narya_flame

Stealing this idea from fiachairecht - ask me anything. Stuff about my writing, my characters, my wips, favourite canons, favourite anythings, my pets, the state of fandom, life in general, whatever you fancy. No politics please but anything else is fair game.

I am back to doing the official Snowflake prompts this year, after choosing to do a DIY version last time. 

Challenge #1: In your own space, update your fandom information.

My SWG profile has minimal info in it, as does my Tumblr bio, which is mostly me being lazy.  My Dreamwidth sticky and AO3 profile are slightly more detailed and contain my transformative works policy, which I have reflected on and tweaked.

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.

I'm going to keep this pretty straightforward. I was really proud of my fic With the Dawn in his Eyes, which I wrote for this summer's TRSB. It's literary RPF, which made it quite a change and a challenge for me, but I was pleased with how it turned out.  J. R. R. Tolkien and Geoffrey Bache Smith, before and during WW1. Rated T. 5k words. Choose not to warn.

Had a busy few days, so playing catch up!

Day 4

In your own space, make a list of things that you wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, and/or that you'd like someone to create or do for you. 

This year I've seen so many people wishing that fandom would chill the F out and be a bit nicer, which I definitely agree with.  In that spirit, I'm going to adapt something from my Silmarillion Writers' Guild holiday wish list, which was intended to encourage people to take a breath and look at the world, but also to use their fannish instincts at the same time:

Notice the world around you; find (and photograph?) a little corner of it that makes you think of your favourite fandom setting.  That could be a tapestry that reminds you of Cintra, a weird landscape feature that could have come straight out of Star Wars, a ruin that Marcus Flavius Aquila might have seen in all its glory, a bar where you think the Avengers might gather, or a flower you think Sam Gamgee would love.  

If you feel comfortable linking to pictures in the comments, I'd love to see what you come up with!

Day 5

In your own space, talk about an idea you wish you had the time / talent / energy to do.

Hmm.  Well, my Tolkien fic ideas list is enormous, but I've accepted that I'm never going to write everything on it, and that's OK; I'm not going to beat myself up over the ones I don't get to.  The list is a lovely resource to have in its own right.

I can't really think of much else that would be relevant to this particular challenge, so I'm calling that done!

This is my fannish goals post! I'm keeping it fairly light this year and not setting too many specific targets; this is more about prioritising where I focus my fandom energy.

1. Finish the gift fic I started for spiced_wine about one of her OCs - should be achievable in the near future, a lot of it is already hand drafted.

2. Work on my two longer WIPs, Summer's Song and The City Over The Mountains.  More progress has been made on these than the current posted wordcount would suggest, but I'm not holding myself to finishing either of them this year, especially given what the world threw at us all during 2020 and 2021.

3. Give some love to the unpublished WIPs, snippets and ideas lurking on my desktop.  (Dependent on progress on Point 2, as well as on time and inspiration.)

4. Make sure that everything on my desktop is actually backed up, in case of another laptop disaster.  

5. Run TRSB again.  Already in train; the mod team are at work on schedules and updates!

6. Continue building a pan-Tolkien fanfiction archive.  This originally started as a bit of a secret squirrel project when Faerie blew up; I wasn't sure I had the time or capability to do it, and I didn't want loads of people asking me when it would be done.  Still, enough people do now know about it that I don't mind sticking "make some progress" on this list as a goal.  No promises as to quantity or speed of progress.  No ETA exists at the present time.

7. Get better at using Canva for edits and moodboards, since Adobe have put so many features behind a paywall now.

Since Monday is my usual day for Poem of the Week, I'm combining that with today's challenge prompt; please enjoy these wonderful Tolkien-inspired poems by my fabulous fellow fans!

Mee and Shee, by Nienna. Mee and Shee dance, each watching the other.

Spring in Doriath, by Himring. Doriath welcomes the spring. Inspired by 'Spring' by William Blake.

Maglor's Lament for Ambarussa, by Bunn. A brief poem. Loosely inspired by Cynddylan's Hall, a lament for a seventh-century prince of Powys, from the fourteenth-century Red Book of Hergest.

Fast Fellows, by Elwinfortuna. Wulfmær wakes Aelfnoth on the morning of the Battle of Maldon.

Dwarven Funeral Rites, by Raiyana. A poem used in funeral rites in Khazad-dûm (and elsewhere, later). Khuzdul, with English translation.

Eight-Pointed Star, by Lferion. A travel-song sung by the Feanorian mounted forces, particularly Maglor's riders.

Teler, by Dawn Felagund. After the Darkening of Valinor, a Telerin Elf looks back at the days of light.

Challenge #4

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

Hmmmmmm. OK.

