Today's snowflake challenge is goal-setting.

Because this is how I roll, I look at last year's goals first. I set myself one goal for 2024: to get a specific post out of my drafts. And I did it. I published a post I had started writing fifteen years prior about fanwork trailers. I would have taken deleting the draft as success, too. (It's really nice to have it out of drafts.)

This year I'm sticking to the one goal thing and I'm going to go with: publish a fic rec. I have so many incomplete drafts to choose from for filling that. I haven't done a tabs collection entry or fic round-up in almost two years and I have all of these themed rec drafts hanging about, too, so if I don't hit my minimum number of fics for a round-up there are lots of other options.

It seems like an achievable goal. I'm hopeful.

Five Things! The five things are totally up to you. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

1.) (ETA: The poll has closed with my pick in the lead. Thank you!) This is a campaign. I am campaigning. I figured out my wishlist for Day 3 of the Snowflake Challenge late on the 17th, so I am posting it here, hoping that more people will go vote in an online poll.

tjs_whatnot made sad tragic noises about their pick losing snowflake_challenge's poll for today's challenge, and it's not like I had other plans, so I am just going to do the also rans here

2.) Dinner Party: You're having a dinner party, you can invite anyone--yes, living or dead if that's your thing--who are you inviting and why?

I'm going to interpret this as "talk about some people who you think might be cool", because in my heart of hearts I am getting myself a plate of assorted vegetable maki rolls and maybe a bottle of wine and I am inviting no one, even if it is an imaginary dinner party. Especially then, maybe.

So:

• Emily Graslie is the science communicator behind The Brain Scoop, recently back from a hiatus. She is so enthusiastic and interested in learning and is a joy.


• Joseph Saunders co-organised the inaugural black birders week and does some really cool wildlife photography that he posts on instagram - reelsonwheels - and does a whole other slew of things that you can find out about here


• Alie Ward is the host of Ologies, a science podcast about all of those different -ologies that people study. A typical episode features Alie in conversation with an -ologist and fleshes out that field. There are a lot of fields.


• Earyn McGee is a herpetologist, science communicator, potter, and dog-owner. She is afro_herper and responsible for #FindThatLizard. I am very bad at finding lizards.

3.) Happy Place: Tell us where you go these days to be happy. Whether that's a literal actual place or a space in fandom world that gives you the jollies.

The PWHL! Specifically, like, all of Montréal's games games, which have all been really exciting, with lots of good back and forth and scoring, containing some excellent hockey drama. I wrote about their first game here, for Day 6 of the Snowflake Challenge, and also the PWHL and North American's women's hockey in general. It is still a thing that is making really happy.

4.) Cast Your Fandom: (or recast your fandom if your fandom is already a show/movie/video). Give us your Dream Cast and tell us why.

I'm going with Persuasion, because someone needs to make a decent adaptation this century, and I'm casting by age, because I need all the help I can get. Ages in brackets are not specifically listed in the novel.

