Snowflake Challenge #5 (Three useful fannish things)

[mumblemumble]

[Community Post]

📋 In your own space, tell us about 3 creative/fannish resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy. (One or two is fine, especially if you're in a smaller fandom or like many people at the moment, fannishly adrift right now.)

(I skipped the third and fourth challenge because I didn't feel like posting a rant and I couldn't think of anything to add to Guardian canon in the manner suggested in the prompt. So here we are!)

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1) I'm pretty much exclusively writing on my phone these days, and somehow I never fully got into using Google Docs for drafting and futzing around. Once I outgrew the iOS Notes app, I tried out Craft and I love it! (This is not sponsored. I do pay for the pro version.) It has some bells and whistles I don't need, but also some bells and whistles I've come to enjoy, like rich links (pasting in a Twitter URL and getting a formatted little card with preview image) and an easy-to-use folder structure with nested documents. I use it for fic writing (and collecting fic-related research), some random lists and notes, and my shopping list.

2) Guardian Bingo is "a very low-stakes, low-pressure fest meant to be fun and inspire more Guardian fan creations" and is now continuing through 2023 after a very successful 2022! (People loved it. :-D) There's a wide variety of prompts which you're encouraged to interpret however you want, there's no minimum requirements for fills, there's a fun bonus prompt every month, and the badges you get for a line or a blackout (seen here in my Bingo post) are beautiful.

3) I haven't been consulting it much recently, but I lived in the Bai Yu & Zhu Yilong Primer by qikiqtarjuaq when I was all new to Guardian fandom and didn't know where to put all my Weilan and Zhubai feelings. What an incredible collection of information and links! I still link people to it all the time.

Comments

[elenothar]

I am deeply in awe of people who manage to write whole fics on their phones, your fingers are magic O.O

[mumblemumble]

I'm more worried about my eyes than my fingers at this point. I really need to cut back on screen time, but CANNOT PUT PHONE AWAY. BRAIN WANTS UPDATES. BRAIN CANNOT BE LEFT TO ITS OWN DEVICES. 😩

But yeah, it helps that I mostly write shorter stuff, and mostly in short bursts, so no magic involved. 😄 I've come to rely on autocorrect and keyboard shortcuts quite a bit ("lgs" makes "Long-ge's" happen, very convenient), and also the laptop is where work happens, so couch + phone = blorbo time.

[elenothar]

(brain cannot be left to its own devices, or in fact the phone device - I'll see myself out)

Yeah, I get having the separation between work and blorbo time. I miss having that, a bit, but I still couldn't type anything of length on my phone 😅 then again, the fact that my touch screen occasionally goes on the fritz might be mainly to blame for that

[tinny]

I tried out Craft and I love it!

Interesting to see what you use it for - from their web page it was completely impossible to tell what that software actually *does*. (except apparently *wow* everyone. Huh?)

(This is not sponsored. I do pay for the pro version.)

Is it naive of me that this never occurred to me? dw lies firmly outside the monetization scheme world for me.

[mumblemumble]

I feel that might definitely play a role. 😅

(By the way, I type entirely with my right thumb and my left index finger, and I have no idea how that happened, but I cannot type any other way on my phone now. Somehow it works!)

[mumblemumble]

Haha, yeah, I feel they're pandering to some kind of corporate productivity mindset and it's been getting worse. I really hope it won't affect their product too much. Which is just a nice little writing tool if that's what you want it to be!

And lol, I guess that was just cheeky shorthand for "I don't financially benefit in any way from telling you about this commercial product," so no, not naive. I was just overcorrecting. 😁

[elenothar]

That makes sense to me, actually. More than two fingers start getting in the way on tiny screen anyway (though I suppose thumb and thumb is more standard?)

[mumblemumble]

This wouldn't let me go, so I tried some googling. Apparently two thumbs is the norm, yes. And if you're old, you use one index finger. According to very srs research. I guess my version is rare, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.

Happy to report I haven't unlearned keyboard typing, though. :-D

[elenothar]

All hail the google! And no, I don't expect you're the only one, there's gotta be all kinds of combinations (and none inherently better than the other)