Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer...

Challenge #15: How Did the Fandom Snowflake Challenge Go? Did you get all you wanted to get from it? Are there things you're going to carry with you for as long as you can? Are you going to continue to challenge yourself? Continue to connect?

I think it went pretty well. I completed most of the challenges, and the ones that I didn't it was merely because I didn't know how to answer them. Honestly, although I know there is no deadline, I do sometimes feel like there is this pressure to be on time with everyone else answering them. That's more on me than anything though, internalizing a timetable that doesn't exist, and I know I need to let that go. So, I most likely will be returning to at least a couple of them in the near future once I figure out how to conduct my thoughts properly without stressing over it too much.

In the meantime, I'm still going through the various challenges to read and comment on the entries posted from others, something that I highly enjoy doing. This is why I love snowflake_challenge, as it not only encourages participation on their own time but it also allows people in the fandom community to interact and connect with each other, and even befriend one another. Plus, I get a lot of motivation and inspiration from others throughout the challenge, and it jump starts my own creativity.

Challenge #06: Top 10 Challenge. The category(ies) you choose are up to you.

( Top Ten OTPs. )

( Top Ten Favorite Pieces of Underrated/Less Talked About Media )

This got way longer than I had intended. I tried to be concise with the second category but, y'know, when you're a fan of something you want to be thorough.

Challenge #09: Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

I'm skipping around the challenge a bit since I'm still constructing my answers for the other ones as I'm way behind at the moment, but this one is one that I know I can answer easily since I definitely have a lot of favorite tropes. I answered last years trope challenge with only one specific trope which I still maintain is a top favorite in recent years, but this will be a more extensive list. Mind you, not all my favorites as that would take forever, just a handful.

( Tropes, tropes, glorious tropes.... )

Challenge #02: Loosely defined! Post about your pets, pets from your canon, anything you want!

After thinking on this one, I decided to tweak this prompt a bit and focus on animal companions from fictional stories that I love.

( My favorite fictional animal companions. )

++ We had rainstorms from Christmas all through New Years, which was a great present for me because, yay rain and thunder! Unfortunately, our backyard did get a little flooded because of how intense the downpour was (it cleared up within hours, don't worry) and a lot of stuff did get blown around the backyard....one item actually flew out from our backyard and across the street. So, that was fun to retrieve. With that being said, it was a pretty chill Christmas and we welcomed 2026 with minimal fireworks due to the rain.

++ There is a New Years friending meme currently up and active.

++ I will be participating in this years snowflake_challenge, something I've enjoyed doing in previous years and last year was one that I was very active in commenting on other people's posts on various challenges which was fun. I'll be doing that again this year, I just need to find the right moment to do so because I've been kind of stressed this week alone with some personal things that I truly haven't had enough time to actually sit down and write something.

++ VERY IMPORTANT NEWS: I don't know how widespread this is at the moment, but it seems that LiveJournal is undergoing a recent change that will drastically affect all users, including Russian users. denise has already made a post welcoming Russian users who are importing their journals from LJ to DW due to this situation, but she has also appeared in various individual places in fandom communities imploring all people who still have access to their LJ accounts (personal journals or communities) to backup/import them to DW immediately. This is quite literally an LJ Exodus 2.0, but this does seem like this could really be final for many people, especially if they're attempting to gatekeep the website from anyone who isn't Russian or complies with Russian law, which isn't surprising considering the way things have been going since the ownership change years ago but it's still devastating to witness all the same. The fact that LJ used to be incredibly lively and has, gradually overtime, turned into a virtual graveyard of what once was a rich and thriving website featuring various communities (fandom, personal, other subcultures) is heartbreaking, and to lose all of that history would be even more so.

If you still have an LJ account please back it up, and if you know someone who does still have access to their account(s) also please notify them of this so they can also back up their information while they still can. Either importing to DW, saving and transporting fanfic to AO3, using the Wayback Machine, whatever possibility is available to preserve LJ/fandom history.