Fandom Snowflake - Day 12: Fannish

Day 12: What makes you fannish? And by that we mean, what is it about a tv show/movie/book/band/podcast/etc that takes you from, "Yeah, I like that," to "I need MOAR!!!" Is it a character? A plotline? The pretty? Subtext that’s just screaming to be acknowledged? Tell us what it is that gets you to cross that line into fandom.

This is pretty easy.

A female character.

I'll enjoy media with guys in it, but it's rare that I feel the urge to explore further.

So, a female character, usually kickass, always intelligent and/or cunning, adaptible, of independent mind even if she doesn't rebel (and this is important; Mako Mori has her own mind, the fact that she goes along with Pentecost is painted - for Raleigh and the audience - in a positive light rather than a negative one; I have no patience for characters who buck the system merely to be rebellious), and quite frequently someone who gets passed over for more snappy/snarky female characters.

Bonus: a woman of colour, or a woman performing 'women's work' - by which I mean cleaning up the mess and doing the emotional labour of making everything run smoothly. Basically being a woman in the way that our society doesn't recognise as valid because it's "just women's work": cleaning up after the menz and the womenz who act emotionally and psychologically like men.

So a female character, her love, her life, her personality, what makes her tick. And frequently one that isn't hugely popular.

And then I write fic about her, because that's what I can do - write words.

assignments and requests and offers and suchlike

So, I received my CB assignment and...we matched on one thing.

One thing that I can write with ease and comfort, and could quite probably put way more than the minimum 300 words into.

However, that one thing stuck out from all the other things that my CB recip had chosen in her sign-up. It was basically the scarlet poppy in a field of daisies. So I've mailed the organiser to check that the recip actually chose it and didn't make a slip of the mouse when they selected the pairings.

Still waiting; must remember to mail them again tonight to follow up.

--

Things that have been bothering me in the last year of exchanges:

In other news, has it become common to require people to fill all the requests in an assignment they're given? I had someone do this in the Pacific Rim Secret Santa, and I just got a query from someone who was concerned that they'd been assigned two fanart requests and one fanfic request when they'd offered fanfic only.

You are given multiple requests, you only have to fill one.

Also, OPTIONAL PAIRINGS ARE OPTIONAL. This cannot be said often enough in general exchanges.

Finally, can we stop reading Dear Author letters as passive-aggressive? Please? They're not rules, as such, as said the crew of the Black Pearl in Pirates of the Carribean; They're more...guidelines. It would be nice we didn't treat the requests in them like someone is going to FIRE ZE MISSILES if we aren't precisely on point with that story, and assume the worst of people who are saying, "If you can do this, it would be nice," in a non-threatening, non-assumptive manner.