All Things Historical

Just a note to let people know that I'm going to step down as historium mod. dimity_blue and auroracloud will continue & everything (barring the newsletter) will carry on as usual.

It's been fun & thanks to everyone for sharing stuff & making historium a reality. I hope it continues to be useful to people. (And I'll still be around for time to time as a member.)

If anyone is going to miss the newsletter, for fannish events & fests most things were farmed from fandomcalendar anyway. For the rest, the reading list I used exists here, if it helps: https://historium-mod.dreamwidth.org/read

If you've got news/links/fanworks/events etc. to bring to historium's attention, you can post them here directly.

/mod out ♥

Just a reminder that we have the latest challenge going on at historium to pick up a new fandom, running until June 30th.

You can check out what's been promoted in our fandom promo tag, post a new fandom promo (or manifesto) yourself (the comm is always open for them).

Plus, as the more fandoms there are to choose from, the more people will be able to play, you can also promote your fandom in a comment at the fandom promo post. (Feel free to chat about fandoms in the promo post, too!)

There's no hurry, but I thought it might have got rather lost in the sudden turn of events everywhere! ♥

As things seem to get ever more depressing around us, here's a challenge where we can try and maybe cheer each other up a little!

Thank you so much to everyone who posted a fandom promo for our last challenge! It is now (belatedly) officially closed, but fandom promos are always welcome here - and any that have posted here (whether before or since the previous challenge as well as specifically for it) will be valid for our current challenge.

You can find them all by checking out our fandom promo tag.

Promos made for the previous challenge:

The Pacific by thrillingdetectivetales
Transparent (TV) by duskpeterson
The Queen's Thief by duskpeterson
Nero Wolfe by delphi
House of Five Leaves | Sarai-ya Goyō by delphi
Desert Peach by sailorkitty

The rules of our next challenge are simple - try out one of the recommended new-to-you fandoms and then create something for it (or generally respond to it). What that might be is pretty flexible, but it must be something positive! (No one is obliged to pretend to like anything they hated, but a rant or anything 100% negative will not qualify as completing this challenge.)

What if none of the fandoms promoted here are your cup of tea/available/in your preferred medium?

Don't panic! People should continue to post fandom promos (I still have at least one I've been meaning to finish), so keep an eye on the comm and the tag to see if something more to your taste crops up over the next three and half months.

I will also make a fandom promo post yuletide style, so that more of us can chip in, particularly for shorter fandoms or just for those who prefer the lower visibilty of comments over posts. (The individual post promos will stand out more in the tag, so this won't be unfair to anyone who has taken the trouble to make one.)


Things you can do to complete the challenge, many of which don't necessarily involve actual fannishness for a thing (as we all know, that's not a feeling that can be guaranteed, even for things we enjoy):

* stop by the original post to discuss the fandom with the OP in the comments, letting them know you watched it (and hopefully enjoyed it/the bits you did enjoy/found interesting).

* create fic, art, vids, fanmixes etc.

* upload screen grabs or scans for the use of others

* picspam scenes, write reviews, meta, comparisons with similar sources

* rec lists

* graphics - gifsets, icons, text icons, headers, moodboards

* podfic someone's existing fic for the fandom

* lists of useful period resources for those creating fanworks for the fandom

* create a related challenge, fest, community etc.

In short, this is pretty low level and if there's something positive you can think of, from chatting to the OP to knitting or baking or the more standard types of fanworks, it should fulfil the challenge. Ask here or PM me if you want to double check any more outside the box ideas!

If you want to tie it in with other challenges, like bingos, 100fandoms etc., bethefirst, then feel free to do so (provided it's within the rules of the other challenge).

And a reminder again that the response does need to be generally positive.


Once you have made your response, post it or link to it in the original fandom promo post or comment so that the OP will see it.

You will need to also post/link directly to the comm in a post, and tag it with "type: historium challenges" so that I can see that it was posted for the challenge. (For anything like comment discussions etc. where that may not be appropriate, please just link back to this post instead so that I know you've completed the challenge.)

There will be banners for everyone who successfully takes part.


This challenge will close on June 30th 2020. Good luck everyone!

