2019 Fandom Promo!

[crantz]

Welcome to the Fandom Promo post, everyone!

Here's where you get those eyes on your fandoms for sign ups!

Share what makes your Yuletide fandoms the shiniest and why you love them. A big part of Yuletide is how small our fandoms can be, and this is a good way to make sure other people know what gems there are out there!

Suggested form to use:

<b>FANDOM NAME</b>:
<b>WHAT MAKES IT GREAT</b>:
<b>WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional)</b>:


For reference, last year's promo post!

This post on LJ

Comments

[eglantiere]

FANDOM NAME: The Tarot Sequence - K.D. Edwards

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: The Last Sun, the first and for now the only book in the Tarot Sequence series, is a very engaged and reasonably short secondary world urban fantasy book. If you like canon m/m, likeable characters who manage to be hella powerful and underdogs at once, loyalty, friendship, found family vibes, more whump than one can shake a stick at, kitchen sink worldbuilding and ton of fast-paced adventures, look no further!

I absolutely adored the protagonist with his uber woobie backstory and his believable mix of trauma, cockiness, decency and robust propensity for picking up strays. I've also adored his relationship with his companion (the soulbonded best friend/bodyguard/ally/sole remnant of his destroyed house), and the way this relationship worked within the romance, and within his relationship with his mentor, and I've liked his friendships/rivalries/guardianships with everybody else in the cast, basically, and I hope you might like them too.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): here on Amazon, and presumably in other bookstores.

Ruby Redfort

[(Anonymous)]

FANDOM NAME: Ruby Redfort series - Lauren Child

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Tiny hypercompetent genius girl gets hired by underground secret spy organization; solves mysteries and cracks crimes in a small town. Sounds cliche? It is, a bit, but it's a kid's book series, so cut it some slack - because it's also an immensely well-written kid's book series. It's set in the 1970s and the aesthetic is very much alive and kicking! The characters are lovely and amazing, and there's so many good friendships between Ruby and everyone else. I'm kind of lowkey obsessed with the fact that everyone in the spy agency basically adopted her after a
week. Plus, the codes are genuinely amazing and well-planned, and the books play around with formatting and do some really interesting things with text a lot. Please join me in this space. There's so much room to play around in.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Most libraries/bookshops/online stores have it!

Swiss Army Man (2016)

[cuddyclothes]

Swiss Army Man Movie(2016):

An incredibly strange, sweet, romantic movie. It hit me right in the feels, it seems almost magical. The main characters are 95% of the movie. Paul Dano as the suicidal loner and Daniel Radcliffe as the corpse who comes to life have incredible chemistry. Hank calls Manny “my multi-purpose tool guy”.


WHAT MAKES IT GREAT:

This was a life-changing movie for me, I'm not even sure why. Despite or because of being so weird, Swiss Army Man has a romantic purity of spirit. The reactions on Youtube have ranged from “this movie changed my life” to “this was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen” to “wtf did I just watch?” Describing it is really hard! The score, written by members of Manchester Orchestra, is entirely made of voices overlaid and found objects. Both Dano and Radcliffe do most of the singing.

Hank (Paul Dano) is marooned on a desert island. As he is about to kill himself, he sees a man (Daniel Radcliffe) washed up in the surf. The man is dead, and flatulent. Believe it or not, as the filmmakers put it, “the first fart makes you laugh and the last fart makes you cry”. (Farting ceases to be prominent after the first 10 minutes.)


Manny sees a picture of Sarah on Hank’s phone, and thinks she is Manny’s girlfriend. To jog Manny’s memory, Hank builds a bus out of found materials and dresses as “Sarah”. Radcliffe described this scene as “the best 6 minutes I’ve ever filmed”. Watching the two men fall in love is absolutely beautiful.


WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional):
Trailer: https://youtu.be/yrK1f4TsQfM

Full movie is available at Amazon Prime, You Tube, Itunes, Google Play.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B01LVVZVJZ/ref=atv_dl_rdr

[ruiswrites]

FANDOM NAME: Sorbian Mythology

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: It's the kind of mythology that often gets overlooked because the Sorbs are a rather small ethnic group and hardly anyone outside of Poland and Germany, where they inhabit the Lusatia region, is familiar with the culture. However, if you like the dark kind of folk tales and myths, and your gothick-y tropes, you might like to take a look. One of the main folk (anti-)heros is Krabat (yes, the same guy the childrens' book is about), and hey, if the dark wizard who made a deal with the devil is the good guy (while he's not busy cheating people out of their money by abusing his magical skills, anyway), you can imagine what you're in for. Also, there are some quite fascinating mythical beings.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional):
When I just went looking, I found out it's kind of difficult to find resources in English language.
For info about Krabat, maybe look at the German-language wikipedia page (the English version is entirely useless in this case) and use google translate? https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krabat_(Sage)
And here's short summaries of Sorbian mythical figures. http://www.sorbe.de/sagen-mythen.html (Also in German, but that's what google translate is for, I guess?)
Same here, some stories, German language: https://www.spreewald.de/urlaub-im-spreewald/kultur-tradition-spreewald/sorbische-sagen/
or here: http://geschichte-forum.forumieren.de/t249-brauchtum-sagen-und-marchen-der-wenden-und-sorben-in-der-lausitz
http://www.zeno.org/M%C3%A4rchen/M/Sorben/Willibald+von+Schulenburg%3A+Wendisches+Volksthum+in+Sage+und+Sitte and here's a whole book, public domain

[vae]

FANDOM NAME: Will (TV 2017)

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Two words: Christopher Marlowe.

