Fandom Snowflake Challenge 2016: Day 10

[hoursgoneby]

Day 10

In your own space, post a rec for fannish and/or creative resources and spaces. Tell us where you go to dig up canon facts for your fandom, or where you get all the juicy details about your favorite ship. Where do you like to hang out and squee like a squeeing thing? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Well, I mostly lurk so here are some resource links.

If this first list looks familiar, yes, it's the one I posted in answer to this question last year. :)

• Wikipedia - I know, I know, but if I just need to check, say, the history of tools or clothing, or the basics of an illness or injury it's good enough.


• TVTropes - In addition to their Useful Notes sections, the pages on the works themselves can be useful if you need to look up something about the material you're working with without having to risk checking it and winding up watching or reading it and not working on what you started out with.


• Google - If Wikipedia doesn't have the information, or the depth of information, I want I head to Google. Someone, somewhere, knows the history of crinolines, or the frequency of inside shutters in old houses and they may not have been interested enough to put it on Wikipedia.


• Fan wikis, if they're available. One of the downsides of smaller fandoms though is they tend not to have large wikis, if at all, and when they have one it's often not been updated recently.


• Pixlr.com - This is an online graphics editor I use for doing simple things, admittedly largely at work but it technically could be used for fan stuff. It's pretty much a Photoshop clone, but not as powerful.


• GIMP - A much more powerful Photoshop clone, it's more complex than Pixlr and needs to be downloaded to be used but it has a lot more features and you can do more with it.


• My husband. No, really. He's a fellow nerd and has an encyclopedic knowledge of whatever fandoms he's interested in. (The trick can, in fact, be getting him to stop.)

And here are some resources I picked up from the 2015 Snowflake Challenge, and over the rest of the year:

• The Domesday Book - Medieval Demographics Made Easy - Put in your kingdom's name, weather type, population density, type of law enforcement etc. and it will generate the demographics for your fictional land! Useful if you're writing original work or trying to figure out how something would work in a fanwork when the author didn't give you exact numbers.


• List of Random Names - Why bother spending hours thinking up names for incidental characters when you can have a tool that does it for you?


• Words - Translate Latin to English - It only lets you translate one word at a time, but it does give you a list with a short description of how that word would be used. For example, I put in 'time' and got not only 'tempus' but that 'tempus' refers to 'time, condition, right time' but 'aevum, aevi: time, time of life, age' plus several more.


• Random Title Generator - Does what it says on the tin. Mind, the titles might not be useable for what you're doing, since you just click a button and don't give it any information but you never know.


• Online Etymology Dictionary - Words come into use at different times, and change meaning through the centuries. This will give you the history of the word, including when it's first attested, and the meanings it had at different times.


• Gode Cookery - Want medieval recipes? An Elizabethan dinner conversation? A description of food in the works of Chaucer? Here you go.


• Georgian Jewelry - Actually a business site not a reference page but it includes clear pictures of the antique and estate jewelry (as far as I can see 'estate' is something like 'gently used') from multiple angles, plus the age of each piece and a little bit of history on it and its style. Plus, it's just lovely to look at. [Edited to add 1/10/16.]

Comments

[samtyr.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the links, especially Gode Cookery. :)

[hours-gone-by.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! :)

[pronker]

What a marvelous list - LOL, TVTropes ought to have a warning label because anyone can get lost in there for hours. I keep trying to start a new entry, but the folks who contribute have already thought of my trope, every darn time.

[hours-gone-by.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

TVTropes should definitely have a warning label! More than once I've made the mistake of going on there for 'just a few minutes' and then suddenly it's three hours later and I haven't gotten anything done.

[lexigent.livejournal.com]

These are all fab! Thank you!

[hours-gone-by.livejournal.com]

You're welcome!

[withasmile87.livejournal.com]

TV Tropes has sucked me in many of times before.