Snowflake #7, 8, 11, & 12

[spatz]

Challenge #7: In your own space, tell us about 3 fandom resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy.

1) Nirvana in Fire fans may already be familiar with Merelhyn's spreadsheet - it's officially titled 'Nif/Lyb - EVERYTHING' but I've bookmarked it as 'Merelyn's insane master spreadsheet of all knowledge' so I can find it more easily. *laughs* It's honestly rather chaotic, but there's a character listing (names in Chinese and English, titles, episode appearances), a timeline (novel and show), Hai Yan's author's notes from the book, download links, and tons of other information.

2) the Online Etymology Dictionary: history and evolution of various words, including vulgar and slang usage. Pairs well with Google's ngram viewer.

3) Uhhh, why not, self-pimp time: I started a Pinboard (with archiving because I kept losing links to internet entropy) at metaspatz. It's still a bit empty, but I know that will change.


Challenge #8: In your own space, celebrate a personal win from the past year: it can be a list of fanworks you're especially proud of, a gift of your time to the community, a quality or skill you cultivated in yourself, something you generally feel went well.

Well, this one turned out to be an actual challenge. My first response was so self-negative I had to complete re-write it. *sigh*

Professionally/personally, I managed to do regular massage trades with a former classmate and friend who lives nearby. We both know a specific modality that is done fully clothed, so we started off trading in her backyard before we were vaccinated, and kept it up after. It was one of my resolutions last New Year, and a much-needed relief for us both!

Fannishly, I didn't post much but my past work inspired SEVEN podfics by three different podficcers, which was amazing!!!
The complete list:
-two of Solar Wind Rising (NIF) by Thimblerig and lattice_frames
-two of Seed (NIF-Temeraire fusion) by marianas and Thimblerig
-tête-à-tête (Temeraire) by Thimblerig
-balm of hurt minds (Temeraire) by Thimblerig
-dreamed this would be held a crime (The Untamed) by Thimblerig

Also, I continued posting rec sets every month. I try not to devalue that: it takes hours to write up each set, since I start by archiving every single one on the Internet Archive because I'm sick of losing links, and especially since I switched to doing all the fics I saved each month rather than my top five.

Actually, I ought to revisit that since I have less time now than I did in 2020 when I took several long stretches off work. Do ya'll have a preference for a big post versus a smaller one? or individual recs at the time of reading? Or, wait, hah! I forgot I can do polls!

Poll #26592 Rec post lengths

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 2

View Respondents

What size of fic reccing do you prefer?

View Answers

large: 10-20 recs
0 (0.0%)

mid-length: 5 recs
2 (100.0%)

small: individual or paired recs
0 (0.0%)

What style of fic reccing do you prefer?

View Answers

multifandom
1 (50.0%)

fandom specific
0 (0.0%)

with full summaries + commentary
2 (100.0%)

with brief elevator-pitch description
2 (100.0%)

link lists with no commentary
0 (0.0%)

I'm going to claim #11 Interact With Someone as done, since I've been commenting more, and #12 Fancast Someone as done with my imagining Element of Fire's Thomas Boniface as Diego Luna.

Comments

[cortue]

Oh that pinboard looks quite cool! Do you subscribe to people on pinboard or just search in particular tags you're interested in? That's so great about all the podfics :D.

I really like your monthly recs posts, as I'm very interested in what people connect to in stories. It is what motivated me to start writing my own monthly rec posts of books, since I don't get through much fic. I don't have a particular preference for length, I usually just look through when I have time.

[spatz]

Well, I spend most of my Pinboard time on my fic bookmarks account (spatz), and I do subscribe to various people there - including you! This new one I don't, it's more a way to offload all the things I have squirreled away in my browser bookmarks for years and years. My last bookmark-organizing session turned up a lot of dead links, right around the time the Pinboard guy encouraged free account users to switch up to paid accounts. The Pinboard caching function is pretty useless for AO3 links though - the site autoredirects to the first chapter for multichaps and to the age consent page for explicit fics, plus locked-to-users fics are blocked; also the cache is only available to me - so I have my own system for archiving fic with the Wayback Machine, and just started the new paid one for caching resource links.

If you're asking how I find fic in general, I can talk about that AT LENGTH, so just lmk, hah.

