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ficinaboxUse this post to promote your fandoms to others or to ask for recommendations! Feel free to link to legal sources for your fandoms :)
A non-complete list of things you may want to include:
A non-complete list of things you may want to include:
- Fandom name
- What medium is it and where to find it
- A summary (try to avoid major spoilers)
- Content warnings
- Why you like it
Vorkosigan Saga!
Date: 2020-08-17 03:18 am (UTC)Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Book series, published from 1986 to 2016. You can find the ebooks online from Amazon or Baen.com, OR you can actually find most of them as free ebooks here.
The free ebooks were distributed by Baen, the publisher, and while you can no longer get them directly from Baen, they were distributed along with the right to distribute them to others non-commercially, so by my lights, getting them from that unofficial source is perfectly legal. There are 3 books and one novella not available this way (Memory, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, and the novella Flowers of Vashnoi), but they fall at the middle and end of the series, so you can see whether you like the books before spending any money.
I would highly recommend starting with Cordelia's Honor (the omnibus) or Shards of Honor and Barrayar (the individual books in that omnibus). The other books have a different protagonist, but those will give you the basics of the worldbuilding, and frankly most of the fandom hangs out in that space. More guidance on reading order, should you want it, is here, including (very helpfully) a summary of what individual novels are in what omnibus.
Did you like Game of Thrones, but think it could be improved by less narrative misogyny, and more spaceships? Read these! Do you find yourself frustrated with unrealistic or unhealthy depictions of adult relationships, and especially married couples? Read these! Do you want stories without a narrative ceiling on the age of the protagonist, where issues of "growing up" don't stop with "coming of age" and "finding yourself as a young adult," but go on to include "dealing with your aging parents as an adult child," "dealing with your own teenage child, bless his heart," "realizing that there are no Adults(tm) in the room and you, a forty-ish fuckup, are going to have to do it yourself," and even, "dealing with your own adult children and their unrealistic expectations that your life in retirement should primarily revolve around your grandchildren"? OMG read these! Great worldbuilding, great twisty plotlines, both action/adventure and political/suspense (with one straight-up Regency-esque romance thrown in because Why Not), great characters (who are the right age for the education/positions/achievements they have), the best het relationship I've ever read in pro fiction (two of them, actually), AND, after all that, the highest average quality of fanfiction I've ever seen in a fandom. Come join us!
The setting is Imperial Russia In Space, with all the twisty court politics and intrigue that suggests. The larger universe includes Gene-Modding Imperial China In Space and also Berkeley, California, ca. 1960, In Space. The author is a woman, and BOY does it show (in a good way). (For example, one of the plot-point Future Tech things is the uterine replicator, aka in vitro gestation, which is in common use on the Berkeley In Space planet and allows women to choose not to deal with pregnancy and childbirth. I had never seen this idea in a non-dystopian way before.) A woman protagonist for the first two books, and a disabled male protagonist after that. Space Opera that doesn't involve the objectification of women or gratuitous catsuits (if you skip the absolutely horrendous cover art)! Queer rep! - though the first books were written in the 1980s, so there's some major caveats with that; see the Content Warnings section for details.
The first two books (or the omnibus Cordelia's Honor, at the free ebooks link) follow Captain Cordelia Naismith of the Beta Colony Scientific Survey (the Berkeley In Space planet) as she meets and eventually marries Captain Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar (Imperial Russia In Space, and the series' main setting). The first book is a get-to-know-you road trip that ends in a war they fight on opposite sides of, and the second book is them getting married anyway, and Cordelia The Modern Liberal dealing with culture shock on a planet that literally left its own version of the Middle Ages fifty-ish canon years ago. This one is lots of politics and worldbuilding.
