potofsoup

Challenge #4: Create some goals.
Here are three 2021 goals:
- Draft at least one original short comic that has a narrative arc
- Finish setting up The Rutabaga Project for printing
- Try drawing more pictures that are shape-based and not line-based

Challenge #6: rec at least three fanworks that you didn’t create.
From my AO3 bookmarks:
[Witcher] ask me tomorrow by Emamel, 10k words
This is a beautiful fic that doesn't really require Witcher knowledge. Basic idea is that the core pairing, Geralt and Jaskier, travel in opposite directions through time. (So Geralt's first meeting of Jaskier is Jaskier's last day with Geralt). Beautifully executed, with great parallels in both directions.

[Witcher] For the Asking by Rassaku, 53k words
On the other end of the spectrum, this is a long fic that is the Accidental Warlord told from Geralt's perspective, but I think it stands well on its own. I absolutely love the political discussions, the explorations of the way a Witcher army would actually work. My favorite line from the fic: Geralt feels it—the moment when the last of Jaskier's anxiety fades. When whatever lingering hold his father still had on him finally slips free, and his fear passes out of anger and into indifference. :chefkiss: Just, such a great description of the feeling where someone no longer has an emotional hold over you.

[Batman] Anti-Social by unpretty, 10k words
This is old (2016) and popular (70k+ hits), but I read it this year and it made me laugh in every chapter, and I recently re-read it and laughed again, so, solid rec. (It features Tim Drake's quest for lunchables and Bruce Wayne getting kicked out of Walmart after trying to get the employees to unionize)


Challenge #9: brag about yourself.
Here are three of my "weird flex" (as the kids would say):
- I can read classic Chinese and a fun thing I've done for class is to find the original text from the Han Shu or whatever and do an ad hoc translation
- I can make a lot of Chinese dumplings: 饺子，馄炖，锅贴，生煎包，小笼包，烧卖，鲜肉月饼, 蛋饺，etc.
- I'm pretty proud of my characters sight-lines when I'm drawing. I made a little tutorial here: [part 1][part 2]


Challenge #10: write a love letter to Fandom
Thank you for being here, for being understanding when people disappear for a while and then reappear, or just disappear altogether. Thank you for valuing creativity in all its forms, for adding diversity and complexity to bland mainstream stories, for documenting and curating and commenting and reading, for moderating events and fandom spaces. Thank you for creating community in a year of social distance. <3 <3 <3

Late to the Snowflake Challenge this year but I'm gonna catch up! Mostly by doing the easier ones first. XD

Challenge #4: In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

Fannish goals:
- actually finish writing a fic (writing is hard!!)
- draw at least 3 fan comics
- watch Falcon and Winter Soldier
- continue feeling connected to fandom

Non-Fannish goals:
- Finish Rutabaga Project
- Finish Tisquantum
- Draw more comics about climate hope
- Learn how the publishing industry works

General life goals:
- Don't overwork (hahahaha)
- Be there for Rutabaga as she turns 4
- Don't take advantage of the supportiveness of Hoosband to then overwork
- Possibly take care of my general health


Challenge #6: In your own space, make a list of things that you wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, or that you'd like someone to make for you.

1. More fics of people being friends. Gen stuff is where it's at!

2. More fics that are outside of the fandom normative experience (middle class suburbia white guys being gay.) I know some of it is "write what you know," But also -- fics centered around female experiences, around being a poc, around rural/urban living, around myths and stories of our many ethnic backgrounds...

3. Asynchronous email or discord correspondence. I think that's the level of fandom interaction that works for me rn. So if anyone ever felt like chatting, lob me an email! (I'm also on discord at potofsoup#8889 , which is such a lucky Chinese number that I can't even)

Day 7

Stretch yourself a little and try something new. Go play in a new fandom or with a new pairing. Try working in a new medium. Or check out some fanworks that are new to you.

Day 10

Create a fanwork.

So even though I posted my Steve Bday 2012 during the Snowflake Challenge, it didn't quite fit the spirit of the challenge -- I wanted to make something new, and maybe a bit different from my usual stuff. It's hard to find something that doesn't involve jumping into a new art genre altogether, but then I remembered that I got a button machine, but could never figure out what to make on it.

So I made myself a Bucky Button:


Here's the original file:




(I made his scarf hufflepuff colors which made me really happy) aww crappo wrong colors I was too happy about the blue being Bucko's colors :((((


I realized in the drawing process that ... I don't really use buttons, and that's probably why I have so much trouble designing them. I know they're a popular convention item, but they're just not as appealing as sticker sheets for me. But anyway, now I have a button.

Day 11

In your own space, talk about your creative process(es) — anything from the initial inspiration to how you feel after something’s done. Do you struggle with motivation or is it a smooth process? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating? What is your level of planning to pantsing/winging it?

Oh man. Guyz I love talking process, it's possibly my most favorite thing.

I'll do a fuller process post on Patreon after narratives are done, but here's the general gist:

First, I do brainstorming on my Google Tasks, which I basically treat as a place to dump small text files, since it's synced with my phone.

For the Maia-Saura MTH comic, where the prompt is the Flag Speech, here's my first Google Task:


Which then becomes this when I was getting out of my car after my morning commute:

( more blathering )

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating?
Usually, the reason it's not working is that there's something structurally wrong. So what I do is step up a tier in the process and ask myself what I was trying to do there. (so if a panel isn't working, I look at the page, if a page isn't working I look at the adjacent pages). Usually it turns out I need to draw something completely different in the panel, or I need to change the panels in the row, or I need to shift some content to the next page. All 3 of those things happened with this comic!

