Canon Promo Post 2020

[modzilla]

Please use this post to promote the fandoms you're interested in requesting, or ask for recommendations of canons that suit you!

Promoting your canons

Comment here with information about the canons you are thinking of requesting, or otherwise want to get people into!

Information you might include

Title

Media

Approx length

Where to find it (If giving links, please only link to legal sources. You may want to encourage people to contact you directly if they are having trouble finding a canon and you can give them tips.)

What is it, in summary?

What do you love about it?

What sort of things are you likely to request for it?

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests?

Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence) - this is at your discretion and is not expected to be comprehensive

Some examples: Yuletide, Fandom5k

Please keep an eye on comments, as people may have follow-up questions about your canons.

Asking for recs

You're also welcome to leave comments (anon or not) asking people to rec you canons that they are likely to request.

Consider letting people know if you're interested in specific media only, or have other restrictions.

Comments

Moonlight Garden

[tristesses]

Moonlight Garden

• 98 chapter webcomic


• Available on Lezhin.com

What is it?

It’s an F/F webcomic about love, obsession, politics, dark secrets, and sex. Lots of sex. I’ll let the website tell it…

“The enchanting flower maidens of Moonlight Garden are coveted by all, as they are known to provide sexual pleasures beyond the imagination. But Dohwa, a young flower maiden who has not yet “bloomed,” concocts potions in the hopes of escaping her destined fate at the brothel. One night, she is caught stealing ingredients for her potions by Lady Hyewon, the new mistress of the Garden. But it turns out Dohwa isn’t the only one with an agenda. Lady Hyewon harbors a few terrible secrets of her own.”

Note: the “blooming” mentioned here is similar to the kink of going into heat, except there’s no breeding/pregnancy involved. Just uncontrollable sexual desire (that can only be satisfied by the touch of a woman).

Something I enjoyed about this is that there are literally no men involved! (Well, I can think of two, but they are more exposition characters than anything.) All relationships are between women, which is a nice change.

What am I likely to request?

I would be happy with literally anything about this comic. The tale of an OC flower maiden? Awesome! Yoosun/Dohwa/Hyewon? Fantastic! General worldbuilding? I am all for it! 10k of smut loosely connected by plot? Sure!

Content Notes

Blooming happens regardless of what the flower maidens want, so sex with flower maidens in bloom is inherently dubcon, and there are depictions of rape — although not to the main characters, if I recall correctly (they do get threatened with it, though). There are medium amounts of violence and depictions of slavery.

Promo: Kaptara

[delphi]

Title: Kaptara
Media: A one-volume comic series (on hiatus)
Approximate Length: 128 pages
Where to Find It: Available in both print and digital format. See the Image Comics series page for a list of where to purchase online and links to a comic shop locator.

What It's About
Kaptara is a delightfully silly sci-fi/fantasy romp about Keith Kanga, a gay xenobotanist who crash-lands on an absurd alien planet. Jaded by his experiences with bigotry, he's more than happy to leave Earth behind for good—until an alien threat to his home planet inspires him to (reluctantly) set off on a heroic quest with a dry-witted tracker, a half-witted prince, a hovering orb that can only communicate through motivational slogans, and a by-the-books warrior who just might be the man of Keith's dreams.

Meet Keith and Manton.

What I Love About It
Chip Zdarksy's writing and Kagan McLeod's art make me laugh out loud, but the humour wouldn't work half as well without the real feelings at the core of all the silliness. Keith's motivations are understandable, and the burgeoning understanding between him and Manton is legitimately sweet.

What I'm Likely to Request
The series went on hiatus after the first volume, so there's a ton to explore! I'd be requesting anything from a proposed take on the rest of the arc, to slow-burn romance between Keith and Manton, to more about both characters' lives before meeting, to future wacky space adventures. The improbably coloured sky's the limit.

Ruse and Route 666

[serenity_abrin]

Titles: Ruse; Route 666 (CrossGen Comics)

Media/length:: Comics. Ruse has 26 issues + 3 bonus side issues. Route 666 has 22 issues.

Where to find it:: Amazon has 2 graphic novels for Ruse and one for Route 666. The individual issues are also floating around online, and are fairly easy to find.

Summary:: I've bunched these together because they are both linked to the larger Sigilverse of other CrossGen comics. These particular titles, however, work very well on their own. Knowing what's going on in the rest of the CrossGen universe adds a bit of context but is absolutely unnecessary to enjoy either comic. CrossGen went bankrupt; this doesn't really affect the ending of Ruse but Route 666 ends a bit abruptly.

RUSE: A Victorian detective/adventure comic set on a fictitious planet resembling Victorian Earth. Simon Archard is our Sherlock Holmes and Emma Bishop is his Watson. She is hiding magic powers from him as she tries to learn more about his past. They must solve the puzzle of the Enigmatic Prism, a gem that has a bloody history and a terrible secret.

ROUTE 666: A horror comic set on a planet resembling 1950s Earth. Classic movie monsters are hiding in plain sight. Cassie, the protagonist, has always been able to see dead people. The ghost of her dead grandfather awakens her power to see these monsters too. She kills one in self-defense but everyone else sees only a normal person so it looks like she killed an innocent man. She is now on the run from monsters and the police as she tries to uncover why the monsters are stealing souls.

What do you love about it? :
CrossGen as a whole is deeply rewarding for anyone who reads all the titles to stitch together the larger picture of what is going on, but each title works very well on its own too.

Ruse is full of witty banter and fun adventure. There are loads of awesome characters, not the least of which are Emma and Simon who have an amazing relationship. Their friendship is so rewarding, and I love the found family they have with Simon's network of agents.

For Route 666, I love the age gap relationship between Cassie and Cisco. I'm not usually a horror fan but I was sucked into this comic immediately. I really loved watching Cassie's powers grow throughout the series, and I was invested in the mystery of what the monsters were doing and what was going on.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? :
Since both titles ended before their time, there are a lot of things that were set up that canon never had a chance to explore and I'd love to see someone tackle them. I'm also looking for tropey ship fic.

Content warning: Route 666 is a horror comic so there's a bit of gore.

Promo: Team Fortress 2

[delphi]

Title: Team Fortress 2
Media: A multiplayer first-person video game, and a comic book series and collection of short videos where the plot and major character work happens
Approximate Length: To get a grounding, six comic book issues plus a short catch-up comic, 35 minutes of video, and as much time with the game as you like.

What It's About
Team Fortress 2 is a team-based first-person shooter video game that was released by Valve in 2007. Jokingly referred to as America's #1 war-themed hat simulator, the game doesn't take itself seriously in the least. You play as one of nine classes of mercenary hired to fight over a New Mexico gravel mine in an alternative version of the late 1960s/early 1970s in which Australia has long ruled as the world's technological superpower thanks to its deposits of wonder-element Australium. Mostly, you strategize with your team, shoot at the opposing side, and collect funny hats.

The game is a hoot, but it didn't spawn such a passionate fandom on its own. As staff at Valve put it:

TF2 didn't start with a lot of story. There wasn't room for one. But as the updates got more ambitious, we found the perfect way to explore the mercs' world: comics. Over the years, the comics have spawned ancillary characters, then assistants to the ancillary characters. Companies mentioned in passing became global empires three generations old. The game that started as a handful of guys in a desert shooting at each other slowly blossomed into the most labyrinthine story in Valve history.

This labyrinthine story includes century-long revenge plots, secret parentage, wizard roommates, Welsh crooner Tom Jones, corporate takeovers, classic comic homages, friendship, romance, loyalty, cross-species male pregnancy, and a whole lot of naked mercenaries (occasionally slathered in honey).

Where to Find It
Everything is free online!

Videos
Meet the Team (a series of 1-3 minute animated videos introducing each of the mercenaries)
Expiration Date (a 15-minute short film)
Other optional videos include canonized fan project End of the Line and ads for updates to the game like Mann vs. Machine, The Sound of Medicine, and Jungle Inferno.

Comics
Catch-Up Comic (a primer on the canon)
TF Comics #1: Ring of Fired
TF Comics #2: Unhappy Returns
TF Comics #3: A Cold Day in Hell
TF Comics #4: Blood in the Water
TF Comics #5: Old Wounds
TF Comics #6: The Naked and the Dead
Other optional reads include supplementary and game update comics.

The game is available for free on Steam.

There is also an official wiki that includes information on all plot points, character moments, game assets and voice lines.

