Fannish options & enthusiasms | June 2025

[brightknightie]

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

Spotlight: With strict scrutiny and nervous caution, wary that perhaps it was only nostalgia and rose-tinted goggles after all, Overly Sarcastic Productions brilliantly examined "The Lost Art of Marvel's Phase 1."

OSP, my favorite YouTube channel, which retells and analyzes history, myth, literature, media, and games, produced an episode on what specifically made the first phase of the MCU so good: "The Lost Art of Marvel's Phase 1." (This kind of episode, which they call a "Detail Diatribe," is much more like a podcast than their usual tightly-crafted animatic episodes, but, while it is freewheeling by their standards, it's nevertheless guided and structured by a detailed outline, which they show on screen in place of their usual animatics.)

I enjoyed it tremendously, not only because I enjoy OSP and MCU, regardless, nor only because it is clever and delightful, as I expect OSP to be, but because they deliciously ramped up to it for a week by releasing miniature, audio-notes, off-the-cuff, podcast episodes to their Patreon subscribers (which I listened to on my commute), one Phase One movie per day, sharing their journey of surprised discovery that, hey, the Phase One movies really were/are that good and really do hold up, yes, all of them.

Then! Then! They followed that up the next week with "Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the Best MCU Movie (And Water Is Wet)." Again, it's a satisfying, delightful, deep-dive analysis of why the movie is so very good, and, as they share their realizations that it's not just the spectacle but the deep craft in so many aspects, it feels less elegiac for the Phase 1 we'll never see again -- though that is of course an element -- than empowering for wonderful stories yet to be told, wherever they can break through.

Ficathons, fests & communities

• Create & engage
  • fkficfest, the Forever Knight challenge, is in progress revealing its stories (one per day).
  • justmarriedexchange is an exchange for marriage tropes. Nominations through June 10; sign-ups through June 22; due August 17.
  • epidemfic is an exchange for illness themes and depictions. Sign-ups through June 8; due July 6.
  • beauty-beast-week is a week-long open celebration of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Posting is August 18-24.
  • trope_of_the_month's June theme is "time loops."
  • pinchhits is a forum for pinch-hits in exchanges. For example, whumpex is seeking pinch hitters.
  • whenisitdue tracks many more events than I note here!
• Enjoy & share
  • fancake (themed fanfic recs); June theme: "female relationships"
  • gensplosion (gen fanfic recs)
  • het_reccers (m/f fanfic recs)
  • fanart_recs (fanart recs)
  • recthething (fanwork recs)

Sidelight: This spring, I posted one recommendation in recthething (for "the gears of time turn on" by LadyHoneydee (TLOZ:BOTW)). I used to have a recommendation-of-the-month project for FK fanfiction, long, long ago. I've been thinking of getting back into recommendations, via such communities, perhaps with mirroring in my AO3 account, definitely no longer limited by fandom. I'm wondering whether and how people really use recs these days. Would it be a good use of my time for others?