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The tie-in novel is literature involving the characters of a TV series, film or other work and usually written by some author you've never heard of.note  Pretty much anything can have a tie-in novel. They're often compared to authorized fanfic, in that they're usually not part of the main continuity, do things that would never be considered in the original, and are widely variant in quality. If a series is exceptionally popular, the tie-novels may have their own micro-continuity. If it's mega-popular, expect them to occupy their own Expanded Universe. Expect tie-in novels by the same author to refer to events in their other novels.

These novels are usually written in a very conservative style. You're unlikely to encounter one written in the style of Margaret Atwood or Marcel Proust.

These can be novelizations of episodes or "untelevised adventures". In that case, they commonly come included in Television Tie-In Magazines.

See Novelization for a main continuity story retold in book form. For the reverse—going from a book to the big screen—see The Film of the Book. For a similar concept but with videogames, see Licensed Game.

Not to be confused with a tie-in edition, in which an original novel gets republished with new cover artwork promoting its movie adaptation.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Robotech: Jack Mckinney — a pseudonym for Science Fiction authors James Luceno and Brian Daley — wrote a series of novelizations of the composite adaptation, which continued into a version of the unproduced Sentinels sequel, and several original tie-ins. The novels are considered Fanon Discontinuity by many fans because of the additions made to the premise, such as inventing the "Thinking Cap" mental control system for the Humongous Mechanote , as well as turning the Applied Phlebotinum, previously just a flower that somehow generates power, into a narcotic that somehow directs the destiny of the universe. (Though no one ever outright said "He who controls the Protoculture, controls the universe!")
  • Naruto has a few novels set after the Fourth Great Shinobi War.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has a tie-in novel set after a slightly altered ending of the first season where, instead of Nanoha's winning against Fate in their battle, the fight ends without a conclusion since Precia interfered early, and Nanoha goes after Fate after Precia is killed so they can have a proper end to their duel. The novel, however, is official, written by the very creator of Nanoha. The background information it contains, such as the nature of Magical Damage, are canon and often alluded to in later seasons.
  • Death Note has a tie in novel in the form of Death Note: Another Note, which tells the story that was (very briefly) mentioned about L working with Naomi Misora.
  • Pokémon: The Series had a couple of picture books based on various episodes such as "Bye-Bye Butterfree" and "Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon".
  • Kaguya-sama: Love Is War had a 4 chapter tie-in novel set before the sports festival (the second chapter specifically takes place the day after chapter 85) that revolves around The Seven Mysteries of the school. It doesn't contradict anything found in the main series, though it's unknown if it's canon.

