Challenge #15: Talk about an unexpected joyous moment you experienced last year.

When I had finished and uploaded my assignment for trickortreatex last October, I looked around to see if there were any prompts that appealed to me as possible treats. I don't usually write Original Works; but I had a vague recollection that someone had nominated the tag "Pilot POW at Stalag Luft III/Another Pilot POW at Stalag Luft III (M/M) (OW)". I once had done a lot of research into the treatment of Allied POWs in Germany in World War II; so I checked particularly for that and found that risalsoran had requested it.

You see, years ago I had missed a rerun of The Great Escape movie—and, if you've never watched it, I certainly recommend it! Very exciting! It's got OCs based more or less on the real people who were involved in a major escape from Stalag Luft III, a POW camp run by the Luftwaffe in World War II for Allied air force officers who'd been taken prisoner. Paul Brickhill, himself a POW somewhat involved in the preparations for the escape, had written the book, The Great Escape; so, having missed the movie, I borrowed the book from the library and read it. From there, I moved on to Eric Williams' The Wooden Horse (about a different escape from the same POW camp), and then started shelf-reading....

There's fanfic for The Great Escape on AO3; but, though I still enjoy the movie, I now know too much about the real escape to want to write about a fictional version of it. On the other hand, I also have no interest in writing RPF about Stalag Luft III either: it would mean getting into the heads of real people—people who actually lived, often until quite recently. Frankly, there are quite a lot of memoirs written by ex-POWs; and they're well worth reading. As for writing about the Escape itself (let alone the fifty escapers who were murdered!) ... well, sorry, but that's definitely not for me.

On the other hand, if there's one thing that most people who were there tend to avoid, it's talking about sex—or, at least, about homosexual activity in the camps. Granted, when food was desperately short at the start and end of the war, no one would have the energy. (I believe that.) However, it stands to reason that the percentage of gay men in the camp would be roughly the same as that in the population as a whole. And there are hints—no more than hints, mind you!—especially in the more recent memoirs. To a degree, therefore, one can try to guess how people might have managed, despite the lack of privacy.

So you can see why I went looking to see if anyone had requested the tag "Pilot POW at Stalag Luft III/Another Pilot POW at Stalag Luft III (M/M) (OW)". I could draw on what I knew about the historical camp, but write about OCs.

Of course, my memories of my old research weren't exactly up to date; so I had to do quite a lot of canon review. I wanted to get the details of camp life as accurate as I could manage. As a result, the story wasn't ready when the collection was opened on Halloween. However, it did get up as a late treat towards the end of the anon period.

Being late up, "Events Transpired" hasn't had a lot of attention. Still, judging by the lovely comment, risalsoran clearly enjoyed it, which is what really matters.

Challenge #13: Interact with someone in fandom you haven't talked with before.

Challenge #14: In your own space, create your own fandom challenge.

So ... I don't really feel up to creating my own fandom challenge. However, I have commented on a number of the challenges that other people have posted.

Challenge #11: In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme.

The whole "frenemy" thing, in various ramifications! Often it's interpreted as a dynamic relationship: Ye Olde enemies > friends > lovers Thinge. However, it can go the other way, of course. Old friends who find themselves on opposite sides (for whatever reason) also qualify. Nor does it have to result in a romantic pairing, though a lot of the best fic does take it that way.

I think much of the appeal comes from the conflict between the personal/emotional relationship that pulls the characters together, and the sense of morality/duty that pulls them apart.

I'm not sure when I first encountered this trope; but certainly D.K. Broster's The Flight of the Heron was a great favourite in my teens. While I read Ewan's friendship with Keith as platonic, I've always been aware that Keith's feelings are rather different. That the whole thing is fated to end in tragedy just twists the knife.

