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Fandom Promotion Post!
The great part about Yuletide is how your tiny fandom finally gets its time in the sun!
But sometimes it needs a little help for other people to know about your fandom in the first place.
This is what this post is for! Tell everyone about your fandom! Tell them what's great! Why they should fic it! What makes it special!
EDIT: I found a much better posting guideline while searching for an old post!
Completely optional format that you don't have to use:
<b>Fandom:</b> (name of fandom)
<b>Category:</b> (the category it will be in)
<b>Comments:</b> (any comments you have about why people should get into the fandom)
<b>Links:</b>
1. (links to any sources you think will help a potential writer get into the fandom, such as wikipedia pages, legal sources for download/viewing, primers, etc.)
2.
3.
4.
5.
Note: I won't be making a spreadsheet for this since I feel this post is best for browsing through to find shinies, but if anyone else makes one I'll happily link it!
Useful links: Evidence Post, Nominations Trading Post and Nominations Tutorial!
LJ post!
But sometimes it needs a little help for other people to know about your fandom in the first place.
This is what this post is for! Tell everyone about your fandom! Tell them what's great! Why they should fic it! What makes it special!
EDIT: I found a much better posting guideline while searching for an old post!
Completely optional format that you don't have to use:
<b>Fandom:</b> (name of fandom)
<b>Category:</b> (the category it will be in)
<b>Comments:</b> (any comments you have about why people should get into the fandom)
<b>Links:</b>
1. (links to any sources you think will help a potential writer get into the fandom, such as wikipedia pages, legal sources for download/viewing, primers, etc.)
2.
3.
4.
5.
Note: I won't be making a spreadsheet for this since I feel this post is best for browsing through to find shinies, but if anyone else makes one I'll happily link it!
Useful links: Evidence Post, Nominations Trading Post and Nominations Tutorial!
LJ post!
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Why this fandom rocks: First, actually getting the game. It's cheap. You can buy the complete game, including the Forgotten Shores expansion pack, for slightly under six dollars. It's easy to get. Any iOS or Android mobile device can play it. If you have a smartphone, you can almost certainly play Monument Valley. Finally, it's quick to play. Even on a first playthrough, it shouldn't take more than three hours.
Next, what's actually in the game. Its main character is named Ida, and she's on a quest for forgiveness. What exactly she's being forgiven for is revealed over the course of the game. The other character, Totem, is a yellow-and-blue friend of yours who joins you during the game. Gameplay involves manipulating the environment or your perspective to create paths. The art style is geometric and minimalistic and very simple. The story is revealed slowly, and when you get to the end of the game you still don't feel like you have the whole thing - plenty of space to write fic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRcZDQnPONQ
This is a link to a video guide to my favorite level in the base game, The Box. It's a good example of what the game looks and plays like. It's also absolutely gorgeous, like the rest of the game. If this level looks interesting enough to play through yourself, consider picking up the base game - it's only $3.99.
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Category: Anime
Comments: Sunday Without God takes place in a world where people can no longer give birth or die naturally, and the only way someone can truly die is if a gravekeeper buries them. Twelve-year-old Ai is one such gravekeeper, and she lives her days peacefully until a mysterious man arrives at her village and massacres everyone but her. After confronting him and learning the truth about her village, she sets out on a journey to save the world and meets a number of interesting people along the way.
Links:
Wikipedia & TVTropes
Watch on Crunchyroll or Hulu
Watch the opening here!
Fandom: Stray Little Devil
Category: Manga
Comments: Stray Little Devil is about a young girl named Pam Akumachi who gets sucked into a world were only devils and angels live, and she gets turned into a devil herself! As she tries to find a way back to her home world, she becomes friends with devils Raim and Vine and grows closer to the standoffish angel Linfa, who looks just like her best friend Rinka. It's a lighthearted manga, and it even has canon yuri!
Links:
Wikipedia & TVTropes
A cute image of Pam and Linfa getting married!
The manga is five volumes and out-of-print, but scans are easy enough to find on most online read
Fandom: Venus Versus Virus
Category: Anime/manga
Comments: Venus Versus Virus is about a middle-school girl named Sumire Takahana who gets attacked by a violent ghost but is saved by a mysterious young hunter named Lucia Nahashi. After Sumire develops strange powers of her own, she joins Lucia in hunting these ghostlike "Viruses." The series has a strong focus on female friendships with plenty of yuri subtext.
Links:
Wikipedia & TVTropes
Watch on Funimation's streaming site
Watch the opening here!
The manga is eight volumes and also out-of-print, but scans can be found on most online readers.