Since we have an AO3 Collection now, I thought it'd be worth highlighting the Bookmarks function it gives us.

If any comm members who use bookmarks on AO3 want to add relevant historical works to the Historium bookmarks collection, please do so. Together we can hopefully make a really useful resource for finding good historical fanworks on the archive.

If you follow the link, you can see I've added a random handful of works as an example. All you need to do to share existing bookmarks is to click on "Add to Collection" then type in "Historium" and the thing is done! If you're making a new bookmark to add, do so as usual, but again, type "Historium" in the space for collections. You can also add external bookmarks.

Our usual (loose) definitions of historical apply and works of all ratings/ship types etc are fine.

Add reccing blurbs and useful tags & mark it as a rec or not as you please (although obviously those things are good). But if it's been bookmarked in the collection here we'll take it that a Historium member thought it was well worth a look.

Have fun!

Because we have one now! You can find historium's AO3 Collection here. If you want to post anything created for any of our community challenges here, please do so. Ditto anything ever inspired by or prompted by community interaction or discussion.

As we're not quite busy enough to warrant sub-collections for each individual activity, if you want to distinguish between specific challenges, when posting your work simply put a tag such as "Historium Commentfest" or "Historium Bingo" into the additional tags field.

Anyone who wrote for the commentfest and would like to add their works to the collection, just edit the work in question and you should be able to add "historium" in the collection field.

Thanks!

Just a head's up that the historium round up will be on hiatus for the summer!

Don't forget that despatches already exists for all your Age of Sail needs, and if you want to keep an eye on what's going on in the historically fannish world, you can always look at our reading list in the meantime: https://historium-mod.dreamwidth.org/read


Also, apologies for the delay in the next community challenge - all three of the mods had simultaneous health issues. However, I hope the next will be posted soon, and certainly I shall be running another in the autumn, whatever else happens. (And we are all still around! Please continue to use the comm as much as you wish.)

Happy New Year! Apologies that I haven't been properly around as mod for the past few weeks, but I'm back now. (And also that, to add to the confusion, I changed my name in the meantime, but this is still lost_spook, your original mod of this comm and not an impostor. Er. Honest!)

Anyway, some updates etc.:

* I have set the community default to "is suitable for everyone", which should solve the problem for people who were seeing every entry as cut when logged out. This does mean that if you do post NSFW material here (which is welcome!), you'll need to alter the Age restriction box on your individual post to whatever you deem most appropriate. (As most fanworks tend to be linked from here rather than posted directly, I shouldn't think this will affect many posts in any case).

* On a similar note, I originally chose the layout 'Mobility' as it was said to be good for mobile users, but it was unfortunately minus the navigation bar making it hard for people to post to and join the comm, which is pretty fundamental, so I changed it to this one. If any of the other free layouts work better for mobile users and still have the grey navigation bar at the top, let me know, and I'll see if we can use that instead.

* We now have a third mod, dimity_blue as well as myself and auroracloud.

* I've been adding fandom tags etc as we go - please let me know if I have missed any or tagged anything incorrectly & I will do my best to fix it. I have been trying to keep everything other than fandom tags to a minimum so that we avoid hitting the Dreamwidth max tags limit too soon, but again, let me know if there's something important I've missed or messed up.


* Suggestions for the community (from the introductory post) are:

- commentfest/promptfest/fic exchange/ficathon
- Resources post(s)
- themed challenges
- fandom manifestos/pimping
- linkspams/round up posts/newsletters

The good news is that most of these are not only great ideas, but will definitely happen here! A resources post will follow presently. The challenges idea could combine well with the other suggestions in any case.

It wouldn't be realistic to try and do a regular linkspam/newsletter for such a wide topic as 'all history' but any relevant linkspams, recs and individual links posts from members are very welcome here - and if anybody sets up any further speciifc newsletters or regular round ups on a topic, do please pimp there here, or use this as a base.

Plus, if you're into the Age of Sail era, there is already despatches, the newsletter for that period & fandoms. There's also archaeology_weekly, too, on the non-fannish side.


