Fannish options & enthusiasms: February 2024

[brightknightie]

Reminder: I've converted my FK monthly recap ("Recently:FK" tag) into general fannish engagement ("Recently:Enthusiasms" tag). This may often include FK; it won't always.

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

Ficathons, fests & communities

• Create & engage
  • halfamoon is an annual challenge over the first 2 weeks of February, celebrating female characters in fandom.
  • comment_bingo is a bingo challenge for commenting on other people's works. The current round runs through May.
  • alexcat hosts "Fandom 50," a challenge to make 50 fandom posts by the end of the year.
  • small_fandoms hosts miscellaneous events welcoming all small fandoms. Its February event is a "drabbleathon."
  • whatif_au hosts AU fanwork challenges. Its February-March challenge is "immortal AU."
  • trope_of_the_month is a themed fanwork community. Its February theme is "marriage & engagement."
  • allbingo is a very general bingo community: card generation, fan and original works, promos of other bingo events, etc. Its February theme is "Valentines." It's also hosting a complementary Valentines "thematic meet-and-greet."
  • pinchhits is a forum for advertising pinch-hits in fannish exchanges. Pick up an assignment and help out a fest!
• Enjoy & share
  • recthething is a general fanwork recs comm with open reccing.
  • fanart_recs is a general fanart recs comm with both signed-up and open recs.
  • fancake is a themed fanfic recs comm. Its February theme is "trans & non-binary characters."
  • het_reccers is a m/f fanfic recs comm with open reccing.
  • gensplosion is a gen fanfic recs comm with open reccing.

My current favorite PokéTubers

• MandJTVPlays
  Michael uniquely, delightfully fuses Pokémon fanfiction with abridged playthroughs. He's created his own "cinematic universe" of vivid original characters (all played by him), including most recently Orange (supposedly the previous champion who lost to Blue in the original Kanto games; an affectionate parody of a stereotypical "Genwunner"); most often the Team Sky Leader (originally a third evil team beside the canonical Teams Aqua and Magma, but now, after many stories, a redeemed defender of the sky); and most famously Grunty Boy (a clueless but ambitious Team Rocket grunt originally created to host in-video commercials).
• BirdKeeperToby
  Toby (currently on sabbatical) is a worldbuilding specialist. He shares fantastic theories and analyses of how the Pokémon world works (or would, you know, if it were real). He's best known for his "evolutionary tree of Pokémon life" but has also looked at the geography, history, culture, and especially legends of the Pokémon world. And he creates assorted fanstories, most recently a full fangame mock-playthrough, with commissioned fanart, of a region based on ancient Greece.
• SwagTips
  Ryan is hands-down the best Pokémon GO PvP IVs expert sharing in English. He also sometimes does quick breakdowns and opinions of new pokémon and new moves, but his bread-and-butter is IV math for hard-core PvPers only. (Everyone else, just use the CalcyIV app and don't worry about it. I do, myself, since I stopped organizing and playing tournaments (RIP Silph Road). But when there's a rare pokémon rising in the meta and I must invest my candy cautiously, SwagTips is my guru! The Rank 1 is not always the optimal choice at higher levels of play.)