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Category: RPF
Comments: Very smart very athletic dudes bonding while forced into a small enclosed space! If any of that sounds like your jam, please join me in yelling about the Apollo astronauts. Science! History! Also, and of course most importantly, sex — IN SPACE! For your convenience, I have written up a primer, divided according to the kind of ship dynamics you might prefer.
Links:
1. Apollo 12: my crew is an accidental space threesome
2. Apollo 13: no, we really do have to huddle together for warmth
3. Apollo 14: my personal hero wants ME on his very important space mission
4. Chris Kraft & mission control: I am absolutely the most qualified person to direct this orgy
5. What to do when you fall in love with your geology professor
6. I admit I am heavily basing my narrative on Andrew Chaikin's book A Man On the Moon: Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. It is like $10 on Amazon and 700 pages long, but if you're interested in space, and humanity, and how people can come together to do astonishing things, it is a really, really excellent book. I would recommend it wholeheartedly even if I didn't want you to write me fic for yuletide :D
7. There is a good overview of the space program in the form of a 2-hour NOVA episode, "To the Moon", which is available on youtube!
8. Tom Hanks also adapted Chaikin's book into a 12-ep TV show with HBO, "From the Earth to the Moon". It is, I believe, available on Amazon Prime?
9. Some individual astronauts, naturally, have also written their own books! They might be unavailable at this point, but here is a partial listing for reference.
IN CONCLUSION: SEX. IN SPACE.
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Who do you want to nominate?
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Through careful wrangling (read: begging my friends to nom people), I've settled on a list of fifteen:
Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, Al Bean (Apollo 12 crew)
Jack Lovell, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert, Ken Mattingly (Apollo 13 crew+)
Al Shepard, Stu Roosa (Apollo 14 minus Mitchell)
Lee Silver, Farouk El-Baz, Dave Scott, Jack Schmitt (geologists & related)
Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz (mission control)
Which I think is a pretty good pool of people to choose from!
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Category: Video Games
Comments: The original game was released on the Wii back in 2009, but then they released it on Vita with four DLC chapters and a new, MUCH BETTER translation as Muramasa Rebirth (seriously, if you're going to play or watch a Let's Play, make sure it's Rebirth!). Even if you've never played it, chances are you've seen it, because this game is freaking gorgeous.
The game takes place in Edo-era Japan, and between the main game and its four DLC, you have the chance to play as six protagonists: Momohime, a young princess possessed by a master swordsman; Kisuke, a rogue ninja trying to save the woman he loves; Miike/Okoi, a Nekomata out to avenge the death of her friend; Gonbe, a peasant farmer trying to save his village; Arashimaru, another ninja cursed by a goddess to die in seven days; and Rajyaki, a young, female oni determined to have the man of her dreams.
If you have a Vita, there's no reason not to own this game. The gameplay is fast-paced and varied between characters, the bosses are huge and creative, the graphics are gorgeous hand-drawn sprites, and the music is phenomenal. And in true Vanillaware fashion the food looks delicious! It's got adventure, romance, fantasy, tragedy. All of the characters have their own story with multiple endings, and they weave together beautifully.
The characters I plan on nominating come from the 3rd DLC starring Arashimaru. It's about a 15 year old ninja, who was kidnapped as a child and raised by the Iga Clan. When he learns the truth of his past and goes on the run, he accidentally desecrates the shrine of the water goddess Inaraki, and is cursed by her to die in seven days. Meanwhile, his brother, Dengoro, hunts him down, thinking he's the ninja that killed their father. It's tense, tragic, and both endings are satisfying conclusions.
You can watch all the relevant cutscenes for Arashimaru's story in about 90 minutes. The rest of the game is much longer but every story is worth it.
Links:
