brightknightie

Last week, I saw The Sheep Detectives (2026) on the big screen. It's a very unexpected movie! I would recommend it as the old-fashioned kind of PG film that really is good for almost all ages and audiences, working on different levels of theme. I found it thoughtful and charming.

It's based on the mystery novel Three Bags Full (2005) by Leonie Swann. The movie elevator pitch could have been: "What if an Agatha Christie whodunnit, but with funnier English villagers, where the murder victim is a shepherd who used to read mystery novels to his sheep, who therefore decide to help solve the murder of their beloved shepherd?" The on-screen actors include Hugh Jackman and Emma Thompson. The voice actors (sheep) include Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, and Patrick Stewart.

(It's not animated, to be clear. That is, the sheep CGI looks like live-action photography, and the sheep speak only to each other, not to humans.)

Yesterday, Nintendo announced that the release of the live-action The Legend of Zelda movie has been moved up to April 30, 2027 (from May 7, 2027). I learned about it from a community post by

Zeltik, who cited Mr. Miyamoto's tweet. It's now reported all over: Deadline, Polygon, IGN.

This is the movie's second date change. March 2027 was the original announced date; later, they pushed it to May, sliding into the vacated slot of a delayed MCU movie. But then the on-site New Zealand filming wrapped ahead of schedule, apparently giving them the opportunity to premiere just ahead of Japan's Golden Week holiday. Also, spring seems to be a less competitive box office window next year, as summer will bring Star Wars: Starfighter, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse (finally), Shrek 5 (don't care, but boy! Puss in Boots: The Last Wish was outstanding), [Superman:] Man of Tomorrow, and A Minecraft Movie 2 (um).

(Be good, be good, be good...)

Here are some recent fannish things I've happened to see and would like to share!

Spotlight: A thriving cosplay club gathers every few months in the park around a certain branch library near me. (I fence rapier-and-dagger weekly at that same time and place.) Usually, they're there to party, 30 to 50 people, mostly twenty-somethings by my guess, with upwards of 75% of attendees in costume. They play games (always including trivia and a piñata) and eat goodies (on picnic blankets), and are a delight. I love recognizing costumes when I can! Every now and then, one asks about fencing, and we chat. Recently, they held a rummage sale, selling each other used costumes, supplies, and fannish miscellany, and I suddenly realized that you might enjoy knowing about them. I also thought that, if you didn't already know, you would enjoy learning about "causeplay" -- cosplay for charity. Apparently, it's a big and growing thing, cosplayers visiting hospitals, shelters, and schools to boost children's morale. ♥

Ficathons, fests & communities

Create & engage
- 3weeks4dreamwidth continues through 5/15.
- fkficfest, the annual Forever Knight event, has prompting through 5/16 and stories due 7/18.
- joseimuke is a new community celebrating "girly Japanse(ish) fiction" ("non-live action media with the heart of shoujo manga").
- ahorseofcourseexchange, a fic exchange for horses and horsemanship, has nominations through 5/10, sign-ups through 5/18, and works due 6/08.
- fanfictionfesta, an event to promote reading, sharing, and commenting on fic, runs through 6/30.
- galorechallenge, a crossover fic challenge resuscitated from LJ, holds its Round 1 through 6/30.
- fandomdoestzedakah, a fanwork auction charity fundraiser for various Jewish organizations, has creator sign-ups through 5/22, bidding through 6/15, and works due on 9/11.
- Watson Birthday Promptfest, a celebration of all Watsons in all Sherlock Holmes versions, runs through 8/07.
- sweetandshort is a low-pressure challenge community for weekly small works.
- fic_promptly is a low-pressure community for daily prompts and fills.
- whatif_au's annual "AU Bingo" game runs through 7/31.
- allbingo's May theme is "Greek myth."
- trope_of_the_month's May theme is "forced proximity."
- pinchhits is a community for needed fills for exchanges. For example, whumpex is currently seeking pinch hitters.
- whenisitdue tracks many more events than I note here!
Enjoy & share
- fancake (themed fanfic recs); May theme: "journey & travel"
- gensplosion (gen fanfic recs)
- het_reccers (m/f fanfic recs)
- fanart_recs (fanart recs)
- recthething (fanwork recs)

Sidelight: I've been looking for new-to-me Dreamwidth folks to read and interact with. I really appreciate that Dreamwidth sorts its lists of journals with certain "interests" by how recently they've posted. It can be dispiriting that various interests have few folks who have posted in recent years. Yet it's really helpful that someone built the sorting that way in the first place! Excellent call.

Fans have been recreating fannish things inside construction games as long as games have existed. Here's a build that I happened to hear about this week that made me smile:

NintenFan re-created the entire map of the original The Legend of Zelda (1986) in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (as a Dream Island), using various props to stand in for the monsters and other Hyrule-specific features, and leveraging Super Mario warp pipes to proxy for the ability to enter key caves. Here's the video. I learned about it via Zelda Universe: "Map from the first Legend of Zelda fully rebuilt in Animal Crossing: New Horizons" by Chloe Mayfield (May 5, 2026).

While fetching that Zelda Universe citation to share, I also learned that Hallmark is adding ToTK Link to its TLOZ ornament set in June: "Tears of the Kingdom Link joins Hallmark’s 2026 Keepsake Ornament collection" by Brooklyn Harnesk (May 6, 2026). (Personally, I'm sticking with amiibo as collectibles. The in-game functionality soothes the price a bit.)

Separately, everyone has heard about Nintendo's surprise Direct by now? (Here's the video.) During Golden Week, no less. StarFox 64 remake incoming! I've been trying to ignore that big leak from earlier this year, but this does lend it credibility... Ocarina of Time remake in November after all? Hmmm.

