#fantasy sample library

[krazetv]

Eduardo Tarilonte's Forest Kingdom 3 Review & Playthrough | Bestservice

[fictionadventurer]

I made the mistake of reading the online samples of Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries and now I'm distressed because I can't get more.

[voidartisan]

read a little bit of The Goblin Emperor bc it seemed up my alley and I must say that, as a Tolkien enthusiast, the fact that it starts out with a pronunciation guide feat. linguistics lore and then immediately follows it up with a guide to forms of address in the style of an in-world traveler's guide AND makes use of formal vs. informal first- and second-person pronouns in the dialogue makes a VERY good first impression

[free-queer-books]

The Trans Rights Readathon is here!

I'll be posting at least one free trans book by a trans author each day of the readathon. In the meantime, here's a list of free books with trans characters to start your readathon! I'll update this pinned post throughout the readathon to show active offers.

Since these books are free, the best way to support the authors is to leave a review if you like the book. Happy reading, and please rec and review!

Free ebooks with trans umbrella characters written by trans umbrella authors:

Blood Samples by Xine Fury - trans woman character and trans man character, trans author

Courage is a Gift: & other stories by and about transgender, non binary, and genderqueer people - trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer authors

Friend of the Damned by Vincent Lore - trans man character, trans man author

How I Found Myself by Luna Tibling - nonbinary character, trans and nonbinary author

I AM DREAMING by Elizabeth Jensen - stories by a trans woman author about her dreams

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom: A Transfeminine Anthology - transfeminine characters, transfeminine authors

Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy by Transgender Authors - trans authors

Noun of Noun and Adjective by Caledonia Fife - trans woman character, trans woman author

A Rose by Any Other Name: A Zine Anthology About Trans People's Relationship With Their Chosen Names - trans authors

Self-Made by M. Darusha Wehm - trans woman character, agender author

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg - butch character, butch author

A Strip of Velvet by Rien Gray - nonbinary character, nonbinary author

whatever.odt by JD O"Mears - memoir by a genderqueer author

And other free books for Trans Rights Readathon:

Freebies by Talli L. Morgan on itch.io

Trans Rights Readathon Bundle by Samarcand Books on itch.io

Books by Oskar Leonard on various platforms

Books by Trismegistus Shandy on various platforms

Books by Fox N. Locke on itch.io (ends 30th March)

Free books available at the Queer Liberation Library posted by @queerliblib

Free and on-sale books compled by @haveyoureadthistransbook

[s0s1mple]

Caught My Eye - Lee Heeseung

Random Prompt:

“I saw you around my home. I couldn’t help but want to take you.”

Random Member: Heeseung

TW: General yandere behavior, stalking, sexual fantasy, kidnapping

Masterlist

Heeseung liked girls. A lot. Liked looking at them, liked flirting with them, liked fucking them and then moving onto the next one that caught his attention. Really, he considered himself a bit of a sommelier when it came to women. He tasted a bit of each, easily worming into their hearts and pants with some well-placed touches and bright smiles, before spitting them right back out and searching for the taste he really craved.

Unfortunately, Heeseung had yet to find that flavor of girl. The ones he slept with were nice, sure. Hot, sexy, cute, take your pick. But they lacked that wow factor, lacked that special something that would have him actually jonesing for a second fix. Heeseung wanted to know what that was like; what was it that made people choose each other? That made them content to stick with one another and sample each other over and over and over. The whole concept frankly sounded boring to him. Inconceivable.

Until he saw you.

Heeseung wasn’t fully sure what it was about you that had drawn his attention. You weren’t particularly interesting, from an objective standpoint. You dressed normally, comfortably, no shorts to draw his attention to your legs or v-neck to pull his gaze to your chest. Your face was… attractive, he guessed. Pretty average though. The sort of face he knew he’d normally see and instantly forget.

But none of that seemed to matter, because the second he saw you passing through the alley that ran between his house and the apartment complex next door, his brain felt like it had downloaded a computer virus. Like it’d completely shut down and rebooted itself with all new code. Gone were the preferences he’d had before, all vague ideas of what he wanted in a partner suddenly replaced with oddly specific adjectives. All of it pertaining to you, the stranger who seemed to like cutting by his property for a shortcut to the library.

He felt like he was defective. What the fuck was going on? Why was it that every time you passed by his kitchen window, your lips pursed as you bobbed your head to music, he stopped what he was doing and watched you. Whenever you appeared, he felt like he’d fallen into a glue trap, his attention so solely stuck on you that everyone else felt hazy.

And fuck, he couldn’t even escape you in his everyday life either. He’d be busy working, his focus entirely on not accidentally crushing his fingers, before all of a sudden his mind drifted to you. What were you doing? What did you do in your free time? What kind of things did you like? Did you have parents? Siblings? A boyfriend? The thought made him irrationally annoyed, for some bizarre reason, which in turn made him even more annoyed. Lee Heeseung didn’t get pussy-whipped, especially when he hadn’t even been in said pussy.

And boy, if that didn’t give him an idea. What if he just got whatever the hell this was out of his system? Surely that would clear all this bullshit out of his brain and leave room for his usual routine once more. Yeah, that would totally work.

So next time Heeseung saw you, he rushed out his front door, fully intending to ‘accidentally’ bump into you and turn his charm up to eleven. Surely it couldn’t be that hard to get in your pants, right?

But as he accidentally-on-purpose bumped into you, false apologies spilling from his lips, he paused. His plan faded from mind. You were looking up at him, easily matching his perfect white smile with a slightly crooked one of your own, eyes crinkled. His heart stuttered. He stared at you, eyes wide, and it became him who did the stammering. “A-Ah, sorry about that…”

“No worries!” You were already moving on before he’d even finished, the interaction so seemingly inconsequential to you that he was sure you’d already begun to forget. It made his skin itch all the more. Why was it that you could care so little, could exist without reciprocating the infatuation in the slightest. It was so fucking unfair. So unfair. His fingers clenched. For the first time, Heeseung felt off balance.

He hated that feeling. Despised it. Lee Heeseung wasn’t nervous, wasn’t led around by some dumb crush sinking its teeth into him. That wasn’t who he was.

He needed to regain control.

Truthfully, Heeseung hadn’t known what that might entail. First he’d thought about resuming his attempt to sleep with you, but the idea of a pump and dump had made his mind violently uncomfortable for some bizarre reason. Then he tried ignoring you completely, even installing shutters on his kitchen windows. Then he’d tried simply learning more about you, an attempt to sate his curiosity by following you routine through the city. Then, as you passed by his porch like usual, his arm was suddenly wrapped around your middle, palm pressed flat against your mouth. In a couple smooth motions, he was yanking you up the porch steps and dragging your kicking, thrashing form into the house.

