Fandom Promos

[galerian_ash]

Have you already decided what fandom(s) to write for? If so, how about doing a little promoting? :D

We've all chosen tiny obscure canons, needless to say. But by posting here you might be able to entice someone else to give it a try — or perhaps you'll even run into a fellow fan, who can't wait to read your coming fic.

Your promo can be long or short, and contain whatever you feel like. Want to post a couple of intriguing screencaps from a movie? Quote a few paragraphs from a book? Rec the best episode of an anime or a TV series? Talk about why you love your favorite character and/or pairing from your fandom? It's all good; anything goes!

Comments

[flo_nelja]

Yde et Olive is a French medieval romance about a trans knight marrying a princess. The knight, assigned female at birth, is fleeing from his would-be incestuous father dressed as a man, and achieves high feats. In the end, an angel changes his physical form so he could have children with his wife.
(It's an interesting medieval take on gender, a nice fairytale-like story, and it should be better nown, regardless of ficcing ^^)

[flo_nelja]

Unrelated, but I saw your icon and: are you a fan of Hyakki Yakoushou? (talking about small fandoms)

[galerian_ash]

Indeed I am! I'm really happy to run into another fan of that manga :D

[flo_nelja]

If one day you want to write if for the comm, all the fics are in French (and by me ^^)

[delphi]

Ooh, that looks hugely interesting!

[atamascolily]

Deep Sea Aquarium MagMell (マグメル深海水族館; MagMell Shinkai Suizokukan) is a shounen manga by Kiyomi Sugishita about a young man working at the eponymous institution 200 meters beneath the surface in the Tokyo Submarine Canyon. Come for the gorgeous multi-page spreads of deep-sea creatures, stay for for the feel-good slice of life where nothing bad happens (at least as far as I've read) and learn a lot about ocean life from characters who genuinely care about their subjects.

This series deserves a wider audience, and I'd be delighted if this or my fic-in-progress encourages anyone to check it out!

[flo_nelja]

OMG I love this manga!

[atamascolily]

Aww yeah! Can't wait to post my fic so you can read it!

[flo_nelja]

Who is it about?

[atamascolily]

You'll have to wait and see! :)

[delphi]

That looks delightful!

[primeideal]

Currently thinking about "The 22 Murders of Madison May," a novel by Max Barry. He's the guy who made the "NationStates" webgame which I am kinda obsessed with.

"Madison May" is IMO one of Barry's better books. It's a parallel-universe thriller: there are certain magical objects that people can touch at certain times to jump into a nearby parallel universe. But once you're there, there's no going back. So there's a villain who keeps jumping in the hopes of hunting down a woman who (in some universes) is an up-and-coming actress, and who (in every universe) he's creepily obsessed with. A journalist finds out about it and starts moving to follow him.

I like the book because the "rules" of universe travel are restrictive enough that you can't necessarily do everything you want, which means it doesn't break plausibility with "why don't they just do X." The characters felt more interesting than "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August," a book with a similar-sounding premise about time loops. And this one is definitely about feminism/misogyny without coming off as overly preachy, in my view.

[atamascolily]

Oh, I remember NationStates! My friends and I loved it when it first came out. The only Max Barry I've ever read was Jennifer Government, the book that NationStates was based off -- I hadn't realized he'd written anything else! Very cool!

[tillwehavefaces]

The work I'll probably end up submitting for this challenge is based on The Prisoner in His Palace, a nonfiction book about the 'Super Twelve', the American soldiers who guarded Saddam Hussein in the time between his capture and execution, and got to know the man behind the dictator, developing quite close relationships with him in some cases. The book's short and very readable, but I found the dynamics between the soldiers quite interesting, coming as they did from widely different backgrounds with different personalities (and some juicy homoerotic conflicts/encounters).

[marcelo]

After, once again, marveling at the breadth of fanfic out there (a polite way of saying "repeatedly cursing at AO3 search results") I decided to go for Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub: it's claustrophobic nonsensical post-apocalyptic spy bureaucracy Kafkian insanity, so there are certainly stories to tell, all of them false.

