alias_sqbr

Vampire m/f romance anime: After Mito loses her parents and is fired from her job, she must fend for herself on the streets disguised as a boy. She comes across a stranger named Ruka and learns his dark secret—he’s a vampire! Ruka invites Mito, still in disguise, to live in an all-boys dorm. Mito exchanges her blood for a place to stay, but a budding romance and her true identity threaten all that hangs in the balance.
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So, after much discussion with Cam, I eventually realised I had vastly misunderstood his base issue with most anime. Asides from things like tropes and genre etc, the main problem is certain specific kinds of sharp vocal sounds, which affect him on an almost physical level, and just happen to be especially common in anime, especially the sort with lots of over the top shenanigans and exaggerated expressions. Since I am not sensitive to that sort of sound I am not likely to notice if it happens, and even dubs might do it too, so we decided he really is better off just avoiding anime unless something seems so appealing he's willing to risk some discomfort.

But! Discussing what he likes tropewise that I've seen in East Asian live action (since he hasn't explored it much) got me to rec my favourite romance kdrama, Coffee Prince, and while Cam thought that sounded a bit too mundane for his tastes looking up the show and actors led him to watch the trailer for Goblin, a kdrama I had never heard of. And based on the first episode he LOVES IT.

Me: It sounds like it might have a tragic ending, that's pretty common in kdramas and one reason I don't watch many.
Cam: Oh I am SURE it's going to be tragic in the BEST WAY, it's about an angsty immortal who wants to die :D :D
Me: Ha ok we really do like different things. Have fun :)

So! Have a (qualified) rec from Cam.

Watch on YouTube

(Note: This is NOT the gay Chinese Guardian, it's a het kdrama)

He also really loved the scifi kdrama Moving, which apparently has some really sweet romance along with badass superhero action.

Watch on YouTube

So while my attempt to find him anime he liked didn't succeed at that, it did help him find a show, and hopefully someone else reading found an anime they might like.

And yes I have now recced him Hotel Del Luna, since I know that's another highly regarded kdrama about an immortal, and he said the gender dynamics with a female immortal/male mortal look fun. I poked

skygiants kdrama tag and she DID review Goblin I just forgot about it, oops. But I also found Tale of the Nine Tailed which looked promising, in terms of modern day fantasy about angsty immortals.

Just finished the first season of the live action Avatar the Last Airbender show. I went in with low expectations, prepared for things to be changed, and with that mindset quite liked it! Not a perfect adaptation, nor a super faithful one, but made by people who liked and mostly understood the original and did a pretty good job at crafting their own take on it.

I'm a big fan of the original show but haven't watched it in a few years, Cam has watched it more recently, and we both agreed that while there were some parts that didn't work very well and some changes we didn't like, it captured most of the important things pretty well, and some of the changes were good, even an improvement. But I got into ATLA as an adult, and am pretty open minded about adaptations taking liberties. This is an ok-but-not-brilliant and not always faithful remake of a beloved children's classic, so I suspect a lot of people are going to be disappointed.

It's hard to say how it would work for people who haven't watched the original tv show, but I think it would be pretty entertaining, if you are interested in an action heavy fantasy-drama about a bunch of teenagers trying to save the world, in an Asian inspired fantasy setting with an all-Asian/Indigenous cast and occasional gestures towards "sexism is bad and women are awesome".

The overall tone is darker than the original children's cartoon, with fewer jokes and more overt on-screen death, but still moderately light and sometimes cheesy. There's no swearing or sexual references, and no significant gore except for one burned dead body early on. It's more shallow and less understated, less interested in philosophical questions but not totally uninterested.

The action scenes were fun. The actors were all fine to good, and the visuals/special effects were mostly pretty good but occasionally distractingly cheesy or CGI sludgey.

Like the original, there's zero onscreen queerness, and only really one disabled character, whose writing is just ok.

Content warnings for both versions: genocide, death, war, child abuse, trauma

Under the cut, I'm going to go into some of the specific things the show changed that I would have liked to know going in. I'll avoid spoiling any new plot since it can be fun to see how things play out for yourself. But if you haven't seen the original this will be very confusing and spoilery!
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This isn't even the next review post I was planning on lol, but

got_quiet asked and it seemed like something other people might be interested in.

Viki is a streaming platform which mostly hosts East Asian live action TV dramas and movies. Some things are entirely free, while others are paywalled past a certain number of episodes. There's a fair amount of BL.
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DID YOU THINK I WAS DONE?? I STILL HAVE AT LEAST ANOTHER POST LEFT AFTER THIS.

