Snowflake Challenge #1

[pensnest]

I did just squeak in before the reveal with yesterday's recs, happily. Not that it matters, because there are so many authors around for Yuletide, and I maybe recognise a handful of names—I doubt I'd go looking for Writer X's Stuff. Anyway, I hope you all had a chance to read through whatever may have caught your eye.

My story was With What Intense Desire, a Mansfield Park fic which changes the end of the story so that Fanny goes home earlier from Portsmouth, and gets to listen to Edmund whingeing about Mary in person instead of reading his letters.

My recipient wanted Fanny to be happy, and my conclusion from re-reading was that Fanny's truest source of happiness is being at Mansfield, at Home, in fact, so that is what I gave her. I may not have been quite heavy-handed enough, as nobody in the comments said they were glad to see her becoming the mistress of Mansfield Park, but there it is. It was fun to do, mostly because I was able to adjust Fanny a wee bit so that she gets more impatient with Edmund, which I do myself.

The title is from a quote in Chapter 45, "With what intense desire she wants her home," from Cowper.


So, that's Yuletide done for another year!

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Snowflake Challenge 2026, challenge no. 1: The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

I seem to have introduced myself many, many times, as I've been doing an online journal since I joined LiveJournal in 2005, and have (I think) done at least some of the Snowflake Challenge every year since it began.

So rather than reiterate how I came to be a fanfic-fandom person, I'm going to send anyone who's interested to the Snowflake 2022 post I made, in which I introduce myself via some posts. A selection of my posts, rather than a(nother) post About Me. The first is a love letter to fandom; the second mourns the death of a creative idol of mine (Stephen Sondheim) and also mourns the country I wish I lived in. The third is about death, though possibly a bit less miserable than that sounds. And there's a bonus fourth, to cheer you up a bit—a really unhelpful phonetic alphabet. As a collection, I think they give quite a good idea of Me, though I'm not usually quite so death-focused.

What do I want from Snowflake this year? I'm not sure. Some entertainment, maybe the discovery of a couple of new people to interact with? As much as anything, I have the feeling that this is a little burgeoning of posts, and I would like to be part of that.

What do I want from DreamWidth this year? Hmm. I'd like to put in a bit of the energy that I've been frivolling away on Reddit lately—although on Reddit I am somewhat more astringent and wit-focused, I think, than I am in this my own space. I hope there will be more discussion of Stuff I'm Interested In, whether that may be barbershop or fandom in general and the changes it has undergone of late, or the pleasure-pain of writing, or what to wear to dance at my daughter's wedding, and more. We shall see.

Comments

[kitarella_imagines]

Gosh you are brave to be on Reddit. I was there for a few months, but people were so rude and unfriendly that I left. Same with Tumblr, where there seemed to be nowhere to have proper conversations.

But on Dreamwidth people are not rude (so far). I think the set up here suits me better: a journal which is like a home for me, where I can have conversations with visitors. Or set out to visit other journals/ homes and have conversations with the owners. A nice small group of friends instead of thousands of anonymous followers is more comfortable to me, too.

I am glad we are friends! I love to read about your choir escapades, and general cosy and comforting activities 🧡

[pensnest]

I am pretty cautious about the bits of Reddit I visit—there are lots of icky places and having seen them I keep well clear—so far it's pretty much fine, though I'm not sure I entirely approve of the person I am when I'm there—although that said, I do manage to keep to my policy of not saying stuff online that I cannot defend!

But yes, DreamWidth is a better place altogether. I agree with the home/conversations with visitors way of looking at it, and we all go calling on our friends as well. I miss the LiveJournal days when my fandom was active—I can't see how to have a conversation on Tumblr either—and it's the absence of that fannish fun that I really miss nowadays, rather than LJ itself. DW is rather better in many ways!

[kitarella_imagines]

You are wise to be cautious. I observed that on Reddit they love the modern sport of piling on to someone's post and tearing them down as much as possible. The other thing I noticed was that it is not set up for people to make friends. Everyone has a strange name of random numbers or letters, everyone's profile photo looks the same, so it's hard to connect and make friends. The only people who followed me there were porn bots, and I was there for nearly a year.

Whereas Dreamwidth members have unique, easily remembered names, unique profile photos and of course journal pages to visit. There's no streaming newsfeed of people firing snarky comments at each other.

Yes, on the commercial social media I had to be defensive 24/7 as I was attacked so often. It was so exhausting and made me very cynical. I joined Mastodon a few years ago and it's like a breath of fresh air where people are polite and human. Every comment is not pulled apart looking for inaccuracies or offence. We have normal friendly conversations there.

I agree, fannish fun seems to have reduced. It's all about 'content consumption'- people read and consume then move on without connecting. Tumblr is supposed to be about fandoms but it's all reblogging and not actually conversing.

I'm so glad I chose Dreamwidth for my fandom home and not anywhere else 🧡

[pensnest]

Reddit's knitting/yarn, fanfic, and Jane Austen communities are quite civilised. The general opinion appears to be that the names with random numbers are bot names, bleah. But to be honest, I don't notice or remember the names of Reddit commenters, it just doesn't seem to be a place for people to make friends in. Possibly within one of the above-mentioned civilised places it would work.

DW is far, far pleasanter.

[kitarella_imagines]

Oh those groups sound nice! I was in Fanfiction and Autism, and both were too argumentative for me. I was in another but I can't remember what it was! lol. Although the Gardening one was nice, just very quiet.

I think the weird names are either bots or people trying to be cool with fashionable names. But anyway, not my types of people. I think Reddit is just a place for people to sound off, rant, argue. Some people just love arguing. I don't.

I agree about DW! 💓

[turps]

I hope you enjoy Snowflake this year :)

[pensnest]

I should go and see what the next challenge is!

[mywitch]

Nice to meet you! I really enjoyed your unhelpful phonetic alphabet. I legit LOL'd. L = LOL
Happy 2026 :)