#dreamwidth challenge

[divinemissem13]

The Shots You Don't Take

2024 Eight Character No True Pair Challenge Fandom: Star Trek Voyager Pair: Kathryn Janeway & Tom Paris Word count: 379 Prompt: one in a million

Kathryn watches the look of panic rise on Tom's face as he analyzes the pool table and she can't help but tease him a little. "I'll tell you what, if you can make this shot, you can have your second pip back."

"Seriously? That shot is nearly impossible! One in a million, at least!"

"I could make it," she declares.

"I'd like to see you try," Tom huffs in response. He knows she's a great pool player, but this shot? There's no way!

"Alright," she agrees confidently. She leans over the table to set up her shot but before taking it, she looks up at the ensign. "What do I get when I make it?"

"Uh… replicator rations?" A raised eyebrow tells Tom that was the wrong answer. "What do you want? My last pip??" Tom groans in frustration.

Kathryn focuses her attention back to the table, lining up the cue just right as she responds. "For the next talent night, Tuvok asked me to read a scene with him from a play he's been writing." She leans over the cue and looks up at Tom. "When I sink this shot, you'll volunteer to read with him instead."

If Tuvok's poetry is any indication, this could be quite the punishment. But Tom looks at the balls on the table again. The eight ball sits directly between the pocket and the last stripe. There's no way to get one in without the other. Tom boldly meets his captain's eyes with a confident, steely gaze. "Deal."

Without even looking back at the table, Kathryn sinks the shot.

Tom's mouth hangs open like a fish while Kathryn orders the computer to reset the table to the previous configuration. "Your move, Ensign," she grins, offering him her stick.

Tom is so flustered that he not only misses the shot but he also rips a hole in the felt with his pool cue.

"Tuvok will be expecting you for a rehearsal tonight at 2000," Kathryn smirks, patting Tom consolingly on the shoulder. With that, she exits the holodeck, leaving Tom to contemplate all of the mistakes he's made in his life to bring him to this moment: a Starfleet ensign, lost in the Delta Quadrant, about to star in the latest Vulcan contemporary theatrical experience.

[freedvmrouge]

Written for Bunnywing Bash on dreamwidth; recip elasticella

Prompt:

Dick, batfam gen after the bunnywing adventure, rabbits in the wilds of gotham/bludhaven/wherever start following dick (very good with damian adopting them all and rabbits taking over the wayne mansion)

fandom: wayne family adventures.

character(s): dick grayson, tim drake, damian wayne, bruce wayne.

word count: 688.

tags & warnings: pov dick grayson, magic shenanigans, dick is like the bunny whisperer, the wayne affliction to adoption.

It takes two weeks for Dick to realize.

Bunnies have been congregating around his feet, hopping up on his shoulders and chewing on his arms, and it still took him two weeks to realize.

It’s an embarrassingly long period of time, he knows. It won’t stop his siblings from laughing at him, but he supposes that’s just what siblings do. Tim in particular is having the time of his life.

He sighs into his hands.

“Please tell me Damian isn’t here,” he groans. “He’s going to adopt every single bunny and then Bruce is gonna yell at me, and then Alf is gonna subtly withhold cookies from me or hide my cereal or—”

“TT. Have these bunnies been fed yet? Irresponsible, Richard.”

Dick’s head snaps up and he just knows how wild and panicked his eyes look. He’s had wild bunnies popping out of the woodwork and following him around for two weeks. He’s been getting questions from civilians and coworkers alike. Even when someone else plays with them, they rush to follow Dick as soon as he leaves the room. ‘Stressed’ doesn’t even begin to cover his emotions right now.

He watches in mounting horror as Damian begins to repurpose Bat-Cow’s hay to make bunny nests. It’s an adorable sight. Dick wants to pull out his phone and record this all for posterity.

In his peripheral vision, he finds Tim doing just that from a particularly safe distance away; non-grabbing or sword-swinging distance, specifically. Tim’s holding his laughter behind a gloved hand, already so red in the face, Dick idly wonders how the boy hides anything behind his pallor. 

“Damian,” he starts. He needs to tell his kid brother that these bunnies aren’t staying and that he came here to the Batcave to call for help. Dick needs to contact Zatanna immediately to get rid of his bunny… affliction doesn’t sound right. Issue, let’s go with issue.

This has to be some side effect of that magical mishap last month. He took to being a bunny pretty easily — you kind of need to be able to quickly adapt to your situations as a vigilante — but he was always under the impression that he would return to humanoid form without too much hassle. Zatanna knew the problem and fixed it super easily after all.