[(Anonymous)]

If I can pull enough of a plot together to make it a proper mystery, I plan on doing some casefic for Robert Barnard’s Mr Mozart series (“http://www.uchronia.net/label/barnmozart.html”), a couple of alt history novels where the Mozart family moves to London during the 1760s and Wolfgang lives into his eighties as a grumpy hack theatre composer and accompanist (and eventual music teacher to a young Victoria), lamenting the successes he obviously would have had back in Salzburg and Vienna and getting dragged into murder mysteries and political intrigue by various patrons. There are hints at unwritten mysteries (and loads of imaginary operas) throughout, and I’ve long wished it was a lengthy mystery series and not so clearly a joke Barnard came up with after watching Amadeus.

Right now, my fic idea will likely pick up on some of the mentions of Mr Mozart’s disappointing trips to the Continent prior to the events of Dead, Mr Mozart. I’m thinking either something where he somehow gets attached to the British delegation to the Congress of Vienna and winds up in a kind of bickering composer-detective thing with Salieri involving French spies or a visit to Salzburg where Nannerl winds up solving the mystery.

[delphi]

As long as the final issue doesn't completely derail my story idea next week, I'm looking to write for We Only Kill Each Other, a five-issue comic book miniseries by writer Stephanie Phillips, artist Peter Krause and colourist Ellie Wright, with covers by Dave Johnson.

We Only Kill Each Other tells the story of two rival Jewish gangsters in 1930s New York—one a young up-and-comer and the other a veteran mob boss—who are forced to team up against a mutual threat when the American Nazi movement starts making moves in town.

For those familiar with the real-life inspiration for the story, a few adaptational changes may or may not land, but it's overall been an atmospheric and action-packed series so far about two enemies on opposite sides of a generational divide coming together as tense allies. (And if, like me, you're into shipping characters with age gaps and complicated shared backgrounds, this might deliver for you.)

The series started out as a Comixology original, but with the service now having been entirely absorbed by Amazon, individual issues are only available digitally for Kindle. A print TPB is due out in April, published by Dark Horse.

[flo_nelja]

Oooh it looks good!

[delphi]

I hope you enjoy it if you check it out! The last issue is due out on the 15th.

[flo_nelja]

I wish there was a paper version, it's easier for me.

[delphi]

That'll be another month, unfortunately. I believe April 20th is the release date. (Which, now that I type that exact date, is definitely a choice.)

[geri_chan]

I'm planning to write for Dungeon Critters, and I actually already made a promo post on it for Yuletide here!

To sum up briefly, it's a really cute and funny graphic novel about a group of Dungeons & Dragons style adventurers who are anthropomorphized animals. This trailer is a pretty good promo/intro to the book and characters. They fight evil plants! They go undercover at a fancy ball to spy on their leader's arch-nemesis! There is adventure, magic, mayhem, and botany! (Remember the evil plants?)

Easy (TV)

[innie_darling]

There are about six fandoms that sprang to mind when I saw this challenge, but I've settled on Easy.

I had never heard of this show (it's on Netflix in the US) until I was looking up Gugu Mbatha-Raw, as you do, and found she'd done two episodes of this anthology show (1x07, "Chemistry Read" and 3x09, "She's Back"). She plays Sophie, a Chicago theater actress who's got a boyfriend, Drew, whom she loves but not to the point that she'll let him stand in the way of her dreams. When she's offered a role on a TV show shooting in LA, she goes, leaving her boyfriend the butcher behind. She comes back two years later for a benefit for her Chicago theater company and seeks out Drew and they have one of the most honest and incredible conversations I've ever seen two characters have; Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Jake Johnson knock it out of the park.

[sweetsorcery]

I didn't manage more than one fic last year, due to all the other exchanges, and I'm not holding my breath this time either about being very prolific, but I'd like to try again for fic based on Morning Departure - a 1950 British submarine film. Here's a promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObbzXRonoGs

This is the plot: On a routine peacetime mission, the crew of HM Submarine Trojan runs afoul of an electrically operated mine, leftover from the war. An unavoidable explosion sends the ship plunging to the seabed.

It's a pretty dramatic, but oddly cosy, film with some lovely pairing possibilities.



Or I might actually try and write the first fic in a fandom I keep on requesting in exchanges: Count Dracula (TV 1977). This is my all-time favourite adaption of Dracula, and the casting of Mina and Van Helsing in particular is just wonderful. This is the ONLY het pairing I like, and I suppose I should just write it instead of requesting it. :)

Oh, and this adaption is online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96OIILetaho

[delphi]

These both look great! I'll definitely be checking them out.

[sweetsorcery]

Yay! I hope you'll like them.

