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Yuletide Noms are open! Here's the instructions. They close on October 3rd. You get three fandoms and four characters per fandom. (Eligibility rules)(Evidence post for borderline fandoms) You'll get to request fic in four fandoms, though, so you might want to do some horse trading with people so that you get everything you want nominated. Here's the post to let people know what you've already nominated, and here's the spreadsheet based on it to help people keep track. Here's the Fandom Promotion Post to get other people excited about your fandom. (Here's the DW version)
I am nominating Donovan's Reef, a 1963 John Wayne romantic comedy about the evils of racism. It's set on a fictional south sea island where the Duke and his WWII buddies have settled down after the war, and the plot revolves around the Boston Brahmin adult daughter of one of them, unaware that her father remarried a native woman and had kids with her, coming to the island to sniff out any "improprieties" that might be an excuse to cheat him out of an inheritance, and the shenanigans around that and around her falling in love with John Wayne. The Duke is okay, there's lots of local color, the Boston daughter is played by a woman who can't act and there is NO chemistry between her and the Duke.
But. But oh, my God, Lelani, the oldest of the second family, is AWESOME. She delivers an incredibly nuanced performance, and you FEEL for her as she and her siblings get kicked out of their home for the white older sister they've never met, as she both wants to build a relationship with her sister and yet won't let her sister get away with belittling Lelani's people and culture. I WANT MORE LELANI. I have been requesting this for YEARS and have never got it.
My big fandom pimp post for Donovan's Reef can be found here.
Metropolis: The Chase Suite--Janelle Monae
Look, I have NO IDEA why this isn't bigger. If you love SF/F, particularly racially aware SF/F, you should be all over this album series. If you love music, you should listen to them (they're all available on Amazon Prime), because HOLY COW, Janelle Monae is AMAZING in what she is doing with the music. I don't like most modern music because it gets boring and repetitive. Janelle Monae puts together albums that are definitely hip hop/R&B, yet that draw far more widely in musical influence and have orchestral portions and really, REALLY intricate themes both musically, SFnally, and racially, and it's just a joy and a treat to listen to. And the visuals--album art, music videos, etc.--are all equally stunning.
I WANT MORE. What I really want is for her to finish the suite (there are supposedly still at least one album to come). What I want for Yuletide is fic exploring the rich, multi-faceted world that she has built in her music. I want to know more about the droid economy. I want to explore the parallels to current American race relations that Janelle draws. I want to know more about Cindi Mayweather (Janelle's alter-ego).
Here's a short guide to the Metropolis Suite and here's the icon post I made for Janelle Monae.
Caprica
Okay, there's a reason it wasn't as popular as BSG, and in my opinion that's because they focused on all the wrong characters. I never really cared much about what was going on with the Graystones, but the ADAMSES, oh, my God.
The show focused on grief and loss, but didn't do as much with the really interesting questions: what does it mean to be alive? What is 'reality,' and how do we shape it? What ends justify what means? Who are we, really, down deep--the sum of our experiences, or culture, or is there something more?
Tamara Adams had to struggle with all these questions, getting thrown into the deep end. She dies in the first few minutes of the first episode ... and then her father and Daniel Graystone use Zoe Graystone's breakthrough programming to make an AI version of Tamara in the virtual reality computer network. Except that when Zoe created her own avatar, she knew what she was doing. Tamara's avatar just woke up, having no clue what had happened or where she was. Watching her grow and adapt and learn and really come into her own was such a treat. She really got screwed over, and and had to completely remake herself. I want to know what happened to her!
I am nominating Donovan's Reef, a 1963 John Wayne romantic comedy about the evils of racism. It's set on a fictional south sea island where the Duke and his WWII buddies have settled down after the war, and the plot revolves around the Boston Brahmin adult daughter of one of them, unaware that her father remarried a native woman and had kids with her, coming to the island to sniff out any "improprieties" that might be an excuse to cheat him out of an inheritance, and the shenanigans around that and around her falling in love with John Wayne. The Duke is okay, there's lots of local color, the Boston daughter is played by a woman who can't act and there is NO chemistry between her and the Duke.
But. But oh, my God, Lelani, the oldest of the second family, is AWESOME. She delivers an incredibly nuanced performance, and you FEEL for her as she and her siblings get kicked out of their home for the white older sister they've never met, as she both wants to build a relationship with her sister and yet won't let her sister get away with belittling Lelani's people and culture. I WANT MORE LELANI. I have been requesting this for YEARS and have never got it.
My big fandom pimp post for Donovan's Reef can be found here.
Metropolis: The Chase Suite--Janelle Monae
Look, I have NO IDEA why this isn't bigger. If you love SF/F, particularly racially aware SF/F, you should be all over this album series. If you love music, you should listen to them (they're all available on Amazon Prime), because HOLY COW, Janelle Monae is AMAZING in what she is doing with the music. I don't like most modern music because it gets boring and repetitive. Janelle Monae puts together albums that are definitely hip hop/R&B, yet that draw far more widely in musical influence and have orchestral portions and really, REALLY intricate themes both musically, SFnally, and racially, and it's just a joy and a treat to listen to. And the visuals--album art, music videos, etc.--are all equally stunning.
I WANT MORE. What I really want is for her to finish the suite (there are supposedly still at least one album to come). What I want for Yuletide is fic exploring the rich, multi-faceted world that she has built in her music. I want to know more about the droid economy. I want to explore the parallels to current American race relations that Janelle draws. I want to know more about Cindi Mayweather (Janelle's alter-ego).
Here's a short guide to the Metropolis Suite and here's the icon post I made for Janelle Monae.
Caprica
Okay, there's a reason it wasn't as popular as BSG, and in my opinion that's because they focused on all the wrong characters. I never really cared much about what was going on with the Graystones, but the ADAMSES, oh, my God.
The show focused on grief and loss, but didn't do as much with the really interesting questions: what does it mean to be alive? What is 'reality,' and how do we shape it? What ends justify what means? Who are we, really, down deep--the sum of our experiences, or culture, or is there something more?
Tamara Adams had to struggle with all these questions, getting thrown into the deep end. She dies in the first few minutes of the first episode ... and then her father and Daniel Graystone use Zoe Graystone's breakthrough programming to make an AI version of Tamara in the virtual reality computer network. Except that when Zoe created her own avatar, she knew what she was doing. Tamara's avatar just woke up, having no clue what had happened or where she was. Watching her grow and adapt and learn and really come into her own was such a treat. She really got screwed over, and and had to completely remake herself. I want to know what happened to her!
