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Challenge #15 Fandom Snowflake Challenge's 2023 Fandom Wrapped!

Your top 5 fandoms for 2023 were: according to the works I produced: Bridgerton (TV), MCU, Stargate SG1, and Stargate Atlantis, and 90s fantasy series (McCaffrey, Pratchett, Rawn).
Your top 5 fandom spaces in 2023 were: Dreamwidth, AO3, Discord, Twitter. (Didn't do well on Mastodon, haven't gotten the hang of Bluesky, and Threads is for Srs Discourse.)
The top 5 things you did to contribute to fandom in 2023 were: Write fix-its, I guess! Years too late for most, but still.
Your top 5 most appreciated fandom contributions were: Assorted WIPs for MCU and Bridgerton, a couple of humourous one-shots for Bridgerton, the memorial ficathon for crazy4orcas (even if I was the fannish-and-pairing red-headed bastard child in the room), and probably the final fix-it fic in the MCU: Steve/Maria series I started back in 2012...

Bonus questions:
Your fandom personality in 2023 was: Virago and Eeyore, by turns. Furiously angry and sad/despondent by turns.
In 2023, you discovered: not sure I discovered anything new? I guess I realised just how disposable my faves are. :(
Your fandom home in 2023 was: AO3 almost certainly. Just quietly chugging along, posting fics, chatting with a few people (although I do miss the days of comment interaction a la LiveJournal). A little bit of DW, but the fannish side of things was very contained; most people on DW seem to be more about the 'everyday life' thing.

Challenge #11: In your own space, create a fanwork.

Good Enough (1041 words) by tielan
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, Clint Barton/Laura Barton (background), Clint Barton/Maria Hill (background)
Characters: Steve Rogers, Maria Hill, Clint Barton, Laura Barton, Natasha Romanov (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Bittersweet Ending
Summary: Maybe they can't have what should have been theirs, but they can have each other.

An old snippet I tidied up and polished off for Snowflake 2024. Going back to my 'classic era' fic.

Day 14: Share your love for something fannish: a trope, cliché, kink, motif, theme, format, or fandom.

So many options here! I'm going to take several of them.

( kind of long, because I could go on about this for ages )

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.

Day 10: Post a rec for fannish and/or creative resources and spaces. Tell us where you go to dig up canon facts for your fandom, or where you get all the juicy details about your favorite ship. Where do you like to hang out and squee like a squeeing thing?

When I need to dig up canon facts about the MCU, I just google. I usually end up on one of the Wikis, do a bit of cross-checking and run with that. If I need something from the comics, though, I tend to go with standard Wikipedia. The problem with research resources and me is that all I need is a very vague idea of whether or not it's possible, or a name, or a connection, and then I do the handwavy thing of fantasy. For me, the more anchoring thing is the relationships and the reactions of the characters, and that's a more fuzzy area of interpretation.

My primary ship of the last three years has almost no canon details. In fact, I've pretty much been the one creating the juicy fannish details since I first saw the pairing.

Generally, my squee spaces are DW/LJ and Tumblr; although more on my journals if I want conversation. It's hard to find people to converse with, though.

If I get further into Star Wars fandom with TFA, I'll probably continue to use the Wikis, and bits and pieces of headcanon.

Recent Wikis I've used:
MCU Wiki
Mad Max Wiki
Chronicles of Narnia Wiki

In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.

I'm going to talk about a scene that most people wouldn't think is one of my favourites, but it was pretty much the moment I knew I was going to be a little longer in MCU fandom than just that first year.

In the first episode of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, Maria Hill is interviewing Grant Ward to be a part of Coulson's team.

Maria Hill: Everything's changing. A little while ago, most people went to bed thinking that the craziest thing in the world was a billionaire in a flying metal suit. Then aliens invade New York then were beaten back by among others, a giant green monster, a costumed hero from the 40's, and a God.
Grant Ward: I don't think Thor's technically a God.
Maria Hill: Well, you haven't been near his arms.

Frankly, before that point, most of fandom behaved as though Maria was basically scenery; as Ward mocks her later that season: she was eye candy, and barely even that when compared the Black Widow. She wasn't a proponent of the Avengers Initiative, which meant she wasn't one of the Good Guys (like Coulson or Fury), and her most redeeming feature seemed to be that she was one more woman in the movie canon.

I saw more in the character from my second viewing of the Avengers movie.

I saw a very droll, very dry sense of humour displayed in the exchanges with Stark: "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" and "He turns." I saw a deep sense of duty and responsibility to chase down an enemy who's already turned two of their people. And a deep and serious affection for Phil Coulson in her reaction to the news of his death, and in the deadly glare she levels at Tony and Steve from the bridge.

But that scene of Maria interviewing Grant Ward? That was something that other people in fandom could grasp - that Maria Hill had a sense of humour which she could let out to play when the world wasn't at stake, that her connections with Fury and Coulson were deeper than their disagreements over the Avengers Initiative, and that she could put up with shit in the name of getting the job done.

And it brought me great joy to see my view of the character confirmed - and to have the character brought back into the universe.

(I'm debating whether I want to do Challenge 6 right now. Challenge 5 was to make a fanwork, which i have no trouble doing, only all mine went to fandom_stocking.)

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.

Wow. This is pretty tricky. I've written a lot of fanfic across a fair few fandoms and I even still like most of it.

So, I'll rec three fics - Stargate Atlantis, Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Stargate Atlantis
title: Bargains Untenable
summary: Her last sight of them was of Torren's eyes filling with tears again as John walked to the door with resolute steps.
notes: This is a Teyla-centric fic that circles around the concept of her Wraithgene and the value of Torran to Michael. It's not one of my more popular SGA fics, because a) Teyla, b) John/Teyla; however it was written towards the end of my SGA run, and by this stage I was comfortable with the nuances of the characters, who they were, what they were doing, as well as the way I tell stories.

Plus I love the sacrifice stories - particularly when the sacrifice is willingly made by a woman - a choice with all the agency that she has available to her. (Limited agency and women; it's a thing for me - not the superpowers, not the white males who can do anything, but the women who have limited choices and still manage to make the best of a bad situation. Our society and storytelling traditions don't respect women's choices at all; to me fiction with femmeprotags who have limited choices and are still depicted as strong for their choice is a way of bringing respect back into the equation.)

Marvel Cinematic Universe
title: Between Destiny And Love
summary: Maria Hill meets Clint Barton on her first mission as a full-fledged SHIELD agent, reared, geared, and ready to rumble. He walks with a swagger as most male operatives do, and she prepares to be paternalised as most female operatives are. Sometimes love is complicated.
notes: So, this story is Maria Hill/Clint Barton and Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, and Clint Barton/Laura Barton, and canon-compliant up to Avengers: Age Of Ultron, and a subverted soulmates AU. Still with me? It's actually a story about the people we are, about the things we can have and the compromises we make when we can't, and how destiny is not the same as love. I'd say that, out of all the fics I've yet written, this story is my id speaking.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens
( semi-spoilers )

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 usually start these things and never finish them, but I'm going to try this year.

I do the Fandom Snowflake Challenge mostly to nut out my own thoughts on why fandom and what I like and why I like it, but also partly to extend myself beyond my circles, because I'm not naturally someone who'll explore out into fandom - too many bad experiences in my 15 years of online fandom.

And each year I hope I'll complete it. I haven't yet. Maybe this will be the year!