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Nominations open in a few days, which is plenty of time for you to shill your favorite canon and lure people into your fandom. Feel free to use the comments on this post to tell everyone why your canon is the best!
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Fandom: Psmith - PG Wodehouse
What Is It?: Gently humorous novels about two best friends and the hijinks they get up to in early 20th century England. The first book starts when they meet in their last year at boarding school, and chronicles their adventures there. In the second, they live together and work at a bank in London. They love each other so much!
What It's About: Rupert Psmith is a whimsically eccentric mastermind and amateur socialist who talks a lot of wildly entertaining rot. Mike Jackson is a practical-minded everyman and cricket star who feels a lot more than his laconic demeanor suggests. Their devotion bursts from every page.
Why You'll Love It: Do you like epically loyal odd couples? Do you like shippable boarding school or university friendships in a historical setting? Do you like (canonical) best friends/roommates to (non-canonical) lovers? Do self-sacrificial gestures of love make your heart beat faster? Do you like to laugh? Do you enjoy felicitous turns of phrase by one of the greatest writers the English language has ever known? If you like any of these things, you will love these books!
Unlike Wodehouse's later output (which I also worship, don't get me wrong), these books have some actual angst, which fuels more feelings. Realistic misfortunes befall Mike, and Wodehouse allows him to be truly unhappy at times, which leads to greater emotional satisfaction when Psmith makes it all better.
Links: Free and legal downloads from Gutenberg HERE. The order is "Mike & Psmith", then "Psmith in the City", then "Psmith, Journalist", then "Leave It to Psmith" (this last one is not free). You only need to read the first two to be able to write this fandom; Mike is barely in the last two (but Psmith remains just as obsessed with him). That said, "Leave It to Psmith" is a masterpiece, and is what made me fall in love with Psmith and want to read the earlier ones.
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Fandom: Ame-Comi Girls
What Is It?: A short lived comic inspired by a line of DC statues that could be seen as the precursor to the Bombshells series.
What It’s About?: Diana leaves her island to venture into man’s world. Kara Jor-El, the last daughter of Krypton, discovers she isn’t as alone as she thought. Barbara Gordon protects Gotham after a shootout left her father in a wheelchair. Wonder Woman, Power Girl, Batgirl, and more heroines will have to come together to defend the Earth from those that would threaten it.
Links: https://www.comixology.com/Ame-Comi-Girls/comics-series/8312
Fandom: Giant Days
The main characters:
DAISY WOOTEN: Homeschooled Daisy is the naivest of the three friends, but her cheerful exterior overlies a core of determination. Her Brownie skills and good sense often rescue her two friends from sticky situations. Daisy is a lesbian whose unfortunate luck in love becomes important later in the series.
SUSAN PTOLEMY: Not as hard-boiled as she likes to think she is, medical student Susan is the gruff realist of the gang. Susan often doesn’t know when to quit — even when she probably should. Her former (and future?) flame McGraw becomes one of the gang’s good friends.
ESTHER DE GROOT: A cheerful Goth with an unshakable flair for drama, Esther leads her friends into adventure, good times, and the occasional disaster. She’s also friends with Ed, another friend of the gang who’s been nursing a crush on her.
Giant Days is a stand-alone ongoing monthly comic written by John Allison (Scary Go Round, Bobbins, Bad Machinery) and illustrated by others. A longer introduction with sample pages is available from Geek & Sundry, and a preview of the first issue is available at the BOOM! Studios site.
The series is being published in four-issue paperback graphic novels and in eight-issue hardback collections. All issues are available for purchase electronically online, and the first 23 issues are available with a Comixology Unlimited subscription.
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Gingiva is an indie RPG game. It stars a female automaton in a dystopian future who breaks out of her oppressive job with the help of a friendly sentient floating mouth. While her initial goal is simply to attain her own freedom, she winds up fighting to take down the powers that be, who've taken her escape rather personally. It can be finished in 4 to 7 hours, depending on how much you want to explore.
