I love the winter...

snowflake_challenge  - Day 13



Can you rec a reccer? I think I do. Especially when they are a creator of so many more things.

turlough regularly posts recs for art, icons, graphics in bandom and classic Doctor Who and creates graphics and icons as well.

I really like her weekly recs for fics. She makes those posts special by including a paragraph or two of the story ("Quotation of the week"). Often the fic is one that's a bit older so I haven't read it yet and the few sentences in her posts make me curious. I'm always looking forward to her posts because with few exceptions I've always loved what she invited me to read.

snowflake_challenge  - Day 11



I'm not creating so much that I need special resources other than Google.

But for info on fannish things I keep coming to the fannish wiki-site, fanlore.

Quote from the site itself: "Fanlore is a collaborative site by, for, and about fans and fan communities that create and consume fanworks. Here, you can read about fan activities, fannish vocabulary, and the histories of fan communities -- and add your own voice, memories, and experiences to our collective story."

snowflake_challenge  - Day 7



This is quite difficult because I'm reading a broad variety of stories. I don't actively look for certain tropes. When my favourite authors release something new, I'm going to read it. But, yes, there are some tropes/clichés or themes I enjoy very much. My rec-list-bookmarking-system is non-existent, therefore I included recs that I was able to find.



Threesomes

I *might have mentioned this some time before. I'm not so sure why I like reading about it, but I'm curious about the dynamics, in and out of bed. It doesn't always have to be a three-way-lovestory, I also like reading about couples with a best friend.

"Everybody Get Up (We're Here To Get Down)" by sunsetmog is porn with feelings (which is probably also a trope/theme I like. I wrote some stories I called PWI - porn with issues-  which I also like a lot).



Pining, misunderstandings

The first fics I read were those friends-to-lovers-pining-going-on-forever stories, and I still love them. I love having my heart torn apart until the happy ending.



AUs

I prefer to read about the bandom guys and girls being in their bands. But because there are AUs out there, I read them. And a lot of those stories are wonderful.

The Killjoys-verse is an AU itself, created by My Chemical Romance in their album and videos, but the writers in fandom have developed the canon for me. And it's not even a consistent canon. Sometimes the musicians are the Killjoys, sometimes they exist in addition to them. And I don't mind because every story I read is great, builds its own world, but adds to the universe as a whole.

I can't speak of Killjoys AU and not rec "The Sharpest Lives" series by akamine_chan . It shaped my knowledge and love for this universe.
Recently I read "Set Fire to the Bones" by Chibifukurou who created a different but very intriguing world for the Killjoys.

But apart from that, I also really enjoy the odd Coffeeshop-AU or College-AU with everybody in bandom turning up as some character. They are usually quirky and fun.



Spencer Smith POV

I'm making it a trope if it isn't already one.
Spencer Smith is the drummer in Panic! At The Disco. I love reading stories where he's the only reasonable one in the band. I love him when he's sarcastic and grumpy. It's the best when he's pining (preferably after Brendon). There are many best-friend stories about that band that are brilliant. I usually like when people switch roles, but when Spencer's a caring top - nngh!

"Put Your Finger On My Trigger" by greedy_dancer is the best example of the latter.

snowflake_challenge  - Day 5


My online name, winterlover, has nothing to do with any of the fandoms I'm in. I wanted to choose one that's relatively neutral so that the name would not go "out of fashion". Of course it has a special source, but not a too obvious one. My LOTR-fan friend would disagree, haha.
I use InsaneJournal mostly to communicate with my first group of fandom-friends and have made my Dreamwidth journal more about bandom. I'm not really active on Livejournal, I have that account to be able to comment. I use the same name on all my fannish platforms (sometimes spelt differently because the original had been taken). My twitter account is private and I only look at tumblr, I don't blog myself.

(I thought I wrote about my fannish origin already in one of the past years, but I can't find the entry, so there might be repeats.)

When I was a teenager I wrote things. They were mostly self-inserted (Mary Sue?) love stories, but original ones. I also wrote poems and lyrics.
I'm a big music-fan and got obsessed with David Bowie when I was 15. I found other Bowie-fans to communicate with (in pre-internet-times) and we met up for gigs and fan-parties or conventions and I'm still friends with some of them. I've broadened my interests to other music now, but I don't see this as being in a fandom. It's real life for me: buying records, listening to music, going to gigs.

I found out about fanfiction through one of my Bowie-friends. We both liked to watch gay movies or read stories with gay content. We shared videotapes and books. One time she copied me a non-explicit, romantic story which turned out to be Kirk/Spock fanfiction. I still have it somewhere.

I found out about online fanfiction very late. A friend was/is a big LOTR Frodo/Sam fan and she told me about Livejournal and the stories she was reading. I was curious, because of the m/m content, but soon found out that I wasn't too keen on Hobbit-slash. But at least now I knew what slash was. I read some Harry Potter fic, which I liked most when the sex-scenes were written well.

