2021 Yuletide Promo Post

[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>:


(Bonus optional: What are you thinking of requesting for this?)

EDIT:

Useful tips (Not required, but helps people if they want to engage with your fandom!):

- Mention what form of media the canon is. Is it a comic miniseries? Is it a twenty season tv show? Is it a book? Is it a twitter feed?
- Is it standalone or part of a series?
- It's best to make each fandom its own entry with its own title in the subject line! That makes it easier for people to find/see what you're promoting! Don't worry about 'spam', that is the entire point of this entry and you're using it exactly as intended.


For reference, last year's promo post!

Comments

Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi | Sunday Without God (Anime)

[rubylily]

FANDOM NAME: Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi | Sunday Without God

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: According to legend, God abandoned the world fifteen years prior, and thus people are no longer able to give birth and cannot find rest after death unless buried by a mythical "gravekeeper." The protagonist, twelve-year-old Ai, is one such gravekeeper for her tiny, isolated village. After tragedy strikes her village, she resolves to set out on a journey to save the world God has abandoned, and along the way she makes new friends and discovers how humanity has adapted to this slowly dying world. Despite the bleak premise, it's actually a rather hopeful series, and I loved Ai's journey and the relationships between her and her companions, and I also really love the canon's setting, as it's both beautiful and haunting.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT? Crunchyroll! It's twelve episodes with a bonus episode on the BD/DVD set. If you have a subscription, the dub and bonus episode can also be watched on HiDive. The series is very beautiful, and you can see that beauty for yourself in the opening!

Toji no Miko | Katana Maidens (Anime)

[rubylily]

FANDOM NAME: Toji no Miko | Katana Maidens

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Young girls known as Toji wield special swords to hunt supernatural monsters called aradama. The first episode starts with a sword-fighting tournament, with protagonist Kanami Etou and her best friend Mai Yanase being chosen as their school's representatives, but when things go wrong, Kanami ends up on the run with fellow Toji Hiyori Juujou, and they find themselves involved in a plot involving aradama-possessed humans and the truth of the great disaster from twenty years ago. As an action-thriller series, you simply can't go wrong with girls with swords, and all the yuri subtext is definitely a welcomed touch too.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Crunchyroll! It's twenty-four episodes, available both dubbed and subbed. You can also check out the opening and ending themes on YouTube:
Opening 1
Ending 1
Opening 2
Ending 2

Cesare (historical manga by Fuyumi Soryo)

[liriaen]

FANDOM NAME: Cesare - Il creatore che ha distrutto

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: If you like historical fiction, if you're into the Borgias, if you like extremely well-researched stories AND gorgeous artwork, as well as heartbreaking character-development, this is the thing for you! So far 12 volumes, it's picked up again after a lengthy hiatus (and then another one) and is planned to wrap up at 30 vol.s - I hope I'll live to see that! So far we've covered: lots of childhood backstory for Cesare Borgia and Miguel de Corella, as well as their time at the university of Pisa in the years 1491 and 1492 up to the conclave that'll see Rodrigo Borgia come out as Alexander VI.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT (optional): "Morning" magazine/Kodansha and Japanese tankoubon. There used to be English language scanlation groups (Vinland, ETC) but right now you're clearly at an advantage if you can read Italian (Star Edizioni, current up to vol 12) and French (Édition Ki-Oon, current up to vol 12).

The canon is, basically, HISTORY, although the mangaka takes some interesting liberties with the material. The depth of cultural, social, and political detail covered here is stunning. If the TV series dwelling on the Borgia were not your cup of tea - this might be just the thing for you. There's a deep love of the Renaissance at work - as well as excursions into political theology, and what it means to have power.

I'm in rapture over Cesare/Miguel, but there's a whole lot to be said for Miguel/Angelo as well (Angelo is an ingenue who entered university on the Medici ticket and is taken under Cesare's (and Miguel's) wing, in a way... Parts of the narrative are driven by Angelo's being drawn into the Borgia circle, and his wide-eyed fascination...). Watch Lorenzo de' Medici, Giovanni de' Medici (future pope Leo X), Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raffaele Riario, and many more take shape and come to life like you've never seen them before.

Re: Cesare (historical manga by Fuyumi Soryo)

[(Anonymous)]

ah the borgia tv show. god that was a a trashfire of a show.

but this actually looks interesting! only wish this was translated in english or german...

Jacqueline Kirby - Elizabeth Peters

[graycardinal]

What It Is

A short series of mysteries by the late and much-loved Elizabeth Peters, best known for her tales of Amelia Peabody Emerson and family, the greatest Egyptologists of this or any other century. Jacqueline is initially a librarian and later a novelist by trade, though none of the books are set in or around a library.

Why It's Worthy

My very first Elizabeth Peters heroine was Jacqueline Kirby, by way of The Murders of Richard III. She and I are both serious about books, enthusiastic about Shakespeare, amused by the eccentric ways of professional writers, and not at all hesitant to jump in at the deep end of the pool when our enthusiasms warrant. Fortunately, though, I have not adopted Jacqueline's habit of falling into the orbits of actual murderers.

It should be noted that there's some variation in tone between the books. Seventh Sinner is very early Peters in which she hasn't yet fully developed the sharply acerbic wit that became her trademark (it's there, but it's not dominant), and Naked Once More dials it back a bit, so that the novel reads in some ways more like the author's works as Barbara Michaels. By contrast, Die For Love and Murders of Richard III are much more snark-filled.

Where To Find It

I believe all of these are still in print:

The Seventh Sinner - set in and around Rome
The Murders of Richard III - a classic country-house whodunit
Die for Love - a romance-writers' conference in NYC
Naked Once More - involves a sequel to a long-vanished writer's iconic bestseller

Prompts & Possibilities

A number of obvious questions arise that deserve thoughtful and entertaining answers: What happened to the (never seen) father of Jacqueline's (likewise never seen) now-adult children? Have any of her kids inherited her sleuthing gifts? What are the legendary origins of The Purse? What has she written beyond what we've seen (is there a series character)?

