Not That This Has Ever Happened To Me Or Anything.

Any old popslashers out there remember the story where the members of NSync were all turned into fish??

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My son, whom I love, is--hm. An argumentative, wildly self-confident, sort of bitchy, emo-fashionista. Yeah, I don't know where he gets it either. But we have conversations like this:

Tiberius: When I grow up, I'm going to be King of England.
Me: You can't be the King of England.
Tiberius: Why not?
Me: You're not English.
Tiberius: I speak English.
Me: Yeah, but England is actually an entirely other country. And you have to be English to be the King of England.
Tiberius: *thinks about this* Okay, then I want to be Queen of New York.
Me: ...That you can do.

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In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.

Ugh, I am sort of horrified by this question, weirdly! Three is too many and not enough at the same time! Everything I've ever made is me, even the bad ones are me; they're all me. I can't choose.

I can give you Anything for Love, though. I mean, that represents my life as a fan as much as anything can.



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Day 2 - Create a fannish wish list.

OMG, I am so blessed among fans for fanart and podfic and translations and vids and metacomments and recs and so many different things that are wonderful: people like lim and revolutionaryjo and zabira and danceswchopsticks and lunate8 and fleurrochard and podcath and dodificus and counteragent and and and so many more; I get just, like, amazing stuff, presents galore. (THANK YOU; THANK YOU EVERYONE.) I'm still reeling from the Victors stuff people made in 2007 and I was just reminiscing over Livia's early covers for my DS stuff and - back in the day - the zine covers TACS made for the Nature series, which just blew me away; it was really the first time anybody'd ever made fanworks based on my fanworks. But I love that so much; it feels like such a happy feedback loop: zing, zing, zing. (Btw I have learned not to ask for crazy things, even in jest, like--OH, a PONY - since that time that renenet GOT ME A PONY, or okay, adopted a wild pony in my name, but still. With great power comes great responsibility, people. Do not ask for crazy things!)

Beyond all that, I am terrible about asking for specific things--this includes challenge fic--because if I can think of it myself, I will probably actually make it myself; my prompt is always, "give me something I haven't thought of!" which--I can't tell you what that is, because if I knew, then I'd know! My favorite things to read are things I wouldn't have thought to write, because I have my own blinders and limitations. (FWIW, I ask my students the same--the As are almost always "things I haven't thought of" which sometimes are REALLY crazy things but I give points for crazy, actually. I want not to see it coming. I want to think a thought I haven't thought before, hear a story it didn't occur to me to tell.) So I'm wildly unhelpful there in terms of making wish lists or creating prompts with any specificity. Make cool fanworks in my fandoms, say I! Make all the things!

(All that being said, I DO have a vid idea that I told somebody wildly talented in fandom and that I know I haven't got the talent to make myself, so I'm hoping said wildly talented person will make it for or with me. Vidding is really hard, and while I've clawed my way back to writing, I don't know that I'll be able to get back to vidding any time soon. I love fanart and the thing that makes me happy with tumblr - which has so much fail in so many other ways - is that it brings amazing fanart across my dash every single day: all you Stucky artists, I love you. Make the things! And I guess I wouldn't turn down any fanworks inspired by The Fifties if anyone felt inspired, because that story has my heart for being the easiest thing I wrote last year - I just knew how it would go from the first sentence, and that always feels good.

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So I see there's a snowflake_challenge afoot! I don't know if I'll finish but I know I can start, which is the first step to finishing anyway. :D

Day 1: In your own space, talk about why you are doing the Fandom Snowflake Challenge? What drew you to it as a participant? What do you hope to accomplish by doing these challenges?

I read but have stopped posting to LJ/DW, but otoh I follow directions very well! :D I can't not answer a question, really - sometimes I make myself NOT ANSWER a question. So this sort of structured month of questions should work well and--I mean, I believe in talk. I believe in us talking to each other when we can! Fandom is made of people. So anything that puts more words in the world is, I think, a good thing. :D

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So yeah, I am really out of the habit of posting here, alas, though I am reading and following you guys who are posting and even commenting when I've got something to say! But somehow I've lost the knack for this. Part of it is just that I am crazy busy and just, I have stress dreams and an endless to-do, and so I'm taking my fannish time in writing time mostly; writing time, tumblr time for pretty pictures, and commenting and being commented upon on AO3. That's where I am fannishly.

