Fannish options & enthusiasms | February 2025

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

Spotlight: PBS Masterpiece
All Creatures Great and Small and Vienna Blood both rolled pleasantly through new seasons on Sunday nights on broadcast PBS (or streaming anytime on PBS Passport). ( Read more... )

Ficathons, fests & communities

• Create & engage
  • trope_of_the_month is asking whether folks still want monthly themes there. If you do, let the mod know!
  • halfamoon, the annual two-week fanwork fest celebrating female characters, is underway.
  • kindreadspirits is a community for fans of m/m subtext in Victorian and Edwardian horror fiction, with an emphasis on identifying/recommending eligible vintage works.
  • valentines_day is a holiday-themed gifting comm a la Fandom Trees, etc. Sign up through 2/12; gift through 3/02.
  • femgiftboxes is a female-characters gifting comm a la Fandom Trees, etc. Sign up through 2/08; gift through 4/29.
  • tv_talk recently completed a recommendations-by-genre fest. Post-fest additions are welcome.
  • marvel_drabbles is running an exchange for traditional 100-words drabbles for MCU Phases 1-3. Nominate through 2/10; sign up through 2/21; due 3/31.
  • fic_promptly is a comment-fic (prompt meme) community, re-launching after a hiatus.
  • babylon5_100 and babylon5events are both active for Babylon 5 fans.
  • pinchhitbingo is an annual year-long challenge for filling pinch hints for other events.
  • genprompt_bingo is in Round 27 of its long-running challenges, where all the prompts are gen, while fills may be anything.
  • trope_of_the_month's February theme is [not yet posted].
  • allbingo's February theme is "Valentines Fest."
  • pinchhits is a forum for pinch-hits in fannish exchanges. For example, fffx is currently seeking pinch hitters.
  • whenisitdue lists every event that I note here -- and many, many more -- in handy table format, with reminders.
• Enjoy & share
  • fancake (themed fanfic recs); February theme: "ambiguous relationships"
  • gensplosion (gen fanfic recs)
  • het_reccers (m/f fanfic recs)
  • fanart_recs (fanart recs)
  • recthething (fanwork recs)

Sidelight: Ranking TLOZ
Ranking and re-ranking the games seems to be a fundamental custom of The Legend of Zelda players. Importantly, while everyone seems to have a "Best" ranking, most also have subsidiary rankings for every characteristic: story, music, visuals, items, puzzles, combat, dungeons, companions, etc., and folks seems encouraged to re-rank often, not only with each new game released.

So: Of the 21 mainline games, ranking solely for each story's literary merit -- and nothing else -- at this particular moment in time, in my opinion, the Top 5 are:

1. Majora's Mask
2. Link's Awakening
3. Tears of the Kingdom
4. Breath of the Wild
5. The Wind Waker

(The story I personally enjoy most at this time is Twilight Princess. Wholly different criteria!)