Praise! Your! Fandoms! Get others interested!

[crantz]

Hey, everyone! It's Praise Your Fandom time!

Get people into your canon! Tell them what's awesome about it!

Tell them where to find it!

Tell them ALL ABOUT IT!

Please use this format:

<b>Fandom/Canon Name:</b>
<b>What's awesome about it:</b>
<b>Where to find:</b>


Thank you and have a great yuletide!


(ALSO: Please feel free to ask for specific recs too! Like post a thread going 'hey I'm looking for canons with bisexual leads' or something!)

Comments

Stranger (TV, 2017)

[geckoholic]

Fandom/Canon Name: Stranger
What's awesome about it: Korean crime show, main character is a prosecutor who lost the ability to feel emotions in a pain-relieving surgery when he was a child, and my favorite thing about it is the fact that he gets sort of adopted by a female detective and it never turns into token romance, and he also has an interesting relationship, also platonic, with a younger female prosecutor. If slash is more your speed, there's also a fellow male prosecutor who sways back and forth between working for the good guys and the bad guys and they have to trust each other in a bit of a case of mutually assured destruction.
Where to find: Netflix

[melannen]

Fandom/Canon Name:The Girl With The Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Rogers

What's awesome about it: The muumuu wearing old fat lady who lives alone with her cat and her books and gives no fucks and is #rolemodel. The fact that the main character can TALK TO CATS. The constant references to other YA fantasy/sf novels by the same publishing imprint that she is reading. How much this book distrusts all adult people. How much this book also distrusts all non-readers. How the kids have psychic powers and are super-smart, but they're also explicitly non-neurotypical in a way that reads a lot more Autism Spectrum than any of the books about supposedly autistic kids that I was reading at the time this came out, and those difference are much more of an issue for them than the psi powers. The swimming pool. The bus. The way Monica tries so hard. The way Miss K effortlessly shuts down all of Mr. P's attempts to nice-guy her into a not-a-date.

Where to find: It's a kids' novel from the early 80s but it had a relatively recent reprint and you can get it used cheap online or at a lot of public libraries.

Fantasia (1940)

[crantz]

Fandom/Canon Name: Fantasia (1940)
What's awesome about it: Specifically this is about the The Pastoral Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven section! Describe by wikipedia as: A mythical Greco-Roman world of colorful centaurs and "centaurettes", cupids, fauns and other figures from classical mythology is portrayed to Beethoven's music. A gathering for a festival to honor Bacchus, the god of wine, is interrupted by Zeus, who creates a storm and directs Vulcan to forge lightning bolts for him to throw at the attendees.

Sounds great, right? It's full of amazingly pretty fantasy creatures, such as centaurs, pegasus, unicorns, and fauns!

They all seem to have a society - they're even working on a festival together.

The centaurs are my favourite part, here are the designs of the ones nominated:






It's a short about a fantasy society of mythological creatures, pretty much, and I think there's a lot of room to create there.

Where to find: I got my copy off itunes. However:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fantasia+the+pastoral+symphony

[ideallyqualia]

Fandom/Canon Name: Magical Girl Raising Project


What's awesome about it: Magical girls! Intriguing plots and page turning twists! This is a very tiny fandom with few people contributing to it. The anime only has 12 episodes, and there are currently 3 books fan-translated (personally I read them within a few days on my first read through). Yen Press is officially translating it, but they've only translated the first book so far. Here's a brief twitter thread summing up the girls with photos in case that piques interest. The way this series handles plot is so amazing imo that it inspired me to actually learn how to outline. Each book/arc succumbs to a game that becomes a fight to the death (personally it reminds me of Danganronpa), but throughout the series, the arcs drift more to plots that are more morally grey and resemble war with no right or wrong sides (at least, that's the feeling I get from later arcs, but later arcs haven't been translated yet in a way that the fandom can agree on, so I'm not linking that). Each magical girl receives a special power, and that power is their one magic, no matter how incredibly specific or quirky it is. The way the girls fight with these bizarre powers (and trust me, it gets BIZARRE; there's one obscure spinoff with a girl who has the magic to bring drawings of sheep to life) is so creative and clever that it's honestly hard to predict what happens next. Off the top of my head, two of the girls are canonically in love, and some relationships/friendships between other girls are up to interpretation, so if you're interested in shipping, there's definitely potential there. Because of the existence of magical powers and twists, there's also easy room for writing plotty fics/gen, too. And if you're into gore/death/angst, well, this is definitely in your ballpark. I never even liked gore/death/angst before this series came along. (Crueltide anyone? I've never done crueltide before, but this fandom has made me change my mind.) On the other hand, it's also easy to write fluff for this series, surprisingly.

