enchantedsleeper: Hiei and Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho stand back to back, looking defensive. (Hiei Kurama)
Last entry I decided that I would do something I'm calling "Archive April", in which I focus on archiving to my personal site during April. I set a goal of at least 10 new fanworks archived, with additional soft goals of creating my Fanart and Fanvid pages and improving the site navigation.

It's taken me a while to make time for any more archiving since March Meta Matters, because I was on a trip a couple of days after my last post and then we had Things Being Done to the house that were quite chaotic and all-encompassing. And I held a belated birthday party ๐Ÿ˜ But I still had a chunk of April left, so I was determined to get back on the archiving train and keep my commitment to myself โ˜บ๏ธ

I got back into the groove with a quick, easy upload of a short Rurouni Kenshin fic that just needed a page and some formatting to go up. That was all I could manage on Saturday night, but on Sunday I had time to get stuck in. I realised that I'd been avoiding archiving longer fics because I wanted to improve the way I handled the chapters, so, I tinkered with my already-uploaded multichapter Yu Yu Hakusho Peter Pan AU (Hiei Jaganshi, Legendary Bandit) and added some links to previous and next chapters. Rather than create a page for each chapter, I wanted to make it possible for people to read the fic continuously if they wanted to, but also have the ability to navigate to individual chapters. I also looked up how to center a bullet point list so that I could create a little chapter navigation menu at the top.

Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: Hello Kitty holding a pencil (Default)
And just like that, it’s the end of March! The year is really whipping past, and I’m pleased that I’m managing to take part in events like March Meta Matters and the Small Fandoms Drabblethon, but I always wish they could last longer xD Still, I’m really happy with my participation in March Meta Matters! Since my last post about the challenge, I have:
  • Archived my various thoughts on drabbles on SquidgeWorld (DW was having some downtime when I felt inspired to archive these, but I think SqWA is a good home for them! I like being able to use chapters for different dates – or date ranges)
  • Archived two new meta essays from a WordPress blog I’d forgotten about: one on the gender-ambiguous pairing of Squib/Pumkin from the web series Baman Piderman, and one on the second Fantastic Beasts film
  • Split off the longer meta essays on my site onto their own pages
  • Renamed the “meta and misc” page URL from /misc to /meta to reflect its much heavier meta emphasis; I’m thinking of moving the misc stuff to sit with my fic, since it’s more fic-related, or maybe just giving it a page of its own
  • I also re-ordered the Site Updates log on the Homepage to reverse chronological order so that the most recent updates are visible first.

Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: A small cloud with a rainbow tail and little wing sticking out. The caption reads, beep beep. I'm a cloud. (cloud)
I've been doing this post series that I call "Something old, something new" over on Pillowfort (things are still going well there, btw! Having a lot of fun) where I post about an old thing (book, TV series, film, song, etc.) that I've been enjoying over the past week, and a new one. Well - it was meant to be at weekly intervals, but in practice it's been more like every 10-14 days. Or whenever I feel like I have something to write about.

I will say, though, that no-one has seemed super interested in the posts (I got a couple of likes on the first one, and nothing since) but I was pretty pleased with the edition that I wrote most recently, where I talked about a new webcomic that I'd got into, and then an old favourite. They're both solid webcomic recs (the 'old' one barely even needs reccing, but I wanted to talk about why I love it), and so I thought I would also bring the post over here for anyone who might be interested.

First, the New: Infernal Relations by Tab Kimpton

I discovered this comic on Monday and couldn't stop bingeing it (work be damned! ...which is apt, given the subject xD) until I was sadly caught up. I also became a Patreon supporter and enjoyed the bonus NSFW scenes there, as well as some early-release pages from the current chapter.

Infernal Relations is a fun story about a romance between an angel and a demon, set in a corporate version of heaven/hell - but contrary to what you might assume, it's the angel who does the seducing >:3 If "huge and broad but self-conscious and awkward demon is seduced by flirty twink angel and they try to keep a sexy office romance a secret from their respective sides" appeals to you, then you will love this webcomic. (The actual sexiness is all on Patreon as I referenced above, but even reading the SFW version, it's very clear they are getting it on off-page xD)

Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: Hiei and Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho stand back to back, looking defensive. (Hiei Kurama)
I finally sat down this evening to do some archiving for [community profile] marchmetamatterschallenge (I keep wanting to call it "March Meta Madness", which I blame on the similarly-named US basketball competition, but it is also a fun name xD).

