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kingstoken) wrote2020-01-17 09:18 am
kingstoken) wrote2020-01-17 09:18 am
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Snowflake Challenge Day #9
In your own space, promote at least one canon that you adore (old, new, forever fandom).
One, only one, Ha Ha Ha, I laugh in the face of that. Just kidding, if you can only rec one that is great, but I'm going to give quite a few canon recs. I will preface this by saying most of my main canons are things that probably don't need reccing like Game of Thrones, Star Trek, etc, so I'm going to try and rec canons that are a little less popular.
Books:
Station Eleven - Multi POV dystopian, that flips back and forth between present day and twenty years in future after the fall of society. It has many dystopian elements, but it is much more hopeful than most books in this genre, and how the author interweaves the characters lives is beautifully done. Bonus, it is being made into a limited run TV series, that is supposed air this year, so if you read it now you will be ahead of the game.
Light Years - Tropey YA Sci-Fi, it doesn't do anything particularly unique or genre defying, but that is not always what you want. It follows four teens at space academy learning to fly spacecrafts. It loved one character in particular, Arran, he is a cinnamon roll of a character, he just wants to make his mother proud, but he is insecure because he comes from poverty and he's never kissed a boy. I just want to wrap him in a warm blanket.
A Song of Ice and Fire - Grim-dark High Fantasy, this one is obviously extremely well known, because it is the basis for the Game of Thrones television series. I will say even if you watched the show give the books a try. There are several minor characters and subplots that are dropped completely or condensed for the TV series, which is understandable, sacrifices have to made many times for adaptations. One subplot I really loved, that never made it to screen, the creepy Lady Stoneheart and the dark Brotherhood without Banners. One warning, the books are absolute tomes, the series is currently over 1 million words, and is unfinished, and it may never be finished.
Graphic Novels:
Pumpkinheads - This should be saved for autumn, it really is a love letter to the season, especially from a North American standpoint. Plus, it has the beginnings of a really sweet romance in it.
Also, I just want to rec graphic novels/comics in general. I just discovered them last year and there is such a great variety of stories. If you're worried about where to start may I suggest starting with a TV series you liked as a kid, many have been continued in comic form, like Xena, Star Trek, Batman '66, Wonder Woman '77 etc.
Television:
The 100 - I'm going to rec the first 5 seasons of this show, it's dystopian sci-fi, with an diverse ensemble cast, it has it's issues, as you may have heard, but I love the characters so much. Plus it had one of the best adult ships on a teen show ever, they were the perfect antagonists to friends to lovers story. I'm deeply unhappy with where the series went in season 6, so for me the season 5 finale, with a few tweaks, is my head-canon for the end of the show.
Fear the Walking Dead - this is TWD's less loved little cousin, and like The 100 I'm only going to rec the first 3 seasons of this show. It's horror, and features a main group that is mostly family and very dysfunctional, but are kind of stuck together because it is the apocalypse, and bad stuff keeps happening. It also features a main female character who is middle aged, sometimes manipulative, and probably isn't a good parent, which is kind of refreshing to see. In season 4 they did a soft reboot, and it ruined the show for me, so for me Fear ends at the season 3 finale.
X-Men: The Animated Series - the 1990's X-Men, this is the show that made me love the X-men. It has the essential X-Men team, plus cameos from many others throughout the series, and it is one of the only X-Men canons to ever do the Dark Phoenix storyline well, yes that Dark Phoenix, that every other film or series has a terrible time adapting. The animation is not up to today's standards, but was probably considered good for the time.
Supernatural - this one maybe needs no introduction, but I will say if you stopped watching in the early seasons please give the series another go. I may be a loner here, but I really love the later seasons of this show, especially seasons 11 and 13.
Lastly, I made a canon rec post for last year's Sunshine Challenge, you can find it here
Unfinished
A friend got me hooked almost 20 years ago. I think the 4th book was just about to be released and we only expected 5 total? I may be misremembering the details, but I clearly remember us both thinking that if I started reading then, I'd be caught up in time for the final installment. ::sad deranged laughter::
(Also mega trigger warnings for... everything. Anyone who was known triggers should ask for more details. I had literal nightmares about these books and I don't think I'm even that sensitive.)
But, yes, the worldbuilding is amazing. I appreciate that GRRM wrote a fantasy world with multiple religions (not just the rival two or oversimplified one) and conflicting mythologies.
Re: Unfinished
I'm still waiting to find out how the Lady Stoneheart storyline will end, and poor little Podrick is he okay? I can't trust the TV show for my answers.
Thank you for mentioning the trigger warnings I didn't think to add them, but you are right. I think the most disturbing scenes were anything involving Reek, and the one scene where a guard talks about how The Mountain and his men raped this innkeeper's daughter, like it wasn't even an "on screen" scene, but something about how causal they all were about rape was really disturbing.
GRRM's world-building is amazing, and that isn't even normally my jam, I think I'm a more of a character driven reader, but man do I love Westeros and Essos, they feel so alive, and like real life places, instead of just backdrop.
ALL the triggers
It's not really clear if she's truly mentally impaired or if she's just on the dull side of average, but the other characters have disparaging thoughts about her as being useless. She's not pretty, she's not smart, she's not high-born enough to attract a suitor, and thus people pity her mother struggling to marry off this unmarriageable daughter. Since we never get her point of view, or even the viewpoint of someone particulary close to her, we never know if these views of her are accurate at all.
And I had the thought in the back of my head that I probably had more in common with Lollys than with any of the other characters in the book. And I'm sure there have been many times I've left people with the impression that I'm mentally deficient because I've spaced out in the middle of a boring meeting. If I lived in that world, I can't quite relate to most of the main characters, but instead I'd see myself as the person sitting at the banquet vacant-eyed and trying to pretend I was following what other people were talking about while being utterly confused by it all. So, yeah, even though she was an incredibly minor character, I related to poor Lollys.
And then, not only is Lollys gang-raped by fifty men, but her mother seems to be the only person who even cares. The other characters almost treat it as funny that now her mother has one more obstacle to marrying her off. Shae goes so far as to mock her for crying all the time.
Meanwhile, the thing I had nightmares about involved all the characters ruining each others plans. Like Chapter A would have a character making plans and deals and getting everything all sorted out so things would be fine, but Chapter B would have a different character who was on the same side working towards the same goals making a different contradictory plan that was going to screw up all the advances made in Chapter A. So many anxiety spirals.
Re: ALL the triggers
You see, this is why George is such a great storyteller, like we know so much about Lollys and her family, even though they aren't POV characters, like he puts so much detail into all his characters, maybe to his detriment, because that may be the reason it takes him forever to write a book.
Re: ALL the triggers
THIS! It's the reason I both love and hate him as a writer.
3-min video of "What It's Like To Read the Game of Thrones Books" without a single spoiler:
https://youtu.be/7KocHhWTwMw
Re: ALL the triggers
This video is highly inaccurate as no man in Westoros would choose to eat Breakfast as opposed to break his fast.
Jannister Mannister
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Thanks for the rec. I just reserved The 100 from the library.
I tried to watch FTWD. I couldn't get into it. I found myself tuning out halfway through the premere. Maybe I should try again...
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I hope you enjoy The 100, I will warn you that the first 2-3 episodes are kind of rough, especially in the teen storyline, the show was trying to find it's feet, but it does get progressively better. I was more invested in the adults storyline from the beginning, but I did come to love the teen characters.
FTWD isn't for everyone, season 3 is in my opinion is their absolute best season, and I do know some people who jumped right in at the season 3 premiere, although I guess it really depends on how you watch television. I enjoyed season 1 and 2, but I may be the exception to the rule here.
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