Fandom Snowflake 2021: Challenge #15

[scrubjayspeaks]

Challenge #15; talk about Your Snowflake Experience.

I know I'm inconsistent in responding to challenges. The casual ones usually get done, while the ones that require either making something on the spot or doing research get skipped. Increasingly, I am disinclined to feel guilty about this. I look forward to the event every year, and every year I only do as much as I like. That's...sort of part of the appeal?

I love the lack of pressure. I love that I can be "lazy" and still come away at the end of the month with new posts and new interactions that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Over the last several years, I've slowly had to make peace with approaching fandom as I am, not as I wish I were.

I don't always have a lot of time, and I don't necessarily want to spend the time I do on the parts of fandom that feel like work--for me, that's writing in particular. Maybe that's a strange way to think of it. Why would any of fandom be work? But creating fanworks of any sort is labor, even if you find it joyous work. And the fact is, it's been a while since I really wanted to engage in that work for any fandom.

I've struggled to figure out what it means to me to be fannish still if I'm not creating fanworks. That was, after all, the primary mode of my fannish engagement since I entered my first fandom lo these many years ago. I've talked about this a few times before, and it's still something I actively think about a lot.

It feels selfish to just read fanfic, to look at gif sets, to reblog meta posts. Surely I'm required to give something (more than comments and tag squee) to count as a fan. And yet. I can't make myself be that. Not right now.

I guess I like that the Snowflake Challenge will meet me where I am lately. It doesn't ask for more than I can give.