Challenge #9

What are your top five fandoms for 2021 based on the amount of time you interacted with them?
1. DC's Arrowverse (specifically, Flash and LoT)
2. Forever Knight
3. Time Team
4. WKRP in Cinncinnati
5. Century City

What are your top five fandom spaces in terms of time spent? (AO3, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Dreamwidth, and others)
1. Dreamwidth
2. AO3
3. Fanlore
4. Youtube (rewatching old series)
5. Wikia (Fandom) wikis

What are the top five ways you interacted in these fandoms? (Reading fanfic, writing, commenting, watching videos, chatting with friends, making art, or anything else you can think of).
1. reading fanfic
2. writing
3. making webpages for my stories
4. rewatching canon
5. editing wiki articles

What are the top five things you did to contribute to fandom in terms of time? Did you write? Comment? Send positive energy into the universe? Create art?
1. thinking/planning fanfic, mulling over canon
2. taking part in fanfic gift exchanges
3. creating background graphics to (potentially) use on webpages
4. editing wiki articles
5. did the 25 Days of Writing meme, also the Snowflake and Sunshine Challenges

What things did you create that took the most time?
1. "If Well Lived"
2. "Crabapple Cove"
3. "The Mystery of Mantlemass"
4. "Stone Cold"
5. partly written sequel to "If Well Lived"

Five oldies-but-goodies I've been rewatching (generally on Youtube):
1. Time Team
2. WKRP in Cinncinnati
3. Man About the House
4. Century City
5. Walking with Dinosaurs (and sequels)

In your own space, tell us about 3 fandom resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy. (One or two is fine, especially if you're in a smaller fandom!)

The article, "Predicting the preservation of cultural artefacts and buried materials in soil" by Mark Kibblewhite, Gergely Tóth, and Tamás Hermann, covers the preservation in various types of soil of bones, teeth and shells; ceramics, glass and phytoliths; organic materials; various metals; and stone and plaster. There are also sections on stratigraphy and soil properties.

I found this to be invaluable in writing my Yuletide treat, "The Mystery of Mantlemass"; and I suspect it would be useful not only for anyone else writing fanfic that involves archaeology but also for people writing casefic, especially involving a cold case.

Challenge #4:  In your own space, make a list of things that you wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, and/or that you'd like someone to create or do for you.

Challenge #5:  In your own space, talk about an idea you wish you had the time / talent / energy to do.

I have a lot of unwritten plot bunnies. Occasionally, there's almost immediately an exchange in which the idea fits closely to someone's prompt (and doesn't hit any DNWs), so I get it written quickly. Or I get the idea a bit late to write that time, but the same person makes the same request in a subsequent exchange; so I do it then.

Other plots linger for years. Most frustrating, perhaps, are the ones that get only partly written, but are too large for the time/energy available. A chunk gets cut off, trimmed to a conclusion, and posted; but the rest of the story just frets away at me.

Once upon a time, I was a self-starter. However, for years now, I have felt an enormous inertia that makes it hard to write without the sort of strong motivation provided by a gift exchange, i.e. a deadline by which it has to be done, someone (the recip) expecting it to be done so they can read it, and a fair dose of guilt because someone else is writing for me and I have to pay for my gift. The trouble is, of course, that when one signs up for an exchange, one probably won't get an assignment that fits anything in the ever-enlarging plot warren.

What I need, therefore, is someone to keep my nose more or less near the grindstone: "accountability buddy" is the phrase used in Challenge #4. In 2020 there was fearbuddies: it helped me write the next two ficlets in a series I started for worldbuildingex; but I ran out of time to finish the whole thing. Then late last year, I heard of mini_wrimo, only that won't run again till the fall.

I don't need a beta, or even a cheerleader. What I need is basically what Fear Buddies gave me: someone to send installments to, say twice a week. They don't have to read them, you understand. I just need the deadline, however little I actually get done; and I need someone at the other end whose mere existence makes me feel guilty.

Which brings me to Challenge #5.

As I said above, between worldbuildingex and fearbuddies I've done the first five ficlets (or chapters) of an Arrowverse backstory about Leonard Snart's childhood and youth. Also the first couple of stories in an even more ambitious sequence about the Flash rescuing him from the Oculus explosion, after which he returns to Central City and starts the Rogues. I'd kind of like to finish both of them.

But I'm not going to even mention anything in other fandoms. That's quite enough to be getting along with. (More than enough, really, on past form.)