1. Muramasa: Rebirth trailer
2. A playthrough of the entire game and its endings.
3. Trailer for the 3rd DLC, which is what I'll be requesting for sure!
4. The Soundtrack, because goddamn, is this music amazing.
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Category: Books and Literature
Comments: The first half of the novel is a perfectly observed study in how alternately AMAZING and BRILLIANT and AWFUL and EMBARRASSING everything is when you are 13 (with bonus stag beetles), and the second half is about the romantic friendship that develops between the eponymous David and the head of his House at boarding school, Frank Maddox. What's not to love? Well, it was published in 1916, and there is some homophobia (mostly of the internalized sort) but on the other hand the romance is textual rather than subtextual. And Frank and David hang out together naked a lot. (They really do.) If you like homoerotic English public school stories...well, you've probably read it already. But if you haven't, it's available free on Gutenberg.org
Links: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48315
Fandom: The Cruel Sea -- Nicholas Monsarrat
Category: Books and Literature, Film
Comments: Verité account of service in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, mostly about the Battle of the Atlantic, based on the author's own experiences. This one is basically 'Corvettes, and the Men Who Love Them.' The film is a pared-down, anti-jingo classic about the hardships and wastefulness of war. Friendships are forged (the one between the protagonist and his skipper is subtextually romantic, if references to them as David and Jonathan in both book and film count as subtext), there's a lot of radar noise on the soundtrack, and you don't see hide nor hair of a German until three-quarters of the way through. (My family always watched it at Christmas. I don't know either.)
Links: Radio adaptation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LDkgcSex9o
Fandom: The Riddle of the Sands -- Erskine Childers
Category:Books and Literature, Film
Comments: Amateur spies! Traitors! Men who love boats! Carruthers joins his friend Davies for what he thinks is a yachting holiday; it turns out that Davies is on the trail of a traitor who is key to a planned German invasion of England. It's an 'invasion literature' classic, but it's also a social comedy, a wry commentary on the English aesthetic of amateurism, an account of a friendship with plenty of homoerotic potential, a down-and-dirty sailing primer, and a guide to the Frisian islands. Bring your own tobacco and rigging screws. Oh, and a No.3 Rippingille stove.
Links: Free on Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2360 Film adaptation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQMdGfNTJvw
Riddle of the Sands fans don't write so much fic. Because they're busy re-enacting the damn thing: http://riddleofthesands.net/wordpress/
x-posted from lj
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Fandom: Travels with the Snow Queen - Kelly Link
Category: Books & Literature
Comments: "Where you are, where you are coming from, it is impossible to read a map made of paper. If it were that easy then everyone would be a traveler. You have heard of other travelers whose maps are breadcrumbs, whose maps are stones, whose maps are the four winds, whose maps are yellow bricks laid one after the other. You read your map with your foot, and behind you somewhere there must be another traveler whose map is the bloody footprints that you are leaving behind you."
Don't be scared off by the second person. This is a short story that is lyrically written, tugs at your heartstrings, empowers you, and turns a classic fairy tale 90 degrees. Not a complete 180, wicked-wolf-as-reporter sort of way, but enough to change the way you see the world for a little while, and the way you see the Snow Queen forever. It examines heartbreak and scars and warm boots and cold lips. It dances around the lies we tell ourselves and other people. It's built on female friendship and unexpected kindness and self-determination. And it's freely available and easy to read in a single sitting!
Links:
1. The totally free and legal pdf of the short story collection, put up by the publisher:
http://smallbeerpress.com/wp-content/uploads/Kelly_Link_Stranger_Things.pdf
Fandom: The King of Ireland's Son
Category: Books & Literature
Comments: "The Hunter-King was being waked in the neighbor-woman's house, and her eldest daughter had been the corpse-watcher the first night. In the morning they found that the girl's hand had been withered. The woman's second daughter was the corpse-watcher the second night and her right hand had been left trembling. This was the third and last night that the Hunter-King would be waked, and to-night there was no one to watch his corpse."
I grew up so obsessed with this book that it inspired my username when I made a dreamwidth and AO3. It's a 1916 retelling of Irish folk and fairy tales, which means it is now in the public domain. The titular character is a goodhearted youth, if a little naive, who gets himself into trouble during the start of the book and has to seek out a powerful enemy enchanter to set things right. But that's only the beginning! The book dips and weaves through vows of silence, the tale of the King of Cats, terrifying wakes, long-lost siblings (only some of them evil), and poems about Celtic deities. A woman instructs her lover to kill her and make a ladder of her bones, but remember to put them back very carefully in the correct order. A queen finally realizes she will never finish making seven bog-down shirts without speaking a word or shedding a tear, and learns to forgive herself for it. And there are happy endings!
Links:
1. Project Gutenberg downloads in various formats:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3495
2. Free audiobook from Librivox:
https://librivox.org/the-king-of-irelands-son-by-padraic-colum/
3. And online at Sacred Texts for good measure:
http://sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/kis/index.htm
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Category: Other Media
Comments: Men in Blazers are Michael Davies and Roger Bennett, and they (quoted from their bio) "believe soccer is the American sport of the future. As it has been since 1972." The podcast originally started with Grantland, but has since moved with the Men in Blazers to NBC Sports.