Other than that - please continue to use the community for fanwork announcements, pimping events, sharing news & links, promoting your historical fandoms, discussion posts, gauging interest on more specific comms or anything else you can think of that's on topic for historium. A community, essentially, is its members, so this is your space - please feel free to use it!

This community is intended as a central community for all historical fandoms, both fictional and RPF. Welcome!



This is a place for posting and linking to any historical fic, icons, art, links, recs, reviews, meta, news, fanworks of any type, useful resources, discussion, community & event promos. If it's to do with a historical fandom, whether RPF or fictional, then it's welcome here. For fanworks, all ratings are fine.

As 'history' is a very wide fandom, this community is also intended to help people find like-minded souls and gauge interest in setting up more specific communities/friending etc. (but it's always fine to interact here). It's also a place for historical fandoms too small/obscure to have their own spaces.


If you're new to Dreamwidth, you can find a collection of helpful welcome & how-to posts here.


Rules & Guidelines
* Be civil to other members - discussion and debate is great, but no trolling, spamming, re-enacting of old time wars in any posts/comments, and absolutely no racism or hatespeech to be used directly against anyone.

* Please put any large (or multiple) graphics, fic, long posts, spoilers, multiple embeds & anything NSFW etc. under a cut. If you are posting content that refers to any more sensitive or problematic areas of history, you must put this behind a cut or post via a link + appropriate content notes/warnings. (To make a cut, in html use: [cut text="More under here etc."], replacing [] with < and >.)

(The community display default is 'suitable for all ages' but it is fine to post NSFW material - just alter the Age Restriction box when you post to 'discretion' or '18+' if you are posting the content to the comm rather than linking to AO3 or a personal journal etc. If there is nothing adult in the post itself, this isn't necessary.)

* Content posted to this community needs to be relevant to history and fandom in some way. It doesn't have to be long, or fanworks only - links, reviews, discussion, resources, commentfests & challenges, news, community promos, and questions etc. are all welcome. Sensitive and difficult content will at times be inevitable given the nature of history, and we have no banned period/topics currently, but members must use cut/links and warnings (or clearly choose not to warn) when posting such content to allow everyone to navigate the comm safely.

However, any active promotion of or apologism for offensive ideologies etc. is of course not allowed. The mods reserve the right to remove material or ban users if we have reason to believe they are abusing content guidelines, trolling, or harrassing anyone. Please contact us if you feel this is the case. (Anon commenting is on here, or you can PM a mod.) We may also review these guidelines at any time.

* Anon commenting is on, but you can adjust comment settings for each individual post to allow screening or disable comments as you prefer.

* The cut-off point definition of history (for the purposes of this comm only!) is 50 years prior to the date of posting, but we realise this always a grey area.

* History vs mythology is another fine line, so please just use your best judgement; ditto historically-set fantasy but most will be fine as long as they're set in an recognisable historical period.

If you're unsure your content 'counts' in any way, you can ask here or PM a mod, but in general the answer will be yes!

* It's fine to post here even if there's a specific era or fandom community! (If any one fandom with its own comm starts flooding the comm, we may temporarily ask people not to cross-post to both.)

* When posting fanworks, please use some kind of header above the cut or link - the AO3 share feature is great, or you can c+p the below (which includes optional coding for links/cuts), but anything similar will do fine:

<b>Creator:</b> <b>Title:</b> <b>Rating:</b> <b>Word Count/size/length:</b> <b>Characters/Pairings:</b> <b>Notes/Warnings:</b> (eg. spoilers, triggers; choose not to warn) <b>Summary</b> cut:<cut text=”YOUR TEXT HERE”> Link: <a href=”link to fic here”>Your text here</a>

* Tagging: this exists to find content on the comm and is currently mod-only for creation of tags, but any member may add existing tags to their post. If you would like to request any particular tags to be made for any reason, please contact a mod.

There is an Historium AO3 Collection that you can use for any works created specifically for community challenges or in any way inspired by any discussion/interaction etc. here.

( Cut for promotional banner coding )

( Masterlist of Historical Communities (WIP) )

We also have a growing Useful Resources Post. (To add links etc., please comment on that post, or post directly to the community.)

If you have any other questions, please ask them in the comments here, or PM a mod.