What I Love About It
I love the chaotic humour and the wild flights of worldbuilding fancy. Even after consuming the canon an overenthusiastic number of times, there are still lines that make me laugh. But what keeps me coming back are the characters, especially the Medic (a mad scientist stripped of his medical license who canonically sold his soul to the devil), Miss Pauling (handler and corpse-disposer extraordinaire who is still working out how to tell jokes and once turned up at a bar's Ladies' Night expecting to meet ladies), the Engineer (a seemingly down to earth Texan who once cut off his own hand to install a robotic upgrade), and the Sniper (a polite and professional Australian who always uses his turn signal, enjoys hallucinogens, and always observes proper protocol when murdering people for money). They're part of a large cast of off-beat and oddly charming people who can be thrown together in any combination to tell an entertaining story.

What I'm Likely to Request
Shippy stuff (likely Engineer/Medic and The Administrator/Miss Pauling at the very least) with any amount of backstory, lore, or mission-based adventure that someone might be inspired to include.

Watch Dogs

[tentacledicks]

Title: Watch Dogs / Watch Dogs 2

Media: Video Game

Approx length: 17-20 hours for the main campaign in both games, 20-25 including side content

Where to find it:
Watch Dogs is on Steam, Uplay, and EGS
Watch Dogs 2 is also on Steam, Uplay, and EGS

It's worth checking the price on each store, because all of them run sales at different times and it can be the difference between paying $5 for a game and paying $40. Both games are also available on the PS4 and Xbox One, and Watch Dogs is also available on the PS3, 360, and WiiU.

What is it, in summary?:

Watch Dogs is a revenge story, starting with the death of Aiden Pearce's niece and culminating in the murder of one of the most powerful crime lords in Chicago. Aiden is a criminal who's hunting for answers, and the more threads he unravels about the night that changed his life, the deeper he falls into the web of crime and conspiracy that's trapping Chicago. It's dark, it doesn't have a happy ending, and it shows a man spiraling down into obsession that drives everyone else away.

Watch Dogs 2, in sharp contrast, is the story of a hacktivist group trying to make a change, fighting against the overreach of the tech companies using people's data for profit. Marcus Holloway is a hacker that was unjustly framed, taking back control of his life as he and his friends do their best to make a difference. If the first game is grim as hell, the second is bright, vibrant, and full of hope; Marcus ends up triumphant, and his connections with others are a large part of that.

Both games are open-world third person shooters, with the first taking place in Chicago and the second taking place in San Francisco. One of the core gameplay mechanics revolves around hacking and exploiting the smart city system that the Big Bad is pushing out across the globe, though it's much more nuanced and well-developed in the second game. The second game can be played 100% nonlethally, while the first one has a morality meter but basically no nonlethal options for dealing with enemies.

What do you love about it?

Jordi's an absolutely hilarious character in both games (though he's a DLC mission character in WD2) whose presence never fails to make me smile, and the gameplay is genuinely engaging (albeit really goddamn frustrating on the mandatory driving missions early in both games; those missions only happen once, but they're still hellish to deal with.)

But putting literal best character Jordi aside, the main cast of both games is super interesting on their own; Aiden's self-destructive spiral is painful to watch but still very true to the kind of person he is, to the point where the inevitable outcomes aren't a surprise to anyone, least of all him. He's an absolute wreck of a human being and I find that super compelling about him.

And Marcus is both an absolute goddamn delight - earnest, empathetic, willing to joke around but still deeply passionate about what he feels is right - and a fantastic main character to meet the rest of DedSec with. Playing the game and hearing their banter is a lot like sitting in a room full of friends for me, and sometimes I pop in to play through certain missions just to watch Marcus joke around and do things with his friends. And there was a lot of care put into the game, from the devs and the actors who did voicework and stunts for the characters. You can feel the love poured into it.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it?

Shipping, definitely! For Watch Dogs, Aiden/Damien is a friends-turned-enemies ship, while Aiden/Jordi is the straight man/funny man of amoral killers bantering as they murder their way through mooks. Both ships have a lot of potential and interaction in the game itself, and I am starving to content here.

For Watch Dogs 2, Marcus/Wrench is the friends-to-lovers, ride or die, two people who meet and click and always get along ship that comes with a ton of UST and shipteasing. Marcus/Jordi is the enemies to reluctant allies ship that mostly involves Jordi still being the funny man amoral killer but now Marcus is here to be a rational human being that thinks that's PRETTY FUCKED UP ACTUALLY and also this guy is terrifying.

There's a lot of room for exploring canon, both during the game events and after, and I'm going to be requesting some of that. But the character dynamics stand up well enough on their own that I think you can have a lot of fun doing AUs with them too.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfill your requests?

There's cutscene movies for both games, along with Let's Plays if that's more appealing. The cutscene movies drop some of the between-mission chatter, but both of them have the bulk of character and plot mission information, and both come in at just under 2 hours.

Watch Dogs:
https://youtu.be/b2SP5qlMwUM

Watch Dogs 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcoObghaZ9Y

Content warnings:
Watch Dogs - Graphic violence (as in, some of the takedowns involve Aiden beating someone to death with a tactical baton, along with the usual gun violence of the genre), lots of violence towards and objectification of women, human trafficking including sexual slavery, nudity, major character death, and some of the side content involves Aiden spying on people with references to eating disorders, drug use, domestic abuse, and suicide.

Watch Dogs 2 - Graphic violence (though Marcus's takedowns are comparatively gentler and you can go through the game without firing a gun even once, there's some violence that can't be avoided), major character death, nudity, drug use, and some of the missions and side missions involve spying on people with references to abuse and suicide.

Gemini (2017 film)

[fiachairecht]

Title: Gemini

Media: Single movie

Approx length: 1h33m

Where to find it: Streaming on Hulu

What is it, in summary? Gemini is a quiet, neon-soaked neo-noir movie about an actress, her personal assistant, and her murder. It's also about mirrors, and long motorcycle rides through a very empty Southern California, and how that first sentence isn't quite true.

Heather Anderson is dead, the morning after meeting her someone who might be her stalker and turning down a movie deal. Her assistant/best friend who might be in love with her, Jill, is used to picking up after Heather but she may or may not be prepared to handle a murder investigation. Heather's girlfriend, Tracy, might know more than she seems to, and Heather's manager, Jamie, is balancing her dislike of Jill with her affection for Heather.

It's about tragedy, and the different ways in which people ask why, and the different types of people who are actually interested in those answers, and why people give different answers.

What do you love about it?: I love that the film centres relationships - romantic, obsessive, one-sided, business, platonic - between women. I love how pretty it is and how, noir-cliche though it might be, Los Angeles is a character. I love that it's self-aware without being obnoxious about it, that Jill is genre-savvy without necessarily being good at being genre savvy.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? I think the movie works really well as a self-contained story of a few days, so probably pre-canon and post-canon stuff. Also, I am me and I always want 'canon, but make them vampires', so expect that as well!

Content warnings: Murder, stalking

The Blending Series - Sharon Green

[morbane]

The Blending Series is a sequence of 8 fantasy novels (5, then 3) by Sharon Green. The first one is called Convergence: Book One of the Blending. Although out of physical print, the books are available in ebook in some regions, and somewhat available in libraries or secondhand.

The premise: The Empire is always ruled jointly by five adepts, each of whom is the master of a different discipline of elemental magic. And more: to rule as a Blending, they must be able to perfectly combine their powers.

Every twenty-five years, for Reasons, the current ruling Blending have to step down and a new Blending of five adepts must be enthroned instead. For Reasons, the new rulers are (supposedly) chosen by random strangers being thrown together into a group with the right magical distribution, and then taking part in competitions, to find out: Will They Blend?

I want to say that these books are good if, and only if, the specific plots and tropes in them are your literary catnip. But I also just want to say, "Please do not expect these books to be good." If you love them wholeheartedly, then I'm sorry for the following, but I basically love them as trashy nonsense, so you might want to give up on the rest of this promo comment. Here's a much kinder review I generally agree with.

What these books have

-Underdogs
-Evil rulers
-Much scenery chewing
-Magical training montages
-An elemental magical sorting system with power rankings
-Elaborate competitions with secret stakes!
-Absurd rigging of same
-Truth drugs
-Mind control
-Telepathy
-Being sold into slavery
-Good conspiracies within the evil conspiracies
-Extremely trashy villains
-Extremely pretty and righteous protagonists
-Woobie backstory drama
-Extremely glamorised sex workers
-Unlikely Group Must Learn To Work Together...
-but even more than that, fucking makes their magic stronger, which means...
-poly house drama that rivals any reality TV.

What these books do not have

-Good pacing
-Consistent worldbuilding
-Consistent characterisation
-Distinct character voices, other than what can be achieved with slightly spelled-out dialect
-Nuanced villains (some are pretty rapey, fyi)
-Any sense of restraint.

Apparently you should not judge a book by its cover, but I think the following is illustrative.

