pj1228

snowflake_challenge: Top-ten list: "The category(ies) you choose are up to you."

I'd like to share my top ten personal favorite YouTube channels overall. In countdown order, more and more awesome as we go:

#10. DominicNoble : Compares a book to its media adaptations(s): what's the same, what's different, and does it work?

#9. CinemaWins : Points out all the most awesome, fan-loved points of a given movie. No shade here, only joy.

#8. RobWords : Explores, exposes, and revels in a cool aspect of or historical tidbit about the English language.

#7. QuestWithAaron : Deep-dives revealing Japanese nuances of The Legend of Zelda lost in English localizations.

#6. ScreenCrush : Recaps, analyzes, predicts, celebrates, or laments fannish movies and television.

#5. TechnologyConnections : Explains how everyday machines, from lightswitches to dishwashers, really work and why.

#4. QuinBoBin : Jokes at his own expense through precisely-edited video-game playthrough abridgements (often, but not only, TLOZ).

#3. MandJTV / MandJTVExtra / MandJTVPlays : "Plays" serves Pokemon playthroughs as fanfic, where the player is an original character living the game, part script and part improv. "Main" is Pokemon game analysis. "Extra" is miscellaneous other Pokemon fun.

#2. Zeltik : Sleek, classic-style mini-documentaries and video essays on the lore of The Legend of Zelda.

#1. OverlySarcasticProductions : More cheeky than actually sarcastic, romps through summaries and analyses of history, literature, mythology, media, and culture, demonstrating how fun learning really is.

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

Spotlight: I'm four episodes into the new Marvel Wonderman. It reminds me again how much I wish we could go back to "television" releasing one episode per week, many episodes per year. This streaming model doesn't allow viewers to build relationships with characters or each other. I can't consume or contribute to any discussions yet, because I've seen "only" four episodes (in less than a week). And by the time I catch up, everyone will have moved on. Granted, I feel strongly that Disney/Marvel should have approached its TV shows, from the start, as an anthology series, a la PBS's Masterpiece or The Wonderful World of Disney. That's a familiar model viewers would have understood and known how to engage with. Retrofitting it now as "Spotlight" may be too little, too late. I'm not asking that every story run for seven seasons, of course! But a big part of what makes TV different from movies, and precious to us, is the stories' presences in our lives as we live them through time.

Ficathons, fests & communities

• Create & engage
  • halfamoon, the 14-day challenge celebrating female characters, is in progress!
  • small_fandoms has a drabble-athon throughout February. ("Smallness" here is not by Yuletide metrics, but by reasonableness and on the honor system for present participation.)
  • pinchhitbingo is a rolling challenge to help out communities and support fellow fans by filling pinch hits (that is, exchange drops and unmatchables).
  • videogamefanworks is a community for sharing assorted fanworks and fanwork recs for any video game or visual novel.
  • allbingo's February theme is "Valentine's Day" (love and loss).
  • trope_of_the_month's February theme is "Aliens Made Them Do It" (your choice of "it").
  • pinchhits is a community for posting needed fills for exchanges. For example, traumaticexperiences is currently seeking pinch hitters.
  • whenisitdue tracks many more events than I note here!
• Enjoy & share
  • fancake (themed fanfic recs); February theme: "inept in love" (fka "idiots in love")
  • gensplosion (gen fanfic recs)
  • het_reccers (m/f fanfic recs)
  • fanart_recs (fanart recs)
  • recthething (fanwork recs)

Sidelight: I've begun playing Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical, which is a choose-your-own-adventure visual novel murder mystery urban fantasy Greek gods retelling with full-on musical numbers that you direct and redirect as they are sung. So far, so good. Not good, it has no key to the chapter controls anywhere I can find. Three chapters in, I'm still struggling. I am not at all a savvy gamer, but this seems... not entirely my fault? A key to the controls, somewhere in the settings menus, is not an unreasonable ask, even for a multi-platform game, is it? (What is the tab sequence?)

It took a while, but I'm ready to share my own favorite stories from hlh_shortcuts '25, the annual Highlander fanfiction exchange that releases on the winter solstice (because that is Duncan's birthday). Of course your tastes may differ, so please check out the whole collection and find your joy!


"Metaphorically Speaking" (~4K words, G, gen; Riche, Angie) by argentum_ls
Please let me shout-out again the story written for my own match request this year. This story delivers a familiar, favorite concept -- Angie encountering Richie after he let her believe he was dead -- in a fresh new way at an energizing distance. Angie is in a very vulnerable place while still immensely strong; the shock doesn't go down easy.

"Orogenesis" (~12K words, G, m/m; Duncan, Methos) by Teratornis
With a gentle pace and layered metaphors, this story gives Duncan a wholly new interest -- geology -- in a peaceful time, and digs into who Duncan can be when he is not fighting for his life and the lives of those he loves. The show never did much to explore his interests. This piece is about reunion, renewal, growth, and hope.

"Closing Up Shop" (~1K words, G, gen; Joe, Rachel) by Merfilly
The idea of Rachel E. and a younger Joe meeting is a delight. This story follows close on the first movie, so we get a competent, careful Rachel acting on behalf of Connor and a cautious, careful Joe acting on behalf of the pre-Horton Watchers. I particularly enjoy the parallelism, perhaps foreshadowing, of a scene many years later in the series.

"Kastagir's Hotel Américain" (~3K words, G, f/f; Amanda, Kastigir, Rachel, Rebecca) by Pennywashburne
This setting is vibrant and an assortment of vivid characters with assorted motivations float downstream into it. Amanda is pulling off a lighter caper while others pull off a more serious operation that is not fully revealed until the end, and we get to see Rachel E. when she's an active young woman, dealing with Connor's immortal friends on her own.

"The Road Forward" (~1K, G, gen; Richie, Connor) by Havocthecat
It's New Year's Eve 1999, and Richie and Connor are celebrating and remembering. Bringing these characters together in this specific part of their experiences is resonant, with melancholic hope and hopeful regret running both directions, over and around references to all Richie's canonical loved ones. His thoughts of Tessa and Angie particularly strike home with me.


(I, of course, wrote "Hakobore" (~6K, G, gen; Duncan, Methos, Midori), in which Duncan takes his damaged katana to Japan for repair.)