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley (plus the DLC "Fuddler's Courtship") did indeed take me much closer to 10 play hours than the 3-5 hours cited for most folks. I enjoyed it! I'll watch for more like it. This cozy adventure is surely delightful for anyone attracted by having all the goodness of story, characters, side quests, exploration, collection, and puzzles, with not a single battle. Snufkin defeats his foes -- such as they are: misguided officials who dam rivers and forbid people to enjoy parks, clinging forest children, a giant crab... -- with music, friendship, stealth, and occasionally a burst of speed. (Of course those of use who already know and love the Moomins get waves of nostalgia when the characters are exactly like themselves.)

I did encounter two hiccups in the game. ( Read more... )

Yesterday, by coincidence, I stumbled across the news that Lois McMaster Bujold had a new "The World of the Five Gods" e-book novella coming out... yesterday! Darksight Dare, the 16th Penric & Desdemona story. See it on Amazon. Also, the next (fourth) hardcover compilation of the e-books comes out... today! Penric's Intrigues (containing "The Assassins of Thasalon" and "Knot of Shadows"). See it on Amazon.

Darksight Dare is set immediately after The Adventure of the Demonic Ox, so this is in the era of Pen's life when he's got himself (vocation, relationships, etc.) mostly figured out, just barely in time for his kids to start figuring out theirs.

I hugely enjoy Bujold's "The World of the Five Gods" (formerly "The Chalion Saga" for where the first two were set). Varying by setting, they're either pseudo-medieval or pseudo-Renaissance, and the fantasy elements exist within the cultures' theologies, which are very "high" (that is, not classical myth demigods running around physically in people's lives, but more metaphorizing real-world modern understandings of God). While of course some of the stories are better than others -- and the re-routing from the first three novels to the Pen novellas leaves me sometimes longing for the more novels of the original vision we might have had if the muse had moved Bujold that way -- every story has something to say that I find worth listening to.

fkficfest prompt submissions are open through May 16: Check it out. This year, we're trying a new prompts method: a common pool made of one anonymous prompt per community member who chooses to share one. No voting, no eliminations, no reveals.

Gifting a prompt to the community is not a commitment to play the game! What would you love to read?

Two prompts have arrived already. Coincidentally, both are quotations. I hope that coincidence won't mislead others to suppose all prompts should be quotations. (One of the two cited its source. If the other prompter doesn't edit theirs to add the attribution by the end of the poll, I'll of course do it for the official final list, as always.) (Did you know that you can edit your answers while a poll is open? You can!)

Yesterday, I got an email saying that the Gizmoplex is shutting down. Read it on their site.

Oversimplified, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (

MST3K) is: a space castaway and two robots hilariously mock bad movies (usually old and always genre). Back in the day, my family would watch it on cable on Saturday nights. As adults, my sister and I went together to a handful of live touring performances. MST3K sits at the rare and invaluable intersection of her tastes and mine; it's also something best shared in real time.

I've supported every "Bring Back MST3K" effort, including the one that failed disastrously because people were still really mad about the super expensive, slow shipping of the cheap plastic bonus knick-knacks from the previous one (because: pandemic). I own ("own") digital copies of everything on the Gizmoplex. Now, I have until June to stream it on my TV as I always have, and until September to download as many files as I want to keep.

My sister paid the extra to get DVDs instead of streaming, so in that sense she's definitely wiser than me. I didn't expect the Roku and other integrations to last forever, but I did expect the website to last... a little longer than this. On the other hand, I watched every new episode as it became available, especially during the pandemic, making a Saturday-night event out of it, reminiscent of those childhood family viewings, while I know my sister instead put her DVDs away on a shelf and still hasn't watched them all, though it's been years. So in that sense I'm the winner. They're downloaded to my brain.

But of course I would rather have had more seasons, more years, more tours. And especially more sharing with my sister.

Thinking about what I love about Dreamwidth, verbs occurred to me. That is, first one, and then more, action words that most characterize this specific kind of sharing and community for me (and, I hope, for you) bubbled up. And the more I thought about them, the more I realized their weight and valence.

Blogging. Conversing. Journaling. Discussing. Connecting. Replying. Catching up. Curating. Commenting. Reading and writing...

♥

Thank you to all the folks who have answered the test poll over on

fkficfest so far. So far, it has illustrated: (a) how the width attributes work in DW poll free-text fields, (b) that anonymizing even to myself works, (c) to note that if one has multiple accounts, one should nominate from only one account, (d) that you can change your answer as long as the poll is open, and (e) the importance of explaining that one must answer the poll itself, not leave a reply to the post (if one cannot see the poll, that's likely because it's open only to community members, so sign in and/or join the community to participate.)

If you observe anything else I should be sure to put in the instructions or do with the poll mechanism, please let me know!

I'll put up the real prompts poll sometime this Sunday, May 3, and run it through May 16. One prompt per community member this year; all prompts make it into the list for the game, open to all, no claiming.

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Page generated Sunday, May 17th, 2026 11:47 am

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Recent

The Sheep Detectives (2026)

TLOZ live-action movie date moved up to April 30, 2027

Fannish options & enthusiasms | May 2026

an Animal Crossing TLOZ build & 2 other TLOZ tidbits

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley (review: I liked it very well)

Darksight Dare (Penric & Desdemona #16) by Lois McMaster Bujold

FKFicFest 2026 prompting is open through May 16

Goodbye MST3K Gizmoplex & yep, stick with hard-copy media

Dreamwidth verbs (during 3 Weeks For Dreamwidth)

Thanks for answering the test poll for FKFicFest's prompts experiment

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