Guess That Rec: Season 4
Want a long-running series with daring escapes, thrilling twists, and even some metatextuality? Mean lesbians, nonbinary baddies, and gays in space, and every ship dynamic you can think of?
Then welcome one, welcome all, to Guess That Rec Season 4, the cult classic tournament where we guess and vote on media based entirely on Booktok-style recommendations. Inspired by @guess-that-ship and this post, the rules of the tournament are simple: submit a recommendation for your favorite piece of media, and we'll vote on which ones we like best, BUT, here's the kicker: You may not mention anything about the actual plot of the story. Instead, we will be voting based on promo-post-style recommendations, which can include tropes, representation, setting, genre, very general theme, and anything else, as long as it doesn't describe anything that actually happens in the story!
Example:
Do you want a high school story with a neurodivergent protagonist working through their trauma by going on adventures in the big city? Queer-coded side characters? Male characters breaking through their toxic masculinity and expressing their feelings? Wholesome sibling relationships?
Then you'll love Catcher in the Rye!
You all know the drill: each rec will be assigned a random number and pitted against another rec, we'll vote for which one we think sounds better, and at the end of the matchup the winner will move on to the next round and the identity of the loser will be revealed.
Polls for round 4 are out and can be found in the #gtr polls tag!
THE RULES:
All recs must be written as recommendations or marketing pitches. While there are plenty of fun ways to describe a work without actually mentioning its plot, the premise of Guess That Rec as a tournament is that we're not just writing bad descriptions, we're writing recommendations in the BookTok style.
Any type of media is permitted. Both fiction and nonfiction are allowed, but everything must be presented as if it's fiction.
You may NOT mention anything to do with the actual plot or premise of the story. Generally speaking, if your rec includes the phrase "this story is about...", unless it's VERY general, it does not belong in this tournament! You may, however, mention:
Tropes (ex. enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, unreliable narrator)
Representation (ex. disabled protagonist, gay side character)
Character dynamics and relationships (ex. dysfunctional siblings, grumpy x sunshine lesbians)
Setting (ex. in space, in the Old West)
Genre and subgenre (ex. historical fiction, whodunnit, workplace comedy)
Comparisons to other media (ex. if you liked Avengers you'll love this, it's Twilight meets Hunger Games)
General themes (ex. love, grief, family)
General elements (ex. murders, adventures, road trips)
Anything else that has NOTHING TO DO with what the story is actually about!
4. You may NOT make anything up: everything must be technically true, or at least up for interpretation. So, in my Catcher in the Rye example, I can't say that there are "canonically gay characters" because there aren't, but I CAN say that there are queer-coded characters. Similarly, if there's a character in your piece of media who exhibits autistic traits but has never been confirmed autistic, you can't call them "autistic", but you can call them "autistic-coded" or mention their specific traits. The use of weasel words (ex. describing a mentally ill serial killer stereotype as "neurodivergent", or a gay villain as a "major queer character") is allowed and encouraged. (Feel free to get creative: for example, last round we had someone describe the dystopian trilogy Divergent as having a "strong neurodivergent female protagonist", because her brain is... Divergent.)
4a. Here at Guess That Rec we encourage stretching and bending the truth until it breaks. If there is ANY way that something said in a rec could possibly be true, it's allowed, so unless you see something egregious - i.e, calling Of Mice and Men a feel-good teen romance with plenty of canonically queer characters - please do not come into my ask box telling me that something's inaccurate.
5. Do not include any identifying details (ex. title, character names, identifying place names) in your rec.
6. Funnier submissions will be given higher priority. Submissions are funnier if A) they're of media that most people have heard of, B) they are technically true while not at all capturing the vibe of the media, and C) they use the format cleverly - twists and turns are encouraged!
6a. Additionally, remember that this is meant to be BAD recs: don't just use this as an excuse to recommend your favorite media! If a Booktok-style rec actually provides a good picture of what your media is, consider either rewriting or not submitting it.
7. Should the same media be submitted by two different people with different recs, priority will generally be given to the first submission, unless a later submission was significantly funnier by the guidelines stipulated in rule #6.
8. There is no banned media: go nuts!
Yet again, I will be allowing resubmissions as long as the new rec is sufficiently different from the one that was in round 2 or 1, with the exception of the winners (Twilight, Red vs. Blue, and Transformers: Prime). The full list of media that competed in round 1 is here, the list of media from round 2 is here, and the list for round 3 is here. (If you're new to the blog and you want to see the rec for a certain work, just search in the tag "#rec [number that the work is listed under]").
Tagging @tournament-announcer!








