yuletide | 2020 Yuletide Fandom Promo Post

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2020 Yuletide Fandom Promo Post

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:

FANDOM NAME:
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT:
WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional):

For reference, last year's promo post!

This post on LJ

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FANDOM NAME: The Left-Handed Booksellers of London - Garth Nix
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Garth Nix’s latest is set in a slightly-alternate 1980s England, where magical creatures and faerie royalty occasionally spill over into mundane reality. They’re kept in check by an ancient secret society/very extended family who, well, also sell books. When Susan Arkenshore comes to London from her rural hometown in search of her absentee father, all hell breaks loose, and she winds up sucked into the Booksellers’ world.

It’s a fun quasi-urban fantasy romp, with lots of derring-do and snark, some pretty great sibling dynamics (between the two youthful Booksellers who take up Susan’s cause), and a ridiculous fop of a genderfluid love interest. Lots of opportunity to play with worldbuilding, and plenty of m/f and f/f potential.

cover for The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Bookstores, libraries, audio and e-book sellers!

FANDOM NAME: The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Interdimensional travel! The consequences of encountering alternate universe versions of your family, friends, coworkers and enemies! Class stratification (with corporate shills at one far-end, and Mad Max style warlords at the other), subterfuge, murder, family (especially sibling) dynamics, trauma, revolution, conspiracies, interdimensional worldbuilding, canon f/f, and all kinds of shipping possibilities.

cover for The Space Between Worlds

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Bookstores, libraries, audio and e-book sellers!

FANDOM NAME: The Darkside Detective

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: This is a point-and-click adventure game where you're the detective in charge of investigating paranormal crimes in the city of Twin Lakes. Whether a child has disappeared through an eldritch portal, or a train has halfway lodged itself into the next universe over, you're there to help solve the crime. Even if that other guy gets all the credit and fame.

If you like old-school adventure games, ghosties and ghoulies, corny jokes, copious breaking of the fourth wall, lots of banter between characters, so much snark you guys, background jokes, and saving the universe, you'll probably enjoy this game. There's also a sequel in the works, but a release date hasn't been announced for that yet.

(I wasn't kidding about the background jokes. Make sure to check out the books on all the shelves in the library chapter.)

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): Steam for Windows/Mac/Linux, and the first case is available for free on Kongregate as well as downloadable for free on Steam.

Edited (adding detail) 2020-10-02 23:38 (UTC)

How delightful. Thanks for nominating this and posting about it!

FANDOM NAME: The Palace (UK TV)

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: It's a very silly but utterly brilliant look at an alternative-timeline British royal family; the feckless, partying Richard, Prince of Wales (played by Rupert Evans from Hellboy), becomes king unexpectedly when his father dies suddenly, and has to get to grips with his new role very quickly. Featuring Richard's siblings, the scheming older sister Eleanor (played by Sophie Winkleman, who these days is actually royal because she's married to Princess Margaret's grandson) who desperately wants to be queen but can't because she's a girl, the disgruntled younger brother George (played by the always brilliant Sebastian Armesto) who misses his partying-partner-in-crime, and his youngest sister Isabelle (played by Nathalie Lunghi, daughter of Cherie), a wannabe-socialist who goes fairly spectacularly off the rails; his mother Queen Charlotte (played by Jane Asher), and various members of Palace staff, including Richard's disillusioned assistant private secretary Abigail Thomas (played by Zoe Telford) who is in the process of selling a tell-all book about life in the palace but is beginning to reconsider (especially when she and Richard start having feelings for each other), and Simon Brooks, Princess Eleanor's private secretary (played by David Harewood) who is aiding and abetting Eleanor's schemes. It only ever ran for one season, but it was so much fun.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Available on DVD, and on Prime Video (in some places, but not apparently in the UK at the moment) and YouTube (episode 1 here).