The other books/omnibuses follow the adventures of their son Miles, which is a lot of Wacky Space Opera Shenanigans, with increasing amounts of home-planet politics as he gets older. Miles is canonically physically disabled, on a planet with a huge culture skew to the militaristic and hyper-masculine. This is an aspect of life that presents challenges to himself and his family, but it's never treated as the only or even the defining aspect of his character (that would be his completely irrepressible personality, and inability to sit still or leave ANYTHING alone). He manages to accidentally commit treason at age 17, after he fails the physical section of the military academy entrance exams, goes off to visit his grandmother on Space Berkeley to get over it, and instead ends up on an increasingly bizarre series of side quests that begins with him selling a radioactive plot of land sight unseen to a customs official, and ends with him bluffing his way into becoming the Admiral of mercenary fleet. That is just the one book. And then he goes on from there.
Memory and A Civil Campaign are set on Barrayar, and focus more on political and interpersonal stuff rather than Space Opera Shenanigans. Memory is fundamentally about how you can fail in ways that seem life-destroying, and then keep on going afterwards anyway. It is one of the best books in the series. A Civil Campaign is the Regency-esque romance/comedy of errors I mentioned earlier, and it's mostly just a really fun romp.
tl;dr - lots of action-movie-level violence, some graphic violence, mentions of off-screen sexual assault and gender-based violence, systemic imperialism and colonialism issues, very imperfect queer rep. Details below.
Many (most? all?) of the books include sci-fi action or combat scenes, aka violence. Several of the books have more graphic violence, including some really explicit torture scenes in Mirror Dance. Sexual violence and gendered violence against women are mentioned and discussed in several places, and there's at least two attempted rapes on-screen, one in Shards of Honor (which also has the most mentions/occurences of off-screen sexual assault), and one in Mirror Dance. To the best of my recollection, none of these descriptions are graphic, but they're not subtle about it either.
The series is generally good with sexism/misogyny, with a few minor exceptions. Many tangentially-mentioned female characters don't have names (a perennial fandom frustration), and instead are referred to only by their relationships with named men, e.g., "Prince Xav's wife." This is apparently because the author preferred to wait until the last minute to name any character, in case she thought of a better name later, but the effect is still mildly frustrating.
Homophobic sentiments on Barrayar are mentioned briefly in a few places, but it's not a big element of the plot. There's discussion of various other forms of societal prejudice on Barrayar, especially misogyny and ableism, though it's generally in the form of a narrative condemnation (e.g., early in the series, Cordelia is quietly horrified by the complete absence of visibly disabled people from Barrayaran society, because what on earth had they done with them?). There is, however, a HUGE blind spot in the entire series for issues of imperialism and colonialism, and to a lesser extent also classism. All the main characters are very privileged, and they frequently don't realize it, and the narrative doesn't always realize it either. If you were bothered by Downton Abbey, you may not like this.
Re: racism - iirc, there are no canon characters of color, depending on how you read the character descriptions (some of them could be either "tan white person" or "light-skinned CoC"). Barrayar is stated at one point to be pretty ethnically homogenous, because it was colonized 600 years pre-canon and whatever ethnic diversity existed at the time basically melded together. There's a disadvantaged linguistic minority on the planet, which seems like it's sort of standing in for issues of racism without actually making it racial (aka, the author is a white woman in the 80s who wants to avoid that whole issue). There are situations of what is effectively in-universe slavery, but not on the main setting planet, and it's not based on in-universe race or ethnicity, but rather is framed as the consequence of unrestrained capitalist exploitation in the relevant society.
Re: queer rep issues: This series was written by a straight woman, starting in the 1980s. As discussed above, there is queer rep of various kinds in the series, and it's always clear in the narrative that this is a good thing (or simply a neutral fact about their character), but the details and the terminology are not always... up to modern standards.
