Promotion Fest: “Rec me!” Comment Meme

[dark_administrator]

Hello, doers of darkness!

To kick off our fandom promotion fest, let’s have a recommendation meme:

• Comment with your favorite tropes, narrative kinks, character archetypes, and other qualities that you look for in a fandom.


• Reply to other people’s comments with recommendations for fandoms with chromatic creator(s) and character(s) that suit their preferences.

This entry is posted at Dreamwidth and LiveJournal and you may comment at either journaling platform.

Comments

[snowynight]

character type: competent decent characters who enjoy working with/spending time with each other.

[troisroyaumes]

The first series that came to mind is The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry, which is a K-drama about three female friends, each of whom is very dedicated and competent in their respective careers. They don't work with each other, but they do spend a lot of time being there for one another. The series is as much about their friendship as it is about their romantic entanglements (it also features two interesting older woman-younger man couples as well as a single woman who is happy to remain single). oyceter has reviews of episodes.

The other series that comes to mind is the J-drama Keizoku 2: SPEC also comes to mind: the main characters are police officers who are partners in a special division unit. Touma is the brains, Sebumi the muscle: both are very excellent at what they do. At first they don't get along, but they soon learn to cooperate and trust each other as every good cop buddy team does. What I like about this series is that Touma is very much the eccentric, socially maladept genius type but she's female. lacewood has a great primer post.

If you're intrigued and need download links to either, I would be happy to supply them!

[troisroyaumes]

I'm looking for humor--especially parody or satire--in any form: books, movies, TV shows, etc. Dark humor is fine, as long as it really does make me laugh, as well as more lighthearted humor. I especially appreciate witty dialogue and narration!

[littlebutfierce]

I am a sucker for chosen family stuff, finding the people who suit you/discovering therefore you're not weird, bad or wrong. Examples of what I mean: Natsume Yuujinchou, Kimi ni Todoke, ahahahaha. Other stuff?

[troisroyaumes]

Hourou Musuko! But you already read/watch this series. ^^;

I think you might already be familiar with this series as well, but Otomen (manga and J-drama) comes to mind as a good example of finding friends who accept you for who you are.

It doesn't strictly fall within this story type but Nabi's protagonists are a group of orphans on the run who have no ties of blood to each other but have very much become one another's family.

Hmm, I should really try not to make my recs all East Asian media...in Amitav Ghosh's The Sea of Poppies, the members of the Ibis who hail from all sorts of backgrounds come together and form a crew...the "chosen family" aspect doesn't really kick in until the latter half of the book but I think once it does, it's really compelling.

Naguib Mahfouz' The Harafish does focus on family-by-blood relationships but I think more importantly it tells the story of how a group of outcasts settle in an alleyway and form their own community. Granted, this community forms its own conflicts and tensions so the focus isn't entirely on acceptance, but I think it still works as a variation on the story type. (I'm actually not at all sure how one would go about making fanwork for The Harafish, but it's an excellent book.)

[snowynight]

Thank you. Both seem very interesting!

[franzeska]

I love longsuffering best friend characters who prop up their more volatile and unhinged counterparts and anybody who ought to be the woobie but who's just too stable.

Alas, recs for this are always inherently spoilers, but I love plots that have presumed-dead characters popping up again, whether it's YuYu Hakusho style afterlife bureaucracy hijinks or secret agents with a bad habit of falling over cliffs at dramatic points in the plot. Also cheesiness. Lots of cheesiness.

[dharmavati]

I'd love any source that is a rom-com or has a comedic element to the romance of the story. I'm a particular sucker for:

- characters that are female and/or have other marginalized identities being respected by the narrative
- fake relationships/contracts
- crossdressing
- everyone else around the couple being a Shipper On Deck

[sophinisba]

You might like the relationship between Alberto and Ernesto (Che Guevara) in the movie The Motorcycle Diaries. Ernesto isn't really unhinged or volatile but his tendency to self-sacrifice can be kind of reckless, and Alberto watches out for him.

[troisroyaumes]

For fake relationships/contracts, the K-drama Family's Honor! The main two characters, Dan-a and Gang-seok decide to pretend to go out in order to help Gang-seok's younger sister with her unrequited love for a male student who has a crush on Dan-a. (That sounds so incredibly contrived but the story manages to sell it, and I found it really entertaining.) Highlight is that the two protagonists are relatively honest about the chemistry they feel instead of being in denial about it. It's a really long series but one of the best I've watched recently. I have some episode reviews if you'd like to find out more.

I hope you get other recs because I like these rom-com tropes too. ^^

[trascendenza]

I agree about Sea of Poppies -- I was just thinking the other day that I couldn't figure out why the second half of the book was when I really started to get into it, but I think that's exactly why, because that's when those relationships become much more the focus.

[trascendenza]

Primarily I'm interesting in stuff about women that doesn't have much (if any) focus on romance.