Anne Elliot is played by Lana Condor of To All the Boys I've Loved Before, who is apparently 27 (how).
John Boyega of Attack the Block, at 31, is Captain Wentworth.
Idris Elba (51) of Luther is Sir Walter Elliot, whose age isn't specifically listed on Persuasion's wiki page, but is old enough to have plausibly fathered a 27 year old, and also I want to see Idris Elba act alongside John Boyega and think that he might enjoy being Sir Walter.
Dakota Fanning (29) of Uptown Girls is Elizabeth Elliot, the eldest daughter.
Mckenna Grace (17) of Gifted is Mary Musgrove (she married young, right? My memory was sketchy and I think the family tree on wiki made me panic and maybe cast her too young, it's fine).
Jharrel Jerome (26) of Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse is Charles Musgrove Jr, because that's an age where he might have proposed to Anne first, right?
Claudia Black (51) of Farscape is Lady Russell, because I wanted someone born the same year as Idris and also Claudia Black.
Sarah Shahi (44) of The L Word is Penelope Clay, because that's young enough to be Elizabeth's friend, right?
Oscar Isaac (44) of Inside Llewyn Davis is Admiral Croft.
Tatiana Maslany, 38, of Orphan Black is Sophia Croft and is also the only person on this list that I have complete and unshakeable confidence that they would nail the accent in spite of not being British (I have a fair amount of faith in a good chunk of the others, also, but Maslany can do any accent, probably).
Dafne Keen, about 19, of His Dark Materials is Louisa Musgrove.
Isabella Wei, about 20, of 1899 is Henrietta Musgrove.
Jonathan Bailey (35) of Brigerton is Captain Harville, because I decided that was an age Wentworth's friend could conceivably be.
Vedang Raina (20) of Archie is Captain James Benwick, because I cannot make myself watch a much older man decide to marry a child.
Michael B Jordan (36) of Black Panther is William Elliot, because that's an age where a man might consider going for a 27 year old or a 44 year old, right?
Jessie Mei Li (28) of Shadow and Bone is Mrs. Smith, because that's young enough to have been at school with Anne.
Sophie Okonedo (55) of Slow Horses is Lady Dalrymple, because I couldn't remember how old she was and decided to make her a contemporary of Sir. Walter.
Tati Gabrielle (27) of The Owl House is her daughter, Miss Carteret, who I decided to make Anne's age.

Done. I refuse to do more research/reviewing or improve it. It cannot be worse than that other thing.

...and I have run out of also rans, so a vid rec:

5.) Masters of War (Pegasus Rising Remix) by bironic
Stargate: Atlantis | 4:02
Summary: The Atlanteans came, they explored, they destroyed lives and families and whole civilizations. The people of Pegasus have had enough.
Music: "Masters of War" by Bob Dylan (edited)
     + The Atlanteans and their actions from the perspective of the Pegasus Galaxy. It's a vid I've been thinking about lately, along with the ways in which the various Stargate series have always very clearly functioned as American military propaganda. This vid is a well-executed critique of the Atlantean narrative with some great audio/visual matches.

In your own space, share a favourite piece of original canon (a show, a specific TV episode, a storyline, a book or series, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

The second game of the inaugural season of the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL): Montréal at Ottawa January 2, 2024. (Youtube.)

The first PWHL game apparently made a lot of people cry, because of the significance to women, women's sports, hockey, these players, future players, hockey fans, etc.

That first game was unreal to me. I don't think that the existence of this league and what it means has sunk in yet. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, because I was a fan of one of the PWHL's predecessors, the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL), and when it unexpectedly folded in 2019 it broke my heart a little.

After the CWHL folded there were a bunch of players, many of them Olympic gold medalists, who didn't have a league to play in, until now. The difference between 2019 and now is ridiculous, just in terms of the resources that have been mobilized to support this league that weren't there 5 years ago. They're playing in bigger rinks, to sold-out crowds, televised on multiple channels, with a continuous stream of articles about the league and its players and games.

          The First CBA In Women’s Hockey Is A Picture Of The Future, And A Story Of The Past by Maitreyi Anantharaman (The Defector, Jan. 11, 2024.) does a really good job of painting a picture of what came before and how the PWHL got going.

          Liz Knox (interviewed for that piece) has been doing some really good press work in general, supporting this league and giving it and the reality of women's hockey context. Her December 3rd piece for CBC (How we built a women’s pro hockey league: Stories from a 10-year effort) is also a good read.

It feels like the landscape of women's hockey has completely changed.

When my hockey friend and I used to go to regular season games in Toronto we'd transit out and our walk to the arena would take us past residential dwellings. We didn't actually need to buy our tickets in advance, but we often did, and we'd show them to the volunteer running the table outside the rink and they'd scrawl "TF" on our hands. We'd show our marked hands to another volunteer who'd wave us in and then we'd go and pick out our seats. Nobody else I knew followed the league, though we did drag other people out with us on occasion, especially when there were bigger games, at bigger rinks.