The world Gingiva presents is so utterly messed-up and beautiful, and the worldbuilding potential abounds. All of the main characters are fascinating and beg to be explored further in fic. There's also a ton of potential for intriguingly unhealthy xeno ships, ranging from cheerfully codependent incest to weapon/wielder relationships laced with corruption and manipulation.
Other reasons it's awesome:
* The graphics combine pixel art with gorgeous collage art.
* There's multiple routes, endings, and obtainable party members.
* It has a beautiful soundtrack.
Download: Right here.
Dawn in Naples is a music video from Chinese idol group SNH48. A plot-driven MV, it tells a story of conspiracy, betrayal, and revenge among an all-female royal court.
I'll be honest, the biggest attraction in this MV is the glorious hateship potential between the duchess (in the black coat, played by Li Yitong) and the princess (in the white and black dresses, played by Ju Jingyi). So many messy feelings and hand-kisses! But besides the femslash, there's also a ton of worldbuilding and character development to dive into, especially in regards to the dark side of the princess.
Other reasons it's awesome:
* Swordfighting!
* Costume porn!
* Oh yeah, the song itself is super catchy. :D
Watch: Here (normal version), or here (extended version)*.
*(I'd recommend watching the normal version first, then the extended, since the normal version is fully subtitled in English.)
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Fandom: David Blaize - E.F. Benson
What Is It?: Two gently humorous yet angsty coming of age novels set in early 20th century England. The first book follows the titular character and his friends through their years at boarding school. The second covers their years at Cambridge. There’s a surprising amount of canonical gay angst for something published in 1916.
What It's About: There's a LOT of pining, internalized homophobia, self-loathing anguish, naked swimming, romantic poetry recitation, declarations of love... and a memorably iddy scene of UST-filled caning. The central relationships are between David and his two closest friends, Frank and George (who goes by 'Bags').
David is almost absurdly nice without being too annoyingly cloying about it. Bags is a lovable woobie, always second best, and you just want to hug him. But it’s Frank who engenders the most feelings! Frank is such a wonderful, complex, fascinating character. He's smart, passionate, snarky, romantic, prickly, and terribly repressed.
Bags and David are the same age, but Bags hero-worships David something awful. He is eternally jealous of David's romantic hero-worship for Frank, who is three years their senior. Meanwhile, Frank spends the entire time trying to repress his lust for David.
Why You'll Love It: I mean... wow. If you like any of the tropes or dynamics explained above, you will love it. There's also some truly epic hurt/comfort, with people literally being healed by the power of love.
Caveats: The first book is GREAT. However, in the second, Bags is written a little less endearingly, and Frank is absent for large swaths of it (busy studying archaeology in Greece—swoon!). However, when Frank IS around, the pining is almost even better than the first book! After awhile, I ended up control-F'ing for Frank's name and reading only those sections, skimming the rest. No regrets!
Links: You can download the first book for free on Gutenberg HERE. The entire set costs only pennies on the kindle store. The set comes with an Alice In Wonderland-style prequel that has nothing to do with anything. I haven't read it, and I don't get the sense that anyone else who likes these books has either.
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The worldbuilding does interesting things with gender dynamics (it's not perfectly egalitarian - women hold more power than men, but it's not at the same level that men had control during the medieval period) and has completely normalized queer relationships.
The two main characters, Nicolas Rathe and Philip Eslingen, are in a relationship as of the 2nd book. Rathe is sort of the hard-bitten detective type and Eslingen is a tall, handsome and rather chronically unemployed and underemployed former lieutenant. The books focus more and more on their relationship as they go on (but there isn't any get together scene - that's skipped over), BUT the overwhelming focus is still on the mystery. Rathe and Eslingen have a great dynamic with each other where they both respect each other a lot and they clearly love spending time together.
The early books are pretty cheap if you buy them used - later ones you have to buy as ebooks but they're about 6-7 dollars. If your library has a good ebook collection you can probably get them that way.
