Favorite fandoms
Mar. 30th, 2021 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doranwenOne of the comms I'm a member of here recently asked members to talk about their favorite fandoms. Most people wrote 1-2 paragraphs, with 1-3 fandoms total. Me, on the other hand… (20 fandoms and a few additional paragraphs later)
I liked what I typed up enough that I decided I'd post it here just in case anyone wants to see a brief summary of my favorite fandoms and what there is in the way of fic for them.
In no particular order:
Rookie Blue - fantastic Canadian cop show that's been described as Grey's Anatomy with cops (but it's a little more serious); it's got its flaws but the main het pairing were SO meant to be (and there are some rarepairs that can be explored), and while the fandom is currently dead there's a lot of good fic to enjoy still out there (I've got a recs post on my DW with around 180 recs of what I think are the best Rookie Blue fics); there's a secondary subfandom that arose later with a femslash pairing the show tossed in near the end which drew a lot of femslash fans who hadn't seen the first half of the show, but I don't get into that particular ship because I don't think it fit the character very well
Lord of the Rings - because the books are amazing (movies less so but still good) and there's SO much good fic out there, SO so much
Women's Murder Club (TV) - homicide detective, medical examiner, ADA, and newspaper reporter who team up to solve cases; it's very female-centric (obviously, given all four of the main characters are female), with heaps of femslash potential for those interested, and one of them is a POC (the supporting cast is also somewhat diverse), some fans wrote a S2/S3 since the show was canceled after S1 (and is watchable in its entirety on Youtube); there's a reasonable amount of fic for a small fandom but what there is is mostly not on AO3 or ff.n
1-800-Missing (TV) - a girl who dreams clues to cases after being struck by lightning goes to work for the FBI; again, very female-centric, three different ethnicities, and an interesting approach to a show, though basically no fic existing
Cybergeddon - hacking meets The Fugitive with a strong female main character played by Missy Peregrym, it's also super short (it's a webseries that adds up to about 90 min of video) and can be found online freely to watch, but there's only one fic out there (written for me as a Yuletide treat one year)
Alphas - fantastic sci-fi show that's like a cross between X-Men and Heroes but better, with a very diverse cast (including the best portrayal of an autistic character I've ever seen) and a lot of moral quandaries particularly with regards to actions of the government (there's less than 200 fics out there but I have all the good ones saved, lol); it's only two seasons and DEFINITELY worth watching, even if it ends on the worst cliffhanger ever!
Push (2009) - awesome sci-fi film with Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning (back when she was 13) and which has led to quite a few people writing underage or aged-up fics because of the massive chemistry between them in the film (and NOT between Chris's character and his film girlfriend), lol - it's a relatively small fandom but there's some very good fic out there
Leverage - fun TV show from 2009-ish with a reboot on its way, it's a con/heist show that becomes more about the team-as-family aspect than about the cons by the end, and one of the characters is almost canonically autistic (I've never found confirmation that the creators/writers actually admit to that or intended that, despite claims that they did, but a lot of the fic writers have run with it), and a small portion of the fandom also sees her as ace (*raises hand*), plenty of fic here to enjoy, in the several thousands range (though if you like poly ships you'll find more of it to your liking than if you don't)
EDIT: The Redemption continuation I don't get into at all but there's still plenty of fic, even new fic, that ignores it entirely, and a few of us who prefer the view that it doesn't exist and the original show is all there is, and we have a Discord server and a DW comm
Sue Thomas F.B.Eye - heartwarming show loosely based on the true story of a deaf woman (and I'm using the lowercase "d" deliberately here to match the real-life woman's self-identity) who worked for the FBI in surveillance because she could read lips; this one's got a lot of potential romance (the show does more teasing than fulfilling but that's what fanfic is for, right?), family-friendly but still teaching about important things like Deaf culture (lead actress is Deaf herself, besides several guest actors who are also Deaf, and there's a lot of signing too!), the Deaf Holocaust, and more general things like forgiveness, reaching out to others, reconciling relationships, etc.; there's not all that much fic out there because a lot used to be on private forums that went down some years ago :/