Every single Canadian PWHL home game is sold out this season.

I had people from three separate friend groups texting me during the Montréal at Ottawa game, and it was such joyful hockey. It was fast-paced and exciting and there was wait, was that a goal drama, with lingering shots of the net, and I got to see players that I've followed for years, as a CWHL and Olympic Women's Hockey fan, play a game of hockey in a league that their player's union chose, and get paid an actual wage for it.

This is a dream that has been decades in the making. A chunk of these women grew up dreaming of playing in the NHL, knowing that they would never be allowed to do so, and they have worked for years for this, and now they have a league of their own, that is paying them real money to play. It is not perfect - another league folded to make this happen and players lost contracts, took pay cuts, and they have been rushing to get these women on the ice, to have them play, to carry the momentum forward. This is the season without logos. The team names are just the cities.

But you know what else it also is? This is the season where someone hugged their fiancée after they scored a goal and the play-by-play announcers dropped that into the commentary. When they took the photo of both teams after the game, someone went to hang out with someone on the other team for it. When players were asked about interview questions that they hate for a TSN promo interview/smelling salts challenge thing, people talked about bullshit rivalry narratives and being friends with people on the other team.

They're building something, and it looks pretty good so far.

(Games stream on the PHWHL's youtube channel and also on a whole host of other channels, especially if you're in Canada. CBC has their upcoming and in-progress games here and their archive here, including that January 2nd Montréal at Toronto game). TSN's broadcast schedule is here. Sportsnet's PWHL content is here. I am definitely missing things with this list - there's a lot of different coverage.)

This post has been adapted from a comment I left on luthien's post, "Snowflake Challenge 2024, Day 3".

1) I decided that I wanted to do more journal posts, so I signed up for Fannish Fifty and as of this posting have completed 14% of my entries, which is 1.75x what I posted all of last year, and also pretty good progress for a single calendar month. (It's working well for me and I am pleased with that.)

2) forestofglory posted in ladybusiness this week about the World Builders Book Club and their rec list for that, also linking to the storygraph page for it where there are more book recommendations. I don't have any immediate writing plans that would benefit from that kind of research, but I do love non-fiction and learning about diverse subjects, so I want to do a kind of quiet read-along and try to check off reading things in those categories. I'm setting myself a very pared back goal of four books/categories this year because I strongly suspect that this year is going to be a lot, and realistic goals are where it's at.

3) I also want to write 100 words for my WIP that I started as comment!fic in 2011 and have not updated since that year. I don't have to post those words, but I do have to write them. (I am trying to trick myself into eventually finishing this fic.)

This post was written for snowflake_challenge - details about the twelfth challenge are here - and also for fannish50.

In your own space, celebrate a personal win from the past year: it can be a list of fanworks you're especially proud of, time you spent in the community, a quality or skill you cultivated in yourself, something you generally feel went well. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Last year I posted Meta on Reccing: A Rather Haphazard and Certainly Incomplete List to my journal, having started the process of making that post over a decade earlier.

I might pick it up again in the future and do some more work on it, perform some actual analysis, but I'm really happy just to have gotten it out there so that it's available to other people and that other people can read it and go there's a piece of 2006 meta talking about people beginning to self-identify as reccers and a 2019 piece posing the question of whether or not reccers and reccing are still needed, on the heels of a 2018 piece about people not being able to conceive of recommending fic at all, that's kind of cool or wow, there are really some repeating themes and cyclical discussions in meta, aren't there. I like that it's out there for people to use it, build off of it, or transform it however.

I like that it is no longer haunting my drafts folder, that feels like a major accomplishment.

In your own space, post the results of your fandom scavenger hunt. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

1. A favorite character
The Phoenix & the Ash by Aria
The Untamed | 3:30 | R | Wei Wuxian
And my back is aching, my belt's too tight / I brought a chisel tip to this pencil fight
Music: 5 out of 6 by Dessa
     + Wei Wuxian is the latest in a string of similar characters that have been ruining me since childhood. I love him so much.