When reading, on the whole I tend to avoid AUs, fusions, and crossovers—I see fusions as more like crossovers, so I'm putting in all three—except for divergent AUs. It is often intriguing to see alternative paths the characters might have taken had things worked out otherwise. On the other hand, I tend to avoid most of the college/fairy tale/omegaverse type of thing. Well, unless it's an author I otherwise trust.

Perversely, I've written some fusions myself. I like to do them straight. The latest one, "The Mystery of Mantlemass", fuses Time Team with Barbara Willard's Chronicles of Mantlemass. The story runs from the first letter to post-production, as the archeologists locate the long-lost manor and foundry from Willard's multi-generational YA historical series.

I think, when I am bitten by a notion that requires a fusion, the impetus is much the same as it is with any other persistent plot bunny: there's something that wants to be said.

Willard's final story in the series, "One of Us", is set at the time of publication (1981); and its theme is the loss of family history, since practically nothing remains from the 150-odd years covered in the series. As I reread the books last fall, though, it occurred to me that more might actually be discovered than Willard realized. The involvement of Time Team was obvious. Fortunately, there was a very prompt prompt in Yuletide; so I was inspired to write it all out as a treat.

So last year I wrote this post about goals for the Snowflake Challenge and ... um ... got nothing of it done. Prognosis is poor, therefore, for setting goals this year.

Yes, I would like to finish the stories I mentioned last January. Sadly, fearbuddies. only ran in 2020; and I clearly do need a deadline to write. At any rate, in 2021 I got some stories finished; but it was always in the context of a gift exchange, i.e. someone to write for, and a date I had to post by.

In December, my goal was to get the Christmas tree up and baking done by the time my sister visited. As heavy fruit cakes need to be done in advance, the ingredients for the currant Dundee I planned to make were set out on the kitchen counter so that they would remind me reproachfully every time I went in. Let's just say that they were put away so my sister could get Christmas dinner made, and the tree was finally finished last weekend, just in time for her to see it fully dressed before she went home.

So my first goal is to get that cake baked. There's a bowl of currants wanting batter to be stirred into.

In your own space, remix an existing work into a new media,....

Not something I can tackle right this minute! And I don't read a lot of remixes. However, I do wonder if something I did a few years ago might qualify. I don't know if it does but....

Is a Yahoo!Group an "existing work"? Not today, for sure, since they've all been discontinued. However, once upon a time ... would a Yahoo!Group be considered a "work"? Not my work, certainly; but I think one could argue that each of them was the collective creation of the fans who were members.

At any rate, over most of 2012 (plus a few more done since), I created a series of icons for all of the Forever Knight factions that I could find. Now, if you were never on FORKNI-L, the FK mailing list, you probably have no idea what a "faction" is. The faction names started as referents for followers of particular characters—and later, pairings—who played as teams in the Wars. (These were basically a series of round-robin RPGs played on list.) However, when Yahoo!Groups began, most of the factions started their own so that they could chat with a cluster of friends about ... well, all kinds of things. Obviously, this would include FK, their favourite character/pairing, and the next War; but also their personal lives, current events, and other fannish interests. Some of these Yahoo!Groups were very active, and developed their own distinct cultures.

This means that the icons that I was making—at least those for established factions—needed to be more than just captioned screencaps. Each icon had to capture the essence of the faction it represented. It had to summarize the Yahoo!Group.

Many icons, therefore, required me to composit a number of different elements.

• The oldest factions had symbols, which were originally rough sketches put on buttons for a convention. Some factions had later redone them; and new factions had created their own. So I needed to translate these into something that could be matched with the other elements of the icon.
• I usually included a screencap; and with some characters I had a lot to choose from. I needed to pick one that would be appropriate to the faction: the expression on the face(s) was critical.
• Other things were included either to represent some aspect of the faction's culture, or to represent something specific to the characters/pairings involved.

At first, I only planned to do the main factions; but in the end the spirit of completism took over. As each new set of icons was completed, I made a post on my journal, with the icons and a discussion of their design. The link was then posted to FORKNI-L. After a number of posts, I started to get a fair bit of response. In fact, the mailing list fandom eventually got down to a bout of factioneering. Not for the first time: it used to be an occasional amusement. However, this time a lot of new names were bandied about—and even voted on, when there were multiple suggestions. So yet more were made!

You can find the whole group of icons here. Most link to a larger version, which was demanded by list members who wanted to see more of the detail.

