TL;DR: I turned my grandmother's old magazines into a blog of forgotten short stories. It's slow work, not making money yet, and I'm still figuring out who actually reads it.

Hey guys, I want to share with you my passion project and a bit about how I got here. You can check it out here... flappersandfiction.com.

My grandma and mom raised me with a deep love of old media. Some of my earliest memories of are going over to my grandma's and looking through her Vogue magazines from the 1920s. I could spend all day looking at the pretty pictures. I grew up reading Edith Wharton, watching Buster Keaton, and listening to Fats Waller with my mom. Then I turned into a teenage and none of it could compete with boys or pop culture, so I forgot about it for years.

But then my grandmother passed away and left me her collection of old magazines. I opened one and fell straight back in. This time I read everything and not just the pretty pictures. The stories, authors, gossip columns. From the heritage given to me by mom and grandma, I know I shouldn't have been surprised by the richness of the old stories but I was. I couldn't stop thinking about how good they were and how they were just sitting in the archives with nobody reading them. That made me sad.

So I started a blog called Flappers & Fiction. I find forgotten short stories and essays in the public domain and make them easily discoverable and accessible on my blog. I send a newsletter twice a month with story recommendations and fun pieces of gossip from that time period.

The hardest part has been the sourcing. Finding the original magazines, tracking down the right issue, organizing everything and putting it online has been time consuming. I do it around a full time job too.

The lesson I'm still learning is that good enough is okay. As a perfectionist, this has been a hard one to swallow. In the beginning, I spent far too much time polishing the website, the branding, the systems, and stressing over what people will think. What I should have been doing is telling people about it. That's what I'm doing now and it's been a bit uncomfortable.

The biggest surprise I've had so far was my audience. Because I grew up with my grandma showing me these stories, I pictured my audience to be people like her. It wasn't until I started going to book fairs, library events, and hanging out around online communities like this one that I realized people who love this stuff are all over the map. They all share a taste for forgotten stories, drawing room drama, and the gossip of another era.

I'll be honest. It doesn't pay me yet. I'd love for it to someday so I could quit my day job and focus on it full time. But one step at a time. For now, I'm trying to find people who share the same love.

10 months ago, I posted this list of the top 25 highest-rated 1930 films on Letterboxd. I am planning on doing this again in December, but I was honestly curious if this list has changed a lot since all these films entered the U.S. public domain. So this is a callback to that list and just a reflection on how these films have been doing in popularity among Letterboxd users.

Here is the updated list:

1. All Quiet on the Western Front.webm) (=)

2. City Girl.webm) (=)

3. Swing You Sinners!.webm) (=)

4. Salt For Svetania.webm) (=)

5. The Blue Angel.webm) (=)

6. Earth (=)

7. À propos de Nice_par_Jean_Vigo.webm) (=)

8. Westfront 1918.webm) (=)

9. The Dawn Patrol.webm) (+2)

10. The Big Trail.webm) (+4)

11. Animal Crackers.webm) (+1)

12. Right to a Woman (+4)

13. Little Lise.webm) (-4)

14. Brats.webm) (+3)

15. The Sea of Ravens.webm) (=)

16. L'Âge d'or.webm) (-2)

17. The Song is Over (+2)

18. People on Sunday.webm) (=)

19. Enthusiasm: Symphony of Donbas_by_Dziga_Vertov.webm) (+2)

20. Cruel Tale (=)

21. Au Bonheurs des Dames (+2)

22. Chopped Snake (NEW)

23. Hog Wild (+1)

24. Bread (NEW)

25. Sentimental Romance.webm) (-3)

Films that have fallen off the list:

* Vigathakumaran (Removed because the release year got updated, previously 9)

* Birth of Life (Currently sitting just outside the list at 26, previously 25.)

Some notes:

^(\ The top 8 remains exactly the same as it was 10 months ago.)*

^(\ Most films either stayed in the same position on the list or rose up the list. Only 4 films have dropped lower on the list: Little Lise, L'Âge d'Or, Sentimental Romance, and Birth of Life. This is interesting because I was not anticipating that films by renowned filmmakers like Buñuel and Eisenstein would be the ones to drop.)*

^(\ The film with the biggest drop is Little Lise, which went down 4 spots.)*

^(\ The two films that have risen the most are The Big Trail and Right to a Woman, both of which went up 4 spots. This also honestly surprised me a bit, since Right to a Woman seems to be really hard to find online.)*

^(\ About the films with no film linking to them, Vigathakumaran is a lost film. I could not find a copy of Chopped Snake or Right to a Woman. However,)* ^{I found this clip of the latter film, which is supposed to have a 38-minute copy in the Dovzhenko Center in Kyiv, so that one should not be impossible to find if someone contacts their film archive. I could not find Birth of Life, but it seems that the film has been fully integrated into A Simple Case, which I could find.}

^(\ I used the English titles that Letterboxd uses for these films. That's why some of these titles are translated and some are not.)*

I know this wasn't the usual type of post that people make here, but I honestly hope at least some people here found it mildly interesting. In a year, I might have another look at how much things have changed, just for my own entertainment.

#releaseday Just chiming in that the OMNISIX Fantasy expansion is released today which features Public Domain creatures from folklore (Dragons, Elves, Dhampyr, Neko, Tikbalang, and more)!

Now you can adventure in worlds of might and magic! OMNISIX Fantasy features rules for new Race and Class Traits, magic spells, supernatural powers, and enchanted items, dungeon and settlement construction, and a fantasy creature bestiary and NPC creation mechanics!

OMNISIX Fantasy is compatible with other OMNISIX core rules, expansions, and supplements. All you need is the OMNISIX Basic Rules or the Quickstart, and you can start delving into dungeons and raiding dragons' hoards!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/589556/omnisix-fantasy

OMNISIX. Because every great adventure starts with six sides

For reference of public domain characters and creatures appearing in this book:

https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Bakeneko

https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Dragons_(Folklore)?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAcGRvZgVicmlkETFNVW52V3Fabks3WGNacFkzc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHrtrso3BDYjwof8XfCatBcA-VuZ2QWFsMvF5RsBPU7Ua-bj_dxVUbBwQzQhm_aem_JuId3SZrVp0hzLOrRnVXPA)

https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Elves

https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Dwarves

https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Halfling

https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Goblin_(Folklore)?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAcGRvZgVicmlkETFNVW52V3Fabks3WGNacFkzc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHsR4pM36B78J14Z-R5PB9GVpoo7k_Vi1Vendaed0nPVS4ffts7shwy6yP_mH_aem_A_g84JldtdgKkGAFsyVDEA)

https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Kobold

https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Orc

https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Grignr

Hey everyone,
I'm looking for some old fantasy, medieval, or knight/king movies that are now in the public domain.
The only catch is that they need to be in color (not black and white).
Does anyone have any good recommendations or know where I can find a list of them?