Fanart, Fanfiction and Fangirling

Challenge #12

Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

So many people make my fandom life better:

People who leave comments and/or kudos or reblog my fics and art. My current fandoms are rather small and interaction is very limited, so I'm always very happy when I receive feedback on my fics and art. Seeing an AO3 email notification saying someone left a comment on one of my fics immediately improves my mood.

Writers and artists in general. Fandom is made by people who create something out of passion and love and share it with the world, be it fanfiction, fanart, moodboards, meta pieces, playlists etc. Reading a fic or looking at a piece of fanart can make me forget about everyday problems, and I'm always grateful for that.

The people behind AO3, DW etc. I don't think people realise how lucky we are to have AO3 and DW and how much work those websites need to keep running. Our online experience would be very different without them!

I'm sure I'm forgetting something/someone, but those are the main things that came to my mind.

Challenge #10: Big Mood (Board)

CHOOSE SOMETHING YOU LOVE AND CREATE A MINI MOOD COLLECTION OF THREE (or more) ITEMS THAT EVOKE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT IT. You don’t have to limit yourself to visual media, or collect the items into a special format like a square (though you can if you’d like).

I've never put together moodboards and I'm probably doing this wrong (as in, I shouldn't use images from the show, but just images of items, places etc. that remind me of the show), but I'm lazy and sleepy and I have to get up early in the morning, so this is the best I can do right now. But it was fun, so I might do other moodboards in the future.

For the moment, here's my very first moodboard! CSI, of course. More specifically, Nick/Greg.

( CSI mood board under the cut )

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

I've never really thought about my creative process, but for writing it usually starts with a scene, a sentence, or even just an image. At the moment I'm only actively writing fanfiction in the CSI and Lupin III fandoms and most of my inspiration comes from one of the following:

a) Specific canon moments, like a certain scene or something the characters said.

Examples of this are Little green-eyed monster (CSI, Nick/Greg), which was inspired by a scene from S09E05 - Leave Out All the Rest; Make a muscle (CSI, Nick/Greg), a coda to S05E04 - Crow's Feet; A promise is a promise (Lupin III, gen), inspired by a line from the Jigen Daisuke live-action film.

b) Writing prompts. I follow Creative Prompts for Writing on Tumblr, and a lot of my fics were inspired by prompts I found on that page. I mostly write ficlets or short fics and I find it quiet easy to develop a short story starting from a few words or a little scene.

Examples of this are Prove it (CSI, Nick/Greg); The way you smile (CSI, Nick/Greg) and a lot of the daily ficlets from the various Nick/Greg Advent Calendars I've done these last few years.

That's where I get inspiration. For the development of the story I don't have a fixed process, but a couple of years ago I changed the way I write. I used to spend a lot of time trying to find the right words in the past, and often got stuck and frustrated. Then I finally embraced the "just write the first draft" approach, and things got so much easier. Sometimes, when I know what I want to say, but not how I want to say it, I just write down a short summary, or a very tentative version of what I have in mind, just to get it out of the way. Then I come back to it and edit it: sometimes it's just some minor twists, like using a certain word instead of another, other times I completely rewrite a sentence or even delete whole scenes.

As for fanart, I started doing redraws of screencaps and illustations lately, just to see if I could do that in my style. I'm not very confident with my art, and by doing redraws I find I'm more relaxed in my approach, it feels like I'm doing a study (which I am, in a way), so I don't care if the final result isn't perfect (which is never going to be).

Examples of this are this Goemon redraw, this Sailor Mars redraw and this Rose of Versailles redraw.

Challenge #6

Top 10 Challenge.

I didn't know what to choose for this challenge, then I thought: why not ranking... Crowley's looks! I haven't been active in the Good Omens fandom lately (let's see what happens after the finale), but Crowley is one of my favourite fictional characters and David Tennant is one of my favourite actors, plus they gave him a lot of interesting looks in the show, so let's see if I can put together a top 10.