For example, there's a canon trans character in A Civil Campaign, and the people who misgender him post-transition are clearly painted as bigoted jerks for doing so. However, the apparent motivation for his transition in the first place is presented as entirely political (as in, externally rather than internally motivated), and neither the narrative nor any of the characters use male pronouns to refer to the pre-transition character when they're discussing him in the past tense. Aral Vorkosigan, the major male character, is canonically bisexual, and his pre-canon relationship with a man is portrayed as a disaster not because gay, but because the other man is a terrible person. On the other hand, his wife the POV character utters the fandom-immortal line, "He was bisexual. Now he's married," in one of the first two books. Yeah. Like I said, it was the 80s. She Tried (tm). (He does later get a canon relationship with a man that isn't terrible, in Gentleman Jole, and happens during their marriage with his wife's consent, but a) that's a bit of a retcon, and b) has its own set of problems. It's meant to be positive poly rep, but IMO it doesn't really succeed.)
There's also a subpopulation of the Berkeley In Space planet who are the descendants of people bio-engineered to have both male and female reproductive systems/genitals; these people are canonically called "hermaphrodites" and their preferred pronouns are canonically "it." On the one hand, again, the narrative treats respecting these characters and their preferred form of address as a matter of basic courtesy - on the other hand, a modern writer would probably choose "they" or "zie" or... literally anything else.
Buffy Comics… specifically, Angel & Faith (2011)
Date: 2020-08-17 08:10 am (UTC)Medium: Comic (25 issues for this season)
What it is: A canon Buffy spin-off! Like Angel the Series, but in comic form.
(After Buffy aired its last episode, a series of canon post-series comics were published. The main Buffy title ran for 5 “seasons” (8-12). A spin-off title, Angel & Faith, ran concurrently to Buffy for 2 seasons (9-10).)
Where to find it: You can purchase it from the publisher (Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3) and it can be found to read/purchase elsewhere, too!
To briefly summarize: Angel and Faith are housemates in Giles’s old home in England. Together, they make plans for a resurrection.
(Due to a bunch of convoluted comics shenanigans, Giles dies by Angel’s hand at the end of Buffy s8. His death is the premise for Angel & Faith s9.)
Content warnings: Major Character Un-Death, technically! But also: Graphic depictions of violence. Body horror. Gore. One character (not Angel or Faith) suffers severe, deforming burns.
Why I like it: Unlikely housemates! England! Magic shenanigans! Awesome platonic friendships! Shipping opportunities! Swords! Character growth! Annnnnnd...
Faith!!! BtVS focused a lot on Buffy’s role as a leader - particularly in season 7, when she struggled to lead a group of teenaged girls. Season 9 is about Faith tackling teamwork and leadership, front and center. She is startled to learn that she is now regarded as a grown-up and a mentor figure by the younger Slayers. She becomes particularly close to one of them - Nadira, a main character in the Angel & Faith series. After witnessing the death of her squadron of Slayers, Nadira is hell-bent on killing Angel. (It was technically his fault.) Faith sees herself in Nadira and dedicates her time to trying to make things better for her - and trying to convince her that she cannot let herself be fueled only by hatred and a desire for revenge. It’s a very well-written character arc, and a very intriguing friendship - especially because Faith is hiding her ties to Angel from Nadira and the other women.
Angel is fantastic here, too! He is at his guilt-ridden best in this series. His friendship with Faith is very complex and layered, and so very genuine.
Drusilla appears! Spike and Willow appear! Giles’s youth is delved into!
Also! The art is fantastic. I adore it. This exact comic made me want to write and draw comics. Unlike Buffy season 8, which I found to be over-complicated and over-the-top, Angel and Faith 9 is highly engaging and easy to follow. When I first read this story, I was unaccustomed to reading comics and had previously struggled with the medium. If you were going to read just one post-series Buffy season, I’d recommend this one.
In this exchange, I am going to be requesting Nadira content. Solo Nadira! Nadira’s friendship with Faith! Nadira shipped with Faith! I love this stylish, hot-headed Slayer and her mentor/friend who relates way too much to her.