“Shh, shh! Shut up!” His brain, slowly realizing what the fuck he was doing, began to blare out ringing alarm bells. His arm shifted up to wrap around your throat, anything to stop your jerking, and he pulled hard. You were soon gasping into his palm, breath warm and hot and making Heeseung inexplicably hot himself, but to little avail. Your eyes rolled into the back of your head as you fell limply into his arms. “Fuck.” Heeseung stared at you for a long moment, dimly registering that he’d just picked you up and taken you. More prominently, he registered his lack of concern about the matter.

Worrying, probably.

Nothing stopped him from hauling you up into his bedroom. Nothing stopped him from tying your hands to his headboard with that cheap bondage shit he’d once thought looked so tantalizing on the girls he’d brought home. All of a sudden, the idea of someone other than you laying there in them felt somehow disgusting. Like the mere idea that they could compare was an affront to whatever god was out there. Because surely that was where this obsession had come from, right? So out of the blue like this, so all-consuming that he was cooing over your passed out form like one of those whipped boyfriends he was so disgusted by. Nothing stopped him from grooming your hair back, marveling at the feel of your skin, wondering if the rest of your body just as soft. Nothing stopped him from licking his suddenly dry lips as he traced a palm over your hip.

God, it was going to be so good when you gave into him. The sweetest flavor he’d ever tasted- one that would pull him back over and over and that he found he didn’t mind double-dipping with. As you blinked awake blearily, confusion and fear seeping into your eyes, Heeseung’s mouth stretched into a blinding, charming smile.

“Hey there, sleepyhead. Feeling alright? Sorry about all this, but I saw you around my home.” He leaned in closer, chuckling at the way your shoulders pulled in. Cute. His voice dropped to a soft whisper. “I couldn’t help but to want to take you for myself.”

Reqs are open, feel free to drop in and say hi :)

[fanonical]

Did you ever get my ask? I asked about what to do when a child loves something by a problematic author. How do you go about telling them if they’re too young? SHOULD you tell them? I’m talking about current 10 year old HP fans and children who like the Coraline movie. What do we do when it’s them and not adults? We forget about the target audience too much when we talk about things like this as if it were exclusively childhood nostalgia of Millenials/Gen Z

For fuck's sake, I didn't want to rise to the bait here, but this is making me mad because it's such a straw argument, so fuck it, I'm taking the bait. For context, this is anon's first ask:

Anon, first off, you are responding to a post that is five years old and about a subject that we pointedly do not post about anymore, and that alone makes me think you're not responding in good faith, but whatever.

Look, I work in a fucking library. We have HP books. If a child comes up to me and asks 'hey where's the HP books' I am not going to a) kick them in the face, b) tell them they're an idiot or c) refuse to answer. I am going to tell them where the fucking HP books are. I don't put them on displays I make, but I don't censor them, because we are legally not allowed to censor books in the library.

But I guess you're asking more if this is a kid who's in my life, as opposed to a kid who I just kinda come across. So, okay, I have a 9 year old neighbour whose family are friends with mine, we play video games together occasionally when her mum and dad need someone to watch her. And this kid reads books! And this kid reads fantasy books.

If I was seriously talking to her about the HP books, I might tell her about JKR! I would say something like 'I used to like the HP books, but then I learned that the author said some really nasty things about trans people like me. Now I don't like them so much any more.' And we could have a conversation about that, you know! I've talked to this kid about transphobia in terms that are appropriate for her age. We've had discussions about gender before. I think she'd listen to me, and form her own fucking opinion about it! 'I don't like the author of the HP books because she has said some nasty things' is a concept you can communicate to a five year old.

But also like. You're kind of acting like by taking away HP from this (hypothetical in your ask) kid they don't have any other books. Which...isn't true? If all copies of the HP books disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, kids would be reading other stuff, as they are currently reading other stuff! My 9 year old neighbour is a huge Jacqueline Wilson fan, she loves the Daisy Meadows rainbow fairy books. I want to introduce her to the Morrigan Crow books. We could get retro and start introducing kids to the Edge Chronicles, I fucking loved those books. Artemis Fowl. A Series of Unfortunate Events. There are so many other book series for kids in this world. I work in a fucking library! I can tell you that the kids are into Tom Gates, Dogman, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Percy Jackson, Babysitter Club, Dork Diaries, and (exasperated sigh) David Walliams books, based on a sample size of every kid I encounter at work. I get asked for all of them far more than I do for HP, actually.

I don't think you'd be ruining every kid's lives by taking away One Series from them. (Particularly not one that's losing some relevancy every day - and I mean that in the sense that it's not an ongoing series, the last book came out in 2007. Nearly 20 years ago. For a nine or ten year old, that's almost double their entire life.) And I don't think you necessarily would be taking it away from them to say 'hey this is the reason I don't like these books'. I trust your average ten year old to be able to have a reasonably mature conversation. You're making it sound like they're all Oliver Twist holding out their gruel bowl saying 'please sir I only read one book'.

Anyway. All this to say, I think kids have the ability to have conversations about media. And there are other books in the world. So, no, taking HP or Coraline or whatever away from kids is hardly snatching candy from a baby. Kids are smarter than you think.

[coyoteincense]

so, you want to try some fragrances, but the big houses are pretty expensive

…here's some indie companies worth a try! they will generally be more affordable, and they also offer some unique fragrances that bigger houses might not have tried yet. remember to consider getting a sample of anything before blind buying a larger bottle!

deep midnight perfumes - incredible selection of perfume oils with a specific focus of folktales, high fantasy, goth/vampire vibes and retro inspiration, but there are plenty of options and themed sets as well

pulp fragrance - i love the general whimsigoth retro book cover aesthetic of theirs, but pulp fragrance also delivers on unique fragrances and realistic nature scents. their scent index is sure to have something you're looking for! fragrances come in roll-on and wand cap samples. amazing longevity from my experience as well

mad labs studios - very fun and well-made fandom inspired fragrances! right now they have fallout, baldur's gate 3, the last of us, resident evil, and much more. i was gifted the astarion fragrance and it genuinely smells so good. they also have wax melts!

alkemia perfumes - established in 2009 and still kicking, alkemia has an insane amount of unique options to try from for very reasonable prices. they're a very reputable indie company. their perfume list is crazy long and full of great options

groovygalaxy - a fragrance etsy shop with cryptid creature inspiration. i've gotten a sample for mothman mall specifically and enjoyed it more than i thought i would!