I’m also fascinated by Jacqueline's ability to charm without being charmed, as it were. She ends several of her adventures with a man in tow who is then Never Seen Again, and insofar as we know, she's still on speaking terms with most of them. I am intrigued that this works; show me how she does it. And then there's casefic: in her first outing, Jacqueline is more or less the guest sleuth in someone else's story – it would be entertaining and satisfying to see a further adventure of that kind.

Extremely Optional Bonus Points

I have for years held the private theory that Jacqueline could very well be the unnamed editor of the Emerson papers forming the basis of the Amelia Peabody series. (It really can't be Vicky Bliss; John doesn't seem to have inherited that particular archive.) A story riffing on that theory would be totally welcome...and if Jacqueline should encounter Vicky and John in the course of her editorial duties, one can but imagine the potential for fireworks.

Charlemagne (8th century RPF)

[liriaen]

FANDOM NAME: 8th century RPF / Court of Charlemagne
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: History is your playground! The Carolingians had a rather interesting way of ruling a vast realm, as well as some rather lofty ideas how to justify their rule. The Frankish empire was stretched and torn between Arab invasions to the west; Avars, Saxons, Slavs to the East; Lombards to the South; etc. etc. etc.! And I'm not saying the Franks were the good guys here ;)
WHERE CAN I FIND IT (optional): Good history books in every library, in the "European Middle Ages" section. Or online.

Actually, MY main interest, in proposing and requesting this, is the strange case of Charlemagne vs Tassilo III (duke of Bavaria) which was every bit a judicial murder - Frankish sources were doctored later to make it look as if a bad vassal had been brought to heel. In reality, a sovereign lord (Tassilo) was lured into a trap and wiped out. Doesn't that just beg to made into fiction? Oh yes.

Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh (video game)

[libraralien]

FANDOM NAME: Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh, sometimes also referred to as Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh (which is how it is listed on AO3) or just Phantasmagoria 2.



WHAT IS IT?: A full-motion point-and-click horror game released by Sierra in 1996. While the game is technically a sequel to the 1995 game Phantasmagoria, there is no character or plot overlap, and the game is a standalone. It takes about 6 hours to play entirely.

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh is a cheesy FMV horror game from the 90s that deals with (with varying levels of success) queerness, kink, mental health, and abuse.

The player plays Curtis Craig, a 26-year-old introverted office worker at a pharmaceutical company in Seattle. Curtis is experiencing gory hallucinations, causing him to worry about his sanity. At the same time, some of his coworkers are gruesomely killed, and Curtis is a suspect. He starts to look into if there is a connection between these deaths, his hallucinations, his own past, and the company he works for.

In the middle of all this is Curtis's love life! There is his girlfriend, Jocilyn, who wants more commitment than Curtis is ready to offer; Therese, who is aggressively pursuing Curtis and introduces him to the kink scene, which he is intrigued by; and Trevor, Curtis's best friend, who is gay and who Curtis admits to his therapist that he has a crush on.

This video essay has a complete (spoilery) plot summary and a deep dive into the queer stuff in the game.

The gameplay is point-and-click puzzle solving. It is mostly not very difficult, but some of the puzzles are not intuitive, especially towards the end when both the puzzles and plot get pretty bonkers. There are walkthroughs online if you get stuck.

I think that the cheesy sci-fi and horror elements, the queer main characters, the kinkiness, and the wild plot all lay a rich ground for fic possibilities!



WHERE CAN I FIND IT: It is available through Steam or GOG. There are also playthroughs on Youtube, such as here.

Re: Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh (video game)

[auklet]

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, HOLY SMOKES! HUMMINA HOMINA HOMINA, MY JAW DROPPED RIGHT TO THE FLOOR AS SOON AS I SAW YOUR WONDERFUL WORDS!? THANK YOU SO VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY MUCH FOR NOMINATING THIS! I THINK YOU'VE GOT ME DUDE, HOOK, LINE & SINKER!

The English Game (TV mini series)

[impala_chick]

FANDOM NAME: The English Game (TV mini series)

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Period drama! Gorgeous costumes! Class issues! An intriguing underdog story! A rich boy who learns a thing or two about empathy! Wonderful female characters (though the show doesn't have very much diversity beyond social class)! Lots of facial hair!

It takes place in England in 1879 and it's by the same creator as Downton Abbey. As an American who knows very little about European Football AKA Soccer, this show is really appealing to me. I am a sucker for a good sports underdog story - and I like how the show kicks off with an exciting rivalry. The class issues are really striking to me, because everything off the pitch effects the game - but ultimately, if you put in the time and you're actually good, you can compete fairly if the rules are fair. There's nothing else in life quite like that outside of sports/games.

I made a non-spoilery post about the show here.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT (optional): It's a 6 part mini series available on Netflix.

Thinking of requesting: Fergus/Arthur! They don't have a whole lot of scenes together, but they are incredibly shippable. I mean, their first meeting is filled with animosity because they've both got a reputation. And then they get rough out on the pitch. Over time, Arthur grows more of a conscious... I won't spoil it but #enemiestolovers. I actually enjoy the canon het ships in this show as well, and there are definitely other shippable people.

Re: The English Game (TV mini series)

[plaid_slytherin]

Ooooh, this is extremely RTMI, thanks for posting about it!

New Amsterdam (TV Series)

[kitsunerei88]

FANDOM NAME: New Amsterdam (TV 2018)

SUMMARY: This is a TV series running on NBC which premiered in 2018 and currently has 3 seasons available, 2 of which are on Netflix and all three are on Youtube (for $). From wikipedia:

New Amsterdam follows Dr. Max Goodwin as he becomes the medical director of one of the United States' oldest public hospitals, aiming to reform the neglected facility by tearing up its bureaucracy to provide exceptional care to patients.

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: Okay, so I'm not American. I come from a land of socialized medicine, and admittedly I love how ham-fisted and heavy-handed it is about SO MANY ISSUES in American medical care. There are episodes where they seriously consider defrauding insurance companies because patients need treatments! There is an episode where they break into the hospital with better equipment to do a specialized surgery! There's an episode where a character says that RACISM is why his patient is sick, and demands that an insurance company recognize it! It's totally wild.