Edited 2020-10-02 20:52 (UTC)

FANDOM NAME: Briarpatch

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: A gender-bent, 10 episode TV series based on Ross Thomas' 1984 novel of the same name. The book is about Benjamin Dill, a white DC operative going home to deal with his sister's murder and spending a lot of time with a childhood friend in the process. The TV show is about Allegra Dill, a mixed race, female DC operative going home to deal with her sister's murder and spending a lot of time with a childhood friend who adores her. Among other things. Rosario Dawson plays the main character and is perfect (her wardrobe is based on 1970s BIANCA JAGGER, for the love of god), and there are just epic tons of feelings (not all remotely good) to be dealt with, not only b/n Allegra and childhood pal (played by Jay R. Ferguson), but also b/n childhood pal and his partner in arms smuggling (played by a -- wait for it -- deliciously evil Alan Cumming) as well as between Allegra and a married TX Congressman with whom she has a delightfully unconventional sexual relationship. Oh, and also: Kim Dickinson is there as the ambitious chief of police, as are Allegra Edwards as a smart as shit camgirl whose partner is somehow involved in everything (maybe) and Edi Gathegi as Allegra's lawyer. The eighth episode is one of my favorite hours of TV of all time, and the show is just magnificent from start to finish.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: It's streaming on Fubo and Amazon Prime.
_______

FANDOM NAME: Mac McCorkle series, by Ross Thomas

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: This four-book series starts with Thomas' first book, The Cold War Swap, which came out in 1966 and won him the Edgar for best novel. It ends with Twilight at Mac's Place, published in 1990. Over the course of the 24 years the series incorporates, Mac and Mike Padillo, his partner in bar ownership and, also, a spy (it's never directly said, but it's clear he works for the CIA, usually unhappily), move from Bonn, Germany to DC together, encountering things like: exploding bars, escapes from East Germany, African leaders plotting their own assassinations, lots of kidnappings and, oh yeah, Padillo's "death". Mac and Padillo are the only consistent things in one another's lives, and their relationship is just as weird and comfortable and wry and secretly adoring as one would expect from the best of series about a couple of dudes who spend more than a quarter century quietly, utterly devoted to one another.

As an added bonus, Thomas is a phenomenal writer -- I strongly urge anyone who is remotely into smart detective-y stuff, particularly with Cold War commentary thrown in, to give the books a try. IMO the second (Cast a Yellow Shadow) is the best one, but they all have their virtues (the third, The Backup Men, is very much focused on Mac's and Padillo's relationship, even as it pretends it's about oil and assassination).

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Far from how things were when I first discovered Thomas and had to scour used bookstores to track down his work, the whole series has now been reissued, so they can now be found anywhere you care to look -- they're even on Audible now!

Edited (Adding a fandom + editing my copious typos.) 2020-10-03 09:26 (UTC)

Whoops, forgot to sign in. This is mine.

FANDOM NAME: Ready Player One -- Ernest Cline

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: The world is in very bad shape, but luckily there's an entire virtual world out there where you can escape to, known as the OASIS -- and with workplaces and schools being located within the world, it's not just for entertainment. After the death of its creator, James Halliday, a contest to find several easter eggs placed within the OASIS begins, with the grand prize being his fortune and the rights to the OASIS. Unfortunately, there's a loophole allowing the megacorporation IOI to participate, putting the OASIS' freedom from plastered advertisements and monthly subscription fees in jeopardy. Can an orphan living in poverty really beat them, preserving the OASIS for other kids like him?

Features tons of worldbuilding potential, discussion of the constructs of the real world vs. the virtual world, and lots of 80's media references. TW for some transphobic comments.

A brief warning: the plot of the book is pretty different from the plot of the movie.

BRB RUNNING TO READ TO THE HILT. I've somehow never read Dick Francis, but your summary is exactly the push I needed -- thank you for that.