Okay, okay, so this podcast won't be of interest to you if you aren't into association football/soccer, and especially the (English) Premier League. And if you like your podcasts less than 90 minutes long...sorry, because they're usually around 90 minutes long? But Men in Blazers is a mostly Premier League podcast. (Sometimes they cover other leagues and events such as MLS and the men's FIFA World Cup.) Along with their soccer coverage and interviews, recorded in the crap part of SoHo (most of the time), they manage to weave in odd catchphrases, pop culture, and real-life tales with every episode.
There are many ways to connect to the Men in Blazers:
1. Of course there's a pod...Rog. (Available on Soundcloud and can be downloaded through iTunes or another podcaster. They also have a couple of compilation albums on iTunes, if you'd like to pay for them, but their whole extensive archive is on Soundcloud.)
2. There is a website, meninblazers.com. (You can find their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify handles here. There are a lot of them. This is also where you can find their email address, so you can send Ravens to the crap part of SoHo.)
3. They have a wiki dedicated to the podcast, a wonder of the modern world.
4. They also have a sub-Reddit, maintained by GFOPs.
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Category: Movies
Comments: A 2007 North Korean film (yes, North Korean film!) about a teenage girl, Kim Su-ryeon, who struggles with various difficulties of growing up, particularly with her resentment of her scientist father's being away from home for months on end for his job. Although the film contains the obligatory propaganda for the Dear Leader and stresses the need to sacrifice one's own feelings for the good of the State, it's still a sensitive and thoughtful treatment of the pains of adolescence and the strength of family love. Su-ryeon's relationship with her sister Su-ok deserves more exploration, as does the relationship across the three generations of women who live in their house (since Su-ryeon's grandmother also lives with them). This film's a refreshing contrast to the heavily militarized media that comes out of North Korea -- it's worth watching, whether or not it inspires fic ideas.
Links: The Schoolgirl's Diary received a very limited distribution outside North Korea, but an English-subbed rip is up on YouTube.
Fandom: Senkou no Night Raid | Night Raid 1931
Category: Anime/Manga
Comments: A 13-episode historical supernatural espionage action anime series, set in Shanghai and Manchuria in the 1930s. The four main characters are part of the Sakurai Organization, a clandestine Japanese spy agency that has been assigned to track down a rogue Imperial Japanese Army officer who appears to be building some sort of super-weapon that might tip the balance of power in Asia. In addition, all four agents have different supernatural powers, ranging from telepathy to teleportation to clairvoyance, and much of the show's action sequences involve some clever uses of these powers.
Beyond being just a noir-ish period spy series, Night Raid grapples with some tough historical questions that don't often show up in Japanese media. There are active moral and ethical dilemmas related to Japan's position as a fledgling imperial power, and the series treats them as an ongoing debate, with the characters all taking different sides and often feeling conflicted about their choices. And there's a lot of room for fic with any of the characters, since they all have demons in their pasts and complicated relationships with each other. There's currently only one Night Raid fic on AO3 right now, and there really should be more!
Links: Crunchyroll (streaming video). Three bonus episodes are available on the official Blu-ray release.
Fandom: Porco Rosso
Category: Movies
Comments: The 1992 Studio Ghibli classic about a World War I flying ace who has been cursed -- or so we are told -- to live as an anthropomorphic pig. Set in the Adriatic in the 1930s, it features lovingly rendered airplanes and scenery, exciting action sequences, two fantastic female characters in the form of airplane designer Fio Piccolo and island hotel owner (and part-time spy?) Madame Gina, and a story that dwells on both the freedom of flying and the remembered horrors of war.
Links: The movie recently came out on Blu-ray, though I don't know whether it's on any streaming services.
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If you love SF/F, particularly racially aware SF/F, you should be all over this album series. If you love music, you should listen to them (they’re all available on Amazon Prime), because HOLY COW, Janelle Monae is AMAZING in what she is doing with the music. I don’t like most modern music because it gets boring and repetitive. Janelle Monae puts together albums that are definitely hip hop/R&B, yet that draw far more widely in musical influence and have orchestral portions and really, REALLY intricate themes both musically, SFnally, and racially, and it’s just a joy and a treat to listen to. And the visuals–album art, music videos, etc.–are all equally stunning.
I WANT MORE. What I really want is for her to finish the suite (there are supposedly still at least one album to come). What I want for Yuletide is fic exploring the rich, multi-faceted world that she has built in her music. I want to know more about the droid economy. I want to explore the parallels to current American race relations that Janelle draws. I want to know more about Cindi Mayweather (Janelle’s alter-ego).