I also love a lot of the minor characters, from Iggy Frome (the psychiatrist who struggles with his self-esteem), to Vijay Kapoor (the neurologist trying to figure out, too late, how to be human), to Lauren Bloom (the ER doctor with an addiction issue). The show is super feel-good, and if you like medical dramas, I'd definitely recommend it.

WHERE I CAN FIND IT: Netflix and YouTube.

I AM ASKING FOR... ER shenanigans with Lauren Bloom, Casey Acosta, and Camila Candelario. I am into a Lauren/Casey ship, because Casey is always there for her and fixes her errors in the worst of her addiction days, but I'd also be into diving in depth into either Casey or Candelario, because even if they are super minor characters, they both have lines indicating that they're military vets because Casey references being in Iraq and Candelario references being in Afghanistan. I want to see more of that aspect of them both!

Re: New Amsterdam (TV Series)

[karios]

*squee* Love your prompts.

Is your fourth character slot open or are you planning to nom someone else beyond those three?

[bookishwench]

Okay, weird one I'm considering nominating. Anybody else remember this? Or have I reached the maximum level of weird?

FANDOM NAME: Lost Boy Remember His Way Home (animated short film)
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: People, this has probably been living rent-free in the back of your mind for decades.
WHERE CAN I FIND IT (optional): Behind your face there is a place that's called your brain or your mind...

The Spellsong Cycle - L. E. Modesitt, Jr. (Books)

[tigerlily]

FANDOM NAME: The Spellsong Cycle - L. E. Modesitt, Jr. (Books)

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: These are five books set in a fantasy world parallel to Earth--in which music can be used to do magic. The protagonist of the first three is Anna, a professor of music in her late forties who, grieving the death of her oldest daughter, wishes to be anywhere but where she is. Enter a continent on the brink of war, and people in need of a sorceress. I love Anna's grief and her struggle first to survive, then to take power so she can do something meaningful with her life in ways she couldn't back on Earth. There are discussions about getting feudal lords to pay their debts, and about creating infrastructure; there are also battles, and mighty spells. I also like the little bits of magical worldbuilding, like how in the continent Anna lands on, drums and dancing used to be a thing, but now people treat them as anything from obscene to abominable, except some of the antagonists, and Anna is so befuddled about it. And I like how there are many chapters for female characters apart from the female protagonists, and that these are from women around her age who are in power in their respective countries. The last two books are about her foster daughter Secca, who shoulders Anna's legacy and tries to keep things from getting worse after her death, while wrangling with who she was on a personal level. I love their relationship and how Secca builds on what Anna did to earn her own renown.

The first three books are a complete story on their own, so I'd love fic pertaining only to them just as much as fic pertaining to the others/the whole series.

Content Notes: Assault and attempted assault, onscreen and off; sexualized murder and offscreen but implied sexual torture of minor female characters with regard to one antagonist across two of the books; lots of misogyny; one set of antagonists being likened to Hitler; another set of antagonists being likened to Islamic extremists; high body count when it comes to the wars.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): The books are available in paperback, hardback, audio, and as ebooks.

Night of the Solstice - L. J. Smith

[graycardinal]

What It Is

L.J. Smith is best known for her Vampire Diaries books, and to a lesser extent for her Night World series. Night of the Solstice and its sequel, Heart of Valor, are much more straightforward fantasy in that fuzzy middle ground between middle-grade and YA. Our heroes are the four Hodges-Bradley siblings: Alys, Janie, Charles, and Claudia, who are tasked by a sorceress's familiar to investigate a classically mysterious house atop a hill in order to rescue the familiar's mistress and hold off a potential threat from beyond the mortal world.

Why It's Worthy

This is both purely classic (think Nesbit's and Eager's family-driven tales) and thoroughly modern (though it just predates the cell-phone era), the latter to the extent that the house-on-the-hill is very nearly findable via online maps, and I did in fact locate the kids' schools while researching the Yuletide story I wrote for this fandom a number of years back. The protagonists come across as believably sensible and daring in the right proportions, the vixen familiar is distinctively foxlike, and sorceress Morgana Shee proves an engaging ally when we finally meet her late in the first book. Solstice is easily readable as a stand-alone, and the sequel is reasonably self-contained.

Where To Find It

For a minor wonder, these appear to still be in print in both paper and e-text.

The Night of the Solstice
Heart of Valor

Prompts & Possibilities

I’d certainly be interested in looking back – at the origins of Morgana’s and Thia’s obvious rivalry, at either character’s individual history - we know or can guess some of Morgana’s, but Thia Pendriel offers a mostly blank slate - or perhaps at the workings of the Weerul Council. I personally am not at all interested in Morgana/Thia slash, but others may differ - and given what we know, any such would seem necessarily to have occurred long prior to canon.

Alternately, if we’re allowing Heart of Valor in the equation, we might also look forward. I’d love to see Morgana as Janie’s and/or Alys’ tutor, Thia on her own hunting artifacts and plotting revenge, or – for the especially ambitious writer – the next and very likely final confrontation between these rival sorcerei. (Smith's online presence has been at best very intermittent for some time, so we probably ought not count on a prospective third book.)

Extremely Optional Bonus Points

I find myself mostly resisting my usual crossover-junkie impulses where these books are concerned...except that it is, after all, a post-Arthurian story. And that has me thinking: Susan Cooper’s Merriman Lyon is almost certainly not L. J. Smith’s Merlin (from Valor). And yet I can’t help wondering whether and how Cooper’s Merriman (and the Old Ones) might have crossed paths with Smith’s Weeriens and sorcerei in their mutual mythic history. So: if your muse runs that way, feel free to splice Smith and Cooper together and we’ll both see what happens. OTOH, any more general Arthurian-centric back story (green knights, black knights, etc.) for our favorite sorcerei is certainly also welcome.

Re: Night of the Solstice - L. J. Smith

[queenbookwench]

Ooooh, I should reread these!

Filthy Rich (TV 2020)

[rsadelle]

FANDOM NAME: Filthy Rich (TV 2020)

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: This is a ridiculous and fun to watch soap opera. Note: This is based on a New Zealand show of the same name. I haven't seen the original, so I don't know how much was changed/kept the same.

