Fandom Promos

[galerian-ash.livejournal.com]

Hi everyone, how's it going? Have you decided what fandom(s) to write for yet? If so, how about doing some pimping? :D

We've all chosen tiny obscure fandoms, needless to say. So by doing a little promoting you might be able to convince 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 a TV series? Talk about why you love your favorite character/pairing from your fandom? It's all good; anything goes!

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/__marcelo/]

I could describe The Black Monday Murders as a comic book at the intersection of detective stories, high finance, dynastic conspiracies, and dark magic, but then you might think it's a wacky AU. It's not wacky; like most of John Hickman's books (e.g. the superb East of West) the world-building is both fascinating on its own and highly self-consistent.

But let's us all wish really really hard that it's an AU.

[geri-chan.livejournal.com]

The fandom I plan to write for is the Japanese business drama Hagetaka: Road to Rebirth (http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Hagetaka) (also known as The Vulture or The Vultures). It takes place during the late 1990s through early 2000s after the collapse of the bubble economy. The main character, Washizu Masahiko, used to be a kind and idealistic Japanese bank employee until a tragedy caused by the bank shattered his ideals. He goes to New York and (apparently) becomes a cold, cynical, and ruthless vulture fund manager for an American firm. Five years later, he returns to Japan to buy up failing business on the cheap and sell them at a high profit, which puts him into conflict with his former boss Shibano Takeo, who is struggling to hold on to his own ideals. There's an intense battle of will and wits as they meet several times over the years, with Shibano fighting to save the businesses that Washizu is trying to buy out. But no one is completely right or wrong, as the banks and the business executives are often corrupt and/or incompetent. Meanwhile, the businesses acquired by Washizu prosper under his guidance. So as one character asks, "Is the vulture a devil or a savior?"

I know that "business drama" doesn't sound very exciting, but the show really is very intense and compelling, and I love the moral ambiguity. And Omori Nao does a great job of playing Washizu as a complex character that you often can't help but sympathize with in spite of his ruthlessness. I also discovered that I have a competency kink, because I just love how scarily efficient Washizu and his employees are.

For shippers, I found myself immediately shipping Washizu with his handsome young American subordinate, Alan Ward. Shallow reasons aside, I love how they work in sync with an air of long familiarity, and how Alan often anticipates Washizu's orders without needing to be told, and just how awesomely ruthless and efficient they are together. The other obvious ship is Washizu/Shibano, given the intense rivalry between them, and how, as Washizu says, they are basically flip sides of the same coin. (I didn't initially ship these two, but I can definitely see it after a couple of rewatches and sort of reading some Chinese fanfic via Google translate.)

There are only 6 episodes, so it's not a huge time investment, but they're not easy to find online. There's a link at D-Addicts (http://www.d-addicts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=73070) for fansubs, but as it's several years old, I'm not sure if it still works. There are plenty of short clips and music videos on YouTube if you want to just get a feel for the show, and sometimes full (raw) episodes show up, but often later disappear, probably because of copyright issues. I usually have more luck searching for ハゲタカ rather than the romanized title.

My Hagetaka blog posts (meta, summaries, links, and general squee) can be found here on LJ, (http://geri-chan.livejournal.com/tag/hagetaka) or here on IJ (http://geri-chan.insanejournal.com/tag/hagetaka) (with more Hagetaka icon pics).

[reeby10.livejournal.com]

The Hidden Almanac (http://www.hiddenalmanac.com/) is a podcast that I've been mentally describing as what would happen if the slightly less weird cousin of Night Vale's Cecil had a radio show. During the show, Reverend Mord (with occasional appearances by the perky Pastor Drom) talks about what's growing in his garden, the bloody anniversaries of horrible battles, the saints days of strange and incredibly niche saints, and more. It's a funny, bizarre little podcast and I've really enjoyed catching up with it. The podcast posts three times a week and episodes are about three to five minutes each, so it's pretty easy to get into.

[doranwen.livejournal.com]

I wrote for an odd TV miniseries called The Changes (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072484/). It's British, ostensibly for kids (they must have been thinking of older children as the under-10 set would be terrified by some of the scenes, I think), and rather apocalyptic in nature. It's a loose adaptation of the Peter Dickinson trilogy of the same name. There are only 10 episodes, each originally a half hour long; I highly recommend them if you can get your hands on them (you may have to resort to illegal methods for this; I'm not sure they ever released it officially).