Fandom Gushing Thread!!

For gushing about things you like and why you like them and how good they are. No negativity here, only positivity and happy screaming, because sometimes that's what you need. :)

 

To christen this thread:
STEVEN. FUCKING. UNIVERSE.

HOLY SHIT, I know you all know this about me, but I fucking ADORE this show. Like, I never knew how attached I'd get to these fucked-up rock aliens and their human acquaintances and their hybrid son, but here we are.

Like, okay, I'm one of those people who is really into good, rich characterization, right? And SU has that in droves! Just...it really makes you care about the characters and get invested in their personal arcs and stories, as well as their connections to the overall story, y'know? And I've been thinking a lot lately about how great these characters are, and how I genuinely want pretty much all of them to be happy.

I don't have any more coherent thoughts right now (I assure you I probably will later) but just. This show, guys. I am in Special Interest Hell and I am loving it.

 

ohohoho screaming you say? I WILL SCREAM. about MOTHERFUCKING SOUND HORIZON.
i love this wacky band/project/theater troupe/storytelling device SO MUCH. you have various albums, or "horizons", each telling more or less cryptic stories - quite often about societal taboos, fucked up people, horrible lives and somehow they still manage to have a particular tinge of weird nihilistic optimism to them, and all of them are cross referenced in ways where you're not really sure if they're self contained. THERE IS SO MUCH THEORY FODDER. (moreso in the earlier, more fractured and vague horizons, but i've latched onto the 6th in particular which is ancient greece flavored.)
most of the newer ones are influenced by history, but in kind of a parallel earth where nothing is all too serious even in a tragedy, with that special dash of japanese weirdness, characters with anime hair, the occasional goofy moments. gratuitous engrish/german/insert language here! so many characters make a+ cosplay fodder because of their beautiful designs! and the songs, especially later ones, are this beautiful beautiful rock-meets-orchestra mix with the occasional folk instruments and jazz interludes and amazing guitar riffs that just hits my particular nerve that makes my brain go all tingly with joy because THAT PARTICULAR GROUP OF SOUNDS IS GOOOOOOD.

and it's all started by the same, cryptid-like music man who made the attack on titan openings, and the soundtrack for bravely default (and all of those have just that right combination of instruments!) revo himself is just a phenomenon, and kind of a cryptic, but watching his antics on stage is SO FUN (and he falls over so much that it's become a fandom-internal meme, which, relatable). sound horizon is his original project, the dude became famous through wanting to sell CDs and make concerts about his weird philosophical OCs really badly, and then he made the concerts entire musical productions, complete with extras and setpieces and costumes and
all this beautiful music with all those cool characters that give me just enough info for me to round them out in my head, and make PILES OF HEADCANONS. all that SUPER CATCHY MUSIC. all that FABULOUS HAIR.

IT'S SUCH A GOOD PACKAGE....so much STUFF in there to fuel my activities. the kind of hopelessness, thorough butchering of some historical events, and many dysfunctional relationships in the horizons might not be for everyone, but man, if i had a chance to get in there and hug all the characters i ABSOLUTELY WOULD.

sanhora, guys. i got into this hole all by myself and i will lovingly stay there and dig until my dying day.

edit: there were too many "goofy"'s in my post so i used the chance to call my favorite composer a cryptid.

 

Oh man, that sounds AWESOME?? Any idea where someone might want to start with their stuff? :3c

(also i hope y'all know that i will be rating like every post in here winner, because fandom gushing makes me v happy :3)

 

FANDOM GUSHING IS THE BEST TBH

as for sound horizon, i personally started by stumbling across a song from the 6th story "Moira" (the greek one), and watched the whole concert because it has an unusually coherent storyline for a SH album. alternative starting points could be the 7th story "Märchen", based on a variety of popular european fairy tales, but imho the music in that one is more erratic and also has less revo-ness to it since it uses classical tunes at times. (also the subbed upload on youtube might be missing some parts.)
the single "Seisen no Iberia" is short, features a p chill relationship between a girl and the demon she accidentally freed and their grand plan for "peace", with 3 catchy songs, and is also a nice jumping off point!
http://sh-whitecrow.com/discography/ here's a discography with summaries of all the albums and singles, and tracklists too, so it's easier to see if any uploads are complete! there are english subbed concert videos on youtube, usually arranged in a playlist, and most concerts were subbed in various other languages, too
...it's a whole hodgepodge of looking things up BUT one gets cool music out of it 83