Cindi Mayweather is an Alpha Platinum 9000 droid in a world where droids are property. She falls in love with a human, which means she must be immediately disassembled, and bounty hunters are sent out to get her. But Cindi is also the ArchAndroid, a messiah-like figure to the rest of the droids fighting to hold their own in a culture that treats them like things instead of people. The songs are about her journeys through time and space insearch of freedom and self-expression, with “interludes” giving the perspective of outsiders from her original timeline.
Here’s a short guide to the chase suite. http://www.philipsandifer.com/blog/a-short-guide-to-janelle-mon%C3%A1e-and-the-metropolis-saga/
Here’s the icon post I made for Janelle Monae. http://beatrice-otter.dreamwidth.org/264879.html#cutid1
Here's Janelle Monae's website. http://www.jmonae.com/
All three albums of the Chase Suite (the Archandroid, Metropolis, and Electric Lady) are available with Amazon Prime.
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Category: TV Shows
Comments: Caprica was a spinoff/prequel of BSG, set fifty years before the show, about how the Cylons were created (and how they found religion).
The show focused on grief and loss and manpain, but didn’t do as much with the really interesting questions: what does it mean to be alive? What is ‘reality,’ and how do we shape it? What ends justify what means? Who are we, really, down deep–the sum of our experiences, or culture, or is there something more?
Tamara Adams (my favorite character, and the older half-sister of Bill Adama from BSG) had to struggle with all these questions, getting thrown into the deep end. She dies in the first few minutes of the first episode … and then her father and Daniel Graystone use Zoe Graystone’s breakthrough programming to make an AI version of Tamara in the virtual reality computer network. Except that when Zoe created her own avatar, she knew what she was doing. Tamara’s avatar just woke up, having no clue what had happened or where she was. Watching her grow and adapt and learn and really come into her own was such a treat. She really got screwed over, and and had to completely remake herself. I want to know what happened to her!
Tamara, unlike Zooey, isn’t anybody’s chosen one. She’s not the brilliant scientist, or the religious leader. She’s the ordinary teenage girl, whose life was destroyed by other peoples’ hubris and mistakes, who has to pick up the pieces and figure out what to do next.
Caprica takes place over fifty years before BSG, and it’s not action-adventure, it’s a family drama. By which I mean, it’s about two very different families (the Graystones and the Adamses) and how they react to tragedy and loss amid turbulent times. It’s about religion–apathetic polytheism vs. fanatical monotheism. It’s about technology–artificial intelligence and the creation of the Cylons and what does it mean to be alive. It’s about culture–whitebread middle-class Capricans vs. earthy Taurons with mob connections vs. the nihilistic youth culture of the virtual reality games. It’s about life in all the forms it takes.
Links: Caprica on hulu: http://www.hulu.com/start/cbsi?cmp=5966
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Category: Movies
Comments: Donovan's Reef is a morality play about racism disguised as a sixties action-romcom starring John Wayne and Lee Marvin.
It takes place in French Polynesia, in the sixties. Twenty years earlier during WWII, three US Navy guys washed ashore and fought the Japanese with the help of the natives.* Two of them (Dr. William Dedham and "Guns" Donovan (The Duke)) stayed, one to open a hospital, one to run a shipping company and a bar. The third (Gilhooley, played by Lee Marvin) is a disreputable sailor who shows up regularly to start bar fights. Dr. Dedham married the Polynesian princess Manulani and had three children with her, Lelani, Sally, and Luke.
Lelani is a beautiful, poised, teen girl at home in her role as royalty but conscious of what it means to not be white. At the start of the movie, Manulani has been dead for years and Doc is headed off on one of his regular traveling-hospital type trips around the islands, where he will be incommunicado for some time.
BACK IN BOSTON, we find that Dedham has a grown (white) daughter Amelia who has never met him, who is now the CEO of the family shipping business, a very proper (and hypocritical) New England operation. An aunt has just died and left most of her stock to Doc Dedham, which the family (not approving of him running off to the Pacific 20 years ago) wants to swindle him out of. So Amelia sets out to French Polynesia to dig up a reason they can declare that he's not "of sound moral character." (For example, that he's gotten up to something with "one of those native women.")
Miss Amelia Dedham of Boston, inquiring where she might find her father.
Guns, Gilhooley, and the Governor of French Polynesia get wind of her visit and decide that the best thing to do is to pretend that Lelani, Sally, and Luke are Guns' children until the Doc gets back to explain things to his Boston daughter.