I enjoyed the books so much that I read them all in a row, and then my wife read them all in a row after me. They're really excellent! And there's so many starting off points for fanfic, like writing their original get-together scene or filling in missing time between the books.
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First, Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi | Sunday Without God:
Ai is a young gravekeeper who lives in a world where no one can give birth any longer or truly die, and the only way the walking dead can find rest is to be buried by a gravekeeper, as according to legend, God abandoned the world fifteen years prior. Ai lives peacefully in her little secluded village, but when she encounters a gunslinger in black, her whole world is turned upside down. She sets out on a journey to save the world, and as she meets new friends along the way, she learns more of the miracles that have reshaped the world, for better and worse.
Being focused on travel and family and other relationships, there's plenty of room for worldbuilding and exploring the bonds between Ai and her traveling companions. The series can get violent and bittersweet, but overall it's a hopeful series and Ai never loses her idealism and sense of wonder. The anime is twelve episodes and can be watched on Crunchyroll. Watch the opening here!
Second, Genei wo Kakeru Taiyou | Day Break Illusion:
This series follows magical girls with powers inspired by the Major Arcana. Akari is the wielder of the Sun card, and at first she's a normal, cheerful girl with a knack for fortune telling. Her powers awaken when her cousin Fuyuna is possessed by a monster known as Daemonia, and sadly, Fuyuna doesn't survive. This is the awful truth of Elemental Tarot Users - when a Daemonia is killed, their human host also dies. Akari also has an unusual ability - she can hear the voices of the Daemonia before they die. She wants to find a way to save the Daemonia, but she also comes to accept her destiny as both savior and executioner.
The series is full of bloody action, femslashy subtext, and creepy villains and monsters, and the Daemonia battles and bonds between the Elemental Tarot Users have plenty of potential for longer fic. The anime is thirteen episodes and can be watched on Crunchyroll. Watch the trailer here!
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Fandom: Furious
What Is It?: A short comic, as in a single trade's length.
What It’s About?: Cadence Lark was once a well known child star. As she grew older she slowly wrecked her life. One day, looking for kicks, she beats up a guy with a bat and saves this girl. The two take drugs and joyride together, this ends with a crash. Cadence survives but her friend doesn't. She then goes through an experimental rehab that results in her getting super powers. Cadence tries to create a super hero persona that she's dubbed the Beacon. But on her first attempt at crime fighting she discovers that a couple had been kidnapping college students for their sex dungeon. Cadence loses control of her anger and is caught by news reporters beating the couple. The news dubs her Furious. Now, Cadence must battle her own anger as well as the spin the media has put on her, meanwhile another woman with powers has started a crime spree.
Link: https://www.comixology.com/Furious/comics-series/12610
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What is it? 6 episode TV series available on UK Netflix, each episode 40 minutes long.
What It's About? Abby and Raquel are twenty-somethings who can see demons. Some of those demons want to use Raquel to open a gateway to hell and most of them want to kill Abby.
Why You'll Love It? It's an absurdist comedy about awkward ordinary people who have to save the world. The friendships between Abby, Raquel and Susanne are the focus and motivators of the plot. Abby, Raquel and Susanne are all acting out heterosexuality but big declarations of love and need are between each other and there is a lot of femslash potential. You have to love a piece where the world is saved by a girl kissing another girl on the mouths, declaring she loves her and both girls live to beat some demon arse together.
It's a closed canon with the main arc of the first season tied up but open ends for playing with in the final episode.
Links: On UK netflix, on channel 4, or itunes.
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Cribbing from my Yuletide pimping post comments for the next little while, as I am nothing if not consistentFandom: The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt
'...I ask you this only once more: Will you return the money, or the pelt?'
'All you will get from me is Death.' Charlie's words, spoken just as casual as a man describing the weather, brought the hair on my neck up and my hands began to pulse and throb. He is wonderful in situations like this, clear minded and without a trace of fear. He had always been this way, and though I had seen it many times, every time I did I felt an admiration for him.
