Snowflake Challenge #11

[annavere]

Challenge #11

In your own space, grant someone's wish from Challenge #5. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it and include a link to your own post with the wishes you granted if you feel comfortable doing so.

Well, this one worried me. I didn't feel comfortable linking my own wishlist to strangers, so nobody is gonna be able to use my post to help them complete the challenge (I didn't know it would have been helpful, my bad).

And lots of people, uncomfortable asking for things, only asked for rhetorical things nobody could give them. I think the challenge should have been titled "Fannish wishlist" if the point was to increase creative engagement in fandom.

The bigger problem for me is a total lack of shared fandoms with most people. I clicked on link after link, heart sinking further every time, because there's just no overlap. I really make a poor showing as a fan of anything, and when people do want recs in a shared fandom, my taste is too niche to satisfy the requests.

And I get the sad impression the Buffyverse is gradually losing its hold over people, because there was an amazing lack of the one big fandom I was sure I could find a request to fill. But at long last I did find a person who was writing in that fandom as recently as 2024, and who requested feedback, so I am now embarked on reading and commenting through their AO3 works, as applicable, fulfilling the challenge to my limited capacity.

Snowflake is good for getting me to post more. And I'm gonna try to carry that forward. But I guess it's in the name. We're all unique. And (probably just owing to my mood) that makes me feel insular and out of step.

---- ETA: Except where it comes to my little DW circle! I was referring to when I step into the wider arena that Snowflake represents! I have had wonderful conversations on all manner of different niche topics here, and know how lucky I am to have found this place and the people who make up my Reading List! Highlander, Jeremiah, Buffyverse meta, obscure music, obscure shows, awesome female characters and writing support have all made for wonderful conversations here, and I always appreciate them. ♥

This is why I usually spend so long in draft mode, to try and clarify before I faceplant. But part of this challenge is quick posting time, hence edits. :) ----- End of Edit

But I guess there's no helping it, and I will just have to be more effusive about what I do love.

Comments

[the_wanlorn]

:( Feeling out of step is the worst. I'm extremely lucky in my friends, in that I am often out of sync with fandom but I'm in sync with them.

Having shared fandoms is so important for feeling like you can talk about what you're into, which is kind of a bummer too! Like, out of all my friends, I think I'm the only one who's into hearing people be enthusiastic about things I have no interest in. :(

Yay, Buffyverse characters and fans

[brightknightie]

Thank you very much for filling that author's wish for feedback! ♥

I saw the original BtVS movie in theaters and admired it. I missed most of the original run of BtVS on broadcast, but later caught up in reruns and syndication. And though I poked a lot of fun at AtS for being a lesser version of the One True Vampire Detective Show ;-) I really loved its first few seasons. I still have a VHS tape that Abby (TV_Elf) gave me of the original BtVS pilot, when several cast members were different.

My own most popular AO3 fic to date is a BtVS story that, sadly, misfired with its recipient in an exchange. So I have mixed feelings about it... and about me trying to write Buffyverse at all (and I try to stay away from romance requests whenever I can, as I just don't have the right emotional intelligence for it). ~wry~

Do you have any BtVS stories you've written that you'd like folks to read and comment on? :-)

Boo, creators who do bad stuff

[brightknightie]

I'm afraid that Buffyverse enthusiasm has been affected not only by the inevitable passage of time, but by the recent awareness that Whedon is someone whom fandom at large wants to thoroughly avoid and never reward with royalty money. (Firefly is similarly hit, I believe.) This is unfair to the stories and characters who are so much bigger than this man, and to everything we fans have made of them with each other and with the writers and directors and actors who are not him. But it's something I keep seeing happen, to fandoms I share and to ones I only vaguely know about -- Rurouni Kenshin, Harry Potter (of course), everything Neil Gaiman...

I generally prefer to not know anything about the personal lives of creators until they're long dead and we can situate them in their sociological context, and disambiguate the creations from the creator... because the creator can no longer profit from the creations, and the audience won't be misled, I suppose. This is familiar and comfortable to me as a lifelong English major. :-) You don't ignore a pivotal thinker for being an ass or even for being evil. You slot that thinker appropriately and proceed to analyze the work and its impact.

As a not high-canon example, I specifically remember learning that Georgette Heyer was a classist and a racist well into an era where that should have been untenable, and it was a long time before I could experience her writing again, even with a keen and careful new eye. But with that new eye, I do now go back and again see the skills and achievements alongside the detriments.

I'm currently reading a 1930s mystery novel my sister gave me, apparently a landmark of the genre affecting the direction of its successors, and while it is absolutely a page-turner, it made me incredibly uncomfortable, to the point that I checked Wikipedia even thought I'm not yet done with the story, and... yep, the author was a cynic, a racist, a eugenicist, and massively sympathized with the Germans in his day. Aaaargh. I will finish this book. Will I read others by him? Probably not. Either way, now I know what to do with what his writing is doing.