I'd already done quite a bit of meta (and musings and theories that I'm generously grouping under that heading) archiving on my personal site, enchantedsleeper's space, on the Meta & Miscellaneous page. However, after taking stock at the beginning of the month, I realised that I'd written some pretty good meta for FENCE since the last time I did any archiving (including a nice piece for the Snowflake Challenge here on DW!) Also, I've wanted to spend some time going through Mastodon to find meta-ish thoughts I've written about things like vidding and drabbles and collect those together somewhere less ephemeral - probably on this blog.

So, these are my projects for the month! So far, I've ticked off the first one: three new pieces of FENCE meta are now hosted on my Meta & Misc page. I'll do an extra comb through my FENCE tags to make sure I haven't missed anything, but I think I got the main ones.

Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: Hello Kitty holding a pencil (Default)
The Drabblethon has ended! The sunglasses emoji with two straight trails of tears running down each cheek. Luckily, since February had 29 days this year (leap year! \o/) I was given an extra day in which to write drabbles, and I needed it xD

I came very close to not writing anything more since my Starship Iris drabble on the 20th, but it got to the 29th and I was determined to get a couple more of my ideas down before the month officially ended, and I managed to write two more works on the last day!

  • Someone (Questionable Content): Yay thinks that Roko should have gone to them for help with her scraped knee. (DW) (SqWA)

I was really determined to write at least one QC fic for the Drabblethon, because it's a tiny fandom (fanworks-wise, anyway) but I also have a lot of fannish thoughts and feelings about it. (I've written for QC before, including for Yuletide one time, and I also received it as a Yuletide gift in 2022). I was batting around a few ideas, but decided to go with this little Yay~Roko scene following on from Comic 5243, in part because I wanted an excuse to use the QPR tag on SquidgeWorld again xD
Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: Hello Kitty holding a pencil (Default)
So, I've been a bit busier lately - I actually managed a good number of fics for week 2 of the Small Fandoms Drabblethon, mostly due to finishing a few at the weekend, but then I didn't have time to post a round-up ๐Ÿ˜‚ And this week I only managed one, so I'm grouping weeks 2 and 3 together.

I'm hoping to write a couple more before the end of the month, but even if I don't manage it, I'm really pleased with everything I've written this month for the drabblethon! And I've had a lot of thoughts and feelings about drabbles and the fandoms I wrote for in the process.
Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: A blue icon with dark blue font reading, I don't obsess. I think. Intensely. (Tumblr icon)
So, things are looking a bit dire over at Tumblr dot com. (Again). I planned to post something about this during the last Demise of Tumblr episode, back when they announced that Tumblr's dedicated staff was being downsized to a skeleton crew, but I didn't get around to it.

This time, I want to throw some thoughts out there, but I don't want to write a properly fleshed-out essay, so for the details on what sparked this off, check Tumblr itself and look for summaries/round-ups (there are several). From here on in I'll assume you either have context or are content with knowing that "shit's going down" without further detail xD

Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: A small cloud with a rainbow tail and little wing sticking out. The caption reads, beep beep. I'm a cloud. (cloud)
Festivids creator reveals have taken place, which means I can finally talk about my vid! \o/ I made 'Greed', a Knives Out / Glass Onion fanvid set to the song Greed by Patrick Stump. (It's excellent and was so much fun to set the vid to).

I'm planning to post some more in-depth 'making of' vid thoughts, but for now I just want to share the vid and say how delighted I am with all the lovely comments that people have left since the vid collection went live. It's only my fourth fanvid (and my first fanvid 'back' after more than two years), so it really meant a lot to get so many comments and compliments on my work. Festivids is such a great event to have for vidders and I'm really glad I took part. I can't wait for the next one! XD

Vid below or you can also check it out on AO3.

enchantedsleeper: rainbow hello kitty (rainbow kitty)
I've been having a great time taking part in the Small Fandoms Drabblethon since I stumbled on it a week ago. It's always really fun to get back into drabble-creating, and it's fun thinking up small fandoms to write for.

I got a bunch of (slightly chaotic) prompts to work with from my friends, but I've also come up with a few ideas apart from those, some of which may or may not pan out; we'll see! But here's a round-up of my drabbles from the first week of taking part. I'm posting them all to the comm on Dreamwidth, but they're also archived on SquidgeWorld Archive in the challenge collection. I'm thinking of putting them up on AO3 right at the end and then backdating them (maybe making a series? Not sure yet).
Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: Hello Kitty holding a pencil (Default)
I just got my bingo card for Comment Bingo Round 5 \o/ It's my third time taking part, and one of my fannish goals for this year is to see if I can earn Blackout finally, but more than that, I want to set out to comment on a variety of fanworks.