Ostensibly, Will is a series based around young William Shakespeare going to London for the first time and struggling to make a living as a playwright and a player. It's got a Knight's Tale-ish approach to history, with a lot of punk aesthetic and punk music because the show runners want to evoke the same reactions in a modern audience as would have been there for a contemporary audience. It's bright and garish and loud.

Will leaves his wife and children behind in Stratford-upon-Avon, and there's a subplot of oh no shock horror he is a sekrit Catholic, which is enough to get you arrested and tortured and executed in very messy ways because this is a time where the Pope has excommunicated the queen and therefore following the Catholic faith is treasonous. Enter Richard Topcliffe, chief torturer, and too many torture scenes, and spy/secret agent/poet/playwright/queer goth nihilist Christopher Marlowe.



Kit Marlowe, who hands over another playwright to Topcliffe to save Will's life because he sees signs of greatness in his writing. Kit Marlowe, who goes to extremes to push himself into hallucinations in attempts to "meet the Devil" to get inspiration to write Doctor Faustus. Kit Marlowe, undercover agent who ends up infiltrating a secret Catholic group because he wanted to find out what Will was up to and the daughter of the house is a fan of his writing. Kit Marlowe, trashing his room and his house because of writers block (we've all been there) and hosting an orgy for "inspiration" (less of us have been there but oh well). Kit Marlowe, desperately searching for some hope in humanity.



Also Alice Burbage, daughter of the owner of the Globe who starts out with ambitions to run it herself some day and finds her own path. Also Richard Burbage, starting the series as really a total dumbass and developing character depth and gravitas. Also Moll who is far better than Richard deserves. Also Thomas Walsingham who never gives up faith in Kit. Also the innkeeper who is taking none of Will's bullshit.

It's not the best written show, and it does not treat its characters of colour well, or even fairly. Randomly it remembers that it needs to throw in some period-appropriate misogyny, and it has some pretty explicit scenes of torture, so please keep all that in mind when deciding if it's a show you want to try. For me, it works because of Kit, and Alice, and Richard, and the fact that it has moments of digging deep into Richard III and making it oh-so-relevant.


WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): YouTube (trailer here), Amazon Prime (definitely in the UK, cannot confirm for other territories), and I believe in the US is still available to stream on the TNT Drama website. UK people who have Virgin TV subscriptions, it's in your boxsets.

[kutsutsu]

Better late than never to the promo party?

FANDOM NAME: Baseball Highlights 2045

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: A deckbuilding card/board game, with a futuristic baseball theme. Takes place in 2045 when the game of baseball has been shortened to 6 innings and now features a mixture of robot, cyborg, and natural (normal human) players. Here is the premise summary from the instruction manual. As a game, it is a lot of fun and does imo a great job of conveying the feel of a baseball game while keeping play fun/snappy and full of meaningful strategic decisions. Rather than simulating every individual play, each card kind of simulates the overall outcomes of a whole inning. It's fun to play against another person, has various tournament modes, and also is a lot of fun solo. For fic potential, I just really love the worldbuilding setup. For people who like baseball and speculative fiction this world could be lots of fun to play in.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): For the physical version, the publisher's website, or Amazon/ebay/maybe your local board game store. There's a cheaper "spring training" version for $15 that contains fewer cards but is still totally playable for 1-2 players, up to the deluxe edition at $80 that contains all expansions. There is also a mobile app version for $4 on android/ios.

The Living and the Dead

[impala_chick]

FANDOM NAME: The Living and the Dead

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Amazon prime streaming

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT:
Only one season, available for free on Amazon Prime. The prodigal son returns from an illustrious big city career to his mother's farm with his talented wife, and inherits the whole operation. It turns out that something supernatural is lurking on the farm. Set in 1800s rural England.

Why I love it: I love horror, beautiful period costumes, and positive established relationships, and this show has all three! Nathan Appleby is broody and thoughtful and just a bit full of himself, whereas Charlotte is practical and compassionate and a born leader. They are so gorgeous together, but the show takes some dark turns as supernatural entities start to haunt them all. I really liked how creepy and spooky the atmosphere got as the show got darker - and the folk tales and ghost stories were so great. I don't want to spoil it, but the horror tropes were executed well. There were only one or two jump scares, as far as I can remember. The show was more focused on the suspense and the mind f*ck, and the main character's downward spiral was quite a thing to behold. I was surprised by the ending in good ways and in bad ways, but the show is so pretty that I'd watch it a bunch more times. Also did I mention Nathan Appleby! With a fancy beard! And a fancy suit! And a fancy hat! On a horse!

TLDR; A cute couple, creepy ghost stories, and fantastic period clothes.