    Comic Books 

    Films — Animation 
  • Frozen:
  • The Lion King received the picture books The Lion King: Six New Adventures not soon after release. It starred Simba and Nala's son Kopa. Some of them are straight-up retellings of those movies' plots, while others are sequels to said movies. It covered more information about the film's main characters, such as how Scar got his um, scar in the first place and what was his name before he even got that scar. However, some of the events that happened in those books are actually not considered canon with the movies (for example, the books claimed that Simba had a son named Kopa, but the Direct to Video sequel had Simba sire a daughter named Kiaranote ).
  • The novelization of Turning Red, The Real R.P.G.: The Story of the Red Panda Girl expands on the story more than the film and includes whole additional scenes.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Live-Action TV 
  • 24 has the 24: Declassified series, whose entries seem to take place at unspecified points before the beginning of the first season of the show and occasionally "introduce" established characters from the show (such as the third, Trojan Horse, which was, chronologically speaking, the first appearance of Edgar Stiles, who had first been introduced in the fourth season and later killed off in the fifth). Some of the series' authors tend toward giving such established character introductions, while others tend toward introducing completely original characters (who then often die before the end of the book because hey, why not? It's not like they have any reason to survive the book).
  • The Addams Family had one by Jack Sharkey called simply The Addams Family, while W. F. Miksch wrote one called The Addams Family Strikes Back.
  • Alien Nation is an unusual case of tie-in novels continuing the series after its cancellation. In particular, the tie-in novel series included two novelizations of scripts that were meant to be future episodes of the series (Dark Horizon and Body and Soul), which were later made into Made-for-TV Movies.
  • Babylon 5 — notable for having the tie-ins be Canon, with series creator J. Michael Straczynski reviewing them and/or providing outlines. Events described in the novels were more than once later referenced in the series.
  • Blake's 7 — Produced a novel, "Redemption", by the series' star Paul Darrow, as well as one by Tony Attwood. There was also at least one set of episodes novelized.
  • Bones — As of this writing only one exists, but it's notable because the show itself is (very loosely) based on a book series, but this new book is based entirely on the television continuity.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel — both original novels and novelizations. Novelizations typically span several episodes (the entire seventh season was novelized into a single 500-page novel).
  • The Castle tie-ins, rather than being books about the series, are the books that Castle is ostensibly writing in the series.
  • Class, another Doctor Who spinoff, had three original novels published, which are notable as the first storylines based on the series not to be written by creator Patrick Ness.
  • A series of Columbo books featured the title detective investigating murders somehow connected to famous crimes of the past (though not always directly; in one, a man murders his wife and her lover and attempts to confuse the investigation by writing "Helter Skelter" and other phrases from the Manson murders on the walls in their blood).
  • All three CSI series have a number of tie-in novels.
  • Dance Academy has episode novelisations of its first season.
  • Doctor Who: At least two hundred original novels, filling the expanded branch of the Whoniverse during the 16-year hiatus in between the series' cancellation in 1989 and its dramatic uncancellation in 2005, and continuing after the series' return, first from Virgin Books (Doctor Who New Adventures) and later from BBC Books (Eighth Doctor Adventures). Both publishers produced ongoing adventures for the 'incumbent' Doctor of the time (the Seventh Doctor and onwards), as well as "Missing Adventures" (Doctor Who Missing Adventures for Virgin, Past Doctor Adventures for BBC Books) squeezed into gaps in the previous Doctors' timelines. Some of the writers ended up working on the 2005 revival television series.
    • A long series of novelisations from Target Books preceded the original novels, of almost all the stories broadcast in the show's 26-year first run. They ranged in size from about 120 pages (for a two-parter) to about 400 pages (for a six-parter), which meant that a lot either got cut out, or should have beennote .
      • In many cases, the novels were, for many years, the only record of episodes that were erased. Many books also allowed the original writers to introduce concepts that there was simply no budget for back in the day.
      • Even though they were technically not needed anymore, efforts continued to novelize the last remaining stories that Target Books were unable to obtain the rights to. By 2017, all three stories written or co-written by Douglas Adams had finally been adapted, and the final two (Eric Saward's 1980s Dalek stories) were novelised by Saward himself in 2019, completing the range.
