Fannish options & enthusiasms: January 2025

[brightknightie]

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

Spotlight: OSP's JttW
December brought Overly Sarcastic Productions's annual new "Journey to the West Kai" installment! To explain my joy:

Overly Sarcastic Productions (OSP) is my favorite YouTube Channel, a delightful hive of history, literature, architecture, media, gaming, mythology, and more. OSP Red is telling an abridged ("Kai") version of the 100-chapter c.1592 classic Chinese novel The Journey to the West (JttW) in the form of hilarious hand-drawn animatics. (Watch the playlist.)

Now, JttW is... well, imagine The Odyssey + The Faerie Queene + Don Quixote, only they're all the same one work, and our hero is a hyper, immortal, magic, warrior monkey, with issues, on a redemption arc (aka Sun Wukong). The JttW story -- and of course its folktale ancestors and spin-off descendants -- seems to be the spring of [almost] every trope I've ever met in manga, anime, or JRPG. (Check out its Wikipedia page.)

I'm reading an unabridged translation and loving it, but it is very slow going. I recommend starting with Red's snappy version! Then an abridged translation, then unabridged, then fanfic... ;-D

Ficathons, fests & communities

• Create & engage
  • fanart_recs no longer requires sign-ups to post recommendations! (It does still require using its template and following its rules.)
  • hlh_shortcuts has released all its '24 stories and is now in its annual author-guessing game phase.
  • snowflake_challenge '25 has begun! They post a modest challenge every second day to help build fannish community. Challenge #1 is to update your fannish info and post to say you did so.
  • whenisitdue is a running list of deadlines for assorted writing communities, challenges, and fests.
  • inkingitout is a challenge community for writing >75K words in 2025, though they also welcome lower wordcount goals.
  • sweetandshort is a weekly challenge community for fics up to 500 words, tiny poems, userpic icons, and small banners.
  • goals_on_dw is running Fannish 50 in 2025, a challenge to make 50 fandom-related posts by the end of the year, among other assorted challenges.
  • lyricaltitles is an event community that uses song lyrics as fic titles.
  • candyheartsex is an exchange with emphases on relationships, both gen and otherwise.
  • trope_of_the_month's January theme is an amnesty (that is, fill any previous theme).
  • allbingo's January theme is "Public Domain Day."
  • pinchhits is a forum for pinch-hits in fannish exchanges. For example, heroexchange is currently seeking pinch hitters.
• Enjoy & share
  • fancake (themed fanfic recs); January theme: "(not really) unrequited love"
  • het_reccers (m/f fanfic recs)
  • gensplosion (gen fanfic recs)
  • recthething (fanwork recs)
  • fanart_recs (fanart recs)

Sidelight: MCU's What If? season three
All episodes in order of how much I personally, subjectively enjoyed them on first viewing:

1. 0304: "What If... Howard the Duck Got Hitched?"
2. 0303: "What If... the Red Guardian Stopped the Winter Soldier?"
3. 0307-08: "What If... the Watcher Disappeared?" + "What If... What If?"
4. 0302: "What If... Agatha Went to Hollywood?"
5. 0306: "What If... 1872?"
6. 0305: "What If... the Emergence Destroyed the Earth?"
7. 0301: "What If... the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?"

(I appreciate the insight -- credit YouTuber TheNandoCut -- that this series, all three seasons, has actually been trying to simultaneously embody both What If? and The Exiles comics; that really explains its series structure for me.)