Okay, I guess I'm in

[gwyn]

I've seen so many people doing the Snowflake Challenge, and one thing I keep wanting to do more of is post outside of just fanwork announcements or crappy life posts. So I guess I'm in, even though I'm super late--is it too late? They say you can start any time but I feel like I'm really late to the game.




Anyhoo.

So this is day one for me.
Day 01

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 love to talk about fandom, but it seems like, with DW and LJ being such a vast empty desert these days, there's little point, and Tumblr, where I spend a lot of time, is basically even worse--most of the people who follow me don't ever interact with me, a lot of times because we're friends or acquaintances and don't necessarily have the same interests. (And now that Tumblr's removed replies, it's even more impossible to interact.) So a lot of times I just use the journals as fic or vid announcements, or when something's going especially crappy. I comment fairly often, and I love reading my flists, but…I feel like no one's interacting anymore much of the time, and I should post about other things. Since so many people I know are doing it, and I'm a lemming, it seems like a valuable tool, and I hope it lasts. I loathe twitter and facebook and I don't have fannish spaces there anyway, they are for my professional life and I barely ever use them, so a part of me constantly hopes this space will be revitalized. I don't think it can, but, well, I can at least contribute, I suppose.

Comments

[kore]

I love talking about fandom, especially on DW! Tumblr....no, and I'm with you, I hate twitter and facebook. I'd be happy to talk about fannish stuff here (especially, well, The Boys, because boys. But other things too!).

[phantomas]

Same reasons as you :) I miss the fannish talks, and this and LJ are still the best venues for that.

[sperrywink]

Welcome! I'm glad to see you posting and joining the challenge!

It is harder to get interaction on LJ/Dw, but I think it is worth the effort. I find it cozier than tmblr or twitter, and I feel like I can really get to know people and what interests them.

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

I feel the same - Buffy fandom brought me here, but I've written all the fic I can in it, and moved to a much less popular fandom, where everyone was initially enthusiastic, but now seems to have wandered off - even my fellow mods. I don't understand Tumblr at all. The facebook group for my current fandom is more active than lj. but only just ...

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Tumblr is not my favorite place, but I hate it less than I hate twitter and facebook. Which is a really weird thing to say! I keep hoping that if fandom's gonna migrate again, it's to a less horrid place. And I wish it'd be soon.

[silk-knickers.livejournal.com]

I also don't understand tumblr. I found a few people who seem to post (repost?) gif sets frequently in one of my fandoms, so I follow them, but I don't really know how to branch out past that without following semi-randomly, and I definitely don't feel like I know anything at all about the people I'm following.

It's weird but I think AO3 was actually a little bad for the talking-about-fandom side of fandom... it used to be that people would post fics on LJ / DW directly, as well as episode recaps or commentary, and also personal stuff. So, like, I can read other things by an author on AO3 but I'll never really know anything about that person beyond their fic, unless they provide a link to their tumblr or LJ.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I can't say I like Tumblr, but that's where 99 percent of my fandom is right now, so... I just keep hoping that maybe fandom, if it doesn't want to come back this way, will migrate somewhere that's less horrible than a site limiting communication to 144 characters or that allows you to use it in an intuitive way and that can accommodate the different ways multiple people use the web.

You might be right about AO3. I never used journals for that, but I know most people did, and so without having an individual site to post to, I just sort of defaulted over there, and now I see that, yeah, it's limited to a small audience now. And forget about interacting on tumblr, even if you post fic directly there (which I rarely can, since I write too long).

Why does everything suuuuuck?

[bond-girl.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean! I don't even try to interact on Tumblr because I fail at keeping up with a conversation there; for me it's like a fast-moving, pretty stream of consciousness where you literally can't walk into the same river twice. I'm seeing a small livejournal comeback for the end-of-the-year posts, so maybe it will stick.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I hope so too. I mean, I get that the largely text based format is hard for a lot of people. But the other answers aren't that great either.