Sense, Nonsense, and Not-Sense

The final challenge for 2025 encourages us to go forward into the year looking for moments of joy.

Today, I invite you to pause for a little and…

Challenge #15

Talk about an unexpected joyous moment you experienced last year.

[hellip;]

Joy comes in lots of forms. Did something make you giggle or crack a smile when you didn’t expect to? Or feel surprisingly content, satisfied, pleased, glad, or warm?

The moment can be quiet, loud, brief, big — maybe it lasted a second, maybe it spanned months. Maybe it was something you saw or heard or read, or something you or somebody did.

There’s no right or wrong answer; only your answer! ;D

( Why I have to work hard to remember the good things, and good things that I remember )

So yeah, there are those moments of joy and happiness that happen all throughout the year, and I try to pay at least some attention to them. (And some of them end up reappearing on performance evaluations for the year, or I dip back into them when I want to reassure myself that people do enjoy the works that I do for them in exchanges and other.) I highly recommend that if you don't already, that you start keeping a folder of the good things people say about you, your fanworks, or your excellence at your work, hobby, or otherwise. They can be really helpful for bludgeoning brainweasels trying to convince you that you have had no impact nor worth to anyone else.

Challenge #13 asks us to expand our circle of people we've made contact with.

For me, one of the best parts of fandom is the opportunity to interact with people who share my passions. Whether that's directly through comments or fanwork exchanges, or more indirectly by moderating communities, or reccing new work to people we already know -- talking to each other is one way I show fandom love.

Challenge #13

Interact with someone in fandom you haven't talked with before.

[…]

We all have different levels of comfort in putting ourselves out there. And while we here at Fandom Snowflake love to challenge people to go out of their comfort zone, we also want you to feel safe. You don't have to strike up a conversation with a total stranger (unless you want to). You could try any number of things! Comment on someone else's journal, or comment on a fanwork. Speak up in a Discord conversation. Leave kudos on a work at AO3. Reblog a fanwork on Tumblr. Fill a prompt at a community. Chat up the random person who posted about your favorite fandom here in our challenges. Find someone to wave to in tags. Really, anything that has you communicating with someone else counts.

Here's some suggestions if you want them:

- Challenge #8 asked people to post a promo or manifesto for one of their beloved fandoms. Look at the comments for someone who shares your interests, and leave them a comment!

- Challenge #9 asked people to create a fanwork. It's a great place to find new people!

- Go to AO3 and sort the fics in your favorite fandom by comments, and leave a comment or kudos on one you've never read before.

- If you would like to find a community that suits your interests, try ysabetwordsmith's Follow Friday tag. The communities are sorted by topic. Maybe comment on a recent post there, or post something relevant yourself.

One of the things that helps build community is having shared things to talk about, and so when Snowflake rolls around, I try to make a concerted effort to comment on various challenge posts and the like. Of course, because so many people participate, I inevitably fall behind on taking care of such things, but I do try to give comments where I have something to talk about with someone else. And most of the time, the people that I'm talking to are usernames that I haven't seen before on Dreamwidth.

( On the matter of talking to people you've never met before )

In any case, this post, like all the others, is a perfect place to jump in and say hello! Ask questions, drop factoids, show links, all of those things. Just remember that it's more of a salon in my living room (as jenett says) than the public square, and comport yourselves accordingly.

Challenge #11 asks us to examine the building blocks and units of storytelling.

In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. […]

What is that one (or several!) trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme that grips your attention whenever it pops up in fandom or fanworks? What is it about it that works for you or appeals to you? If you have any recs or examples, feel free to include them!

I don't have a bulletproof trope or other such unit of storytelling that draws me to a story or guarantees that it will be enjoyable. (Sometimes I think these challenges, and a fair amount of my fannish life, would be easier if I did have an OTP or something that was guaranteed to make it good for me.) The skill of someone using tropes and their storytelling elements can make a story better or worse for me, but it's not going to make or break the story itself.

( What do I like (and dislike) though? )

Challenge #9 asks us to indulge in the urge to create.

When thinking back to this year's fourth challenge, 'Make some Goals,' I remember how many of you mentioned that they plan to write more or create more icons. If you haven't already started, today is your chance to do so.

Challenge #9

In your own space, create a fanwork.[…]

Don't think you have to limit yourself to "write some fic" or "create some icons," though please do if you like that. But also consider art, graphics, podfics, musical scores, meta, fiber arts, videos, recipes, or whatever other combination of the words "fan" and "work" strikes your fancy.

If you are still looking for ideas of what to create, I suggest checking out Challenge #7 - Make a Wish. Maybe you can create a little something for someone else?

I did some fills for threesentenceficathon, so that ticks the box of creating a fanwork for today's challenge.

( However, this challenge is one of the ones I have the worst time with. )

Challenge #7 asks us to be selfish and consider our own wishes and wants first.

Today's challenge is one of my favourites - the wishlist - because it's nice to see the variety of wishes across many and varied fandoms.