This (click for larger) is the original print cover of Book 5. Honestly, I think it's beautiful. This is what you think you're getting.


This (click for larger) is the lurid option of the cover currently available on Kindle. It is truth in advertising.

What I'm requesting

-Worldbuilding; I basically see this as a crack played straight request. How do all these conspiracies keep from toppling over? If the Seated Five did really work as a system of government, how would they earnestly handle the 25-year turnover? What do middle or high adepts do, especially when it's nowhere near, or just after, a Competition year?
-Original characters: the drama of "we've been placed in a mansion together and now we must train together to win or die!" is both absurd and compelling to me, especially when combined with the ridiculousness of "also we must sleep together." (The books only have het sex. Boooooooo. I look forward to subversions of that, and plenty of other ways not to play it straight. Maybe your group figures out how to be a Blending and then successfully runs away.)
-Jovvi/Tamrissa: These two women are very supportive of each other and, apart from some Tamrissa character assassination in book 4, are the most sympathetic to me. Maybe some canon divergence in the first series, or some closeness within their polycule-whatever in the second series?


To fill my request, you can probably get away with skimming the first four books. I will consider you as noble and glorious as a Tom Cantry cover.

NB: I think I gestured to most of the major warn-worthy content, but it includes rape, domestic violence, sexually sadistic murder (in the background), slavery, mind control, very tropey treatment of sex work, and protagonist centred morality.

Full set of titles:

Convergence: Book One of the Blending
Competitions: Book Two of the Blending
Challenges: Book Three of the Blending
Betrayals: Book Four of the Blending
Prophecy: Book Five of the Blending

Intrigues: Book One of the Blending Enthroned
Deceptions: Book Two of the Blending Enthroned
Destiny: Book Three of the Blending Enthroned

Ichi the Killer (Koroshiya Ichi)

[exchangebench]

Title: Ichi the Killer

Media (/length): One 10-volume manga, and/or its 2 hour movie adaptation

Where to find it?: I don't think the manga has ever been officially licensed, but scanlations are easily found online. The movie is available to rent on Youtube, with subtitles.

Content warnings: I'm going to lead with this, because the absolute defining feature of Ichi is how incredibly, over-the-top violent it is. If you don't have a stomach for gore, this is not going to be a canon for you. Barely a page goes by without someone getting a limb ripped off or having something sharp shoved in places it shouldn't go. There's also a fair amount of sexual violence, including rape, necrophilia, and genital torture. There's a few scenes of underage noncon. The movie is a lot tamer than the manga, but it's still not something I'd recommend to anyone who doesn't know what they're getting into. Ichi the Killer is a story about terrible people doing terrible things, portrayed in heavy detail. And it does a great job of that! It's just. Not gonna be for everyone.

What's it about?: Shiroishi Hajime is a mentally and emotionally stunted young man with a lot of pent-up violent tendencies. Seeing his potential, an old man nicknamed Jijii decides to take him in and mold him into "Ichi," a superhero-esque persona who goes around the red light district of Shinjuku and kills all the bad people. Which sounds great! Until you realize that Jijii has no morals of his own and just wants someone to fight his gang wars for him, and Ichi is incapable of processing the difference between violent criminals and innocent bystanders. Things only go more downhill when Ichi builds a mental connection between killing people and getting aroused, leading to a frighteningly intense sadistic streak that Ichi just does not have the maturity to understand in any normal sense.

Ichi, however, is not the real protagonist of the story. The plot kicks off when Ichi gets the orders to kill a gang leader named Anjou. Anjou's right-hand man is Masao Kakihara, and he is one kinky bastard. He's open and proud about being a huge masochist who gets off on people beating him up, and he has no time for weak-ass sadists who do silly things like "respect his boundaries" or "care about his well-being." No, he wants someone who will absolutely destroy him. Which Anjou was happy to provide. As a result, Kakihara was madly in love with his boss. (Multiple characters call him out on it. It's great.) And when Anjou seemingly goes missing? Kakihara starts tearing apart the entire yakuza underworld in order to get him back.

When Kakihara eventually finds out that Anjou's dead, he's of course devastated...but more than that, he's intrigued by the man who apparently killed his boss. Ichi's been killing other yakuza this whole time, and by analyzing the, er, evidence left at the crime scenes, Kakihara deduces that this mysterious "Ichi" figure must be a stone-cold sadist. Enchanted by the idea that there might be someone out there who could please him even better than Anjou, Kakihara sets out to find the fabled killer. Thus begins a bizarre game of cat and mouse, with Ichi slowly picking off Kakihara's allies while Kakihara tries to have Ichi for himself.

The movie is, for the most part, a pretty faithful abridging of the events of the manga. (With many of the more gratuitous gore scenes eschewed, as I mentioned earlier.) Honestly, the biggest change the movie made was turning Kakihara into a prettyboy, which I certainly can't say I mind.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: Awful, awful men doing awful, awful things to each other. And loving it. Both Ichi/Kakihara and Anjou/Kakihara are ships full of potential for so much fun emotional weirdness and strange power dynamics, even aside from the obvious massive kink potential. These characters are so fucking good and they play off each other like a game of horny, dysfunctional Pong. Gimme more, please.

RE:ZERO

[(Anonymous)]

Title: Re:Zero Starting Life in Another World

Media: I requested the anime adaptation for this exchange (the original is a light novel and there's also manga adaptation)

Approx length: 25 episode series and two OVAs. Second season is currently airing, but even without it the first season is a pretty satisfying watch.

Where to find it: It's available on Crunchyroll. I suggest watching Director's Cut which is a remastered version of first season

What is it: One day Natsuki Subaru suddenly finds himself in another world. He figures this might be the big thing that will change his life for better. After all, being transported to another world means that he has received some special magical powers and now he will lead a life of luxury... except he dies a gruesome death less than a day after being summoned into this fantasy world. Luckily for him, that's when he discovers his special power, he has a unique ability to return back in time after dying. Which is an ability that he will keep having to rely on, because the fantasy world he ended up in is a dangerous place to live and Subaru will end up dying a lot.

What do you love about it? It's a very unusual take on an isekai story in that it's an honest to god reconstruction of the isekai tropes. Subaru is absolutely insufferable at the beginning of the story, believing that being transported to another world means that he is special. However, the story goes to great lengths to beat that mindset out of him to the point where the whole second half of the show is about him having to overcome his entitelment before he can succeed. It's one of the best character arcs I've seen, tearing the protagonist apart physically and mentally in a really visceral way and forcing the protagonist to face all his failings. But the series isn't just the protagonist. Every character feels like a living and breathing person who has their own live. There isn't a secondary character I don't like and the whole cast could easily have their own interesting adventures without protagonist ever appearing in their life (though in some cases those would be tragically short lives). The places, the people, the history, they are all fleshed out to create an intricate and fascinating world. Also, there's just something extremely satisfying about watching the character having to repeatedly die and put a lot of effort to earn their happy ending.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? I'm requesting gen for Subaru and some of the great secondary characters. Particualrly a great spirit, Puck; the withdrawn librarian Beatrice; and other queen candidate knights who all have interesting interactions with Subaru.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests? The first season should be enough on it's own. Frozen Bond OVA gives some interesting insight into Puck, if you decide to write about him.

Content warnings: A lot of gore, since the protagonist keeps dying or watching people he love get murdered pretty regularly. It's a pretty brutal series in that regard not pulling any punches. There's also some fantasy racism.

promo: All American

[dirty_diana]

All American

32 episodes on CW/Netflix in the US. I think you have to use other methods in other countries.

what it is: a teenager moves from his poor Los Angeles neighbourhood to play football at a Beverly Hills high school; drama ensues.

longer: a teen drama/sports drama with a very charming cast, that gets into personal and social issues very sincerely. There's romance, there's secrets, there's adorable hot messes trying to find their way. I don't think there's any need to be a fan of or expert in American football, though it would probably help to not hate all mentions of it. It airs in CW's block of shows with a predominantly black cast, with Black Lightning, so if you're looking for representation on your screen here it is.

fannish appeal: Taye Diggs is here and he's still lovely. Cody Christian is also here. Has all the friends and family sticking together you could want, great male-female friendships, sweet canon het, adorable canon lesbians, and for slash potential a bunch of boys who veer between bffs and frenemies, and general teammate dynamics. (My requests are gen and het.)

contains: storylines/beats about being a black teenager in America, not all with a totally happy resolution. Antagonists will occasionally say racist or homophobic/transphobic things. All the serious life topics you'd expect of a teen soap, in general.