For established factions, especially those where there were still members on list, the design had to be approved. It is true that some icons hit the spot immediately; but I often had to change things. A lot of faction members really cared about their symbols; so each updated version I created had to be okayed before I could use it. And there were other types of alteration that people wanted, too. For example, the icon I originally made for the Cousins of the Knight had the crossed swords behind a smaller pocket watch; but I was told that this "felt wrong". The faction leader admitted she'd never realized before how significant the symbolism of the swords was, and asked me to reverse it. The icon for the FK Pagans also had to be extensively redone. I still think the original version was prettier; but they felt it was too Celtic. And the icon for the Dark Perks needed a new rabbit head: their leader loved the pic of Tracy; but she said the rabbit absolutely had to be a white one.

So, if translating a Yahoo!Group into an icon counts....

Today's challenge is to list fandom resources that I use.

First off has to be Wikipedia. No, I know it's not a specifically fandom resource (and I know everyone is familiar with it already); but I use it a lot, especially when I'm writing any story with an historical setting. I may well use other sources, too: when I need a lot of specific information about a particular period, Wikipedia is likely to be inadequate. But it's told me about the US TV schedule for 1968, described Roman glassware, and given me an alternative Hastings with its own Battle. Among so many other verisimilitudinous details.

Second on the list have to be other wikis (collectively!) since they're utterly invaluable for checking canon details. I trust we all know Fanlore? Here are four fandom-specific wikis that I use:

• Arthur Ransome Wiki (558 pages) - Ransome himself, and the "Swallows and Amazons" series, including adaptations
  
• Arrowverse Wiki (10,487 pages) - all series in the CW Arrowverse
  
• Forever Knight Wiki (5548 pages) - Forever Knight, both the series and fannish activities - especially dear to my heart, since I'm an editor there
  
• Monster M*A*S*H Wiki (1111 pages) - all versions of MASH, including the TV sequel series
  

Third has to be the Forkni-L Archives, which comprise the major part of Knightwind's Nook. Alas, it only covers digests from 2000 to the present, plus a few months from 1996. Nor is it searchable, save those pages currently scanned by Google. Nevertheless, it has told me a lot about FK fandom in its latter heyday; and a lot of what I have learned there has found itself into those portions of the FK Wiki that deal with fan activities, and some thence to Fanlore.

Fourth is the Forever Knight Website Archive. Sadly incomplete, it nevertheless has over a hundred old sites. These include the main fanfic archive, faction sites, several war archives, the Kickstart the Knight campaign, the NATPE Seven History, and sundry else from the fandom's history. In addition, there are a lot of ancient personal sites (and my own, which is still active). Those old sites vary enormously in content and in quality; looking through them is a lesson in fannish history in itself.

It seems a bit weird to tout one's own virtues—or rec one's own fic, for that matter. I notice others have said the same thing. Basically, we're told not to when we're little kids; and that's pretty well reinforced as we get older, too.

Anyway, I see most people have given a few of their own stories. So here are five of mine, each in a different fandom. The main links are to my website, since I have to admit I am proud of the webpages I make for my stories.

• "A Different Shade of Gold" - S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders

  I first read this book when it was bought by our public library some months after publication, when I was Ponyboy's age. Each time I have read it since, I'm a bit older and my perspectives have shifted. Here I translate that into fiction: Ponyboy as he might be today, a guy around my own age rereading that old "class assignment" after so many years. (Written for luciferinasundaysuit in waybackexchange 2019. On AO3 here.)

  
  
  
• "Exiles of the Sunless Sea" - C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia

  I wrote this after a mad post-sign-up scramble through the tagset to find a request that I felt I could offer. In The Silver Chair, Lewis created the deep underground realm of Bism; but, although Jill and Eustace meet its exiled inhabitants, they had long since been bespelled into minions of evil. My story turns the tale round, to show the Bismian perspective on their situation. (Written for deepdarkwaters in worldbuildingex 2017. On AO3 here.)

  
  
  
• "Hobbiton Farm" - BBC Historical Farms series X The Lord of the Rings

  This was actually an extra prompt in a Yuletide letter. A crackfic notion, of course; but I decided to treat it seriously. What if, in a modern Middle-earth, the BBC did a series in which Ruth, Alex, and Peter spent a year living the life of the hobbits of Hobbiton? (Written for halotolerant in Yuletide 2015. On AO3 here.)

