Thursday DE

[needsmoreresearch]

We're about to dive into AU Week (eeeee!) but before we do that--sell everyone on your amazing canon. What draws you to the canons you play in? What do you love about them?

Comments

[just_cant_lose]

Sherlock has Jim in it.

Les Mis has Javert and Jean Valjean in it.

MCU has...

...you get the idea. Great characters! That's what draws me. Sherlock is clever and entertaining, and funny, and can be heartbreaking, and has a really strong cast, and it's well written and there are twists, and it's audacious and really well shot, and there are probably problems with it as well but eh, everything has those.

Les Mis is a heartbreaking classic that rips you pieces and flings you against a wall, and then tells you deserve to cry and then Hugo probably kills you a bit because you happen to be there, and then readers fight about it for 150 years. I mean, what's not to love?

I can't sit still long enough to write any more, but basically, I love characters that make me love them even if they're horrible, or I love flawed hero types, and all my canons have those. And the Master & Commander series has ships shooting each other on the high seas! Sailors! Pirates! String music! Perfection, tbh.

[bjornwilde]

I think I will go with my lesser known canons...
Tokyo Ravens: Think Harry Potter through a Japanese lens with Ron as the main character; though the best friend is still the seemingly Chosen One. Great characters, who show an amazing about of depth and character growth. For instance, two characters that start as antagonists for the main trio end up joining them instead. Touji might have influenced this, which is why I love him.

Great art is a big help as well. Also, the fan service dial is turned down low and when it occurs, it really fits the character, imho. They also play with the harem trope in an amusing way. Streaming on Hulu or FUNimation's website, if you want to check it out. Here's a trailer.

Knights of Sidonia: SF/horror mashup that also mixes in mecha vs alien monster dogfights in space. Don't try to think of the physics involved too much. Sort of Pacific Rim in space, though I've seen people complain it's Attack On Titan in space. Great characters and humor. Neat social ideas--accepted genders beyond the binary, genetic engineering and clones, pacifism in the face of aggression, social privilege, social privilege in medicine--but doesn't really dig into the topics. Humor mixed in. Animation could take some getting use to; characters look a lot alike (I blame limited genetic pool), CGI to traditional animation ratio can be off (I've heard someone compare it to a bad Playstation game). But all in all, I love my cheesy space anime.

Warning, fan service dial is set to just annoying in the first season (do all the breasts really need to move that much?), to eye rolling in the second season (there's even an up skirt shot). It also suffers from the harem trope, though the main character is clueless about it, much to Izana's annoyance.

Both seasons are streaming on Netflix. Here's a trailer for season 01.

Heartstriker series by Rachael Aaron: Did you ever play Shadowrun, or just want to? This series is for you. High tech meets supernatural when an event (there was a comet mentioned but I can't remember if it hit Earth or just passed by) fires up the old magic machine. Magic returns, Spirits manifest, power wakes, and all that nice tech is still around. Think solar punk mixed with urban fantasy. The series focuses on a family of dragons, more specifically an aberrant dragon who actually has compassion and empathy. Will he just survive in the cut throat world of dragons or will he thrive?

What I really like about this series, is that the author is working hard to have the main character, the aberrant dragon I mentioned above, win by being true to himself. By using words and deeds, rather than kicking ass to win. It's a nice change. Third book comes out in 15 hours!

[bjornwilde]

Addendum to the Tokyo Ravens entry: They do play with the main character is a perv trope too much and with a seemingly underage character at that. Granted most of the characters are minors, but in this case it's an obvious teen (the main character) and his shikigami/familiar Kon (who appears as a childlike kitsune). Nothing graphic but enough to raise an eyebrow or get an eye roll.

[sdelmonte]

Star Trek, the classic series and the movies: Here is the future, and the future doesn't suck. Oh, maybe the vision of the future from 50 years ago needs a lot of adjusting. But we don't destroy ourselves. We start to get over ourselves. There is hope. There is science. There is somewhere new to be and something new to do. Come along for the ride. (Star Trek is on Amazon Prime and Netflix; most of the movies are on Prime only.)

Swamp Thing, most recent series: It's got one foot in the classic horror of the Alan Moore era and one foot in the DC Universe, and it's got two of the best writers of today in Scott Snyder and Charles Soule, and some incredible art, and a lot of heart and soul.

Teen Titans animated: Sure it's a bit silly (though next to Teen Titans Go!, it's King Lear). But it has some really great individual episodes and some incredible story arcs, especially in its second and fourth seasons. Plus a great voice cast. And sometimes it's hysterical. And sometimes's it's surprisingly moving.

The Question comic books, 1986-89: It's that rare DC comic that requires almost no knowledge of DC Comics. It's 36 issues (and two annuals) about a man trying to find himself and trying to find the balance between doing good and being just a man who likes violence. It's Denny O'Neil and Denys Cowan at their best.

Poirot TV series: Take the best elements of the Agatha Christie novels, but leave out the maddening problem of a lead character whose first case is in 1916 and whose last is in 1970. Add in production values that create a 30s wonderland, an actor who embodies the famous detective but also humanizes him, and some of the best screenwriters in British TV. Lastly, watch as you wish, with no worry about continuity. And voila! One of the best mystery series we'll ever get. (The entire series is on Netflix.)