FANDOM NAME: Bonekickers

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: With a cast that includes Julie Graham, Adrian Lester, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Hugh Bonneville, you'd expect this show to be- well, if not amazing, then at least good, right? Well, if archaeology or history are your thing then this show will...probably make you want to kill someone. But in, like, a good way?

Basically, Bonekickers is the best and the worst show I've ever seen, and I love it. Unbelievably, it comes from the guys who wrote Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, but don't let that fool you. These guys are supposedly archaeologists (and know nothing about archaeology), are supposedly scientists (and spout scientific nonsense), and are supposedly normal human people (when they are clearly aliens trying to understand how to function in human form). When I say they're a disaster team? Everything they find, they destroy, no matter the historical or achaeological importance. Characters are at the mercy of the narrative, and make no sense by themselves. There is no emotional continuity. And yet it's the most delightful, fun, crappy, B-movie-esque show I've ever seen. Oh, and there's a series of razor-sharp hilarious reviews here on YouTube, and you don't even need to watch the show.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): Split into many many parts on Dailymotion here. Please press play.

Title: Marathon

Medium: Video game (FPS)

Length: Three games, each either 27 or 28 levels

Where To Find It: Aleph One (the games themselves); the Marathon's Story page (all game + manual text and meta/speculation); complete video Let's Play by Halved Studios; Marathon 1, Marathon 2, and Marathon Infinity video LPs by Rampancy

What's It All About?

The Marathon games are a trilogy of first-person shooters by the company Bungie (now best known for the original Halo games and the hybrid MMO/FPS Destiny), originally created in the mid-90s for Macs only, though the second game received a Windows port as well after its release. Later, Bungie released them as open source files through the Aleph One project, which brought them to Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

In the first game, you play as an unnamed security officer from Mars working for a human colony on Tau Ceti. On a trip up to the colony ship the Marathon, the security officer is ambushed by aliens called the Pfhor and by the AI Durandal, who's gone Rampant, but manages to escape to the Marathon. That's all in the manual prologue; the landing on the Marathon is where the actual game begins. At first you work for Leela, the Marathon's primary AI, as you both fight off the alien invasion, but Durandal continues to interfere and even takes over the defense of the ship in his own unique way. He establishes a connection with another alien race enslaved by the Pfhor, called the S'pht, and with your help frees them from the Pfhor's control and takes off in the Pfhor ship with them, leaving you behind to mop up the rest of the invasion with Leela.

In Marathon 2: Durandal, it turns out that parting was not such sweet sorrow, after all. Instead of leaving you with the colony, Durandal circled back, kidnapped you, and went on a hunt for the S'pht homeworld Lh'owon, where you wake up after seventeen years in stasis to help Durandal and the S'pht search for a way to effectively fight back against the Pfhor's empire and free the S'pht entirely.

In the third game, Marathon: Infinity - well, that's where things get a little weird... Filled with alternate timelines, shifting alliances, and the looming threat of Space Cthulhu eating the universe, it's not the easiest game to follow, but it's still a great conclusion that rewards thought and analysis (so it's a good thing there are already several years' worth of meta about it).

Why Do I Love It?

So many reasons! To start with, although it's certainly dated, the gameplay is fun and satisfying (ah, the feel of wielding dual shotguns! No other game has captured it for me), and there are different difficulty levels depending on whether you want a major challenge or to just run around feeling like a rampaging god of war. The graphics are also dated, but very solid for their era, and I'll defend the skyboxes of Lh'owon in Marathon 2 till my dying day for their alien beauty. The chapter/loading screens for Marathon 2 and Infinity are also fantastic, featuring the art of Craig Mullins. (The chapter screens for the first game are a bit more amateur, but still charming in their way.)