More recently, this is what immediately attracted me to ColdFlash fic based on The Flash TV show on the CW: Barry Allen, CSI and superhero; Leonard Snart, costumed criminal with a cold gun. In fact, I'd seen the potential years earlier when reading comics—though, as with Ewan and Keith, I saw it as one-sided, with Len consciously or unconsciously caring for Barry in a potentially sexual way to which the hero was oblivious. In fic based on the TV show, however, fan writers definitely slash the pair, if not from the start, then definitely as the endgame.

Challenge #8: In your own space, write a promo, manifesto or primer for a beloved character, relationship or fandom.

My favourite among Janet Kagan's handful of books is Hellspark. It's an SF mystery, thus appealing to me on both setting and plot, since I've always loved a good detective story.

Hellspark is set in some indefinite future of galactic exploration and colonization. The protagonist, Tocohl Susumo, is a polyglot trader whose ship is run by a bright, inquiring young AI, Maggy, who is unexpectedly starting to manifest sentience. They hail from the eponymous planet Hellspark, whose people are specialists in communication and therefore often serve as "Byworld Judges". So, when one of the scientists surveying the newly discovered world of Lassti is murdered, the team assume Tocohl to be a judge and ask her to find the killer.

The survey team all come from different worlds and cultures, in itself fascinating; but Lassti itself—a world whose name means "Flashfever", so dubbed because of its violent storms and exotic plant life—is a wonderfully different planet with its own mystery for Tocohl to solve. Are the silent feathered aliens sentient? If so, then the world is off limits for colonization. However, there are powerful interests who want the "sprookjes" deemed mere animals so that Lassti can be exploited.

To save the sprookjes, Tocohl is passing herself off as a Byworld Judge; but the penalty for that is being grounded for life. And what will become of Maggy then?

Challenge #10: In your own space, talk about one of your fandom firsts. This could be your first fandom, your first fandom friend, the first fanwork you created, the first fanwork you interacted with... The options are endless!

I think it was in 2017 that I read my first Arrowverse fanfic, RedHead's "Seventy Three Seconds".

I had actually been watching Arrow since it started in the fall of 2012 (and found it impressively like the Green Arrow reboot in The Longbow Hunters comic book miniseries of 1987); and in 2014, when they'd used a guest appearance of Barry Allen to launch a sister series starring The Flash, I'd promptly tried that as well. Admittedly, I was a bit flummoxed by a brunette Barry; but the first season was extremely good. Compellingly so: I watched every episode eagerly, and rewatched the whole season as soon as it was over. Even so, I didn't bother to seek out fanfic.

It was not until a couple of years later, when I was checking out the "Recent changes" page on Fanlore, that I had a look at some alteration or other to the article on Flash fandom, spotted a link to "Seventy-Three Seconds", and clicked on in idle curiosity. So I read my first ColdFlash story. It was a stunner.

After that, I perused the AO3 collection (and there were already quite a lot of ColdFlash stories, so it took me some time). "Seventy Three Seconds" was quite an early one: actually written during the first season. Its characterization of Captain Cold is consistent with those early episodes, and very compelling. Fanfic slashing Captain Cold and the Flash quickly shifted to a softer, more romantic view of their relationship—not to mention many varied types of AUs. Some of those are also very well written. Not to mention long: quite a few are novels.

Eventually, I wrote some Flash fic of my own, as well as Legends of Tomorrow fic; and Captain Cold and the Flash certainly feature in quite a few of my stories. More & than / in terms of their relationship; but that's just the way I write.

Challenge #6: Share your favourite piece of original canon.

As if there could only be one!

This question reminds me of the tenth anniversary celebrations on maryrenaultfics, way back in 2014. Various activities were suggested by the moderators, my_cnnr and trueriver; and both my sister and I did the "Ten descriptions that have stuck with you" one—the descriptions in question being, of course, taken from any of Mary Renault's books. As I particularly like The Charioteer, I picked all ten from there. Here are a few of them:

1. Laurie's first sight of Andrew: The boy put down his floorcloth, wiped his hand on the seat of his trousers, and with the back of it pushed the hair away from his eyes. It was fairish, the colour of old gilt. He had a fair skin which was smoothly tanned, so that his grey eyes showed up very bright and clear.