If you happen to read this series and fall for her, Nadira also appears in Angel & Faith s10!
no subject
Date: 2020-08-18 09:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-18 09:46 pm (UTC)I'd start here with season 1 - http://bspace.freeshell.org/Borgstories.html
The premise of Borgspace is that when various entities are assimilated, sometimes it doesn't quite work, and the (victims?) retain a bit of their individuality. The Borg queen doesn't want to waste these drones, but also doesn't want them to "infect" the rest of the collective, so she assigned them all to one cube and sent them off to the far reaches of the galaxy where they (supposedly) can't cause too much harm.
Various episodes have them dealing with everything from a thinly disguised UPS to religious zealots and the Galactic Wrestling Federation.
You don't need to read all of it to "get" who the main characters are, and how their world operates.
Rec me Cnovels and Cdramas!
Date: 2020-08-18 01:37 pm (UTC)Re: Rec me Cnovels and Cdramas! - The Untamed
Date: 2020-08-18 09:58 pm (UTC)The Untamed (or "Chen Qing Ling"/"CQL" but just calling it The Untamed is pretty popular!)
What medium is it and where to find it
A cdrama that's on Netflix and Viki! The subtitles vary between the two versions; Viki is free iirc. The Untamed is based on a popular cnovel Mo Dao Zu Shi (MDZS) and there's also a donghua (cartoon) version, but the series differs from the novel and its other versions in major ways including characterization of the main character and major parts of the worldbuilding and plot. You...have probably heard of The Untamed....? But I am reccing it to you just in case!
A summary
The Untamed is about a necromancer who dies hated by everyone and comes back to life more than a decade later, but that seems like a kind of poor summary. It's sort of about fantasy cultivation politics and sort of about solving a mystery and VERY about the main character and his love-interest-who-can't-be-his-confirmed-love-interest-in-the-cdrama-because-censors.
(Also because censors saying he's a necromancer is also pretty inaccurate...the cdrama couldn't have zombies...but like basically zombies, basically necromancy.)
Content warnings
Mind control, lots of death, non-graphic torture, genocide, one instance of sex workers being forced to sexually assault someone but you can skip that 5 minute explanation/flashback combo without missing anything.
Why you like it
More than half of the show is one long, wonderful, tense flashback that was hard to get into when it started but that had me SO HOOKED once I settled in. It has a large cast of characters and lots of interesting and complex friendship dynamics as well! Even if you don't like the main ship, you will probably find an m/m pair to obsess over.
Here are some ships that have been nominated to consider!
Lan Wanji/Wei Wuxian - This is the main ship, and it's canonical in the cnovel! LWJ is stoic and was raised in a place with a lot of rules; WWX is a carefree genius, emphasis on genius. They have a kind of rocky road to their friendship that I really liked!
Nie Huaisang/Wei Wuxian - NHS and WWX are friends while attending cultivation school together during the first part of the flashback! They swap porn and goof off before things go off the rails, and then don't see each other for a long time, so there's lots of interesting unexplored corners to their relationship.
Lan Xichen/Meng Yao - It would be a little spoiler-y to fully explain this ship but do you like bromances that are fascinating train wrecks? This one's for you!
Re: Rec me Cnovels and Cdramas!
Date: 2020-08-19 01:34 am (UTC)What medium is it and where to find it: 40 episode live action cdrama, freely available on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdRj_d7_skE&list=PLvpAVnYN4lb2Gfz6Feq3KA1r5trkUxMU-
I suggest using solo's edited subtitles:
https://mega.nz/folder/xYN2UQaJ#ePMdTg-NCMtgQSCcIV6M_w
A summary (try to avoid major spoilers): In short, a ten thousand year old superpowered alien engineering professor (who's terrible with technology) and a socially adept, sometimes-jerk cop with a heart of gold deal with crimes committed undocumented cave aliens attempting to make a life for themselves on the surface. Along the way, they fall in love.
For more detail, I will point you to rheasylvia's introduction:
https://rheasilvia.dreamwidth.org/122887.html
Content warnings: Lots of death, blood, one episode revolves around a past sexual assault.