The Pretender - absolutely amazing TV show that features a genius who can "become anyone he wants to be", and who was kidnapped by "a corporation known as the Centre" when a child and forced to work for them; the opener finishes with "then one day, their pretender ran away", thus setting up the show premise; in it, the main character goes around righting wrongs by outing hidden conspiracies and corruption, and then vanishing before the Centre can recapture him; as the story continues, he learns more about his family, and rebuilds some of the ties between him and the woman whose job is to hunt him down (and who was his childhood best friend while he lived in the Centre); not only are there thousands of fics for this show, there's also a couple virtual seasons that pick up after the four seasons (ignoring the two TV movies), and one writer's continuation of the story that picks up after the two TV movies and wraps it all up to a satisfying finish with at least half a million words in all
Rizzoli & Isles (TV) - crime show focusing on two women who are best friends, one a homicide detective and the other a medical examiner; the fanfic is 99% femslash and 1% other, and there's thousands of fics for it
C-16: FBI - little-known one-season show starring Eric Roberts and which has Angie Harmon in a similar role to her much later Lindsay Boxer from Women's Murder Club or Jane Rizzoli from Rizzoli & Isles; also interesting is that it's the only FBI show I know of that never had any serial killer episodes; it's got quite a bit of arc-ing in the few eps it does have and some really interesting characters & situations, if you can find the eps (they were on Youtube last I saw), but it's rare enough that the only fics I've ever seen are the ones I wrote
Tomorrow When the War Began (2010) - based on the excellent series of books by John Marsden, this is not the TV show produced more recently but the single film from over a decade ago, which was on the whole very faithful to the books, and one of the best book-to-film adaptations I've seen (where they changed things, it made SENSE, and the characters were very good adaptations from the books); the general premise is "seven teenagers are camping in the Outback while their country is invaded, and they become guerrilla fighters to defend their home"; I particularly like how they handle the moral questions and emotional effects, with some VERY good acting by the lead actress Caitlin Stasey; there's very little fic out there, and what there is is mostly for the books
Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain (1995) - early teen friendship film that's little-known, and for which the existing fics could be counted on one's fingers (most of them either by or for me, lol); the two girls are best friends and it could be seen as either a developing romantic friendship (my take) or regular femslash (as in one fic I saw), quote to illustrate: "Jody saved my life; I save hers; that's the way it works"
Earth Girl, by Janet Edwards - series of books that mixes sci-fi with archaeology with a main female character that I really love (there's romance but it's very PG-rated); there's three full-length books, several novellas, at least a collection or two of short stories, and more being written! (but very very little fic for it yet)
Worldweavers, by Alma Alexander - set of four books that combines magic in our world with Native American mythology with Nikola Tesla and time travel, and it all works excellently with a great teen girl main character and only a touch of romance; this one has very good worldbuilding, but sadly the only fic for it I could count on the fingers of one hand
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman - the best Superman canon ever, in my opinion, this portrayal of Clark Kent and Lois Lane is a love story par excellence with a good share of drama and danger, and there are tons of high-quality long fics out there with all manner of A-plot as well as B-plot (lots and lots of canon divergence AUs, mostly episode rewrites, but a few good AU-from-the-start fics as well)
Edited to add:
Hive Mind, by Janet Edwards - a different series of books by her, this one focusing on enclosed cities called Hives, which use telepaths to keep order; the worldbuilding is excellent but there's far too few fics for it
The Fugitive (1993) - absolutely *amazing* film, Harrison Ford does such a good job of portraying Dr. Richard Kimble, with great music and of course the fantastic acting by Tommy Lee Jones as well; there's only a few dozen fics for it and over half ship them romantically (I don't)
And then there's my "qualified fandom" list, of ones where I really love parts of the fandom - but not others, lol:
Smallville - while some either disliked the show entirely or liked the whole thing (with a minority I've heard that actually liked the later seasons better than earlier ones), I only really like the first three seasons, as Chloe Sullivan had all the characteristics of Lois-Lane-to-be (I was a major Chlark shipper), and the writers stretched belief further and further as they went and introduced a Lois Lane that grated on me massively (the early seasons stuck mostly with the meteor mutants and Clark learning to handle his powers, whereas later ones introduced all manner of other aliens, magic, other superhumans, etc.); for someone whose only other Superman canon to that point was Lois & Clark, S1-S3 of Smallville was the only one that worked for me; there's thousands upon thousands of fics for Smallville as a whole, a reasonable number of which were either written about the early seasons or during them, so there's plenty to enjoy even for me who throws out S4 onwards
X-Men Original Movieverse - I love X1 and X2, and X3 is a qualified enjoyment as I loved some of the plot elements but hated others (and really hated the killing off of several of my favorite characters) and I've never seen any other X-Men film or X-Men canon of any kind; fortunately there is PLENTY of fic out there that was written back in the days of just the first two films, and more with the 3rd, though you may have to poke around sites using the Wayback Machine to find some of it
