Snowflake Challenge #15

[pensnest]

In your own space, Talk about Your Snowflake Experience. 

What did you come into it thinking or wanting? Did you get that? Did you get something else? Did you learn anything new about fandom, others, yourself? Are you glad you did it or thought it a waste of time and energy? You can tell us. We’re all here to learn and grow. What did you learn? How did you grow?

What did I come in to it wanting? I... hmm. More action on my Reading list? (check) More action in the comments to my own journal? (check) More participation from me in other journals, according to challenge? (check, but possibly less than I could have) I like this challenge, it's fun and a general boost to the fannishness of the community. More later.

#1 Intro post. Well, I've been participating in Snowflake for years now, I think since it began, so it is getting harder to do an intro post... on the other hand, I do appreciate reading reiterated intros for the people I've started reading as a result of seeing their participation during previous years, so I think it still has a point.

#2 Interact with someone new - this is pretty much an automatic part of the Snowflake Challenge. In fact, I think it would be better as part of a final roundup than as a separate challenge on its own. If we don't do *something* to react to other participants, why are we even here?

#3 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - interesting new idea, didn't really appeal to me.

#4 Create some Goals. Well, I've started seriously on one of the three. That's good, I guess?

#5 Promote a canon that you love - well, mine is a dead fandom, though not dead to me. I wasn't in the mood.

#6 Recs This was fun. I stuck to stories from beyond my beloved popslash, minority fandoms, and was pleased that quite a few people seemed to be interested in reading them. All jolly good quality work, and it is nice to share the love. I hope the authors got an uptick in responses!

#7 Create your own challenge. This is, potentially, a Big Deal, and I think needs a lot more warning, as a post! I have run a challenge of my own in the past, and co-modded others, and there can be a lot more to it than the impulse of the day. Of course there is room for mini-challenges, but I think this is something that should have notice so that participants can really think about it. Anyway, I had no thoughts on the matter and have not completed it.

#8 Create a Wishlist: well, mine is always Moar Feedback PLS, and frankly it's beginning to feel a bit pathetic, so I didn't play this year. Could we just stipulate that everybody wants more feedback?

#9 Brag About Yourself
I was feeling someone introspective on this day, and didn't link it to the main comm. On a different day I might have bragged about my Considerable Prowess As A Writer, or My Fabulous Artistic Creations, or whatever, but not on 17th January for some reason. It was probably quite useful for me to try to assess myself in a broader context than simply fandom, and in the broader world my light is a very small one.

#10 Love Letter to fandom - actually, I enjoyed this quite a lot. It just flowed out very easily, and the most difficult thing in the writing was keeping it to a reasonable length. It was fun, too, receiving comments from people who had had similar experiences to my own. I think we have a lot of common experiences within fandom, even if our actual fandoms don't even overlap! So this was very satisfying, possibly the most satisfying challenge of the month, which I would not have anticipated.

#11 Create a fanwork - well, I didn't *create* one specially for this challenge, but I expected this to be one of the challenges so I held back the fanwork I completed at the end of last year in order to use it here. Response has been... well, disappointing, at best: I don't know whether any Snowflake participants were among the handful who left kudos, perhaps there were. Of the three who commented, two were my betas. In fairness, I know this is a fandom, or pair of fandoms, whose time has gone, but I had hoped there might be a bit of interest. It's a good story! And comments are life-giving joy to a fic writer.

#12 Random memes - fun, trivial, nice little challenge.

#13 Fandom resources you use/enjoy - didn't really have anything to say here. I can see its utility to more current fans.

#14 Remix something - gah! I mean, a little notice, please? Haven't done this, probably won't.

#15 Talk about Your Snowflake Experience
I'm glad to have participated in the challenge again, though there were several daily challenges I did not do for varying reasons. Some days, it's easy to contribute, but other days require more thought and preparation—I mean, I cannot just whip out a remix of something on demand. I think it would be nice to have an advance listing of what will be coming up, next year, so that people have a chance to look up their recs, flex their creative muscles, and so forth. I know we can take our time and post things after we have had a chance to fulfil them, but... well, part of the fun of Snowflake Challenge is to do it in January. I don't really want to have it hanging over me as a Thing I Have Not Done. And a good bit of the point is to share whatever we've done with the other participants—I don't ever think to look back at the collected comments to each challenge, after January, and I doubt many other people do, so there just isn't the sharing element there for responses that come late.

Comments

[smallhobbit]

It's interesting to read your responses - I have yet to do my own (if I do indeed do it, currently I'm in two minds, since I suspect it may be rather negative). I was very struck with how many people want more feedback, and wondered whether they themselves do give feedback.

[pensnest]

Yes - I didn't mean to be negative, but some challenges found a response from me and some didn't.

Yeah... it's a common thing to want more feedback. I rather yearn for the days when (my) fandom lived on LJ and there was no option for leaving kudos, you commented, even if all you said was "Nice fic". I certainly do my best to leave comments when I really enjoy a story, but when I've just read it and thought, yeah, that was nice, I leave kudos. If there were a new story in my beloved fandom I'd do my best to encourage them... and yet, I found a bunch of popslash stories that were posted within the last few years, though I think written longer ago, and I, er, didn't think much of them. Difficult!