But boy, writing; I didn't realize how much I missed writing in a big fandom until I started writing in a big fandom again; it's been wild and fun - SO MUCH FUN. I've been keeping my trickster site more or less updated - it gets updated a little bit avant la lettre - but I've forgotten to crosspost here (I also figure that if anyone wants to read what I'm putting out they're subbed to me at AO3 or to the stucky tag or whatever.)

But to be completist about it (man, it's like old times - by which I mean pre-child times): all Captain America, all Stucky except where noted. (Is that seriously like 188,000 words? fuck. well, there's the book I didn't write. There's two of the books I didn't write, really. But I was really happy having fandom back in my life.)

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Wow, I realized that I've been posting so little here, I'm not even posting FIC here. I'm not ready to close down my journaling experience quite yet! Yeesh.

Title: Half of the History (We Shall Never Know) (36675 words)
Author: Speranza
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MCU
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Additional Tags: War is hell, Please Heed Archive Content Warnings, Soldier Boys, Love under fire, To the end of the line, Threesomes, winterwidow - Freeform, Dancing, Realpolitik, We're All In It Up To The Neck Darling
Summary: This is a war story.

Title: Your Lack Of An Answer Is Kind Of An Answer: Four Questions Natasha Asked Steve Rogers, And One Time Bucky Barnes Answered (4490 words)
Author: Speranza
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MCU
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Characters: Natasha Romanov, Pepper Potts
Additional Tags: 5 Things, Find Bucky, Natasha likes to know things, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Rude is culturally relative
Summary: "All right, I have a question for you. Oh, but you don’t have to answer it. I feel like if you don't answer it though, you're kind of answering it, you know…"

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My husband's firm has been the victims of a ransom cyber attack and they now are thinking about changing their security people for IT (their IT people are having trouble coming up with good backups, ugh)- so anybody have any recs for good geeks who work NYC and environs? (Is this you?)

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Title: 4 Minute Window (24127 words)
Author: Speranza
Fandom: MCU
Pairing: Steve/Bucky
Rating: Explicit
Additional Tags: Surveillance, It's Like Grand Central Station In Here, Brooklyn Boys, Power Couple, People Are Sick of Conceptual Art
Summary: "Look, if they catch me," Bucky muttered, "they're either going to kill me or they're going to put me in a box with a little window and—Steve, I can't."

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So this was a tough year where I spent a lot of time in the hospital (being the sandwich generation suuuuuucks)...but everyone survived and is fine and I learned that I am actually really pretty awesome under stress. I also learned (rediscovered) that I have the best friends in the entire universe. Even my husband was like, wow, how would we survive without your friends?

LET'S NEVER FIND THAT OUT.

Anyway, fandom was one of my happier places this year. I've long had a theory that people sometimes drift away from fandom when they're really happy - you see it when people get new sexual partners, new jobs, new lifestyles, increased commitments to other things. Fandom, otoh, is a great place to be if you're tired, sick, disabled, breastfeeding, bored, underutilized, stressed, isolated, or just need awesome pleasure served up to you JUST THE WAY YOU LIKE IT ALL THE TIME FOR REASONS, DAMMIT. Fandom totally came through for me this year with awesome fic and art and meta and vids and er, crafts (sob - I totally needed Marvel crafts!) - so thank you, fandom, for being great when I needed you to be great.

A few more thank yous:

Thanks, awesome friends, for dragging me to CA: The Winter Soldier the week after my kid came out of the hospital--THAT WAS THE FANDOM I NEEDED WHEN I NEEDED IT.

Thank you, CA:TWS, for your operatic multivalent shippiness and operatic soulmate story.

Thank you, Tony/Steve shippers, for your many excellent insights into Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. (One of my more hilarious LJ posts from earlier this year, pre CA: TWS: I think I'm starting to get what's so interesting about Steve Rogers. Ha. Ha, ha, ha ha.)

Thank you, Bucky Barnes, for finally giving me an attainable makeup look. (PS - for those of you wanting to try it, angry raccoon looks great pretty much on everybody, it turns out.)

Tumblr, you still scare me a little (your endless scrolling makes me dizzy) but I think I am starting to like you; thank you for the nonstop fanart and also for the many pictures of Chris Evans trying not to look anxious and of Sebastian Stan a) kissing boys b) posing like a supermodel in a vodka ad or c) frantically trying to think of something to say and failing. They have been very entertaining! :D

Anyway, I wrote a bunch of fic (mostly MCU, Steve/Bucky) this year and am primed to write a whole ton more, so I'm pretty optimistic about 2015.

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