Snowflake Challenge #5 and #6

[malenkayacherepakha]

Challenge #5 was to speak to someone I haven't spoken to before - thanks to this challenge I've done lots of that so far this month, and have met some lovely people. 

Challenge #6 is to list some things I wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, or things I'd like. 

This has been quite a tricky one for me - I'm not good at asking for things! I also don't tend to have very many specific things I want - I hate filling out exchange forms because my tastes are so wide and generally speaking I'll read anything. But there are a few things I managed to think of:

• Betas/Cheerleaders - I've got a few regular betas but not many, and I'm always conscious of not overloading them or asking them to look at things which contain their squicks etc, so if anyone wanted to trade off on betas (for HP) that would be amazing (I can also offer britpicking if needed).

• A writing community - I'm not quite sure how to best explain this one, and it does link a lot with the above comments about betas, but I'd love to have a community/place/group chat where myself and others can chat about writing, discuss ideas and what we're working on, and generally help each other to become better writers and write what we want. I'm not a big fan of unsolicited concrit but in a situation like this one I'd be looking for advice on how to improve etc. I know of various discords where this kind of happens but that still seems a bit too public, so I don't really know exactly how to make this work - maybe it's just building a deeper writing relationship with a few people I trust and interacting through email/dms, who knows. 

• More interaction on Dreamwidth - this is something I want from myself as much as from others. I've loved all the interaction that I've been having here this month with the Snowflake Challenge going on, and I'd love to see it continue past the challenge. I also want to figure out how to properly use comms so I can interact more on them too. 

• More recs - this links back to my own goals for the year, and I've seen a bunch of other people talk about this too. I'd love to see a wider range of fics recced too - often I see the same fics recced over and over again (which isn't a bad thing, they deserve the love they're getting!) but that doesn't help when I'm trying to find new things to read. I've got my list of 'things to rec' started, so will start posting them soon. paulamcg talked about some sort of rec community in their wishes post, and that's something I'd love to see too.

I of course also wish for more interaction on my own fics but I'm happy to wait for that to happen organically, I don't like asking people to comment on my stuff (my dislike of self promo and complete inability to do it does not mix well with my constant need for validation!)