andromeda's curse - a really good indie shop with very nice custom sample packs. honestly really good projection of their notes, they know how to really balance a fragrance and let each note have their time to shine

lovesick witchery - i like a lot of these, babydoll head really threw me for a loop and i enjoy the more 'out there' artistic ones, but there's a lot to choose from and they're all pretty solid! their longevity isn't perfect but they're fairly inexpensive and worth it in my opinion

poesie perfume - there are some really unique fragrances in here. green girl, forest cat, library ghost, and marlowe really caught my eye and i really enjoy what they make!

here's a whole spreadsheet with way more indie houses to take a look at. i have not tried all of these, but this is an amazing resource to support smaller businesses and try fragrances you wouldn't be able to find elsewhere

[erintoknow]

2024 reading roundup

i managed to read over a 100 books this year, which is, personally nuts, for me as a pace, especially when i feel busier then ever. the joys and benefits of downtime at the desk job, i guess? the bulk of what i read is YA which is ostensibly for professional reasons as a ya librarian but i was still able to sneak in a few decent adult grade books at least

this is probably also the most trans fem authored fiction i've read in a single year (hooray), in large part things to having a resource like @thetransfemininereview now whereas before i just kinda out in the woods poking at rocks with a small stick, praying the library will pick things up

so like, here's a sampling of some books and a few thoughts; trans fem authored books listed first ofc ofc:

These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein

goodreads says i read this in december but i swore i picked it up over the summer - anyway, transfem protag, transfem author, sorta cyberpunk noir murder mystery deal. really enjoyed this book, especially with how it played with cyberpunk genre conceits while still feeling like it's not just importing stuff unchanged from the 80s.

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

i'm still stuck waiting for a library to get the Translation State ebook in so i thought i'd give Leckie's fantasy novel a spin; this was great. i'm uncultured swine apparently (joke) so i didn't pick up on the very end that at least half the book was a twist on Hamlet but i was on board from pretty much first page. the use of 1st and 2nd person with the narrator being a character in the story telling the events of the novel to another character in the story was great. loved the world building and finished the book hoping Leckie will come back to this concept for another go in the future

might be my top book that i read in 2024?

The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy

i really want to talk about this book, but i'm not sure what to say. i didn't realize going in that this would be YA (just because the protag is teen doesn't always equal YA and all) but, yeah, it's very YA. it feels like a gender flipped tamora pierce novel and i gather that was extremely intentional. our trans girl protag trades places with her best friend who was promised to a coven of witches and 'disguises' herself as a girl so she can do so

i liked the book and i'm looking forward to the continuation but the whole thing kind of feels like a dream on review after reading, specific details are hard to grasp onto. the narrative voice of protag feels a lot younger to me then 16, more like 12 or 11 maybe, which felt off? but didn't overly detract from the story which gets into some pretty high stakes!

the ending felt weirdly forced with the big-bad duchess just deciding not to press the advantage and go for the throne after everyone else is exhausted from fighting the big climatic battle, but sure, okay, this is a world where an entire country just collectively agreed to live by anarchist principles so clearly human cognition works differently in this setting

Magica Riot by Kara Buchanan

i read like three different magical girl books/novellas this year which feels wild. anyway, this was great cotton candy treat of a book. a solid entry in the 'everyone is nice to the trans girl for once' genre of trans fem fiction, our protagonist gets to become a magical girl, make friends, and save the day, hooray! it looks like this is going to be a series, which yes, sure, i'm sold

A Little Vice by Erin Elkin

i picked this up on a whim without really knowing what i was getting into and ended up really enjoying it. trans fem egg protagonist is stuck on the sidelines while the plot of a magical girl show plays out at her school with her best friend as one of the lead members. lotta angst and big feelings in this one. i understand this was originally a scribblehub serial? it certainly seems to follow in the scribblehub tradition of 'make as oblivious a headcase of a trans fem egg as possible' but whereas i've bounced off of that before the combination of addressing dsyphoria/angst/and sunk cost fallacy got me hooked - you know i love my sunk cost fallacy characters. also, i wanna add: the metatextual conceit with how each chapter is framed was a really cute touch and really completed the whole vibe

and a sampling of some non trans fem work i chewed through this year:

A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon, translated by Anton Hur

i picked this up after seeing it get a lot of positive press and... i don't know? maybe it's because i'm missing something about the culture context the book was written in / released into, or because magical girl stuff largely missed me as a kid (i got sucked into digimon instead of sailor moon), but this really fell flat for me. like, i wouldn't call it bad but it felt stale and kind of a surface level take? maybe i would feel better about this book if i hadn't been lead to believe going into it that it was saying something deep and profound

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White

this book fucking rocked, let's be clear - it might be my top non-trans fem authored novel of the year? our protag is a trans boy in an old appalachian mining town who's family has been in a generations long bloody and violent feud with the sheriff's family dating back to a coal miner strike. YA gets a lot of rightly deserved derision i think (i've read enough stinkers this year) but White knocks it out of the park every time and this one was no exception.

Old Wounds by Logan-Ashley Kisner

horror story where a trans boy and his ex, a trans girl while running away to california get stuck in a small town where locals sacrifice a girl every year to the local monster - so who in this scenario gets to decide who counts as a girl?

this was a really fun book, full stop, no notes. easily in my top 5? 10? for the year and not just because i share a name with the trans girl.

The Girl in Question by Tess Sharpe

the sequel i didn't know i wanted, or existed - a follow up to Sharpe's previous book, The Girl's I've Been, which was a fasted paced thriller that kept you engaged even has it jumped back and forth between past and present. The follow up here is more of the same, and while i don't think it follow recaptures the magic, it manages to take the same basic premise and both up the stakes and add a new twist on events that i still came out with a pretty good time

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew

surprise non-fiction entry - this was a really great and thoughtful little book on how we currently approach ability aids and technology and how we might do better, if you see it, i recommend picking this one up

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

what if ender's game but not by a homophobe? okay, that's a bit reductive. Some Desperate Glory follows Kyr, a child solider who grew up in a fanatical fascist cult on her painful and reality bending journey to learn empathy. Kyr never really becomes a 'good' person by the end of the story, and she's aware of that, but her journey through self deprogramming her monstrous beliefs set to a backdrop where humanity lost the war (and their homeworld) against an alien empire was way better executed then i expected going in. this book is going to be peak 'your mileage may vary' but is absolutely worth giving a shot

[philtstone]

as if you havent already filled enough indulgent prompts for me already—Juliet & Gus, "competition"

also cleaned up and posted on ao3

Juliet's always been the jealous type, but she's never been jealous of Gus.

