Fandom Snowflake 2021 #7: User-Generated Content

Challenge #7 asks us to create our own challenge for everyone else to attempt.

I'm used to this being more of an end-of-challenge item, so seeing it here in the middle has thrown me for a little bit of a loop. (And then I checked, and it's been in the middle at least once in my years of doing so, so this is not completely unprecedented.)

There's always a certain amount of "who are you, fool, that you think you can demand a thing of someone?" when this one shows up in the rotation. But the people who are participating in the challenge are the kind of people who can choose whether they want to participate in any other challenges put before them. And that helps quiet things down a little bit.

So, onward. What sort of things are we looking for in a fun fannish challenge?

I was expect someone to say right from the beginning, have a transformative works statement available, so that people know whether it's okay, not okay, or okay under certain circumstances to remix and make other kinds of works of your work. Asking for permission is often awkward, and some creators simply don't bother if they don't see a statement on the matter. And it's there in the list.

Some of my previous challenges have been fan-focused. Tell someone that you're their fan and why, because those kinds of comments are saved and cuddled by creators and used when things aren't going well at all for them. (Or at least just me. It can't be just me.)

There are challenges in there that will be about creating on a theme, and, like, if it were something that was a bulletproof trope or otherwise for me, I might say something like "hey, create me these things that I really like seeing and that I don't get enough of," but I really don't have anything like that, which you will find out on later challenges, if they talk about "what's your go-to trope" or other such things.

I'm seeing a lot of interesting things already created in the space, which, y'know, sometimes you want to be unique, but truthfully, this last year has been terrible to everyone. Creativity-crushingly so in a lot of situations, and so there's a lot of material in there about being kinder to yourself, about being bolder with yourself, and about doing things that you wouldn't have otherwise done before. Or questions asking about how people relate to characters, canons, and shows in specific ways. I'm always impressed that people can come up with these things on their own. (I'm much more of a prompt writer, because I hit a blank on "create something out of whole cloth" a lot of the time, unless something specific hits my head, and it's almost always based on some other thing.)

And, often times, if I let myself type for a while, eventually, something comes to mind that I'm willing to let out on the idea that it's not going to be terrible. Because a lot of my ideas, and my default position on things, is "it's probably not going to be terrible." Even things that I've been doing for a while, things that seem to go consistently well, start from the position of "it's probably not going to be terrible." (And then whatever qualifies it as not terrible starts shifting around so as to make sure that I don't think that it's going to be good until well after it's established itself as being good.) So, maybe that's a useful challenge for myself and others.

Talk about a work of yours that's good like it's good!

Try to see a work of yours from the perspective of the people that give it kudos and comments about how good it is. Talk about it like it's a thing you knew was going to gather a following, or an eddy, or become your most popular work. This will be easier for some of us than others, depending on how much you've been socialized not to take credit for your work or how much of a hatedom you may have attracted in addition to your fans and followers. Or how much you've been harassed by people who insist that some aspect of you completely unrelated to your creating forever disqualifies you from the ranks of good people or good creators. (No, that's not apologia for certain terrible people, because the views you hold are often very related to your creating, even if terrible people want to deny that truth.)

And, because it wouldn't be fair to insist on other people if I didn't do it myself, here's how I might describe what is far and away my most kudoed work on AO3:

I've been to enough conventions to understand what it's like when the photoshoots start, because there's always a lot of people and their cameras that want to take pictures. And it takes a good amount of time and organization to get posed. Including the idea that Chat Noir would see it as an opportunity to massively troll everybody by having them think he's just another cosplayer, while also getting to join in on the appreciation as just one of the fans, would be perfect for his attention-seeking heart. And, of course, the opportunity to show off something casually badass as the reveal of his identity. Since the original material was about things that Chat Noir does on social media, the Twitter-like format of the interstitials was a natural fit. And all of it came together so easily. It contains all the necessary things for a quick and fun little romp, compared to something heavier. Clearly, it was destined to have a good pocket in the Miraculous Ladybug fandom.

Okay, that might have been a touch over-the-top. But it had good comedic beats, and it rang true to the convention experiences I had, so it shouldn't be as surprising and amazing as it is that so many people really liked it. Even though it is very much surprising and amazing that so many people liked it.