What is it? A literary fiction/Western novel published in... 2012? 2013? Sometime around then. Got shortlisted for a Man Booker, in case you care about stuff like that.
What it's about? A sibling duo of gold rush-era assassins go on the hunt of a prospector their employer wants dead. The elder brother, Charlie, is super into their murderous lifestyle, but the younger brother, Eli, is beginning to reassess his life choices. Over the course of their travels + travails through Oregon and California in the 1850s, their relationship begins to fray at the seams. Other features: the most loving attention paid to the pleasures of toothbrushes I've ever come across in the written word; a horse named Tub.
Why You'll Love It: It's like a Coen Brothers movie comprised mostly of surreal vignettes relayed by an earnest 19th century frontier diarist. If you like black comedy and/or Westerns, it's a super entertaining quick read. Eli, the narrator, is so charming; I would read an entire series of him watching paint dry.
It's also a goldmine for fucked up incest shipping potential. Eli and Charlie's relationship is fraught with bitterness, resentment, trauma-forged codependency, parasitic familiarity, and affection. It's unhealthy in the best ways. The 300-odd pages we got were not. enough.
Caveat: The characters are bad people with period-typical attitudes about women, etc; the book is graphically violent; things don't end particularly happily for the leads (though it's not, like, Rogue One or anything).
It should be pretty easy to get ahold of via libraries or bookstores.
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What is it? A TV show that aired on UK Channel 4 starting in 2013. There are two series, six episodes each.
What's it about? A group of strangers meet on a forum for fans of an obscure comic book and then find themselves pursued by relentless assassins. A mysterious woman comes to their aid, but her private agenda may be almost as terrifying as what she's protecting them from. Meanwhile, a bumbling civil servant (played by Jamie Mcdonald from The Thick of It, which is hilarious) is blackmailed into the sinuous web of an shady pharmaceutical company. Vestiges of Cold War biowarfare development programs may be pulling strings inside world governments, causing many problems for the protagonists. Hanging over everything is the backdrop of impending global food shortages. And that's just the first two episodes! It all just gets worse from there.
Why you'll love it: First off, the original soundtrack is the best I've ever come across on TV. Have a listen to some tracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrenNlr1Wzo&t=3820s (Warning: that link goes to music from the second series. The soundtrack clips from the first series include some spoilerific dialogue, so don't go clicking related videos unless you're prepared!)
Do any of the following appeal to you: global conspiracies revolving around hidden messages embedded in graphic novels? Ragtag groups of people forced into tenuous alliances with each other out of necessity? Meditations on personal morality in times of global crisis? Screwed up family dynamics? Sci-fi thrillers set in the real world? Cold war spy hijinks? Loyalty kink and identity shenanigans? Hyper-competent women? Nathan Stewart-Jarrett being beautiful and morally compromised? Rose Leslie being beautiful and terrifying (see icon)? If you answered "yes" to any of the above, consider watching Utopia!
In terms of style, I'd describe it as Black Mirror meets Tarantino with sides of the IT Crowd and Watchmen. There's sexy scarification! Black comedy involving severed fingers! Really beautiful, colourful audio-visual design! What more could you ask for?
It can be binge-watched in a day if you feel inclined. It was, unfortunately, cancelled two series into a planned four-series arc, but the second season finale wraps up many character arcs in a satisfying way, IMO, while also leaving lots of jumping-off points for fic writers to play around with. The rewatch value is very high.
Caveat: It's hard to pitch this show because it's both thematically bleak and full of (very) graphic violence. For what it's worth, the series premiere is probably the most concentrated in its depiction of violence, so if you can get through that you can probably make it through the rest. If you're at all interested, please try it out!
It's unfortunately pretty hard to get ahold of legally outside of the UK. I know you can stream it on Netflix in some EU countries. You can also find downloads/streams... around. If you get my drift.
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Some notable ones:
- The first scene of the first episode involves several people getting murdered via gas suffocation, one of whom is a child. The child's death is implied/offscreen.