Where to find: Crunchyroll and Reddit Translation of light novels.

TW for death, gore, transphobia, and suicide.

[alessandriana]

Fandom/Canon Name: Murderbot Diaries

What's awesome about it: I'm just going to copy and paste the intro paragraph at you, because Murderbot is possibly the single most relatable (not-quite-a-)robot you've ever run into:

I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don't know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

Murderbot proceeds to spend the next ~150 pages trying (and mostly failing) to pretend they don't have feelings, especially about this weird group of humans they've been assigned to protect. It's glorious.

Where to find: You can read the first chapter here! The novella is available from all your major booksellers (B&N; Amazon)

[kissoffools]

Fandom/Canon Name: Falsettos

What's awesome about it: Do you like morally grey characters and beautiful, catchy music? Do you like canons that make you laugh and then make you cry? Do you like canon gay and lesbian characters? Then you might want to check out the Broadway musical Falsettos!

Falsettos begins in 1979, and tells the story of Marvin, a closeted gay man who has come out and left his wife and child to be with a man. Marvin is selfish, quick to anger, and desperate to be loved - and he so badly wants to bring everyone in his life together to form a new kind of tight-knit family. That goes pretty much as well as you’d expect! But people grow up, and people change, and with the beginning of the 1980s and the AIDS crisis picking up steam in New York City, Falsettos shows that love really does bring people together in the worst of times.

Falsettos premiered on Broadway in 1992. It had its first revival on Broadway last year, in 2016, starring Christian Borle, Andrew Rannells, Stephanie J Block, Brandon Uranowitz, Tracie Thoms, and Betsy Wolfe. All incredible performers who bring a lot of depth, beauty, and heart to this little gem of a show!

I love Falsettos because I think the characters are beautifully written - no one is a perfect person, but watching them come together and figure out how to love each other despite all the pain they’ve experienced is so beautiful. It’s a very real story, very truthful, and I love the way it makes you both laugh and cry as it takes you along. The music is catchy and conversational and modern, and the acting is just so damn good. I would love to see fic for this show this Yuletide! (Plus, I wanna write it, so I’d love to see someone other than me requesting it!)

Where to find: The Falsettos revival was fortunate enough to get a cast album, which you can find on Spotify - it’s completely sung through so you get the whole story with it!

And it was even more fortunate to be professionally filmed!!! The trailer for Falsettos is right here, to give you a taste of what the show is like. See? Funny and sweet and heartbreaking, all at once. And you can rent the full show at BroadwayHD’s website legally, for $7.99 USD. The professionally shot recording is incredibly well done and well worth the money, if you ask me. But it will also be airing on PBS’ Great Performances series on Friday, October 27, if you’d like to catch it for free! (And if you’d like to see it before then but can’t afford to pay to rent it from BroadwayHD, well… I won’t tell you to message me so I can hook you up, but I do get email notifications for PMs!)

Falsettos. Beautiful music, funny and heartbreaking story, canon gay & lesbian characters, fantastic actors, a damn good show. I hope other people will check it out so we can have some fun with it this Yuletide!

[katarik]

I adored that book when I was a kid and may have to find a copy somewhere. Thanks for reminding me of it!