      • The producers of the 2005-present series indicated no desire to have modern episodes adapted as novels, feeling such records are no longer required. The short story collection The Story of Martha was a partial adaptation of the Series 3 finale, and Neil Gaiman has stated that he was interested in writing a novel based upon his 2011 episode "The Doctor's Wife" but was unable to. Finally in 2018 four new series stories were given Target-style novelizations: "Rose", "The Christmas Invasion", "The Day of the Doctor", and "Twice Upon a Time". Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat adapted their own scripts in the first and third cases, while Jenny T. Colgan wrote the second and Paul Cornell handled the fourth. "Twice Upon a Time" had a lot of extra details, clarifying the fates of the Twelfth Doctor's last companions among other things.
    • Way back in the 1960's, original creator Terry Nation wrote the first series of "factual" tie-in books, that explained things like the eating arrangements on board the TARDIS, the continuity of the Who universe as it was then understood, the relationship between the Daleks and the Cybermen, and lots of other then-current trivia and expanded information. these are apparently quite rare and sought-after now.
  • Forever Knight had three official tie-in novels written by fanfic writers. A fourth was axed before release, but can be read online or rarely found on eBay, where it can sell for hundreds of dollars.
  • Getting Together has two novels and some comic books.
  • Grimm has several tie-in novels that expand on the series' canon lore, introducing wessen that have not been featured on the televised show.
  • H₂O: Just Add Water has a whole series of 12 tie-in novels released by Nickelodeon. They appear to be original stories.
  • Heroes had a tie-in novel titled Saving Charlie about Ensemble Dark Horse Hiro traveling back in time in order to save his girlfriend Charlie.
  • Highlander: The Series has some novels and an anthology that are considered canon. The concept behind the show of immortals Walking the Earth lends itself well to these tie-ins. One novel died pre-release,though, despite being advertised in the last published one.
  • The Heisei-era Kamen Rider got their own series of tie-in novels, variously serving as prequels, sequels, untold stories, or alternate takes on the original shows. In terms of content, it's a mixed bag; most are disregard by fans for trying to be Darker and Edgier (Blade's focuses on a now-immortal Kenzaki trying to kill himself, while 555's depicts Kusaka raping Mari and ends with him getting his limbs hacked off by Kiba and being taken in by a stalker a'la Misery), while Decade's is full of glaring continuity errors (Momotaros being portrayed as quiet and polite is just the tip of the iceberg). The ones that are generally well-regarded seem to be official canon, or at least referenced in official media; Kamen Rider Drive's novel is the first part of a story that concludes in Mach's stand-alone movie, while Philip's Kamen Rider Cyclone form appeared in the video game Super Climax Heroes as an Assist Character for Shotaro's Kamen Rider Joker.
  • Leverage got several tie-in novels after it was canceled. Each story is set at a specific point in the series' timeline, and all contain multiple Continuity Nods to the original series.
  • Lost had a few books featuring new castaways and their lives on and off the island, as well as the book Bad Twin which was written by a character, mentioned in the show, and played a small role in the Alternate Reality Game "The Lost Experience".
  • Merlin has a number of episode novelizations.
  • Monk has a series of tie-in novels written by Lee Goldberg since 2006. Two of the early novels, Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse and Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu, were later turned into episodes (season 5's "Mr. Monk Can't See a Thing" and season 8's "Mr. Monk and the Badge").
    • The adaptation of Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse in "Mr. Monk Can't See a Thing" is a Crowning Moment of Awesomeness for the writer as he notes it is the first time any television / movie tie-in novel has been transformed into a series episode.
  • Murder, She Wrote has many tie-in novels that are credited to the main character, Jessica Fletcher.
  • Neighbours had two prequel books about the major characters from the 1980s. The Ramsays: A Family Divided begins with the first meeting of Fred Mitchell and Madge Ramsay in 1965 and tracks the eventual breakdown of their marriage (coinciding with significant drama for their children Henry and Charlene), ending with Madge walking out on him and moving to Erinsborough in 1986. The Robinsons: A Family in Crisis, set in 1975, depicts the Happily Married Jim and Anne Robinson and their family, during the month leading up to Anne giving birth to Lucy before dying from complications. Both books are generally consistent with the backstory presented onscreen at the time, though the former gets at least one character's name wrong and the latter has since been contradicted by numerous Retcons.
  • Northern Exposure has Letters From Cicely where characters write to various people about what is going on in Cicely.
  • The Partridge Family had seventeen Partridge Family Mysteries.
