A Carnival of Aces: December 2019 Roundup

 A huge thank you to everyone who participated! If you made a post and it didn't end up on here, then that means I didn't receive it, so feel free to message me and I'll add it. Same goes for if you have a late submission you really want on the list, I'll add that as well if you send me the link to it.

Here is what everyone put together for the prompt "Literature, Academia, and Storytelling":

Polly All Sorts wrote "More Ace Rep Like This Please..." about seeing more realistic fiction dealing with ace-allo relations. 

Strange Perspectives on Stuff wrote "Fiction from the Alien Library" about his own experiences with being a literature fan and being asexual. 

The Aro Ace Safe Space wrote "Asexuality in Fanfiction" about lack of diversity in ace narratives in fanfiction. 

Osteophage wrote "A Summary of 'Picturing Space for Lesbian Nonsexualities'" about ace academic studies using a specific article as an example.

Aspec of Stardust wrote "Literature and Academia" about ace representation in literature and the issues that come with ace-coded (but not canon) characters. 

Almost, Almost wrote "Carnival of Aces: Literature, Academia, and Storytelling" about their experiences with the lack of asexual-friendly narratives in literature. 

Siggy on The Asexual Agenda wrote "There's Another Perspective: Approaches to Ace Literature" about the different ways scholars analyze ace texts compared to how the general ace community tends to analyze ace texts. 

Again, thank you to everyone who participated! I really enjoyed reading all of the entries, and look forward to the upcoming carnivals! 

Snowflake Challenge 1: Introduction

Hello everyone! The first challenge of this year's fandom snowflake challenge is to write an introduction of yourself. Since I haven't actually written a proper introduction for myself on here before, I thought I'd give it a go! I go by Autumn (though you can call me Aria too, since both on here and pillowfort I go by 'Aria's' Hollow) and am an avid fan of storytelling and writing. In particular, I've always been drawn to fantasy and science fiction stories, stories with horror and/or mystery elements, and stories that are deeply character driven. I'm not too picky about what medium the story takes, as I love playing video games, reading books and comics/manga, and watching television and films. I've done a lot more watching lately than anything else, but I'm making a point to get back into reading and gaming as well now. (For anime and manga I use myanimelist.net, and for books I use goodreads, since having lists/goals helps me stay on track. Haven't found a good site equivalent for games or films yet though...)

I also do a fair bit of writing myself. Of course, since my focus tends to jump around like some kind of hyperactive toad, I have yet to finish most of my WiPs, but nothing is ever really abandoned with me either, for fanfiction or original fiction. Similar to my consuming interests, I write a lot of character-centric fantasy and sci-fi stories, which can range from original superhero stories to dystopian fantasy to shoujo-inspired magical girl/boy series among other things. Over on pillowfort (and sometimes tumblr) I also showcase my art of all my ocs, though I may delve properly into fan art at some point as well. I've also been doing nanowrimo consistently since 2015, so hopefully that will eventually kick some of my drafts into the finished stages! 

Outside of fandom geekery and writing woes, the other thing always popping up on my journal is that I am aromantic and asexual and fairly loud about it. I'm definitely on the repulsed side for both, though I'm more heavily sex-repulsed than romance-repulsed, and that has certainly informed a lot of my story preferences and fandom experiences. While there are certainly romance stories I've liked or even really liked (Cardcaptor Sakura is one of my favorite series), I generally prefer a story to have little to none of it, or at least not have it be the only kind of relationship that gets to shine. Likewise, there is little romance in my original works and my fanfiction doesn't tend to get very shippy (since... I don't tend to ship anything in the traditional way). That said I am very much a 'ship and let ship' kind of person, though since this is my own journal aroace interpretations and personal rants/opinions will be mixed in with general reviews. 

I also hope to start writing more meta for the series I love! Normally I keep my thoughts swirling around in just my head, but I want to try putting more of them into words, and maybe even do some liveblogs of certain shows or video games. 

My main other interests are music (I'm a big disney and musical fan, as well as a wide variety of other styles), food/cooking, languages, and clothing design (mainly for character design ideas). I generally like to ramble and talk about different ideas and interpretations and what not, so feel free to send a message or leave a comment if you want to chat about anything in specific. 

Snowflake Challenge 2: Fannish History

While I have always gotten very actively into whatever my favorite stories were at the time (which for child!me was the Teen Titans cartoon, Avatar the Last Airbender, and the Harry Potter books. Spirited Away was another early obsession for me), I first started dabbling in fandom when I was about ten and obsessing over Pokemon (the original anime) and Powerpuff Girls/Powerpuff Girls Z. That was when I first started looking at, hesitantly, fan art and fanfic (hesitantly only because I had been warned about how much Adult Content existed in fandom spaces). Mostly though, I just saved a million screencaps of my favorite characters and then edited them with picnic.

(Other early series for me was X-Men (the cartoon) and some Batman: The Animated Series and The Justice League.)

Middle School was when I really got into it though with Fullmetal Alchemist, and soon after that Death Note and Cardcaptor Sakura. That was when I joined tumblr, which was when I finally took the deep Plunge into fandom. Though I think one of my earlier deep plunges into fanfiction specifically was with Thor (2011) and The Avengers (2012). I was deeply obsessed with that and read a dizzying amount of fanfic, especially for Loki since he was my fave, read every ounce of meta I could dig up, I even watched the commentary for the first Thor film and watched actor interviews which was unusual for me. When the second Thor film was announced I checked regularly for updates on any information or trailers, though I had some issues with the final results, I still enjoyed the second film and it gave me more ideas and metas to read. It's safe to say that at that point anime/manga and the mcu were some of my biggest obsessions in general. (After Ragnarok came and set fire to my crops and betrayed me I haven't really had the heart for the mcu as much, though I still watch all the new films and probably will continue to do so, but man the early obsession was Great. Plus, because I often listened to ccs music while reading loki meta/fic, I came to associate the first ending theme of the anime with Loki and that still amuses me, so)

Also, not sure exactly where this fits in, but at some point in the teen years I got really into vocaloid music. I didn't really fan over the personas/characters of the vocaloids as much as other people did, but boy howdy did I listen to a LOT of vocaloid, which definitely had an impact on my music identity (I like a lot of other styles, but that was My Thing along with game/film soundtracks and Disney songs, though that might have crept in a little later). 

Another High Impact series I read as a teen was D.Gray-Man, and later there was the Good Omens tv series and more recently The Untamed. Eventually I started moving to Dreamwidth and Pillowfort since tumblr was/is getting more broken all the time, though I'm still definitely on there. At some point, probably also in high school, I started reviewing stuff after I finished reading/watching it. I haven't been exactly consistent with it, but even now I try to keep it up when I remember to and write my thoughts out after I have finished something. 

I also had a distinct Super Smash Brothers fixation, more than once actually,  I even went as far as creating dark mirrior oc versions of my favorite characters and giving them full on personalities and backstories, which was a ton of fun. The few other series I actually wrote some fanfic for was Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle (that obsession was LONG LASTING), Star Trek (TOS, TNG, and DS9, though I only wrote for the latter), The Untamed, and BBC Merlin (which is a series I was super obsessed with but also have a love/hate relationship with).

I finally got to go to my first con when I attended KuroNekoCon last year, which was absolutely fantastic, I went all three days, managed to buy a few souvenirs, played video games, and all around had a great time. I definitely look forward to going to more cons in the future!

I think that pretty much catches us up to the present. I don't have a clear cut obsession at the moment, though I'm always looking for a new one. So I guess we'll see how that goes!