1998), Dungeons & Dragons (cartoon, 1983-1985), Battlestar Galactica (original, 1978-1979) — are all long-canceled and in frequent peril of being rebooted by folks whom I worry may not love and understand them as well as I like to imagine I do. Among not-yet-canceled properties, my latest and highest delight is Overly Sarcastic Productions! As a life-long Marvel reader, I'm on the spot for everything MCU and have opinions by the yard that may or may not match anyone else's. In the comics, I am currently all in for the awesome writing of Jed MacKay. I'm on board for Strange New Worlds, the new Quantum Leap, My Adventures with Superman, and most things on PBS's Masterpiece. I love to watch new movies on the big screen, on opening weekend if I can swing it, surrounded by other people to share laughter and gasps in community... still wearing an N95 mask for now, but hopefully not forever. Also, of course, nineteenth-century English-language literature, The Journey to the West, many, many books of many kinds...

My Fanfiction: Mostly, I write canon-aware gen that sides with heroes. I often try to imitate episode structures, explore bereavement themes, or fill canonical gaps.

Writing for me in an exchange? Thank you! I have a "Likes & Dislikes" post and tag here on DW. I hope they can be useful. (I try to be an easy recipient with many options to pick from.)

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Snowflake Challenge 2023 #5: Resources

"Tell us about 3 creative/fannish resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy."

Tip-top canon resources:

Bulbapedia, "the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia," is the highest-quality public wiki I've ever seen. It reports and tracks every bit of canon across the entire sprawling IP. ♥

Now available only via the Wayback Machine, the old dungeonsanddragonscartoon.com fansite is still the very best D&DC resource, "from the Alicorn river to the hills of Zorm." Forever respect and gratitude to its fan creator!

It's super ugly and advertisement-ridden now, but it's as accurate and comprehensive as ever: Portal: Battlestar Galactica (TOS). I depend on its Colonial vocabulary lists.

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Snowflake Challenge 2023 #4: Add something to canon

"Add something to your fandom’s canon."

Only "add," not change, fix, override, or redirect, hmmm? Three ideas:

( HL )
( BSG78 )
( D&DC )

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Snowflake Challenge 2023 #2: Promo (Journey to the West)

"Write a promo, manifesto or primer."

Imagine, if you will, an epic crossover between Homer's Odyssey and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, with all the ancient Greek and medieval Christian religious beliefs and holy figures running around, equally, and interacting with each other and the protagonists. Then marinate this crossover in Cervantes's Don Quixote for satire and irony. Finally, generously dust it with shredded Spenser's Faerie Queene for allegory and top off with a slather of gooey melted Dante's Divine Comedy for worldbuilding. And it's funny. So funny.

That wild mash-up would be a western literary approximation of the eastern literary classic The Journey to the West, which is set in 7th-century China, and was published as the hundred-chapter novel we know today circa 1592. It's attributed to Wu Cheng'en (questioning the real authorship is a thing a la Shakespeare, only more so, because the original publication was anonymous). It wasn't translated into English at all until the early 20th-century, and wasn't translated into English in full until the 1980s, but of course it's been available and loved in many other languages for centuries. Like the European works I mention above, the hundred-chapter-novel of JttW draws on previous literature, folklore, and real history and religion to craft a literary achievement that has stood the test of time and been itself endlessly adapted. The way many of us might casually refer to Arthur's sword or Odysseus's journey, folks who grew up with JttW might casually refer to Wukong's rod or Xuanzang's quest.

We need a back-cover blurb here, right? Wikipedia says: "Enduringly popular, the novel is at once a comic adventure story, a humorous satire of Chinese bureaucracy, a source of spiritual insight, and an extended allegory." ( Read more... )

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Snowflake Challenge 2023 #1: Fandom info

"Update your fandom information."

Instead of a pinned post, I like to point folks to my DW profile. It's up to date! And of course please check out my AO3 works.

I try to keep this journal fandom-focused. The fandoms-as-fandoms dearest to my heart are still Forever Knight and Highlander (with BSG78 and D&DC hard on their heels). Scratch that surface, and you'll uncover Marvel, Trek, and the long nineteenth century in English-language literature, among many other things. I'm presently besotted with Overly Sarcastic Productions. I'm watching the Quantum Leap sequel, The Equalizer reboot, everything Marvel, and just about everything on PBS's Masterpiece. And I play way too much Pokemon GO.

I always side with heroism and decry villainy. I almost always prefer gen to romance. I usually prefer canon couples to non-canon, and canon continuation, insertion, or divergence to complete AUs.

I love Dreamwidth as a platform and wish more folks would play fannishly here. :-) Thank you very much for being here and playing here!

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'22 Snowflake Challenge #7: Communities & resources

> "tell us about fandom resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy"

A community that I follow that you might not know is

fanart_recs. The moderator tries to get folks to commit to a run of one rec per week for a month in a certain fandom, or similar cadences.

