dickinsons: (barrow thomas)
[personal profile] dickinsons posting in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Pairings/Characters: Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent, Lady Anstruther, OCs
Rating:T
Length: 79,395
Creator Links: Laramie, LinkWorshiper (AO3)
Theme: journey & travel

Summary: Though Jimmy Kent has found success and fortune since moving on from Downton, he has never been able to forgive Lady Anstruther for the troubles she's caused him in the past. Motivated by a burning desire for revenge, Jimmy takes action - and enlists the help of the one person he's ever trusted. Naturally that person is Thomas Barrow.

Reccer's Notes: This fic has romance, a revenge plot, and mystery fiction elements, all while the characters travel to China. It's a really fun read.

Fanwork Links: Slow Boat to China
full_metal_ox: Samurai-style circular crest of a butterfly with a demon mask for an abdomen and swords for swallowtails. (Crest)
[personal profile] full_metal_ox posting in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate” (Arrogant Worms song; Captain Tractor cover)
Pairings/Characters: Gen; OCs of assorted genders.
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 4:13
Content Notes: The OP identifies the song as by the Arrogant Worms—who originated it, but the version used here is Captain Tractor’s cover.
Creator Links: (YouTube): [youtube.com profile] vinnyreid

Theme: Journey & Travel, Fanvid, Just Plain Fun, Kidfic (child performers), Old Fandoms, Pre-AO3 Works

Summary: This is a video that I made with some of the students from the youth group back in April 2003. Its pretty cheezy, but we had lots of fun making it and still get a laugh out of watching it. Hope you enjoy it too. The song is "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate" by the Arrogant Worms.



Reccer's Notes: This is an exercise in how to make a killer fanvid on a backyard budget—propelled by the sheer exuberant glee of the kid pirates running amuck and by the masterfully edited nonstop action—Benny Hillesque chase scenes, sword fights, and Scooby Dooby Doors. (Note in particular the inventive use of camera angles and farm and playground architecture to create the impression that they actually have a ship.)

Things I Learned in the process of fact-checking this post: “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate” has become such an anthem for Saskatchewanians (and Canadians in general) that it’s taught in grade-school music classes! (It’s also a compelling fantasy to lots of non-Canadian dwellers in regions marked by farming and economic disgruntlement; The Longest Johns (of viral “Wellerman” fame) have localized it accordingly.)

I would have added “a large local body of water”, but it turns out that part of the regional in-joke is that Regina (“Regina’s mighty shores”), the provincial capitol, is in a landlocked part of Saskatchewan; the Jolly Roger is a legendary dive bar there.

Reid doesn’t specify the affiliation of the youth group, but the censorship of the word “damn” leads me to suspect a church.

Fanwork Links: The Last Saskatchewan Pirate (fanvid), by Kevin Reid and his youth group.
runpunkrun: combat boot, pizza, camo pants = punk  (punk rock girl)
[personal profile] runpunkrun posting in [community profile] fandomcalendar
Photograph of things you might take with you, or pick up, on a trip, with added text: Journey & Travel, at Fancake. Items are neatly arranged on a rustic wooden table or door and photographed from above: hat, knapsack, barn coat, worn boots, folding knife, sunglasses, bottle, magnifying glass, as well as various maps, notebooks, pine cones, cameras, lenses, and rolls of 35mm film.
[community profile] fancake is a thematic recommendation community where all members are welcome to post recs, and fanworks of all shapes and sizes are accepted. Check out the community guidelines for the full set of rules.

This theme runs for the entire month. If you have any questions, just ask!

trip prep checklist

May. 2nd, 2026 04:25 pm
the_shoshanna: giant wave, tiny person. (wave)
[personal profile] the_shoshanna
Do Before Leaving list: 72 items checked off, 19 remaining

Pack And Bring list: 33 items checked off, 16 remaining (including 5 items to be worn for travel, not packed)

Pretty good, for three days in advance!

A friend has offered to give us a ride to the train (that goes to the train that goes to the plane that goes to the plane that goes to where we want to end up, whee), so that's very nice indeed.
carenejeans: (Default)
[personal profile] carenejeans
Sorry this is late! I think I have everyone now. Let me know if not!

Final Tally

Days 1-15 )

Thanks everyone!
[syndicated profile] otw_news_feed

Posted by Lute

Mediafans, a multifandom fanfiction archive, and Futures Without End, a Duncan/Methos zine it hosted, are being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

Background explanation

Mediafans was a personal fanworks archive for creators Rachael Sabotini and Melina, as well as several other creators. It also hosted the Highlander zine Futures Without End, which was started by Melina and Maygra de Rhema and ran for four issues. Mediafans went offline in 2013, taking digital access to Futures Without End with it.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Melina to import Mediafans and Futures Without End into separate, searchable collections on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archives in their entirety, all fanfiction and fanart currently in the archive and zine will be hosted on the OTW’s servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Mediafans and Futures Without End to AO3 after May. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) on Mediafans or in Futures Without End?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We’ll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your Mediafans or Futures Without End pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

  1. You’d like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archives.
  2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
  3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
  4. You would NOT like your works moved to AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the archive collection.
  5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
  6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with Mediafans or Futures Without End, please contact Open Doors and we’ll help you out. (If you’ve posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they’re yours, that’s great; if not, we will work with Melina to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

If you still have questions…

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We’d also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Mediafans and Futures Without End on Fanlore. If you’re new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We’re excited to be able to help preserve Mediafans and Futures Without End!