2. Laurie meets Andrew in the orchard: The declining sun was ripe and warm. Hips and haws shone like polished beads in the hedgerows; the damp mats of fallen leaves had a smoky, rusty smell. […] The blackberries couldn’t have been picked over for at least a week. They tasted of frost and faint sun and smoke and purple leaves: sweet, childish and sad.

3. Laurie's reaction when seeing Bim: A young flight-lieutenant came in. He was a small man but very handsome, with a tough, steely kind of grace. The high girlish voice with which he greeted his friends was burlesqued and perfunctory, like a carnival vizard held with a flourish a foot away from the face. You felt, and were meant to feel, that he was playing at it. He was like a little fighting-cock, brave, shining and cruel.

4. A quiet moment with Ralph: The popping blue gas-fire had warmed to a spreading glow. Beyond the hooded reading-lamp’s small orbit it touched the room with dusky gold and rose. Laurie sat as he was bidden in the arm-chair; he had learned to accept such things simply, like the old. Ralph, curled easily on the old hooked-wool rug, would have looked incongruous there to no one, probably, except to Laurie, who found ancient habits of precedence still haunting his mind.

One of the people to leave a comment was my sister, who said:

Lovely all - and in an odd way, I think the difference between your choices and mine reveal the differences between us (no matter that my_cnnr often struggles with 'which Watson'). All your choices are the 'insignificant' descriptions which, for the most part (Bim being an exception) do not belong to hugely dramatic scenes (unlike the ones which stick in my memory) but nonetheless add so much to the quality of the novel, it would be much the less without them.

To which I could only reply:

At least you and I can tell each other apart. Just as well really. ;)

Which is true.

Challenge #5: Talk about what has improved in your life thanks to fandom.

First off, I've made friends: first, when I joined the Forever Knight mailing lists, particularly FORKNI-L; and then when I joined LiveJournal and Dreamwidth communities, particularly maryrenaultfics and fkficfest.

Second, I've done a lot of writing. It's true that, before I ever went on line, I wrote fannishly without an audience; but, both in the context of fandom-specific community activities and in the context of gift exchanges, I've done very much more—and more varied, in quite a range of fandoms.

Challenge #4: Since this is the start of a new year, this challenge will be e to set your own goals! Of course we can all make large or ambitious goals, remember that small and/or short goals are also good!

This challenge is a hardy perennial. So I looked back at what I wrote each year I've done Snowflake....

Yup. Just as I thought. Goals unmet, over and over.

So what might practical goals look like? Well, I've already signed up for candyheartsex; so doing my assignment for that. If worldbuilding_exchange runs this year, then that one too. I've done fkficfest every year since it started; so that one's likely. And in the fall, there's trickortreatex and Yuletide: those, certainly. And multiple treats, at least for Yuletide. (This year I did three treats; and I've never done fewer than one. Plus my assignment.)

Yes, that's fairly doable, I think. Of course, I've got two fanfic series that are ongoing but incomplete; so I hope that maybe (maybe!) I can get another installment done on at least one of them. But longfic hopes are ... hopes and dreams, probably.

Next January, I'll have a look at this post and see what happened. I'm not crossing my fingers, though. It makes it hard to use the keyboard!

Challenge #3: In your own space, talk about a fannish opinion you hold that has changed over time.

When I first went on line and subscribed to the Forever Knight mailing list, I should say that most of the members—certainly well over half—used their own names. As I did: it never occurred to me to dub myself anything else. It was not until three years later, when I first joined a LiveJournal community, that I found myself in the midst of usernames. When prompted to pick one for myself, I boggled. I also had no trouble deciding that my "username" would simply be my real name, albeit glommed together as a single word.

To appreciate my disinclination towards pseuds, I should go back a fair few decades to the days of my extreme youth. Back then, people were far less familiar with the broad variety of personal names that are the norm in any big city in Canada in this century. Immigration from myriad international sources had had the effect that, if one hears even a slightly unfamiliar sounding name, one takes it in stride: asks to have it repeated, perhaps, or how it is spelled. Back when I was a kid, though, this was not so.