  
  
  
• "Stopped Cold" - The Flash (CW TV)

  When TPTB decided to write Leonard Snart and Mick Rory out of The Flash and into Legends of Tomorrow, they drew a line under any chance of a TV version of the Rogues from the Flash comics. Most fans at the time wrote AUs in which the group were recruited shortly after Season One; but, coming into the fandom some years later, I wondered what it would be like if Cold were instead rescued from the Oculus explosion after a significant time gap; found the differences in the Waverider crew too disconcerting; and only then decided to return to Central City to start the Rogues. I've never essayed the whole story. I did, however, snip out this part of the tale: the newly formed Rogues' first heist, and its aftermath. (Written for rivulet027 in worldbuildingex 2018. On AO3 here.)

  
  
  
• "A Winchester Always" - M*A*S*H (TV)

  This is nominally a remix of my sister's story, "Secrets and Lies"; but, to my way of thinking, it would be better described as a co-writing project, even though my involvement was pretty ex post facto. She picked up the assignment and came up with the basic plot, and the notion of alternating between the "today" of 1968 and flashbacks to the Korean War. I heavily reorganized it and doubled its length. (Written in remixrevival 2019. On AO3 here.)

  
  

I thought I'd rec three stories that are not in my two longstanding main fandoms:

• "Donation" by merriman - Anthropomorfic (Libraries)

  This was written for Yuletide 2014; but I've read it several times since. It's the story of a new acquisition to a university library. Or an old one, since it's a well used copy; and thereby hangs the tale. This is a snuggly fic to curl up with.

  
  
• "The Emperor's Garden" by hedda62 - Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosiverse

  I think A Civil Campaign is probably my favourite of all the Vorkosiverse books; and this is only partly because of the plot and genre. It's also because of Ma Kosti's delicious food and Ekaterin's gardening. This story focuses on the latter. Gregor wants the imperial garden completely updated; but that raises the question of the best effect to achieve, and everyone has different opinions.

  
  
• "An Internal Affair" by nirejseki - The Flash (CW TV series)

  This is a role-reversal ColdFlash story in which Leonard Snart is a police officer. Just off an undercover assignment, he's now been transferred to Internal Affairs, where he's a new broom sweeping the CCPD clean—and very suspicious of the mysterious behaviour of one Barry Allen. One of the nicest things in the story (aside from the plot) is the introduction of a fun group of fellow CSIs for Barry to interact with.

What to promote? What to promote? Well, I've loved Forever Knight for years: it's my oldest active fandom. It's a TV series about an angsty vampire working as a homicide detective to expiate his feelings of guilt.

FK ran for three seasons in the 90s, first as a late-night show after the news, and then as a syndicated series.

Det. Nick Knight

For a while it was in reruns; today you have to search out the DVDs. In truth, though, there was a fair amount of searching for it even back in the day. At the time, I wondered whether that might even have something to do with my being so devoted to it. When you've scoured the TV Guide trying to find a station that carries it, and then hunted it round the dial as it changes time slots, you tend to feel the show has to have value to it. How else do you justify the effort? (Or is that a chicken-and-egg question?)

As FK started in a Crimetime After Prime Time line-up, it's basically a cop show with a difference—the difference being, of course, that the hero was born in the 13th century, has incredible powers that aid him in solving crimes, and a family (of sorts) that keeps wanting him to return to the vampire lifestyle. Nick Knight—born Nicolas de Brabant, with myriad aliases down the centuries—was played by Geraint Wyn Davies.

A knight returning from the Crusades in 1228, Nick was "brought across" in Paris by an older vampire, LaCroix, and thereafter travelled for centuries with his master.

LaCroix

Almost every episode has a flashback to this period of Nick's life. Cumulatively, we see how, over time, his feelings toward killing shifted. Today, Nick drinks bottled blood; as a homicide detective, he tries to save lives; and, for centuries, he has tried to find a way to become human again. However, from LaCroix's point of view, to seek mortality is suicidal: vampires are immortal, but humans die. LaCroix—who, in life, was a Roman general—is autocratic, dogmatic, and dangerous. He sees himself as pater familias, and Nick as a recalcitrant son. With them also travels Janette, brought across by LaCroix in the 11th century: she is, so to speak, Nick's sister; but she has also, off and on, been his lover. Today, she keeps a Goth nightclub called The Raven, a haven for the vampires of Toronto. Though more sympathetic to Nick than their master is, she still feels that he is utterly misguided.

In his quest for mortality, Nick is nowadays aided by a police pathologist, Dr. Natalie Lambert.