Bonuses would be:
- women getting to have relationships with each other!
- fantasy elements, especially if they're unique/not like every other fantasy setting out there
- not too much interpersonal drama or over-the-top emotional drama (though of course what's "over the top" changes with context)

Examples of things I like: Fairly Legal, Aoi Hana, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Nikita, Moment in Peking, HawthoRNe, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Treme and My Name is Kim Sam Soon with the caveats that where applicable I probably would have preferred less romance and/or more focus on women. I'm also liking Claymore, though I'm not done with it yet. Oh, and I loved the movies Sin dejar huella, Spider Lilies, and Castillos de cartón.

[troisroyaumes]

What immediately came to mind was the manga series Glass Mask, which is about a young girl with a talent for acting who is on the quest to prove herself worthy to play the ultimate role called the Crimson Goddess. The series very much focuses on her relationships with other female characters, such as fellow members of her acting troupe, her teacher and her main rival. There is a romance sideplot but it develops very slowly and definitely isn't the main focus. It does have some plot arcs that are very emotionally dramatic, but I don't think they were particularly over the top, and the story is mainly about Maya's development as an actor.

[trascendenza]

Oooh, sounds interesting! I love arcs about people working towards a goal.

[chomiji]

Lovers or spouses or even just really good lifelong friends (m/f, m/m, f/f - it matters not to me) who are equals and partners and who snark at each other as they face tough, dangerous situations. The genre can be fantasy, SF, mystery, or adventure, and the media should be print (fiction, manga, or maybe comics), because I don't watch many movies and barely any TV.

[maerhys]

Not exactly obscure but the Parable of Sower/Parable of the Talents come to mind, specifically Lauren and Zahra's friendship, the Lauren/Bankole and Travis/Natividad romances. There are a whole host of relationships explored that really resonate at veristic even in the dystopian universe.

[snowynight]

Sea of Poppies is really, really great. I second the choice.

[troisroyaumes]

Anything with plots revolving around political/court intrigue, e.g. N.K. Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms or the K-drama Queen Seondeok.

[dharmavati]

It sounds interesting! 54 episodes sounds intimidating but the combination of fake relationships and siblings is like kryptonite to me. I'm definitely adding it to my list!

[dharmavati]

The Twentieth Wife and its sequel, The Feast of Roses by Indu Sundaresan are fictional accounts of Nur Jahan's life as she falls in love with Mughal emperor-to-be Jahangir and maneuvers her way into the Mughal court. I haven't read Sundaresan's other novel, Shadow Princess, but it is supposed to take place later in Mughal Indian history with similar themes.

Toshokan Sensou, a.k.a. Library War, is about the militarized war between libraries and the censorship laws of the government in a future, dystopian Japan. The novels, in particular, spend significant time detailing the many political factions in and many of the conflicts require subtlety and finesse, rather than outright military action, to be resolved. You can find ongoing English translations of the novel s here.

[troisroyaumes]

Ooh, thanks for the recs! Nur Jahan sounds awesome, and I adore epic historical fiction! I've watched the Toshokan Sensou anime, I haven't read the novels, so it's interesting to hear that they have a lot more political conflict.

[anenko]

I'd love recs for something with fantasy or supernatural elements. I'm pretty well covered on the Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China front (although I'm open to any Must Read/Watch recs you may have!)

My attempts on Amazon bring up Serious Literature, which. . . isn't my thing. I'm open to reading/watching more from any corner of the world. I'd also really love recs from stories by Chromatic Canadians. Think along the lines of Rabbit Fall.

*

Romance novel recs would also be welcomed. Preferably with competent heroines, and not too heavy on Alpha Male behaviour.

[gloss]

Chromatic Canadians ftw! Right now I am reading (and ADORING) Hiromi Goto's Chorus of Mushrooms; I want very much to read her Kappa Child, about which I've also heard great things, but I'm having a hell of a time tracking down a copy.

Fantasy/supernatural: I cannot recommend Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar highly enough. It's categorized as "magical realism", a term I don't exactly like, but might serve okay; I'd say it's more (occasionally) surreal than fantastic, if that makes sense. It's phenomenal stuff, mundane and lusty and achey and melancholy and hilariously funny.

[aldanise]

The political intrigue is the reason I fell in love with Saiunkoku Monogatari, a series made up of two 39-episode anime, which are an adaptation of part of a soon-to-finish light novel series. The first seven episodes are typical light-shojo with a dusting of politics, but it eventually develops into a show that has one plot-arc driven by the economic and political consequences of contaminated salt. I love this story.

It won't count as rare if the fandom-specific challenge running for more than two years rule makes it to the final cut, but it fits the other rules, so I thought I'd throw it out.

[aldanise]

My absolute favorite jdrama for relationships between women is BOSS, for reasons that I go on about at length [spoilers in the second half]. It's a capery cop show, basically, whose characters make it amazing. Short answer: women as friends, mentors, and rivals, on the same show, sometimes with the same women. The romance on the show is a nice characterization sidenote that holds far less weight (for both story and character) than the lead woman's career, there are interesting female criminals (as well as male ones), and the women on the team (leader, forensic specialist/investigator-in-training, and lead forensic specialist) have the greatest narrative weight.

The second series currently airing seems to be jumping the shark, but the first one is awesome.