[scripsi]

I've nominated Elizabeth of the Garrett Theatre by Gwendoline Courtney. My ultimate feelgood book about four sisters who are suddenly get a stepmother they decide to hate. But she turns up to be nice and with a great deal of humour. I crave happy what-happens-next.

I also tool Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward because I would really like to know more about Joseph Curwens marriage.

And lastly, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova because Dracula.

[rosehiptea]

Fandom/Canon Name: Die Ärzte
What's awesome about it: Everything! See below.
Where to find: Youtube mostly (See below)

Die Ärzte is a German punk band that is very famous in Germany but not so well-known in other places. They are semi-retired but they have been around since the 80s (though this exact lineup came slightly later). They consist of Farin Urlaub on guitar, Bela B on drums, and Rodrigo González on bass.

I know a band is a much bigger fandom than those people usually get into for Yuletide, but these are very fun guys and I always love talking about them and encouraging people to listen to them so here I am.

Their lyrics, which is virtually all in German, are a huge part of the appeal of the band. Most of their songs are funny, though they have some kickass serious ones too, and they are often very insightful. I have links below for several of their songs. The links are for a fan translation site and they have English translations (done by fans, quality varies) of the songs as well as a link to songs on Youtube.

Main Lyrics Page

3-Tage-Bart. (3 Day Beard). A very funny song, and the video is a parody of boy band videos that I find hilarious.

Zu spät (Too Late), a classic from their early days.

Mach die Augen zu (Close Your Eyes). This is a sad one.

Schrei Nach Liebe (Cry for Love) Their famous anti-Nazi anthem.

This band is very easy to write fic about because they are total goofballs and they turn the stage gay up to 11, especially Farin and Bela. In fact I have here a NSFW mini-picspam of Farin/Bela moments.

Enjoy!

[muccamukk]

I can here to post about this!

I was also going to say that while I think that the humour was undersold in promoting this book, because really which us CAN'T relate to that, there's also a lot of really interesting storytelling going on.

Murderbot's media addiction is both a response to trauma in its past, which we only get hints at, but its way of learning to deal with the world, and how to see itself. I really like how story is used in this novella, right up to the end.

I also really liked how the storytelling intertwined with Murderbot's identity issues. This is NOT a robot that wants to be human, but it does want to figure out what identity and freedom mean to it. Especially given that its legal status is somewhere between a laptop and a dog, or a small child on the best planets.

I just love this series to death because it's so sharp and funny, and Murderbot is totally my favourite (not-quite-a-)robot ever, and because under the snark and Netflix there's a really great story that I want ALL the fic about, and the next three novellas, post haste.

[meretricula]

I discovered this after I'd already settled on my nominations so I guess technically not my fandom but this is my fangirl siren alert that there are BRUNO AND BOOTS MOVIES and they are surprisingly well-done and well-cast and every bit as sweetly homoerotic as they should be and also AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX??? god bless Canada. if you are nostalgic for the Macdonald Hall series or just really like movies about twinky codependent boarding school boys and the wacky hijinks they get up to with the girls from the school across the street, you should 100% check them out and then nominate them for Yuletide. Bruno/Boots, Cathy/Diane, Wilbur/the cute asthmatic kid on the swim team, Scrimmage/The Fish: the possibilities are endless and varied. it's not Yuletide without Bruno & Boots!

[rubylily]

Fandom/Canon Name: Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi | Sunday Without God

What's awesome about it: Do you like post-apocalyptic stories that are both hopeful and melancholy? Are you interested in stories about journeys and family? Then come follow twelve-year-old gravekeeper Ai on her quest to help others and make new friends to be part of her family!

Where to find: Crunchyroll! You can also watch the opening here.

-----

Fandom/Canon Name: Stray Little Devil

What's awesome about it: Do you like portal fantasy? What about worlds split between devils and angels, and the human protagonist suddenly finds herself transformed into a devil? That's the fate of Pam Akumachi, who decides to train hard in hopes of finding a way home, and eventually her relationship with snobbish angel Linfa blossoms into surprise canon yuri!

