Fandom Snowflake Challenge

[queer_scribbling]

Day #15: Fandom Wrapped.

Your top 5 fandoms for 2023 were:

1. Harry Potter - Due to writing for some fests [see: Challenge 12].
2. All Creatures Great & Small - Recaps.
3. The Ark - Recaps.
4. Miscellaneous - Revisiting past fandoms while archiving fanworks on Squidge.
5. " " - Same, except archiving recaps and non-AO3 fannish writing on Dreamwidth.

Your top 5 fandom spaces in 2023 were:

1. Pillowfort.
2. Tumblr.
3. Discord.
4. AO3.
5. SquidgeWorld Archive.

The top 5 things you did to contribute to fandom in 2023 were:

1. Trying to share fandom events across platforms (mostly Tumblr, Discord, and Pillowfort).
2. Writing fanfic.
3. Archiving fanworks and various fan scribbling (like those recaps).
4. I guess sharing said recaps counts, too.
5. I unofficially shared last year's Snowflake Challenge posts on Pillowfort.

Your top 5 most appreciated fandom contributions were:

1. Pillowfort folks did seem to appreciate having Snowflake Challenge posts last year.
2. I think someone on The Ark's crew appreciated that show's recaps, since I shared them on Tumblr and theoretically more people found out about the show. (This guess is partially based on a crew member reaching out about a Facebook group for fans via my ask box.)
3. People did read and indicate some amount of liking my fanfic [kudos, comments, etc.].
4. I think some people appreciated hearing about various fandom events.
5. At least one person appreciated Sunshine Challenge posts in the Snowflake Challenge community this past summer, too.

In 2023, you discovered:

1. It's surprisingly hard to keep up with Dracula Daily.
2. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes were both necessary on their own merits and a good opportunity to catch up on recorded shows. It truly didn't cause a catastrophe for most fans I interacted with.
3. Some discussion about fandomification of politics and global events, which was insightful but also kind of disappointing.
4. There are a surprising amount of people who will judge a show set in space based on how gravity is handled and/or recreated on the spaceship. (Or at least, some of those people will be very vocal on Reddit.)
5. To future me: You will not be able to easily find that post or comment link in the future for a hitching post if you don't save the link now. No, it doesn't matter how slow your Pillowfort Notifications Feed usually is. You will not be able to scroll back far enough to find it in a month or several months.

Comments

[muccamukk]

I'm so happy people crosspost these to other platforms!

[queer_scribbling]

It seems like the least I can do.

(I still tend to draft and post Snowflake Challenge entries on Pillowfort first, which is how I just spotted a 'here on Pillowfort'. >.> )

[wendelah1]

There are a surprising amount of people who will judge a show set in space based on how gravity is handled and/or recreated on the spaceship. (Or at least, some of those people will be very vocal on Reddit.)

Yes. God, yes. And not just on Reddit, I'm sure. Sound in space, too, I'd imagine.

Would you mind sharing more about #3?

[queer_scribbling]

I don't remember anyone being hung up on the sound in space aspect, but when I first peeked into a Reddit presence for The Ark, so many of the top comments on the first one or two episodes were people hating that something in the wide view CGI shot of the spaceship spun in such a way that 'technically' gravity should have pulled people towards the walls instead of the floors in that section (or something like that).

Would you mind sharing more about #3?

Keeping in mind that this was a few posts and more speculation than consensus: A few Jewish Tumblrites have used 'fandomification' to describe the flattening of nuance they have witnessed in Israel/Palestine discussions and topics that have come up since October 7th. Like the way that some Tumblrites they've interacted with have ignored anything seemingly 'bad' about the Houthis or Hamas because it countered Good Guy vs Bad Guy simplicity or ruined 'the Houthis are their newest blorbos' support. Or someone mentioned finding Hamas Captor/Israeli Hostage real person fic and wondered if that was why a particular person they interacted with didn't actually believe that the hostages still in Gaza are actually facing a risk of any mistreatment. Someone thought the energy poured into trying to drive at least one Israeli Tumblrite off the site felt similar to harassment from anti-"problematic" ship discourse. [Though there have been non-fandom issues where people have faced that before, and I certainly wouldn't say that all people facing 'kill yourself' anons are dealing with fandomification specifically.]

To circle back to calling Hamas or Houthis 'blorbos', I believe one person used an extended metaphor about how the non-Jewish USA citizens they were interacting with [with no Palestinian or Israeli ties to this discussion] were sort of treating this conflict like a tv show because it is just scenes on a television to them. It didn't seem ahistorical to deny ancient Jewish history within the modern nation-state of Israel, such as trying to assert that Jesus was a Palestinian, because they were doing the equivalent of a Canon Fix-It to make sure that Hamas was still the Good Guy. In this speculative metaphor, being Pro-Palestine is very distinctly the opposite of any supposed support or sympathy for Israel because the two stances are like two sides in a ship war.

These haven't been very long and detailed breakdowns, and some of this has very much been venting and 'ugh [fill in the blank] are their new blorbos 🙄' tag chatter. (Due to the likelihood of blocking, I'm not sure if anyone being complained about has actually seen these posts and tags, so I definitely don't think anyone is self-describing via fandomification.) However, in certain fandom circles where the 'XYZ Fandom until Oct 7th' blogs suddenly voiced I/P positions for the very first time, I could see where some people were getting the vibe that the current round of Israel-Hamas conflict was more like a new fandom to loudly share opinions on instead of an actual geopolitical issue in another country.

It's entirely possible that someone just thought 'fandomification' sounded close enough for a vent post, and they would use a different description (such as ignoring nuance) in an environment that wasn't Tumblr. I would imagine that some people would take offense to the phrase, so I don't think it would be a net benefit to really make an effort to introduce this concept into the wider I/P discussion specifically. However, I ran into some of these discussions when it did seem like one or two 'just my silly little fandom' blogs on my dash were inexplicably turning into Houthi stans, and I felt like it wasn't 100% off the mark to wonder if a little fandomification had come into play.