[smallhobbit]

I didn't find yours negative - I thought you presented a very reasoned approach. I did very few days this year, and although I may consider why, I may simply decide that the challenge is no longer for me.

I agree entirely about simply leaving kudos to say you thought something was a pleasant read - and I like receiving them, particularly when it's an older fic, it's nice to know someone has found it and liked it.

[sjh2009]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. As a mod I've read through a lot of the responses to many of the challenges, asking for feedback is something that has come up a lot, but it has been interesting to see the number of people who have also,commented that they're not as good as they should be at commenting in other people's work, so I hope that this challenge has made people more aware of the fact that commenting works both ways.

We are always interested in feedback from participants, and are also open to suggestions from participants. It's difficult to please everyone, some people love some of the challenges and others don't. We do try to take this on board when planning the challenges and try and come up with things that will appeal to the majority, we also like to try out new things to give regular participants a change.

Thank you for taking part, I am glad that you found some of the challenges enjoyable, Snowflake wouldn't be the success it is without all our wonderful participants :)

[pensnest]

I think asking for feedback has probably been a Thing since... since fanfic began? I remember zines would beg for Letters of Comment. (I wrote at least one, and got a very good penfriend out of it!) I think we all know, if we write fic, that feedback makes *us* feel good, but most of us can also find it hard to write it for others. It's Thing.

I don't think it's even possible to please everyone all the time, and I don't, personally, think that it's important for Snowflake to do that. I've responded to the challenges that spoke to me, and skipped the ones that didn't, and I think that's perfectly reasonable. Sometimes, I simply have had nothing to say, other times, I've not wanted to say anything. There are challenges that regularly appear - create something, rec something, introduce yourself, that kind of thing - and they probably should; I like that there were some variations this year, eg the meme one and the dinner party, even though I didn't do the dinner party one. And it must be jolly hard to come up with new variations that will appeal!

Thank you and your fellow mods for the work you put into this challenge. It really is a thing I look forward to in Januarys.

[sjh2009]

Thank you, I am glad you look forward to it. I have mentioned your feedback as you haven't been the only person to mention about advance notice for challenges which require participants to create something, especially if it's a new challenge we haven't included before.

We are genuinely interested to hear of any ideas people have for new challenges, it is hard work trying to decide what challenges to have and which ones to keep and which to swap out.

:)

[pensnest]

I can just imagine how hard it is to think up the challenges. I liked the approach the Sunshine Challenge took, with a one-word that each participant could interpret in her own way... not sure if that would fit in with the style of Snowflake, but you might see if the occasional one-word prompt would fit?

[sjh2009]

Thank you. It's something to consider for future years, we're always looking at ways to change things up a bit. Several mods crossover from Snowflake to Sunshine so the ideas are filtering around both challenges.

[turps]

I love that Snowflake gets the year off to such a good start. Some of the challenges it does feel I've done a thousand times before, but that's inevitable considering I've done it from the start. So I get how it's hard to do things like an intro post again.

Really, what I like most is checking out other journals, and seeing and commenting to people that normally I wouldn't.

I know it doesn't help right now but I do have your story tabbed for when I finish the mega long Downton story I'm in the middle of. I'm looking forward to getting lost in your words again.

[pensnest]

Yes - it is always a good opportunity to take a look at some different journals and see whether people think in a way I find interesting! It was also quite nice, this year, seeing quite a lot of obviously older fans participating, so that even if we didn't have fandoms in common, I recognised things about theirs!

*blushes* As the new story is hella long (for me) at 65,000 words (!!) I am being a bit unreasonable wanting instant feedback. I know this. And yet, it's hard not to!

[author_by_night]

#2 Interact with someone new - this is pretty much an automatic part of the Snowflake Challenge. In fact, I think it would be better as part of a final roundup than as a separate challenge on its own. If we don't do *something* to react to other participants, why are we even here?

Yeah, I like that as a closing prompt, or even at the beginning. Honestly, a few of these would've been good warm-ups, like the introduction.

I agree with you completely about needing more time for some of them. And you're exactly right, in theory you can post for older prompts, but how many people really look?

The Brag About Yourself was a no-go for me because I'm... so bad at that. Don't ask me to talk about myself. :P

[pensnest]

I would have found it relatively easy to fill a "Rec some of your own work" challenge, but 'Brag about yourself' was just... too hard! It's really weird to do that.

[frausorge]

I see what you mean about it being less tempting to finish the challenges after the main event is over, even if there's no official deadline. The collective momentum definitely moves on. (And I can't even manage the shorter challenges!)

[brandywine28]

I admit, I sat on this entry for a couple of days just because, ugh. I so used to doing the avoid-dance when it comes to this topic. But, yes. Popslash fics don't rake in a lot of feedback anymore and I hate it. I hate it and I hate acknowledging it and -- ugh.

Sometimes I'll be adding to a WIP (You know, one of those fabled WIPs I'm always mentioning and somehow never finishing? Yeah. Those.) and I'll just have a really bleak moment, two or three seconds of pure, uncut 'what's the point? No one's gonna read this.' But it always passes, because -- !!! There IS a point! I like these stories. I want them to exist. And if I don't write them, truly, truly, no one else will.

And that's reason enough for me, I guess. For whatever it's worth, your Lance-bert(??) AU made me smile. A lot. And it exists! And I'm so happy about that!

<3