But even beyond that - the story and characters have captured my imagination (and my heart) since I was a kid first discovering them. There's so much fascinating worldbuilding and characterization throughout all three games, from the horrifying nature of battleroids* to the complex politics of the colonized solar system to the history and societies of the Pfhor and the S'pht to the grander mythology of the Jjaro and the W'rkncacnter, that there's always something new to explore. The AI characters are all such vivid individuals - Leela's bravery and ingenuity in her defense of the Marathon, Durandal's explosion into Rampancy metamorphosing into philosophy and ambition and conflicted feelings about humanity, Tycho's rebirth twisting him into full-blown yet pitiable villainy... God, I love them all so much! (And that's not even touching on Thoth's mystic alien AI deal.) There's so much potential in their relationships to each other, as well as in the different ways they treat the security officer, other humans, and the aliens around them. There's also Robert Blake, the poor beleaguered leader of the humans working with Durandal, and Tfear, the terrifyingly tactical and arrogant Pfhor admiral leading their forces in Marathon 2 and Infinity. And some of the one-terminal characters are surprisingly memorable - like F'tha, a S'pht in Marathon 2 who reaches out directly to the security officer to encourage them in their fight, and Re'eer, a Pfhor garrison commander who fakes death to spend more time on their hobby of comparative xenolinguistics.

On the ships front, while the nature of the games makes shippy interactions a bit difficult, there still manages to be some excellent fodder! Most especially for the security officer with Leela, Durandal, and Tycho - Leela works very closely with the security officer in the first game and appears to think highly of them; Durandal kidnaps and manipulates them but is also fascinated by them, grows to rely on them and trust them, and does things like sign a farewell terminal "Love and kisses, Durandal" and tell the security officer "Good-byes were always hard for me. You know I'll never let you go"; Tycho is primarily obsessed with destroying Durandal (which is pretty shippy, too, in a very fucked-up way) but also takes a lot of pleasure in using the security officer to do so and in ordering the security officer around. Then there's Bernhard Strauss, the mysterious scientist whose experiments on Durandal led to the entirety of the first game - Strauss and Durandal's relationship is always interesting to play with, as is Strauss's knowledge of the security officer's true nature. And if you're more into all parts of a ship having physical bodies, there's potential with Blake and the security officer, or F'tha and the security officer, or some nastiness with Tfear or another Pfhor and the security officer...

Tl;dr: They're fun games with a cool story and cool characters and endless opportunities for shipping, worldbuilding, adventures, canon-divergent AUs, crossovers/fusions, and anything else you could want to write!

*It was the 90s!

What a delightful short story! Definitely a lot of promise and unanswered questions!

FANDOM NAME: Time Team RPF

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: If you're of a certain age and from the UK then this show is probably part of your psyche. If not, then it's basically a bunch of lovely, lovely archaeologists excavating an entire site in just 3 days. For the first...10 years?...there's Phil (Westcountry sweetheart, master of flint-knapping), Mick (king of the knitted sweater), Carenza (beautiful and fearless), and Tony (narrator, once in Blackadder). Best of all, they're all clever, brilliant people who really like and respect each other.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): Free on All4 if you're in the UK, or on Dailymotion

Edited 2020-10-02 23:39 (UTC)

Would you happen to know how many volumes it is in print form?

FANDOM NAME: Surfing RPF

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: The surfers I nominated — John John Florence, Nathan Florence, and Koa Rothman — are an extremely narrow window into the surfing world, but Surfers From The North Shore Of Oahu Who Happen To Have Successful Youtube Channels are genuinely what got me through a very beachless summer. Everywhere they go is beautiful. Connecting with nature is beautiful. The water is beautiful. Surfing is beautiful.

John is the most traditionally talented of the bunch — he was a back-to-back World Surf League champion in 2016 and 2017, and would have represented the US in the 202 Olympics — so if you want competency porn, got it. Nathan and Koa also compete, but in different forms, and a lot of their content is very dreamy reality TV. And if you’ve ever wanted a canonical Coffee Shop AU, Koa’s got you covered!