The roar of the batmobile does a great job of spurring him out of his thoughts. 

He sees Bruce in all his Batman glory freeze in the safety of his vehicle. Dick can only imagine what’s going through the man’s mind. The manor has doubled as an animal sanctuary at this point. Dick still has nary a clue where Goliath the dragon bat came from. Anyone who knows the origin story treats it as some kind of taboo. Or they just get that thousand-yard stare, and frankly, that concerns him more than anything.

“You will be named Antony,” Damian says to the bunny that’s primarily white with beige coloring over its face and floppy ears. 

“Oh no,” it’s starting. 

The batmobile’s door swings open, and it appears that Bruce realized what just occurred and was likewise spurred into action. The man’s lips form around the kid’s name, and sound comes out of it… this doesn’t stop Damian from naming another three bunnies with various fur patterns.

Dick quickly realizes that each name comes from a historical ruler of some sort. Big names for small, fluffy bunnies.

Tim continues to contain his laughter— trying and failing, that is.

Dick whispers to some kind of god in a prayer for help. There’s an animal or child god somewhere, he’s pretty sure Donna’s told him before.

“We are not keeping bun— more animals in the manor, Damian.” 

Bruce sounds firm, all hidden away in the character that is Batman, the Dark Knight, but Dick watches in slow motion how one pleading look on the kid’s face changes the whole game completely.

Bruce darts a sharp look over at Dick, which hey! This is absolutely not his fault! Then he says with a voice that brokers no retaliation; “You will be informing Alfred about these new developments, Dick.”

[what-have-i-unleashed]

does utmv/utdr fandom have a prompt meme challenge kind of thing?

[rosemirmir]

You really are the daughter of a traitor.

[sisterdivinium]

Guilt served as comfortable bed sheet, as did darkness — the price for the sacrilege of love.

But a mischievous light shone briefly from outside and Jillian perceived the shapes of the woman she had spent the night adoring: scars, dimples, hair and fat which she only loved all the more, growing ashamed of her shame, of hiding her own mangled arm.

Then she saw the thin, injured skin of Suzannes’s knees and understood.

She could not hide from God.

Jillian dropped to her own knees, cursing the cross, defying it; worshipping her lover with new passion under His resentful eye.

[case-of-traxits]

No True Pair Writing Prompts

So, for anyone unfamiliar, No True Pair is a community over on Dreamwidth that features fanwork prompts. From their community profile:

no_true_pair is, loosely, a mad-libs-style challenge. You make a list of characters, a set of prompts is posted that uses all the characters in different combinations, and you create works using those characters. For example, if your list contained Darth Vader and Mickey Mouse as numbers 2 and 4, there could be a prompt like "2 & 4 go out for coffee" or "4 invites 2 out for dinner, except..." and you'd write Darth Vader and Mickey Mouse going out for coffee, or Mickey Mouse inviting Darth Vader out for dinner and then going from there.

Now, if this sounds interesting to you because you like writing prompts, awesome! I made a spreadsheet of all the prompts available so far (383 prompts available so far, excluding round 10, which was a "by popular demand" rerun of older prompts). The community is super awesome and has an AO3 collection, so if you're interested, you should absolutely give it a whirl! I'm going to explain how it works here.

The Spreadsheet

(The section header is linked to the sheet if you're looking for it)

The first page of the spreadsheet is the instruction sheet. It includes links to everything and explanations of how the community works. You can see the prompts by clicking the "tabs" down there across the bottom.

If you have a Google Account and you want to play, you should go to "File" and "Make a Copy" to save a copy of it to your own Google Drive so that you can edit the lists. (See below screenshot.)

If you do not have a Google Account, no worries! You can go to "File" and "Download" the sheet to save a local copy that you can use. (See below screenshot.)

Once you've done that, go to one of the tabs at the bottom to pick a round. I'm going to use Round 8 in this example.

The Round Sheets

The round sheets look like this. You have a section at the top for your character list, and then the prompts are in the bottom.

You make a list of characters.

And then the prompts will auto-populate with their names.

And you can pick whatever you like to go forth and write! Now, obviously, I'm an FF7 writer, but you can do any fandom for this community. Or OCs! They're very welcoming.

Once again, you can find the spreadsheet here if you're interested!

GO FORTH AND WRITE, EVERYONE!

[anghraine]

I meant to mention it earlier, but the yearly Snowflake challenge is going on at Dreamwidth and started yesterday! It's a sort of day by day meme for the entire month of January, with a prompt every other day for something to do or write about on Dreamwidth.

