Fannish options & enthusiasms: January 2024

[brightknightie]

Announcement: Effective for the new year, I'm converting my old Forever Knight monthly newsletter ("Recently:FK" tag) into a post about whatever happens to fannishly engage me at that time ("Recently:Enthusiasms" tag). Likely, that may often include FK. But it won't always. Our fannish options are wide and fascinating!

To kick off this new plan with high hopes of a happy new year, we have:

Some interesting ficathons, fests & communities

• Fiction
  • yuletide_admin revealed the '23 main and madness collections. yuletide has been seeing recommendation posts; it will likely soon see some reflection posts.
  • hlh_shortcuts brought us 25 assorted new Highlander stories for '23. Check out the collection.
  • seasonsofdrabbles, a quarterly exchange, has sign-ups 1/07-1/14, with assignments out by 1/17 and due 1/27.
  • genprompt_bingo, a low-commitment challenge, runs its 25th round through 3/20.
  • trope_of_the_month's January theme is "amnesty" (that is, any of the previous themes).
  • allbingo's January theme is "Public Domain Day."
• Non-fiction (meta)
  • snowflake_challenge, an annual celebration of fandom, is back. The challenges post 1/01-1/31; there are no deadlines.
  • fancake, a fic recommendation community, has a January theme of "indigenous characters."

Some history podcasts to which I currently subscribe

• Wide-ranging
  • Throughline (NPR; hosts Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah) -- "The past is never past. Every headline has a history. ... Go back in time to understand the present."
  • The Rest is History (Goalhanger; hosts Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland) -- "Interrogating the past and attempting to de-tangle the present."
  • History Extra (BBC; host Ellie Cawthorne) -- "Interviews with notable historians ... everything from crusading knights to Tudor monarchs and the D-Day landings."
• Targeted
  • Fall of Civilizations (Independent; host Paul Cooper) -- "Exploring the collapse of different societies through history."
  • The History Chicks (Wondery; hosts Beckett Graham and Susan Vollenweider) -- "Two women. Half the population. Several thousand years of history. About an hour."
  • The Gilded Gentleman (The Bowery Boys; host Carl Raymond) -- "A look behind the velvet curtains of America’s Gilded Age, Paris’ Belle Époque and England’s Victorian and Edwardian eras."
  • Medieval Murders (University of Cambridge; hosts Nora Eisner and Manuel Eisner) -- "Delves into the world of violent crimes in the streets, taverns and privy chambers of fourteenth-century London, York, and Oxford. ... Show the similarities and the differences to violent crime in our modern world."

Comments

[senmut]

A lovely update to your informative posts!

[brightknightie]

Thank you!

[celli]

very cool!

[brightknightie]

Thank you!

[thefruitbat]

Happy New Year! Those podcasts sound interesting. :)

[brightknightie]

Thank you!

The Rest is History is the one I mentioned to you many months ago, as having had a specific episode that coincided with something you'd mentioned... I think likely it was their "Hadrian and Antinous" (June 2023) but I haven't re-listened to make sure. The episode description is: "A mysterious death on the Nile, an unconventional love affair, a Roman-Greek hero turned God - the story of Hadrian and Antinous is full of intrigue. Join Tom and Dominic as they delve into the world of Roman romance, where gender binaries and modern moral arguments do not feature, and look into the possible theories of how Antinous' body ended up in the Nile..."

[brightknightie]

Here's that podcast episodeon YouTube, Spotify, and UK Podcasts.

[thefruitbat]

Thank you! :)

[havocthecat]

What a lovely plan! I look forward to seeing the more wide-ranging items!

[brightknightie]

Thank you!

[switchbladeeyes]

Ooooh, The Gilded Gentleman and Medieval Murders sound right up my alley!