The Governor, Gillhooley, and Guns
And so begins the farce. Amelia is charmed by Guns' three "half-caste" children, the governor wants to marry Amelia for her $18 million, Guns and Amelia are sparring and flirting, Gilhooley is picking fights, and Amelia's trying to figure out who this Manulani person was, why her father has a portrait of her, and why no one will talk about her.
Amelia and Manulani's portrait
Meanwhile, the three kids (particularly Lelani) are watching this from the sidelines, unable to greet their sister as a sister because they are not white.
Lelani watching from the sidelines
It all turns out well in the end--Amelia learns the kids are her siblings and embraces them, realizing (at least a little) how wrong prejudice is, and its costs. (She also agrees to marry Guns, but the romance is fairly trite and predictable and there's not much chemistry between the two actors, so I don't usually pay much attention to the love story.) Meanwhile, Lelani is mature and proud of her heritage, and stands up for herself even when that means contradicting an older sister she desperately wants to please.
Now, the movie isn't perfect. It was made during the sixties, and there's plenty of misogyny to go around. And the casting director didn't quite get the distinction between "Asian" and "Polynesian" at all times. And there's some anti-Asian bigotry and stereotypes played for laughs. (Yes, John Wayne character is also played for laughs at times, but it's different for a straight white man who gets some heroic and romantic stuff too. Also, the acting isn't always the greatest, particularly the actress who plays Amelia. On the other hand, the actress who plays Lelani is fabulous. And their handling of the racial issues are surprisingly non-faily for the era, all things considered--I love how Lelani quietly puts Amelia in her place when Amelia starts trying to mock her for following her peoples' religious traditions.
*Okay, in reality the Japanese never reached French Polynesia, please don't let minor details like that get in your way.
Links:
<b>Category:</b> Movies
<b>Comments:</b> Donovan's Reef is a morality play about racism disguised as a sixties action-romcom starring John Wayne and Lee Marvin.
It takes place in French Polynesia, in the sixties. Twenty years earlier during WWII, three US Navy guys washed ashore and fought the Japanese with the help of the natives.* Two of them (Dr. William Dedham and "Guns" Donovan (The Duke)) stayed, one to open a hospital, one to run a shipping company and a bar. The third (Gilhooley, played by Lee Marvin) is a disreputable sailor who shows up regularly to start bar fights. Dr. Dedham married the Polynesian princess Manulani and had three children with her, Lelani, Sally, and Luke.
Lelani is a beautiful, poised, teen girl at home in her role as royalty but conscious of what it means to not be white. At the start of the movie, Manulani has been dead for years and Doc is headed off on one of his regular traveling-hospital type trips around the islands, where he will be incommunicado for some time.
BACK IN BOSTON, we find that Dedham has a grown (white) daughter Amelia who has never met him, who is now the CEO of the family shipping business, a very proper (and hypocritical) New England operation. An aunt has just died and left most of her stock to Doc Dedham, which the family (not approving of him running off to the Pacific 20 years ago) wants to swindle him out of. So Amelia sets out to French Polynesia to dig up a reason they can declare that he's not "of sound moral character." (For example, that he's gotten up to something with "one of those native women.")
Miss Amelia Dedham of Boston, inquiring where she might find her father.
Guns, Gilhooley, and the Governor of French Polynesia get wind of her visit and decide that the best thing to do is to pretend that Lelani, Sally, and Luke are Guns' children until the Doc gets back to explain things to his Boston daughter.
The Governor, Gillhooley, and Guns
And so begins the farce. Amelia is charmed by Guns' three "half-caste" children, the governor wants to marry Amelia for her $18 million, Guns and Amelia are sparring and flirting, Gilhooley is picking fights, and Amelia's trying to figure out who this Manulani person was, why her father has a portrait of her, and why no one will talk about her.
Amelia and Manulani's portrait
Meanwhile, the three kids (particularly Lelani) are watching this from the sidelines, unable to greet their sister as a sister because they are not white.
Lelani watching from the sidelines
It all turns out well in the end--Amelia learns the kids are her siblings and embraces them, realizing (at least a little) how wrong prejudice is, and its costs. (She also agrees to marry Guns, but the romance is fairly trite and predictable and there's not much chemistry between the two actors, so I don't usually pay much attention to the love story.) Meanwhile, Lelani is mature and proud of her heritage, and stands up for herself even when that means contradicting an older sister she desperately wants to please.