Now my personal name is short, and spelled according to regular English rules. So teachers at school all addressed me accurately. Strange adults who heard me say my name were another matter. If I said my name was "Greer", they almost invariably heard something else. This is more or less how the conversation would go:

"What's your name, dear?"
"Greer."
"Oh, Leah! That's a pretty name."
"No, my name isn't 'Leah'. It's Greer."
"Oh, Rhea! That's a pretty name too."
No, my name is Greer: G R E E R."
      (astonished silence)
"Oh! Um … were you named after Greer Garson?"
"No."
"Oh, I'm sure you were."

(And no, I wasn't: it's a family name.)

Now, some people after the umpteenth go-through of this sort of thing wind up hating their own name; and, quite possibly, when they grow up they change it. My reaction was different: it's my name, dammit!!!! (Granted, at that age, I wouldn't have said "dammit".)

So, as I say, I had little appreciation for the reasons why other people would want to be known by any of the weird and wonderful usernames that I've seen over the years. However, in that time, I have heard quite a few people defend the practice, especially those who live in less enlightened parts of the world and fear consequences from family, employers, and state security should their fannish interests become public. I think one of the things that brought that home to me was the realization that the maryrenaultfics community had members from such countries as Russia and China.

And, of course, even leaving that sort of peril out of it, there's the simple fact that, if I feel strongly about my own name, so do you about yours. It is, after all, your name.

Challenge #2:  In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story.

I suppose, in a way, this is a three-part story: discovering my fannish inclinations (though I wouldn't have put it like that at the time), learning of the existence of fandom and fannish activities, and actually joining.

Once upon a time, long long ago when I was a kid, I absolutely adored certain specific canons—different ones at different times—and did a lot of thinking about them, telling myself stories (of a self-insert sort), and then extrapolating from there to the creation of new characters and plots more or less related to the original. When I was ten or eleven, for example, I was very keen on Andre Norton's science fiction; a few years later it was the original Star Trek. I figure a lot of fans started this way in pre-internet days when—unless you had a best friend into the same things—you were pretty well on your own, in your own head.

Then I discovered that there were books about Star Trek (and other TV series); and some of these mentioned fan activities, such as conventions and fanzines. I'd never before tried writing. (No patience! When telling myself stories, I wanted to get to the exciting bits straight off.) However, reading about fans writing fiction—not to be confused with reading any actual fanfic—did inspire me to start writing my own. No one I knew was into any of this; so it was all drawerfic: never saw the light of day. I started with a Star Trek novel, went on to Next Gen scripts, and then to a full virtual season of Forever Knight.

When I got a new computer in 2004, I went on line for the first time. Of course, I made a beeline for FK fandom and discovered that there was a whole archive of fanfic. I read copiously, joined the FORKNI-L mailing list, and learned HTML so I could make a website to showcase my virtual season. That eventually led to other mailing lists and lurking around a message board or two; then I discovered LiveJournal in 2007. My first venture into gift exchanges was Yuletide in 2011; and I haven't looked back since.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge's 2023 Fandom Wrapped!

Top 5 fandoms for 2023:
1. Forever Knight
2. Mary Renault's The Charioteer
3. M*A*S*H
4. Arrowverse (The Flash & Legends of Tomorrow)
5. Capt. W.E. Johns' Biggles series

Top 5 fandom spaces in 2023 were:
1. AO3
2. Dreamwidth
3. Fanlore
4. Wikia wikis, esp. FK, M*A*S*H, Biggles
5. Sudoku.org.uk (for daily sudokus)

Top 5 things contributions to fandom in 2023 were:
1. editing & reposting the Forever Knight Website Archive
2. writing fanfic
3. reading fanfic
4. reading Fanlore
5. commenting

Top 5 most appreciated fandom contributions were:
1. editing & reposting the Forever Knight Website Archive
2. writing fanfic
3. commenting

Bonus questions:

My fandom personality in 2023:
Obsessive Reader (i.e. fell in love with a new canon)

In 2023, I discovered:
Capt. W.E. Johns' Biggles series

My fandom home in 2023 was:
glued to the computer — reading, reading, reading,....