Why you like it: I came for the ten thousand year old superpowered alien engineering professor pretending to be human. I stayed for the science fiction, the jerk cop with a heart of gold, the very sweet time travel m/m romance (albeit chaste due to censorship), and all the overly dramatic
gothsaliens who love to monologue.Sarazanmai
Date: 2020-08-19 01:26 am (UTC)Sarazanmai
Medium
Anime (11 episodes), sub available on Crunchyroll and dub available on Funimation; there are side materials that are spottily translated but aren't necessary for understanding. I recommend the light novels for people interested in additional insight into the characters, both novels have been officially translated and are available digitally on Kindle, Google Books, etc.
Summary
Three teenage boys are given the opportunity to wish for anything they want, but only if they turn into kappa and fight enemies for the exiled prince of the Kappa Kingdom. After each successful fight, they are forced to connect with each other by sharing their deepest, most shameful secrets.
Each boy is struggling to connect to someone they care about and the show explores themes of love and desire, communication, sexuality, and friendship.
Content Warnings
Non-explicit sexual content, mainly between adult characters (a few quick scenes involving dubious consent) and some sexual references involving the middle school-aged characters. Varying levels of unhealthy relationships such as some implied emotional abuse between siblings and concerns about infidelity. Character death and violence, including minor scenes of police brutality. Some non-explicit references to suicidal thoughts.
Why I Like It
I'm a big Ikuhara fan and Sarazanmai is a great example of his strengths. Every character is complicated and flawed while being sympathetic and enjoyable. The show manages to explore their development and relationships in a short amount of time. It also explores sexuality and same-sex relationships in a thoughtful and (imo) relatable way; specifically, there is a canon m/m couple and a canon gay main character. And of course, deliciously complicated sibling relationships.
I could go on! The animation is beautiful, the music is addicting, and so on. If you're interested in any of the things I discussed above, I highly recommend giving it a try. Oh, and a tip: always watch past the ending credits! There are important, plot-related scenes after the ending theme.
A Gathering of Dragons series by Milla Vane
Date: 2020-08-20 08:04 pm (UTC)A Gathering of Dragons series by Milla Vane
A book series currently consisting out of two novels and a novella (but book 1 is enough canon knowledge for my requests).
Summary:
It's a Barbarian Romance in a Fantasy setting.
A generation ago the Destroyer raged over the world and left a trail of death, dark magic, and destruction. The Destroyer was barely held back by several tribes, city-states and people forming an alliance, and while it worked, the politics and scheming make the peace and cooperation fragile.
The world is slowly recovering, but now rumors grow that the Destroyer might be returning. So when a people's leaders are murdered it sets the alliance tumbling at the worst possible moment. Unless the marriage of convenience between a Barbarian leader and a cast-out City-State queen can restore the balance and start a true alliance to fight back against the Destroyer.
What do you love about it?
Barbarians! Falling slowly in love! Politics and assassinations! A complicated motive about the value of truth. DINOSAURS.
It's like the Dothraki in a world where dinosaurs still roam in the wilds (not as bountiful, but still there), dark magic turns creatures into zombies, and Gods meddle in human affairs.
Mostly I fell in love with the characters, as both the hero and heroine of the first and second book are characters you want to root for. I fell even more in love with the supporting characters, the Dragon from the series title, which serves as the personal guard of the Barbarian leader and hits all my found family buttons. My favorites are Ardyl and Keril who are queer and poly and who love each other, so I desperately need them to kiss.
It's a Barbarian romance series, so there's a lot of violence and gore, and it's a pretty dark and brutal world. Content warnings from the author here (https://millavane.com/books/content-warning/). All sex between main characters is consensual though.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-23 11:34 pm (UTC)Fandom: Golden Kamuy
What is it?: An ongoing manga by Satoru Noda, with two seasons of anime (and a third on the way). Anime News Network encyclopedia links for the manga, and the anime. GoodReads profile on the manga, including a brief preview, here.
Where can you find it?: The manga is published in North America by Viz Media, and has ebook releases. It’s currently up to volume 17; 22 volumes are out in Japan. The anime is available through Crunchyroll, VRV, and Funimation. You can find international distributors on its ANN page or its Wikipedia entry.