Now, the movie isn't perfect. It was made during the sixties, and there's plenty of misogyny to go around. And the casting director didn't quite get the distinction between "Asian" and "Polynesian" at all times. And there's some anti-Asian bigotry and stereotypes played for laughs. (Yes, John Wayne character is also played for laughs at times, but it's different for a straight white man who gets some heroic and romantic stuff too. Also, the acting isn't always the greatest, particularly the actress who plays Amelia. On the other hand, the actress who plays Lelani is fabulous. And their handling of the racial issues are surprisingly non-faily for the era, all things considered--I love how Lelani quietly puts Amelia in her place when Amelia starts trying to mock her for following her peoples' religious traditions.
*Okay, in reality the Japanese never reached French Polynesia, please don't let minor details like that get in your way.
<b>Links:</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Donovans-Reef-John-Wayne/dp/B002DHXUCI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443285506&sr=8-1&keywords=donovan%27s+reef"For rent on Amazon</a>
It's also available for free on Youtube, but the quality is pretty poor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFFdWGDk19A
Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (a.k.a. "7KPP") - diplomatic dating sim
Category: Video Games
Comments:
How to explain Seven Kingdoms? Well, 7KPP (fan abbreviation) is an indie game of the visual novel style that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. It's a diplomatic game crossed with a dating sim that allows your character to forge alliances by making either a political marriage or a love match. The full game is not out yet, but the demo (http://www.indiedb.com/games/seven-kingdoms-the-princess-problem) has more content than many fully-developed games and the fandom is amazing.
Anyone can play it, even someone who never has (and never wanted to) play a video game. Because: the genre is political fantasy, the premise is a diplomatic summit, and you play a princess trying to determine her own destiny. Because of all these things, the main talents your princess requires are social skills. You can be an over-educated academic, or a charming flirt, or an under-handed manipulator, and each of these skill sets can be vital to winning the game.
But! This is not just an antidote to the typical war-game. It's also a dating sim. What's that? You want to hear about the love interests? Well, there are twelve of them, male and female, appropriate and... less appropriate. Want a brilliant but socially awkward nerd? We've got one of those. Golden retriever boyfriend? Got one of those too. Sexually-aggressive lesbian warrior princess? Yup, that too.
But! The very best thing about this game (and this fandom) is how accessible it is. You can download the demo for free (as mentioned) and the game has a challenge mode (for the hardcore) and a story mode (if you want to enjoy the game without stressing about being voted off the island). For the more competitive player, there are about seventy special achievements that you can unlock, and the fandom has created probably dozens of different guides for uncovering all the secrets and hidden content.
Download it! Play it! Join the fandom, we're very welcoming! Fair warning: the demo might take you between 2-4 hours to play through once. Less fair warning: this game is ridiculously addictive and a complete time-sink.
Links:
1. My initial review of the game: http://lea-hazel.dreamwidth.org/336505.html
2. Quick impressions of the main NPCs: http://leahazel.tumblr.com/post/124766558190/rundown-of-7kpp-delegates
3. Official game dev blog with lots of Q&A and bonus material: http://azalynestudios.tumblr.com/
4. The fan-run wiki will help you win every game: http://7kpp.wikia.com/wiki/7KPP_Wikia
5. Biggest, baddest fan-run Tumblr: http://7kpp.tumblr.com
6. TV Tropes page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VisualNovel/SevenKingdomsThePrincessProblem
no subject
Category: Video Games
Comments: Love Live! School Idol Project is an anime about nine girls who become an idol singer group in order to save their under-enrolled rural high school from shutting down, and how they end up good friends even though at the start they mostly had nothing in common but their love of their school. It's a fun little series with a thriving, although still Yuletide-sized, fandom.
But this isn't really about that, because I'm a weirdo and I nominated the tie-in cell phone game instead. It's a rhythm game with the same basic premise of school-based idol groups, but with a metric ton of characters from different schools, each of whom has several different scenes that you can unlock as you play the game. They run the gamut of character types--I've nominated a Takarazuka-like actress who plays male roles, her best childhood friend who's a ballet dancer, and a pair of Gothic Lolita sisters, the older of whom has a questionable grip on reality and the latter of whom is more sensible and a bit long-suffering, but there are many, many more and if I tried to give you a reasonable cross-section I'd be here all day. The scenes are pretty short, though, so the characters aren't explored in much depth, and while they often mention each other, we never really see them interact with anyone besides the PC--hence my desire for fanfic.
If you're in the US (or Japan), the game is available for free for Android or iPhone.