  • Many Planet of the Apes series episodes were novelized.
  • The Prisoner (1967) had a trio of novels published around the time of its run. The first book was written by SF icon Thomas M. Disch, and decades later there are online sources that erroneously credit Disch with creating the series. The second book is notable for going against Word of God and directly identifying No. 6 as John Drake, the character from Danger Man that some fans speculate became No. 6. In the 2000s several additional novels based on the series were published.
  • Psych now has a burgeoning series of tie-in novels.
  • Quantum Leap has a small body of novels, including both novelizations of episodes and original novels; among the latter are a "prelude" to the series and at least one explicit follow-up to a broadcast episode (Angels Unaware by L. Elizabeth Storm, which revisits characters from the episode "Another Mother").
  • Red Dwarf: Two novels by "Grant Naylor" — a pseudonym for series creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor — as well as novels written by Rob Grant and by Doug Naylor as solo efforts. The novels parallel some key events in the series, but stand alone from the TV show, as they have their own continuity.
  • Ditto Roswell, whose last four tie-ins form a sort of print season 4, though it's not official canon.
  • The Sarah Jane Adventures revived the Target Books novelisation format followed by its parent series, with a number of (but not all) of the show's televised storylines adapted as novels for younger readers.
  • SeaQuest DSV had a series of three novels, one of which was a novelization of the pilot. The other novels are mediocre at best.
  • Sliders: The Novel by Brad Linaweaver adapts the pilot episode into printed form.
  • Smallville: Copious numbers of books have been released, which tend to be Self-Insert Fic-level quality (meteor freaks more powerful than Clark, a new perfect love interest who seduces Clark and dies tragically, and so on). This is not always the author's fault — as the Television Without Pity crew will tell you, the actual series is just as poorly written.
  • Sons of Anarchy has the tie-in novel Sons Of Anarchy: Bratva which takes place after the events of season. It features a surprisingly solid story about Jax trying to rescue his half-sister Trinity from the clutches of a Russian mafia civil war. If read after the entire series is viewed, it's a bit of a kick in the gut to see fan favorite characters live and well again.
  • Stargate:
    • Stargate SG-1 had a novelization of the pilot episode and four original tie-in novels by Ashley McConnell early on. They're mostly known for their poor editing and continuity errors, such as referring to characters by their actors' names. The current series of tie-in novels is published by Fandemonium, who originally sought out Stargate fanfic writers. The company went on to publish Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe novelizations and tie-ins as well.
    • There was also a series of five novels by Bill McCay based on the original Stargate movie, which take place in an entirely different continuity than the series.
  • Star Trek — A huge range of novels based on all eras of the franchise (and the spaces in between) exists, including novelizations of all Original Series and Animated Series episodes and Star Trek: New Frontier. Other than the novelizations, these are all officially declared non-canon by Paramount and Gene Roddenberry. When Jeri Taylor was the Word of God on Star Trek: Voyager, her original novels about the crew's history were considered canon. They aren't any more.
  • Supernatural has a small series of tie-in novels, with six books already published or soon to be released. Their connectivity with each other and the series depends on the author, but most will at least mention events in the series that happened recently in relation to the novel.
  • Torchwood has a number of them. The stories range from the reasonably logical to the ridiculous, and deal with every trope you can possibly thing of from zombies, to the Invisible Man routine, to card games being serious business, to Gender Bending.
  • Twin Peaks had a number of tie-in novels like The Secret Life Of Laura Palmer and The Secret History of Twin Peaks.
  • Welcome Back, Kotter had five or six of them.
  • The X-Files:
    • A few very short books, some of which are actually based on episodes from the show (this may also be the reason for their length). The prose is nice but very simple; you may even be forgiven for thinking that they were meant for younger readers, but the subject matter isn't any less child-unfriendly than it normally is on the show.
    • Kevin J. Anderson wrote three full-length novels based on Mulder and Scully's adventures.
  • The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles received several novels detailing the additional adventures of Dr. Jones.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Would you believe, Professional Wrestling, specifically WWE, has had a couple of these? One, Journey into Darkness, details the Start of Darkness of everybody's favorite giant, psychotic pyromaniac, Kane, while another, Big Apple Takedown, has the government forming a covert-ops team of WWE wrestlers.

