Guava Continent Outpost

Prompt: In your own space, create a list of at least three fannish things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a fannish wish-list of sorts.

Being used to small fandoms and creating all the content, my fannish wishlists tend to be more like to-do lists these days. One of my greatest fannish wishes is for tokusatsu fandom to have another active, thriving kink meme - a wish that no individual fan can fulfill alone.

Throughout the years, the fandom has had multiple Kamen Rider/Super Sentai/Ultraman/General tokusatsu kink memes that rarely stayed active for long unlike the long-running franchises of the source materials themselves. Below is my wishlist for the running of a new kink meme that could potentially last for a year or two.

Tokusatsu Kink Meme Wishlist

(01) Hosted on Dreamwidth with detailed tutorials on how kink memes work. Topics for the meta/tutorials can include: Tracking DW threads, writing short vs detailed prompts, writing short & satisfying fills etc. So newer fans can take advantage of the platform's features (that AO3 doesn't have) and be braver about writing prompts/creating fills.

(02) Top level threads with titles of each show. To allow tracking of the shows that you're interested in prompting and filling for.

(03) An associated AO3 Collection and Twitter account for notifications of new fills. For continuous promotion of the kink meme and fics created for it.

(04) Chat post for discussion of kinks and how to write/draw them. A free-for-all space to ask for help on the technical details and share recs of existing fics/art that focuses on niche kinks to learn from them.

(05) Affiliation with fanwork exchanges. I've been thinking that it's a waste that many cool and delicious requests in exchanges have been left unfilled, so why not reuse them as prompts for a kink meme? Plus as the requests for exchanges roll out, the kink meme may be a good avenue for practicing writing/drawing certain characters/ships. This way, the fanwork exchanges and kink meme can work in tandem to create a healthy fanwork ecosystem.

Prompt: Comment to someone you haven't ever interacted with before or introduce yourself to someone you've interacted with and friend/follow them.

There's not a lot of toku fans on DW these days. I doubt more will migrate cause of the tumblr purge since the fandom culture isn't strongly bent towards NSFW fanworks. I myself didn't start poking around here cause of what happened on tumblr in Dec 2018, but due to coming to terms with my preference for enjoying my hobby slowly.

Still, I'd like to reach out to any DW user that are interested in toku, blogs about toku shows and even uses icons featuring toku shows. I find that if I really look out for fellow fans, I can find them in the most unexpected places, such as on the challenge posts for snowflake_challenge. That's how I stumbled upon evilinsanemonkey's journal and KR Kuuga icon :O This reminds me of how a few years back, I wandered into the journal of a Hockey RPF author and found entries on Kamen Rider OOO, showing how diverse DW users' interests are.

I've looked into the member posts of the two main toku-centric comms (kamenrider and sentai) and I don't think it's realistic to try to revive them now, if ever. I still like to brainstorm ideas on how to encourage discussion and the creation of more fanwork for my niche Japanese shows, mostly to keep motivating myself to #bethechange.

Posted my exchange treat!

I posted my completed treat on 11 Dec, four days before the official deadline. I feel unnecessarily competitive and therefore #onbrand with my ship >:3 Even after posting, my nerves on how the story will be received still have yet to abate. I'm trying to work through it now by starting another fic, one with kinks and a plot that makes it obvious that the story is mainly for me.

A vision for juicedguava 2.0: Version Dreamwidth

Like many who have jumped on to the DW bandwagon due to the recent Tumblr purge, I've been exploring the various communities on the platform. I've rebooted my own fanworks community juicedguava, named after my first fanworks blog on Tumblr.

In 2019, I plan to move my static graphic edits from the Tumblr to juicedguava, that is photo sets and a softer world remixes. I think I'll continue making GIF sets and to make up for the extra step of uploading them on another host for embedding, I can experiment with going beyond Tumblr size limits.

This week, I've made some shippy icons for the first time and learned how to use this handy website for generating the HTML for the icon table. It's been a refreshing experience to just edit pictures for the fun of it with no expectation for the final work to be of use for others. Once or twice I wondered what if I learned how to contribute graphics back when I was active on LJ fandom, but at that age when I didn't really have anything unique to express, it felt all the more awkward when I forced myself to contribute out of anxiety on missing out on all the fun.

Last year, I confronted that anxiety head on through writing and posting fics, and while it feels like a never-ending battle, each breakthrough gives me the confidence and courage to face the next intangible obstacle.

Completed this week's prompt for 100words

Wrote a Naoto/Tatsuya drabble for Prompt #123 - Ghost and posted it on the comm! I've saved the post to my memories for posting on AO3 if/when I've written more drabbles.

I was more excited than I thought I'd be about posting on a DW space that isn't my own. I had to take extra care in formatting my post to look like the post of other members; a practice that I don't think is intuitive for fans of the social media generation. For that reason, I think that if there'd be another attempt to start up fan activity on DW, a lot of detailed handholding would be required to keep up the momentum for a significant (and perhaps finite) amount of time.