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

[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.