2. Something that makes you laugh
Chicago's Most Wanted by Speranza
due South | 42,595 words | NC-17 | Fraser/Ray K
"Of course he got the money--he's Fraser, he's organized, he's a fucking criminal mastermind, what do you think?!"
     + Every reread fills me with fresh glee. Fraser has amnesia and takes up crime, Fraser-style.

3. A bookshelf
Milkshake by mithborien
Gunpowder Milkshake | 2:26 | PG-13
Summary: "Close your eyes, baby girl."
Music: Milkshake by Kelis (Dawin Remix)
     + A library of guns, and a gun-fight in a library. There are a lot of bookshelves in this. I thought about choosing a resource for this item, but you know what, more people need to watch this, and know about this action film.

4. A game or hobby you enjoy
The Stars and Scones Bakery and Coffee Shop by LuciaZephyr
Dresden Files | 42,863 words | NC-17 | Dresden/Marcone
Summary: In which Harry is the best baker in Chicago, but still ends up starting a few fires along the way.
     + I'm a really big fan of the bit where Harry gets drunk and makes baklava. I, too, enjoy baking, and also bakery AUs. A really solid story where Harry deals with his trauma in very in character ways, and lives his life.

5. Something you find comforting
Made With Love by Rhea
Kinou Nani Tabeta? | 1:28 | G | Kakei Shirou/Yabuki Kenji
Summary: Food and love.
Music: Hang On Little Tomato by Pink Martini
     + Domesticity. All of the food. This is so lovely and soft.

6. A TV show or movie you hope more people will watch
How You Get The Girl by absternr
Couple of Mirrors | 3:15 | G | Xu Youyi/Yan Wei
And that's how it works
That's how you get the girl
Music: How You Get The Girl by Taylor Swift
     + Me. I am the person that needs to watch this TV show. Pretty femslashy historical drama.

7. A piece of clothing you love
Picspam: Costumes in Inception by bennet_7
Inception | picspam | G
So the purpose of this picspam is to examine the work that went into these costumes, tease out what they say about the characters, and generally just heap praise upon Jeffrey Kurland because, dammit, someone should.
     + Arthur's boots. The detailing, the colours, the way they disguise themselves as shoes. I've been in love with these things for over a decade. bennet_7's 2011 breakdown is fantastically thorough and offers a great rundown on what good costume design is and does.

8. A thing from an old fandom
The Student Prince by FayJay
Merlin | 145, 222 words | NC-17 | Arthur/Merlin
Summary: A Modern day Merlin AU set at the University of St Andrews, featuring teetotal kickboxers, secret wizards, magnificent bodyguards of various genders, irate fairies, imprisoned dragons, crumbling gothic architecture, arrogant princes, adorable engineering students, stolen gold, magical doorways, attempted assassination, drunken students, shaving foam fights, embarrassing mornings after, The Hammer Dance, duty, responsibility, friendship and true love...
This story was inspired by the thought of Prince William of Wales (and indeed the current Max von Hapsburg) studying at the University of St Andrews; it is also, as the title suggests, at least a little inspired by the operetta 'The Student Prince'.
     + I fell in love with this fic with Merlin and Gwen meeting and bonding on the train. It's an incredibly satisfying read. I find it weird to think of Merlin as an old fandom, but it came out in 2008, so I'm pretty sure that qualifies.

9. A thing from a new fandom
and so does sharp grass by freshmarigolds
Extraordinary Attorney Woo | 777 words | G | Choi Su Yeon/Woo Young Woo
If Choi Su-yeon was the spring sunshine, Young-woo guesses that she must be the winter sky.
     + I came to this show and fandom for the gay and this is a little tiny piece of delight. I'm about halfway through the show now and with the exception of episode 3 (where the show gets its suicide warning) so far it's all adorable fuzzy episodic legal drama with hijinks.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine originally aired 1993-1999 and it took me something like twenty years to discover Bashir/Garak and the show. I started watching DS9 during the height of the pandemic for Bashir/Garak, having been lured in through fic, and it's one of those ships where- look, it was the nineties, I was expecting the flirting to be less overt, and it is not, and it is a delight.

