Beyond the Algorithm

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 )

I have a small theory of the story to be revealed Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment that I haven't seen, which means the fandom at large considers it unlikely and unsupported.

Still, fwiw, as I think on the conjunction between the official statement that the story will be canon and a HW game's need for more playable characters than we currently have pinned down from Tears of the Kingdom -- Zelda, Raru, Mineru, the four masked sages; Sonia until she's murdered; maybe Ganondorf and Twinrova -- the more I suspect that the Ancient Hero (this guy) will be there. Like many, I suspect that he's part Zonai. A question is whether he's also part Hylian or part Gerudo or both (red hair always makes fans suspect Gerudo lineage, e.g. Malon, Groose) or whether he's part of that lost frog-like people seen only in statuary.

But as he is from 10,000 years before BotW/TotK canon, he can't be native to Raru's and Sonia's Founding Era, which is much further back. He can't be their son. (Separate theory: We could be getting their adult children in this game, as new characters.) He could be a descendant of theirs. He could be the Eighth Heroine of Gerudo legend (speculated by fans to have been male). And... he could have gotten to their era by the power of the Zelda of his own era, who could even have accompanied him, adding two to the playable line-up.

Or he could actually be their adult son, who gets catapulted to 10,000 years ago from the Founding Era by our Zelda in the course of the game.

Officially pronouncing this story to be canon, TPTB limited the possibilities for timey-wimey shenanigans messing with the story we know, but left them wide open for the stories we don't know.

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.)