Snowflake Challenge #10: Fanworks! Fanworks for everybody!

[silveradept]

Challenge Number 10 asks us to recommend the works of others.

In your own space, rec a fanwork (fic, art, vid, playlist, anything!) you did not create.
[…]
Tell us what's special about this piece. What draws you to it and what makes it special enough to recommend it to others. And don't hesitate to recommend both new and older works. Fandom is wide and deep, and folk who are new to your fandom or who are only casual participants may not be aware of older works.

This should be no trouble, right? I am an information professional, this is what I do. I'll bury all of you in my recommendation links, ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Except not, because part of the work that I do is figuring out what things you're looking for in your next read and then curating down from Everything to a few specific choices. Truthfully, with a space like AO3, I'll probably get more mileage and have a better good hits rate explaining to you how to think like a search engine like Elasticsearch, give you a cheat sheet on how you might construct a search query in ElasticSearch (although this one is for books in a book database, not works), and then pointing you at searching, browsing, and filtering tips for AO3 and
the advanced search operators post so that you have an idea of what AO3 does differently or what AO3 has extended from the regular search operators so you can tailor your knowledge specifically to thinking about the AO3 database. If I do it right, you can then use all of that information to construct a complex search query that has the highest likelihood of giving you what you want while excluding things that you don't. Done properly, you get to construct your own personalized recommendations list from everything in AO3.

Okay, obligatory information professional bit done. What this challenge actually wants us to do is assume at least some part of the reading audience has the same or similar enough tastes to ourselves that recommending the things that we enjoyed (or found intriguing) will be good for them as well. Or may convince someone who is curious about a new fandom or looking for new works in their fandom to give a try to. So, in no particular order at all, have an arbitrary list of recommendations.

1. I generally recommend anything at all by AlexSeanchai for the way that the language itself builds the story, with secrets hiding in corners, subtle foreshadows cast, and as much said by what's missing than from what's there, but I just recommended Where the Firelight Fades to someone who was looking for three sentence fic fills based on a video of the destruction an Akumatized Marinette would wreak. It's considerably more than three sentences, of course, but it delivers on the premise of being as terrifying an Akumatized Marinette story as it can be while still having a happy ending.


2. The thing I most recently bookmarked on AO3 was Fantasia 2020, which I really love because it's a very faithful installment of the Fantasia series, mixing instrumental music of the distant past and the recent past, and ChokolatteJedi delivers some still forms with description of what the finished animated products might have been, so we can at least imagine the visual track along with the soundtrack selected. It would be the work of a Fantasia to animate those ideas, but we can always hope.


3. I really like receiving art as an exchange gift, mostly because I know it takes time and effort to bring artistic ideas into being and to the satisfaction of the artist. Which means it's great when laughingpineapple gives a gift. The First Athein Cow Race is a great moment from the Bone comic series by Jeff Smith, suggesting one of the early Great Cow Races might have had more than just Gran'ma Ben involved with the cows. It's a really well-crafted at piece, in addition to the scene that it paints.


4. Worldbuilding is one of my great loves in fiction, it appears, given how often I complain about bad characterization or keep consuming something because I'm intrigued by what's going on in the background or to the secondary characters even if I've given up on the primary characters. So it's probably less of a surprise that I really enjoy Pi'maat, a series by sixbeforelunch (you'll need an AO3 account to read it) that has no canon characters and devotes itself to telling the story of how society on Vulcan functions, especially in places that are fairly far away from the metropolises and the spaces where the tourists would go. It is also a meditation on how our experiences with war, pain, love, and duty shape us profoundly, regardless of whether we are combatants, healers, or civilians. It is profoundly Vulcan, and being Vulcan, does not shy away from the parts that are less easy to bear, because that would be illogical.


5. I'm a music and sound kind of person in a lot of my life, which might mean I pay a little more attention than usual to soundtracks and music choices and I get really excited by sound design in stories that use it, even if I am a know-nothing about how it all happens. I'm Not Afraid Of The Darkness takes Riku's theme from Kingdom Hearts and expands it into it's own symphonic style piece. Which is awesome. But I can also appreciate Alive 25, an idea of what the setlist might have been for a hypothetical 25th anniversary tour of Daft Punk, incorporating new albums and songs released since their last tour, as well as classics that have become part of the Daft Punk sound. It's nice having people who post music links in my feed, because it gives me time to listen to while I compose these entries and many other things.

I'm sure there's more that I'm not thinking of, or things that I will discover as we go along. But for now, this seems like a good spot to stop at.

Comments

[tellshannon815]

That cow art made me smile, thanks for the rec!

[silveradept]

Glad that it worked. It's a very funny image, whether you know the context or not.

[batrachian]

Vulcan worldbuilding?!!?!?!

*squirrels away forever*

[silveradept]

That's one, one rousing success, ah-ah-ah!

[alexseanchai]

gonna make me blush

[silveradept]

Nothing others haven't also said, I'm sure.

[goddess47]

That's a fascinating analysis of searching for fic on AO3! Thank you for organizing that!

I have one of Alex's fic on my to-read list... I've even watched Miraculous Ladybug to be better prepared to read the fic. ;-)

Yes, the cow pic is cool! Good to share that!

The rest of that is also amazing!

Thank you for sharing that with us!

[silveradept]

Search engine and database is one of the secret languages they teach us as information professionals so that when our fingers tap the keyboard, it seems miraculous.

The cow picture is a good one, and it works well whether you know the context or not.

Expect Alex's work to be largely canon compliant (barring unavoidable paradoxes or contradictions in the source) but also detailed in ways the show isn't, and those details are going to be important.

[alexseanchai]

😸

[dragonyphoenix]

The cow race one is awesome! And timely as I've just finished rereading vol 2 The Great Cow Race! Others look interesting too. Definitely planning to check some of them out

[silveradept]

Seems like that one is the clear winner in the comments so far. I really like it and think it while the characters involved very well.

[mesotablar]

those vids were really good! I imagine they all took heaps of blood, sweat, tears and time from their creators, especially the Miraculous Ladybug animatic. Like even how do they do that!? Amazing!

[silveradept]

They're very good. The full animation for such an animatic would look exquisite. And probably take quite a while to get drawn up and ready.