Where to find: It's a five-volume manga, and while the English release is out-of-print, used copies aren't hard to find, and some library systems may have copies available for interloan.

-----

Fandom/Canon Name: Venus Versus Virus

What's awesome about it: Do you like urban fantasy with female protagonists? What about an eyepatch-wearing beauty teaming up with a normal schoolgirl with strange berserker powers and taking down zombie-like ghosts called "Viruses"? Lucia and Sumire make a great team, and there's plenty of action and femslashy subtext to be had.

Where to find: The anime can be watched on Funimation, and while the English release of the manga is out-of-print, used copies aren't hard to find, and again, interlibrary loan might be helpful too. Watch the opening here!

I promoted these canons in a previous post, and my comment is here if you want a little more information.

[devilc]

Fandom: The Barrow
What's awesome about it:
If anybody remembers the Artesia comics of the early 2000s, this is a novel set in that world, which tells the story of Artesia's older brother, Stjepan Blackheart.

This is a dark (but not grim-dark crapsack world) and tropey fantasy novel where --

1) Our gay POC POV character lives. (He can get it up and perform for a woman, but all of his erotic thoughts are about men.)

2) Our gender non-conforming POV character lives.

3) A woman gets an epic revenge. EPIC.

4) The kind of guy who's usually the hero of a fantasy novel dies horribly by the end.

5) There's an awesome & prominent transwoman secondary character who wields a great deal of power and authority.

6) There is a lot of swinging dick. (Did I mention bi/gay POV character?)

7) Fuck or die ... in a grave. (Did I mention it's tropey? Kinky, too.)

8) There's a 300 page set up for a joke. ("That book is forbidden, Master ...")

9) And ... the quest for the magical missing sword goes completely off the rails in the best way possible.

ETA: There is incest in the book and it's presented as a troubling thing.

Where to find:
Official Website

The Barrow at Amazon

Blackguards Anthology at Amazon (contains a short story where the transwoman character shows up for a great scene.)

A post at my journal where I talk about my love for said transwoman, and quote an excerpt from the story in Blackguards.

Re: Fantasia (1940)

[marginaliana]

Oooooooooooooooh, I love this movie! Interesting to see what people might write for it.

[raininshadows]

I was going to post about it too! So there's already a decent-size fandom for Yuletide.

Personally, I loved Murderbot for the narrative voice. I have a weakness for snarky narrators of that variety, and Murderbot is one of the best I've seen in a while. I also really like AIs that don't actually want to be human but do want to be treated as people, stories about exploration (the main plot is about a planetary survey team), and non-main characters with their own lives and doings.

(Also, if you like unremarked diversity, you may like that aspect of it - the survey team has a variety of non-white ethnicities represented, judging by their last names; is fairly evenly split between male and female members; and originates from a culture where marriage is apparently expected to be polygamous. The story never makes a point of it, but the human cast is pretty diverse.)

[karmageddon]

Fandom/Canon Name: Krabat | The Satanic Mill by Otfried Preußler -- An orphan finds work in a mill where the boys are also studying the dark arts. He becomes a star pupil.
What's awesome about it: It's dark yet hopeful in a way that only YA translated from the German can be! Sorcery! Satan! Suicide! Redemption!
Where to find:Here be all 24 works on Ao3 : https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Krabat%20%7C%20The%20Satanic%20Mill%20-%20Otfried%20Preußler/works

[sailor]

Fandom/Canon Name: Club de Cuervos (TV)

What's awesome about it: Do you like family dramas with brother-sister power dynamics? Do you like soccer — or at least like the concept of a team trying to overcome the odds together? Do you dig ensemble dramadies? Do you love flashy, rude yet lovable boys who define their sexuality as men, women and robots? Do you wish your shows had 150% more no mames güey? Have I got a show for you!

Club de Cuervos, the first Spanish-language Netflix original, opens with the death of a Liga Mx soccer club owner and Iglesias family patriarch. Ownership is given to his son Chava, a ridiculous and obnoxious egomaniac who doesn't know shit about running a club and only wants to be famous — but it should have gone to his daughter Isabel, who's worked her whole life to take over the Cuervos. Isabel vows to take control of the Cuervos from Chava, and things unfold from there.