The Matrix - while I loved the first film, I'm more ambivalent about the second and third films (enjoyable to watch once, but less liking the impact on the characters and general storyline), and I'm just as happy reading fic that throws them out the window; there's thousands of fics out there if you hunt for them
EDIT: and I'm quite happy ignoring the 4th (recent) film entirely - I found it very unsatisfying and uninteresting compared to the earlier ones and disliked some of the plot considerably
Edited to add:
Profiler (TV 1996) - the show that started most of the things current murder shows do (reenactments/flashbacks, etc.), with a strong female lead (Samantha Waters) with a tragic backstory acted VERY well by Ally Walker and all kinds of shippy potential; there's a reasonable number of fics for a show so old that it predates most of the current sites, but a lot of them you have to dig up via the Wayback Machine or poke through an old LiveJournal community to find them; the first two seasons are *fantastic* but they changed production companies for S3 onwards and the show noticeably went downhill from there (I like to pretend S1/S2 are all there is)
Law & Order: SVU - I adore the 1.0 Bensler run (first 12 seasons) but I absolutely cannot handle Elliot not being there for Olivia with Lewis, and greatly dislike the way they had him leave. So basically S13 onwards is not canon to me (though I can sometimes accept canon through the end of S15 if they have Elliot come back), and I don't care how much they try to make their story work years and years later, they ruined it to me; Elliot/Olivia is my OTP and the core of the show to me (not Olivia alone) and there's heaps and heaps of fic on both main sites for just that ship (plus lots for other ships, though E/O is the top one)
There are more fandoms I love (mostly some book ones), but at least some of the books if not all I don't know if I'd call them favorites in the same way as the ones above. I do really enjoy them though. (Flood - the 2007 British disaster film, Stick It - the 2005 gymnastics film, the currently airing CBS FBI show starring Missy Peregrym among others, FBI: Most Wanted, Pern, Talents - also by McCaffrey, The Dark Is Rising, Narnia, Tortall, Circle of Magic, Riddle-master, Song for the Basilisk, Valdemar, A Wrinkle in Time, Invitation to the Game, The Girl Who Owned a City…)
I can give recs lists for the best fics in most any of these upon request. :) Some are in my fanfic database already (Alphas, C-16: FBI, Cybergeddon, Push, Flood, Stick It, older FBI and FBI: Most Wanted fics, most of The Matrix ones, etc.) but most are not yet, so I'd have to create those manually.
I liked what I typed up enough that I decided I'd post it here just in case anyone wants to see a brief summary of my favorite fandoms and what there is in the way of fic for them.
In no particular order:
Rookie Blue - fantastic Canadian cop show that's been described as Grey's Anatomy with cops (but it's a little more serious); it's got its flaws but the main het pairing were SO meant to be (and there are some rarepairs that can be explored), and while the fandom is currently dead there's a lot of good fic to enjoy still out there (I've got a recs post on my DW with around 180 recs of what I think are the best Rookie Blue fics); there's a secondary subfandom that arose later with a femslash pairing the show tossed in near the end which drew a lot of femslash fans who hadn't seen the first half of the show, but I don't get into that particular ship because I don't think it fit the character very well
Lord of the Rings - because the books are amazing (movies less so but still good) and there's SO much good fic out there, SO so much
Women's Murder Club (TV) - homicide detective, medical examiner, ADA, and newspaper reporter who team up to solve cases; it's very female-centric (obviously, given all four of the main characters are female), with heaps of femslash potential for those interested, and one of them is a POC (the supporting cast is also somewhat diverse), some fans wrote a S2/S3 since the show was canceled after S1 (and is watchable in its entirety on Youtube); there's a reasonable amount of fic for a small fandom but what there is is mostly not on AO3 or ff.n
1-800-Missing (TV) - a girl who dreams clues to cases after being struck by lightning goes to work for the FBI; again, very female-centric, three different ethnicities, and an interesting approach to a show, though basically no fic existing
Cybergeddon - hacking meets The Fugitive with a strong female main character played by Missy Peregrym, it's also super short (it's a webseries that adds up to about 90 min of video) and can be found online freely to watch, but there's only one fic out there (written for me as a Yuletide treat one year)
Alphas - fantastic sci-fi show that's like a cross between X-Men and Heroes but better, with a very diverse cast (including the best portrayal of an autistic character I've ever seen) and a lot of moral quandaries particularly with regards to actions of the government (there's less than 200 fics out there but I have all the good ones saved, lol); it's only two seasons and DEFINITELY worth watching, even if it ends on the worst cliffhanger ever!