For the "Recently in FK" post each month, I always check

fandom_on_dw,

fandomcalendar,

yuletide, and

fancake. (I check others, too, but most of the others have been quiet long and long.)

I get notifications on my DW reading page of new FK stories posted to the AO3. If you didn't know this feature was available, well, it is! Subscribe to this DW feed for AO3 FK posting notifications. (You can of course also check for existing feeds for other fandoms and make a new feed for any that don't exist.)

For perhaps an odd twist on options for consuming meta analysis, I'm going to recommend three YouTube channels that I enjoy: ImplicitlyPretentious, who makes video essays (mostly MCU recently) with lots of citations of monomyth resources; CinemaTherapy, which analyzes films (and some MCU TV) with an eye to the mental and emotional health of the characters as depicted (the best-friend hosts are a professional therapist and a professional filmmaker); and, my current favorite, OverlySarcasticProductions, which I discovered in November and have so far found to be seemingly endlessly awesome about mythology, history, tropes, literature, architecture, video games, and more (I haven't yet watched all their stuff, but oh! so fun).

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'22 Snowflake Challenge #4: Wishes

> "make a list of [fannish] things that you wish existed... and/or that you'd like someone to create or do for you"

For me? :-D

Like many of us, I wish we had piles of fantastic stories for my own personal favorite rare pairing (which, of course, no, because: rare). Mine is FK's Nick/Urs via canon divergence. Both characters have tremendous challenges, of course, yet I feel that they also have key things in common, and if they could find themselves having each other's backs, they could fit their strengths and weaknesses together to grow stronger together than apart, on each other's behalf and for themselves, with, eventually, forgiveness and joy for their road ahead.

I wish there were more smart D&DC stories about the long road from canon to the present day, whether in the Realm or the real world. I really want to crawl inside insightful stories about our heroes growing up and being grown up. I'm still here; so must the characters be... at least most of them. Also, I wish there were more Diana stories in general, and oh! I wish there were a brilliant Diana story written by an African-American fanwriter who engages with the little canon gives us on Diana's family.

I wish there were more amazing FK stories in which Lacroix never came back into the present of the reality, or was suitably re-killed to restore the original metaphors and expectations.

I hope that the MyOldFandom > RetroTV and RareWomen > RarelyWritten > EveryWoman exchanges, and their friends and relatives, will run happily again this year, and for many years. Also HLH_Shortcuts. (FKFicFest, yes.)

I wish someone would discover the elusive excellent method that would allow the AO3 to easily, cleanly, sustainably support tagging by "major/starring" versus "minor/appearing" (and even "mentioned") characters.

I wish there were a legitimate, ethical, easy way to get all of Susan G.'s fanfic onto the AO3 in beautiful, perfect condition, to be enjoyed by everyone as long as the AO3 lasts. (As you know, she died before the AO3 came along.) ♥

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'22 Snowflake Challenge #3: AUs

> "talk about your favorite AU/fusion tropes, or tell us why AU/fusions aren’t your cup of tea"

I personally tend to think of fusions as in the crossover family, rather than the AU family. So this prompt asked me vocabulary and taxonomy as well as genre questions. On consideration, I see how fusions are often as closely related to AUs as they are to crossovers -- a kind of convergent evolution, perhaps!

For myself, I had long thought of Alternate Universe as the overarching top-level category that includes all the kinds of contradictions to and divergences from canon. This would have every degree of branched, parallel, and "total" (coffee shop and so on). Basically, I had thought of anything that didn't intend to fit into, follow from, or cap off canon as it existed at the time of the story as an AU.

From the replies I've seen to this meme prompt, it sounds like the more current understanding of "AU" has largely shed the most modest tier of canon tinkering, and now more usually means the broadest tier: the "total" AUs. Is that about right?

( My own likes in AUs )

What do you think? Do "total" AUs go with my dearest fandoms better than I yet realize?

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'22 Snowflake Challenge #2: Goals

> "...set some goals for the coming year."

I plan to run fkficfest again this year, if at least a few of you all would enjoy it, and circumstances allow. (I'm imminently changing positions and teams at work, so I don't yet know when might be good.)

I hope to finish the D&DC treat story I started (for a now-long-passed fest). The requestor asked for an "epic" rendition of a certain pairing, which I've seen her request many times, in many events, and rarely get a nibble. It's a rare pair: neither canon nor fan-favorite. I got it into my head that I could put something together that she might enjoy, because if I pull this string and push that stick, I can see the characters getting together, too. I'm no good at romance, but... I'm going to try.

I would like to finally get control of the default fandoms display on my AO3 page. That is, you know how your top five most-written fandoms show "above the fold," and in case of ties, populate at random? Well, my top two are always FK (84) and HL (15), but everything else is 1-3, and I don't feel... represented? ...by what shows in the other three slots. So. This requires 2 new stories each in at least 3 of D&DC, PoGO, BSG78, or YB. Or 4 new stories each in fandoms I've never written before. That is wildly ambitious for a single year, given my usual output! We shall see.

What are you looking at atop your horizon this fannish year?