What’s it about?: Sugimoto Saichi, veteran of the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese war, desperately needs money to fulfill an important promise and heads to Hokkaido to pan for gold. Instead of money, he finds a strange story about a treasure trove of gold bloodily stolen from a group of indigenous Ainu men. The gold is hidden, and the only map to it is tattooed on the bodies of escaped convicts who were incarcerated alongside the murderer. Sugimoto teams up with Asirpa, a talented hunter and tracker, and the daughter of one of the murdered men, to find the gold and get Asirpa some closure.
Why do I like it?: It’s famously well-researched, and has an extremely unusual setting. (The Ainu appear in a significant capacity in possibly five other works of fiction; this is by far the most in-depth.)
It blends a ton of genres - mainly that of action-adventure period piece and cultural edutainment, but it’s also a Western, a war story (especially of what happens to soldiers after wars), a critique of imperialism, a survival story, and very often a cooking anime, and features lots of comedy (sometimes quite dark, just as often ridiculous, or both), high camp, and horror.
There’s a massive cast of (mostly) entertaining characters, but the beating heart of it all is the relationship between Sugimoto and Asirpa. He’s a sweetheart, and a talented fighter who’s lived through so many things that should have killed him that he’s nicknamed “The Immortal”; she’s a perpetually-hungry orphan who takes neither guff nor human lives. (Taking animal lives, however? Asirpa’s from a hunter-gatherer society; she’ll do it with respect, but she’ll kill any critter that might conceivably be tasty.) They save each other’s lives with regularity, and functionally, each other’s souls. She lets him be somebody besides unkillable “Immortal” Sugimoto, reminding him of the things he left behind when he went to war. He enables her to pursue her investigation of the gold and her father’s death without compromising her morality.
And there’s great funny faces, and a wonderful found family, and shifting alliances, and so many cool animals, and the manga’s very pretty (the anime only rarely rises above workman-like, I’m afraid, but it has a terrific voice cast to make up for it), and female characters treated with respect! In a seinen manga! And just, again, so much interesting stuff about Ainu culture and Hokkaido and the political situation in East Asia in the early 20th century.
Anything you should be leery of?: YES. THERE IS. Gore - humans attacking and killing each other with fists, blades, and guns; animals attacking, killing, and eating humans; humans killing, cooking, and skinning animals. A major plot point revolves around skinning (already dead) humans; a significant arc character produces outlandish products from human skin. Fanservice - always of adults, of both genders, with setting-censored genitalia, and nearly always of characters who are competent and have agency in the narrative, i.e. they are not present in the narrative for mere titillation, which always makes fanservice more bearable to me. There are occasional naked or near-naked tertiary characters - male and female coal miners, female sex workers. Some comic, undetailed nudity of child characters. A running gag involves a male character’s large chest size, another involves an eight-year-old boy admiring the size of an adult woman’s breasts. Repeated queer-coding of antagonists (and protagonists, but less overtly), no unarguably heroic and good LGBT+ characters (well, basically only Asirpa is ever presented as consistently heroic and moral). Bestiality in one arc - decried by all parties but the perpretrator. Sexualized violence by antagonists - never rape, though. One antagonist has manipulated and/or gaslit his allies into being loyal and/or in love with him.
Fandom: Otoyomegatari | A Bride’s Story
What is it?: An ongoing manga by Kaoru Mori. Anime News Network encyclopedia link here. GoodReads profile, including a brief preview, here.
Where can you find it?: The manga is published in North America by Yen Press, and has ebook releases. It’s currently up to volume 11; there are 12 volumes released in Japan so far. You can find international distributors on its ANN page or its Wikipedia entry.