 

idk if it's a fandom but fucking!!!!!!!! the stage version of hunchback of notre dame!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SO FUCKING GOOD???
it's a good halfway point between the original novel and the disney version, and it doesn't have the historical preservation themes of the original novel but has the much more relevant humanity and kindness themes of the 20th century adaptations without going full fluff, while using and expanding the musical themes of the disney version that is. like. that soundtrack is such a masterpiece
every single actor is absurdly talented. the dude who plays quasimodo is like. ugh. his performance is so good. his voice is so good. i love the transition between his mental landscape and the world around and i love the use of asl and i love everything about this production ))):

 

griffin mcelroy's music in the adventure zone is so goddamn fucking good like fuck!!!! i usually dislike it if i notice the music in something but i notice the hell out of this music and i love it, it adds to the mood so perfectly and makes the scenes that much more emotional
im listening my way through taz: balance again and Reunion Tour just started coming up it's so evocative of everything behind it
and i know it's because i have the context for everything behind it, but it really feels like the story is completely and intensely linked to the song itself
so the song has like 7 layers of pathos and context and it just feels so heavy with the weight of the story and it's just so perfect for it

 

(edited)
stardew valley has really good music and it gives me mad taz vibes

 

@witchknights I love the stage version of Hunchback! It's probably my favorite Disney movie and they did a great job adapting it. I actually saw a local production a few weeks ago and it was probably the best local musical I've ever seen! Also probably the hardest I've ever cried at a musical ;u;

 

The Force of Will community in the Atlanta area is generally pretty great. There's lots of helpful people who have been keen on giving me tips of suggestions after games and are generally just excited to see a person picking up their game. They're just talkative in general too and I haven't seen some of the horrible shit I've seen from other similar communities personally, yet. I know we have it. My boyfriend mentioned someone in the discord for the game who was being a shitfuck about the recent sexual abuse scandals that MTG has had coming out; namely, in declaring that in giving a shit about banning people for it Wizards is killing the game. But the point is at the store I'm not being subject to some fuck calling women sluts or someone thinking that calling someone a faggot isn't only a good idea but one worth dying on a hill for. Nor am I being told to my face that something I made sucks and that I have no idea how to build blue. If anything, if something I'm working isn't going well I've had people point out other ways I can do the thing I want to do. Functional ways to do the thing I want to do. Someone suggested I run a card that would give my beefy vampires swiftness (haste, for the MTG savvy) when a vampire deck I was running wasn't really panning out right. As opposed to just telling me I'm bad at that and leaving it at that.

This is an important thing to me. Because card games are already hard enough for me to do. I'm not as good at them as some people are naturally and I'm incredibly paranoid that people hate me or think I'm stupid. Having run into some very shitty people with MTG is part of why I ended up stopping with that game entirely, along with it just not fitting with me well on the rules and mechanics front. And nice rules and mechanics that basically fix the parts of Magic that I didn't like would mean fucking nothing if I ran into assholes who actively make the environment unfun.

One of the boardgame groups we've run into needs to be praised for similar things, as does the DnD at the store we play Force of Will at. Yay decent people that make me feel welcome.

 

i don't know anything about the fandom, if it exists at all any more, but as a thing i just want to happy-flail about: Elfquest! I can't even words about why it's so important to me. It was everything I wanted and needed to be able to enjoy in high school and was hurting too much to admit it and just... aurg. *flail*

 

Happy-flailing is the point of the thread! :D I should've made that more clear, sorry!

 

*joins the elfquest flailing*

 

walter simonson's art is really good

Spoiler: pic dump

 

Monstress is amazing and has some of the most jaw-droppingly good art I've seen in ever ;w; i will go mad waiting for the next volume to come out

 

Not sure if this is the thread for it, but one of my favourite fanfics has started updating again after 3 years and the author saying he’d abandoned it and I never thought I’d see any more of it and eeeeeee

 

This is absolutely the thread for it!! I’m so happy for you!

 

Among other reasons I like it, it just occurred to me that I think Redwall is the first time I saw competent fat heroes in media. I must strive more to emulate it on that topic.

 

Also Steven Universe has competent fat heroines and that is awesome. We need more of them in specifically girl-marketed stuff especially, which SU is.

 

i'm in the process of watching senki zesshou symphogear, and i just gotta say: the concept of huge-weapon-bearing j-pop battle bards in ridiculous (sadly skimpy but still cool) mecha girl-style armor fighting glowy monster thingies while belting out catchy songs hits so many FUCK YEAH nodes in my brain. this anime is silly and often melodramatic and i wanna sign up to the karaoke fighting party, dammit! it's dumb and tropey and awesome and has so much ship fodder for me (sadly never stated out loud but the main girl hibiki and her school roomate move out together to a bigger place later in the series and are p much married as fuck. is there the nagging thought of all the relationships being intended as basically h-doujin fodder? yes. are they completely and utterly adorable? also yes.)