Here's the basic premise: Eugene and Margaret Monreaux (Gerald McRaney and Kim Cattrall) are the white, extremely wealthy power couple heading up the Sunshine Network, an evangelical Christian TV network. They have two adult children: Eric and Rose. Eric is married to Becky, who is pregnant and whose brother Paul, aka The Reverend, is one of the stars of the network. Rose wants to be a fashion designer; Eric truly believes in the company and its missionary work. Eugene's plane crashes, and his will provides for three additional adult children outside his marriage: Ginger, Jason, and Antonio. Ginger runs a successful porn site based in Las Vegas. Jason is a pot grower and dealer in Colorado. Antonio is an MMA fighter in New York and a single father with a very young son.

There's a lot about the show that I found really fun. And then this happens:





(Gifs by booasaur, source)

That's Becky kissing Ginger, and it isn't just a thing that happens once and then gets forgotten. There is a several-episode arc that involves Becky and Ginger having both an affair and several conversations about sexuality and making your own choices. You can see the best bits in booasaur's gif posts about the show.

I want to be clear that this was a show that was (a) pushed back, (b) at least slightly retooled between the shooting of the pilot/cutting of the original trailer and the making of the rest of the series, and (c) cancelled after the first season of 10 episodes, which should give you some idea about its objective quality standards. I think there's also something not quite right about the tone of the show that keeps it from being particularly good, but it is very much a good time with some really interesting things going on with the women in it and I've watched the whole thing through at least three times. I wrote a much more spoilery 3,700-word post if you want to know more details about all of it. In particular, there is a twist in the last few minutes of the show that you might want to be spoiled about before watching. If so, you can search my post for "Eugene tells Margaret" for the paragraph that explains it. I don't want to spoil it here, but suffice to say that it's the kind of thing that, for fic purposes, could be either explored in future fic in interesting ways or fairly easily alternate universe - canon divergence ignored - I thought the twist was thematically interesting but structurally a mess.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?: Fox's website with a TV provider login, Hulu with a subscription, purchasable on Amazon/iTunes/Google Play/Vudu.

Miss Mack - Michael McDowell

[scioscribe]

FANDOM NAME: "Miss Mack," by Michael McDowell (short story)
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: This is an incredibly creepy, incredibly femslashy horror short story. (The setting is tied to some of McDowell's novels, but you don't have to have read them; it's just a bonus.) It's set in a small Southern town called Babylon, and it's about how Miss Mack--the kind of fat, badly dressed, traditionally unattractive woman who would normally be disregarded or villainized by a lot of stories--moves to town and winds up becoming an incredibly competent, adored teacher who's best friends with another teacher, the adorable Janice Faulk. Unbeknownst to either Miss Mack or Janice, the school's principal, Mr. Hill, has been planning to basically subtly guilt Janice into marrying him, and he's quite perturbed that she's now way more interested in Miss Mack. ("Miss Mack, in short, knew how to show a girl a good time.") Mr. Hill doesn't like this at all, so he consults his elderly mother, who practices a kind of sinister, subtle witchcraft, to get Miss Mack out of the way.

The story is dark--it's a really effective, well-crafted horror story that hits a lot of creepy tropes about stopped time, being stuck somewhere, hopelessness, etc., so it's not really the Fun Adventures of Janice and Miss Mack. (Rot13 spoiler: Abg n unccl raqvat.) But the combination of sinister horror and offbeat f/f subtext is just great.
WHERE CAN I FIND IT (optional): It's collected in The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume One, and as of three hours ago--how's that for timing?--there's a podcast reading of it up for free on Pseudopod with the story text just below it.
I'LL BE ASKING FOR...: More unnerving Southern Gothic horror, alternate endings/canon-divergences, and all the Miss Mack/Janice.

Re: Miss Mack - Michael McDowell

[kitsunerei88]

I have read this and now I can't get it out of my head. Thanks for the find!

Maiden Holmes (TV Series)

[aroberuka]

Fandom Name: 少女大人 | Maiden Holmes (2020)

What is it?: A 32-episode single season Chinese Drama.

What makes it great: Despite the English title, this is not, in fact, yet another Sherlock Holmes adaptation. What it is is 1)a period drama 2)a procedural of sorts 3)political intrigue 4)a cross-dressing, secret-identity romance, all rolled-up in one, and it is rocking them!

What it's about: Su Ci, genius detective, rising through the ranks while discreetly investigating her parents' murder and stumbling into something much bigger in the process. The main appeal is that she immediately gathers an entire found family unit that just. Refuses to leave and let her be the badass stoic lone wolf investigator she's trying so hard to be? She will have unconditional ride-or-die support, whether she likes it or not! That + badass female characters + every romance subplot being 'badass female character/man who looks at her like she hung the stars in the sky' basically made the show for me. It also swings wildly between laugh-out-loud comedy and tear-your-heart-out drama, which is an entire mood for this year.

I cannot fully squee about my intended request without spoiling a late-series twist (there's a handful of these and they actually work great, don't read spoilers for this show), so instead I'm going to squee about 2/3 of it:



-Xie Beiming: nice but dim noble warrior son of high-ranking official and the poster child for 'a little bit confused, but he got the spirit'. Stole my heart by not treating the protag any different post cross-dressing reveal and being everyone's Most Supportive Friend and only got better from there on.

-Dong Rushuang: 'Damsel in distress' who immediately turns the tables on her perceived attacker, thus proving right from the start she is in fact the most dangerous of the main five. I didn't know before this show that 'cheerful poison-master' was one of my character types but it absolutely is.

-They're the b-couple so of course they're my favourites. They have a great dynamic -- see above re: badass female character/man who looks at her like she hung the stars in the sky, but also: they're both equally gung-ho about helping people in need while also having a collective common sense score of approximately none, which makes them the perfect fodder for either funny antics or whump, in and out of canon, and frankly I don't know what more you could possibly want :p

Content warnings: The cross-dressing is handled with the usual double-standard of women dressing as men = a tragic necessity in a sexist society; men dressing as women = either funny or disgusting. The first episode especially opens up on a classic 'attractive woman is revealed to be man in disguise; everyone makes a great show of being disgusted' scene. Sexism is present and openly discussed/criticized; there's one attempted sexual assault in an early ep; and then there's the assortment of Bad Things Happening To Good People you can expect from a court intrigue/procedural combo (mostly murder, sometimes suicide).