Wow, turning off email notifs for comments has made me feel much better. I think in part because email is my space for "things I need to deal with", and so having all of the comments drop in there, unthreaded and without context, was very stressful.

Anyway, I didn't get a chance to take a pic for my daily wip post last night, so here's a belated picture:


It's socks that I tie-dyed for the Arts and Crafts New Year's Gift Exchange that I hosted at work today! The gift exchange was really fun -- I went and got us boba, and we took turns sharing the clues that we received and then getting the gifts. (Context: in mid-Dec I asked people to sign up with (a) what sorts of things they can make, and (b) an art prompt and a craft prompt. Then I made assignments. Everyone had to leave a clue to what their gift was.) It filled me with so much joy and love at the creativity and thoughtfulness of my coworkers. <3 <3 <3 (Someone painted a mug! Someone made magnets! Someone did an oil pastel of the roads that they've traveled! Someone made a really cool abstract painting using Illustrator!)

Anyway, I gave away the 6 best pairs to come out of this tie-dye batch, so I suppose that counts for:

Day 9

Commit an Act of Kindness. In your own space, share what you’ve done, talk about what you’ve done, or simply leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

Day 5

In your own space, promote three communities, challenges, blogs, pages, Twitters, Tumblrs or platforms and explain why you love them.

Okay, a lot of people have been reccing Twitter or Tumblr things... and I just don't have the ability to be on that many platforms at once, so I want to rec DW things. BUT I also haven't been on DW enough to really know of many comms? So this quickly descends into "stuff I want there to be more followers for"

purimgifts looks super fun -- basically focusing on characters who're at least one of WOMEN, JEWISH, or PERSECUTED BY EVIL VIZIERS. How rad is that?! makes me want to have one for Asian chars. I don't think I can do it, but I definitely subscribed!

The caprbb comm is finally ready! :D!!! Signups open soon! (Guess what I spent 6 hours working on today?)

dailychrisevans -- want a dose of that good old Tumblr vibe on your Reading Page? Nothing like a soulful image of Chris Evans to make you feel refreshed!

Bonus:
capfanart is a comm that I really want traction for. The idea is for it to be a place for artists to post their cap-related fanart, or for people to post links to cap-related fanart that they see elsewhere.

3 Fic recs! I'm going for "Stuff I enjoyed and have surprisingly few hits"

A Far Better Thing I Do (5333 words) by BrighteyedJill
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America (Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Steve Rogers, James T. Kirk, Tony Stark, Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Nyota Uhura, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Natasha Romanov (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Spock (Star Trek)
Summary:

A mysterious man with no paper trail was involved in a bloody attack on a meeting of Starfleet admirals. James T. Kirk and the crew of the starship Enterprise have tracked him to the Klingon home wold, Kronos, where they have threatened to unleash the experimental torpedoes Admiral Marcus sent with them unless the man surrenders. That man, Steve Rogers, has other ideas.

Jill gave me something that I didn't know I desperately wanted: that instead of Benedict Cumberbatch, it was Steve Rogers who was in that capsule.

The Sun Room (6329 words) by kvikindi
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Peggy Carter & Howard Stark, Peggy Carter/Gabe Jones
Characters: Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, Gabe Jones, James Jesus Angleton, Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, Jim Morita
Additional Tags: S.H.I.E.L.D., Cold War, Espionage
Summary:

Peggy Carter and Howard Stark versus the future.

Is the SHIELD founders fandom still around? Anyway, this is my favorite -- it perfectly captures that sense of ... well, gray-ness in the Cold War years. Where compromises are made, and right doesn't seem that different from wrong. I absolutely adore the Peggy voice here.

Radio to the Youth (6189 words) by Scappodaqui
Chapters: 4/4
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Captain America (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Jim Morita, Steve Rogers & Jim Morita, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, Jim Morita & Howling Commandos, Jim Morita/OFC, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Characters: Jim Morita, Morita Family, Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, OCs, Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, Jacques Dernier, James Montgomery Falsworth, Gabe Jones
Additional Tags: Character Study, Second Person, Period-Typical Racism, Japanese Internment, Radio Nerdery, Mentions of Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, POV Jim Morita, WW II History, Radio Propaganda
Series: Part 1 of Radio
Summary:

The idea of America rides on radio waves, chasing itself across the plains like wind whipping through wheat, and sometimes there’s a storm.

Or: Jim Morita, before and during the war, and before and after he meets Captain America. (And teaches him to start a tractor.)

Morita + radio + immigrant feels. Seriously, so many lines resonated all the way down the pit of my stomach with my Chinese-American self.

The Soldier's Kittens (11367 words) by exclamation
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Kittens, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Hydra (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Friendship, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Everyone Needs A Hug, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Bear - Freeform
Summary:

Hydra once gave the Winter Soldier a kitten to care for as a reward. Now Steve wants Bucky to be friends with Sam, but Bucky has learned his lesson. He will never show he cares for anything or anyone ever again.

This made me sad for days, mostly because it shows HYDRA using Bucky's kindness against him. But Bucky (and Steve and Sam) come through in the end! I'm a sucker for Bucky recovering his humanity despite all of the HYDRA conditioning, and this was a quick, effective dose of that.

And a bonus -- it has too many hits to count for the above, but I absolutely love Birdbrains' Propellers series. ESPECIALLY their performative Bucky in Chapter 3 of Let Your Arms Become Propellers is basically my favorite performative!wartime!Bucky. (Although my favorite wartime!Bucky has to go to The Thirteen Letters)