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Digimon Adventure is really fun. Sometimes angsty, too! But mostly fun. The big thing that drew me (and I think a lot of people) in as a child and which continued to hold my interest as I grew up were that it had this huge, ensemble cast of interesting kids, none of whom were really background characters and all of whom had their own interesting character flaws and conflicts. There's a character for pretty much any taste among the eight human characters.

As I've grown older, I've also come to appreciate that while most of it didn't get translated over into the dub for reasons of none-of-it-makes-much-sense-outside-of-Japan, it also has some downright vicious social commentary on early 2000s Japanese society, and especially on traditionalism and traditional attitudes. That's -- pretty unusual for anime in general, really, let alone anime aimed at quite young children.

It spans, at this point, three series and a bunch of films and various video games and novels, and it has a certain quality that allows it to jump between genres: So you have Miyazaki-oid 'a boy and his mon' flicks like the first film; ensemble adventure stories with heavy strains of myth arc to them like 01 and 02 (and in 02's case, with a bonus cosmic horror story); Hurricane Touchdown, which is essentially a horror film; and things like Tri, which kind of combines slice-of-life stuff with mystery drama and big blowout battles between giant monsters.

Dragon Age: Dragon Age kind of awes me with its worldbuilding. It has one of those fantasy worlds which feel genuinely huge and involved and real, and Bioware's populated that world with no end of interesting characters. Again, it's a franchise where you can always find a character to your taste. Usually multiple characters.

(It says a lot, as well, about how well Bioware's made Thedas that I see people who argue about Thedosian politics more forcefully and passionately than they argue about real world politics, but. Yes.)

They've generally got pretty brilliant gameplay, as well, and Bioware seems pretty committed to innovating and improving upon the games - Inquisition was easily my favourite game of 2014, and I fully expect Dragon Age 4 to be even better. As far as Dragon Age II specifically goes, it stands out to me for being something very different from the other two games. Origins and Inquisition are big, sweeping stories about epic, world-ending events, but II is a lot quieter and has a much narrower focus, and I thought that was an interesting direction to take the series in for a game.

Also, Hawke is always hilarious. Like, even if you're not playing funny purple Hawke, they're an absolute riot.

Final Fantasy XII: This is probably my absolute favourite FF game, even if it's kind of overlooked? It's markedly different from any other FF game, and I think a large part of that is that it's a game that's very interested in politics and the build-up to war and trying to figure out how magic and big scary god things and magical nuke-rocks would affect that.

In gameplay terms, it's -- fine, but not brilliant, but in terms of story, it is a really well put-together epic fantasy story that draws heavily off established genre tropes and archetypes while doing its best to put an interesting spin on them. It's a very pretty game too, which helps.

Also, it's getting a rerelease soon, so that's always nice.

Kamen Rider: Kamen Rider has one of those fantastically diverse premises which, combined with a pretty great understanding of shock and awe honed over forty-five years of different series, makes it kind of an amazing, cracky spectacle.

The fact that it swaps out premises every year means that it can explore different tones, structures, and themes really easily, so no two series are ever alike. In the past decade alone, we've had Gaim, a grim arc-based show about people backstabbing each other and clashing on how best to save the world with a level of politicking on par with Game of Thrones; W, an often pretty biting satire of the noir genre and hardboiled detective shows; and Fourze, a series heavily inspired by Glee (to the point where several characters are obvious expys - Will Schuester's expy is a cockroach monster who everybody hates, for example!) about space and rockets and friendship.

It's one of the franchises that directly inspired Pacific Rim, so if you liked that, chances are you'll like it as well. The current series, Ghost, about a dead landowner who wears historical figures as stylish jackets in order to fight other stylish jacket ghosts, and which deals with themes like the abruptness of death and the importance of living without regrets, is ending soon, so there's going to be a new series, Ex-Aid, which is apparently about video games.

Speaking of, look at Ex-Aid's design. It's so horrible. It's the worst designed suit I've ever seen in my life and I love it.

[forceimbalance]

FFXII is probably my favorite FF game as well. Also, it is 100% "Square Enix re-tells Star Wars." For the record.

[cottoncandypink]

It's random without being "lol so random." Weird things happen, but in a way that makes linear sense, most of the time.

But mostly for me, the best part of it is where it comes from. I love the idea of low- and no-budget creators being able to just do whatever the hell they want without having to worry about sponsors and ratings. Ad rev doesn't care about content, which is one good thing to be said for it.

The best part of Warfstache's canon are the collabs with Cyndago. Just three guys doing everything - acting, filming, sound, editing. I love that kind of thing, and remember trying to do it in high school and just not really having the resources. Watching the sketches in order, you can really see the production values begin to improve, taking it miles from where it started. Seeing something go from a weird idea with minimal costumes, and shot in someone's mother's dining room, to having actual rented set space and visual effects is the sort of thing that really excites me. I love seeing indy creators be successful, and the sketch comedy side of YouTube has a lot of hidden talent in it that I've really been able to get into.

I'm not sure what to expect from any future Waftstache sketches in the wake of what happened with Cyndago. New sketches have been teased, but I'm not sure if it's ever got beyond the "I want to do more" stage. For now, there are just the weird video games that make even less sense than the live-action stuff.