Where can I find it (optional): It's available for free on Youtube or Viki.

Re: Maiden Holmes (TV Series)

[magpiemountains]

oh this looks SO GOOD. thanks for the rec (and the content warnings--i enjoy c-dramas and wuxia but the sexism and gender expectations often make them impossible to watch). definitely checking this out.

The Twilight Zone - "The After Hours"

[scioscribe]

FANDOM NAME: The Twilight Zone (original) - "The After Hours"
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: This is a Twilight Zone episode where a woman named Marsha White visits an upscale department store to buy a present for her mother and finds herself taken to a seemingly nonexistent floor staffed only by a single unnerving saleswoman ... who sells her the only item on the floor, which just so happens to be exactly what she's looking for. The "creepy little shop that wasn't there an hour ago" vibe then changes to "creepy mannequins," and then the episode moves from horror to a kind of dark, empathetic fantasy about living mannequins. It's unsettling, intriguing, surprisingly charming, and full of good worldbuilding and f/f possibilities.
WHERE CAN I FIND IT (optional): The whole series is streaming on Paramount+, which you can get on its own or as an add-on through a service like Amazon or Hulu. Original TZ often tends to be pretty available through libraries/reruns.
I'LL BE ASKING FOR...: Living mannequin-related worldbuilding, character pieces for both Marsha and the unnervingly compelling saleswoman, and Marsha/Saleswoman f/f.

Diana Winthrop series - Kate Chambers

[graycardinal]

What It Is

The Winthrop books are a mid-'80s teen-sleuth series - six slim paperbacks - set mostly in New York and New England, with "Kate Chambers" being a pen name for versatile writer Norma Johnston, a fact I didn't learn till much later.

Why It's Worthy

On one hand, these are absolutely meant as updates of the classic Nancy Drew premise - but where the actual modern series updating Nancy herself have mostly seemed intent on injecting romance tropes into the franchise, the Winthrop series instead veered strongly toward mainstream mystery territory. The individual mysteries are dedicated to (and often cleverly plotted in the style of) various classic and then-famous mystery authors, and the crimes are not restricted to property offenses and domestic kerfuffles. Likewise, the characterizations are much more nuanced than is usual for this category, and there’s a strong ongoing ensemble cast, including:

# a well-rendered secondary character who’s blind
# a recurring female mentor character
# well-drawn younger and older characters

It's further worth observing that Diana's father, Robert Winthrop, is a somewhat more active presence in this series than Carson Drew is in Nancy's. The senior Winthrop's latest business venture is the focus of the second book, and he gets actively involved in a couple of the other cases.

Where To Find It

Unfortunately, this is one of those series that seems to have been read by maybe two dozen people back in the day, and if anyone is managing Norma Johnston's literary estate, they've overlooked this series entirely, so it's long OP. The Goodreads link below should give you enough breadcrumbs to track down what's out there on the used market - and while there are six books, they're short by modern standards, and therefore very quick reads.

Diana Winthrop series

Prompts & Possibilities

One of the really nifty things about Diana's adventures was the multi-generational family dynamic, which includes her cousin Jacintha (who's clearly an adult, if pretty new-minted; I see her as mid-20s at the outside), Gran Kathleen Culhaine, and journalist Lydian Sinclair (who looks likely to become part of the Winthrop clan ere long) as part of the ensemble.

I'd definitely like to see that familial texture explored, whether in the context of a case/adventure or a more personal sort of tale. Feel free to bring in others from the extended cast as appropriate, and to look for story ideas both from Diana's past (the Boston contingent as kids? Diana's original "acting" days?) and future (what does she end up doing career-wise?) as well as the series' present.

Extremely Optional Bonus Points

The crossover junkie in me points out that Diana's NYC/Boston home base and detective interests make for plausible run-ins with a great variety of other source canons (I gave her a walk-on part in one of my Castle stories), and someone other than me (!) has nudge-winked a connection between Diana's Ross cousins and a certain family of MCU military and espionage professionals. I will likely talk more about this in my actual Yuletide signup; for now, I merely mention the potential as an encouragement to become Winthrop-literate.

Cam (2018)

[scioscribe]

FANDOM NAME: Cam (2018)

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: This is a standalone psychological horror movie about a camgirl named Alice--a.k.a. "Lola"--whose struggle to get to the #1 spot on her hosting site is suddenly derailed when her image is stolen and she's locked out of her account.

Alice is riveting--likable, weird, driven, creative--and I love how the movie toys with supernatural, science fictional, and criminal explanations for what's happening to her. It gets really unsettling, and the feeling of an ambiguous, uncertain threat hanging over her is really well-done. It's also got a lot of fascinating subtext (and outright text, honestly) about privacy, sex work, and identity. And it looks great--the visuals are distinctive and there are a lot of images that have stayed with me.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT: It's on Netflix, at least in the US.

CONTENT NOTES: Some self-harm, real and simulated (including a simulated suicide); stalking; depictions of misogyny and anti-sex worker bias; boundaries being violated; some humiliation; referenced sexual assault.

I'LL BE ASKING FOR...: Horror (science fictional/supernatural/psychological), Alice rebuilding her life, Alice/Lola weird digital selfcest, the stolen Lola image as a character, Alice/various female characters.

Re: Cam (2018)

[geckoholic]

Huh, interesting rec. When I saw this show up on Netflix I assumed smth exploitative, so thanks for setting me straight on this one. I shall check it out!

[jalu2]

Fandom name: Growing Things -- Paul Tremblay (short story)

What is it: A short story found in the anthology with the same name, it follows the story of two sisters abandoned by their father after their mother's death and the...growing thing...found in their basement. The sisters are very heavily implied to be those found in Tremblay's novel A Head Full of Ghosts.

What make it great: I love how open to interpretation this story is, and the overall feeling of dread and soft hope that runs throughout.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? Worldbuilding! Interpretations! More tales about these two sisters. How does it tie into A Head Full of Ghosts (if it even does)? What is the growing thing? WHO IS AT THE DOOR? More than anything, I feel the story leaves questions and I would love someone to answer them.