Last Bingo I set out to up the proportion of non-fic fanworks I commented on, and I did a decent job of that, with half of the fanworks I left comments on (10 out of 20) being fanart, fancomics, fanvids, and fancrafts. This round I'd like to do more, and also where I'm commenting on fic, to find fic on sites other than AO3. (Though, I will say that AO3's filters are really helpful for the more specific prompts, which are harder to fill on other sites...)

Bingo card and fic list below!

Bingo card )

Fic list )
enchantedsleeper: An anime girl sits at a desk with a quill in one hand. The caption reads, ready to hit some bunnies. (bunnies)
I just discovered [community profile] small_fandoms and the February Small Fandoms Drabblethon! I love drabbles and I love small fandoms, so I'm super excited to create for this fest.

However, I tend to work best with something to spark inspiration, so I wanted to throw it open to anyone here to give me prompts! Even just a single word will be great. I can't guarantee I will "fill" them all (that's assuming I get any ๐Ÿ˜‚), but I'll give it a go! I could use a random prompt generator, but it's much more fun to have an element of interaction ^^

Some of the fandoms I'm thinking of writing for are:
  • The Strange Case of Starship Iris
  • The Murderbot Diaries (still small, although decreasingly so these days ๐Ÿ˜‚)
  • Peter Pan
  • FENCE
  • Possibly Fandom for Robots, a short story by Vina Jie-Min Prasad that I can't recommend highly enough if you haven't read it
  • The Wayfarers series

However, I don't need prompts to be fandom-specific (unless you'd like to prompt for a specific fandom, of course) - this is just to keep the fandoms uppermost in my mind so that I know what I'm connecting them to! I might get inspired for something totally different xD

For anyone who considers throwing a prompt my way - thank you! ๐Ÿ’œ

enchantedsleeper: Hello Kitty holding a pencil (Default)
I managed to tick off a few more Snowflake Challenges this year than I did last year (I never aim to do all of them, but more is good!) and so I thought I would make a little round-up of the challenges I fulfilled, especially as some of them were off DW!

1. Challenge #1: Update your fandom information: I updated my sticky on Dreamwidth and made an intro post on Pillowfort

2. Challenge #2: Set yourself some goals for the coming year: I looked back on my goals for 2023 and set new ones for 2024!

3. Challenge #4: Icebreaker challenge:
I answered 5 randomly-generated questions about myself!

4. Challenge #5: Scavenger hunt:
I scavenged!

5. Challenge #6: Share a favourite piece of original canon & #9: Rec us your newest thing:
I wrote about why I love Harvard/Aiden from FENCE, drawing on a particularly good early scene <3

6. Challenge #7: Make a list of fannish and/or creative resources:
I rounded up some resources for making a personal fanworks archive

7. Challenge #11: Create a fanwork:
I posted Height Advantage, a D&D: HAT fanfic which was also a prompt fill for Funuary!

8. Challenge #13: Make a rec list of fanworks:
I posted about my favourite Pan-fics (this was a really nice nostalgia trip ^^)

9. Challenge #14: Try something new:
I did my first Blanket Box (a list of prompts to help you build/furnish your Fort) over on Pillowfort!

10. Challenge #15:
Fandom Wrapped!

A round 10! I like that :D
enchantedsleeper: Hello Kitty holding a pencil (Default)
Now comes the part every year where I bawwwwww because the Snowflake Challenge is over for another year. ๐Ÿ˜ญ But it wouldn't be as fun if it wasn't finite, and I've got the Sunshine Challenge to look forward to in the summer (as well as other events during the spring!)

Snowflake Challenge #15 is Fandom Wrapped! If you've come across Spotify Wrapped (and it's pretty everywhere) or one of its many variants, then you'll know this is a sort of "Top X" retrospective on the past year. (I was a bit sad that Tumblr didn't do their Wrapped this year, probably because of that whole "skeleton crew" thing...)

So here's my Fandom Wrapped for 2023, à la Snowflake Challenge:

Your top 5 fandoms for 2023 were:
Read more... )

enchantedsleeper: Jeremy Sumpter as Peter Pan in the 2003 movie. He is looking upwards with a whimsical expression, his arms out to the sides. The caption reads, teach me how to fly! (peter pan)
I've decided to suspend doing the Snowflake challenges in order so that I can jump on something a bit more timely!