(I know I could just NOT review everything but I do always like having done it)

Past (just finished):

I finished it:
My New Boss is Goofy
Tearmoon Empire
I'm Giving the Disgraced Noble Lady I Rescued a Crash Course in Naughtiness
Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me
Heaven Official's Blessing

I dropped it:
Frieren
Migi & Dali
100 girlfriends Who Really Really Really Love You

Current (just starting):

Delicious in Dungeon
Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp
Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss But I'm Not the Demon Lord
Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable!
7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy!
A Sign of Affection
The Demon Prince of Momochi House
Cherry Magic

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Are there any fantasy stories with democratic gods who follow the conscious decisions of their followers as a group? It's like... a typical god may be similar to a king who tries to listen to his citizens else he be deposed, but I'm looking for something more like a democratically elected president who was voted in and can be voted out.

This is an off-shoot of a discussion of Baldur's Gate 3/The Forgotten Realms but I think it should work for any fantasy setting where gods can be deliberately created or are a job mortals can take on, with powers reliant on simple things like their number of followers instead of anything numinous or mystical. I'm mostly thinking high fantasy set in a secondary world, but I guess it could work in other sorts of fantasy too.
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Since I seem to be talking about it!
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I know the author of The Iron Children which made me put off reading it in case I didn't like it and felt awkward(*). But luckily I loved it!

It's a fantasy novella about a group of young, magic-cyborg soldiers, part of a religious military order and under the command of a well intentioned but inexperienced not-yet-cyborged commander-nun who is in vastly over her head and having complicated feelings about the fact that she can mind-control any of the soldiers under her command whenever she sees fit. The soldiers have complicated feelings about it too... especially the one who's secretly a spy for the other side.
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I was offered a review copy of the LGBTQ+ paranormal romance anthology Longsummer Nights and encouraged to be entirely honest, so I'm going to write reactions as I read.

Thus far I've read the first three stories and the hit rate has been pretty good, considering that I bounce off a lot of paranormal romances and short stories. It's all felt more like AO3 original fiction than commercial (Paranormal) Romance, which for me is definitely a plus.

Heat is on a scale from 0 to 5.

SEEDS OF SOLACE by RIEN GRAY Pairing: F/NB Heat Level: 3
The love interest and relationship felt like paper-thin devices to write the (more fleshed out) protagonist having cheerfully weird, kinda vague xeno sex. I need more emotional connection even in erotica, and didn't find it very sexy, but I did enjoy the evocative fantasy Southern Gothic weirdness.

ANNIVERSARY by A.K. FEDEAU Pairing: F/M Heat Level: 3
Bittersweet noir about an established couple. A bag of slightly cheesy noir and fantasy tropes, and not a classic romance, but I enjoyed it.

VIRGIN COCKTAIL by FISHER STRUNC Pairing: M/NB Heat Level: 4
Delightful "Oh god they were roommates, and also one of them is a vampire" romance with all the standard AO3 slash tropes, except the bottom is an afab non-binary character and the sex is PIV. I tend to have Messy Gender Feelings about that sort of thing but the blood drinking made up for it >.>

Longsummer Nights was created by VOW, a collective of writers who met working for the US division of the Japanese otome company Voltage. When they unionised Voltage shut the US division down and they've been working on finding new ways to support themselves and other writers ever since. I am thus very happy to discover that I thus far like their writing as well as their politics, and hope they sell lots of books! It's $15US for 15 stories in a variety of formats.

Content note: I quote some violence. Spoilers for all three stories!
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The dream itself was like a very mild nightmare, not because of the vampires but because I was playing the game in the dream and OTHER PEOPLE KEPT TALKING OVER IT AND BLOCKING THE SCREEN (they all thought I was a bit cringe for caring but I just wanted to see the end). Also the game controls were confusing, and I kept accidentally dying and having to restart etc. So I saw a bunch of inconsistent variants of the story, and was thinking about how I'd do it differently as I played. The post below is me collecting the interesting parts.

It was not a sexy game, in fact I kept thinking "this is surprisingly unsexy for a vampire dating game, but I guess that makes it less embarrassing to play in this communal game playing club I have apparently joined". Which also makes it less embarrassing to describe in a post, so, thanks subconscious! I guess! No thanks for the annoying hecklers, though.
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This is a very fun Chinese fantasy m/m romance novel.

The main character is a dragon who's spent thousands of years cheerfully not really caring about anything...but then someone captured him and stole some of his bones, leaving him half paralysed and very angry. In the journey to get revenge and find his bones, he encounters an uptight amnesiac monk who he feels oddly drawn to tease. The two of them go on a mystery solving road trip, inadvertently making friends and saving innocent people along the way despite both considering themselves lone wolves above that sort of thing.
( Warnings, links, other details )

As encountered by me while poking Wikipedia. I was specifically researching gods for TGCF/Heaven Official's Blessing, but I think this sort of thing is interesting for anyone with an interest in Chinese fantasy or folklore.