Push (2009) - awesome sci-fi film with Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning (back when she was 13) and which has led to quite a few people writing underage or aged-up fics because of the massive chemistry between them in the film (and NOT between Chris's character and his film girlfriend), lol - it's a relatively small fandom but there's some very good fic out there
Leverage - fun TV show from 2009-ish with a reboot on its way, it's a con/heist show that becomes more about the team-as-family aspect than about the cons by the end, and one of the characters is almost canonically autistic (I've never found confirmation that the creators/writers actually admit to that or intended that, despite claims that they did, but a lot of the fic writers have run with it), and a small portion of the fandom also sees her as ace (*raises hand*), plenty of fic here to enjoy, in the several thousands range (though if you like poly ships you'll find more of it to your liking than if you don't)
EDIT: The Redemption continuation I don't get into at all but there's still plenty of fic, even new fic, that ignores it entirely, and a few of us who prefer the view that it doesn't exist and the original show is all there is, and we have a Discord server and a DW comm
Sue Thomas F.B.Eye - heartwarming show loosely based on the true story of a deaf woman (and I'm using the lowercase "d" deliberately here to match the real-life woman's self-identity) who worked for the FBI in surveillance because she could read lips; this one's got a lot of potential romance (the show does more teasing than fulfilling but that's what fanfic is for, right?), family-friendly but still teaching about important things like Deaf culture (lead actress is Deaf herself, besides several guest actors who are also Deaf, and there's a lot of signing too!), the Deaf Holocaust, and more general things like forgiveness, reaching out to others, reconciling relationships, etc.; there's not all that much fic out there because a lot used to be on private forums that went down some years ago :/
The Pretender - absolutely amazing TV show that features a genius who can "become anyone he wants to be", and who was kidnapped by "a corporation known as the Centre" when a child and forced to work for them; the opener finishes with "then one day, their pretender ran away", thus setting up the show premise; in it, the main character goes around righting wrongs by outing hidden conspiracies and corruption, and then vanishing before the Centre can recapture him; as the story continues, he learns more about his family, and rebuilds some of the ties between him and the woman whose job is to hunt him down (and who was his childhood best friend while he lived in the Centre); not only are there thousands of fics for this show, there's also a couple virtual seasons that pick up after the four seasons (ignoring the two TV movies), and one writer's continuation of the story that picks up after the two TV movies and wraps it all up to a satisfying finish with at least half a million words in all
Rizzoli & Isles (TV) - crime show focusing on two women who are best friends, one a homicide detective and the other a medical examiner; the fanfic is 99% femslash and 1% other, and there's thousands of fics for it
C-16: FBI - little-known one-season show starring Eric Roberts and which has Angie Harmon in a similar role to her much later Lindsay Boxer from Women's Murder Club or Jane Rizzoli from Rizzoli & Isles; also interesting is that it's the only FBI show I know of that never had any serial killer episodes; it's got quite a bit of arc-ing in the few eps it does have and some really interesting characters & situations, if you can find the eps (they were on Youtube last I saw), but it's rare enough that the only fics I've ever seen are the ones I wrote
Tomorrow When the War Began (2010) - based on the excellent series of books by John Marsden, this is not the TV show produced more recently but the single film from over a decade ago, which was on the whole very faithful to the books, and one of the best book-to-film adaptations I've seen (where they changed things, it made SENSE, and the characters were very good adaptations from the books); the general premise is "seven teenagers are camping in the Outback while their country is invaded, and they become guerrilla fighters to defend their home"; I particularly like how they handle the moral questions and emotional effects, with some VERY good acting by the lead actress Caitlin Stasey; there's very little fic out there, and what there is is mostly for the books
Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain (1995) - early teen friendship film that's little-known, and for which the existing fics could be counted on one's fingers (most of them either by or for me, lol); the two girls are best friends and it could be seen as either a developing romantic friendship (my take) or regular femslash (as in one fic I saw), quote to illustrate: "Jody saved my life; I save hers; that's the way it works"
Earth Girl, by Janet Edwards - series of books that mixes sci-fi with archaeology with a main female character that I really love (there's romance but it's very PG-rated); there's three full-length books, several novellas, at least a collection or two of short stories, and more being written! (but very very little fic for it yet)