Where to find it: Within the book Growing Things and Other Stories, which can be borrowed/requested from your local library or purchased from any good booksellers.

[ellen_fremedon]

FANDOM NAME: Petit-Cénacle RPF

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT:

The Petit-Cénacle was a French Romantic salon, slightly younger and considerably more politically radical than the Cénacle centered on Hugo and Dumas; it included painters and sculptors as well as writers and critics, and most of its members at least dabbled in both written and visual arts. Its best-known members today are Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, and Pétrus Borel (the Lycanthrope)--the last two are thinly fictionalized in Les Misérables as Jean Prouvaire and Bahorel. (It's debatable how much Grantaire owes to Gautier but it's probably a nonzero amount.)

The group coalesced around Borel and Nerval as the organizers of the Battle of Hernani--a fight between Romantics and classicists at the premiere of Victor Hugo's play Hernani in 1830. Most theater productions at this time had claques--groups of paid supporters of a show or an actor, who were planted in the audience to drum up applause. For Hernani--the first Romantic work staged at the prestigious Comédie-Français, which broke classical norms so thoroughly that it no longer seems at all transgressive--Hugo and the theater management decided they were going to need more than just a claque. They recruited a few of Hugo's fans--Gautier was so star-struck he had to be physically hauled up the stairs to Hugo's apartment--to stage An Event. The fans recruited their friends. They showed up in cosplay, with the play already memorized and callback lines devised. It was basically the Rocky Horror Picture Show of its day. It almost immediately turned into an actual fight, with fists and projectiles flying. And it made Hernani the hottest ticket in Paris.

This is the group's origin story, and they pretty much spent their lives living up to it. They were every bit as extra as you would expect--Nerval allegedly walked a lobster on a leash in the Champs-Elyseés, explaining that "it knows the secrets of the deep, and it does not bark"--but they also stayed friends all their lives, often living together, supporting each other through poverty and mental illness and absurd political upheaval.


WHERE CAN I FIND IT:

Gautier's History of Romanticism covers the early days of the group and the Battle of Hernani in some detail. (There is also a 2002 French TV movie, La bataille d'Hernani, which is charming and pretty accurate; hit me up if you want a copy.)

Other than that--this crowd wrote a lot, and they're all very present in their work--even in their fiction, which is shockingly modern in a ton of ways.

For Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin has a lot of genderfeels, surprisingly literal landscape porn, and a fursuit sex scene in chapter two.

If you want Nerval's works in English, you might be limited to dead-tree versions, but I highly, highly recommend The Salt Smugglers, a work of metafiction that answers the question, "What if The Princess Bride had been written in 1850 specifically to troll the press censorship laws of Prince President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte?"

Borel's experimental short story collection Champavert has a new and very good English translation by Brian Stableford and is also one of my other fandoms this year, so that will be its own post.



I'm nominating Pétrus Borel | Le Lycanthrope, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, and Philothée O’Neddy; you could nominate other members like the artists Jehan Duseigneur, Celestin Nanteuil, and the Deverias, or even associates of the group like Dumas and Hugo.

[ellen_fremedon]

FANDOM NAME: Champavert: Contes Immoraux | Champavert: Immoral Tales - Pétrus Borel

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT:

Last year I requested Borel RPF but I decided this book was unfanficcable. This year, I am going to have a little more faith in the Yuletide community.

Champavert is a weird as hell little book and probably the best thing I read last year. It's an experimental short story collection from 1830. Someone on one of my Les Mis Discords described it as "a collection of gothic creepypasta, but the author is constantly clanging pots and pans together and going 'JUST IN CASE you didn't notice, the real horror was colonialism and misogyny all along and i'm very angry about it!'"

And, yeah, pretty much that, with added metafictional weirdness, intense nerding about architecture and regional languages, and the absolute delight that is Borel's righteously ebullient voice.

Borel wrote for a couple of years under the name of The Lycanthrope, and though he kills the alter ego in this book, the name stuck, and would continue to be used by friends and enemies alike all his life. Pretty much everyone who met Pétrus agreed that 1) he was just ungodly hot; 2) he was probably a werewolf, sure, that makes sense; and 3) he was definitely older than he claimed to be, possibly by centuries, possibly just immortal, who knows.

But, like I said, he kills the alter ego in this book: it begins with an introduction announcing that "Pétrus Borel" has been a pseudonym all along, that the Lycanthrope's real name is Champavert--and that the Lycanthrope is dead and these are his posthumous papers, compiled by an unnamed editor; the papers include some of Borel's actual poems and letters, published under his own name. The final story in the collection is called "Champavert, The Lycanthrope," and is situated as an autobiographical story, following a collection of fictional tales--which share thematic elements and, in the frame of the book, start to look like "Champavert"'s attempts to use fiction to come to terms with events of his own life.

And that's probably an oversimplification; this is a dense little book and it's doing a lot.

The subtitle is Contes Immoraux. It's part of a genre of "contes cruelles" (and, content note for. Um. A lot), but it's never gratuitously cruel--it's very consciously interrogating the idea of the moral story, and what sort of morality is encoded in fables, and what it means to set a story where people get what they deserve in an unjust world where that's rarely the case.

I'm nominating the unnamed editor, Champavert, his friend Jean-Louis from the introduction and the final story, and Flava from the final story; you could also nominate characters from the explicitly fictional stories.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT:

Brian Stableford's English translation is available in ebook and dead tree form.

The Windrose Chronicles - Barbara Hambly

[(Anonymous)]

The Windrose Chronicles is a trilogy of 1980s SFF novels (The Silent Tower, The Silicon Mage, Dog Wizard), with a fourth novel in the same setting but featuring different characters (Stranger at the Wedding) and some recent online-only novellas set after the main trilogy. I've only read the main trilogy so far, so anything I request will relate to those books.

You pretty much do need to read the trilogy as a whole. The first book, The Silent Tower, ends on a heart-shattering cliffhanger that leads immediately into The Silicon Mage. Dog Wizard is a little more independent but resolves many longer-term plot threads from the previous two books. But they're none of them doorstoppers.