Snowflake Challenge #13 is "Make a rec list of fanworks!" I've been in a bit of a Peter Pan frame of mind lately, what with travelling to Dublin to watch a theatre performance of Peter Pan (okay, I was visiting a friend, but we did very much make the plans around going to see that show xD) (I should do a DW post about it) and then the other day I pulled out an old notebook to use for something and unexpectedly found a Peter Pan fic I'd been writing inside xD

Originally I thought of doing this rec list for one of my more recent fandoms, but then the idea of a Pan-fics roundup took hold (also because I enjoy using the term Pan-fics :D). It's quite a small collection, but it's fun to bring together works from through the years with different takes on the canon and characters. I hope you all enjoy the result!

My favourite Peter Pan fics: a short list

Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: Hello Kitty holding a pencil (kitty pencil)
This is a list that I originally put together for the 2024 Snowflake Challenge (as the name shows :D), but I've decided to turn it into a rolling list of resources, guides and tutorials that I've found helpful in my small/indie web journey to create a personal fanworks archive.

I rely heavily on how-to guides for making my site (and I like to save cool/helpful things I find), so there'll always be plenty to add to this list! I've added each one with some notes about how I found or used it, which should hopefully be helpful for anyone consulting these sites.

I've added headings to break up the list and also make it easier to find a specific resource, though the categorisation may be a little idiosyncratic xD

Last updated: 2025-09-29

General indie web

How To Make Your Own Fanfiction Archive, In Just 10 Easy Steps by melannen

This guide is specific to Neocities, so I didn't really use it for reference myself, but it's a nice step-by-step for anyone who might feel intimidated by the prospect of creating a site from scratch. You can't get simpler than this! Also, there are lots of site examples and interesting discussions in the comments.

IndieWeb 101 by fLaMEd

This post was made as part of 32-Bit Cafe's August Code Jam and is a cool primer on the IndieWeb (it also differentiates between the IndieWeb and Independent Web, something I haven't come across before).

It contains some suggestions for things that people can do to get started on the IndieWeb, focusing primarily on marking up content with microformats2 and making an h-card, which is a sort of integrated contact card for your website, and an h-entry, which marks up individual posts or articles. It also touches briefly on webmentions. This was my first brush with all of these concepts, and I haven't done any of these things myself, but I felt like it was a resource worth passing on.Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: A blue icon with dark blue font reading, I don't obsess. I think. Intensely. (Tumblr icon)
Challenge #6 for the Snowflake Challenge is: In your own space, share a favourite piece of original canon (a show, a specific TV episode, a storyline, a book or series, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.

For the FENCE Secret Santa last month I had the pleasure of writing Harvard/Aiden, my favourite ship in FENCE. Harvard/Aiden is a brilliant ship pairing the fencing team captain with the 'school playboy', which you can imagine is a very fun combination of personalities. Despite this, it doesn't really have much of a dedicated fandom - it's one of those ships that everyone is happy to ship but that kind of plays second fiddle to the main canon ship (Seiji/Nicholas), usually appearing as a side pairing in fanworks.

As part of canon review for my Secret Santa, I enjoyed re-reading Harvard and Aiden's interactions in the comics (they are also a canon pairing in the spin-off novels by Sarah Rees Brennan, but I'm not a fan of the books) and so for Challenge #6, I'm going to break down a scene that shows why I love Harvard/Aiden so much. I think this also works for Challenge #9, which is all about reccing a thing you love!

But first, who are our characters?

Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: Hello Kitty holding a pencil (Default)
I love the Snowflake Challenge Scavenger Hunt, but I was drawing a blank on what to answer for most of the questions this year, until I had a bit of an epiphany this morning while half-asleep, and then I hit my stride ๐Ÿ˜„ I prefer to use brick-and-mortar/physical objects because it feels more like a "hunt", but it can also be more challenging to find something physical for each question! Still, the challenge is part of the fun ๐Ÿ˜Š

Snowflake Challenge #5: Search in your current space, whether brick-and-mortar or digital. Post a picture (a link to a picture will be fine!) or description of something that is or represents:

1. Something your favorite character would like


This was one of the first ones where I blanked, because first of all - how can I choose just one favourite character?? But even thinking about some of my faves, it was hard to pick a physical object I'd associate with them.

However, I realised that I had an object that Sakurayashiki Kaoru, aka Cherry Blossom, my favourite character from SK8 the Infinity, would probably like:

Close up of a fluffy black wristband with three cherries across the centre.

Actually, it suits him, doesn't it? ๐Ÿ˜„

An image of Sakurayashiki Kaoru from SK8 the Infinity wearing a Paint edited wristband with cherries on one wrist.