– The Open Doors team and Melina

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

labingi: (Default)
[personal profile] labingi
Here are some more random thoughts up to roughly Helm's Deep: the Dealing with Mistakes Edition.

(LOTR spoilers, if anyone cares...)

Aragorn

Original (pre-Viggo) Aragon often gets described as too perfect, and I see why. I don't find him a super fascinating character either, but I had not clocked how protracted his inner struggle is over leading the fellowship after the fall of Gandalf. He has multiple iterations of the "we must do without hope" idea, which, in Tolkien's philosophy, is a clear sign you're not thinking properly. Admission: In an earlier entry on this, I unwittingly quoted Bakshi (facepalm)!

He recurrently talks about how his decisions as a leader have gone wrong--and he's not totally wrong about that. He fails to track what's going on with Boromir, fails to keep track of Frodo (and Sam). Interestingly, he loses Frodo and Sam, in part, because he decides to climb the Emyn Muil to check things out from its famous vantage point, and that's not a bad decision in itself, but it is explicitly driven, in part, by ego, by his desire to sit on the seat of kings, and that seems not accidental. Later, against Legolas's advice, he chooses to rest rather than keep chasing the Orcs, which may have quashed their chance of actually catching the Orcs.

That's a lot of struggle with fallibility, and it's fairly easy to miss because it's minor. It's minor because Aragorn operates from a place of good intention and time-tested knowledge and morals. This makes me think of karma as a seed that may or may not fall into fertile soil. Each of those little losses of hope or imperfect decisions would carry karma (in a Buddhist frame), but they don't fall into fertile soil because Aragorn has--to torture the metaphor--been consistently cleaning the shit so there's nothing for them to grow into.

BoromirRead more... )

Severance Analysis

May. 1st, 2026 05:59 pm
osteophage: photo of a leaping coyote (Default)
[personal profile] osteophage posting in [community profile] meta_warehouse
Mysterious Work & Alienation of Labor in Severance by me (comment on Dreamwidth)
Severance employs a fantastical scenario at an imaginary company to depict a phenomenon that’s very real: the systematic alienation of labor. This theme has been widely remarked upon by those familiar with the framework, but not everyone is already familiar, and so it warrants explanation. To that end, this analysis presents a brief introduction to alienation as a concept, an in-depth exploration of how it applies to the characters of Severance, and some observations on how that theme relates to the real world.
The Brilliance of Severance's Disturbing Precision [video] by Thomas Flight
In an era where high-concept TV shows now feature impressive visual effects, sprawling fantasy worlds, and elaborate costume design and makeup, how does a show that mostly takes place in a white, windowless office end up being one of the most visually striking TV shows ever made?
A musical analysis of the Severance theme [video] by Charles Cornell
A tritone is very commonly thought of as one of the most dissonant intervals that you can play... So what we have here is consonance, dissonance, consonance, dissonance. 

My Eyes!

May. 1st, 2026 03:41 pm
yourlibrarian: Matt Murdock Looks Surprised (AVEN-Matt Surprised - inkonic)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian
1) I've no idea why, but this afternoon my monitor screen brightness suddenly shot up to where the blue light on white areas is practically visible. I went to my computer settings and found that the brightness slider was greyed out. I looked for info online and – along with various instructions which seemed to lead nowhere – it was suggested that I needed to change the settings on my monitor. Problem is, I'm using a Roku TV as my monitor, and when I went in there the brightness settings were already low and making them lower changed nothing.

I did a Microsoft update yesterday but supposedly all the downloads were related to security updates. I already use dark mode on both browsers but this doesn't apply to MS Word, and in any case the dark mode has to be switched off at times because it obscures buttons or other info in certain layouts. (This is also true of MS's accessibility dark mode themes)

2) Ok, then: Regal sold its inventory of $50 “Dune” tickets projected in 70 millimeter IMAX film in a matter of minutes. "Some 17% of film tickets sold last year were for premium-format theaters with bigger screens and better sound, compared with 13% in 2021. They cost an average of $18 nationally, according to research firm EntTelligence, and as much as $30 in big cities such as New York and Los Angeles."

3) Perhaps relatedly, Las Vegas Sphere is a Success. Although largely for music concerts, the site has also been used for movies, notably “The Wizard of Oz.” "Dolan decided he wanted to turn the 1939 classic film into an immersive experience. He recruited Google’s AI engineers for the $100 million project...Red apples made of foam drop from above in one scene, and leaves swirl during the tornado. From its opening Aug. 28 through Jan. 20, the movie generated more than $260 million in ticket sales, the company said."