Looking for Recs

[(Anonymous)]

The longer writing period for this exchange means it's perfect for creating some more involved interactive fiction. I'd like recommendations for canons that people would like interactive fiction for. Canons with "medium" levels of lore are best. Enough to set a tone. I'm more interested in filling in blanks rather than sifting through something sprawling like Star Wars. I especially love horror and fantasy settings that would let me create magic rituals or religious rites and stuff where found footage or internet first media tropes could be applied. Here's some examples of what I'm thinking of:

The Magnus Archives (podcast) - Preseries fic with Gertrude and her dynamic with Emma and Agnes. Jonah picking his new hosts through the centuries.
Bloodborne (video game) - Choir rituals or school of Mensis studies. Another Hunter of the Dream and how they failed and descended into madness.
Dishonored (video games) - Something from the point of view of Delilah or Breanna's coven or the Sisters of the Oracular Order would be fun. Granny Rags, the Lonely Rat Boy, or other marked characters that inhabit the edges of Corvo and Emily's stories.

Others stuff I'm familiar with that I think would work: Pathologic (video game), The Southern Reach trilogy (books), Steven Universe (show)

I'm totally willing to learn a new fandom for this!

Visual Novels by parade

[shamebucket]

I'm lumping these together because they are in the same universe and have largely the same content warnings, but they can definitely be played separately if only one of them looks interesting to you!

Title: No Thank You!!!, Room No. 9

Media: Visual Novels

Approx length: NTY!!! took me around 35 hours to play in English. Rn9 took me approximately 10 hours to read in Japanese, but my Japanese reading speed is much slower; it's due to be released in English on August 6th, and I'm approximating that it'll take around 4 hours to play.

Where to find it: Both NTY!!! and Rn9 are available on Mangagamer and Steam. Both are uncensored on Steam, if that was a concern. If you prefer to read them in Japanese, they also are available on DMM and physical copies are available on the usual Japanese storefronts. There are also setting books that you can buy from parade's official website for extra info (Japanese only), but this is by no means required.

What is it, in summary? These are 18+ Boy's Love (M/M) visual novels that veer much less romantic than the typical fare that has been translated, and instead focus more on porn (that is usually, but not always, noncon or dubcon) and either mystery or character development respectively. They take place in the same universe, but they do not look connected at first glance.

The premise of NTY!!! - You play Haru, a mysterious man who has amnesia after being hit by a car to save a stranger's life. Said stranger is the owner of a bar that secretly doubles as an under-the-table detective agency. Haru gets hired as one of the bar staff while he tries to remember who he is, as he has no identifying materials on him when he was hit by the car. Throughout the game, Haru solves mysteries with the rest of the bar staff as he woos one of them! Haru is bisexual and an exclusive top in the game. The love interests include the beefy, middle-aged bar owner Kouichi, the quiet and mysterious well-built chef Maki, the stern and cold piano player Ryu, and the gentle and unlucky-in-love bartender Hiroyuki. All of the love interests are "straight". There are approximately 3 endings per boy.

The premise of Room No. 9 - Childhood best friends and university students Daichi and Seiji have just been dumped by their girlfriends, right after Daichi bought tickets to go on a trip to Okinawa. It's their last summer before they get full-time work, so Seiji offers to go on the vacation with Daichi. Daichi happily accepts, and is excited to go on a vacation with his super cool, super hot best friend! However, when they land in Okinawa, they end up boarding a bus that was filled with some sort of knock-out gas, and they wake up in a strange hotel room. An LED screen replaces the window, and a tablet lets them know that they have been selected for a social experiment. Every day for the next ten days, either Seiji needs to hurt Daichi physically, or Daichi needs to debase Seiji sexually. Neither of them wants to hurt the other, so this will be a very difficult task for them... You play as Daichi, and Seiji is the only "love interest". There are six endings across three routes.

What do you love about it? I'm a parade/Clock Up stan, I won't lie. These games are definitely not for everyone, and people can argue about the taste of including some of the things they choose to include, but I think that these games have a more sensitive take especially on child abuse than many visual novels of the same genre do. While these are porn games (and the porn is really hot! both beautifully drawn and sexily described!), I feel like there's much more to them than just porn. NTY!!! has a really interesting mystery that is super fun to watch unfold with a really cool gameplay system, and Rn9 just... is one of the most tragic VNs I've ever read, one of the best Fuck or Die stories Ever in my opinion. You really get inside Daichi's head as he's forced to hurt and be hurt, trying to find the best way out of an absolutely impossible situation, and it's heartbreaking to watch.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? I'm mostly interested in pre-canon and post-canon for both games, but I'm flexible! Explaining my pre-canon prompts would be a bit spoilery, but post-canon I'm mostly looking for fix-it since things don't always go well for the main characters and I JUST WANT THEM TO BE HAPPY.

Content warnings (apply to both games): noncon and dubcon, watersports, breathplay/choking, major character death (can be avoided), extensive discussions of child abuse, neglect, and child sexual abuse. Discussions of yakuza/criminal activity, drug use. Very heavily implied off-screen child death.
NTY only - a parent/child incest subplot that isn't explicit, but is shown from the child's point of view and they are clearly unhappy with what's happening to them.
Rn9 only - minor gore, scat (images can be toggled off for both, but the scat scene is actually plot important so I wouldn't recommend skipping through the scat), avoidable but character development-important gang rape scene. Daichi dissociates a few times. Internalized homophobia.

Sarazanmai

[shamebucket]

Title: Sarazanmai

Media: I personally believe that the best experience is multi-media, but only the anime is required both to enjoy the experience and to fulfill my requests! (Recommended order for my requests: spin-off manga -> Twitter -> first volume of the LN -> anime -> both volumes of the LN. Most to least important for my requests: anime >>> Twitter > manga >>> LN.)

Approx length: the anime is 11 episodes, so less than 4 hours. The spin-off manga, Sarazanmai: Reo and Mabu is a single volume that you can read in an hour or less. There is a fan translation floating around of the ReoMabu Twitter @/keeponly1luv that takes an hour or two to read through (it's around six months of daily tweets, with pictures). Only one of the light novels has been translated into English as of yet, but the second is coming out in November and both light novels are fairly short and shouldn't take that long to read (a few hours at most)!

Where to find it: The anime is licensed by Crunchyroll and Funimation, and is available for streaming or physical purchase on both of those websites. The manga and light novels are both licensed by Seven Seas, and are available in both hard copy and digital formats (Google Play, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon are all accessible vendors that I know of off the top of my head). Contact me if you want to see the translated Twitter, since I'm unsure of the strict legality of that? It was originally online for free (because it was an in-character Twitter...), but the Twitter was blacked out during episode 10, and all the deleted tweets were published in a book in limited quantities after the fact (Japanese only).

What is it, in summary? From Ikuhara Kunihito (of Utena fame), this anime is about connections, love, desire, and (mis)communication. It follows three teenage boys who break open a statue and release the mysterious Keppi, who claims to be the Prince of the Kappa Kingdom, and turns them into kappas to fight against the Otters, whose mission is destroy every connection on earth. Kazuki, Enta, and Tooi all need to learn to connect with each other and the people that they love to be able to defeat humans-turned-monsters (kappa zombies) and put the world back into balance. On the sidelines, mysterious Reo and Mabu are working for the Otters, and something seems to be... off about their relationship. They dance so close to one another, so why do they look so sad?
The manga and Twitter take place before the anime, and are a lot of ReoMabu's backstory that make their moments in the anime even more poignant. The LN has some exclusive backstory for ReoMabu as well, and some cut scenes that don't make it into the anime.

What do you love about it? In terms of themes: a lot of people think that this anime is confusing to follow and a bit absurd (the extended shirikodama extraction scene in the first episode is, uh... probably a deal-breaker for a lot of people, lol), and they might be right, but I think that it's most fun to just sit back and enjoy it! Sarazanmai is incredibly earnest, and it has a really wholesome message at the end that made me cry. It's often as funny as it is heartbreaking! I loved the symbolism in the show, especially the water and circle imagery.
In terms of characters: Okay, I won't lie: I love everybody in this show dearly and would be happy to see them as background characters in any fic you might think of writing for me, but Tragic Cop Dads have stolen my heart and have free real estate in my brain at all times. Their entire arc feels like it was written just for me. Every part of it is special, and putting it all together creates a tapestry of tropes that I love (childhood friends! miscommunication! dads!!! angst with consent issues!!!!), and the ending of their story I found incredibly moving (and the openness that lies afterwards)! Not only do I find their literal storyline appealing, but I love the meta elements too. Like, the way that both the audience's and Reo's opinions of Mabu's feelings towards him changed as more information slowly came out. It was really fascinating watching people say "haha ReoMabu isn't like canon canon even though they're baiting it really hard" at around episode 7 and then episode 10 happened and blew everything wide open! (Although a lot of us already considered it explicitly canon by episode 9 for... many reasons.) I'm not sure how well this will translate to people getting into the series later, but one of the things that I found really cool about Sarazanmai was how the staff constantly played with expectations by teasing us both within the show and on social media. I would love to see that in fic, too!