- About 2/3 the way through the same episode is a torture scene involving eye trauma; it's a couple minutes long and you can fast-forward through it or just look away from the screen, as the important information from it is discussed by characters later.
- Someone walks in front of a truck in the opening of S1E2; it's clear what's happening but it's not particularly graphic.
- There's an elementary school shooting at the beginning of S1E3. It's semi-onscreen (you can kind of hear what's going on but the camera doesn't follow it).
- Near the end of S1E3 a character is blackmailed with the threat of sexual violence towards his wife if he doesn't behave; however, nothing comes of it and the wife never finds out. IIRC there's no other instances of sexual assault in the show besides a brief nonconsensual kiss (involving different characters than these ones).
- There are two hand trauma sequences I can remember. The one with the severed fingers is in S1E3 and actually involves a dead body, so it's mostly just gross. You see someone cut off fingers from a corpse and carry them around in a bag for a bit. The other instance is a brief onscreen torture scene near the end of S2E1 that involves fingernail removal (and is supposed to parallel the torture scene in the pilot).
- Past and potential future genocide is a major part of the plot.
The frequency and intensity of the violence drops off as the show progresses. For what it's worth, I think there are plot reasons things play out the way they do beyond just shock value (though that's part of it). Cycles of violence and trauma, especially childhood trauma, are A Theme. The show is also generally a riff on dark-n-edgy comic books, so the OTT violence is part of the aesthetic in the same way the overly saturated colours are.
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What Is It?: Cinderella Phenomenon is a fantasy Visual Novel based on fairy tales, in a sense. It's also free on Steam and Itch.io.
What Is It About?: The official blurb from the steam page says the following:
Four years after the end of the Great War and the loss of her mother, Crown Princess Lucette of Angielle is still struggling to come to terms with her new life and step-family. Cold-hearted and bitter, Lucette’s life is once again turned upside-down by the Fairytale Curse, she is thrown into a battle to regain her crown in a fractured kingdom where nothing is as it seems…
Why You'll Love it: The five routes are all unique, with distinct good and bad endings, and there's a panoply of several great side characters as well. The main character Lucette goes through her own growth as well. And you will cry. There is 25 hours of gameplay if you are a completionist, and have I mentioned that it's free?
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Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou | Girls' Last Tour:
Chito and Yuuri are two young girls who have survived the end of the world, and the series follows their journey as they explore the ruins of a towering, mechanical city. They travel together in their modified Kettenkrad as they search for food and other supplies, and they have no grand goal in mind - they just live day to day, as tomorrow's always another day. Sometimes they meet other survivors or cute robots or strange noodle creatures, but all in all, as long as Chito and Yuuri have each other, even a world that's dying is still pretty nice.
Being a post-apocalyptic series focused on travel, there's naturally plenty of potential for worldbuilding, and the relationship between Chito and Yuuri is both hilarious and sweet, and they've got an opposites-attract thing going on. The anime is twelve episodes and is available on Amazon Prime for US users, and for non-US users, HiDive is good too. Yen Press has released four of the manga volumes in English.
Gakkou Gurashi | School-Live!:
Can't get enough of the apocalypse? Then how about a zombie apocalypse? You've got four girls trapped in their suspiciously well-stocked school while the walking dead waits outside, so what do they do to survive? Why, start a School Living Club and pretend everything's normal, of course! Protagonist Yuki still believes that she's living a normal, happy school life, and her friends play along with her delusions to give their lives some kind of normalcy. The girls are resourceful and use common school tropes to keep their spirits up, but there's always an air of horror over them, especially as Yuki's delusions begin to crack.
Like with Girls' Last Tour, the apocalyptic setting and focus on slice-of-life survival allow for plenty of worldbuilding, and the strong relationships between the girls lend themselves well to femslash. The anime is twelve episodes and can be watched on Crunchyroll, and Yen Press has released nine volumes of the manga in English so far.
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