Maybe for like a week, right after Vancouver, she had a mild freakout over how it would all work. Which was normal of her, Juliet maintains. Shawn was historically bad at saying no to both of them, they were trying to keep things a secret at work, it was so so so new in ways that blended the heady butterflies and anxiety about the future into one single entity in her stomach, and, well. She was suddenly very personally aware: there were things Gus knew about her boyfriend that were probably so hyperspecific that they completely escaped her scope of imagination.

The little thread of anxiety tied to this particular knowledge started to dissolve the first time Shawn called her in the middle of the night when he couldn't sleep. And besides, she had thought -- wasn't this all just a great opportunity to get to know Gus better, too?

Juliet is a pragmatic woman and a strategist and the initiator of their local public library's Feminist Fantasy and Friendship book club. Over the last fifteen years, the number of times she's felt like she's competing with Burton Guster for Shawn's attention is so small it's kind of irrelevant.

"Juliet!" Gus follows the sound of his pained voice through the door. "It's been three hours! He's not answering his phone!"

Juliet closes the front door and sighs. "He's fixing the dishwasher."

Gus's scarf is hanging lopsidedly from around his neck and the top of his perfectly round head glistens with the remnants of a spring rainstorm. He raises both eyebrows. "Shawn. Our Shawn? The Shawn we know. Is fixing the dishwasher."

"Didn't he do it for a living for like three weeks back in ninety nine?" Juliet asks, taking Gus's coat from him and ushering him into the living room.

"Well, yeah," says Gus, in a tone that implies the mutual understanding that Shawn is annoyingly handy when he isn't distracted by twelve other more interesting things and/or being deliberately useless. "I just didn't think he'd have the patience to sit down and do it. Especially when he was supposed to come over three hours ago to go over these case files with me. I gotta pick up Junior from daycare in twenty minutes!"

Wordlessly, Juliet nudges him closer to the half-shut kitchen door. Gus pauses, frowning, then tilts his head as Shawn's animated voice floats through to them, a sample of the bits and pieces of conversation Juliet's been neglected for all afternoon.

"... then he goes over and stands by the record stand -- cue music -- have I played Try A Little Tenderness for you yet? Not exactly in this household's hall of fame, but one of the greats for sure. Now, music starts playing, and he starts dancing -- bam bam beeeenyon, hang on, I gotta demonstrate -- now imagine you're Andi, and you're standing over there, looking appropriately reserved and restrained 'cause life is just complicated, you know?! You're trying to figure out how to be a person in high school."

"Aaaab aaab baa."

"Exactly! Don't worry, you don't have to go to high school for ages. Maybe by the time you do high school the aliens will have invaded. Mol, note to self -- if aliens invade, make sure they do experiments on me first. You and Mommy and Uncle Gus are too important to be experimented on."

"Baaaa."

"That's right, because I love you. So back to Andi -- it's hard, 'cause she totally stands out, you know? But that's only because she has a great personality, and get this, the general population of the world is not interested in good personalities. You're definitely gonna have a great personality, but if anyone doesn't like you they'll have to go through Mommy, right? Then me, and then Gus probably third -- Hm, no. Me, Grandpa, Selene, then Gus. Your Uncle Gus is a sensitive soul."

"Abbbrrrabababa"

"Right. I think you might have the most personality of anyone I've ever met, including myself and the inimitable Rod Steiger impersonator I met once in Arkansas. It's just been obvious from pretty much the second I held you; you know your dad's a great judge of character. So anyway, Ducky starts dancing -- oooh, I just had a thought. How do we feel about pineapple Fruit By the Foot in a cheesy chili dog? Here me out -- same concept as a pizza -- but with maximum shelf life for the fruitiness. We gotta try that one on Uncle Gus ..."

Gus blinks at the door, then at Juliet, then back at the door.

"I'm not that sensitive," he says defensively. "I am fully prepared to fight a man and or woman and or other self-identified gender to protect your daughter, Juliet --"

"Gus, focus!"

Gus clears his throat and straightens up.

"All afternoon?" he asks.

"It's so sweet," Juliet whispers miserably, "I don't think he's ever had a more captive audience."

There's a mild clang from inside the kitchen, and Molly's bubbly shrieking laughter. Gus's eyebrows climb by the inch up his forehead. He looks like he doesn't know whether he wants to laugh to look sympathetic or shed a few emotional tears; Juliet can relate.

"And you've been ..."

"In the kitchen, doing boring tax stuff. They've been so caught up in their conversation it's like I'm not even there."

"Jules, she's six months old."

"Don't laugh at me."

"I'm not laughing! I feel neglected too. Three hours, remember?"

Molly laughs again, clapping her hands. Shawn's started singing Try a Little Tenderness and is surprisingly on-key until it suddenly gets muffled by what Juliet presumes is the screwdriver he's been using to fix their kitchen appliance.

"I am not jealous of my baby," she says determinedly, bringing forward a vehement finger. "And neither are you." Gus holds his hands up in surrender.

"I'm Switzerland. And have to pick up my own baby. Tell Shawn I stopped by."

"Tell Selene she has to finish chapter five by Sunday."

"Man, I have to finish chapter five by Sunday. Selene's read all the way ahead to the sexy stuff."

"Gus!" Juliet shoos him away in distress. "She's not supposed to do that! We're meant to experience the book together in friendship!"

"I am not going to be discussing fairy smut with a room full of adults, Juliet, I don't care how a book club works. I am attending this out of the goodness of my heart because you are a valued member of my circle --"

"Go pick up your kid, oh my God."

Gus huffs, shrugging his coat on. "And you go rescue yours from another hour's worth of Pretty in Pink. You know, he did this to me once when we were in ninth grade?"

"Oh, me too. Third month together. The whole thing."

"What number are we at by now?"

"Eighty-seven watches. And counting."

The realization that exposing Molly's baby eyeballs to movie screens isn't very good for her baby brain has had a surprisingly mitigating effect on Shawn's own movie watching habits. Juliet supposes that he's found a decent workaround; Shawn's nothing if not a good storyteller. And it's not like he forgets any of the details.

" -- exactly! The subtlety? The delicate traaamble of her lip? You're named for her, you know. One of the greatest actresses of all time --"

"Amm mama!"

"Bye," says Gus. The front door slams shut. More clattering of tools from inside the kitchen.

"Jules! Sweetheart! Where are you? We miss you in here!"