Make a rec list of fanworks!

For Challenge No. 9, I talked about Capt. W.E. Johns' Biggles series, which I've recently got into. As my interest was piqued by fanfic, it seems reasonable to rec some of that here. The only problem is which, since I've pretty well vacuumed up everything available on line!

One of the books that has particularly been prompting fans to write fic is Biggles Buries a Hatchet. As it was published in 1958, it's one of the later books (though the author kept writing the series right up to his death a decade later). It's also a major turning point, at least with respect to one character in particular: Erich von Stalhein. He was originally introduced in one of the World War I stories, Biggles Flies East, as a German spy operating in Palestine—a sort of Lawrence of Arabia figure, but on the other side. During the 1930s, he becomes a recurrent antagonist in the years leading up to World War II; and, in the post-war books, he works for the Soviets. Biggles clearly respects him, considers him an "honourable enemy" type of figure, and keeps trying to persuade him to defect. In Biggles Buries a Hatchet, von Stalhein's nephew turns up in London to warn Biggles that his uncle has been sent to Siberia for refusing to assassinate him. Naturally, Biggles and his team go and rescue him. At which point, von Stalhein does indeed finally change sides.

Typically of Johns' books, there is a long lead-in to the main action, but the story is tied up very quickly at the end. Inevitably, the result has been fanfic. Here are a few, which I've put in more or less chronological order in terms of their relation to the action of the story.

"First Light" by philomytha is set in East Germany and sets up the events of the book: von Stalhein's arrest and the decision to send Fritz to Biggles.

After the rescue, they spend a secret night moored in their sea plane before taking off. In philomytha's "Ordinary Kindness", the man on watch, Biggles' closest friend Algy, wakes von Stalhein from a nightmare.

Their first stop is at an American air force base in Japan. There are several worthy stories filling in details of their brief stay there, but particularly notable is sholio's "A Touch of Kindness", in which Biggles brings food and medication to von Stalhein, who is under guard.

After that, they journey in stages back to England. In philomytha's "a piece of the continent", a stop-off in Singapore clarifies that von Stalhein is far from recovered from his ordeal in Siberia.

As for subsequent events in London, here are two rather different possibilities. In Akseel's "An Invitation to Dinner", von Stalhein is wary when Biggles' boss, Air Commodore Raymond, appears to accede to the pilot's wish that he not be constrained after his defection. In sholio's "Lightning in a Jar", on the other hand, he is subjected to mandatory electronic monitoring (indeed, forced to wear a shock collar), to Biggles' fury.

Five Things! The five things are totally up to you.

I post my stories to my website, and usually make individual pages for them. Here are five of my favourite webpage designs. (The titles link to my site.)

• "Disconcert", Forever Knight, 519 words, 3 May 2020
  
  
• "Afterword", Alan Garner's Alderley Edge series, 1328 words, 18 December 2014
  
  
• "En Vacances", Forever Knight, 3020 words, 22 August 2015  (NOTE: scroll down!)
  
  
• "Thorn Bushes Have Roses", Capt. W.E. Johns' Biggles series, 8591 words, 25 December 2023
  
  
• "Best Laid Plans", Mary Renault's The Charioteer, 1948 words, 17 December 2022
  

Rec Us Your Newest Thing.

This past year, I got interested in a new fandom—well, new to me, that is. I'd certainly heard of the Biggles series, which is a long set of adventure stories by British author, Capt. W.E. Johns, starring James Bigglesworth (nicknamed "Biggles") from his teen years as a fighter pilot in World War I through to middle age in the 1960s. Altogether over a hundred books, very popular in its day. Biggles is a typical mid-twentieth century boys' adventure hero: honourable, brave, ingenious, and lucky. I never read any of the books when I was a kid; but, when I was studying children's fiction back in the '90s, I bought a few for my collection. Judging by the spines, I'm not sure I even opened them!

