Snowflake Challenge 2025 | Part One

Like last year, I decided to participate again in the snowflake challenge.

Obviously, with the restart of the website, I’ve lost all links to the website itself from last year, buuut… I was a smart cookie and also posted on the website that was hosting it, and you can find my entries for 2024 here.

I’ll be posting weekly in the month of January.

The Masterpost of the 2025 Snowflake Challenge for all participants are linked here.

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Challenge #1 – Update your fandom information

Hey, you’re on this website, you know the story behind this website!

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Challenge #2 – Your Fannish Origin Story

I don’t even remember… Oh wait, yeah. It all started with daydreaming about TV shows I was watching like Airwolf, MacGyver, Dukes of Hazzard… and just making up stories. I wrote poetry for the school paper (really bad but it got posted anyway because… content??) and when I was in my teens I got into a band and kept daydreaming until one day I was like… I write poetry, surely I can write stories??

So I started to write a story by hand about that band, more so I had friends and people around who didn’t bully me. First in my native language and then I was like… but this band is English and don’t really speak Dutch all that well so, let’s switch it up!

It was a continuous story, and I had like 10 notebooks full of the story. As I got older, I thought… if I can write a story about this band, why not about the TV shows I was into? I didn’t do it at first, but then I went to my first Star Wars convention – a small one with like the actors who played Chewie, R2, Boba Fett and someone else I don’t remember, and met someone who wrote stories about Star Wars.

We met again at a Stargate convention (I got into that because of Richard Dean Anderson as I was a biiiig fan of MacGyver), and then I got involved into ‘fandom’ as it were. She introduced me into slash, whump… fanfiction – and making me realise that what I was doing was called writing fanfiction, and it was as if a new world opened up for me.

I had so much stories written by hand or on my typewriter, and my first ‘collab’ was with my best friend in college where we took A4 binders and wrote a gigantic one based on a band she was into, several other artists and it was amaaaazing.

Until, you know, I started renting my own home and I had a neighbor use my shed because his shed was full and he thought the box of papers and notebooks was ‘old shit’ and threw it out for me, thinking he did me a favor.

I never thought of writing stories on a computer; I got my first computer when I was… 20 or something? Before that I used other people’s computer or worked in the library for a small fee every single time. Yeah, there was a reason why I wrote stories by hand!

And, with my own computer, and the internet rising in popularity (although it was really stupid back then and expensive), I could read on my shows, and interact with people across the world about my favourite TV shows.

My online presence started in 2005 and when I started to post my stories. I had gotten into NCIS (because of Mark Harmon, I was a huge fan of his show with Marlee Matlin called Reasonable Doubts when I grew up) and started out with a crossover with Stargate SG-1, and things just spiralled from there. Onwards and upwards!

My livejournal turns 20 this year. It was my second account; I don’t really remember what happened to the first one. This means that all the friends I made back in 2005, we’ve known each other for that long.

I don’t really participate in fandom anymore, I don’t know any good places that are safe and active – I’ve dealt with too many fandom wars/flames for a life time… Everyone seems to have poofed out of existence after the mass livejournal exodus and the communities I was a part of for challenges (het bigbang, anyone??) are no longer active.

And you know, this is okay, my Autistic ass just doesn’t like starting over and we’re fine writing by ourselves and have the occasional interaction with people.

I’ve been meaning to get back into things though, but I don’t know where to start!

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Challenge #3 – A Fannish opinion you hold that has changed over time

Oh, this is hard.

Early on in my fannish life I learned REALLY quick to keep my opinions to myself and not to get involved in fannish things as much as others because people got upset.

It took me a little to sleep on it buuuut… I have one!! You know, when I was younger, I encountered fans that were waaaaaay older than me and usually thought to myself; why are OLD PEOPLE still involved in THE THING THAT I LIKE??? They’re my mum’s age/they’re older than my mum and SHE’s not doing this stuff!

(Mostly overridden by the realisation that they’re actually really nice people I can vibe with, yay!)

Yeah well, now that I’m basically OLD PEOPLE I’d like to slap my younger self so hard.

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Challenge #4 – Set your goals for 2025

HAHA. I set goals last year and spectacularly failed at them; I wanted to write 7000 words a *peeps at notes* MONTH. Which is more than doable for me. I managed to write/post one story and that was like 20k of words and…. then… I got distracted.

I still started a new story back then but never posted it, but I didn’t make the yearly word count anyway.

So, for 2025, I’m doing it again because I still have the story ideas I set out from last year, and I’m working on the story I started to write last year (The Fox And The Swan).

The reason I set myself such a low goal is that I’m rusty when it comes to writing stuff, I used to bang out so many stories each year with a large word goal that I need to ease myself back into it.

So, my fannish to-do list for 2025:

• Write 7000 words a month – 87000 words by the end of the year at least please.
• Finish The Fox And The Swan
• Finish re-uploading Meekobuggy stories to our new website
• Finish writing a story of Lily and Lamb and post it
• Work on a Meekobuggy story REMIX that we started last year (won’t count towards word goal)
• Start new stories (have 4 ideas from last year)

A personal goal of mine is to spend even less, and still save money now that I have a car. I’m decent with money, but I want to take it a step further and I’ve even created a spreadsheet. Stricter budgeting!

I want to do this for several reasons, mainly because I spent quite some money in 2024 (new 2nd hand car and a new graphics card for my PC) and I want to get back to where I was, but also because having money in your savings account can save your life one day.

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If you were to answer these questions, how would you do it? Let me know!

Until next time,
Buggy