Juliet can't help but smile.

"Coming! And you know that's the sound she always makes when she needs to nurse, Shawn." The kitchen door swings open to the sight of Shawn on his side, wedged into the dishwasher's depths, and Molly in her high chair with slobber all over her fist. Juliet feels her heart melt anyway when Molly reaches for her. "Hi baby," she coos.

Shawn extracts himself from the innards. "Not true," he says. She takes a seat at the kitchen table and situates Molly and undoes her nursing bra. "I can read the intonations. This was a genuine emotion, beyond need for boob --"

"Mmmhmm," Juliet says.

"-- and I missed you," Shawn finishes, sincerely.

Juliet's smile grows big and bright and silly. She pets Molly's head, tilts her head at him. She has no idea if their dishes will be washed anytime soon.

"Gus was here," she says. "He's jealous of our six month old. You should call him." Then, unable to help herself, has to start laughing at the expression of deep distress that immediately overtakes Shawn's face.

[ofliterarynature]

TBR TAKEDOWN: GOODREADS, WEEK 11b

The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths & Magic (The Rules #1) by F.T. Lukens

I'm trying to trim down my tbr list(s) and I'm asking for your help! Descriptions and more info under the cut. Please reblog and add your thoughts!

* * * * *

Desperate to pay for college, Bridger Whitt is willing to overlook the peculiarities of his new job—entering via the roof, the weird stacks of old books and even older scrolls, the seemingly incorporeal voices he hears from time to time—but it’s pretty hard to ignore being pulled under Lake Michigan by… mermaids? Worse yet, this happens in front of his new crush, Leo, the dreamy football star who just moved to town.

Fantastic.

When he discovers his eccentric employer Pavel Chudinov is an intermediary between the human world and its myths, Bridger is plunged into a world of pixies, werewolves, and Sasquatch. The realm of myths and magic is growing increasingly unstable, and it is up to Bridger to ascertain the cause of the chaos, eliminate the problem, and help his boss keep the real world from finding the world of myths.

Date added: 2018 Goodreads: 4.12 Storygraph: 4.04

PRO:

chaotic and zany-sounding fantasy. and gay!

love humans getting sucked into the fantasy world

Michigan! Which is sort of local :D

The sample I read wasn't bad

Both books in the series are available from the library in my preferred format (audiobook)

CON:

YA

dnf'd one of the author's other books (newer, high fantasy), but this was on my tbr long before then.

[starfieldcanvas]

You seem like the appropriate person to ask, so might as well. How do I read Scum Villain's Self Saving System? I'm an english only reader that's not very familiar with the danmei ecosystem.

It's been published in English! Big bookstores like Barnes & Noble are carrying Seven Seas danmei these days. My local indie carries them as well. And of course you can buy them on Bookshop or your preferred online retailer. There are four volumes in the English printing, which comprise the original chapters, a lot of illustrations, some translator notes on the basics of cultivation novels and Chinese forms of address, and the "extras", bonus chapters that are a fairly common addition to books that were originally published as pay-per-chapter webnovels.

My local library system has at least one copy of every volume. I do live in a large city (with a large Asian population to boot), but I don't know how relevant that is. The series was an NYT bestseller, so it's totally plausible that even a medium-size county system would have them too. And if you're very patient, you can always request the series be added to your local library catalog.

But the obvious easy answer is that the whole thing is (shh!) still online. 'Lily's BC translation' made it through the whole thing, and there are other slightly smoother fan translations that you can start off with before switching translations when you run out of chapters.

The issue with reading it online is that you're going to run into some odd mixes of preservation vs translation vs localization ('Shidi' sounds much nicer than 'Junior Apprentice-Brother', imo. but why is it always Regret of Chunshan and never Regret of Spring Mountain?) and some transplanted Mandarin dialogue formatting (often it's just [Charactername, "Dialogue"] with no dialogue tag at all) that will take a little getting used to. The translator notes are a lot more colorful, though!

Scum Villain is a fun trip to read knowing pretty much nothing going into it. It's a convergence (and parody) of four different genres: stallion novel, danmei, isekai/transmigration, and cultivation/xianxia. Stop here if you want to go in genre-blind!

Here are my random thoughts about what might be nice for new readers to know IF they don't feel like dropping themselves in the deep end and learning by osmosis:

Stallion novels:

This is the type of webnovel being parodied by Scum Villain's book-within-a-book Proud Immortal Demon Way. Kinda like a harem anime, but more focused on providing a satisfying male power fantasy. Though you can definitely get the gist of it just from the exposition in Scum Villain, there were a few misconceptions I walked away with at the end of the book. This rundown on AO3, Stallion Novels: A Guide, is a brief introduction to the genre and how it differs from or overlaps with other genres of Chinese webnovel.

Danmei:

The popular danmei that have made it the furthest into Western circulation don't necessarily give a representative sampling of common-denominator danmei tropes, precisely because the popular stuff is usually the memorable standouts rather than the generic pulp. So just keep in mind that the common gong (seme) archetype is the dangerous, demanding, quasi-rapist huge-dicked dom who magically makes dry pounding feel insanely pleasurable, and the shou (uke) archetype is the delicate virginal younger man who says no but means yes and cries prettily during sex. These traits WILL be thrown in a blender and parodied, lovingly.

Isekai/transmigration:

This is the trope where you die in real life and wake up in a fantasy world (typical isekai) or in an explicitly fictional setting you recognize from your real-world media consumption (fairly typical transmigration.) Especially in the Chinese webnovel side of the genre, there's often a lot of emphasis on 'leveling up', point farming, and getting 'achievements' like in a video game. Access to this game system typically gives the player advantages over the natural inhabitants of the new world. If there isn't a game system, the player usually still has some kind of magical specialness conferred by being from 'the real world', such as knowledge of how the plot will go. These things will, again, be parodied all to hell.

Cultivation/xianxia:

It's apparently pretty common for westerners ignorant of Daoism and new to xianxia ("immortal heroes") stories to assume cultivation stuff is unique to whatever cultivation-setting book they happened to pick up first. If you had never heard of vampires and then you watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you'd be forgiven for initially assuming that the show invented vampires, but you'd misunderstand its commentary on existing vampire lore, and it would probably be confusing how much vampire stuff it inexplicably expected you to already know. With that in mind, you can see why it might be helpful to have a vague awareness of what "cultivation" refers to in xianxia novels.