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? I'm still coming up with prompts as of the time I'm writing this promo post, but I'm likely to request a wide variety of scenarios for Reo/Mabu(/Otter), from pre-canon to post-canon, canon compliant to AU, fluffy to angsty, gen to smutty (I have a wide variety of kinks that I'm into, and I love vanilla as well). I love it all, and I'll try to give you some different options to work with!

Content warnings: character death (both temporary and permanent), fade to black noncon, BDSM and other fetishes shown on-screen, children in peril, a waterboarding scene, drugs, gun violence, yakuza/gang violence, police brutality/vigilante justice (it's more symbolic than literal, but still probably warrants a warning)

Kim Possible Promo Post

[neosaiyanangel]

Kim Possible

TV cartoon show

87 episodes + one movie

Where to find it: Disney+ is a legit source. A less legit source is, surprisingly, YouTube. Last I checked nearly all the episodes (not the movie) were on YouTube

Kim Possible is a combination action/adventure, comedy, and high school drama about a teenage heroine defeating villains while trying to maintain her social life. She succeeds for the most part! Most episodes are a balance of regular life drama and actiony villain fighting. Sometimes there’s an Aesop, a couple of times there’s a spoof Aesop. Very much a comedy, too, with lots of running gags and a few callbacks. But! There is no real overarching plot. You can pick out a few episodes (like those with your favorite villain) and still know what’s going on. So the Drama is the movie capping the third season that doubles as a mystery.

What do I love about it? What DON’T I love about it? Great protagonists and antagonists! Each character is unique and memorable. There’s practically a villain for everyone to like. Mad science! Ninja monkeys! Killer golfers! Life lessons that make sense (for the most part...I’m looking at you, Halloween episode). Subtext! Obvious text! Relationship advice! (Though I really don’t like Kim/Ron)

What sort of things am I likely to request for it? Drakken. Dr. Drakken is, hands down, my favorite character. Good things happening to him make me happy and I LOVE Drakken/Kim (mid-season 3 onwards only due to ages). I’m not going to specifically request it, but I would love exploring the deaths of the synthodrones with personalities in So the Drama as a debate point on the measure of non-human lives in the Kim Possible universe.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfill your requests? As I said earlier, each episode (save for A Sitch in Time which I hate with a burning passion) is standalone. You could just pick out the Drakken episodes. Or, if you’re daring and short on time, you could just watch So the Drama and get a good idea on the main characters.

Content warnings: The worst I can think of is violence due to the action scenes. Death is more of a dropped a bridge on them in season 4. There is a genuine ‘what measure is a non-human?’ death in So the Drama that I would LOVE to be explored a bit.

PG Wodehouse - Psmith

[aurilly]

Title: Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse

Media: Books

Approx Length: There are four short novels. You only need the first two books in order to write most of the Psmith/Mike requests that people make. I promise.

Where to Find It: The books are all free on Gutenberg HERE.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? Pretty much every request ever is for Psmith/Mike shipfic. It's not just me.

Series Overview: The official order is:
1) Mike & Psmith – classic boarding school hijinks | meet-cute | devoted roommates | so much loyalty porn, gah
2) Psmith In the City – living and working in London | devoted roommates | even more loyalty porn
3) Psmith, Journalist – Psmith vs NYC gangsters | gun fights | running a newspaper | a ridiculously shippy Ch2 & Epilogue
4) Leave It to Psmith – country estate hijinks | identity porn | jewelry heist | comedy of errors

Jump in with whichever one has a setting or trope that you like! They each work as standalones. All that said, I'd read 'Psmith, Journalist' last.

What It's About: A hilarious, eccentric, badass, dandy hero in early 20th century England. Think 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' with lower stakes, but even more charming eccentricity and homoeroticism (I know, right?!). In almost every book, Psmith ends up throwing himself on his sword in various hilarious ways for the benefit of Mike, who is a non-eccentric, everyman cricket star.

What Makes It Great:
Do you like identity porn? Do you like satire? Do you like completely devoted, self-sacrificing best friends who are immensely shippable? Do you like odd couples? Do you like stories set at dreamy English castles, with bonus mysteries, heists, and action scenes? Do you like angst with a happy ending? Do you like exquisitely pyrotechnic celebrations of the English language? Do you like to laugh? Do you like breathing? If you answered 'yes' to any of the above, you will like these books!

This series often gets recced as a good example of the English boarding school genre; however, only the first book takes place at school. The rest put the boys in a variety of locales and situations. There's truly something for everyone.

The greatest draws of the series are:
• Psmith himself – Psmith's dialogue is unparalleled in gentle, eccentric hilarity. The guy talks non-stop and it's always so weird and funny and charming. But then, when necessity demands, he will very calmly, very elegantly, very sexily take you down and make you squirm. If you go after Mike, he will destroy you and blandly pretend to Mike that he had nothing to do with it. He's an eccentric genius, but a really nice example of one. He's a snob about everything except people, whom he likes no matter their class.

• Odd Couples – Mike is the opposite of Psmith in terms of dialogue and temperament. Watching their back and forth is beautiful. Even better is how mastermind Psmith respects and constantly compliments Mike's simple, straightforward contributions (compliments AND complements!). The wonderful thing is how the narrative never makes Mike the butt of the joke, or treats him as bland foil. One of the reasons this is my favorite series is because, unlike in his other books, Wodehouse allows Mike to wallow in so much believable ANGST, which makes Psmith's sly resolutions all the more satisfying.

• The writing – In addition to the dialogue, the plotting -- specifically in Leave It to Psmith -- is AMAZING. Even aside from the character of Psmith, this is one of Wodehouse's most satisfying, perfectly crafted masterpieces.

If, after reading the main four books, you find yourself equally in love with Mike as with Psmith, try the prequel called simply "Mike". It's on Gutenberg HERE. It's a classic boarding school novel about Mike before he met Psmith. I wouldn't recommend starting with it, since it's not as interesting as the Psmith ones (and therefore might bore you and make you stop before you get to the good stuff), and it isn't remotely necessary to understand the later ones.

Content Warnings: Honestly, the biggest content warning is about the cricket content. It's zzzzz. When you see a game starting, just skim until it looks like the characters and narrative start talking about other things. You won't be missing anything. More seriously, part of the reason Psmith, Journalist is my least favorite is because Wodehouse wrote out phonetic accents for a few NYC characters, which, with most writers, tends to come off... yikes. You don't get that in the other books, thankfully.

I know a lot of people consider writing Wodehouse fic very intimidating ; however, this is not Jeeves. Mike's canonical 3rd person POV is incredibly straightforward and simple. I promise. Please? Pretty please?

Vagrant Story

[sylvertongue]

Title: Vagrant Story

Media: Video Game (Playstation One, available on later platforms as well, released in 2000.)

Approx length: 24 - 30 hours playtime, or two hours to watch the cut scenes.

Where to find it: Watch all the cut scenes as a movie, or Playstation (discs or download). See the concept art here.

What is it, in summary?

Would you like:

An iron woobie, one man army with memory/identity tropes and, it must be said, assless battle shorts?

A sorcerer prophet with metal limbs, claws, and a magical tattoo that binds him to The Dark, a supernatural force that may or may not be sentient? And telepathy powers that let him play on the woobie's memory issues? And, it also must be said, leather pants with a butt cape that do not do up at the front?

A loyal lieutenant to the sorcerer, who will follow him anywhere?

An evil Templar on a mission to steal the supernatural force for ~~his church~~ himself?

A small supporting cast of mercenaries, agents and knights who all get enough story to be interesting?

An abandoned magical city in ruins?

Dragons, zombies, creepy dolls, animate suits of armour, minotaurs, zombie minotaurs, and monsters of all kinds?

Vagrant Story is an RPG style dungeon crawl with a focus on weapons, the creation and use thereof, with a pretty cool story.

Riskbreaker Ashley "I am the reinforcements" Riot, is sent to deal with a situation at a politically important Duke's manor. Cult leader Sydney "I am the hart and you are the hunter" Losstarot is searching for a grimoire there, but when he doesn't find it, escapes to the ruined magical city of Lea Monde. You play as Ashley, fighting his way through Lea Monde's denizens and Sydney's mind games while building better and better gear for yourself.

Meanwhile Romeo Guildenstern commands the cardinal's Crimson Blades, sent to seize the grimoire for the church, and - yes - Rosencrantz is an amoral rival Riskbreaker there to steal Ashley's thunder and play more mind games. Blade officers Tieger and Neesa are a delight.