[kurjanik]

I haven't fully decided yet, but I'm strongly considering Kukelokuti (Rooster Wattle). It's a short novel (novella? novelette?) about a linguistics student in 1990s Estonia, dealing with her PTSD. I hated the ending from the moment I realised what the foreshadowing pointed at (she drowned herself), and immediately concocted a version in my head where she survived, kicked the heck out of her assaulter, and also fell in love with her girl best friend. So that's one way. But I'm also nut sure how well writing it in English would work. Since she's a linguistics student, a lot of the way she thinks, how she narrates, is embedded with Estonian language puns and cultural things, and, god, the Wiedemann! How does one translate the absolute obscurity of Wiedemann's words?

... do board games count? I've always imagined the princess and the countess in Love Letter are girlfriends. (Also the captain and the contessa in Coup, but Coup does have one fic, so that's out.)

[flo_nelja]

Board games totally count!

[primeideal]

Ooh, Love Letter fic would be great! :D

[atamascolily]

I'm also writing a drabble for Puparia, a gorgeously animated three-minute short film by Shingo Tamagawa available for free on Youtube. Despite its brevity, there's a lot to unpack there, and I'm only scratching the surface of possible interpretations.

[tildytwo]

I just finished a little piece based on The Caine Mutiny novel. It's basically the story of a spoiled rich boy who joins the Navy and witnesses the events leading up to a mutiny on a destroyer-minesweeper during a typhoon in WWII. There was a great movie made starring Humphrey Bogart, Fred MacMurray, and Jose Ferrer, but my piece is based around the final chapters, which to my recollection didn't make it into the movie.

Incidentally, there're no fics for the book or movie version of The Caine Mutiny, but there were two non-English fics for the play version. I didn't even think to check for that--is that still okay?

[galerian_ash]

That's perfectly okay! For starters, non-English fics don't count at all; and secondly, different versions/adaptions of a canon are all seen as different (so even if there had been English fics for the play it wouldn't matter since you're writing for the book). Come to think of it, I don't think I properly mention that second bit in the FAQ, so thank you for reminding me! I'll edit it in ASAP!

Lost Words: Beyond the Page

[lirin_lirilla]

I recently played a video game about grief and found it very cathartic.

Lost Words: Beyond the Page (Steam link) is a simple platformer game by Rhianna Pratchett. It alternates between two sections: the journal of Izzy, a girl whose grandmother is in the hospital after a stroke; and the fantasy story that Izzy is writing about brave adventurer not!Izzy whose powers were passed on to her by Elder Ava (not!Gran), and who is going in pursuit of revenge and/or answers after her village was destroyed. The journal sections are 2D while the fantasy world sections are 2.5D, and both have beautiful but completely different visuals. The game itself is very easy, as evinced by the fact that I was able to play through the entire thing when I'm very bad at platformers (and at most other types of video games...); it does feel like it was written to be accessible for kids but as an adult I didn't feel like it was too immature for me. (I'm the kind of person who still enjoys reading YA and kids' books though, so others' perspectives might differ.)





The last part of this review talks about some personal grief...feel free to skip!

I had lost my favorite grandmother (and last remaining grandparent) a few years back in Jan 2018, and at the time I just hadn't had the energy to deal with it so I'd kind of just balled everything up inside and just kept pressing on. I think that's part of why this game hit me so hard, because it was bringing up some of that grief that I'd never really properly dealt with. I knit a pair of socks for Grammy that Christmas but the nursing facility she was staying at didn't let her choose her own footwear so she never got to wear them. Izzy's plans to show her Gran her story reminded me a lot of this, with all the guilt I felt that I hadn't given her the socks sooner, even though I'd done nothing wrong and she was still very glad to have the socks even though she couldn't wear them.

I really recommend this game to anyone who's working through (or trying to ignore) grief like I was; it's a gentle way to face those feelings. I sobbed so much through the game, but it was the good sort of crying, where you feel better once you've done it.

[shetiger]

I'm sliding in here at the last minute with my promo for Earth Star Voyager, a TV movie/failed series pilot aired in 1988. I've got a bit more on my DW here, but basically it's a 3-hour scfi movie with a young cast who set off to find a new planet for the inhabitants of Earth to move to. It starred Duncan Regehr, who played Shakaar in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as well as Zorro in the 90s TV series.

You can watch it on Youtube here.

I've loved this movie since I was 15, and I think it still holds up (for what it is) on a rewatch. If you want some kind of cheesy 80s space scif, please check it out!