Chava and Isabel (and the rest of the Iglesias family) are the heart of the show, but there's also a whole cast of enormously endearing secondary characters. Chava's assistant Hugo Sánchez lives to do everything for his boss, Isabel's husband Rafa struggles with retiring from the team while they're in decline, aforementioned pansexual superstar Aitor explodes onto the scene mid-season one and the show immediately gets infinitely more amazing, Mary Luz is the mysterious and complicated lover of the Iglesias patriarch at the time of his death. The rest of the Cuervos? Incredible. Moi is the captain who goes through hell in season one, Potro is the cocky but insecure striker, Tony is the young upstart trying to fit into the team, on and on. There are so many characters and they're all so wonderful to watch.

Club de Cuervos bills itself as a comedy-drama, and when I first got into it years ago I was expecting it to be ridiculous fun, and any emotional punches it pulled would be more telenovela-esque than anything else. But the show has an extraordinary amount of heart to it and sometimes it gets real deep. I've cried real tears and laughed myself sick during a single episode of this show. I've also come out of it with like, 83840938 ships and very little fic, so! Join me and let's rectify that together! :D

Where to find: Season 1 and Season 2 are currently on Netflix! Season 3 will be put up on 9/29.

[sailor]

Fandom/Canon Name: The Time of the Singing - Louise Blaydon

What's awesome about it: I was sold on this book by a friend with nothing more than "age difference m/m with overt Catholic imagery," so let me preface this by saying it definitely isn't for everyone! The story centers around a priest (presumed to be in his mid-20s) and a 17 year old boy (who turns 18 mid-story, though the book goes to great lengths to mention it takes place somewhere where the age of consent is 17). If that age difference or the religious theme squicks you, I don't recommend it.

But if you are into that, I can't recommend it enough. I honestly picked it up assuming it would be pulpy, iddy fun and nothing more. I was more than pleasantly surprised. Blaydon's writing is lovely. The perspective of the main character, Israfel Vacek, is so interesting — and everything that delves into his life before priesthood will make your heart hurt in the best way. It took an approach to being gay and Catholic that I didn't expect and that I enjoyed a lot. It's nuanced but never feels ham-handed. Also, the smut is super hot.

Basic plot summary: Israfel moves to small New England town to lead his new congregation, and it's all well and good until he meets a high school senior, Nate Mulligan, who sees right through Israfel and seems to only live to make his life hell. The Mulligan family are good church-going folk, so Nate and his younger brother are regular altar servers — Israfel literally can't avoid being around Nate. He tries to keep their relationship surface-level and platonic, but Nate has other plans, and things unravel from there.

Also, it has a happy ending. In case you were worried it might end in tragedy. (I was.)

Where to find: Here, both eBook and paperback!

Keltiad - Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

[rosefox]

Fandom/Canon Name: Keltiad - Patricia Kennealy-Morrison
What's awesome about it: CELTS. IN. SPACE.

Duels with light swords! Duels with spaceships! Duels with magic! Magic that destroys planets! A love triangle full of angst! Sibling rivalry! A GLORIOUS Mary Sue heroine and the jealous mean girl who love/hates her! Magic school! Battle school! Horses! Telepathy! (No telepathic horses, though.) Generational feuds! A space ship that looks like a huge golden dragon! Descendants of the Atlanteans! Gods that might be aliens! Dream voyages! People speaking an amazing mishmash of Welsh, Irish, Scottish, English, and whatever the fuck else they feel like!

And then a small Earth spaceship shows up right in the middle of the war among the space Celts and the space Egyptians (who are genuinely sympathetic, not cartoonish villains) and the space English (more or less) and you get what is basically a racebent version of the ST:TOS crew (Japanese captain, Irish comm officer, Russian science officer, etc.) wandering around going "no but what the fuck".

