Spreading the Love for Fanworks

[tardis_stowaway]

After seeing it on andrea_deer's journal, I've just signed up for a fannish festival/challenge/event/thing that I think is a great idea.














Rectober aims to have people posting recs for all sorts of fanworks during the month of October.  I love sharing the delight of my favorite fanworks with friends and hopefully sending some loving feedback to the creators. I hope some of y'all will join in, because I'd love to see what you recommend.

If you participate, you get to choose how much you want to post.  Some people are setting daily posting goals, while others are only committing to two posts the whole month.  For myself, I'm setting a goal of seven rec posts over the month of October.  That's about twice a week with one built-in skip.  I may try for more if the posts go quickly, but seven seems like about the maximum that I can reasonably promise.

I'm probably going to do themed rec posts with a mix of fic and vids.  I'm still trying to work out what those themes will be, but some candidates include:
-Excellent Ensembles
-This Broke Me Into Tiny Pieces, Please Share My Pain
-Golden Oldies (fics/vids more than 4-5 years old...obviously fandom goes back much farther than that, but since I started bookmarking fic in 2007 this is a good cut-off)
-Three (or More) Cheers for Poly Ships
-Avoid Beverages Or Risk Keyboard Destruction (crack/humor/general silliness)
-Long Reads Worth the Time Investment
-Fanworks Other Than Fic and Vids (meta, fan art, crafts, fanmixes, etc.)
-Awesome Ladies Being Awesome (focus on one or more female characters saving the day...this may have too much overlap with what I'd rec for everything else)
-Fairy Tales & Fantasy
-Crossovers of Great Win
-This Doesn't Fit My Other Categories But It's Too Awesome To Ignore

Obviously this is more than seven categories, so I'm either going to whittle it down, make some rec posts include one or more categories, or just make more posts.  Feel free to comment if there are some of these categories you're especially interested in seeing or if you want to suggest others.

I hope some of you will join me in making LJ lively with the celebration of fannish creativity this month!  Click the banner if you want to officially sign up.

Meanwhile, the good news is that Doctor Who is getting a spin-off.  The bad news is that this spin-off is NOT about Madame Vastra and Jenny as Victorian interspecies lesbians who fight crime accompanied by sidekick Strax and a pack of plucky street urchins.  It's also not flashback/prequel Doctor Who starring Paul McGann.  It's not a revitalization of Torchwood, or any other form of spin-off that fans have been asking for.  Instead, the spin-off is about teens at Coal Hill School dealing with aliens/monsters, with no mention of characters from previous shows appearing.  I will certainly give it a try, but this just feels like a missed opportunity.

Comments

[andrea-deer.livejournal.com]

Yay! :D I think my flist will be so full of recs this month, this is awesome! :D

[qwentoozla]

Totally agree about the Doctor Who spinoff--I don't really get why they would make a spinoff that doesn't feature already known characters. I've never especially wanted to know more about teens at Coal Hill School. I've read some of Patrick Ness's writing, and he can definitely develop excitement and urgency, but a DW spinoff doesn't necessarily seem like the place for him.

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

I'm also in agreement about the Doctor Who spin-off, it sounds like they definitely missed the mark on what the audience has been wanting in terms of expansion of the universe. I don't want to judge simply based off of a vague description of what this might feature, but from my understanding a spin-off usually means connecting the already existing universe and established characters to it, from expanding minor characters and their stories to exploring more on things that the original series couldn't do. IDK.

Personally, a show featuring the adventures of River Song would be fantastic (without Moffat's interference, of course), since we know that she's had quite a life that doesn't always revolve around the Doctor. Or some other characters that were introduced that we didn't get enough time to explore more of the background and storylines, while at the same time introducing us to newer characters and having time to expand on them, as well. But alas, none of this will happen.