A year or so ago, a group of Biggles fans on AO3 began requesting the series in gift exchanges, writing for each other in a venue that made the fandom visible to people quite unfamiliar with the series. They're very good writers, and one of their main pairings is the sort of frenemyship that's pure catnip. So last summer I hauled out the handful of books I had and took a peek at them.

They're well plotted and lots of fun!

So I ordered more; but, as they're cheaper in Britain, I had them delivered to my sister, who brought them over to me when she came here for Christmas. In the meantime, I discovered that most of the books are actually available on line. In some countries, you see, they're out of copyright; and, as that includes Canada, I've been downloading them with a clear conscience. Of course, with so many of them, I'm nowhere near finishing the series yet.

People who read my stories know that I often write "worldbuilding" stories: not just backstory and futurefic; but also stories that fill in missing bits, or try to resolve contradictions and errors, or assemble all the tiny snippets of information we have about a supporting character and then try to fit them into a coherent whole. Any worldbuilder who sees a lacuna in canon is bound to wonder what happened. Well, the Biggles series is full of odd gaps and questions. So fanfic, obviously ... and then probably more fanfic! And maybe some meta, too.

Talk about a current fannish project (fic, art, vid, crochet, funko pop village) (that you are creating or enjoying)

How current is "current"? Given how little work I've done on the goal I mentioned in the Challenge #2 post, that one doesn't qualify as anything but wishful thinking! Yet, anyway.

Last year, though, I did get another installment done for the Depths of Cold series I started back in 2019. It's based on what backstory we have on the version of Captain Cold (Leonard Snart) that appeared in the Arrowverse, specifically in The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. Most fic about his childhood dwells hard on the abuse he suffered at his father's hands. However, it seemed to me that anyone who got half-starved and beat up as much as he does in fic would hardly grow up to look like Wentworth Miller, the actor who played him. I wanted to write something more nuanced.

There are at least a couple more installments to go; but I got Part 6 up last year. "Cold Storage" actually is about Len's meeting Mick Rory (Heat Wave) in Juvie; but, after all, that's part of the backstory too.

In your own space, share a favourite piece of original canon (a show, a specific TV episode, a storyline, a book or series, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.

Boy, this one was hard! I think it's the "favourite" plus "love it so much" that made it so tricky. I have so many things I like, albeit to varying degrees, that it was really hard to pick. Then I decided to treat this challenge as more a matter of reccing something obscure that others might not know.

Jean in the Morning is the first volume of a four-part series. The author (whose real name was apparently Elizabeth Jane Cameron) was, in the day, better known under the name "Jane Duncan". She wrote a long semi-autobiographical series of books that is usually called the "My Friend" series because their titles take the form My Friend [NAME]. In later volumes, the protagonist, Janet Sandison, now widowed, finds a publisher for some books she's been writing about a working-class girl named Jean Robertson.

Then "Jane Duncan" wrote those books for real.

Jean in the Morning was published in 1969 under the "Janet Sandison" pseudonym. Three more books followed, not all focused on Jean herself; the series has a rather wobbly overall story arc. Of the four volumes, the first is by far the best.

Written in the first person, it covers "wee Jeanie"'s story from her first day at school in 1911 till she leaves and goes to work as a housemaid, i.e. seven years or so. She's born in a slum tenement for the families of railway workers, gradually works out the social hierarchy of the commuter suburb of Glasgow in which she lives, and sees the home front of World War I from the very bottom rung of society.

She's a street-smart, canny kid. She sees a lot.

IceBreaker Challenge! Tell us about yourself.

Assorted miscellaneous facts:

• I was born in England; but my family came to Canada when I was not yet six. So I grew up in Toronto, went to school here (except for going off to grad. school), and still live here.
  
