#is this likely to become yet another unfinished WIP? most definitely! but that's Ok because i am having Fun and that is all that matters | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

desertdragon · 3 years

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I'm not doing the WiP challenge @traveleorzea 's doing right now, still not 100% on if I want to join, but I do love sharing books- so here's stuff I have in my home library that has definitely influenced Vaste and anything I write for her FFXIV AU story:

I want to note this is only the stuff I have on hand, there's countless others that I wasn't able to buy yet or in the past or I may only have it in Japanese hard copy, that can still be found online like Vinland Saga or Claymore and From The New World along with I Am Legend (not the movie featuring Will Smith, the original novella, they have the same premise but go about it wildly different)

Series in the picture:

Girlfriends - Milk Morinaga / Plain Jane meets the school's most popular Fashionista, they become friends at the Fashionista's insistence and while Mari the Plane Jane sees herself snapped out of monotonous trudging through life living only day by day in the same routines to finally have new experiences, she ends up falling in love with Akko but struggles to accept the terror of admitting she could be lesbian

/ I've read this one ten times over the years and it's like I fall in love with it every time, it's not without faults though in the way it treats stuff like dieting, makeup culture, underage drinking, and high schoolers getting hit on by predatory men, it ranges on a scale of sorta accepting adherence to these things to implying discussion of its wrongness without going too deep because it's still largely a romance manga that wants to focus on the romance rather than incorporate hard discussion of social issues present

However where it can go hard on discussing the confusion people feel discovering their homosexuality (especially challenging the ridiculous belief that WLW girls can only be homosexual in adolescence but "leave it behind" for men as adults that Japan holds) and the shame they can feel doing so, it absolutely does, it also has some organic relationships, discussion on what even makes relationships, and loves showing off character's daily lives together in order to understand them, it's as much about being lgbt in our society as it is teenagers finding their place in it and relation to each other and themselves

Our Dreams At Dusk (Shimanami Tasogare) - Yūki Tamagani

/ A high school gay teen comes to terms with his sexuality and feels trapped by the safety of staying closeted with no one he can relate to making him feel completely alone, enter a hidden local lgbt lounge disguised as home renovating volunteers (though they do actually work as this too) who encompass trans, gay, questioning gender, lesbian, and questioning asexual members, they hire out his help while taking him under their wing to offer him support, the series revolves around him and the struggles and lives of the other members and what they face from outsider CisHet society

Berserk - Kentaro Miura / We recently lost him two months ago so Berserk's future is uncertain as its unfinished but it is a masterpiece that's influenced everything from Final Fantasy itself to Castlevania on Netflix to Bleach and countless other works spanning cultures and the world, it's worth trying if you can tolerate graphic art and mature themes ie. Rape, Gore, Religious Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Psychological Manipulation etc. it's ok if that's too much though / Story of a man going from revenge seeking to finding peace

Vagabond - Takehiko Inoue / Another masterpiece unfinished on hiatus though Inoue-sensei is still alive but needs to be in the right mindset to finish it, if you're already interested in Miyamoto Musashi, it's a retelling of his life based on a novel serial from the 1950s called Musashi which I also own, similar to Berserk in that Musashi begins very violent and fueled by power and lust to dominate for a place to belong in feudal Japan, but his life becomes questioning violence itself and what it does to the soul, instead doing the hard work of rejecting it and becoming as non violent and at peace as possible (similar to Vinland Saga)

Battle Royale - Koshun Takami / I also own the JP edition, in the West people probably remember this for being brought up as Suzanne Collins stealing it's premise for Hunger Games, but having read both series the only things they have in common are killing games, the themes and message overlaps a little bit because it deals with killing games, but it's largely different contexts and audiences they're speaking to- plus wearing a bomb collar in BR is a little more terrifying personally

Watchmen - Alan Moore / Alan Moore...Alan Moore 😔 enjoyed this one though and it's full of way more than the movie could cram in and does a better job of challenging the dangers superheroes actually present while still touching on the human spirit

Dune - Frank Herbert / I know it's a series but I've only read Dune itself and I think that alone is self contained and compelling enough to stand as is, deconstructs then reconstructs the concept of the heroic messiah the West loves into something horrifying for its effectiveness and cult of power within followers, as well as the abuses of capitalist, imperialistic powers that be trying to strip Arrakis of life for resource hoarding