Dr. Bashir is brash and idealistic, and Garak is something out of his fantasies - a Cardassian spy - who he wants to unravel, and Garak is more than happy to play with him to pass the time. That Man by ellipsiss (G | 2:20) is a vid that does an excellent job of highlighting the foundations of their dynamic, including bits of dialogue and the thing where Garak makes Bashir *light up*. Also how Garak pursues their relationship, playing on Bashir's expectations and curiosity, showing his puzzle box self off to Bashir, and ultimately letting him inside.

They're both a combination of incredibly straight forward and made of twisty secrets, and it's delicious. the gift we cannot destroy by susiecarter (PG-13 | 5,793 words) is a fic that's a good example of that twisty-ness at play. In a universe where soulmarks are a thing, Garak recognises Julian as his soulmate, something to be approached cautiously. Because of expectations that Julian has, rooted in the secret that he keeps, he fails to recognise their bonding or to parse Garak's hints to him, which results in a delightful layering in their conversations.

Garak is incredibly flirty and Bashir is oblivious. There's this whole thing where arguments are flirtation for Cardassians that gets addressed in, so many fic, really, including ellethinthewoods's Red tulips (and their correct application) (PG-13 | 4,903 words) - where Keiko and Miles' somewhat inebriated takeaway from Miles' run-in with a flirtatious Cardassian is that they really, really need to fix Julian's love life.

The cultural differences between the two men lend themselves to some pretty excellent scenarios. Letters from the Northern Continent by thehoyden (NC-17 | 7,966 words) has Julian taking on Garak's culture, going to Cardassia, and picking up a few things he was oblivious of before. It's a post-war story that spins out all of that tension between them and neatly tidies it up, a wonderful UST-laden thing resolved.

The tension is strong in this ship. Undisclosed Desires by purplefringe (G | 3:57) is a vid that's- it's set to Muse, alright, it's all intense longing with a strong sexual component. There's care-taking, and interest, and acceptance of and a desire to see all of the other's bits- Garak's frustration and Julian's past. Just how much they clearly enjoy each other is great and the look that Julian gives Garak at the end - it's godsgrief's art, wait until the bit about how he really… wRANGLED with those weeds…… just, fuckin obliterated em… (PG), where Julian is literally *chinhandsing* and everything is soft around the edges and they are so much themselves. It's adorable.

The Rose of Terok Nor by cicak is another work that fills me with warm fuzzies, basically. It's tagged "screwball", which is what I want out of my fic, like, a significant chunk of the time, and a thing that Garak and Bashir are really great for. This fic also asks the question of: what if Garak wrote an epic pulp romance about himself and Bashir under a false name and it got really popular.

There's this wonderful sense of absurdity in a lot of the fanwork, like Mostly Tame, Track 3 of Blame It on the Stardust: A Star Trek Vid Album by BeatriceEagle. It's set to Kesha's Godzilla. (What do you get when you take Godzilla to meet your mom Starfleet captain?) ...and I think I forgot to mention that the alien bits of Cardassian physiology are modelled off of reptiles.

Garak is a giant lizard and he and the wunderkind are in love, they just- make each other so happy and I am here for it.

They argue about literature.

I just- ♥.

(This post was written for snowflake_challenge - details about the second challenge are here - and for fannish50, a 2023 posting challenge.)