And if that last bit was a big fat nope for you, there’s also the fact it got started in part because of Koa’s ties to the community, and Koa’s ties to the community are in part from his father, who is… a bit intimidating. And that, like so many other sports, there’s enough macho bullshit floating around that articles get published about it being just so great that, when a wave straight up broke John’s back, he had enough “Hemingway sense” to limp back back home without crying about it. And that wave, Pipeline, breaking someone’s back or outright killing them is just, like, a given. Surfing can be terrifying!

… But if you don’t want to deal with all that, you can float right back up hanging out on the beach with the boys, having a great time. Such is the versatility of RPF!

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Many places! But my (again, very niche) window of familiarity has mostly come from noodling around social media and Google. I’ve linked to a few typical videos below.

John — All of John’s videos are aesthetically beautiful, but he also has that whole reclusive great thing going, so not many are super personal. This, however, is the first episode of a series about the season leading up to his first world championship. Each episode is ~10 minutes long, and there’s a total of seven.

Nathan — Nathan is much more prone to storytime/explanation/workout/POV wave videos, if you’re into that sort of thing, but this is more or less your typical vlog focusing on Nathan, Koa and a few of their friends participating in a big wave competition. Runtime’s 34:37.

Koa 1 and Koa 2 — Cheating a little bit, but Koa’s the most traditional vlogger out of the bunch, and his videos have a more broad approach, so I’m using him as a lifestyle source. The first link is about seven minutes of blatant travel porn from a commercial photo shoot in Tahiti (it’s also one of the older videos, so he’s a little more awkward in it).

The second is the first actually set in the North Shore, where they all live. Koa picks up some boards at the old sugar mill. Koa is also a middle child with a (big wave) world champion older brother, and they have a nice friendly surf off. 14:21.

Also, here’s Makua Rothman and Rihanna hanging out.

(As a bonus round, I also nominated Mike Hynson, who is most well-known for being one of the two dudes on The Endless Summer, which was on Amazon Prime when I watched and seems to now be on Tubi in the US, before getting involved with The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, described by the BBC as “the LSD cult that transformed America,” which is exactly the kind of true crime I can get into.)

YES! I hope you like it :)

This sounds great and I'm going to check it out. Thanks for writing it up!

FANDOM NAME: The Society

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: It is a TV show with so much going on in it that somehow meshes together when it really shouldn't. It was renewed by Netflix after receiving a really good reception to its first season, but that renewal was retracted due to the pandemic making the uncertainty of retaining such a large cast financially unfeasible. My heart hopes that when it's safe to film again, maybe the creators will get to re-renewed or find a new home for it, if the cast hasn't moved on. Anyway...

The Society is a late-teen/high school-age kids show, but it turns a lot of that on its head in its short ten-episode run. I do not want to spoil too many of the details, but essentially the juniors and seniors from a small New England town are sent on a field trip, a welcome escape from a mysterious, unpleasant smell of unknown origin. After riding the bus toward their destination for hours, their trip is abruptly canceled, and they are bused back home, only to find that "home" is exactly the same but devoid of all other people.

The series addresses a lot of interesting concerns about self-management and government and human nature. It sort of shows the ugly parts of all forms of self-government that human beings tend to turn to, including a complete lack of it. There is an unresolved supernatural element to it that may be sci-fi, fantasy, or a mix of both.

In reviews, I have seen it compared to a modern day twist on Lord of the Flies but also, perhaps more interestingly, The Pied Piper. Unfortunately, some of the most brain-teasing aspects of the series remain plot threads that we will likely never see resolved now, but that's why I would love more fic for this series!

If you liked the first couple of seasons of The 100, you will probably like this, but it has a far more mundane setting and a lower body count.

The series also has a good balance of presenting unsupervised teens as being often-sexual creatures without being lurid or exploitative, which is something I see criticized by some "high school shows" these days.

The series really respects its characters as being independent people capable of thought, organization, and moral reasoning while also allowing them to suffer the consequences of their immaturity. It really evokes this sense of "back to the state of nature" with interesting twists on it. It has a diverse cast and several character archetypes and ship dynamics to choose from.