It is the best, best, best cracktastic crack I have ever had the pleasure of smoking reading and I recommend it highly.

Notable for Yuletide purposes: there is a love triangle where the guy she doesn't marry goes to hang out with her and the guy she does marry on their honeymoon. I genuinely forget that there's no canon polyamory in these because the subtext is || close to being text. And there are a great many foster siblings and blood siblings and cousins if that is your thing. And single-sex boarding schools. And co-ed boarding schools. And Beltane sex rituals. (Really.)

Caveats: these came out in the 80s and 90s and have many of the common flaws of fantasy novels of the era. There are no fat people and no disabled people—literally everyone is a ridiculous 12 out of 10 on PKM's personal hot or not scale, which means they're all seven feet tall and hyperathletic with long flowing hair. There are no canon trans or queer people; there's also no canon disparaging of trans or queer people. The society is fully gender-egalitarian with some sex-segregated magic/religion stuff that will be familiar to anyone who's even glanced at 1980s-style Wicca/paganism. There are no skeptics of the religion because the gods do miracles and show up and wander around on the regular. The only dark-skinned people are the space Egyptians and a very brief cameo from some space Amazons, until the Earth folks show up and bring with them one (1) Black dude (who isn't a villain and doesn't get killed but also doesn't get many lines). There are no poor people but they take some effort to explain why there shouldn't be poor people anywhere because it is the government's responsibility to care for the populace. (The government is an elected monarchy clan something something something. Whatever. It's not important.) The prose can only be described as grandiose.

When people say "The golden age of fantasy is 11" these books are what I think of; I read them when I was an 11-year-old girl and I thought they were the best thing since things.

Where to find: Three paperback novels, which should be read in this order: The Silver Branch, The Copper Crown, The Throne of Scone. All are long out of print but can be found on AbeBooks for pennies. Alas, there are no e-book editions. (WHY NOT. THESE BOOKS ARE SO GREAT.) Alas, they have not been turned into movies. (WHY. NOT.) There are other related books—she retold the Arthurian legends in this setting, with a big section set on the planet of the space Amazons because space Amazons are cool, and also wrote a standalone that sucks—but for my requests I'm focusing on the original three.

[swan_tower]

Fandom/Canon Name: Gabriel Knight

What's awesome about it: Urban fantasy mystery point-and-click RPGs from the latter days of Sierra. Gabriel Knight is a mystery novelist who turns out to be from a bloodline tasked with hunting supernatural threats -- only he's the last of that line because they screwed up generations ago and have been cursed ever since. In the later two games his assistant/sidekick Grace Nakimura becomes a playable character and co-protagonist. The character development across the three games is really satisfying. And each game takes a surprisingly deep dive into its subject matter: New Orleans voodoo in the first title, Sins of the Fathers; werewolves and Ludwig II and Richard Wagner in the second, The Beast Within; and vampires, wine-making, Templars, and the whole "Jesus had a child" idea in the third, Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned.

Where to find: GOG sells all three games for $5.99 a pop -- cheaper than a paperback book, these days!

[elf]

That was one of my favorite books as a young teenager! I have no idea if I remember enough details to do anything Yuletide-y with it, but I have fond memories of it. :)

[kutsutsu]

Thanks for the reminder, I watched a few episodes of this a while back and should watch some more! It was pretty entertaining.

Vermilion - Molly Tanzer

[ricardienne]

fandom: Vermilion - Molly Tanzer

what it is: a Weird West horror novel that puts queer poc front and center. In alt-1870's San Francisco, Half-Chinese, half-English Lou Merriwether is a psychopomp-- a specialist in laying the unquiet dead, from unhappy ghosts to full-on zombies. She's good at her job, and it keeps her from thinking too much about her father's death and her rocky relationship with her estranged mother. Until she reluctantly takes on the task of investigating the mysterious disappearances of Chinese men who were lured to a mysterious Sanitorium in the Colorado rockies with the promise of work and haven't been heard from since...

why it's awesome: do you like necromancy? Adventures in the mountains? Gunslinging, foul-mouthed, give-no-fucks heroines? Pulpy dime-novel plots and villainy? Historical fantasy about POC? Un-erased queer and genderqueer characters? If yes, you will probably enjoy this novel, and perhaps you will even want to request/offer fic for it!