    Roleplay 
  • Dozens of novels have been published based upon the original RPG Dungeons & Dragons and its spin-off games such as Dragonlance. In the early 2000s a revision of D&D's rules included the creation of a series of characters that appeared in print and video promotions for the game. A series of novels focusing on each character, or featuring the characters teaming up in various combinations, was published as well, though fans of the more complex D&D, Dragonlance, etc. book series tended to ignore these near-novella-length releases.

    Toys 
  • Transformers: Obviously a massive amount of children's books, but recently, a number of novels for older readers have been produced as well. The Official Transformers Fanclub also semi-regularly releases official short prose stories to its members which take place in its own continuities. The answer to "What's Canon with regards to Transformers?" is "Yes". Let's not get into it.
  • BIONICLE had multiple series of junior novels, some of which told new stories not based on the comics or Direct to Video movies. However, these were not treated as tie-ins but as full canon, dealing with the main story arcs and doing it more in-depth than the other mediums usually could. Interestingly enough, the movie novelizations tended to be folded into the tie-in series rather then set apart (as in, the Legends of Metru Nui novelization was published as Bionicle Adventures #4). Additionally, all but the first few were written by one of the franchise's main story editors, who also wrote the comics and web serials.

    Video Games 
  • A video game example: the Backyard Books, based on the Backyard Sports series. They are more this than novelizations because the games have no plot (except for Skateboarding, but there is no book based on that game).
  • Baldur's Gate received a Baldur's Gate novel trilogy.
  • The Elder Scrolls novels are, at the moment, a two-part novel series between the events of Oblivion and Skyrim. No word on whether or not there will eventually be more.
  • The Gold Box Pool of Radiance games were adapted to The Heroes of Phlan trilogy: Pool of Radiance, Pools of Darkness, and Pool of Twilight.
  • Hitman has two tie-in novels: Hitman: Enemy Within, set between Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and Hitman: Blood Money and revolves around a rival murder-for-hire organization, known as Puissance Treize (French for "Power Thirteen"), attempting to destroy Agent 47's employer, the International Contract Agency (ICA) and Hitman: Damnation, which is a prequel to Hitman: Absolution and explaining the events behind the game's situation.
  • King's Quest has not just The Kings Quest Companion, which serves as novelizations of the games themselves with extra information in addition to walkthroughs, but also three little-known original-story novels.
  • Planescape: Torment received a novel adaptation that was considered Fanon Discontinuity.
  • A number of Star Wars video games have had either tie-in novels or novelizations.
  • Skylanders got a couple tie-ins.
  • Myst has a trilogy of novels with involvement by the brothers who made the original game.
  • Mass Effect has a number of them, ranging from the prequel Revelations to several books that fill in the gaps between games (or in the second game's case, the two years between the intro and the game proper). There are also several graphic novels... including one featuring Blasto.
  • Borderlands has so far spawned three tie in novels (The Fallen, Unconquered, and Gunsight) that involve the adventures of the original four vault hunters on Pandora. All three take place before the events of the second game.
  • Sword of the Stars: The Deacon's Tale by Arinn Dembo, was initially released as a novella with the Collector's Edition that included the initial release and Born of Blood. Set 33 years after the start of the first game, it tells the tale of the first four races' formal introduction to the Zuul and set up certain subsequent events all the way up to the sequel. It provides a wealth of backstory for the Sword of the Stars universe, which is understandable as Dembo is the lead writer of the game series.
  • Tomb Raider, specifically Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, spawned a trilogy of original novels. The books were criticized by fans for depicting Lara Croft as a cold blooded killer more interested in increasing her body count than actually engaging in archeology.
  • Doom: the original 1990s game spawned several tie-in novels, with the first actually attempting to build a storyline around the levels of the first game.
  • Resident Evil has quite a few original novels in addition to the various novelizations of the games and films.
    • The very first novel based on the franchise was actually 'BIO HAZARD: The Beginning by Hiroyuki Ariga, which was originally published in 1997 as part of a larger book titled The True Story Behind BIO HAZARD, which was given away in Japan as a pre-order incentive with the Saturn port of the first game. The novel by itself was actually published in the U.S. under the name Resident Evil: The Book, but this version is even rarer than the Japanese original, having been available only as a mail-order. While the story of the book has since been contradicted by later games, the character of Bill Rabbitson (Chris Redfield's childhood friend who was employed by Umbrella) is referenced in S.D. Perry's novelization of the first game (The Umbrella Conspiracy).