In your own space, promote three communities, challenges, blogs, pages, Twitters, Tumblrs or platforms and explain why you love them. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

I keep a very minimalistic reading list on dreamwidth - if I am not always about the thing it is not on my list, basically. I am reccing three things that I have been following for years and all produce a lot of content:

fancake - year round, multifandom, thematic recs community (January's theme is five things)

smartbitches_feed - feed for Smart Bitches, Trashy Books ("all of the romance, none of the bullshit") - book reviews, book-finding posts, episode reviews of shows I don't watch, posts that are basically sales flyers, round-up posts of books they've advertised for on their site, cover snark...

ladybusiness - creative fandom feminist blog collective? - has won a Hugo Award - contributors have MLP avatars and write about media and feminism. They did a rec roundtable this past December and have excellent cut skills.

Would You Be Mine, Could You Be Mine by lady_ragnell
Merlin | 23,456 words | 2018 | PG-13 | Arthur/Merlin
Summary: Merlin does not want to invite the Prime Minister's son onto his show, even if he is an environmental scientist. Arthur does not want to admit that he has a crush on the star of Merlin's Castle, the most popular children's show in the nation.
In which Merlin is Mr. Rogers, there is a bouquet of finger puppets, Freya and Gwaine hooked up years ago and neither of them wants to talk about it, and eventually everything turns out okay.
+Merlin is an excellent Mr. Rogers and he and Arthur have just a bit of believable friction before getting themselves sorted. Charming.

This is How We Go by skoosiepants
Teen Wolf | 5,745 words | 2012 | PG-13 | Derek/Stiles
Summary: Scott and Stiles go on the Warped Tour with Allison’s band.
“I think we need to bring more joy to the children,” Stiles says. “I think we need to dress as pirates and do the Scott is a Terrible Pirate skit, because *you are a terrible pirate*,” and when Stiles says pirate, Stiles means friend. Scott is a terrible, horrible friend, and Stiles hates him.
+Pining, ridiculousness, and dreams. Scott and Stiles feels like a show homesick college kids might watch at two in the morning, snacking on brownies and popcorn.

Catalysis for Dummies by crysothemis
Stargate: Atlantis | 2,233 words | 2009 | G | John/Rodney
Summary: Rodney finally discovers the truth about the boots
+Snark, John irritating Rodney, and a crowd of children shouting on command.

This post is for snowflake_challenge. Details about the first day are here.

leave your lovers like campsites by staranise
Summary: The Aces' new PR intern is a mentally ill hot mess who's far from home and missing her old teammates something fierce. The only thing that makes her life bearable is: she's not the only one on the team.
Check Please! | 14,353 words | Rating: PG-13 | Kent/OFC
Andrea, the OFC lead, is awesome. She's a queer woman who's played college hockey and has a continuing interest in women's hockey, so the CWHL comes up in this story, as does minor hockey, as do rec league opportunities because those are all things that are part of her life in some way. She and Kent bond and they're careful with each other, which is really excellent, and there's character growth, too. This story was satisfying on multiple levels.

How I Don't Know What I Should Do With My Hands When I Talk to You by Chash
Summary: When Bellamy turns eighteen, he finds out his soulmate is some guy named Clarke Griffin. Which means he has to figure out how he feels about dating guys.
The 100 | 9,117 words | Rating: R | Clarke/Bellamy
Fluff, essentially. A fic about Bellamy's voyage to feeling comfortable in his sexuality and being prepared to meet his soulmate. Also featuring being friends with an ex. Mostly an interesting exploration of the soulmate trope through the name causing a gender mix-up and meeting your friend's soulmate before they do.

Sure of You by shiningartifact
Summary: In Gee's senior year of college, waking up with sex hair and a vague memory of the girl who gave it to her is just another Friday morning. She's fine with that. She is. And then she meets Frank.
Bandom | 10,938 words | Rating: NC-17 | Frank/Gerard
Gee deals with the weirdness of being in a relationship with someone you wouldn't have expected, and how being a woman in a relationship with a man makes some people think you're straight, and how that feels when you're not. There's also all of that youthful insecurity and the logistics of having a sexual relationship while in a dorm - there's a lot of sex in this - and starting to plan your life together. It feels real.

This post is for snowflake_challenge. Details about the tenth day are here.