Here's my stab at it: "cultivation" means something like "increasing one's spiritual energy reserves and improving one's control over spiritual energy (qi) through meditation, study, and physical discipline, in order to develop a powerful core of spiritual energy that can heal wounds, enable powerful martial techniques, slow visible aging or stop aging entirely, and allow a person to forgo food and sleep indefinitely as they transcend the limitations of their physical body and become immortal, maybe even ascending to godhood."

Usually cultivators practice cultivation in cultivation sects - these sects are typically depicted as a cross between a temple, a boot camp, a university campus, and a small independent political entity

Everyone in the same sect ("martial family") refers to each other using sect-flavored family terms. Two people of the same generation are sect-siblings and will use sibling suffixes with the "shi-" prefix to indicate it's a sect relationship. Your sect mentor is your shizun/shifu ("honored teacher-mentor-master"/"teacher-mentor-master"). Someone in your mentor's generation is your sect-uncle or sect-aunt; they'll refer to you as their sect-niece or sect-nephew.

Similar to how Chinese family name suffixes differ by age order, sect-family suffixes differ depending on seniority (i.e. when your master took you as a disciple, relative to the other disciples.) But different novels play with these seniority rules differently and may assign suffixes by age alone or by some other ranking system.

Westerners occasionally get freaked out when people in the same sect generation fall in love because the characters are sect siblings. But there's no incest implied at all—it's nothing more than two people being in the same boarding school or church congregation.

If a cultivator is not in a sect, they're called a rogue cultivator ; this confers less stability and political prestige, but despite the name, rogue cultivators are not outlaws or apostates. It just means "independent."

Cultivators will often accept requests from civilians to deal with marauding monsters and mysterious ghost-related deaths. How much money they expect for their services is generally tied to how righteous they are.

Depending on their chosen cultivation path, they may be more martial or less martial. Cultivators of the sword path use spiritual swords that can (1) work like a regular sword but better, (2) project power at range in a glowing beam called a sword glare, or (3) be directed remotely in battle using hand seals (adopted into Daoism from Buddhism, known elsewhere as mudras) or wordless telepathy. Some cultivators of the sword path will nevertheless have non-sword spiritual weapons or favor other qi-powered martial techniques.

Cultivators make use of talismans (spells written in red cinnabar ink on strips of paper and then activated, often used like throwable magic stickers) and arrays (more powerful, longer-lasting spells painted or carved into locations or objects.)

Various stages of core formation may be referenced to indicate power levels. Reaching a new stage may involve some kind of tribulation, health risk, or grueling purification process (e.g. expelling all your body's impurities out through your pores as black goo.)

Spiritual energy is channelled through pathways in your body called spirit veins to key points called meridians. Different people may be said to have different types of spirit veins typed according to the five elements. A trained cultivator can examine someone's meridians to check their spiritual health or cultivation aptitude.

Strain on your psyche or your spiritual energy can lead to what's called a qi deviation, where the spiritual energy circulating through you gets fucked up and you have the spiritual equivalent of a stroke. Sufferers may bleed from all their face holes, lash out mindlessly at anyone who comes near them, hallucinate, straight-up die, or endure wacky shenanigans like temporarily reverting to childhood.

Cultivators may use external alchemy to create power-boosting pills in small alchemical cauldrons.

Dual cultivation is exchanging energy through sex in order to aid in spiritual regulation or to mutually increase power levels. It can be done in a one-sided way to steal spiritual energy, which is known as making a human cauldron. In the real religious practice on which the fantasy version is based, dual cultivation relies on the exchange of men's yang and women's yin, but somehow in danmei xianxia the m/m couples seem to manage it just fine...

Different Chinese novels and shows do different variations on cultivation (the same way Western shows do variations on vampires/angels/demons/etc) but they're all ultimately drawing on the same Daoist tradition of internal alchemy (also called The Way of the Golden Elixir) with bits of Buddhism and Chinese folk religion mixed in. (Chinese folk religion is usually where the monster/ghost/demon stuff comes from.)

Other stuff:

Scum Villain is peppered with a bunch of trope references that will be largely unfamiliar to most western readers, like "white lotus"/"black lotus", "blackened", "black belly", and so on. It also borrows a few Japanese archetype references here and there. "Cannon fodder" is fairly self-explanatory at least.

It's fun to look these up, but it's equally fun to just figure them out from context.

Hope this helps! Enjoy your reading!

[kaonarvna]

Here we are! The first entry into the slice of life adjacent series of sephiroth & genesis centric short stories, which I discussed here a month or so ago. I'll be putting up another decision poll soon about which piece to write up next; another is nearly finished.

"Chapter" Name: An Even Temperament — Sector Zero, Midgar 199X

Summary: A THIRD seeks out Genesis' support in handing Sephiroth's "mood" in the absence of other FIRSTs and Lazard.

Tags: Slice of Life, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort.

WC: ~2000 (5-10 minute read)

Short sample below the cut!

...

            “Thank you—“ the boy nods emphatically. Ascending the stairs two at a time, he looks back at Genesis through his helmet when pausing at the first landing. “He is up here Sir! He is not talking with anyone and he looks furious and—”

            Genesis takes a deep breath, walking far more calmly than the excitable boy. “He will be alright. Do you know where he was before this started?”

            Climbing the stairs quickly, the boy waits at the door to the fifty-first, and holds it for Genesis, who walks through with just a nod of acknowledgement.

            “No sir! He wasn’t on the forty-ninth this morning, we only saw him maybe an hour ago here, and—”

            Genesis sighs, trying to remember the man’s agenda, where he should have been, what could have possibly dysregulated his even temperament. They walk together into the open foyer-like space of the fifty-first, past the hallway to the director’s office, past the meeting rooms and briefing rooms, past the copier and lounge.

            “—he’s refused to speak with anyone, and he went in the library when I tried to ask him for help, and—”

            Holding up a hand in a ‘stop’ gesture, Genesis waits for the boy to quiet. “I can handle him. Go back downstairs and stay busy. If you need something administrative done, just…see if a SECOND can help you. If no, email me.”

            “Yes sir, can I ask—”

            “Downstairs.”

            The boy emphatically nods, catching his slightly unsteady breath and repeating a script of gratitude before leaving Genesis to his own devices.

            Walking quietly despite the heavy click of his modest boot heels, Genesis opens the library door slowly, fully turning the knob to make opening it as smooth and soundless as possible. He enters the room with the most deliberately calm and inoffensive posture that he can, setting his coat on the low shelf to the right of the doorway.

...

Read the full piece on Ao3

[moviemunchies]

On St. Patrick’s Day, my library had an event about illuminated books, and a screening of the movie Secret of Kells. And it’s a fantastic little film! Cartoon Saloon rocks my socks!

