Fandom Snowflake 2019 #12: D.I.Y.
Jan. 12th, 2019 07:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptIn your own space, create your own challenge.
Here's some of the flavor text to help inspire the process of creating something for others:
Which inspires people to a lot of possible things. A lot of the challenges will be practical to fanworks, like finishing a work in progress (or adding another chapter to it), or contributing to the greater knowledge of fannish history by creating pages on Fanlore (or, possibly for that matter, TvTropes). Others might repeat the Day 7 challenge and ask people to expand their horizons by writing or reading in new fictions or new fictional universes, because there are a lot of sandboxes around to play in that would happily welcome new friends. Or repeat other days' challenges about making recommendations for works that you found enjoyable and want to share with others.
The flavor text asks about adopting, adapting, or creating challenges for your favorite pieces of canon so that others might participate as well and increase the amount of fanwork available to everyone to enjoy, possibly centering it around a particular medium, pairing, or trope so that everyone has a starting point to work from. Moderating and running challenges, or standing up spaces for people to come together and talk is a lot of hard work, but is also hopefully rewarding when everything happens according to the plan you've put forth and a thriving community happens around the place you've set up or adopted.
Others will talk about the practicalities of having a body and existing in it, with all the ailments and variable emotional and intellectual states that come with it. Challenges to do something nice for yourself, or something that makes you happy, or something that can make you proud, are all about staving off one of the more common things that happens to creatives - the feeling that because there is always someone better, they're not good enough. Which isn't true, but brainweasels are quite adept at convincing us of things that aren't true, because they know how to make us feel like they are. It's difficult to beat them, because they cheat unapologetically. There will be challenges as well to leave comment-feedback on works that you enjoy. Kudos are excellent at counting "Hi, I was here and I liked this," but for many people making creative work, we want to know why you liked it. Details matter, because many of those details were crafted specifically for the story as a way of making it distinct and enjoyable in a sea of other works that take the same basic plot beats and put them together in similar ways. Close reading is a very helpful skill to pulling out good detailed comments.
All of these are wonderful ideas, and if you can, doing any one (or more) of them regularly can be very helpful, to yourselves and to the other people that you'll come in contact with by doing these challenges.
If I wanted to do something unique and unparalleled and un-thought-of before, well, there are a lot of you out there, and so it's unlikely that what I can come up with is going to be truly unique. Some part of me wants to try to do it, though, because one of my brainweasels around creating fanworks is that I'm a nobody, I'm going to stay a nobody, and I will never ascend to the heights of having people who follow me as an author and comment on my works specifically because they like me as a writer, rather than because they were looking at the tags for a particular fandom and I happened to be one of the works that appeared. My metrics certainly seem to suggest this. (Counter-point: Have only really been doing this on AO3 for two years at this point, and doing exchanges all the time doesn't mean you build up a following in a single fandom, not really.)
I think, though, this leads to my challenge for all of you.
If you're someone's fan, let them know.
Anything from a "Hey, you know, I really enjoy your work specifically in this fandom. Thank you for being a creator of good things here." to a long list of the things that you have enjoyed about all their works so far that you've read. (Assuming it's not going to be taken as going overboard with it.) Tell a creator that you like their stuff because it's their stuff, and why, if you can articulate it. I think some creators (which includes myself) can attribute their successes more to the fandom, the characters, the canon, everything else except the skill they bring to the table in the creation of their fanworks. Impostor Syndrome is rampant among creative types (and certain segments of the population in general). Sometimes the best thing we can do for someone is to unapologetically take the stance that they're good at what they do, and refuse to be budged from that stance by whatever brainweasel horde erupts from making that declaration. If you stand firm on your assertion, at some point the person who you believe in might start to believe it, too.
Here's some of the flavor text to help inspire the process of creating something for others:
Is there a challenge you've seen in the past that's no longer being run, and you wish it was? Or maybe one you've heard about in some other fandom that would be perfect for yours? Is there a challenge you'd love to see, but can't seem to find? Now's your chance to fill that void. Do you wish there was more (fill in the blank) in fandom? This could be something specific to your favorite fandom, or something more all-encompassing. Have you always wanted to try something, but needed that extra push?
Which inspires people to a lot of possible things. A lot of the challenges will be practical to fanworks, like finishing a work in progress (or adding another chapter to it), or contributing to the greater knowledge of fannish history by creating pages on Fanlore (or, possibly for that matter, TvTropes). Others might repeat the Day 7 challenge and ask people to expand their horizons by writing or reading in new fictions or new fictional universes, because there are a lot of sandboxes around to play in that would happily welcome new friends. Or repeat other days' challenges about making recommendations for works that you found enjoyable and want to share with others.
The flavor text asks about adopting, adapting, or creating challenges for your favorite pieces of canon so that others might participate as well and increase the amount of fanwork available to everyone to enjoy, possibly centering it around a particular medium, pairing, or trope so that everyone has a starting point to work from. Moderating and running challenges, or standing up spaces for people to come together and talk is a lot of hard work, but is also hopefully rewarding when everything happens according to the plan you've put forth and a thriving community happens around the place you've set up or adopted.
Others will talk about the practicalities of having a body and existing in it, with all the ailments and variable emotional and intellectual states that come with it. Challenges to do something nice for yourself, or something that makes you happy, or something that can make you proud, are all about staving off one of the more common things that happens to creatives - the feeling that because there is always someone better, they're not good enough. Which isn't true, but brainweasels are quite adept at convincing us of things that aren't true, because they know how to make us feel like they are. It's difficult to beat them, because they cheat unapologetically. There will be challenges as well to leave comment-feedback on works that you enjoy. Kudos are excellent at counting "Hi, I was here and I liked this," but for many people making creative work, we want to know why you liked it. Details matter, because many of those details were crafted specifically for the story as a way of making it distinct and enjoyable in a sea of other works that take the same basic plot beats and put them together in similar ways. Close reading is a very helpful skill to pulling out good detailed comments.
All of these are wonderful ideas, and if you can, doing any one (or more) of them regularly can be very helpful, to yourselves and to the other people that you'll come in contact with by doing these challenges.
If I wanted to do something unique and unparalleled and un-thought-of before, well, there are a lot of you out there, and so it's unlikely that what I can come up with is going to be truly unique. Some part of me wants to try to do it, though, because one of my brainweasels around creating fanworks is that I'm a nobody, I'm going to stay a nobody, and I will never ascend to the heights of having people who follow me as an author and comment on my works specifically because they like me as a writer, rather than because they were looking at the tags for a particular fandom and I happened to be one of the works that appeared. My metrics certainly seem to suggest this. (Counter-point: Have only really been doing this on AO3 for two years at this point, and doing exchanges all the time doesn't mean you build up a following in a single fandom, not really.)
I think, though, this leads to my challenge for all of you.
If you're someone's fan, let them know.
Anything from a "Hey, you know, I really enjoy your work specifically in this fandom. Thank you for being a creator of good things here." to a long list of the things that you have enjoyed about all their works so far that you've read. (Assuming it's not going to be taken as going overboard with it.) Tell a creator that you like their stuff because it's their stuff, and why, if you can articulate it. I think some creators (which includes myself) can attribute their successes more to the fandom, the characters, the canon, everything else except the skill they bring to the table in the creation of their fanworks. Impostor Syndrome is rampant among creative types (and certain segments of the population in general). Sometimes the best thing we can do for someone is to unapologetically take the stance that they're good at what they do, and refuse to be budged from that stance by whatever brainweasel horde erupts from making that declaration. If you stand firm on your assertion, at some point the person who you believe in might start to believe it, too.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-12 05:47 pm (UTC)