Haha, well, he'd probably wear it with his Cherry Blossom outfit and not as part of his traditional Japanese attire, but it was easier to find space on his wrist in this outfit ๐Ÿ˜‰
Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: Hello Kitty holding a pencil (Default)
Okay, so I'm trailing a bit behind with Snowflake Challenge posts, but that's okay because there's no deadline! I will still try to do them* in "order", though I know that doesn't really matter either; that's just my organisational preference ^^

(*them = the challenges I am doing, because there are some I've decided to skip)

Snowflake Challenge #4 is: "IceBreaker Challenge! Tell us about yourself. [...] Think of it as an elevator pitch, or a manifesto; give us bullet points or lyrical prose. Want to make a game out of it? Tell us things that are true and things that aren’t and let us guess. Don't know what to say? Hate elevator speeches, but don't want to skip a day? Try this Random Question Generator and make yourself a meme all your own."

I really liked the idea of a Random Question Generator, as I like answering varied questions about myself but thinking up questions is hard when you have a completely blank slate. So, here are my answers to five questions that the question generator threw out:

Read more... )
enchantedsleeper: Hello Kitty holding a pencil (Default)
This weekend, I finally finished my Festivid, which is my fourth fanvid in total since I started vidding in 2019. It took nine (almost consecutive - I had one day 'off') days of pretty hard editing to complete, and I'm really pleased with the result. (I've also been pretty "head down" in vidding mode all weekend, so apologies to the people still waiting on replies to comments they left me! I also have Snowflake challenges I want to catch up on).

Having said that I'm really pleased with my vid, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the quote by Ira Glass, which is much-circulated on Tumblr, about the gap between taste and creative output. From a transcript I found on The Marginalian (sidenote: the accompanying short film is really cool!):

"All of us who do creative work โ€ฆ we get into it because we have good taste. But itโ€™s like thereโ€™s a gap, that for the first couple years that youโ€™re making stuff, what youโ€™re making isnโ€™t so good, OK? [...] But your taste โ€” the thing that got you into the game โ€” your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what youโ€™re making is kind of a disappointment to you"


(That's not the whole quote, which is much longer, but it's the relevant part).

The song that I chose for my vid (I have to be a bit coy about what it is because the exchange is anonymous for now) is very snappy and upbeat, and I have this version of my vid in my head that's so crisply on the beat, where every visual and every audio beat combined is killer and the result just blows the viewer away. And the actual vid I've put together is good work, I think, but it does fall short of the version in my head, and I've worried that I'm not doing the material justice - the potential of the vid justice - with what I'm making.

But, of course, the only way to get to where I want to be as a vidder is to keep making fanvids. It's literally the only way. And so of course the vids that I produce as I go will have things that I need to improve on. There's no scenario in which I become a better fanvidder by never making vids or by giving up on them because they don't match my imagined ideal. I also have to love the idea of what I'm making enough to keep trying to create it - so if I didn't have a super cool version of the vid in my head, what would I be trying to make?

Another thing I've been telling myself is that when I'm writing fic (which is my main type of fanwork and the one I feel most confident in), not every single line that I pen is supposed to be killer. There'll be some that really hit home, but others are just there to move the story along or lead up to the killer moments. So, it follows that not every moment of my fanvids can possibly be The Amazing Golden Moment - some of them are just there to suit the flow or pacing, or because they looked kinda cool.

Vidding to a deadline also requires some sacrifices, in that I can't spend an infinite amount of time familiarising myself with the material or trawling for the perfect clip and experimenting with the best combinations. But I also like that I'm motivated to push past my doubts to some extent and just finish the thing. As it happens, in his full quote, Ira Glass also says to give yourself deadlines, so I'm doing that bit! And when I look back later at parts of my fanvids that made me wince at the time, I often think, 'What was so bad about that section? It looks fine'.

It'll be interesting to see how I manage when I'm not vidding to a deadline from an exchange or event, but hopefully I'll remember to focus on the end goal of accomplishing a finished fanvid rather than obsessing over an ideal version in my head.
enchantedsleeper: Hello Kitty holding a pencil (Default)
Challenge #2 for the Snowflake Challenge is:

In your own space, set yourself some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
I had a lot of fun setting some fannish goals for 2023, so I'm excited to think up my goals for 2024. This post has a Part 1 where I looked back on how I did against my goals for 2023, which isn't a "do or die" thing, but it's nice to see which ones I hit! This year, I wanted to include a couple of not specifically fannish goals, but the focus is still mostly on fandom and creativity. So without further ado...

Read more... )

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