Brendan is a young monk and the nephew of the Abbot of Kells, a busy monastery in the midst of building a large stone wall around itself to ward off the Northmen who have been raiding Christian settlements. When Brother Aiden of Iona, a survivor of a raid, arrives at Kells to finish a manuscript, Brendan wants to help, and Aiden sees his talent. His strict uncle, however, doesn’t want him to wander out of the walls to seek ink ingredients. Brendan does it anyway, and comes across Aisling, one of the Daione Sidhe, and the two strike up a friendship.

So something a bit odd of this movie is that it’s a fantasy take on the creation of the Book of Kells, but it doesn’t actually tell us what the Book of Kells is. There’s a lot of talk about this being the book that “turns darkness into light” and brings hope to the people in the hard times of the Northmen raids. Okay, fine; well, what is it, then? For the record, the Book of Kells is a real artifact, an illuminated manuscript of the Four Gospels in Latin. So you do have this weird thing where the characters are all talking about a book saving the world, vague references to holiness, without any overt explanations or references to what the thing is. You’d think it was because of the amazing art that the book is saving the world. Though, admittedly, that art’s pretty amazing when we do see it.

Actually, the art style of this film was modeled after medieval manuscripts. The makers of this film were inspired by Mulan, actually, rationalizing that if Disney can make a movie that had an art style taking after traditional Chinese art, there’s no reason someone couldn’t do that with Irish culture. Which is a fantastic idea, and I wish more studios would try to make movies based off of weird, culturally distinct art styles.

[There is some minor controversy about character design–there are some who feel that the black monk in Kells has a design that’s reminiscent of a caricature. I mean, it’s based off of medieval manuscript marginalia, but I get why some found the look unfortunate. The director actually apologized for this, for the record.]

The animation throughout the film is masterful, as you’d expect from an art style derived from medieval manuscripts. Sometimes, it’s just surreal, really, to see those things brought to life on screen. Swirls, spirals, patterns, bright colors, squarish creatures–it’s all here! I love it, it’s fantastic.

And of course, there are a ton of references to Irish culture–monastic culture, folklore, and literature. Like, right off the bat: Brother Aiden has a white cat named ‘Pangur Ban’. That’s a thing from literature! One of the oldest written samples of the Irish language is a poem that a monk wrote about his white cat, Pangur Ban. Crom Cruach is a figure from literature about Saint Patrick. The manuscript maker from the backstory, Columkille, is Saint Columba from Irish and Scottish history. It’s like the filmmakers wanted to include every remotely relevant bit of Irish culture into this story, and it comes together surprisingly well.

Check out this movie. It’s pretty great. It looks great, and it’s incredible to see people animating in a style that’s both unique and interesting. I would have preferred if they actually told you what the Book of Kells is, but as it is the film’s still a strong, memorable story that I love to rewatch when I can.

[puddlebrigade]

thinking about jk rowling's insistence on gender and sex binaries and how that kind of rigid magical thinking about how nature hath appointed roles is probably a global problem for her mind based on the way that she wrote about cladistics or botany and animalia in hp.

through the power of autism i at one point made a broad review of botanical and animal ingredients named in the hp series and body of work, and I have to say, she does not understand how the labor of doing life sciences works in the least. rowling totally presents "magical" plants and animals from her low fantasy fiction as being -totally separated- from the "non-magical" spheres of influence.

For example: the botanical woods that are used in wands are explicitly said to be derived from specimens in nature that haunted or something by little creatures. I paraphrase here bc I'm not laboring over this, but hoooly fuck it's a huuuuuge blind spot to conceptualize that non-magical field scientists would not be AWARE that there are some special properties about such and such field specimens that eventually end up in an herbarium.

This premise that she's presented, that in a low-fantasy world with easily accessible magic and a government that has complete say over the sharing of said magic with strict hierarchical roles that Must Be Followed but the consequences of Not Following the Rules never materializes because it's a government built like 1940's WWII politics and you just can't apply that to a population in the 90's. Or that with some canonizing handwave there is some broad global gov that can somehow manage the international politics of Keeping The Big Secret Of Wizards as though people have ever ever been able to keep a secret.

But like, you can't keep secrets from science. The whole point of the scientific method is to form a hypothesis and/or theory about the natural laws of the world. The natural laws of reality are universal for everyone, so if magic exists in a fantasy world, it exists in everyone's experience of reality and should they desire to go seek it out, they will find it. A Government trying to prevent non-magic users from experiencing magical phenomena would be like trying to keep a deaf person from understanding sheet music or enjoying concerts.

So imagine if you will, a "Non-Magic Practicing" Environmental Scientist and a "Magic Practicing" Environmental Scientist go out together on a field survey study within the HP universe. They find many specimens of their target species, let's imagine herbs or trees. They carefully document them and collect samples to return with to a central herbarium (a kind of specimen library). They have accession numbers and photographs and soil samples and descriptions of the collection conditions and GPS coordinates; each sample is treated with the same level of care and cataloging rigor.

Some of the species in the fiction are ones in our universe, others are not. We have aconite and belladonna and holly and sage and thistle and like four dozen other species names. I can't be bothered to list out rowling's "'magical" species.

It's just. Field scientists are trained to notice, observe, and document whole systems when they are collecting and analyzing samples and specimens. Whatever phenomena is supposed to separate "magical" species from "non-magical" species is never ever addressed, not even fictionally.

People aren't stupid like that. Everyone notices things around them and with enough documentation and analysis done with academic rigor there is no way that the phenomena that constitutes "Magic" in the HP universe would go without being observed, documented, and analyzed by those who are not practicing it. Not to mention the labor of keeping magical animalia outside the notice of "muggles" would be functionally impossible. Anyone who has ever practiced animal husbandry or tried negotiating with a wild animal can tell you that. In a world where film cameras and eventually live-streaming exist, the whole binary of separating the magic-users from those who don't is Really Fucking Bad Anthropology.

I'm going to be mad forever at the shit worldbuilding decisions this fundamentally white british colonizer cis woman made and the many many producers and corporations who recognized the fuckwithability of the canon to turn out a garbage story into a Nostalgia Zeitgeist Superpower. I'm going to be mad forever about how one woman's un-analyzed schemas about the world are viscerally fucking up so so much for living breathing humans living in ways that define the binary she REFUSES TO RECKON PROPERLY. And I'm mad that every time I think about certain botanical species I have to think of her stupid smug face once upon a time turning a profit off of my naïve childhood joy.