    • S.D. Perry herself wrote two Resident Evil side-novels alongside her novelizations of the games titled Caliban Cove and Underworld, which revolved around Rebecca Chambers teaming with a new branch of S.T.A.R.S. from Exeter, Maine. These novels attempted to expend the stories beyond what happened after the events of the first two games, resulting in a few contradictions when later games took the story to a different direction than what was depicted in Perry's books, resulting in Perry having to explain away her contradictions in the novelizations for those games.
    • There were also a few more novels that were written in Japanese. Hokkai no Yojū (Wicked Beast of the Northern Sea) was published in 1998 by Jump J-Novels around the time the second game was released. Two more novels were published in 2002 titled Rose Blank and To the Liberty, which were actually fan-fictions selected by Capcom from a book-publishing contest. These last two novels were actually translated to German by the same company that were translating the S.D. Perry books after they ran out of Perry books to translate.
  • Dead Space has two novels in addition to all of its tie-in media. Dead Space: Martyr is a prequel that explains the origins of series' Religion of Evil, and Dead Space: Catalyst is not about anything in particular.
  • The Halo series has several books connected to it, expanding the plot outside of the original parameters and filling in gaps, including but not limited to covering the deeds of the Spartans other than Master Chief John-117.
  • The RuneScape novels Betrayal at Falador, Return to Canifis, and Legacy of Blood are not without nitpickers.
  • StarCraft has multiple novels and short stories covering gaps in the games and extra events tied to the game universe. StarCraft Ghost: Nova and StarCraft Ghost: Spectres deserve special mention for being tie-ins for a Spinoff game that was never released.
  • Crysis has Crysis: Legion, an expanded retelling of Crysis 2, and Crysis: Escalation which fills in the gap between 2 and 3.
  • The Ultima series novels include two books in The Ultima Saga with a cancelled third book, three books in The Technocrat War trilogy, tying into the cancelled Ultima Online 2, and around sixteen Japan-only novels. A few of the strategy guides are written from the POV of one of the in-game characters.
  • Infocom inspired a number of novels loosely based on various games; Zork alone had half a dozen or so.
  • I=MGCM:
    • There's Magicami: Evil of Tail Court written by Shimesaba, the novelist of Hige O Soru Soshite Joshi Kousei O Hirou. It's a side story where Omnis and the twelve heroines fight against Enbi, a demon of the week, who doesn't appear in the game. It's heavily implied that the novel story takes place in the main canon, since this novel is supervised by Studio MGCM themselves.
    • There's a second novel Magicami: Evil of Flower Bad which is also written by Shimesaba.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • When Doug went to Disney, a few episodes of the show were part of the Disney Chapters collection of books. About a year later, Doug got not one, but two spin-off titles: Doug Chronicles, which were original stories about the title character, and Doug Mysteries, which was the same thing but as mysteries.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has a set of these, each one based on a member of the Mane cast.
  • Ninjago: "Way of the Departed" (different from but related to the show's TV special Day of the Departed) is a novel by one of the show's co-creators, Tommy Andreasen, who releases the chapters on on his Twitter as he writes them. He's stated that it's non-canon but that it provides possible explanations for various unanswered questions from the series. The story itself takes place within the one-year Time Skip between seasons 7 and 8 and explained by Andreasen to be "the untold story of Cole's scar". Andreasen uses the format to create a darker and more mature story than what can be done in the series. For example, it gives some depressing introspective insight into Cole's character that isn't explored much in the show. See the show's Tear Jerker page for more info.
  • 101 Dalmatians: The Series got a tie-in novel released shortly before the show premiered, "Cruella Returns". It tied four episodes together ("You Slipped a Disc", "Leisure Lawsuit", "Cone Head", and "Snow Bounders"), with many differences from what actually happend in the episodes (such as Mooch's gang being made up of a bunch of random stray dogs instead of Dipstick and Whizzer, etc.).
  • A number of Recess episodes were also part of the Disney Chapters series in the 1990s, most notably, "The Experiment".
  • SpongeBob SquarePants had novelizations of its first few episodes. Very awkward novelizations, created from translating the script into prose.
  • Star Trek: The Animated Series.
    • Alan Dean Foster's Star Trek: Log books were novelizations of the episodes (much as James Blish did for the original show) expanding on the bare bones thirty minute plots. Starting with three episodes per book, he managed to create whole books out of one episode as time went on.
    • Many Trek novels referenced it even when official Trek canon did not.

 
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Video Example(s):

Alternative Title(s): Television Tie In Novels

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"She's naked [on the cover]!"

"Little Girl Lost". Castle and Beckett get into it about the just-released cover art for Castle's first Nikki Heat murder mystery novel, Heat Wave, which features an expy of Beckett herself as the main character... and has her nude silhouette on the cover art. ABC published ten real-life Nikki Heat novels as tie-ins to the show, which, in keeping with this scene, almost all show the protagonist's nude silhouette on the cover.

How well does it match the trope?

4.56 (9 votes)

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