[bleodswean]

I feel your frustration and sing your praises for finding a wishlist you can fulfill! That's wonderful!

Snowflake has had me mulling over this exact thing - fandoms have become too fractured, too specific, too small for a general feeling of FANDOM for large groups of people. I have been shocked to read through Snowflake entries and realize that I have ZERO familiarity with any of the fandoms!

[annavere]

I'm extremely lucky in my friends, in that I am often out of sync with fandom but I'm in sync with them. That is very well put, and I just went into panic edit mode to clarify (in worse prose) the same concept up above. It's just the wider world of DW, and my own knowledge of how few fandoms I am really familiar with, which make me feel out of sync. Fringe, Lost, Lucifer, Star Trek, SG-1, Babylon 5, X-Files... I have so much catching up to do, thanks to barely watching TV for much of my life.

I love seeing posts from people going crazy over something I don't know about. It's why my watchlist is so long! There's a lot more of it on Tumblr, but Tumblr is hard to have conversations on, at least for me. I wish there was more of that kind of posting on DW, and it's a goal this year for me to up my game and make more rabid posts going forward. I talked myself out of so many entries this past year (which was admittedly a horrible year, but still, I want to do better).

Re: Yay, Buffyverse characters and fans

[annavere]

I am planning eventually (once I have seen more of FK) to do a comparative post between that and AtS, because the parallels are fascinating, but I also think each show is trying to do its own thing, and excel in different areas. I'd kind of like to watch the other vampire detective show, Moonlight, which is free on Plex right now, just to see how it contributes to the conversation, but that will have to wait.

Alas, I have not written for BtVS yet. It's on my list of somedays, once I clear some of my current projects. It's a toss up whether I will rewatch that or HL first, but whichever one will end up generating a lot of posts here, and I expect will fire up my fic-writing impulses at the same time. Maybe later this year? I feel it would facilitate some great conversations!

I'm sorry you have mixed feelings about your most popular story. I still remember your Promises and Promissory Notes so fondly, for capturing all that I like best in Duncan and Amanda's complex relationship, so I would certainly say you do have the right emotional intelligence for romantic themes, even though it's outside of your comfort zone. ♥

[teratornis]

I'm not really involved with BtVS fandom much, but yeah I feel this a little. There are great places for discussion and conversation, but in wider fandom communities it does feel harder. I tend to haunt various exchanges a lot of the time, even if I don't participate, and a lot of the time the fandoms and specific requests are just way out there, from my perspective.

To be honest, I actually feel like things have been pretty quiet in fandom spaces in general lately, though I could just not be looking in the right places.

I'm glad you found somebody to wrangle some stories for, and I for one love chatting with you here over various things. And hey, sometimes seeing what other people enjoy introduces you to some new fun things. ❤️

Re: Boo, creators who do bad stuff

[annavere]

I have a similar outlook, as someone who read a lot of literary classics when I was younger. I learned very quickly not to idolize creatives, only to admire their abilities while acknowledging the realities of the lives they led. It gets easier the further back in time they lived, certainly, but it's also not easy to define the parameters. Everything ends up being case by case. Everyone has to personally decide where they draw the line for what. I can understand people who would prefer to walk away from the Buffyverse (and Firefly) for their own emotional wellbeing, even though I'm not one of them.

But it does damage the fandom, and that is something I can't help but be sad over, especially in the realm of television where so many other people's hard work gets tarnished or brushed aside because of one showrunner or writer.

Yes, the best way is to be aware and to be able to see the skills and achievements alongside the detriments. That is a good way to put it.

[annavere]

Thank you! ♥

Yes, there is a strong feeling of fragmentation, seemingly wherever I look. I am mostly saddened because there is a constant thread to so many fandom comments, about the lack of interaction, about silence and loneliness, missing the communities that used to exist (long before I ever made it into fandom). I see it in so many places here, on Tumblr, AO3, on endless Reddit threads. Less on Discord, but conversations there are transitory by nature. And then I don't know what can be done to combat it, and it's frustrating to feel like I can't really help much. I wanted to fulfill more requests!

[annavere]

I guess the only thing for it is to hang on to those places that do facilitate conversations, and to friends made. ♥

I've noticed the same thing about fandom feeling really quiet lately, but I take it as an ill omen if you think so too. I perk up whenever a stray meme comes through, and always hope that will snowball into more activities, as I know from scrolling through DW archives that there used to be so much more playful interaction years back, and the memes and meta were thick on the ground. It makes me sad to have missed out on so much.

I really didn't want to make a downer post for this Challenge, and the fact that this sentiment struck a chord with multiple people saddens me. But like I said, I don't really see a way forward other than not giving up. I will be trying to post more, read and comment more, watch shows - and try to keep the conversations going. Because that's what's in my power to do, and I certainly hope you continue to find some fun posts here to chat over. I'm always happy to see you've stopped by. ♥