You may recognize Barbara Hambly's name from the Benjamin January historical mystery series, from the Darwath trilogy (which I'm told is similar in concept to Windrose but much bleaker in tone), or from her Star Trek and Star Wars novels. Hambly is very much One Of Us; she knows what the fannish brain and heart want, and she gives you plenty of it.

In brief, The Windrose Chronicles are about a young female computer programmer from the 1980s, Joanna Sheraton, who’s pulled into another world where magic exists, but is heavily regulated and controversial. There she meets Stonn Caris, a young member of an order of warriors who are trained to see themselves as nothing but living weapons. Stonn is escorting as his prisoner a renegade wizard, Antryg Windrose, widely believed to be insane and accused of creating portals into other worlds--including Joanna's. But as Joanna travels with Caris and Antryg, hoping to return to her own world, she finds it harder and harder to believe he's the real culprit. The relationships between these three characters (various permutations of romance, friendship, enmity, trust and distrust--despite which there's no love triangle whatsoever!) are the heart of the story, in my opinion.

The worldbuilding is vaguely based on Regency England (But With Magic, and also evil female bishops), and Antryg is explicitly based on Tom Baker in Doctor Who, whom the author clearly has a little bit of a voice-crush on (I told you she was One Of Us!). It's good stuff. There’s adventure and intrigue and angst and humor and really good character relationships, both romantic and platonic.

It's marketed as fantasy, but I'm really more comfortable calling it SFF or spec-fic without narrowing it down, because it very much operates off of 'sufficiently advanced technology cannot be distinguished from magic'--and vice versa! Sorcerers draw on the power of computers, eldritch abominations run science experiments, etc. Joanna's mainframe-based programming expertise is somewhat endearingly dated now, but that gives it the feel of a delightful period piece.

I'll likely be requesting stories with the same characters pre- or post-canon, or canon scenes from a different character's perspective. A little worldbuilding/magic-system stuff never went amiss either, but I'm mainly interested in Antryg and Joanna and their friends. It's been a Yuletide fandom before, and I've liked several of the resulting fics.

I really love the complex and nuanced ways in which the characters claim and exercise agency in their lives, especially the female characters. The romance makes me absolutely melt in puddles (although it's at least as much adventure as romance), the setting is really vivid and well-drawn, and I've just remembered one of the characters deals with chronic pain and a disability in his hands, which is some pretty cool low-key representation, I think.

The main content warnings I can think of are for depictions of emotionally abusive relationships (one of the major themes of the trilogy is the complex process of recovering from such a relationship) and, especially in the third book, discussion of a major character's abusive childhood. There is some aftermath of torture stuff (characters with permanent scars and so on). Another thing that might put some readers off is that there's a gay antagonist side character who is depicted... pretty much how you'd expect for a gay antagonist side character in the 1980s, but that's only in part of one book. (And he does have some unexpected redeeming qualities! There's a reason I've said 'antagonist' and not 'villain.') There might be something I'm not remembering right now, but it's not a bleak or grim story either.

Some libraries have copies, and there's generally a few copies for sale at reasonable prices on your favorite book-buying website. Also apparently Kindle and audiobook editions, as I've just discovered!

-lurking_latinist (no Dreamwidth acct)

[ellen_fremedon]

FANDOM NAME: Les Enfants du Paradis | Children of Paradise

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT:

This is a film made between 1943 and 1945 in Vichy and Occupied France and set...somewhere?...around the July Revolution, probably, I'll get into that :D.
It's beautifully filmed, with gorgeous sets and costumes and a truly unbelievable number of extras, and some fantastic pantomime scenes. (On stage and off; there's a scene where a henchman attempts to publicly humiliate a mime, and it goes about as well as you would expect.)



"Paradise," in the title, is the equivalent of "the gods" in English--the cheap seats in the topmost tier of a theater. It's set in and around the theaters of the Boulevard du Temple--the area called the Boulevard du Crime, not for the pickpockets outside the theaters but for the content of the melodramas inside them.

The story follows a woman called Garance, after the flower (red madder), a grisette turned artists' model turned sideshow girl turned actress turned courtesan, and four men who love her, some of whom she loves, all of whom ultimately fail to connect with her in the way she needs or wants or can live with.

This sounds like a setup for some slut-shaming garbage. It's not--Garance is a person, with interiority, and the story never blames her for what other people project onto her.

Of those four men, one is a fictional count and the other three are heavily fictionalized real people: the actor Frédérick Lemaître, the mime Baptiste Deburau, and the celebrity criminal Lacenaire. Everyone in this story is performing for an audience, pretty much constantly, onstage or off: reflexively, or deliberately, or compulsively.

Garance's survival skill is to reflect back to people what they want to see of themselves. She never lies, but she shows very different parts of herself to different people. We get the impression that there are aspects of herself she doesn't have much access to without someone else to show them to. Frédérick is also a mirror, in a way that makes him and Garance good as friends and terrible as lovers--an empty hall of mirrors. He's always playing a part--the libertine, the artist, the lover--and mining his actual life and emotions for the sake of his art. Baptiste channels his life into his art as well, but without any deliberation or artifice--everything goes into the character, unfiltered. It makes him a better artist than any of the others will ever be, but his lack of self-awareness is terrifying, and his transparency fascinates Garance and Frédérick, who are more themselves with him than with anyone else. Lacenaire, the playwright turned thief and murderer, seems to no self at all, except when other people are watching. Against the performers are the spectators: the gaze of others--fashion, etiquette, and reputation--personified by Count Mornay; and the internal gaze personified in Nathalie, an actress and Baptiste's eventual wife, who hopes that if they observe the forms of devotion for long enough the feeling will follow.

The time frame is deliberately vague--it's set an idealized July Monarchy where all these people were simultaneously at the most exciting part of their careers. In the real world, Frédérick turned his performance of Robert Macaire into burlesque in 1823, Baptiste's tragic pantomime Le Marrrchand d’Habits! ("The Old-Clothes Seller") played in 1842, and Lacenaire's final murder, for which he is guillotined, is 1832; these all take place in Act II of the movie within about a week of each other.