( Favourite Crowley's looks - with pictures )

Challenge #3:

Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

Oh, fandom, fandom, where would I be without you? At the risk of sounding dramatic, I'll say that fandom changed my life. I've been in various fandoms over the years, and some of them had a huge impact on me.

The Cure: my very first fandom, the one that made me start writing fanfiction and reminded me how much I like drawing. The one that broadened my musical horizons and changed my style (yep, it was not a phase). The first one that made me travel to see concerts and meet other fans. The one that started it all.

Harry Potter: the one that made me finish books in a handful of days (I'm usually a very slow reader) and inspired me to keep writing and drawing.

Die Ärzte: the one that revived my German and made me interact with fans from all over the world, some of whom I'm still in contact with. The one that made me travel thousands of kilometers to see concerts and meet musicians, that made me dance on stage during a concert, the one that was behind the decision to leave it all behind and move to Berlin when I couldn't take it any more at my old job.

Hawaii Five-0: the one that encouraged me to enroll in a screenwriting workshop at UCLA, something I never thought I could do.

Good Omens: the one that made me draw again after a long dry spell and thanks to which I was invited to be part of a fanzine.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: the one that helped me a lot during a really difficult time at work and keeps inspiring me, even if the interactions with other fans are close to zero.

I've been in other fandoms too (Star Trek: TNG, Sherlock, Lupin III and many others) and each one gave me something, but these are the ones that had the biggest impact. I can't imagine how my life would be today if I hadn't stumbled upon that fanfiction website all those years ago...

So, thank you, fandom, for everything you've given me and continue to give me. I may stop writing and drawing one day, but I wouldn't be the person I am today without you.

Challenge #1

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

I've been taking part in the Snowflake Challenge for a few years now, and I'm always looking forward to it. There isn't a specific reason, but I really enjoy the challenges and the fact that they motivate me to be more active on DW/LJ, even if it's just for a month. I used to be very active on LJ back in the day, and the Snowflake Challenge brings back some of that enthusiasm.

I like both writing fanfiction and drawing fanart. I've been in various fandoms over the years, and at the moment I'm mostly active in CSI and Lupin III. I'm also a big Good Omens fan and, even if I'm not as active in the fandom as I used to be, I'm really looking forward to the finale.

2025 is almost over, so here are the usual end of year memes, both fannish and not.

( End of year memes 2025 )

I totally forgot to post this here. I saved a Goemon screencap ages ago with the intention of doing a screencap redraw, but never got around to do it until last month. Well, better late than never.

( Goemon drawing and screencap under the cut )

I was hoping to have more time to draw in October, but it turned out to be a pretty busy month (luckily in a good, non work-related way). Some of the Drawlloween 2025 prompts were very interesting, but I hated how my first attempt turned out (for the "Undead" prompt) and I was tempted to just give up. Luckily I remembered that not everything I draw must be "good" (I'm still working on that), and if I don't like how something is coming along, I can simply draw something else.

So I ended up drawing two sketches: one for the "Yokai" prompt and one for the "Rest in peace" prompt. They're quite simple, but I'm happy with them.

( Sketches and Drawlloween prompts )

Like every little girl who grew up in Italy in the '80s, one of my favourite cartoons was "Ai shite knight" (or "Kiss me Licia", as it was known here). The anime was so huge, an Italian TV channel produced 4 live action series based on it, and then 4 further spin-off series with the same actress playing the female protagonist, who in the meantime had become extremely popular singing anime songs (yes, of course I'm talking about Cristina D'Avena, my childhood hero).

Anyway, all this intro to say that back in 2020, in the middle of lockdown, I drew a picture of the main male character (link to Tumblr, because I didn't post the pic on DW or LJ at the time). I've wanted to draw the other main male character since then, but as it oftens happens, I got lazy and then forgot. But since I have some free time, here he is, finally.

( Satomi )