Worldweavers, by Alma Alexander - set of four books that combines magic in our world with Native American mythology with Nikola Tesla and time travel, and it all works excellently with a great teen girl main character and only a touch of romance; this one has very good worldbuilding, but sadly the only fic for it I could count on the fingers of one hand
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman - the best Superman canon ever, in my opinion, this portrayal of Clark Kent and Lois Lane is a love story par excellence with a good share of drama and danger, and there are tons of high-quality long fics out there with all manner of A-plot as well as B-plot (lots and lots of canon divergence AUs, mostly episode rewrites, but a few good AU-from-the-start fics as well)
Edited to add:
Hive Mind, by Janet Edwards - a different series of books by her, this one focusing on enclosed cities called Hives, which use telepaths to keep order; the worldbuilding is excellent but there's far too few fics for it
The Fugitive (1993) - absolutely *amazing* film, Harrison Ford does such a good job of portraying Dr. Richard Kimble, with great music and of course the fantastic acting by Tommy Lee Jones as well; there's only a few dozen fics for it and over half ship them romantically (I don't)
And then there's my "qualified fandom" list, of ones where I really love parts of the fandom - but not others, lol:
Smallville - while some either disliked the show entirely or liked the whole thing (with a minority I've heard that actually liked the later seasons better than earlier ones), I only really like the first three seasons, as Chloe Sullivan had all the characteristics of Lois-Lane-to-be (I was a major Chlark shipper), and the writers stretched belief further and further as they went and introduced a Lois Lane that grated on me massively (the early seasons stuck mostly with the meteor mutants and Clark learning to handle his powers, whereas later ones introduced all manner of other aliens, magic, other superhumans, etc.); for someone whose only other Superman canon to that point was Lois & Clark, S1-S3 of Smallville was the only one that worked for me; there's thousands upon thousands of fics for Smallville as a whole, a reasonable number of which were either written about the early seasons or during them, so there's plenty to enjoy even for me who throws out S4 onwards
X-Men Original Movieverse - I love X1 and X2, and X3 is a qualified enjoyment as I loved some of the plot elements but hated others (and really hated the killing off of several of my favorite characters) and I've never seen any other X-Men film or X-Men canon of any kind; fortunately there is PLENTY of fic out there that was written back in the days of just the first two films, and more with the 3rd, though you may have to poke around sites using the Wayback Machine to find some of it
The Matrix - while I loved the first film, I'm more ambivalent about the second and third films (enjoyable to watch once, but less liking the impact on the characters and general storyline), and I'm just as happy reading fic that throws them out the window; there's thousands of fics out there if you hunt for them
EDIT: and I'm quite happy ignoring the 4th (recent) film entirely - I found it very unsatisfying and uninteresting compared to the earlier ones and disliked some of the plot considerably
Edited to add:
Profiler (TV 1996) - the show that started most of the things current murder shows do (reenactments/flashbacks, etc.), with a strong female lead (Samantha Waters) with a tragic backstory acted VERY well by Ally Walker and all kinds of shippy potential; there's a reasonable number of fics for a show so old that it predates most of the current sites, but a lot of them you have to dig up via the Wayback Machine or poke through an old LiveJournal community to find them; the first two seasons are *fantastic* but they changed production companies for S3 onwards and the show noticeably went downhill from there (I like to pretend S1/S2 are all there is)
Law & Order: SVU - I adore the 1.0 Bensler run (first 12 seasons) but I absolutely cannot handle Elliot not being there for Olivia with Lewis, and greatly dislike the way they had him leave. So basically S13 onwards is not canon to me (though I can sometimes accept canon through the end of S15 if they have Elliot come back), and I don't care how much they try to make their story work years and years later, they ruined it to me; Elliot/Olivia is my OTP and the core of the show to me (not Olivia alone) and there's heaps and heaps of fic on both main sites for just that ship (plus lots for other ships, though E/O is the top one)
There are more fandoms I love (mostly some book ones), but at least some of the books if not all I don't know if I'd call them favorites in the same way as the ones above. I do really enjoy them though. (Flood - the 2007 British disaster film, Stick It - the 2005 gymnastics film, the currently airing CBS FBI show starring Missy Peregrym among others, FBI: Most Wanted, Pern, Talents - also by McCaffrey, The Dark Is Rising, Narnia, Tortall, Circle of Magic, Riddle-master, Song for the Basilisk, Valdemar, A Wrinkle in Time, Invitation to the Game, The Girl Who Owned a City…)
I can give recs lists for the best fics in most any of these upon request. :) Some are in my fanfic database already (Alphas, C-16: FBI, Cybergeddon, Push, Flood, Stick It, older FBI and FBI: Most Wanted fics, most of The Matrix ones, etc.) but most are not yet, so I'd have to create those manually.