There's no deadline or expectations, really, so it's fine to skip individual days or go back later and do prompts after the day they were posted, though it's really a January event in terms of fandom activity. I've always wanted to do it and always got distracted by other things, so I'm trying to do all the prompts this year. We'll see.

The first challenge (per the link) is to update your Dreamwidth profile/profile post. When I went to change my actual profile, I realized I had ... never updated it, as far as I can tell? I've had an account since 2009, and I still had my interests listed as what they were when I made my account and had never gotten around to the mini-bio at all. So I updated my interests and wrote up a little fandom blurb and posted about it for yesterday's challenge.

[greaseonmymouth]

pledging for GYWO 2024 is open! I’ve pledged again - I’ve done GYWO since 2012 and this year is the second year I’ve completed a pledge (first time was in 2018) though I’ve come close a few times and also some years fallen very short of the mark.

There are several pledge types and throughout the year (and the month) there are various voluntary activities one can participate in to stay motivated. Only mandatory thing is the formal check-in every month.

I’ve seen whispers on here wrt people wanting to check out or go back to dreamwidth; if you are writing minded then this community could be a great way to use dreamwidth more actively and connect with people.

[stickers-on-a-laptop]

being afraid that the fic won't be 500 words and then reaching over 1k with the ending nowhere in sight

[alexcat45]

Join Fandom 50 for 2024

What are you fannish about? ♥ Movies? ♥ Hedgehogs? ♥ Baking? ♥ Fictional characters?

Why not post about all of them this year? This is a challenge to make fifty posts about fandom things. They can be whatever kind of posts you’d like - movie reviews, recs, a story about meeting a fellow fan, cosplaying … anything! The challenge runs for a year (well, 11 months), so a pace of one post per week plus a couple would do it. .

If you’d like to do a theme, feel free. Some ideas: ♦ 50 fictional characters that I want to meet in real life ♦ 50 fanvid recs ♦ 50 television episodes that were lifechanging ♦ 50 fanfic plots I’ll never write

You don’t need to do a theme if you don’t want to. You can make fifty random fan-adjacent posts.

If you’d like even more structure or if you’d like to share your Fandom 50 with others, you can commit to the challenge by signing up.

To sign up, comment on this post with the following:

Happy Fandom Fun!

Disclaimer: I nabbed this from swannee's Fannish Fifty from 2023 and with their permission.

[face--the--strange]

♡ La'an as Princess Thalia in The Elysian Kingdom ♡

[chacusha]

Snowflake Challenge #2

Challenge #2 - Write a promo, manifesto or primer for your fave character, ship or fandom.

I am lazy so instead of doing this, I linked (on Dreamwidth, friendslocked) all the manifestos I’ve already written and also add some thoughts about how writing those manifestos made me wonder at my sometimes unpredictable/inconsistent taste in pairings, and how Quodo is simultaneously a very new/unusual kind of OTP for me to have and also kind of at the intersection of multiple dynamics I’ve been drawn to in the past. It’s simultaneously a bizarre OTP for me and a completely predictable OTP for me. The full discussion is over at my journal in a friends-locked post, but here is a part of it I’m fine sharing publicly:

In some ways my obsession with Quodo is simultaneously very weird/unprecedented for me (like, M/M pairing? aliens/xeno? sci-fi canon? rivals-to-lovers instead of friends-to-lovers? these are very weird/new aspects for me). But at the same time, I am also 100% convinced that my taste in pairings has led me straight to Quodo and it's 100% predictable that this pairing would have been catnip to me. Like, I guess one thing you might notice about my shipping patterns is that they seem to be pretty agnostic to the genders/ages/attractiveness of characters, but they strongly gravitate toward romance/pining/romcom type dynamics. Usually such pairings in fiction are het, hence the skew in my OTPs toward het, but in the case of Odo/Quark, they're like a romance pairing on steroids, with basically half a dozen romcom dynamics somehow packed into a single pair of characters. They're enemies-to-lovers; they're friends-to-lovers; they're the disreputable rake and the spirited virgin; they're the dour emotionally-repressed guy pining after the vibrant girl full of life; they're slap-slap-kissing except without the kissing part; they're detective/thief; they're corrupt cop and criminal boyfriend; they're tsundere; they're the guy with a crush on his best friend who has a crush on someone else; they're sharing a bed and stranded together and enemies forced to cooperate; they're running to the airport to confess their feelings; they're both shamelessly flirting with each other; one is shamelessly flirting and the other is oblivious; they're both oblivious; they're already married. They're like a supernormal stimulus, where the stimulus in this case is romcom plots.

