potentiality_26

Challenge #3

Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

Dear Fandom,

Ever since I was a homesick fourteen year old with access to fast internet for the first time, you've been my constant companion. Hubs may come and go, specific fandoms too, but the idea of finding a book or a show or a movie, finding something to love and wanting to talk and talk, and read and read, and write and write, is always there.

Thank you for the over 800k words I've written and shared over the years. Thank you for the friends I've made, the skills I've learned, and the hours I've spent with something wonderful to think about instead of what was scary or sad in my life just then. Thank you for the distraction. Thank you for the joy.

Here's to all the loves I've found with you, and all the loves I've yet to find!

Love,
potentiality_26

(Writing this put me in mind of a post I made for the challenge last year about my fannish origin story. Check it out if you're interested!)

Challenge #1

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

Hi, I'm potentiality_26, and I do the Snowflake Challenge to get myself back into posting here on DW, which I often forget to do for weeks or months (or more!) at a time. Last year's challenge was quite interesting because it inspired me to return to an old fandom (Kingsman), though it also sent me back to Tumblr (oops). 

Can't wait to see what this year brings!  

Challenge #11

In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme.

Only one??? Impossible! I love tropes, so it's a tough one.

I think Pining/Seemingly Unrequited Love is probably my favorite. Though I'll definitely give Established Relationship fics a go if they look interesting, getting into a character's headspace while they agonizingly long for someone they think couldn't possibly feel the same way is my jam.

A lot of the other tropes I love are, in a way, offshoots of my love for that one. I like pretty much all the #problematic relationship tropes - Enemies to Lovers, Age Difference, Incest - because they offer so many delicious reasons they shouldn't want to be together.

Then there's also Fake Dating, Bed Sharing, Trapped Together... all that good forced proximity while just yearning. 

And then of course Sex Pollen, Fuck or Die, Forced Marriage... where things might get even more intense while the feelings are still unresolved.

(So, one answer and many at the same time. What else is new?)

Challenge #9

In your own space, create a fanwork.

I wrote an Astrid double drabble.

( Episode tag for 10.000 mètres )

Challenge #6

Share your favourite piece of original canon.

This is a tough one every time I do the challenge because it means I have pick a canon, and my interests are all over the place. So this year I'm going to narrow my focus by specifically choosing a small piece of a larger canon with which I am disproportionately fascinated. It is appropriately an episode called "Part of a Whole."

For those who don't know, which is probably most people, New Tricks is a mystery series about aging, formerly retired police officers solving cold cases. It's a fun show with lots of spot-the-actor opportunities if you've had a 70s and 80s British TV phase, which I have. Anyway, I like it a lot but I didn't really feel fannish about it until I became obsessed with Stephen Fisher, a minor character who is in only three episodes, the last of which being "Part of a Whole."

The even more minor character of Jane Ross, who's only in this one episode, totally captured me. The dialogue between Jane and Stephen absolutely glitters. The shipping potential of Stephen and Robert Strickland is spectacular. There's just so much story between the lines in this one episode. Is it mostly in my head? Maybe. Does that matter? Not really.

Anyway, I wrote a fic and I have a couple of other WIPs.

Challenge #4

Since this is the start of a new year, this challenge will be to set your own goals! Of course we can all make large or ambitious goals, remember that small and/or short goals are also good!

My goals for 2025:

1) Post more fics this year than I did in 2024. (Four is the number to beat!)

2) Do a round-up post each month about what I'm reading/watching/writing/etc.

3) Turn the page of the calendar every month. (A resolution I had mixed success with last year, lol) 

Challenge #2

In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story.

I definitely came up in the "on the internet no one knows you're a dog" school of thought, so the idea of Dating Myself in this fashion is a little scary, but you know what? Let's do this, it'll be fun.

So it all started when I went to boarding school at fourteen. Before that the internet was both a wild confusing place and a boring slog because of dial-up -- but at school I had my own laptop, a class on how to use it, and fast internet. Now I don't remember how I ended up there, but my first fannish activities were those personality quizzes -- like, "Which [fandom] character are you?" but also "Which pairing are you?" Initially these were Harry Potter Quizilla quizzes, but I also remember a Les Miserables website with them that I spent a huge amount of time on. Anyway, I didn't know fanfiction was a thing until one of the quizzes had the question, "Where do you read fanfiction?" And I was like, "???" and ended up on good ol' Fanfiction.net where I read and eventually wrote some stories for -- this will shock you -- Harry Potter and Les Miz.

After a while I didn't use it much anymore, and also I was hiding from an HP chapterfic I had started posting but was never gonna finish (equally shocking, I'm sure), so I let it lapse for a couple of years and I don't connect myself with the FF.net account anymore. (In the extremely unlikely circumstance that you can find said account based on this information, no you can't).

I was in college and the throes of a Stargate obsession when I started my livejournal, and I still use the same default icon I opened that account with to this day. I made it in about ten minutes and it shows, but I can't seem to part with it. That is My Face on the Internet.

I think I'll keep which to myself for now in case I crash and burn, but I have had an idea for a fic already.

And it's the kind of fic idea where you go from prompt to premise to imagining the 5k-at-least of background you'll need to justify the premise all within like one hour, so it might even be a big one. 
  

Title: Rushing Headlong
Fandom: Good Omens
Pairing/Characters: Aziraphale/Crowley
Summary: Things are changing a little too fast for Aziraphale's taste.
Rating: PG
Length: Short (1543 words)
Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me.
Notes/Warnings: I thought about tagging this for the book too, but I haven't read it in fifteen years and need to be honest about what this is. The TV adaptation was great fun and I'm getting on that train. Fills my 100fandoms table prompt #12 (new) and my hc_bingo "hugs" square. Not Brit-picked.
Excerpt:
The apocalypse-that-wasn't was still fresh in Aziraphale's mind, and he spent the drive mainly luxuriating in the ‘still here’ of it all. That sweet shop down the way he had always liked? Still here. The stationary shop he often patronized? Still here. More importantly, his own shop, just waiting for him to return of an evening? Still here. And- more importantly still- Crowley in the car next to him, obeying the rules of the road for once? Still here. Everything could go back to normal.

But then, even through that contented haze, a niggling voice in the back of his mind turned strident and began to sound awfully like Gabriel. It wanted to know just how likely to go back to normal everything really was.

On AO3