The most popular ship is a m/m ship where one of the characters is deaf and uses ASL.

There are a lot of intriguing but different female characters, too! And there is potential for m/f and f/f ships as well. There were no officially canon f/f ships, but there is one that had enough material to be considered potentially going that way by some fans.

A word of warning is that there is a character with a mental illness that is identified as psychopathy, and this character is involved in one of the most realistic abusive relationships I have ever seen depicted. If you are sensitive to this or any other common squicks/triggers, you might want to look it up on something like Does the Dog Die.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): Netflix!

FANDOM NAME: Petrus Gonsalvus RPF
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Okay, so the story of Petrus Gonsalvus is pretty amazing. He is a disabled person traipsing through life (and facing hardship) in the 1500s. He may or may not have inspired the fairytale Beauty and the Beast in its entirety. He was one of the original circus/jester/court entertainment people, he had a full family, and basically rather than view his story as tragic I choose to say he made the best life he could for himself and I just really love him and want happy or at least not horrifying stories for him. In general I think people should know about him and consider his story! So I nominated him.
WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): Here's an article (there are a few), and there's also a (PBS?) documentary floating around. Article: https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/beauty-and-the-beast/

FANDOM NAME: Ravenous (1999)
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: This is a fandom that has been in Yuletide in previous years, but why not promo it? Basically, it's a dark comedy horror movie. When I first watched it I was in a situation that really emphasized the comedy aspects so it still really amuses me even though it's absolutely a dark humor. It's set at the very beginning of formation of the US, in and around a fort/outpost the main character has been "promoted" to protect. From there it devolves into some cannibalism tropes.
WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): Prime video (to rent) or Shudder (with free trial? Looks like it is there. I have not used Shudder though. It may also be on YouTube (rentable).

FANDOM NAME: The Prestige (2006)
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: This has been in Yuletide before but why not promote it? Warring and personally destructive stage magicians! Intrigue! Mysterious technology! David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla! It's a thriller.
WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): Prime Video to rent? There may be a better way...

That depends on the country, because there are sidestories, but the main story is three volumes so far. The fourth volume should be out soon, too.

FANDOM NAME: Superstition by Superstition_hockey
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Did you ever think that the Hockey RPF fandom seemed to be having a lot of fun, but the NHL was full of sexist bullshit/RPF was maybe a bridge too far? Welcome to Superstition, the love story with entirely fictional pro-hockey player protagonists, set in ~2026--some real life hockey players are background/supporting characters, so it treads the line between original fiction and RPF. Pure of heart and dumb of ass, our heroes are adorable childhood BFFs who are deeply devoted to this silly ice knife-show game and also each other. As it progresses, the series deals seriously with issues of sexism & sexual violence in pro sports, and develops a rich & glorious ensemble cast. There are already some awesome fanfics, which are most easily located via the "other works inspired by this one" links!
WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): Conveniently on AO3! https://archiveofourown.org/series/413233

Thanks! I'm trying to track down a copy--looks like the French version is cheaper than the English ebooks, but only 2 volumes out...

I watched this movie when it came out and it haunts me to this day. Actually.

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Page 11 of 15

2020 Yuletide Fandom Promo Post

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Darkside Detective

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Briarpatch (TV) + Mac McCorkle series (Ross Thomas)

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Re: To the Hilt and HENCH

Promo: Bonekickers

Marathon (Video Games)

Re: Little Free Library by Naomi Kritzer (short story)

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Re: In These Words - Guilt Pleasure (Manga/Webcomic)

Surfing RPF 🤙🏽

Re: To the Hilt and HENCH

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Petrus Gonsalvus RPF

Ravenous (1999)

The Prestige (2006)

Re: In These Words - Guilt Pleasure (Manga/Webcomic)

Superstition-verse!

Re: In These Words - Guilt Pleasure (Manga/Webcomic)

Re: The Prestige (2006)