pronker

In your own space, create your own challenge. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.



This can be big or small; strictly fannish or extending across all aspects of life; a challenge you saw someone else do, or that used to run and you miss, or something you have thought up just now, or something you yourself are already doing. Earnest, silly, fun, all three! Send us off into the rest of the year by challenging us all to give it a go.

Oldie but a goodie challenge:

Fandom challenges generally involve sitting, although one may stand while reading on one's phone on the subway, recline in bed or on the couch while thinking of how to respond to today's challenge, etc., so let's change that up. I challenge Snowflakes to get physical: roll the shoulders, twitch the toes, do isometrics with the fingers, and exercise the body part that most needs it, the glutes. Yes! On count of three, clench those glutes! All together now!

One two three CLENCH!

and relax and

CLENCH!

and relax and

CLENCH! Harder! You can do it! Let's go, Snowflakes!!

Let me hear your body talk. Let's get physical, physical I wanna get physical Let's get into physical Let me hear your body talk, your body talk Let me hear your body talk. I'm sure you'll understand my point of view We know each other mentally You gotta know that you're bringin' out The animal in me. Let's get physical, PHYSICAL!

In your own space, create a fanwork. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Aw yeah, I'm ready for this one! *fist pump* The glacial updates to my blog containing a long fic proceeded one half inch down the Matterhorn with a post on the 24th. Huzzah!

Fandom is full of awesomely helpful references and resources! What are some of your favorites?

Tutorials? Fandom Primers? Ship Manifestos? Info Posts? How-to Guides? Writing Resources? Helpful Links?

Challenge #11

In your own space, recommend a fannish or creative resource. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Let's mix a 2020 cocktail to combine a general theme's inspiration, followed by a splash of helpful ordnance and tactical hints, and then a chaser of waaaaay detailed aptly described rants on tropes, some of them unfamiliar, all of them funny.

Canon is not to be outdone by an award-winning episode.

Going back a few years, Wookieepedia filled happy hours researching topics such as the Mandalorian language and history, especially appropriate as a link in view of the current Star Wars series on Disney+. If the link has been Jossed by the showrunners of 2020, what of it? Canon changes and we pick and choose between Star Wars Legends and Star Wars Current canon. Rules change. Did you ever hear of a little thing called Prohibition? ;)

As much as I'm often happy paddling my fandom-of-one canoe on my own, sharing my love and excitement and rants and hopes and general flailing about The Thing I Love is a big part of what draws me to fandom spaces. Admittedly, I've never been that good at talking people into fandoms, but that's never slowed me down when it comes to trying!

So which of the Things You Love would you like to tell people about? Why might others like it? If you're a fan of this other thing, would you be a fan of this? Why is it just the best and most terrible and beautiful canon in your heart right now?

Challenge #9

In your own space, promote at least one canon that you adore (old, new, forever fandom). Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


This challenge is focused on original canons, but I personally hold a pretty loose definition of what that can mean, so if you think something is a "canon," it totally is. Alternately, promote your favourite "cannon." Preferably with pictures.

IOIOIOIOIO

I'm unsure about this post, but here goes:

I've loved animation since childhood when we kids and the adults, too, would howl at Bugs Bunny, Marvin the Martian, the King-Size Canary from Tex Avery, and many others, and this was even before we got a color TV. To narrow the focus, in adulthood the surreal world of animation containing Hammer Space, Breaking The Fourth Wall, and other "norms" of the cartoon world enamored me further. To get really specific, the fandom of Dreamworks' TV show Penguins of Madagascar with top notch VAs, music, stories and general wackiness makes me happy. The simple premise of a penguin with a mysterious stretchable past containing eight years hiding in the Mexican jungle as a, what, guerrilla? commando? traveling troubadour? where he learned how to play the Spanish guitar masterfully continues to entertain after some years in the fandom now.

A picture? Here ya go!

Today another Madagascar franchise cartoon was announced.

The world tells us we must be humble, we must take a compliment, but never to compliment ourselves. Never toot our own horn and many other cliches about how to be proper and not overbearingly egotistical. We at FSC say, f&#k that! Tell us of all the ways you are the BEST! All the things you’ve done, want to do or will one day do. All the ways you are marvelously you.

Challenge #7

Promote/Rec/Sing the Praises* of Yourself! Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I'm good at giving feedback to fanart and fics since 1988.

Comment to someone you haven't ever interacted with before or introduce yourself to someone you've briefly interacted with and friend/follow them. Afterwards, leave a comment in this post with the equivalent of "I did it!"



Snowflake as always offers community and this month-long format is turning out just right for pacing, like a well-plotted fic. It's been grand to reach out.

Pimp Your Favorite Communities, Fests or Challenges! Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Vintage Ads continues to be a well-run and modded community with themes, lots of activity, and like-minded folks who remember ... vintage times. *coughchildofthefiftiesandsixtiescough*

For fannish crack, I visit Jedi News, founded years ago and maintained at the present time by the dearest and most dedicated fan, you know who you are!!

For more fannish crack, including but not limited to fanart, is the tumblr of drawbauchery, whose art blows me away in its masterfully rendered human AU Penguins of Madagascar in cartoon form. The fun never stops!! Recently, Shads chirped a twitter, with a 18+ age stipulation.

Finally, Snowflake Challenge surges to the fore as a marvelous fun place with great interaction and thoughtful expressions of thinky thoughts. Each year, it's a community that warms the heart in icy January. :)

In your own space, talk about your fannish history. Leave a comment at the Fandom Snowflake Challenge on DW saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I pruned last year's entry to produce: At sleepovers, we five girls wrote round robin Star Trek fics as TOS unfolded; Superfan, our polestar in fandom, preferred Spock as the whumpee while Kirk tended to him lovingly in fic after fic. Whatever happened to these works?

Until Star Wars' A New Hope, I didn't participate in fandom. Star Wars hit and so did "nostalgia shows," places in large venues for vintage furniture, books, comics, anything older than maybe ten years. At one of the shows, a vendor displayed a 'zine to a customer at a comic booth where I browsed and thrust it in a box under the show table after the customer departed. After the first customer left without purchasing, I asked to see it, too, and the vendor seemed pleased to relate what 'zines were, though they also seemed to keep it hush hush. This caveat operated for 'zines of all ratings during my years of "nostalgia show" attending.

I bought a 'zine for maybe $25, which was average price. For some years, 'zines filled boxes in my apartment and then I joined a letterzine (In The Belly of the Whale for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea fandom). It was only for writing LOCs (Letters of Comment) regarding all aspects of fandom, including fics, that appeared in other 'zines.

I first got online in 2005 onto the library's computer. Wow! First came one year of lurking and reading both meta and fics on starwars.com, theforceDOTnet, fanfictionDOTnet, various personal websites on geocities and elsewhere, and master-apprenticeDOTorg. I interacted with admired authors, dipped toes into reviewing, brainstormed plots, and wrote fic in challenges. I used a beta once and was a beta once. More fun came with posting illustrations and manips. And all free of charge.

Life is good in fandom.