While today's challenge does look easy, I know that for some people asking for things is hard. You can ask for something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for elsewhere, but you can also ask for something you've prompted and asked for before. If you have wishes for transformative works from your own works or another's work, remember to include links to those sources in order to make it easier for people to create.

Challenge #7

In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a wishlist of sorts. […] Maybe someone will grant a wish. Check out other people's posts. Maybe you will grant a wish. If any wishes are granted, we'd love it if you link them to this post.

( After the requisite self-esteem issues, on to the wishlist )
These seem like reasonable asks, not too outlandish or impossible. (Because there's that part, too, about tailoring your asks to what you think is doable, rather than the asks that might be what you want but that are unlikely to have happen. Caroline, if you're out there, and you are interested in resuming the project, there are a lot of 9E fans who would cheer you on.) I'll go looking at other people's wish lists as well, and see if there is anything that I might be able to do.

And if not, well, threesentenceficathon has already opened up a second post of prompts, so there's definitely going to be plenty there to peruse and fill for.

So what did I do so far? Offered some story suggestions, some short stories and prompt recommendations, clicked some buttons to make donations, some media recommendations, some other media recommendations, two media recs and a writing prompt, trying to help someone find resources for starting up a movie-watching group on Discord.

Challenge #5 is looking for the good times and the happy things.

Talk about what has improved in your life thanks to fandom. […]

Fandom can be a highly meaningful experience for many! We'd love to hear about how being part of a fandom has helped your life change for the better. Have you made any cherished memories or connections? Does fandom bring you joy? Tell us about the ways that fandom has helped you.

I jokingly refer to myself as a Great Old One of the Internet, because I was here in the era of the Web on dial-up, but I know that I'm not actually an Elder God, since there were plenty of groups and bulletin boards that predate the Web. Similarly, there are plenty of fandom Elder Gods who have done their things before me and before the Web, sharing stories and community with each other. It doesn't feel like I'm all that old, or that I've seen all that much, in comparison with the people who were here before me, but then I get reminded at work about being institutional knowledge, or I see some of the responses that tell me old wars are repackaged for new fandoms, and I recognize that while history rarely repeats, it often rhymes, and a sign of age and wisdom is recognizing when it's happening again.

If I pursue that line of thinking too much further, though, it gets mired in how so many things that were not good about the past either never left or are on their way around again, as new generations join up and start making the same mistakes of the past. (There's a certain amount of "we moved to a new platform, not all of the people who were there followed us, so now we have to gain that wisdom again" that happens, but there are a few things that I thought settled matters that are apparently unsettled and continue to plague the fandom.)

( Happy stories, then. )

Yeah. There have been a fair number of happy things involved by sticking with fandoms and with working the exchange circuit and otherwise sharing my time and creativity with other people. It seems like one of them that was recent (Yuletide 2023) was all the people who laughed, liked, or found an e-mail from a department chair about the upcoming doctoral defense by snake fight eerily accurate to some of their own higher education experiences, even though they're not obligated to fight any reptiles, large or small, to obtain their own advanced degrees. And one that still gets lots of nice comments was a Fandom Trumps Hate bit where one of the characters had a disabling event, but eventually adapted and found a girlfriend out of it, once the girlfriend was willing to see past the bitchy front she put up. (The comments are often about how good the treatment of the disability was and how true to character everyone remained even with this change in events, which I like very much, since the prompt I picked up was about a disabling event and what came from it.)

Sometimes it is worth celebrating the wins, even though I know that my brain is not going to hold on to them long or think of them as the results of what I did, rather than some other thing that was fully out of my control, or a manifestation of Beginner's Luck. I could always use more help with the celebration of good things, or of people saying good things about me that they believe genuinely.

Challenge #3 reminds us that in fandom, it is a firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs.

In your own space, talk about a fannish opinion you hold that has changed over time. […]

Despite society's insistence otherwise, the beliefs and opinions that we hold about things change over time. We thought it was important that we reflect that (and perhaps laugh at our previously ill-considered opinions) with this challenge.

( Taking about wrong ideas that appeal to us, though we are not unkind )

Personally, though, I can admit to having changed my mind about things.

• I was definitely wrong about transformative fandom being primarily girls hankering for emotionally vulnerable and sexually explicit m/m relationships.


• I have come around to appreciating "kissing books" more, sufficiently so to have better reasons for flinging some of them across the room.


• It's not true that everyone will hate my works.


• It's also not true that I'll manage to somehow skirt the people who do hate my works and feel entitled to tell me so.


• Turns out Disney and Square-Enix can tell a story together.


• Diamond and Pearl Remake came out before Pokémon Drink Some Water.


• "Don't feed the trolls" is only part of what you need to have a vibrant and happy community, rather than all of it. At least some other part is "Ban/Block their asses from here to Mount Doom."


• I really had hoped that the phenomenon of the Bronies or, really, so many other situations where the periphery demographic was men and the target audience was kids or girls would result in greater latitude for men to express their emotions and not have to be jaded or looking for an excuse to like something. But I'm not feeling quite as optimistic about that any more.

There will still be some things that I change my mind on in the future, as well, and that will be okay.