I kind of came to this conclusion partly because I was thinking about what do some of my other recent OTPs share in common with Quodo and I came up with something like this:

Shared with Hawkeye/Riesz: One half of the pairing is a shameless flirt; the other half radiates intense never-been-kissed energy. Shared with Sansa/Sandor: Every interaction is a clash between opposing life philosophies. Shared with Alternis/Edea: One half of the pairing is a super repressed guy always hiding feelings. Shared with Mi-na/Yun-seong: Playful teasing friendship with sexual tension. What these dynamics all share is, well, Quodo, but also you might notice that they all create some kind of pining potential: With the shameless flirt + never-been-kissed character, you get plenty of opportunities for romantic/intimate moments initiated by the flirty character but rebuffed by the never-been-kissed character who doesn't quite know whether to take the flirty character's advances seriously at all. Ambiguous feelings! Intimacy while pining! Rejection! With the clash-between-philosophies dynamic, the opposing moral codes create tension and a feeling of incompatibility that keep two characters who are otherwise attracted to each other apart. Will-they-won't-they! Slow burn! A reason why neither character will end our misery and just Spit It Out! Repressed characters -- I mean, this is the bread and butter of pining. Works better the more ridiculously repressed a character is, and Odo is ridiculously repressed for various reasons of his upbringing. Yeah! Just the contrast between the strength of the felt feelings and how little the character expresses them -- that's the good stuff. Again, a good reason why characters attracted to each other just will not say anything or get together -- one guy is repressed and, while the other is expressive, they have no reason to believe repressed guy is interested in them at all. With various friends-to-lovers dynamics, you get all the fun of flirtation but then the mixed messaging where neither person is sure whether affection is platonic or romantic. Like, sometimes this kind of play, these games these friends who are attracted to each other engage in, feel like courtship, but I mean... they're just friends, right? The situation is just waiting for one of the two friends to develop a crush on or be wooed by a third party and then oh NO, the pining hits the fan. Once one character (or both) catches/realizes feelings, then it's Pining Time. Affection that used to feel good now feels painful; its pain is proportional to how good it feels, even! Guilt at having developed feelings! Jealousy while also wanting to be A Good/Supportive Friend!

So yeah, analyzing the connections between Quodo and my various OTPs has led me to conclude that Quodo is the usual pining dynamic I like in fiction... ON STEROIDS. Which maybe explains why it broke my brain while being very unlike the kind of pairing I usually get obsessed with/go for. Because in some sense it is the intersection of a whole bunch of my favorite dynamics in fiction somehow rolled into a bizarre package.

[actiaslunaris]

A NaNo challenge for vidders, y'all.

[Copied in whole from the original post on Dreamwidth (https://actiaslunaris.dreamwidth.org/565916.html), with slight alterations for readability on Tumblr.]

Many, many thanks to simplecoffee, who brainstormed with me and helped me design these challenges. All my love for her support and creative ideas!

Two ways to approach -- an easy mode and a hard mode -- for four different challenges, but pick one to do.

On easy mode, you do all your planning in the months preceding November, starting whenever you feel most comfortable. On hard mode, you do your planning only in the month of November, with a few exceptions.

I've tried to design these to be accessible to new vidders, while still presenting a challenge to more experienced vidders. New vidders can also use the Vexercises Challenge prompts to help generate different ways of creating fanvids (https://vexercises.dreamwidth.org/12201.html). There are others there, so poke around.

All these, whichever you choose, must be finished in the month of November.

The four challenges:

The Back of Your Hand

Take a fandom you've vidded to death, meaning you know where all the clips are you want to use, and vid a thirty-second vid for every day of the month. If you think you can't match this, make a one-minute vid for each seven-day week.

Anything goes, to the limit of your inspiration.

New vidders, get to know your source using this challenge. Do start your planning before November.

The DJ Mixer -- courtesy of simplecoffee

Make a fanmix, and then vid that fanmix. Bonus feature to the challenge -- invite someone to create you a fanmix and vid that. Your challenge here lies in creating a fluid mix, where you choose how much of each song to use. This is for those who want to make a long narrative, or play with audio mixing, or anything else this might spark for inspiration. Your finished project should have a run time of at least twenty minutes, because you are creating a set.

See the conversation between myself and simplecoffee on how you can approach this for a more clear example. (https://actiaslunaris.dreamwidth.org/558508.html?thread=522412#cmt522412)

If you think you can't match this, create a shorter set, around ten minutes.

