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

Spotlight: I feel that both Superman (2025) and Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) are good movies and strongly recommend them to general audiences looking for a pleasant time at the cinema this summer. I have literary and fannish critiques of the execution of each (of course I do), yet I feel bad about critiquing at all. I so want them both to succeed! And I so wanted them both to be not just good, or very good, but indeed knock-my-socks-off great, and I don't love how the release proximity invites ranking... but that would have been present, anyway, as each has just about the same "job" not just as an IP entry but in its writers' and director's choices. ( Very light spoilers )

Ficathons, fests & communities

• Create & engage
  • fan_writers is a community for discussion, reflection, and tools for writers, with emphasis on writing fanfic but not excluding writing original fic (or non-fic).
  • dreams_mayhem is a competitive creative challenge with weekly games for points.
  • seasons_of_fandom is the landcomm formerly known as lands_of_magic, relaunched to reflect that they are panfandom, not fantasy-exclusive.
  • ficinabox is a somewhat complex exchange, with a 10K+ words minimum that may or may not be spread, via swaps, across multiple works and/or multiple fandoms and recipients. Nominations through August 12; sign-ups through August 31; due October 19.
  • fffc is a low-pressure challenge community for creating something small-ish each week (like a drabble or haiku or equivalent in another medium). Prompts post on Fridays.
  • fic_promptly is a comment-fic community.
  • trope_of_the_month's August theme is "omegaverse."
  • pinchhits is a forum for pinch-hits in exchanges. For example, caseficexchange is seeking pinch hitters.
  • whenisitdue tracks many more events than I note here!
• Enjoy & share
  • fancake (themed fanfic recs); August theme: "marriage of convenience"
  • gensplosion (gen fanfic recs)
  • het_reccers (m/f fanfic recs)
  • fanart_recs (fanart recs)
  • recthething (fanwork recs)

Sidelight: Did you know that Marvel Comics released a "prequel" comic (single issue) to the Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) movie? The first print run sold out; I'm waiting for a copy from the second. It's not just any old prelude to the events of the movie, but covers the same ground as some of the cut footage. Specifically, it sets up ( mild spoiler )

So how about that Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment footage from yesterday's Nintendo Direct? I have no intention of playing a Warriors game (they're battle, not exploration+puzzle, games), but my goodness do I look forward to all the cutscenes and lore! Spoilers ahead...

I'm happy to see the Gerudo sage's face reveal and learn not only that the player will likely be recruiting each sage through the course of the game, but specifically that the Gerudo sage in particular looks likely to have been loyal to Ganondorf before she turns on him; excellently rich story and characterization potential there.

I'm happy to see Sonia broadly active, and the touching artwork expressions when she and Raru look at each other. I'm sure we all recognize the continued thematic emphasis on hands, hand-holding, shaking hands, and cooperation, collaboration, mutual support from Tears of the Kingdom, which was meant to contrast the isolation of Breath of the Wild. I found the new footage of the ancient original palace interesting; it's bigger than I had imagined, though still not as imposing as I imagine Gerudo civilization was at the time.

Which brings us to the final shots and their soundtrack. I expect that Fi's theme playing over that construct implies that Fi will populate and/or guide the building of that construct, likely giving Mineru the idea for her own later construct. I see that many people are expecting that the construct will house the Spirit of the Hero, which doesn't appeal to me, personally; the hero is a mortal being, and the hero's spirit belongs in life or the afterlife, not in a construct, while Fi was created by her goddess specifically to inhabit and animate an unliving item, the Sword of Evil's Bane. Of course these are not the only two possibilities! We shall see. What do you think?

In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild yesterday (Sunday) -- my first playthrough, to be clear -- I successfully defeated the Stone Talus on the Great Plateau with only three hearts (though it took many tries, hiding behind trees, and some bomb arrows that I think I got from my one amiibo), and collected all but one of the available Korok seeds there (for inventory increase later). It started storming a lot on the Great Plateau; presumably, getting the glider unlocked the weather (and Blood Moons). Despite my original intentions about what to complete before venturing off the Great Plateau, I decided to not try to defeat any of the Guardians just now, with my paltry three hearts, but perhaps to come back later for practice, as needed.

I descended off the plateau with the glider, sneaked and fought past some Moblins as I avoided monster camps, and found my way to my first stable, which has a small lake behind it in which the magnesis rune shows me two sunken things that will be my first gameplay targets when I resume. Well, them or the adjacent shrine.

Obviously, the game is beautiful and enthralling. And I'm getting the hang of the controls, I think. Now, I need to worry about keeping this gaming on my new Switch 2 in its place, and not letting it edge out other good things in life, even things like keeping up with shows I want to be able to recognize when you all discuss them. (The last time I did much video gaming, maybe more than fifteen years ago, it was on PC, and I ended up giving away all my games because I had not written any fanfic, not a word, in that period, having let the games gobble that up.) (Of course, in those pre-AO3, pre-DW days, we still lived fannishly on email, mainly, and I had connections to only the one online fandom. Different world.)