Links:
1. Official website
2. App on the Play store
3. App on the iTunes store
4. Fairly comprehensive resource for character information
Fandom: Neon Genesis Impacts
Category: Anime & Manga
Comments: Neon Genesis Impacts is a seven-minute short set in the world of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but all you really need to know to understand Impacts is that fifteen years prior, monsters called Angels attacked and killed off about half the human population, and now (in the distant future year of 2015!) they've returned to finish the job. Impacts tells, very briefly, the story of three teenage girls in a pop-rock band who are separated when Tokyo-3 is evacuated due to the Angel attacks. Also, two of them kiss just before they have to part ways, so if canon (though bittersweet) f/f calls to you, there you are.
The whole thing is available to stream for free with English subs. Also, I mean, it's only seven minutes, so what have you got to lose?
Links:
1. Announcement on AnimeNewsNetwork with translated blurb
2. Official streaming video (click the button that says "英語字幕" for subs--or if that just looks like boxes to you, it's the second of the three buttons under the video window)
Fandom: Ever 17: The Out of Infinity
Category: Video Games
Comments: Unfortunately, Ever17 is hard to sell given that it's hard to discuss in any depth what makes it appealing without running into spoilers. It's a visual novel which tells the story of seven (or more???) people who are trapped in an underwater theme park and have 119 hours to escape before the whole thing floods, but what seems like a simple accident turns out to be a whole mess of mysteries involving conspiracies, alternate timeline shenanigans, mysterious diseases, shady pharmaceutical companies, and other weird plot twists. It's a pretty crazy ride, and pretty much none of the characters are what they first appear to be.
If you're familiar with the Zero Escape series, Ever17 is an entry (the strongest one, IMO) in the creator's previous series and is... basically exactly what you'd expect from him. Sadly, the company that released it in English has gone under and so outside of Japan (where it's available for a million different systems including Android and iOS) there's no legit way to get it without paying $200 (I am not kidding) for a secondhand copy. There is, however, a complete Let's Play, and you can find ways to play it for yourself if you go looking.
Links:
1. Let's Play
no subject
Fandom: The Feed (Australian TV)
Category: TV series
Comments: There is only one main character in this fandom, and that is Lee Lin Chin. Lee Lin Chin is a real person, but in this context she is a character, who happens to be played by the real Lee Lin Chin.
Background/Context: Lee Lin Chin is a respected veteran newsreader and fashionista in Australia, in the last few years has switched to only reading the weekend news after SBS changed the format of the weekday news. Since then, she has started appearing in sketches on The Feed, which combines news and in depth feature reporting with comedy, and tends to be pitched at a younger audience.
In these sketches, Lee Lin Chin is essentially playing a exaggerated or parody version of herself (which is written by The Feed's comedy team). This version of Lee Lin Chin is sarcastic, obsessed with high fashion and boutique beer, and considers most people to be beneath her. In the first few episodes they have her hosting a celebrity gossip show, then a cooking show. After that it's fairly random. In one of the most popular episodes, she gets into a knife fight with news readers from other tv stations. Some of the references will be more relevant to Australians, but many are generally accessible.
There is also an hilarious and acerbic twitter account, which is written in character, and which responds to current affairs. During the last leadership spill which resulted in a change of Prime Minister, #LeeLinforPM and #PrimeChinister were both trending.
I really hope people will feel inspired to offer and request this fandom
Links:
1. Full playlist of Lee Lin Chin sketches, listed in reverse chronological order: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTN4Afxv_hgMhMm5FvLBiwEBJYPPqfL4H
2. About The Feed: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/thefeed/about
3. Twitter account: https://twitter.com/LeeLinChinSBS
2.
Fandom: A Sparkle on the Wrist (Portofino Comercial)
Category: Other
Comments: This is a black and white advertisement set to the song "Amore Fermati" by Fred Bongusto (1969). The whole thing is designed to have a very 1960s Italian film feeling, along the lines of Fellini's La Dolce Vita. In this advert for very expensive watches, Cate Blanchett, Emily Blunt, Zhou Xun (nominated characters), Ewan McGregor, and Christoph Waltz (not nominated due to limits) meet in a seaside villa in Italy, before driving in vintage cars, and riding in speedboats. All the women are wearing tailored suits, and travelling together. They see the men, and eventually meet up with them. There is no spoken dialogue, but we see them talking and laughing and exchanging glances.
The fact that we don't get dialogue makes it very open to interpretation, and the first thing I thought upon seeing it was that I wanted to know who these people were, particularly the women, and what was their backstory.
Links:
1. Full advert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6NpJ8wQ1KM
2. Making of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcKjzle2ACY
no subject
Category: Other
Comments: This is a two-minute fandom starring Ewan McGregor about which I made a pimping post here.
X-posted to the LJ version of this post
Island of Doomed Men