Daughters of Mannerling

[thisbluespirit]

Fandom/Canon Name: Daughters of Mannerling by M.C. Beaton (Marion Chesney)
What's awesome about it: Do you expect, when picking up another slight, light-hearted Regency series to be confronted with a possessed/sentient beautiful but evil stately home? I certainly didn't and now I need to know more. Yuletide seems like my only hope.

Imagine Pemberley, but so evil it drives everyone into desperate deeds to possess it, up to and including murder. And once they do, it then tends to drive them to throw themselves (or other people) off the bannister and haunt the place.

How did it get that way? Is it just so in love with its own perfect proportions and beautiful landscaping? Built on a cursed site? What? Did it torment previous generations? What happens next? (The ending suggests that it'll just start the game again with the next generation). Does it survive into the post-stately home era and become a goverment department with the highest casualty rate and inter-office rivalry in the country? Or burn down and curse in turn a modern estate? I mean, these are questions I need to have answered. Does it get investigated over the years by ghost-hunters/detectives/eccentric government outfits? (Clearly there are some options for appropriate crossovers here.)

The series is fairly fun, too - if you've read an MC Beaton Regency, you know the kind of thing. But with added blink-inducing crack of an EVIL house. Which is, as you can tell, exactly the kind of crack I am here for.

Where to find: It's a very slight series - six books, but you could get through them in not much more than a day, and you'd probably only have to read the last couple to get the gist. It seems to have been relatively recently reprinted and available in libraries both here (in the UK) and in the US.

On Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/series/55378-the-daughters-of-mannerling

[thisbluespirit]

Fandom/Canon Name: The Shadow of the Tower
What's awesome about it: Did you watch The White Princess and pine for a more historically accurate dramatisation of the same period?* Your luck is in: the BBC made such a thing in 1972, a 13x 50 min serial composed entirely of historical accuracy, curtains, bad wigs and absolutely no budget whatsoever. And a monkey. \o/

It was made as a prequel to the BBC's earlier Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R. It's an odd little serial, but it is fairly accurate as these things go (although not entirely, of course; it's fiction and it has its own agenda), and has a really interesting take on many aspects. It does require some getting used to the theatrical style, and episode 1 is unfortunately pretty dire - but it improves fairly rapidly after that. If you're into Shakespeare's histories, Tudors, or historical drama generally and don't mind theatrical TV, there's a lot to appreciate in this, especially James Maxwell's layered take on Henry VII. It's all about trust/mistrust, power, paranoia, the terribleness of kings, and irony and, of course, people getting their heads chopped off. I would love to have some things followed up, or missing years covered, and just more generally. ("The Serpent and the Comforter" "The White Hart" and "Do the Sheep Sin?" are definite highlights, at least IMO.)

Also, James Maxwell's face generally, although I accept that is probably just me and I need help or something.

Also: I wasn't joking about the monkey.

Online info & reviews:
Shadow of the Tower (Wiki entry)
http://venetianvase.co.uk/2015/01/27/henry-vii-winter-king-and-the-shadow-of-the-tower/
https://thehistorylady.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/henry-vii-the-tudor-who-started-it-all-beset-by-pretenders-in-the-shadow-of-the-tower/
http://www.frockflicks.com/the-shadow-of-the-tower-pt-2/
tumblr post on my favourite episode: http://lost-spook.tumblr.com/post/147694255839/favourite-episodes-of-old-telly-3-the-shadow#notes

Where to find: here on YouTube. It is also out on DVD in R1 and R2 (although oddly, only in non-UK editions, but they play! I have the Dutch one, which came pretty cheap second hand.)



* I haven't actually seen TWP, so apologies if I'm maligning it, but I have seen The White Queen, so I suspect not.