There are three female characters who get lines. Inquisitor Callo Merlose should be working with Ashley but he's not cooperative, so she's doing her own thing, and she's really cool. She gets superpowers by the end. Lady Samantha gets a terrible storyline, but she has excellent potential. Commander Neesa of the Crimson Blades is a total delight and I wish we got more of her.

The ending is ambiguous enough to leave a lot of room open for post-canon directions.

A warning, if you decide to play this: working out the Snowfly Forest on your own is not worth the trouble. Go look up a map for it. It's a stupid level and every single person who has ever played this game agrees.

What do you love about it?

This game is just visually beautiful. I mean, the in-game graphics are twenty years old, the resolution is pretty horrible, but the concept art gives you enough to go on.

An enemies to allies mind games ship, an iron woobie, and a snarky metal armed sorcerer with claws. CLAWS. Sydney gave up his arms (and possibly his legs, it's a debate) voluntarily in order to become the Rood Bearer, the person who wears the Blood Sin tattoo and therefore is the avatar of The Dark. He can, as a short list, summon creatures, heal himself but not without pain, and use telepathy-like powers to push Ashley into his memories and talk to him there.

Ashley is kind of mentally disintegrating as he fights his way through the game, thanks to Sydney's forcing him to question his memories, and that plus his obsession with catching Sydney to see his mission through is my catnip.

By the end, Ashley, a brute-force fighter, has magic he has very little idea what to do with. It hits my love for "I'm dangerous to other people, I need to go off by myself, oh no, here is my old enemy here to help me" tropes so hard.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? Likely comics, and maybe fic too. Monster fighting, Ashley and Sydney working together, post-game mentor/student magic learning, Idk, sex magic maybe.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests? See links to cut scenes above.

Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence): There are zombies, and zombies who know they are zombies and are sad about it. There is an instance of betrayal and murder of a female partner by a male character. The violence is not graphic but when there are death scenes they are drawn out. 

The Seer and the Sword - Victoria Hanley

[morbane]

Title: The Seer and the Sword - Victoria Hanley
Media, length, availability, what it is: One Young Adult fantasy novel. Out of print, available on Kindle in some regions and possibly secondhand in paperback.

The Seer and the Sword is part of the author's "Healer and Seer Series", but this is an extremely loose grouping that does not share an era, a location, or a magic system, let alone characters; you do not remotely need to read the other two books.

This is an indulgently tropey fantasy that starts with a conquered and enslaved prince (Landen) being given as a gift to a princess (Torina), who promptly frees him. Over the course of the novel, both characters find their lives violently uprooted and must assume new identities and discover new skills; the courses of their lives are also deeply affected by the goals of a third royal figure, High King Dahmis.

What I love: There is so much pining! Pining for people you can't have, pining for people thought dead... Just pining in general. There is also competence, and dramatic episodes of competence! Torina is self-assured and brave; Landen is defiant and inventive and charismatic; Dahmis is charismatic, dedicated, and a visionary. And there is identity porn. So much identity porn. Also, of course, there is an adventure plot, involving politics between kings, a magic sword, a crystal ball that gives visions in the right hands, and a foreign invasion...

What I'm asking for: You can probably guess from the description so far that there is a romance between Landen and Torina, but the romance between Dahmis and Torina, and Dahmis and Landen, is nearly as textual. Dahmis can't stop thinking of Torina; Torina is tempted by Dahmis. Landen is utterly thrilled to work for Dahmis; Dahmis is intrigued by and deeply admiring of Landen. I really want to get all of them together, though more pining, or more politics and worldbuilding, would be a plus.

Content warnings: This is pretty safely middle-grade in tone and content (and prose). However, realms invade each other, there is slavery, there is murder and threatened murder, there is drugging, and there is a threat of coerced marriage.

Archive 81

[fayharley]

Title: Archive 81

Media: Podcast

Approx length: 35 episodes split into seasons. Season one episodes are around 15 minutes each, season two 40 minutes each, and in three up to an hour.

Where to find it: Available on all major podcast apps. Their website Archive 81 has links.

What is it, in summary? The creators describe it as "a found footage horror podcast about ritual, stories, and sound." The first season revolves around Dan Powell being hired to transfer some archived cassette tapes to digital. The tapes are interviews of people living in a strange apartment building in the 90s. As the story progresses, we learn that the building might be alive and there's a cult trying to use its power. The second season follows Dan once again, only now he's in an alternate dimension dealing with eldritch beings. The third season is set in New York and is about two half siblings, Nicholas and Christine, following a ritual their dead father invented.

What do you love about it? The soundscaping! More than any other fictional podcast I've listened to, Archive 81 puts an emphasis on sound design. This is an in universe consideration as well. The extradimensional beings in the show are best identified by the music that accompanies them. Though out clips of interviews, museum tour guides, advertisements, and answering machine messages are used. The fun part for me is that you're not told initially which of these is important and which are just flavor. Characters and ideas reemerge episodes or seasons later. There's an emphasis on the idea that the act of being listened to gives you power. There's even a character that only has a physical body when he's being recorded.

The characters are also very fun. Season two in particular is my favorite. It starts with some horrific body horror. Dan has been kidnapped and is being turned into something half machine. The doctor is a weird little guy that eventually picks the name "Rat." What I love is that Dan never hates Rat. And Rat talks about loving his creation and is excited for Dan to learn to enjoy his new body. It's a wonderfully weird dynamic. There's a third character with them, Suit, who is another of Rat's experiments and slowly regains her humanity through the season. The contrast between her hatred of Rat and what she's been made into versus Dan's friendship or almost love for Rat despite everything makes things tense as they're dealing with some bigger issues like the weird dimension they're stuck in being ruled by leviathans that want to kill them. There's more characters of course and a lot of strangeness and terror but the central relationship I'm into is those three.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? Season two is the most interesting one to me and Dan/Rat is my pairing of choice. The dynamic of a mad scientist in love with his experiment is really fun.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfill your requests? Dan is the main character of seasons one and two.

Content warnings: Graphic violence and gore throughout including animal death. Characters are subjected to verbal and medical abuse.

The Technomancer

[aearis]

Title: The Technomancer

Media: Video Game

Approx length: 20-30 hours, or ~4 hours to watch the cutscenes on youtube.

Where to find it: Steam or GOG for PC (Windows only), on PS4, and Xbox One.

What is it, in summary? A post-apocalyptic sci-fi RPG set on Mars. You play as Zach, a newly-graduated technomancer who quickly gets caught up in a conspiracy and has to go on the run, enlisting other factions for help. There are 5 companions to recruit, 3 of whom are possible romance options.

What do you love about it? The worldbuilding! The lore! The characters! The main locations you can visit (Ophir - the capital city of the Abundance corporation, Noctis - a secret city built into a canyon, Mutant Valley - a settlement built by escaped mutants, who are more or less treated as slaves by everyone else) are stunning, each with rich origin stories just waiting to be delved into. The characters are complex and interesting, even the NPCs and side characters. I don't want to go into more details about Andrew and Niesha who I've requested in my sign-up, because they're both introduced to you as being different to who they really are, and I don't want to spoil anything.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? Post-canon fic for Zach/Andrew, one of the possible (and arguably the best) romances in the game. Also pre-canon fic for Andrew & Niesha (with optional Andrew/Niesha), who have a great dynamic and interesting history together that's only hinted at in-game. I'm also always down for canon-divergent AUs and AU settings.

Content warnings: RPG-typical violence, nothing too gory; alcoholism and drug use; unethical experimentation, including on children (mostly discussion, nothing graphic); suicide in a companion's side quest (contains a cutscene with clear visuals of the body)

ELEX

[aearis]

Title: ELEX

Media: Video Game

Approx length: 25-50 hours, highly dependent on the difficulty level and the amount of side quests you complete and exploration you do. As far as I can see, there's no comprehensive cutscene video on youtube, but there are a few complete Let's Plays if you don't want to play the game yourself. Word of warning: it can take ~10 hours of grinding to really be able to progress in the story, you may want to install mods to make the game easier if you're short on time and/or patience.

Where to find it: Steam, GOG, Xbox One, PS4

What is it, in summary? An open world post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy RPG. Several years before the start of the game, a comet crashed into the planet of Magalan, causing the extinction of nearly all advanced civilisation. The comet brought with it a new element called elex, which caused some humans and animals to mutate while others split off into factions and made use of it in different ways. The Berserkers transmute it into Mana, which they use to cast magic, while the Clerics use elex to create weapons and machinery, the Outlaws use it to create stimulants they inject into themselves, and the Albs consume it raw to make themselves stronger at the cost of suppressing their emotions.