I like to watch TV and movies and read books, but I'm not a natural shipper. That's why I preferred to watch movies or TV-shows that already had gay characters.

One of the TV shows was German daily soap "Alles Was Zählt". I didn't watch regularly but I knew about the gay storyline which lead me to searching for it on Youtube. And I found more than I was looking for: a whole community, not only Germans but people from all over the world enjoyed watching subtitled episodes provided to us by the lovely "EskimoKissProject" (EKP).
First I only laughed about the hilarious summaries by the lovely uploaders and about the funny comment section, but soon I found out about their community on InsaneJournal. Their enthusiasm and input made me delurk and get involved. I found a group of friends who had my kind of humour, were no tinhats and wrote brilliant fanfic. This was the first time I was inspired to write fanfiction myself, to expand on the storyline, continue scenes or write an alternate reality (*coughsthreesomecoughs*).

Unfortunately the storyline of that soap was discontinued and the TV station forced EKP to take all episodes off YouTube. And now the fannish enthusiasm in the show has faded or moved on. I'm still friends with the wonderful core of that community, we also met in person more than once, but there are other subjects we talk about now, our other interests or fandoms are more varied.

I wasn't looking for a new fandom after that, but for more fanfic to read. I was spoilt with the brilliant writing of "my" fandom, so I didn't want to risk reading too much bad fic to find the good ones. I resorted to reading work that had been podficced. I thought that if someone wants to read a fic out loud and record it, the writing can't be too bad. And I was right. I found great fic. First I read lots in the Adam Lambert fandom. I followed some of the writers into bandom. I say "follow", but I was late to everything. I've only been reading since 2013, but so I had plenty of older fics to choose from.

And this is the embarrassing part where I admit that I came into bandom not because of the bands or their music, but because of the fic. I fell in love with the characters, with how they were written. Only recently, after everyone came out of their hiatus, I'm also learning more about the "real people", but I'm not actively searching for RL stuff.

All this is certainly part of the reason why I'm not confident in my writing yet. Am I even allowed to write about people I really know nothing about? Because I'm no *REAL fan? But I'm a fan of the subject. I love to read about bands, gangs, musicians on stage, on tour, in vans, in busses, in hotels and the resulting drama. And there are lots of amazing AUs that I didn't expect to love so much.

And I also discovered a lovely and welcoming community in bandom. That's reason enough for me to try and take part whenever I feel able to.

snowflake_challenge  - Day 3



This has actually always been my biggest problem: if I  HAVE to be creative then I can't be, if I MUST have an idea, then I can't think of any. It was a problem at school, at uni and even at work. That's why I shy away from writing-challenges. Too much pressure. It works better with art. At least my recent participation in bandom_holidays was a lot of fun for me.

@gerardway tweeted today: "Any time I make any kind of art- paint, music, writing-I like it at first, then I hate it,then I stick it out, then I love it"

I'm not very good at sticking it out yet, so my writings are mostly very short, but I'm going through the other phases he mentions as well. In the end I'm only putting out what I really love, so even if noone else might like it, at least I will.

I'm not constantly creative, but when I have an idea I cannot stop until I have written it down or made the first draft. An inspiration can be something I'm suddenly thinking about, a prompt, a tweet, anything actually. I don't have much time for creativity outside of my long work-days, so I'm patient and don't try to force it.

My biggest motivation to create are my own ideas and of course I love positive feedback, be it kudos or comments. But what I found out over the last years is that being in a community with other people being creative and excited about what they do also helps me a lot. When I see filled prompts in bandom_meme I feel inspired to try things myself. When my small circle of the first fandom that I was in held the Drabble Day challenge, releasing prompts every hour for one day, I started to have ideas, even if there were only sixty minutes until the next prompt.

The snowflake_challenge  also motivates me because it shows the fannish-enthusiasm of so many people and therefore it's a wonderful way to start the new year.

snowflake_challenge - Day 1



1)  Artwork and icons
Today also is the reveal of the creators for the bandom_holidays fanwork exchange, so I can link to what I created for this challenge:

Artwork and Icons for were_duck

I had written some Killjoys Haikus before and was inspired by them to make the artwork and add two more haikus just for were_duck.


2)  Drabbles
I seem to have the best ideas but cannot write long storylines for them. That's why I like drabbles so much. They're only 100 words, not too many possibilities for grammar-mistakes, but they still tell a story. That's what I try to accomplish.
I found out about this through two Drabble Days, organized by dear friends. Those challenges were great fun and I'm still happy about what I created:

My Drabble Days


3)  Fic
I have written longer pieces. If "longer" means about 1000 words. One fic, actually.
It's for the first fandom I actually participated in, "Alles Was Zählt", a German soap with a gay storyline.
It's revealing or defining as it's explicit and about a threesome, and I like explicit fics about threesomes.

Wait