Aww, that's great! I was ~inspiring~! :D I wish I read more books, I've just had such low energy for new/challenging material since the pandemic started - like, I'll start things and then fail to finish them if I don't power through the binge before I lose energy again, or stall out at a depressing bit. Like, I'm stuck on Story of Yanxi Palace cuz I'm 90% sure a minor character I like is about to get framed and executed, which is :(((

[cortue]

Yes I was interested in how you find fic as, if I recall correctly, you've mentioned before that you got into reading some fandoms (BNHA, 911) because the fic was showing up a lot on pinboard.

I get that! I go back and forth a lot. Right now I feel like I've been struggling with fiction books more than I normally would versus nonfiction. What I've totally dropped off on is fiction shows. After I finished The Legend of Minglan, I had other dramas I wanted to watch but I just keep watching random youtube things instead that don't require me to get invested in anything complicated. I have heard good things about Yanxi Palace - how far were you into it?

[spatz]

OK, just remember that you asked for this ;P

For finding fic, I usually check my Pinboard network and popular/fandom daily. My network isn't super active (by preference) but everyone I follow has taste that matches mine; Pinboard popular has been eaten up by people archiving Twitter posts (I think) but you can still see a good number of fics on there. I usually check anything that's one of my fandoms or isn't tagged with a fandom - which is how I end up curious about BNHA and 9-1-1 because I'm like 'who are these people?' or 'oh no, a fic with presumed dead, amnesia, and adoptive parenting? maybe I should check this out...' *sigh* My weakness for certain tropes is a Problem.

My other main source is AO3 subscriptions. I have a lot of author subs, carefully curated over the past decade-plus. I'm weirdly better about deleting unfamiliar fandoms in the emails, but if I see a bunch of people start posting fic for something I'll at least google it (most recently The Hands of the Emperor, but also Word of Honor).

When I'm binging something and/or getting into a new fandom, I often have a starting point from the first two - a fic or author or specific rec I've opened in a tab to keep me curious, like a little carrot on a stick. If I'm going in blind: go to AO3, sort by bookmarks + completed, find something intriguing. If something's well-written/characterized, check out the author's other work in the fandom. Then, if you continued to like their stuff, check out anything they've bookmarked.

If my taste isn't lining up with the popular fic (in some fandoms, this is more the case than others), I'll backtrack to something I did like, check the bookmarks on AO3 and on Pinboard, and then look at other recs by those bookmarkers in hopes that we have similar taste. Alternately, filter for podfics - I don't like first-time listening to stories, but if someone loved a fic enough to record it, that's a solid recommendation right there. (also useful for finding shorter good fic, as the behemoths are often longfic but podfic skews shorter)

I only rarely browse specific tags, unless I'm in the mood for something (i.e. amnesia, h/c, post-tsunami fic, etc). I get some recs through my Discord servers, but those are pretty hit-or-miss.

I was...seven episodes into Yanxi Palace? Yep. I think you'll really like the main character, she's smart and ruthless and so determined to find her sister's killer she comes to the palace as a seamstress, and also has a ferocious temper and a good heart. There's quite a lot of inner palace intrigue and murder already, but I hear there's more female friendship as she climbs in status and works for the empress.

[cortue]

Oooo, I am very intrigued by The Hands of the Emperor. It's nice to see some more optimistic politics. And if it doesn't work, the description made met think of Goblin Emperor so I can just reread that.

I'm also impressed by your techniques - I wouldn't have thought to sort by podfic to find good sort fic for instance. And the seeing who recced a story you liked and looking at what else they liked. *takes notes*

:D I've had that one recced to me, yes! It's gonna take me a minute before I have another long political drama in me but I am excited to watch it eventually.

[spatz]

I got a good way into Hands of the Emperor and liked it! I want to finish it! But the author clearly is more into vibes and bureaucracy than, like, narrative tension? So there's not much of a driving need, if you know what I mean. Also: not enough ladies.

♥

[cortue]

Mm yeah I definitely get it. It's hard not to compare it to The Goblin Emperor in terms of the vibes I would want from the book description but I do want there to be an actual story there. And ladies!

[spatz]

The Emperor does have strong Maia vibes but it's from his sorta-Csevet's POV so the feels aren't quite as powerful, and also he's much (much! timey-wimey stuff) older and was trapped for much longer in his role, and there's some weird magic going on that hadn't fully been revealed. I'm curious to see what is up, though I accidentally may have spoiled myself for part of that by going on the author's Goodreads page and seeing the sequel's summary, so. Oops?

Definitely needs more ladies so far. There have been some good ones but only one as part of the central ensemble.