Some audio editing resources that make creating mixes easier: Sound Forge (trialware), Audacity (free), Tonium's Pacemaker Editor (specifically designed for DJs and free; has some bugs when used on Windows 10, but nothing severe).

Simple mix example: "Diamond" by imbir, Hotel Del Luna, (https://archiveofourown.org/works/29056350).

The Extended Play of Your Fave

Choose a musical artist whom you love. (Optionally, in addition to the musical artist, focus on a favorite actor.) Mix and match four to five songs from their body of work. You are not allowed to cut these songs. Create a thematic set of videos, your pick of topic. For instance, think tropes, or other commonalities, like for supercut visuals. Choose a recently consumed and previously unvidded source, only.

For a bonus approach, go multi-fandom. For less difficulty, do only three songs. The Vidder in the Booth

Your challenge here is to show us your process. For this one, you must only work during the month of November. You choose only one piece of music, but it must be four to six minutes long. You choose only one source.

Now, get hold of a screen recorder and other methods of recording your progress. For instance, if you work on paper to take notes before you start your vid, take photos. Log your progress visually, from the beginning stage up through the finished project. You'll then edit all these into two videos: your process and your project. You must share both.

Your process video can be in "Let's Play" style, including everything without cuts, and you can fast-forward process, whatever fits with your sensibilities. If you cut out what you consider to be boring or repetitive, keep track of the time spent there and log it in your process video.

The "I Have a Type, Don't I?" -- concept courtesy again of simplecoffee

Fanvids can be many genres. Some common ones are angst, fluff, alternate universe, and constructed narratives. Fanvids can also be meta, utilizing music and source to comment on the source in some way meant to provoke thought (for example, a vid could comment on toxic couples).

So, this challenge is to exercise your ability to create several of these genres, but with two little requirements. This is for multi-fandom vidders with a shipper's focus. Examine your fandom history. What ships are you most drawn to? Do they have commonalities?

As you’ve noticed, each challenge also has an easy, as well as a more difficult way, to accomplish creating several fanvids. For this, the easy way would be to pick and choose two from the given genres -- angst, fluff, AU, constructed narrative, metavid – and make two videos for each genre. For the more difficult challenge, pick four, and make two videos for each.

Each video should be one to two minutes long.

Please note -- there can be a lot of overlap between AU and constructed narrative, but to my understanding, an AU is if characters who are not werewolves in the original source are all now werewolves in your vid. A constructed narrative is something like if you chose to retell the story of a popular film but using the characters of a different source, or repurposed source and cut it to also tell a different story than what exists in the source.

Meta example: "Cosmic Love" by lola, multi-fandom, (https://lola.dreamwidth.org/96907.html).

Constructed narrative example: "【汤薰衍生】因为我的另一半是你" by 翼翼酱, Galileo, (https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Pe411W7Di/).

AU example: "【浪客剑��现代衍生|斋藤一X比古清十郎】雨系列之一" by rainnorth, Rurouni Kenshin, (https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1is411S7Mk/), contains flashes.

This is a multi-fandom challenge specifically to allow you to compare and contrast, and also, to borrow from other sources, so you can be as wide or narrow in your focus as you like. Go wild. (Break a few rules from all these guidelines if you want.)

The goal is to have fun. Show us what you can do!

[rosemirmir]

I have no idea who follows me here uses Dreamwidth but I made a space for all my icons on there.

I'm also doing a personal icon making project where I make icons for each episode of Kamen Rider Gotchard as it airs, as a way to get icon making practice in.

(No I have no hard rules for myself there, it's just an excuse to make some icons.)

[sisterdivinium]

Category: F/F Fandom: Warrior Nun (TV) Relationship: Jillian Salvius/Mother Superion

"It was just as impossible as wishing for a sudden refreshing shower in the outskirts of sunny, suffering Madrid during a false angel’s draught, wasn’t it? If perhaps only a bit more indecent." In unrelenting weather, it's hard not to hope for the impossible...

[fandomsideworks]

Dreamwidth Fanfiction Community Recommendations #6

hc_bingo (Hurt/Comfort Bingo)

via the community’s profile:

With acknowledgment and gratitude for eruthros and thingswithwings and their kink_bingo. Tired of bemoaning the lack of hurt/comfort in our assorted fandoms, we've decided to take matters in our own hands and encourage people to write all the hurt/comfort stories in the world. The model is adapted after kink_bingo's, with permission: sign up and we'll give you a 5x5 table of prompts that you can fill out in certain patterns to earn banners and achievements or just have fun. Currently on Round 13 Mods: eglantiere, somebraveapollo moderatorial e-mail Official AO3 collection