You play as Jax, a former Alb commander whose raider is shot down while on a mission. His brother Kallax is sent to execute him for his failure, but Jax survives and sets out on a quest to find out who sabotaged his mission and ordered his execution. Along the way, he has to deal with the effects of elex withdrawal, one of which is coming to terms with having emotions. The game operates on a 'cold' system, giving the player choices to make Jax more logical or emotional, which affects some quests and character interactions as well as the ending.

There are 7 companions to recruit and 2 romance options, though the romances aren't particularly deep, all you get is a cutscene and some extra dialogue.

What do you love about it? First of all, it's basically all my favourite RPG genres rolled into one game. Swords, bows, guns, magic, it's got it all. Second of all, the world is huge and so much fun to explore. It's got five main areas - the forests of Edan, home to the medieval-esque Berserkers; the deserts of Tavar, home to the Outlaws who build everything out of scrap; the volcanic regions of Ignadon, home to the futuristic Clerics; the frozen mountains of Xacor, home to the Albs, and the forests of Abessa, a neutral zone with civil war brewing in its main settlement, the Domed City. The worldbuilding is fantastic, with lots of side quests that draw you into the NPCs' daily lives, and journals and audio logs that give you snippets of what Magalan was like before the comet hit. The game also has great characters, but there's a disappointing lack of interaction with your companions outside of quests and between the companions themselves that I'm hoping can be rectified through fanfic.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? Anything to do with Jax, Ray, and/or Kallax. More details in my sign-up, but basically family stuff with Jax & Kallax, shippy stuff with Jax/Ray, or gen/backstory stuff for any of the three.

Content warnings: Violence, blood, strong language

[kanadka]

Title: XCOM (is a franchise, but each is standalone and I'm specifically requesting Chimera Squad)

Media/Length: Video game, takes 20-26 hours to complete, or about 4 hours to consume enough youtube material. You can find the game on Steam, and I'd wait for the next sale to get a better discount. (While the XCOM games typically are available on Windows, Mac, or Linux, alas CS is currently Windows-only.)

What is it?
XCOM Chimera Squad is a turn-based tactical action/strategy game by the same guys who brought you Civilization (and XCOM generally is a lot like Civilisation except military sci-fi, and also in addition to the resource planning, it has missions where you shoot people). In Chimera Squad, you have a team of 11 agents, 4 of whom you can bring on any mission. Your goal on any of those missions is stuff like escorting a hostage out, rescuing civilians, capturing flags, etc. Between missions, you have to manage resources to be able to quell unrest in different parts of the city.

What's it about?
If you're not familiar with XCOM as a franchise, here's the story so far from the main games: you play as the Commander of an international paramilitary organisation (that's XCOM), originally set up by a council of nations to combat an alien invasion. The aliens win, though, and they set up their own occupying organisation on Earth called ADVENT. There's a lot of capturing, autopsying and genetic experimentation on both sides: ADVENT has its own strange science projects for their own murky reasons which you discover as you play, while XCOM is mostly looking for answers and how to make better weapons and not be the underdog all the time. After 20 years of occupation and alien rule, ADVENT is finally overthrown in the events of XCOM 2. The upper caste of the aliens who made up ADVENT leave the planet, but they leave behind all their alien grunt soldiers. A tentative peace has been struck to get humans and remaining aliens (and the hybrids that ADVENT created, who aren't human or alien) to work together.

This is where Chimera Squad comes in, and it takes place 5 years into this tentative peace, trying to enforce that peace. It's up to you as the player to figure out how effective that enforcement really is! When not saving the city in an alien/human/hybrid SWAT team, or choosing where to expend resources, your team snarks playfully at each other in the background.

Why I love it:
- I'm a huge fan of turn-based tactical strategy :D
- the worldbuilding is great but has a lot of potential that's constantly going under-explored
- the characters in Chimera Squad are charming and super fun - unlike in previous XCOMs, you can't customise them, they come pre-made; and while they've done a good job making a diverse and fun cast for CS (nice voices, some clever writing), there is still so, so, so much more potential to fleshing out these characters, and it'd only be a step above Original Works type fic at this point.
- it's cheap but replayable (you can only collect 8 of the 11 agents and playing with different ones means different strategies), so there's value for your money; it's also relatively short
- it's (arguably) not as difficult* as regular ordinary XCOM, because you get a free first turn, and there's not as much stuff to customise, so it's an easy gateway to the franchise (or indeed to other turn-based strategy games, such as Shadowrun (the computer game version, that is))
- it has that Great XCOM Feel of having a 97% probable hit and missing and ruining the absolute rest of the mission and getting everyone killed!
- it doesn't take very long before you find the cool guns and unlock the cool skills and become massively overpowered and then No One Can Stop You. It's very good for working out aggression.

*unless you pick the super hard ironman-type setting that doesn't let you save so you can't refresh the game over and over to try that shot you missed again. ...which I would never do, of course.

What I'll request
Worldbuilding, and found-family teambuilding shenanigans. My favourite character is Verge, and I nominated a few others I was fond of, but I really love them all, and there's a whole bunch of cool character archetypes for those who don't like the 'I grew empathy so I heel-face turned and found myself a redemption arc'. For example, Terminal is a cheerful/wisecracking/sarcastic medic who hides pain and a difficult past that she conceals-doesn't-feel; Godmother is an older srs bsns resistance veteran who Can't Stop Fighting and Doesn't Like Trusting, and Torque (the sexy snake lady) fought for the opposite side throughout the entire war - only her connections with Col. Kelly seem to have gotten her out of detention - and she's still generally kinda prickly.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests?
Yes! There's a campaign movie here - it's not long, though it feels a little more disjointed as it removes all of the fun things the squad says to one another as they're standing around the map table, or in missions, or while you're planning your resources, but youtube provides for those, too and you can get a sense of in-mission dynamics and the agents' special skills just from watching that or other playthroughs. All character intros can be found here, if that helps entice you.

Dark (2017)

[flirtygaybrit]

Title: Dark

Media TV (Netflix)

Length: 3 seasons | 26 episodes

What it is: A German sci-fi drama about time travel! Set in a small fictitious German town called Winden where a nuclear power plant looms ominously over dense forests, mysterious cave systems, and underground bunkers, this series follows a series of residents across multiple generations as they investigate and unravel some incredibly strange mysteries--such as children vanishing into thin air, portable time machines powered by radioactive materials, and a really, really complicated group of family trees. And the apocalypse, of course.

Also a lot of string-of-fate and knot metaphors! And some intergenerational trauma. And a lot of accidentally running into strangers who reveal themselves to be your parent, or your child, or yourself (older, younger, another dimension), or your surprise nephew's third cousin, or--

What I love about it: all of the above! It's got a fairly solid story, in my opinion, and has a very unique take on the infinite and cyclical nature of time travel, whether such time loops should be preserved and whether or not they can be destroyed (and if anyone truly has a choice in the matter), how unexpected and often paradoxical relationships can develop over time or reveal themselves in places you would never guess (again, the family trees are incredibly complicated)... and there are many characters we see across several points in time, and they are all so well cast. There are a lot of moving pieces and a lot of fun and interesting reveals in the series, but there is not a single character whose motivations are not thoroughly explained, and the story is very neatly contained within its three short seasons.

What I'd like to request: oh man, I would love to see so much, especially re: shipping. The nature of the show means there are a lot of years that we don't necessarily see, and a lot of relationships left to be explored. Full disclosure, the nature of the show also means that a lot of the most obvious ships are likely to be somewhat incestuous in nature, even if they are never strictly acknowledged as so, and it is discussed within the show, but it kind of ends up being mostly irrelevant, I suppose. In particular, though, I'm interested in seeing the relationship that develops between Jonas Kahnwald, the protagonist, and Noah/Hanno Tauber, the priest who is perhaps not quite as villainous as he appears. Even if not a strictly romantic/sexual relationship, I think they have a really interesting history that spans ~66 years, and anyone who's watched the show -- especially the final season -- will understand how nuanced and tragic these characters and their relationship can be.

(And, of course, having Claudia and Elisabeth with them, attempting to navigate a new apocalypse/create a wormhole/preserve or destroy a time loop will make for excellent shenanigans.)

(Also also, Hanno was born in 1904. Jonas was born in 2003. Two guys with vastly different childhood experiences, already familiar with different versions of one another... oh man, the possibilities.)

Are there sections of canon that can be consumed by themselves to fulfill your requests? I suppose so! It will contain major spoilers for the entirety of the series, obviously, but episode seven of season three contains a lot of wonderful secrets and possibilities.