But it comes at a high price: Tickets to Sphere concerts can range for a few hundred dollars to thousands.

4) Not thrilled with the Copilot product placement in Season 2 episode 18 of High Potential. It makes me think we should have a contest to see what increasingly absurd examples of AI use will start to intrude into scenes across TV shows.

5) My partner clearly enjoys Dark Winds, because Mr. I-Hate-Binging watched 2 seasons of it within 5 days with me. This was probably just as well because I was not thrilled with S4. Read more... )

Poll #34543 Kudos Footer-574
This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

Want to leave a Kudos?

View Answers

Kudos!
8 (100.0%)



vamp_ress: (Default)
[personal profile] vamp_ress posting in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Pairings/Characters: Viggo Mortensen/Orlando Bloom
Rating: Explicit
Length: 30.000 words
Creator Links: lennongirl on AO3
Theme: Journey & Travel

Summary: AU: Orlando and Viggo meet in Spain under strange circumstances and travel through Europe together in Viggo's truck, getting to know each other and themselves.

Reccer's Notes: This is an old comfort fic that I used to read and re-read all the time back in the day. It's 30.000 words of both road trip and falling in love and that combination is simply too charming for its own good. You'll get to see quite a bit of Europe in the story as this starts out in Spain and and ends in Denmark. And to keep readers in the know there's a map of the characters' journey/progress at the end of each chapter. This story is fluffy and romantic and adventurous - simply the best combination of all the ingredients!

Fanwork Links: The Journey is the Destination on AO3

Round 186: Journey & Travel

May. 1st, 2026 08:17 am
runpunkrun: combat boot, pizza, camo pants = punk  (punk rock girl)
[personal profile] runpunkrun posting in [community profile] fancake
Photograph of things you might take with you, or pick up, on a trip, with added text: Journey & Travel, at Fancake. Items are neatly arranged on a rustic wooden table or door and photographed from above: hat, knapsack, barn coat, worn boots, folding knife, sunglasses, bottle, magnifying glass, as well as various maps, notebooks, pine cones, cameras, lenses, and rolls of 35mm film.
Our theme for May is journey & travel!

The tag for this round is: theme: journey & travel

If you're just joining us, be sure to check out our policy on content notes. Content notes aren't required, but they're nice to include in your recs, especially if a fanwork has untagged content that readers may wish to know about in advance.

Rules! )

Posting Template! )

Promote this round! )

maevedarcy: Shane and Ilya from Heated Rivalry kissing (Default)
[personal profile] maevedarcy posting in [community profile] recthething
[community profile] polyamships is participating in [community profile] 3weeks4dreamwidth  and today's post is all about reccing fics (you can see that post here)

This is my own post answering that call for recs.

Fandoms included in my post:
Teen Wolf
The Raven Cycle
The Infernal Devices
3 will be free
Arcane
The bastard son and the devil himself
Heated Rivalry
All for the game
Sense8

starwatcher: Western windmill, clouds in background, trees around base. (Default)
[personal profile] starwatcher posting in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: The Old Guard
Pairings: Joe/Nicky
Characters: Joe, Nicky, a lot of OCs
Rating: Explicit
Length: 40,000 words
Creator Links: [archiveofourown.org profile] mellyflori
Theme: Arranged marriage, No canon required, Complete AU, Historical AU, Mundane AU, Diplomatic marriage, Enemies to friends (to lovers), Royalty AU

Summary: “I’m certain this is not what you wanted from a marriage any more than I did.”
      For a second, Joe is on the receiving end of the most intense stare he’s ever seen. He almost dares to hope for an argument, something unexpected, then his husband blinks, and he’s back to being that blank-faced stranger Joe first met earlier that day. “On the contrary. An advantageous match is all a prince should ever want.”
      It was too much to hope that Nicolò might possess wit or charm that he felt free to express behind closed doors. Joe tries to hide a sigh. On the bright side, he thinks, at least it’s forever.

Reccer's Notes: A marriage based on a political arrangement is less than ideal, but Nicky and Joe cautiously move to friendship, then friends with benefits, with each wishing for more. Unfortunately, their tentative journey toward love gets waylaid when their fathers -- still immersed in long-held grudges -- break up the pair "for security." Cue Joe riding in pursuit of his hoped-for love, followed by some astute, verbal sleight-of-hand to force their fathers' acceptance of the marriage remaining intact for the requisite happy ending. Lots of fun, and highly recommended.

Content Notes: None

Fanwork Links: We Wouldn’t Be Standing Here So Tall, by Mellyflori at AO3

 

About

Contents of this journal include: sneeze fetish references and lots of hurt/comfort, short fics and/or WIPS, everything from gen and het to slash and femslash, everything from G to NC-17, random ramblings about my life and fandom obsessions.

June 2023

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