rodo's journal

Because RL kind of got in the way a lot this week, here’s two for one!

( Challenge #9: Rec Us Your Newest Thing. - My Man Is Cupid )



( Challenge #10 – five actors/actresses I’ll watch a lot of dramas I wouldn’t usually watch for )

snowflake_challenge: Challenge #15:
In your own space, opine on the future of fandom.

So, this is a bit difficult for me, since I haven’t really had my finger anywhere near the pulse of fandom in over a decade, and I’ve happily been doing my own thing at the fringes every since, but I’ll give it a try.

1. Fandom will continue to mostly congregate around franchises and/or remakes. This is partly due to the fact that genuinely original canons seem to get more and more rare these days, but also due to the fact that the built-in sense of community an existing fandom provides helps organise people.

2. East Asian live action canons are going to increase in popularity. This is going to happen in bursts, whenever there’s a new canon coming out that hits the nerve of fandom, as has happened in the last couple of years. Western producers are going to try to cash in on the hype and miserably fail to adapt one of these canons in a western way at least once, because they don’t get why people love the original in the first place.

3. At some point, the social media fandom sphere might collapse or at least diminish because the business model of social media is going to come into conflict with political and legal realities around the globe, such as consumer protection laws, worker protection laws, laws against certain types of hate speech and so on – and managing those types of requirements would require more money than the advertising-based business model brings in (and no, algorithms aren’t going to solve the problem because they’re not good enough to keep pace with humans yet.)

Take all of these with a huge grain of salt because I’m shit at predicting stuff, and also, things might turn out very differently if there’s a war with China.

snowflake_challenge: Challenge #9:
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.

I wrote a fic! Well, a longfic, I write other kinds of fic pretty often, so that’s not news. But this one is 77k, which dwarfs any of the other fics I’ve finished so far, the longest of which is 24k. I’ve drafts that are longer, but the really difficult part for me is finishing those drafts and then polishing them up a little.

Of course, the fic hasn’t been posted yet because it really needs a beta, and since it’s for Carnival Row, my chances of finding someone who can check for more than SPAG is pretty low. So, it’s up to anyone’s guess if I’ll ever publish the fic, but even if I don’t, I finally have a longfic to read in a fandom that has zero.

snowflake_challenge: Challenge #4
In your own space, add something to your fandom’s canon.

In Rogue One: Cassian and Jyn kiss, either on the elevator or when they die. It totally happened off-screen and I won’t hear otherwise. (Okay, that last bit was half a joke. But only half.)

snowflake_challenge: Challenge #2
In your own space, write a promo, manifesto or primer for your fave character, ship or fandom.

Okay, it was really hard to choose which of my fandoms to advertise, since almost all of them are tiny, but for this post, I’m going with Carnival Row, since the next season is finally going to come out next month.

What is Carnival Row: It’s an eight-episode (so far) TV series by Amazon which focusses on Inspector Rycroft Philostrate, a policeman in The Burgue, a city that finds itself an unwilling refuge for fantasy creatures of many different kinds, leading to all the usual tensions between the newcomers and the humans. The plot kicks off when Philo’s old flame arrives in the city as a refugee and Philo gets drawn into the investigation of a series of murders that is far more dangerous than it seems at first.

Why you should watch Carnival Row:

• Philo (as played by a scruffy Orlando Bloom) is an A+ stoic woobie.
• The world building is really interesting, even if a lot of it is only touched on in passing. It’s a fantasy series, but it focusses on a London-inspired city circa 1900.
• some wonderful minor storylines that get some screen time, such as the cross-species romance between an upper-class lady and a faun, an actor and his troupe of kobold actors, and the Chancellor’s disappointment of a son getting some development.
• Not (just) your usual fantasy creatures: it’s fairies, fauns, centaurs and giant trolls, and unlike with other storylines about oppression and fantasy races, the other races’ differences don’t pose an inherent threat to the humans at all (which can sometimes make it seem as if the oppression is justified).
• A solid mystery that I, at least, found rather satisfying.

Challenge #10: In your own space, rec a fanwork (fic, art, vid, playlist, anything!) you did not create.

An Impending Storm (78075 words) by lordsofandunie
Chapters: 25/25
Fandom: 天盛长歌 | The Rise of Phoenixes (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ning Yi/Feng Zhiwei, 宁弈/凤知微
Characters: Ning Yi, 宁弈, Feng Zhiwei, 凤知微, Zhuyin, 珠茵, Gu Nanyi, 顾南衣, Qiu Mingying, 秋明缨, Yan Huashi, 燕怀石, Xin Ziyan, 辛子砚, Ning Cheng, 宁澄, Ya Le, 雅乐
Additional Tags: Romance, Drama, cdrama, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, AU, Dark, Scheming, Politics, YiWei, ning yi x feng zhiwei, an extension of 'fate intervened'
Summary:

The only daughter of Emperor Ai falls in love with a rebel lord's son as they manoeuvre through the plots of the court of a crumbling empire. While Ning Yi prepares for the overthrow of a dynasty, Zhiwei harbours imperial ambitions of her own and the pair grow closer scheming with and against each other.

So, I really like Canon Divergence AUs, and this fandom needs more of them. This one is my favourite, though. It diverges pre-canon, actually, with the rebellion of Ning Yi’s father failing. I really liked the bits where Feng Zhiwei plots and schemes against her crazy family in a way that shows being royal just royally sucks.

Challenge #8: In your own space, celebrate a personal win from the past year

For me personally, 2021 didn’t actually suck. Shocker, I know, but neither did 2020. Guess I’m just good at pandemics. Anyway, I actually did a couple of things that I’d count as a personal win, but I’m going to mention the one I’m most proud, which I already mentioned in an earlier post. I hit my GYWO target! 75K a year might not sound like a lot to a lot of people, but for me, it is.

For those who don’t know: getyourwordsout is a community that offers you a yearly writing commitment. There’s several pledges (habit – where you sign up to write a certain number of days – and word count, where 75k is the lowest level) and you check in once a month with your progress. It was actually really helpful in getting me working on stuff, not all of which was published. And this year’s sign-ups are still open for one or two more days (time zones can be confusing and I don’t want to math right now), so if this sounds like your thing, try it! The worst that can happen is that you don’t make your target, which is probably what’s already happening anyway.

Title: One Way Ticket
Fandom: Snowdrop
Author: rodo
Length: 367 words
Rating: 0+
Genre: introspection, episode-related
Pairing: Lim Soo-ho/Eun Yeong-ro
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to JTBC and Disney+
A/N: Snowflake Challenge #6: In your own space, Create something. Since my only talent is fic writing and I'm strapped for time during the week - have a little introspective oneshot I wrote at work today.

Summary: A look at Lim Soo-ho's feelings during his meeting(s) with Eun Yeong-ro in episode 1.


( A touch was all it took. )

Challenge #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.

1. I just want Carnival Row to have a fandom. Any fandom, I don’t even care if it’s relevant to my interest. Even the person who keeps posting wacky AUs that are very much not my thing makes me feel less lonely, just by posting.

2. I wish it were easier to find a beta, so if you’re up to it, join betaplease, make a ff.net beta profile or respond to requests you see elsewhere. Or check out my Looking for a Beta post (there’s currently only a Musketeers fic on it.)

3. Is there a DW comm for Korean dramas? Or any place that’s free and asynchronous where you can discuss Korean dramas like an adult?