#snowflake challenge

[laufire]

If any of you have a neglected dreamwidth, or recently got one, or was on the fence about getting one, I would recommend joining Snowflake Challenge 2026, starting tomorrow. It's a great way to meet people over there!

[scumsuckart]

I have collected my last 7 Snowflake Challenge posts into a blog post. Scrolling down and seeing the collective John Redcorn and Slaxl goonery all together is pretty crazy.

[maluron]

Julian Bashir likes Women and Yet is Not Straight; a manifesto.

aka: queerphobes fuck off.

gasp oh no not me vagueblogging about someone who pissed me off like a tired old petty fangull

but @snowflake_challenge suggested we wrote a manifesto; In your own space, write a promo, manifesto or primer for a beloved character, relationship or fandom.

so.

In the aftermath of December 12th. Reveling in canon Garashir. Making a couple celebrating shitposts that gain traction. And I get one stupid comment

"i wish bashir still liked women [sadface emoji]" 1) wow rude—ever heard of the fandom rule «don’t harsh my squee»? make your own post if you want to complain don’t spam mine; 2) bitch he does what are you yapping about??

So yeah here’s my manifesto. Julian Bashir Does indeed like Women (among other) and Yet is Not Straight.

His hologram ending married to a man does not invalidate that the template was a huge bisexual xenophile slut (affectionate) who liked women and at least one man and possibly others and fondling their feet (entirely canon) and possibly getting his ass smacked (personal fanon) (note: having a kink has not influence whatsoever on sexual orientation but pointing this out is likely to piss off heterosexist bigots, so)

I posit that Bashir’s attraction to Jadzia while very real was stemming out of Doylist comp-het [insert siddig "spark" interview https://www.tumblr.com/beechicory/772072920481742848] and was also in the Watsonian way not very gender-traditional. She’s a beautiful statuesque young woman who exsudes Gender Energy, she’s got several lifetimes of experience as both men and women, she can bodily pick him up and toss him and that’s what attracts him: no despite, because. If they’d been to fuck she would peg him and smack his bottom. [insert "not straight" siddig interview https://www.tumblr.com/nimue44/773490608390176768]

[insert robinson "i want to fuck him" interview https://www.tumblr.com/pajamasecrets/718997301079719936] The actors themselves have said time and again that Garak and Bashir had so much more chemistry together than any other pairing involving either. I’m not going to epilogue on that: there must be already so many garashir manifestos out there. It’s fact.

I’m personnally not a fan of Bashir’s relationship with Leeta; I’ll file it under comp-het again but I admit his feelings were real and won’t invalidate them.

(I can’t argue about Ezri and how it’s unhealthy because at this point I only have second-hand knowledge.)

What I’m saying is

this twink Cannot Sit Straight and exsudes Disaster Bi vibes; also neurodivergent vibes and that’s canon too but subject of another manifesto. (I’m not saying that looking like a twink makes you gay—but acting a certain way gives you higher odds of being Not Straight)

Also Star Trek is in The Future where people should be so very chill about identity and orientation—fuck Berman forever (I still need a link to that «in the 90ties everyone had to be straight» post please, can someone point me to it?) and every character should be assumed bi until proven otherwise. And Bashir has proven to love at least several women and one man! (again I’m not saying either Everyone Is Bi, period; lots of characters can still be attracted to only one gender and/or sex but a lack of shown attraction to the other is not the same as proof of absence—unless they explicitely state one strong preference)

Now the LWD Bashir married to Garak is a hologram. They could have forfeit programming any attraction in it and made him aro-ace but they didn’t. It’s only logical to assume they made him as bi/pan as his template. The hologram marrying One (1) Cardassian man does not make Bashir Just Gay And Not Attracted To Any Woman. It makes him attracted to at least one man and Prophets know how many other people or any and every and no gender before and/or on the side.

Regarding how the LWD alternates make Garashir canon I’m choosing the "soulmates" for lack of a better word, interpretation—it’s not that they were fated to be together but that in the Prime universe they could have been, they would have been, they shoud have been but circumstances conspired against them, and in another universe given the chance they totally do. [insert perfect choice post here https://www.tumblr.com/believethestars/770420215813177344] [insert Mac interview https://www.tumblr.com/wanderingwriter87/771121857095172096]

And now if you’re really a homophobic shit or if you just happen to have a different ship ie Bashir joins the O’Brien Polycule while Garak marries Parmak or whatever yes there are alternate universe versions yes one is a hologram so maybe not a perfect copy so you can still interpret original Prime Bashir however you want and blame the hologram’s actions on a fancy grown-beyond-their-programming accident.