What’s it about?: In 19th Century Central Asia, 20-year-old Amir Halgal and 12-year-old Karluk Eihon enter into an arranged marriage. The story is usually a slice-of-life romance, alternately following Amir and Karluk’s families and friends and their guest, British researcher Henry Smith as he enters new places and meets new people. Please don’t run away from the age-gap romance at the heart of the series - it’s treated really respectfully and wholesomely, and with a strong sense of time and place. Amir, at 20, is considered late to marry; Karluk, at 12, a little young. An ongoing thread with them is Karluk’s efforts to grow up and be ‘manly’ enough for his adult bride, even though, as a married man, he’s accepted as an adult by everyone around him already. Amir has to adapt from her previous nomadic lifestyle to the settled routines of town, and choose between the warmth of her new husband’s family versus going back to her controlling birth family.
Why do I like it?: Again, an unusual setting, with loads of research done for it - there’s not a lot of English-translated media set amidst the daily life of Silk Road societies. Locations visited include: Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Karakalpakstan, Tajikistan, and Persia/modern Iran. There’s a deep sense of cultural exploration, featuring nomadic herding families, agricultural town dwellers, fisher folk around the Aral Sea, Persian aristocracy.
This is a series that really values ‘women’s work’ - entire chapters revolve around textile work, child care, cooking, animal husbandry. Despite the patriarchal societies they live in, the female characters have power in their own lives, in their families, and in their communities. And despite the series being, ostensibly, a romance (or several romances), familial and platonic relationships form a major part of the narrative.
Most of the characters in A Bride’s Story are good-hearted, trying their best to live alongside each other in an increasingly turbulent time. This means most chapters are slower-paced slice of life, sinking into the details of the setting. Occasionally, though, Mori chooses to flex her writing chops, and these high-drama moments are as exciting and heart-pounding as the rest of the series is delightful and relaxing. (Mostly relaxing - the historical encroachment of Russia is a source of continual background tension.)
The art! For my money, one of the three most gorgeous manga being published. Mori is incredible - she draws people, props, animals, and landscapes with lush and beautiful realism. No cheap shortcuts, either - one glance at a panel draped with hand-drawn embroidery is enough to show that off.
Anything you should be leery of?: Well, the central age-gap romance. Again, I think it’s handled well, and there is no creepy sexualization or fetishization going on. A small amount of nudity with characters bathing or sleeping naked (in a yurt, or while suffering a fever.) Teenagers getting married or betrothed to other teens. One warfare sequence with visible blood. References to spousal abuse - offscreen, and decried. Two instances of patriarchs enforcing their will over women in their charge - neither successful in the long term.
Apothecia
Date: 2020-08-27 10:18 am (UTC)Medium: webcomic, under 100 pages and free to read online here.
Summary: A horrible alien criminal has crash-landed on earth, and the only person who knows he's there is Jessie. She's about in middle school, precocious, a little difficult, and mostly ignored; the alien in the woods seems to be the single person who takes her at all seriously. The alien seems to be a collection of ??symbiotic fungi?? more than anything else and, while it would usually sweep over the earth and consume all life forms, it's not able to consume earth life just yet. It talks to Jessie a lot instead. Near the end, the comic goes through a timeskip, and adult Jessie swings back for one more confrontation with the alien.
Content warnings: allusions to a sexual predator abducting and probably killing young women in the area; nothing explicit happens, but Jessie does have a brief encounter with him. Gore, body horror, and references to genocide.
Why I like it: The dynamic between Jessie and the alien is central to the story, and there's something uniquely fun about a fungoid alien with a jillion eyes and very little understanding of humanity seeming to take this mostly ignored little human girl under its terrible, evil wing. The relationship between the alien and Jessie comes across to me more than anything as a bit parental ("YOU DO NOT CHITTER. ALL YOUNG THINGS SHOULD CHITTER.") and I just like how fucked up that is. This isn't, like, a happy comic, but it's full of greasy, slimy, yucky body horror, and the alien eating a dude and wanting to eat more, and Jessie coming of age in a strange way that is not too good for her or happy. The ending scenario leaves lots of possibilities for fic, and the comic doesn't outstay its welcome. It's a fun time.