Dr. Natalie Lambert

Obviously, she is his present-day love interest! However, there are plenty of reasons why neither of them is open with the other about the way they feel. Natalie is Nick's doctor; he has a long history of draining (and killing) women he falls in love with; and the vampire community would not approve of anything that might draw attention to them. Still, as Nick works Homicide and she autopsies murder victims, the two of them see each other all the time professionally. And they are certainly close friends: they spend a lot of off-duty time together, and Natalie is Nick's only human confidant. If LaCroix is his "bad angel", then she is his "good one". Though that does, of course, depend on how you feel about his antipathy to his vampire condition.

But, of course, this is only one side of the series. Forever Knight was, first and foremost, sold as a cop show. So every episode has its murder mystery; and, as a Homicide detective, Nick works for the Toronto Metropolitan Police force. He has a boss (actually a different one each season); and he has a partner (Don Schanke in the first two seasons, and Tracy Vetter in the final season).

Capt. Joe Stonetree &     Det. Don Schanke Season 1	Det. Don Schanke &     Capt. Amanda Cohen Season 2	Capt. Joe Reese &     Det. Tracy Vetter Season 3

Each of the police captains has their own style: Joe Stonetree (played by Gary Farmer) is pretty laid back; Amanda Cohen (Netsuko Ohama) is crisply by-the-book; and Joe Reese (Blu Mankuma) is ambitious. As for the partners: Don Schanke (John Kapelos) is a family man, and an experienced cop who is more able than he seems on the surface; Tracy Vetter (Lisa Ryder) is the newly promoted daughter of a senior officer, both advantaged by and resentful of her father's influence. The prominent cast of human characters also means that Nick is mostly interacting with mortals who have no idea that he is a vampire. A source of angst, sure; but, even more, a source of humour.
( Read more... )

Goals, eh?

I just had a quick look at a locked sticky on my journal. It was written in 2017. "Pending," I called it. There is nothing there that is not STILL pending. Which is not to say that I've done nothing at all in the last few years. I just haven't done any of those things. I have had a lot of trouble writing without a deadline—which, in practice, means that I've been writing very little outside gift exchanges.

However, last year I had two projects that did not have recipients. First, in the heart of the initial lockdown, I made myself write ficlets every few days so that I'd do something other than follow the news. To myself, I call them my "COVID Collection" (which is a ghastly name, I know). In fact, the stories have no illness in them, let alone plagues or pandemics. They're simply short pieces featuring various Forever Knight characters, and were posted to the old mailing list as well as AO3. I did a couple of dozen of them. Then, in the late summer, I signed up for fearbuddies, specifically Small Fear, with the intention of completing a series of Arrowverse stories about Leonard Snart's childhood. I'd started with three connected ficlets in a gift exchange; but more than a year had gone by, and I'd not got any more done. Well, I didn't finish; but I did get two more parts completed. Admittedly, regular reporting to my FearBuddy helped a lot: sort of mini-deadlines, you might say.

So what this shows is that I can do it. Sort of.

The "Pending" post has several prospective stories listed. I have ideas for:

• a Forever Knight futurefic about Capt. Reese set in 2010 at the G20 Summit in Toronto
• a crackfic crossover between FK and Thomas the Tank Engine
• a Charioteer story about Ralph Lanyon's first voyage after he was expelled from school
• longfic in which Leonard Snart is rescued from the Oculus explosion, leaves the Waverider, and returns to Central City to start the Rogues.

On top of that, I want to revise two stories I've already written, both FK stories done for gift exchanges. One just needs a bit of tweaking; but, for "A Dark and Stormy Night" (written years ago for Yuletide), I got some ex post facto concrit that I think was justified. The story needs to be refocused a bit, and have a better ending.

So what's my goal?

Complete "Depths of Cold", the Arrowverse series about Captain Cold's childhood and youth. I think there are probably three more parts to go.

Yes, it sounds pitiful. However, the things I've listed here are all utterly open-ended. I want to be at least slightly realistic about the prospects of actually achieving anything.

Challenge No. 1: Introduction

I've not done the Snowflake Challenge before. I've seen friends do it, but always seen their posts part way through the month and decided it was too late to catch up. This year I subscribed, so I'd get the notification. (Okay, starting a little late maybe, but not too much so.) I don't post very often to my journal; but that's not to say I'm not involved in fandom. Nowadays, this mostly means gift exchanges. However, I started on mailing lists, followed by LJ communities; and I have to say that I do miss that sense of community, where you got to know fellow members.
( Read more... )