I don't know how I feel about this year yet. I want it to be significantly better than 2020 - but the first few months are looking like they will be much the same as last March/April. Stay at home, only leave for essential purposes. For me, lockdown doesn't equal extra productivity - quite the reverse, and I've made my peace with that - so I'm not going to start down the track of "I shall write a novel in three months!" because it won't happen.

If things improve later in the year (i.e. if all goes to plan with the UK vaccine rollout and we don't get any more unwelcome plot twists like jab-resistant mutations, which are two very big ifs), I hope to spend a lot of time in the second half of 2021 doing things with my much-missed friends. If it's safe, I have every intention of being very busy with trips and dinners and long, long walks and nights out and nights in and barbecues and bonfires and parties and (maybe) sporting events and concerts - just generally being able to enjoy the world and the people in it again, and above all being able to have physical contact with someone who isn't my husband. I adore him, but I miss lounging on the sofa in a tangled heap with my friends, and hugging my sister so hard that we both fall over (it's happened more than once).  If the second half of the year brings a lift in restrictions, I can't see myself hitting any arbitrary goals and targets I set myself now, because I'll just want to have fun.

That said, socialising in and of itself can't be a personal target to aim for; it's not in my control.  I can do my best to keep myself and others safe and not spread this thing, but I can't account for others who may not do the same.

So - where does that leave me?

A few days ago elwinfortuna mentioned the idea of a yearly theme, as opposed to a set of resolutions.  Since there are big question marks over what 2021 is going to throw at us, to me this feels like a better choice than a list of resolutions I won't keep.  I've been struggling, though, to think of what my theme could be - but, writing out that long paragraph about the things I've missed, it hit me.  Above all things, I've missed having fun.

I spent a lot of 2020 grousing and sighing and huffing and wishing things were different, and no doubt there'll be some of that this year too.  Really, though, the pandemic has still left me (in theory) with lots of things that I love.  My books.  My writing.  D&D.  (Thank goodness for Zoom.)  The outdoors.  My crazy, ridiculous, horrendously behaved cat.  But I haven't enjoyed all of them in the way I normally would.  There was always the mental noise, the sense of waiting, of feeling fidgety - the inability to settle, the constant search for a temporary mental way out, the endless cycle of clicking and scrolling that invariably ensued.  I was constantly speculating about and pinning hopes on the next government announcement ("We might be able to see one more person!  We might be able to go and sit outside a pub with a drink if we stay two metres apart!").  At the same time I felt guilty that I wasn't "achieving" more.  Why hadn't I lost weight?  Why had I not made myself finally read The Dubliners?  Why wasn't I going out for a run every day, instead of whining about missing the pool?*  Why hadn't I made my house and garden look like something out of Ideal Homes?  Why hadn't I carefully tied all the plot threads of our D&D adventure to my players' character backgrounds, and made them feel like they were starring in an epic fantasy novel, not just messing about doing silly voices through a laptop? 

*Actually there's a very good reason for that, as I remembered last weekend when I twisted my ankle - my joints and tendons are a mess from years of hockey at school and university, and pounding miles of concrete everyday will not do them any good!

So that's going to be my theme for this year.  Fun.  

Whichever way 2021 goes, I'm going to choose to do things I enjoy, for no reason other than I enjoy them.  I'm going to choose books that I want to read, instead of kidding myself that if I try hard enough I really might develop a liking for James Joyce.  I'm going to write and run that homebrew D&D campaign idea, and never mind that it probably won't be as good as a published adventure - nothing ever survives contact with the players anyway.  As soon as we get to a point where physical gatherings are possible again, I'm giving myself permission to spend as much time with my friends as I want, instead of guilt-tripping myself about other things I "should" be doing.  I'm going to make and eat food that I love, and go for walks in beautiful places, and not make either of those things about how many calories I consumed or lost in the process. 

Brace for incoming Mary Poppins moment - I'm also going to lean into the fun of things that I don't always enjoy, or find ways to improve them.  I cannot make myself like cleaning, but I can put AC/DC on at full blast and sing while I do it.  There are elements of my job that are deadly dull - but nothing says I can't move files around in our system while Downton Abbey meanders along in the background.  (I miss my colleagues, but there are some serious perks to working from home!)

So there we go.  Fun.   I'm taking it back - whatever it may end up looking like in a year of uncertainty and change.

Challenge #2

In your own space (or their own space) interact with someone new. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. No need to leave a link for this one, but if you’d like to invite others to join the conversation, please do leave one.

I have already met some new people as a result of Snowflake 21, and spoken to a few new folks on various Discord servers, so I'm counting this one as done!

I have seen others doing a "how I fell into fandom" post as an unofficial Day 2 challenge, and I might well do something similar at some point this month. I'm a sucker for nostalgia, as anyone who has read any of my fic will have worked out...

Seen others doing this, so let's take a look at what my plans were and what reality did to them...

(ETA after review - actually not bad.  I've written more than I realised this year - blue text = a link to a fanwork.)