Content Warnings for the series at large: sex/nudity, suicide, some violence (occasional gore, including murder), and heavily implied/sometimes directly addressed/often entirely ignored incest.

Darkwood

[corvusumbranox]

Title: Darkwood

Media: Video game

Approx length: 15-20 hours

Where to find it: It's available on Steam, and also on various consoles. (I have heard that the developer put it out for free somewhere, but I have no idea how you'd go about looking for it.)

What is it, in summary?: It's a top-down survival horror game from a Polish indie games company.

What do you love about it?: Two words: murder forest. It's creepy as hell, with gorgeously creepy artwork, and lots and lots of body horror, with monsters and arboreal horror -- mushrooms, people being absorbed into trees, that sort of thing, and it is so much my jam that I cannot even say. It's incredibly atmospheric and grotesque, and I found it pretty damn fun to play.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: Horror, and anything that captures the feel of canon. I'll be requesting both fic and a comic.

[damkianna]

Title: Tidelands (TV 2018)

Medium: Live-action TV.

Length: 8 episodes.

Where to find it: It's a Netflix series and should still be available there!

What it is: Set in Australia, Tidelands follows Calliope "Cal" McTeer, returning to her hometown of Orphelin Bay for the first time in years, after her release from prison for a murder she didn't commit. She is, naturally, immediately entangled not only in her brother's less-than-legal business pursuits, but also in increasingly complicated developments involving the close-knit commune of L'Attente, run by a ridiculously charismatic and intense woman named Adrielle, whose residents are known locally as "Tidelanders".

What I love about it: I tried to keep that brief description basically spoiler-free, but long story short: the waters off the coast are full of sirens. Sirens who like to not just drown human men, but bang them for fun on the way down ... and then dump their half-siren babies on the beach, to grow up as orphans in a fascinatingly weird closed community that operates by its own violent, disconcerting, and uncompromising rules.

Cal finds out she's one such half-siren when someone hired by her mother tries to drown her and it doesn't work. A bit further into the show, she attempts to bang her childhood crush, and accidentally starts using her powers over water to suck his blood through his skin with the palms of her hands! OOPS. This show is dark, a little strange, full of intriguing tidbits of worldbuilding that are not at all fully explored, and ends on a ridiculously twisty cliffhanger episode during which like three-quarters of the named cast get stabbed. We don't even get to find out how many of them die! THAT'S HOW BIG A CLIFFHANGER IT IS.

Cal is a fascinating character, jaded but uncertain, alone but desperate not to be, struggling to figure out what she is and whether it's okay to find herself liking to use her typically-incredibly-creepy siren powers. Adrielle is scary, unnecessarily dramatic, and weirdly magnetic by turns. The backstory worldbuilding regarding the sirens, and the Tidelander's communal desperation to be accepted by their "mothers", grabbed me by the brain and still hasn't let go. There is so much going on in just eight episodes, it kind of beggars belief! I'm not sure I can call it a good show, but for me it was engaging, absorbing, and stuffed full of hooks it didn't get a chance to fully explore (as far as I know, Tidelands hasn't technically been canceled? Maybe? But there hasn't been another season yet, and it's hard to imagine Netflix is suddenly going to pick it back up now).

What I'm requesting for it: I nominated a bunch of my favorite characters, but I've narrowed my final request down to Cal alone—I ship her with basically everyone she speaks to on the show, and would also be interested in pretty much anything about her that isn't aimed in a shippy direction.

 • Is quasi-incestuous m/f your jam? Cal and Augie, the guy she's been raised to consider her brother but is not actually technically biologically related to, have quite possibly the strongest and least fucked-up relationship on the show. Which of course immediately makes me want to fuck it up a little. /o\
 • Do you like good boy/bad girl m/f? Cal's aforementioned childhood crush, Corey, has grown up and become a cop, and is charmingly earnest, well-meaning, and willing to help her even though she's not telling him anything and also, you know, almost sucked his blood out of him with her hands. ♥
 • Do you like bad boy/bad girl m/f? Over the course of the show, Cal also hooks up with Dylan, a Tidelander who's mysterious and hot and kind of pulling a honeypot thing on her; his motives are incredibly hard to pin down, but he's pretty built, so there we are.
 • Do you like m/m/f threesomes? Check out the last two bullets! I'd be stoked if you wanted to turn Cal/Corey/Dylan into a proper triangle rather than a V, because frankly Cal and Dylan could really use someone guileless, upfront, and well-intentioned in between them.
 • Do you like constructing f/f out of thin air? There are several potentially interesting (and hot) Tidelander women Cal could bang, if things went a little differently ...
 • Do you like not constructing f/f out of thin air? And enjoy shipping young women who are tougher than anyone gives them credit for with much more obviously powerful older women who are threatened by them and secretly trying to kill them? Adrielle, the Tidelander queen, spends basically the whole show circling Cal, by turns hitting on her, seeking to be understood by her, and plotting her demise!
 • Do you like filling in blanks in worldbuilding, and/or deciding where you think a story should have gone? I would LOVE to see where you're interested in taking the show's "ending", no matter who you'd like to save, who you'd like to kill, or what you think might have happened next! The door is open for anything from horror to romance, Cal ascending to a position as queen of the Tidelanders to Adrielle deciding to keep her as a pet ...

I'd issue content warnings for: Gore/violence, mainly. Tidelanders take punishment very seriously, as a community; it gets gruesome at several points, and deliberate injury is caused to children onscreen. Also, as noted, a whole bunch of people get stabbed—several named characters are murdered onscreen, even before the finale.

Hashihime of the Old Book Town

[shamebucket]

Title: Hashihime of the Old Book Town

Media: Visual/Kinetic Novel. There are other materials (like short stories and Drama CDs) that are Japanese only, but I haven't interacted with them so you can ignore them if you'd like.

Approx length: ~30-40 hours depending on your reading speed. There are very few choices and they only appear at route branches (and there is an enforced playing order), so you don't need to worry about trial and error at least.

Where to find it: Mangagamer and Steam.

What is it, in summary?: Hashihime is a historical mystery visual novel (Taisho Era) about a young man, Tamamori, who comes to Tokyo to study at the Imperial University, but keeps failing his entrance exams. Two of his childhood friends traveled to Tokyo with him, and he is the only one that isn't accepted. In his spare time, instead of studying, he writes manuscript after manuscript of original fiction. Eventually he gets kicked out of his boarding house for not getting accepted, and he finds a home in a mysterious bookshop, Umebachidou. He ends up wiling his days away, until one day, his friends are mysteriously killed. He steps in a puddle and somehow travels back in time before everything goes wrong. Is he going to be able to save the people he loves, or is there nothing that he can do to change their fates?

What do you love about it?: Tamamori is such a little shit! I love him! I really love his strong opinionated character voice, how gross he is... but I also feel like the game does a really great job of humanizing him, too, despite him being a jerk a lot of the time.
There are a lot of things I think this game does really well. Tamamori experiences psychosis throughout the game, and instead of friends immediately shunning him... they're really kind to him and try to help him through it? It's unusual to see games that are sensitive to things like this, so it was genuinely nice to see.
This game also sold me on time loops. I was not a fan of the genre before this game, but damn does it sell the trope well! It's fun both on a meta level and for romance - there are certain scenes that really wouldn't work well outside of this trope, and man it's effective.
One of the other things that I really love about it is how rich the world feels. I didn't know a lot about Japanese literature before I played Hashihime, but now I'm really bummed that some of the books referenced aren't translated into English! There are a lot of meta elements about writing and reading and the back and forth between author and reader and also author and other authors, which could be a fun thing to explore in fic!

What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: I'm requesting a wide variety of prompts for both Minakami/Tamamori and Kaoru/Tamamori, who are both "the true pair" depending on who you ask. While their routes are really different, I would like to see backstory explored, as well as some "what if" scenarios.

Content warnings: Tamamori experiences psychosis, as mentioned before, which could be triggering to some people since he's often not sure what's real and what isn't. Early on in the game, there is pet abuse that is played for laughs and the pet ends up dying (it's a goldfish if knowing what animal it is helps). There are graphic suicide scenes (multiple methods). There's some gore, but it's usually played more for horror than gross-out factor. Tamamori is... Disgusting, as in he does things that are unsanitary (emetophobia warning at the very least). A character has CSA backstory. There are two adoptive father/son incest plotlines: one portrayed in a negative abusive light, and one that is a little more complicated but is ultimately portrayed positively. There is a route that has noncon in it (it's the third route if you need a warning). There's also period-typical homophobia and transphobia (including internalized, and including an extended scene of a character going through what could be argued as gender dysphoria), although it's never portrayed as good or justified.