I don't know enough to judge if these wikipedia pages are accurate, and if people have better places to read up about this sort of thing, or any other info, I'd love to hear about it!
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Live action TV: We Are Ladyparts, Ted Lasso

TV Cartoons: Owl House season 2, Amphibia, Master of the Universe

Games: The World of Art, Spiritfarer

Books: The Raven Tower

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New Times, New Hell: This is a very fun Chinese m/m modern fantasy rom-com novel.

The premise is that Chinese government policies discouraging supernatural belief led to the collapse of Heaven and Hell, and now reincarnation is run out of a little office using Excel spreadsheets of everyone's karma. The protagonist is a new IT graduate who's been hired to update their system by the surprisingly hot King of Hell, who keeps spending company bonuses on gacha games.

There's a lot of cute shippy moments and surreal humour about ghosts dealing with modern life. The surrealness was only added to for me by the cultural differences, eg "communism" was used to mean something pretty different to any definition of communism I'm familiar with. It looks a lot like capitalism to me, but the book is clear that capitalism is bad, so I guess not! I have no idea how much of this is deliberate social commentary, a lot went over my head and I'm sure a Chinese reader would have a very different experience of the book. But the emotions of the characters were always clear and I got enough of the jokes to have fun.

I lost momentum once the main couple got together and never finished the book, but had a lot of fun getting to that point.

I've put some interesting quotes I saved about communism/socialism under the cut for anyone who's curious. No major spoilers.
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Raya and the Last Dragon, Wandavision, Disco Elysium, My Brother Rabbit, Stay
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A light high-school musical tv show about a girl working through the death of her mother with the help of a band of teen boy ghosts. Produced by the guy who created Highschool Musical and Descendants for Disney, but on Netflix so he finally got to include canon gay!(*)

It's very much a silly children's show, and not my usual sort of thing, but it's so sweet and charming it won me over.
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So I finally watched this show and it's really good for what it is! Which is basically a cross between The Simpsons and The X-files: a kid's cartoon about a twelve year old nerd Dipper and his wacky twin sister Mabel spending their summer holidays with their shyster great-uncle Stan in a weird little Oregon town called Gravity Falls. It's funny and strange and ends up telling a surprisingly coherent and engaging scifi/fantasy story about family bonds and growing up over it's two seasons.
( But I have some quibbles )

I absolutely adored this fantasy novel, about an orc girl who has mostly convinced herself she's ok being sacrificed to the cold, ancient god of the death cult who raised her, but is understandably quick to jump at the chance to escape and become the minion of a morally ambiguous wizard who says she has more to offer the world.
( No major spoilers )

Crossposts: https://alias-sqbr.livejournal.com/794218.html

I made this for my little brother after he mentioned pondering watching The Dragon Prince. It is thus aimed at his kinda mainstream tastes but thought I might as well post it here too.

It was weird writing a rec for She-ra for someone for whom "It's full of queer women" is not worth mentioning one way or the other haha.
( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://alias-sqbr.livejournal.com/771130.html

A Good Day To Be A Dog is a very cute m/f Korean romantic comedy webtoon about a woman who is cursed to turn into a dog every day at midnight if she kisses someone...and the dog-phobic guy she accidentally kisses while drunk.

It's on-going, but Chapters 1-61 make for a moderately self contained getting together romance. Its up to Chapter 71 now and I'm still really enjoying it. I usually get bored of romances once the main couple get together, but it's cute watching their relationship develop and I'm curious to see where the other plot threads go.

It's not doing anything massively original, but is sweet and romantic and funny, with likeable main and side characters, and enough dramatic tension to be interesting without descending into annoying melodrama. The female lead is basically a Nice Girl, but loud and dorky enough to not feel generic, and the male lead is the sort of "seems grumpy but is actually shy and traumatised" silver haired dude I am always here for. It's entirely heterosexual, but not too heteronormative. The fantasy worldbuilding is pretty slight but mildly intriguing when it shows up.

The leads are both high school teachers, and there's a few plot threads about bullying. I think it's handled moderately well, but it might be triggering for some people.

Crossposts: https://alias-sqbr.livejournal.com/751681.html

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Entries tagged with fantasy

Vampire Dormitory: Masterlist

I am counting this as a success

Avatar the Last Airbender (2024) Season 1

Viki!

Reviews: Past and Current Anime Seasons

Fantasy with Elected/Communal Gods

Baldur's Gate 3 masterpost

The Iron Children by Rebecca Fraimow

Long Summer Nights: First three stories

Dream about a vampire dating sim

铜钱龛世/Tong Qian Kan Shi/Copper Coins by 木苏里/Musuli

Various interesting figures from Chinese mythology

Reviews September 2021

New Times, New Hell

Some fantasy media and games reviews

Julie and the Phantoms

Gravity Falls

The Unspoken Name by A K Larkwood

(Mostly) Netflix scifi and fantasy rec list

A Good Day To Be A Dog