  
• When I was in junior high, my parents allowed me to watch two extra hours TV per week provided I read a non-fiction book every day. (My choice, but duplicates didn't count.) Over a period of about five years, that adds up to an awful lot of books. It's fair to say I read pretty fast, since the non-fiction was vastly outnumbered by the fiction I also read!
  
  
• Lasting interests from back then: anthropology, archaeology, history, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, paleontology.... Alas, I don't read as much today as I used to: there are too many distractions. Still, there's always Nova. And Wikipedia: the links are the closest thing I know of to flypaper-to-catch-humans.
  
  
• I've collected superhero comics since the late '60s.
  
  
• I love sudokus, especially the "jigsaw" ones.
  
  
• I read the Toronto Star. Yes, a daily subscription to a real paper newspaper.
  
  
• I love Christmas trees, and have a large collection of glass ornaments—more than I'll ever be able to fit on the one I own. It's a 6-foot artificial tree, bought back in the late '80s. The secret to keeping glass ornaments safe is using an artificial tree, since they don't dry out, droop, and drop bells and balls as the needles go. It takes so long to dress, that I usually keep it out till the end of January.
  
  
• The first fanfic I wrote was a Star Trek K/S pon farr novel. I did it on an electric typewriter in the late '80s; and, as I wasn't in fandom back then, it's never been published. I still have it in a box somewhere; but I haven't looked at it in literally decades.
  
  

In your own space, set yourself some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

Well, as I come a bit late to the Snowflake Challenge this year, one goal is to do some more of them. (Not all, mind you; but more than just this one!)

But seriously folks....

One big goal I have this year is to work on expanding a story that I did for ficinabox back in 2022. "Trial by Jury" was never supposed to be 38K long! I did, on the other hand, intend from the start that it should end on a cliffhanger. By Christmas, though, the darn thing had made it clear to me that it had aspirations: it considered itself no more than the first part of something bigger. So my goal is to get some work done on its goal.

Challenge #10:   In your own space, rec a fanwork (fic, art, vid, playlist, anything!) you did not create.

I decided to rec Forever Knight fic; and then had a tricky question to answer, since there are a few thousand of them now. Not on AO3; but, if you go back to the old archives, then there certainly are—plus, of course, the new ones. So I decided to limit it to LK stories. And then, having read through a few (and there are more than just a few!), it seemed best to stick to a single theme. So here a a couple of stories that follow the series finale, "Last Knight", but require a measure of detective work from a lone survivor.

Angst is one thing; and I don't deny there are some good examples out there. However, I do like me some plot with my fic.

Dorothy Elggren's "All The Rest Is Silence" is, of course, the classic of the type. Set immediately after "Last Knight", a grieving Captain Reese tries to puzzle out the mystery of what exactly did happen in Nick's loft that fateful day.

On the other hand, brightknightie's "Corners of the Mind" is predicated on Tracy's survival with amnesia about the year she worked with Nick, until a series of odd events bring on nightmares that point to a forgotten secret.

Challenge #6  In your own space, create something.

Challenge #8   In your own space, celebrate a personal win from the past year.

For a number of years now, I've been tweaking background tiles to create new ones. Most of them came from the now-defunct GRSites.com; and I used their software for some of the modifications, along with Microsoft Picture Manager. For the past several months, the graphics I've been working with have been based on one called (on that site) beige208.jpg. This is the original graphic:



I've made many variations, some of which have already been used on my website. At first, as with "Fairies of the Orchard", it was more a question of intensifying and slightly colour-shifting the original. Then, as in "Back in the Saddle" and "Professional Courtesies", it was a matter of applying filters. More recently, though, I've managed to get the graphic to shift in more malleable ways. For example, the graphic I used on "Grand Old School, Second to None" (written last Yuletide), involved the use of a filter to both darken the band across the graphic and augment the background colour.

Here is a selection of others, some made last year and some just this past month. If you click on the graphic, you can see how it tiles: