Snowflake Challenge 2026, Day 1
Jan. 3rd, 2026 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
22degreehaloChallenge #1
The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.
Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.
So: Hi!!!!! I try to do Snowflake Challenge every year (I fully completed it in 2024 IIRC!!!) and at this point it's pretty much the only consistent time I post to this blog :') Which is a bit of a shame, but while I used to regularly write longer-form posts to tumblr, over the last year and a half or so I've been dealing with some pretty heavy fatigue and haven't really done that anymore. Or maybe it's just that I'm channelling all that writing energy into fic right now? I got into SVSSS last year and have been absolutely bursting with inspiration ever since <333
Anyway!! As for what I plan to get out of this event... I'm not sure!!! I'm not really here often enough to make friends. I haven't even made any icons in ages, though I'm always wanting to get back into it. (I really need a BingQiu icon at least!) And... while overall I do vibe very heavily with the kind of fandom that goes on at DW - I myself grew up in the LJ era, so I am also on the older side and feel great nostalgia for that era both in terms of blogging infrastructure and also fandom culture - I... have found a bit of a chasm between myself and most of fandom as a whole, of late: in some ways, especially within these older circles. And I guess in more specifically-focused spaces I can just talk about the fics I like or writing or headcanons and stuff, but I associate DW with more high-level analytical thoughts? And your blog as a space for sharing your unfiltered thoughts and opinions in a broad sense? To an extent, I guess the latter especially is also true of Tumblr... which is part of why I intentionally don't associate my Tumblr blogs with my ao3/discord. (Is that disingenuous? At one point I felt really guilty about the idea of 'hiding' my bad sides and 'tricking' people into liking or interacting with me despite it. Now? Fatigue. If there's one good aspect, it's kinda hard to be too anxious when you're tired all the time!!!)
I'm not sure whether to really go into that in detail. I'm worried both that people will project onto me overly positive interpretations ('yeah I also hate people who want ao3 to be an algorithm and never comment!!!' I don't hate those people actually.) and also overly negative ones (the chasm isn't, like, me being angry that fandom nowadays is too Woke and Reverse Racist or something). The easier thing to say is that I just hate how difficult it's been to find people who truly agree with the 'bullying is bad' principle, even when it's easy: Harry Potter fans being, again, the easier group to defend. But I also despise the aggressive bullying and death threats levelled at anyone associated with AI use. I think sending horrible DMs to people is bad, actually. I also think that including in the rules of an event that certain people should 'take a long walk off a short pier' or the like is also bad. I am continually disillusioned how much of fandom has accepted this as normal and justified. (And, no, I don't think it makes it okay to say 'well but I think it's normal to be frustrated by-' that is not the same thing!! I am complaining about very specific acts!! What you are bringing up is completely different!!!)
But also - okay, fuck it. I don't think generative AI is bad. I am not a capitalist; I despise Elon Musk. But AI was not invented by capitalism. It was invented by programmers and linguists and scientists who have spent decades studying the overlap between computing and natural human language, and that's cool as fuck actually. As a result of that study they have achieved the most perfect yet unity between science and art, the ability to transform numbers and probabilities into (usually bad) poetry and (often actually very good) visual images. We literally live in a world where you can say aloud 'computer, draw me a cat dressed as a cowboy' and I couldn't stop finding the awe in that even if I tried. AI art wasn't 'invented' to steal artists' jobs, it was invented because a bunch of largely autistic largely trans woman programmers wanted to see if they Could and also wanted to generate a bunch of weird furry porn.
I don't think AI art is inherently lazy; just hearing about ComfyUI and weights and inpainting makes my eyes cross. I also think that being lazy is cool and rad, an opinion I held before the fatigue set in but which has become all the more poignant since. I think that people can Expend Energy Towards their fandoms in infinite ways and that historically people have always tried to claim that some mediums Aren't Real Art, and can't imagine hearing people enthusiastically introduce something that exists because of them and not immediately wanting to know why they enjoy it and what purpose they could find in that act. I also think that sometimes fandom is just 'hehe I made these sims look like my OTP and now they're kissing' and that's okay. I think that fraud is bad and also was always possible before AI, though I agree that it should be better regulated than it is now. I understand that AI datacenter water usage is so abysmally small that it truly makes 0 sense to focus on it as an environmental issue; you might as well start cancelling people for taking overly long showers. I think that text AI gen is mostly correct so long as you know what you're doing with it and verify anything specific, and I think that even if the generation had no 'useful purpose' it would still have value purely because roleplaying is fun. I know that AI very much is an accessibility tool: it allows some to create images in a way that they otherwise couldn't (or could with great difficulty, or only in a manner they don't enjoy), and can help neurodivergents specifically get through the insane emotional labour that workplaces expect through emails and such. (And, no, I am not going to start romanticising unnecessary work emails. I can't believe how many people I've seen do that purely because the 'enemy' is AI.)
This is just one particular issue, but... I guess it's shown to me that a lot of things which I thought were highly-held broad moral principles - that art is meaningful insofar as a human finds it meaningful, or that accessibility is good and there is nothing inherently pure about suffering - are not, in fact, widely agreed across fandom. It's not that I think you can disagree with generative AI while agreeing with those things, but that people's drive to intensely and publicly Hate AI has over and over taken precedence over those principles: has lead fandom to turn a blind eye to bullying, to demean other's impassioned works, to reblog some of the most excruciatingly ableist bullshit I've ever heard in my entire life, all because opposing AI was a greater priority.
I'm also intensely weirded out by all the 'media literacy is dead' stuff I keep seeing around; yeah, it sucks that proshipping is no longer considered the default in fandom, but on a societal level? Do we remember that in the 80s significant swathes of the population genuinely believed that popular music was intentionally crafted to secretly convert teenagers to satanism??? (Also I fucking hate the term 'brainrot'. I kinda can't stand how comfortable people have gotten with accusing others of mental deficiency, or genuinely believing that modern society is 'degenerating' people or whatever; sorry, but this shit is just one step away from nazi rhetoric. There is no 'better time' of family and traditional culture we can return to by steadfastly resisting Modern Indulgences, what the actual hell you guys.)
anyway.
I don't really know where my place is, now. Fandom has to be important to me because it is something that, as an autistic person, is a core feature of my life's Meaning and Fulfilment; it's not merely a means to an end towards the things that Really Matter, but something that without which I find it significantly harder to get through my days. In the past I've suffered badly with moral OCD and ruminated for hours about whatever ideological differences I had with the majority of my respective fandoms, convinced that they made me fundamentally a Bad Person because I knew that I was believing something Wrong but continued to do it anyway; this still haunts me, but - say it with me, now! - the Fatigue has at least taken the wind out of my sails enough that I can write this all up without continually berating myself or repeatedly requesting reassurance. Maybe I really am just a bad person who doesn't care about artists enough. (I do feel bad for anyone how's finding it harder to find work!! As someone who was fired from my dream job a year ago due to ADHD and fatigue issues... I do kind of find myself wondering why nobody ever talks about UBI anymore, though. If I had one reason to hate this AI moral panic, it's for thoroughly wiping that from most of the cultural discourse that I've been part of. Hating AI isn't going to uninvent it!! It's literally just maths!! UBI is actually, for once, the more realistic solution!!!!!)
yeah this has just turned into a rant, like I knew it would.
What am I hoping to get out of the Snowflake Challenge? Some fun prompts to think about the year past and ahead. Motivation to make an icon or two, maybe. Any extra events or sites or spaces I could learn about or recommend to others. Opportunities to journal and get my thoughts down. All that sort of thing.
...I guess I could have just written that up from the outset. Perhaps I would not have been capable of such clarity had I not purged my brain of those swirling thoughts beforehand?
I should probably just delete all that. Is there anything to be gained from keeping it? I don't have any expectation of changing anyone's minds... But I just can't seem to let go of the hope that people will learn more about the kind of person who can not hate AI. Usually, whenever the subject comes up, the assumption seems to be that there are Normal People (who would abandon any and all principle to loudly denounce AI), and then there are Asshole Lazy Soulless Socially Awkward (not autistic) Creepy Tech Bros incapable of the basic humanisation to even understand art as a concept. Or just scam artists. Which is why any and all aggression directed towards them is morally justified or even required.
If I can achieve one thing from these rants, it's to say that: no. Sometimes, the person who is inquiring as to the extremely vague 'no AI' rule on your event, or posting their cute new OC, or chatting on character.ai, is just as much your standard autistic shut-in 30-something Old Fandom-er with hundreds of thousands of words of m/m incest fic up on ao3 as the rest of you. They are not incapable of conceptualising art or basic empathy. They are just, quite simply, very very stupid.
Or I am, at least.
I'm lying I don't have hundreds of thousands of m/m incest. my incest is largely m/f for some reason. also that's on the Secret Ao3 Account nowadays.
The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.
Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.
So: Hi!!!!! I try to do Snowflake Challenge every year (I fully completed it in 2024 IIRC!!!) and at this point it's pretty much the only consistent time I post to this blog :') Which is a bit of a shame, but while I used to regularly write longer-form posts to tumblr, over the last year and a half or so I've been dealing with some pretty heavy fatigue and haven't really done that anymore. Or maybe it's just that I'm channelling all that writing energy into fic right now? I got into SVSSS last year and have been absolutely bursting with inspiration ever since <333
Anyway!! As for what I plan to get out of this event... I'm not sure!!! I'm not really here often enough to make friends. I haven't even made any icons in ages, though I'm always wanting to get back into it. (I really need a BingQiu icon at least!) And... while overall I do vibe very heavily with the kind of fandom that goes on at DW - I myself grew up in the LJ era, so I am also on the older side and feel great nostalgia for that era both in terms of blogging infrastructure and also fandom culture - I... have found a bit of a chasm between myself and most of fandom as a whole, of late: in some ways, especially within these older circles. And I guess in more specifically-focused spaces I can just talk about the fics I like or writing or headcanons and stuff, but I associate DW with more high-level analytical thoughts? And your blog as a space for sharing your unfiltered thoughts and opinions in a broad sense? To an extent, I guess the latter especially is also true of Tumblr... which is part of why I intentionally don't associate my Tumblr blogs with my ao3/discord. (Is that disingenuous? At one point I felt really guilty about the idea of 'hiding' my bad sides and 'tricking' people into liking or interacting with me despite it. Now? Fatigue. If there's one good aspect, it's kinda hard to be too anxious when you're tired all the time!!!)
I'm not sure whether to really go into that in detail. I'm worried both that people will project onto me overly positive interpretations ('yeah I also hate people who want ao3 to be an algorithm and never comment!!!' I don't hate those people actually.) and also overly negative ones (the chasm isn't, like, me being angry that fandom nowadays is too Woke and Reverse Racist or something). The easier thing to say is that I just hate how difficult it's been to find people who truly agree with the 'bullying is bad' principle, even when it's easy: Harry Potter fans being, again, the easier group to defend. But I also despise the aggressive bullying and death threats levelled at anyone associated with AI use. I think sending horrible DMs to people is bad, actually. I also think that including in the rules of an event that certain people should 'take a long walk off a short pier' or the like is also bad. I am continually disillusioned how much of fandom has accepted this as normal and justified. (And, no, I don't think it makes it okay to say 'well but I think it's normal to be frustrated by-' that is not the same thing!! I am complaining about very specific acts!! What you are bringing up is completely different!!!)
But also - okay, fuck it. I don't think generative AI is bad. I am not a capitalist; I despise Elon Musk. But AI was not invented by capitalism. It was invented by programmers and linguists and scientists who have spent decades studying the overlap between computing and natural human language, and that's cool as fuck actually. As a result of that study they have achieved the most perfect yet unity between science and art, the ability to transform numbers and probabilities into (usually bad) poetry and (often actually very good) visual images. We literally live in a world where you can say aloud 'computer, draw me a cat dressed as a cowboy' and I couldn't stop finding the awe in that even if I tried. AI art wasn't 'invented' to steal artists' jobs, it was invented because a bunch of largely autistic largely trans woman programmers wanted to see if they Could and also wanted to generate a bunch of weird furry porn.
I don't think AI art is inherently lazy; just hearing about ComfyUI and weights and inpainting makes my eyes cross. I also think that being lazy is cool and rad, an opinion I held before the fatigue set in but which has become all the more poignant since. I think that people can Expend Energy Towards their fandoms in infinite ways and that historically people have always tried to claim that some mediums Aren't Real Art, and can't imagine hearing people enthusiastically introduce something that exists because of them and not immediately wanting to know why they enjoy it and what purpose they could find in that act. I also think that sometimes fandom is just 'hehe I made these sims look like my OTP and now they're kissing' and that's okay. I think that fraud is bad and also was always possible before AI, though I agree that it should be better regulated than it is now. I understand that AI datacenter water usage is so abysmally small that it truly makes 0 sense to focus on it as an environmental issue; you might as well start cancelling people for taking overly long showers. I think that text AI gen is mostly correct so long as you know what you're doing with it and verify anything specific, and I think that even if the generation had no 'useful purpose' it would still have value purely because roleplaying is fun. I know that AI very much is an accessibility tool: it allows some to create images in a way that they otherwise couldn't (or could with great difficulty, or only in a manner they don't enjoy), and can help neurodivergents specifically get through the insane emotional labour that workplaces expect through emails and such. (And, no, I am not going to start romanticising unnecessary work emails. I can't believe how many people I've seen do that purely because the 'enemy' is AI.)
This is just one particular issue, but... I guess it's shown to me that a lot of things which I thought were highly-held broad moral principles - that art is meaningful insofar as a human finds it meaningful, or that accessibility is good and there is nothing inherently pure about suffering - are not, in fact, widely agreed across fandom. It's not that I think you can disagree with generative AI while agreeing with those things, but that people's drive to intensely and publicly Hate AI has over and over taken precedence over those principles: has lead fandom to turn a blind eye to bullying, to demean other's impassioned works, to reblog some of the most excruciatingly ableist bullshit I've ever heard in my entire life, all because opposing AI was a greater priority.
I'm also intensely weirded out by all the 'media literacy is dead' stuff I keep seeing around; yeah, it sucks that proshipping is no longer considered the default in fandom, but on a societal level? Do we remember that in the 80s significant swathes of the population genuinely believed that popular music was intentionally crafted to secretly convert teenagers to satanism??? (Also I fucking hate the term 'brainrot'. I kinda can't stand how comfortable people have gotten with accusing others of mental deficiency, or genuinely believing that modern society is 'degenerating' people or whatever; sorry, but this shit is just one step away from nazi rhetoric. There is no 'better time' of family and traditional culture we can return to by steadfastly resisting Modern Indulgences, what the actual hell you guys.)
anyway.
I don't really know where my place is, now. Fandom has to be important to me because it is something that, as an autistic person, is a core feature of my life's Meaning and Fulfilment; it's not merely a means to an end towards the things that Really Matter, but something that without which I find it significantly harder to get through my days. In the past I've suffered badly with moral OCD and ruminated for hours about whatever ideological differences I had with the majority of my respective fandoms, convinced that they made me fundamentally a Bad Person because I knew that I was believing something Wrong but continued to do it anyway; this still haunts me, but - say it with me, now! - the Fatigue has at least taken the wind out of my sails enough that I can write this all up without continually berating myself or repeatedly requesting reassurance. Maybe I really am just a bad person who doesn't care about artists enough. (I do feel bad for anyone how's finding it harder to find work!! As someone who was fired from my dream job a year ago due to ADHD and fatigue issues... I do kind of find myself wondering why nobody ever talks about UBI anymore, though. If I had one reason to hate this AI moral panic, it's for thoroughly wiping that from most of the cultural discourse that I've been part of. Hating AI isn't going to uninvent it!! It's literally just maths!! UBI is actually, for once, the more realistic solution!!!!!)
yeah this has just turned into a rant, like I knew it would.
What am I hoping to get out of the Snowflake Challenge? Some fun prompts to think about the year past and ahead. Motivation to make an icon or two, maybe. Any extra events or sites or spaces I could learn about or recommend to others. Opportunities to journal and get my thoughts down. All that sort of thing.
...I guess I could have just written that up from the outset. Perhaps I would not have been capable of such clarity had I not purged my brain of those swirling thoughts beforehand?
I should probably just delete all that. Is there anything to be gained from keeping it? I don't have any expectation of changing anyone's minds... But I just can't seem to let go of the hope that people will learn more about the kind of person who can not hate AI. Usually, whenever the subject comes up, the assumption seems to be that there are Normal People (who would abandon any and all principle to loudly denounce AI), and then there are Asshole Lazy Soulless Socially Awkward (not autistic) Creepy Tech Bros incapable of the basic humanisation to even understand art as a concept. Or just scam artists. Which is why any and all aggression directed towards them is morally justified or even required.
If I can achieve one thing from these rants, it's to say that: no. Sometimes, the person who is inquiring as to the extremely vague 'no AI' rule on your event, or posting their cute new OC, or chatting on character.ai, is just as much your standard autistic shut-in 30-something Old Fandom-er with hundreds of thousands of words of m/m incest fic up on ao3 as the rest of you. They are not incapable of conceptualising art or basic empathy. They are just, quite simply, very very stupid.
Or I am, at least.
I'm lying I don't have hundreds of thousands of m/m incest. my incest is largely m/f for some reason. also that's on the Secret Ao3 Account nowadays.