(Théophile Gautier, mentioned but tragically offstage in the film, was a fan of Baptiste; Le Marrrchand d’Habits! started as Gautier's fanfic--he wrote a fake review of a nonexistent pantomime, and the review became popular enough the Theater des Funambules decided to actually stage it. It only ran for seven performances.)


I am nominating Garance, Frédérick Lemaître, Baptiste Deburau, and Pierre François Lacenaire. I'd love to see nominations of the other characters (Count Mornay, Nathalie, the old-clothes seller Jéricho, Baptiste's father, his landlady, Nathalie's father the Funambules manager). Gautier, regrettably, does not actually appear in the film but you can bet that's going to be one of my prompts.


WHERE CAN I FIND IT:

There's a DVD in print from Criterion and quite possibly available through your local library system. And it's streaming on Amazon Prime and the Criterion Channel.

Planet Builders series - Robyn Tallis

[graycardinal]

What It Is

Published in the late 1980s, this was a ten-book series of teen space-opera adventures (slim paperbacks again) written by a collective of authors under the joint pen name of Robyn Tallis. I used to compare these to Andre Norton; nowadays, what I should tell you is that they read a great deal like Sherwood Smith channeling a mix of Norton and Tom Swift - which is more accurate than you might expect, as Smith was in fact one of the Tallis collective and the direct author of several books in the series. Other series contributors included Bruce Coville, Mary Frances Zambreno, and Mageworlds authors Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald.

Why It's Worthy

Until very recently, it's always been something of a challenge to find good straight-ahead SF written specifically for younger readers (one reason so many of us who grew up in the late 20th century gravitated straight to the grownup shelves) - and a great deal of the better stuff (Miss Pickerell, the Mushroom Planet series, Danny Dunn) skewed strongly toward grade-school readers rather than teens.

The Planet Builders books were a rousing response to that problem. They're set on a recently settled colony world featuring ancient alien ruins, interesting fauna, but no apparent living civilized population. The core cast was a good-sized and interestingly varied ensemble of teen-agers - smart, hard-working, but restless enough to push the limits of their allowed freedoms. And while there were ongoing mysteries, the plots varied from book to book - exploration, industrial espionage, political intrigue, even some character-driven family drama. The pacing was brisk, the language crisp and modern, and the alien elements cleverly developed. If they'd been published anytime in the last three or four years, there'd be a TV series in development by now for the CW or Netflix. Even in their own day, they were popular for long enough to get the initial six-book contract extended to four additional volumes...but the series' original packager left the rights in a sufficient tangle that there's essentially no way to revive the books now. Well, except for fanfic....

Where To Find It

Sadly, per above note about the rights, these are long OP and unlikely to be reissued. As with the Diana Winthrop series, I'm supplying a link to the Goodreads series page and hoping to generate enough interest to support a nomination.

# Planet Builders series

Prompts & Possibilities

With as large a cast as there was in Planet Builders, not everyone got as much stage-time as they should have. Of all the lesser-used characters, I’m particularly fond of Daphne deVries, both because of her lively personality and because I’m also a big theater fan. Other characters I'd like to have seen more of include Noriko Wilder, Paul Riedel, and one of the kids' teachers, Dr. Rey "X-Ray" Ives.

That said, almost any story I can imagine would be greeted with delight, whether during canon (or even pre-canon or long afterward). Lost cities, clever plans gone amusingly and comic-disastrously (but not too painfully) wrong, gentle romance, swashbuckling space opera - these books had them all there, and this is really truly a case where I'm like Oliver Twist, and "please sir, may I have some more" will do very nicely indeed.

Re: Planet Builders series - Robyn Tallis

[kate_nepveu]

I'd never heard of these but they sound extremely up my alley, thanks! (Though not to get your hopes up--I don't write, so this is solely for reading purposes)

We Know The Devil

[wolffyluna]

FANDOM NAME: We Know the Devil

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: We Know the Devil is a short visual novel (~1.5-3 hours, depending in how fast you read). Overachieving Jupiter, trouble-making Neptune and shy and awkward Venus are sent to a Christian Summer camp for troubled teens, which tries to untrouble the teens with a combination of the great outdoors, hard work, guitar backed sermons... and sending teams of kids into the woods to meet and defeat the Devil. And the kids have to be careful not to let the Devil into their hearts. (But don't worry. Statistically a human is way more likely to kill you than the devil.)

It's magical realism/psychological horror/religious horror with great atmosphere and music, dialogue that is deep and feels like the midnight conversations you had when you are 14.

Also, queer characters! I would elaborate, but that would be spoilers.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional): It can be found on Steam

Re: We Know The Devil

[scansionictus]

This looks great! From the trailer I'm getting that it's sort of like a CYOA story?

The Imperial Coroner

[wolffyluna]

FANDOM NAME: The Imperial Coroner

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: A live action TV series set in Tang Dynasty China, Chu Chu travels to the capital to pass the coroner exam and become an official coroner like the rest of her family.

Prince Xiao Jinyu, head of the Three Judiciaries, finds out that she is a talented and brilliant coroner and likely to be an asset in solving cases... and also she has a pendant that his missing father had. Which raises questions about how she got it. Questions he would like answers to.

The show is both a mystery and a romance. The central mystery takes a little while to build up, and for the audience to have enough of the pieces to see the full size of it, but it is very fun, and is full of all sorts of smaller mysteries feeding into, which keeps the pace up. The romantic chemistry between the two leads is also very sweet and I love it.

As well as our two main leads, we have our secondary leads: Jing Yi, who is fun loving but also way smarter than he looks and frighteningly good at reading people, and Leng Yue, who has had to stop wandering the jianghu to focus on getting married... which is a bit of a problem, because most people want to marry her to get favour with her grandfather who she hates. The romance between Jing Yi and Leng Yue is not given as much screen time as the romance between the main leads, but it is still very fun and quite enjoyable. The friendship dynamics between all four of the main cast are also really fun (and let's be real: quite shippable.)

WHERE CAN I FIND IT (optional): It is available for free-with-ads on Rakuten Viki

Re: The Imperial Coroner

[fairestcat]

Eeee! I was hoping someone would nominate this! I loved this show.