snowflake challenge #3

Stumbling through the door late again! I'm not gonna lie, this one has been stumping me since it was posted, and it isn't because I don't have a lot of love for fandom, I do. It's just difficult to know where to start!

However: a toast (in Earl Grey, since that's what I'm having atm) to all the people who write fanfics for tiny fandoms.

I can think of a few fandoms and ships where I've literally only ever been able to find one, or two, fics -- and I cherish those like gold! Tbh I think the unsung heroes of fandom (well, maybe -- I've definitely seen some posts in praise of them on tumblr) are the people who have like 150+ works on ao3 and have written one really lovely fic in like a bajillion different niche fandoms. We owe them so much. Genuinely, no lie, that writer is who I aspire to be one day. If you are that writer, thank you. I'm handing you a hot drink of your choice. And how do you do it?

(And on the other end of the range, there's the one really long MacGyver fic that was posted on InsaneJournal, of all the places, literally 20+ years ago (and I live in fear of the day the whole platform goes down) and had such a good character reveal moment that it literally shaped my relationship with the trope. Absolute king shit. I still think about it regularly.)

snowflake challenge #4

Challenge #4: Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page
Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

Since I'm literally using it right now and I never miss a chance to peddle it, I have to rec MyNoise -- the biggest collection of sound generators on the internet, I'm sure. I've been using the site for a decade, since its collection was much smaller, and I'll never go anywhere else for ambient noise. They've basically got everything -- fireplace, waterfall, cat purr, thunder, storms, all the classics, but you can also get drones of various kinds, white noise and other colours of noise, cafe/office background noise, loads of different soundscapes, and pretty much whatever.

There's one that's just record player hiss -- it's lovely to play alongside music! (Or do what I've done a few times -- open rain and fireplace in separate tabs and then play some solo violin music off Spotify, and voilà, instant 221B Baker Street.)

I've donated a few times, so I have access to all the generators (a single donation gives you full access permanently, so it's worth it!), but even without that, there are SO many good ones. And unlike those 10-hour loops of whatever on youtube, they're customisable -- consisting of several independent sound files, so you can alter volume for each frequency at will, alter playback speed, and set the sliders to "animate", which means you get constant variety. That also makes it much better at blocking out speech. Cannot rec enough!