But bemoaning that Woke made your fav character Not Het is not a good look. Queerphobia is never a good look. Doing so in an untrue fashion looks stupid and this one was stupidly biphobic. You’re allowed to not like a canon development but think long and hard about why exactly you don’t like it before you come spouting bigoted shit especially on someone else’s post.

Ok that manifesto was mainly just an excuse to collect Doctor Twink pictures because I love him. And his stupid lizard husband (affectionate). https://www.tumblr.com/see: smileyobrien/769842115232563200 https://www.tumblr.com/dreamerdrop/773084827961491456 They’re in love and I love them, Your Honor. Thank you for your attention.

(and queerphobia on my posts will still get you blocked)

[tempural]

Changed fannish opinion. Mine? Appreciating the term "yaoi".

This 3am ramble will discuss "problematic" themes in art, sexism and racism/xenophobia. Crossposted from my mastodon/fediverse account.

I used to be one of those annoying "my glorious gay porn, their bad yaoi for GIRLS" people when I was an underage tf2channer. So I know exactly how those people think, and hope they grow out of it by the time they're 17.

It comes from:

Trying to impress your peers by rejecting nerdy weebery, like saying that western cartoons are better than anime (spoilers: its all cartoons).

Trying to present more masculine (regardless of transness or gender identity) by rejecting femininity as a safety mechanism. (We live in a Joker society)

Trying to make fun of other people's interests before they can make fun of your "cringe" interests. Spoilers, it's all gay cartoon porn and anyone who's not a internet addled nerd thinks its weird.

The funniest thing about the modern iteration of 'yaoi is bad gay porn', is that in Ye Olde Days, yaoi was the "bad gay porn" because it wasn't problematic enough to be cool! While now it's 'real m/m is good representation, yaoi is problematic"

The stereotype used to be that yaoi was too girly and full of flowery nonsense and melodramatic emotions and kissing. While the REAL GAY PORN FOR REAL GAY MEN full of snuff and age gap daddy kink and wolf rape. Gengoroh Tagame comics were popular "shock art" amongst the internet crowd back then ya see.

In [current year] it's more obviously xenophobic. Japanese terms like BL and yaoi are the "bad terms" used by "bad people". Meanwhile English language queer shows and books are localized as BL in Japan lololol.

It's never too late to embrace that everything and nothing is dank yaoi! I embrace the word "yaoi" now rather than any other label, because:

I like that it makes ignorant people mad.

It is nostalgic and reminds me of my youth reading final fantasy doujin scanlations.

I like the history of the term being applied to "comics with no point or plot" (from the perspective of professional editors) speaks to me. Lowbrow comics about dudes kissin'. I don't care if you can't find a deep message or world building. I have fun thinkin it up and making it.

I like this history of the term being used for "self-indulgent doujinshi" from the 70's-80's. Doesn't necessarily only apply to pornographic comics. And I like those decades in art 😼

I like to be oppositionally defiant and challenge people who have preconceived notions that all Asian artists draw in a certain art style, by using an Asian term. I know my art doesn't scream ORIENTAL to most people lmao, I got old teachers that told me that I should draw more "ethnically" to appeal to illustration/animation standards for non white artists. But the truth is I am very inspired by azn comics like Old Master Q and Dragon Ball and all those doujinshi I read as a kid, even if other people can't see it. #snowflakeChallenge2025

[jaded-of-mara]

snowflake challenge #9: make something

i am very inexperienced with manips but i wanted to do something funnnn. i also made a 100px version bc the great thing about working in dw icon size is it doesnt matter if it looks like shit bc its very tiny

[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.

[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.

[fardell24b]

Snowflake Challenge #4

Challenge #4

In your own space, add something to your fandom’s canon. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Daria Morgendorffer finds more than one friend who is similar to her during her first semester of College. At the same time, her sister Quinn finds that she's interested in Mathematics after Ms. Li ropes her into tutoring Kevin Thompson.