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Challenge #9 is a direct challenge to the socialization that a significant number of people are brought up with and expected to follow all of their life.
This does not happen in real life. This does not happen on the Internet, either, and the reading audience is free to choose whichever harassment campaign of a marginalized creator that means the most to them as illustration that being unapologetically awesome is not a cure-all for all the people out there who think that you can't possibly be better than they are, simply because you're not a cis white male, and so any success you have must be due to some unfair and unearned advantage given to you by a not-man for a counterfeit reason. Or their superior work was denied because some not-man gave away spaces to not-cis, not-white, not-males for political reasons instead of forcing them to compete on merit with everyone else.
Most of us are also coming out of a year where we got to see what happens when people who can only fail up because of their privilege were allowed to continue failing while others covered for their failures and exacerbated the, to the detriment of anyone who isn't them. In this kind of environment, it can feel a little dangerous to say good things about yourself if you're not in the privileged group, because all of those trolls and assholes feel more emboldened than ever to say and do terrible things and assume there will be no consequences for it.
( Begin the bragging! )
So, yeah, compared to a lot of years before, there's a lot more easily-recallable happy stuff, braggable stuff, or other stuff that's good going on in my life. It's been a few years since I made some major choices in my life, and while I'm still having some difficulty about thinking of them as positive ones, because they came with significant long-term consequences, the people around me have mentioned that I'm much better now than I was when I was suffering. I'll believe it more when those consequences finally disappear, but even this situation is better than the one I was in.
The world tells us we must be humble, we must take a compliment, but never to compliment ourselves. Never toot our own horn and many other cliches about how to be proper and not overbearingly egotistical. We at Fandom Snowflake Challenge say, f&#k that! Tell us of all the ways you are the BEST! All the things you’ve done, want to do or will one day do. All the ways you are marvelously you.This one's a more difficult one, because of that socialization, and because a lot of people experience Tall Poppy Syndrome if they take advice that says they should be proud of the person they are and not try to hide themselves. I got that advice as a smalling, in conjunction with the advice that jealousy drives most bullies, so ignoring them will eventually make things go away, because at some point, those bullies will either get over their jealousy or realize what kind of jerks they've been and stop.
In your own space, brag about yourself. Tell us what things you've done that you're proud of; the things that make you the wonderful person you are.
Rec YOUR work, YOUR fic, YOUR art, YOUR meta, YOUR anything! Maybe you host a challenge, or maybe you have lists of resources that you've lovingly curated that you'd like to share. Or maybe you…whatever you do, we want to hear about it!!
This does not happen in real life. This does not happen on the Internet, either, and the reading audience is free to choose whichever harassment campaign of a marginalized creator that means the most to them as illustration that being unapologetically awesome is not a cure-all for all the people out there who think that you can't possibly be better than they are, simply because you're not a cis white male, and so any success you have must be due to some unfair and unearned advantage given to you by a not-man for a counterfeit reason. Or their superior work was denied because some not-man gave away spaces to not-cis, not-white, not-males for political reasons instead of forcing them to compete on merit with everyone else.
Most of us are also coming out of a year where we got to see what happens when people who can only fail up because of their privilege were allowed to continue failing while others covered for their failures and exacerbated the, to the detriment of anyone who isn't them. In this kind of environment, it can feel a little dangerous to say good things about yourself if you're not in the privileged group, because all of those trolls and assholes feel more emboldened than ever to say and do terrible things and assume there will be no consequences for it.
( Begin the bragging! )
So, yeah, compared to a lot of years before, there's a lot more easily-recallable happy stuff, braggable stuff, or other stuff that's good going on in my life. It's been a few years since I made some major choices in my life, and while I'm still having some difficulty about thinking of them as positive ones, because they came with significant long-term consequences, the people around me have mentioned that I'm much better now than I was when I was suffering. I'll believe it more when those consequences finally disappear, but even this situation is better than the one I was in.