[nerdby]

My Year Of Rest & Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

4/5⭐

Earlier today I finished reading My Year Of Rest & Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, and I have to say that while I loved it this is definitely a book that is going to rub some people the wrong way. The story focuses on an unnamed, twenty-something female narrator who lives in New York City in the year 2000 and seems to have everything she could possibly dream of: A massive inheritance fund, a closet full of high end clothes, and a career in a prestigious art gallery courtesy of her degree from Columbia University. Despite all of that, though, the narrator is tormented by memories of childhood trauma and unresolved grief. To power through it, she turns to a very sketchy psychiatrist named Dr. Tuttle to prescribe her with pharmaceutical drugs that will allow her to sleep her days away.

For a year.

Before I go any further I have to emphasize the fact that the narrator in this book is NOT someone anyone should be emulating. Not only that but, please for the love of God, do not try any of the medical cocktails in this book without the supervision of a doctor because I'm pretty sure some of these would kill a person. And if you ever encounter a psychiatrist like Dr. Tuttle in real life RUN cause I have and 90% they aren't even doctors. They are nurse practitioners or whatever who are acting as pharmaceutical sales reps. They get fancy perks for every patient prescribed a new drug and will ply you with samples without a second thought if your symptoms don't clear up IMMEDIATELY.

Anyway, back to the review....

So this book was very triggering for me, but I am glad I finished reading it because it ended up being incredible. Good things do happen when you face your fears, see? The main character was one of the most deplorable, unlikeable characters I have ever encountered for like 97% of the book. But I still couldn't stop reading??? I felt like I was watching Bridezillas or Teen Mom or some other awful trainwreck of a reality TV show, and I just could not put this book down.

It wasn't until after I finished the book that I realized the plot is all just one big metaphor, mocking people who only consume escapist media. Escapist media is stuff like Twilight or Dragon Ball Z or Family Guy or Bridgerton or Superman. Escapist media tends to have low stake plots with problems that get resolved quickly and effortlessly. In the case of things like Bridgerton it can even be dangerous if taken figuratively because Bridgerton falls into the alternative history genre. I know, I know what you're thinking -- Bridgerton is just The Crown without all the colonizing and racism. I'm taking this WAY too seriously, right?

Well, imagine if someone took Bridgerton completely out of context and framed it as HISTORICAL FACT instead of as HISTORICAL FICTION like in a home school setting, perhaps? Yeah, sounds unlikely but go look up the Nazi home school scandal and then we'll talk.

And, no, I have nothing against escapist media. I like escapist media myself, and Bridgerton is a fun little fantasy, but it's important to remember that that's exactly what it is: A fantasy. It's not real and, yeah, that's probably ironic coming from someone who blogs about Marvel in their time but my life doesn't revolve around Marvel. I have other interests like books, video games, horror, psychology, my cat, and history.

My point and the point of this book is that you shouldn't consume ONLY escapist media. You should face your fears, explore new genres, go to the museum and the park and the library. Don't be a white person who only reads books about white people by white authors. Consume media in other languages from other cultures and talk about it afterwards.

Broaden your horizons. Otherwise you might as well be sleeping through life.

This is a book that everyone should read, but it's definitely intended for more mature readers. So people sixteen and up are probably the most suitable audience. Keep all of this in mind, and happy reading.

[wuxiaphoenix]

On Writing: A Basis for Truth

I was considering Caroline Furlong’s post on trust and heroism, mulling over how we might get more movies and books where heroes are willing to defend the truth. And the fact that there is truth in the first place.

Part of that, of course, is reinvigorating writers’ and readers’ belief in truth. And possibly more important, their ability to express that truth exists. Two things in particular come to mind. Mathematical logic, and murder mysteries.

No, I’m not advocating starting with any book of faith. We have large swaths of our population who’ve never really been taught any faith, or were so badly mistaught and abused by people hailed by their community as “pillars of the church” that they’re willing to throw out the Bible with the bathwater. Trust me on this. Someone who’s been that badly burned needs to go back to the basics of truth and reality.

A = A.

Yes. Start here. Give someone floundering a stable point to start from. A is A. 1 is 1. A cat is a cat. These are truths that can be observed and tested. 1+1 = 2, 2+2 = 4. If p then q; not q, therefore not p.

Basics. That’s the point. With these basic tools, you can dig your way out of a lot of logic holes.

And that’s one reason you should also introduce people to murder mysteries. At their core they have a basic set of truths. Someone who was alive is dead, by unlawful means and at unknown hands. Someone has been deprived of life, liberty, and any chance to pursue happiness. This cannot stand.

People can get into all the long-winded discussions about “morality being a social construct” they want, but it’s very hard to equivocate and rationalize away a dead body on the floor.

...Yes, people still try. But as Edogawa Conan puts it, “There is only one truth!”

(Excellent manga, anime, and movies, BTW. Highly recommend.)

Start with that intrinsic piece of logic - a murder is a murder - and the basic genre tropes of murder mysteries - murder is wrong, the mystery must be solved, and the murderer must be caught.

From these you can build foundations of morality and truth you can defend. If murder is wrong, human life has value. This is a place your readers - and your characters - can reach out from to find more truth; that life has wonder (fantasy), that life has potential (SF), and that doing the right thing is not easy (all of the above), but it must be done.

Life has value. This is a place we can make our stand, when everything seems darkest.

Some mysteries for finding that solid ground:

Sherlock Holmes, of course.

Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael series; a monk in the 12th century does his best to heal bodies and catch those who leave corpses behind.

The Cat Who series by Lilian Jackson Braun. Newspaper reporter gains Siamese cat and starts finding clues.

Charlotte MacLeod’s Peter Shandy mysteries; small college professor ends up with a dead body in his front room, and it goes from there.  

Rita Mae Brown’s Sister Jane mysteries. American foxhunting details!

Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee series; murders on the Navajo reservation.

Grace Burrowes’ Lord Julian mysteries; a survivor of the Napoleonic Wars finds trouble possibly as deadly at home.

Elsa Hart’s Lu Du series; I’ve read Jade Dragon Mountain and The White Mirror so far. In 1708, an exiled Chinese librarian finds a Jesuit astronomer murdered in Tibet....

Note, a lot of these used to be in my local library. I’d advise poking samples off Amazon to see what might be to your taste, and then hitting up your local library to see what they can grab!

Working on a further post on why “life has value” also means “self-defense is totally legit”. Because there are too many people who take “I shouldn’t hurt people” to mean “I can’t defend myself.”

(And more who are fed that line and don’t think about it. Oh, have I got a few stories....)