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Leguin

The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Leguin

/ What can I say it's THE Ursula Leguin, her passing has been a huge blow as one of the voices that defined generations of anti capitalist human rights and environmental activists and her books reflect this challenging of everything from gender perception to the basis of societies and the community inherent to anarchy, she is a legend in life and in death

The Way of Kings + Edgedancer - Brandon Sanderson

WoK is Book 1 for the Stormlight Archive, my Book 1's here are recs for the whole series after those, ED is a novella that takes place in the SA universe between Books 2-3 but it works as a stand-alone too

/ Stormlight Archive is one of the pinnacles of epic fantasy thematically and literally with every book breaking 1000+ pages, it's dripping with some of the most complex characters I've ever seen and deals with a plethora of worldly themes and humor that honestly I think should be gone into blind the same way I was when I flipped through WoK at a Barnes and Noble when I was bored, I've reblogged some quotes from it for Vaste's musings tag before and this is the series that gave us the Shallan fucking Davar and Lift

It has some issues with how it portrays characters using social privilege and going against established order more than likely because the author's a Mormon white guy but I feel like despite its fumbling in places it still has a lot to say and the way it makes characters come alive is perfection, the discussion of morality and each Knight Radiant order's take on it and their guiding principles is also a joy, and I should advise it deals with many forms of realistic abuse on characters as well, I could keep reading it but I did need breaks sometimes to cry because I'd trigger flashbacks by accident, it has some of the most realistic and respectful portrayals of PTSD done I've ever seen

@kingjasnah runs a well documented and formatted blog for the series that deserves more attention

The Fifth Season (Book 1 in The Broken Earth Cycle) - N.K. Jemisin

/ Haunting, chilling, has one of the best openers ever I can only dream of standing level with one day and which I respect and cried over just opening the book, a post apocalyptic world with an unreliable narrator who'll keep you guessing as much as listening- should also be gone into blind for the best experience imo

The Eye of the World (Book 1 of The Wheel of Time)

/ Before and better than Game of Thrones there was Wheel of Time spanning decades and feared to remain incomplete when Robert Jordan passed in 2007 (Brandon Sanderson himself a WoT fan ended up being given the official task to finish the series last 3 books using Jordan's notes and drafts) it walks the line between fantasy and psychological realism with protagonists who wished for adventure and got it in ways they'd regret and treasure, it's the only fantasy series that uses prophecy cliches in a way I can stand by flipping the mental costs on its head (and the fact that none of the prophesied hero characters even want it) and the prose is great at both setting scenes and making you feel the given perspective of a POV character just by the language they use- also one of the best series to use the Split Them Up trope for clustered but cohesive character development

It's defined villains aren't as in depth as the central characters so far imo as I'm almost at Book 4, but I feel like they don't have to be because they serve more as tests, foils, and drive exploration of POV characters better, it's views on homosexuality and women are kinda dated, but it also has a huge range of women from all walks of life and of all kinds of backgrounds and personalities and abilities it's so good to see them all clashing or helping each other or both, the negatives are worth to me in that we still get rich characters first and foremost, and I get the sense that it wanted to be Progressive in the sense of 90s Liberalism informed by the 60s & 70s and Jordan's time as a Vietnam War veteran

It's getting an Amazon Prime TV serial adaptation too that's yet to start but I'm a little optimistic for it especially since the casting is featuring more Actors of Color

Land of the Lustrous (Houseki no Kuni) - Haruko Ichikawa

/ If the Ship of Theseus paradox met Buddhism for a story it'd be this, sentient gender less beings made of gemstone materials live on the single island left to Earth battling figures who descend from the sky to dismember and collect them as they have for thousands of years, and when the youngest most perceived useless member of gem society tries to find purpose and a job they can finally fit in with, it leads to questioning where the sky beings come from, who they are, and what they really want, which in turn unravels the current state and mysteries of all the three living races in existence

I feel like I'm underselling HnK with that but it's genuinely one giant complex ongoing philosophical exercise asking everything from what is a life if not constant change to what conditions are the ethical endings for that life and can sentient life really have an ethical decision in choosing to end itself and the metaphorical food chain as a cycle of life itself to even discussing genocide at the cost of saving one living society from extinction / One of the rare cases where the anime adaptation perfectly captured the essence of the source material while being as frame faithful as possible to boot

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