#12k

i just finished Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon (newest taiki/gyousou story) and i think that while it definitely got too bogged down in geography, politics, etc., i LOVED it. i read all four books in under a week and would have gone faster had i not had to work and live.

i'm so glad risai survived. i loved that it ended on her and kyoshi and kouryou, right where it started. i love that enki and youko argued shoryuu to a standstill about helping tai. so fab.

i love that taiki took 1 look at gyousou and fucking turned right back into a kirin. whoever said afterward that "oh he hid from us that he'd recovered! how smart"---i FULLY believe he didn't realize he could do that lol. it probably surprised him too. his bond with gyousou is just that powerful.

on a serious note...it's been a long time since i read most of the other books. I did reread the risai-goes-to-kei book this week as well, but the rest are more than 10 years into the fog of memory for me, if not 15-20. That said--I was surprised to see raisai and shikirei talking about sexism in the army, as my understanding of the universe was kind of that sexism wasn't really a thing (idk, due to the riboku thing?). in retrospect, i also noted the multiple implications of rape (ukou..... do not rip) that were discussed when villages got ransacked, always to the women. so CLEARLY there is violence and sexism directed at women in this universe. bc i haven't read the other books in so long, i wonder if i just missed it before? or whether this is a product of the author writing over the course of so many years and changing her mind about what should be mentioned?

i was also very surprised by the inclusion of the queen mother of the west, ie a literal god, when to my memory we'd never seen that before? there was a lot of talking-up of gyokuyou as ~oooh the closest we get to heaven, who knows who's pulling the strings~ and then WHAM later in the book (1 book later? idr) risai (who has, mind you, spent an entire book saying that god doesn't exist) is confronted with a goddess. that was all very strange.

i am fascinated by both rousan and taiki. i don't understand rousan. i appreciate her and also hate her, and her motivations were never entirely clear. like, taiki at the end was certain she had protected him, but unequivocally, she was the one who gave asen the jisen???? and the other youma??? SHE enabled him to do all of this. what does taiki mean she's not against them!!! sure, she talked a big talk the whole time about a sort of neutrality, and was clearly judgmental of asen, but...she did that. like, come on. 1 yari does not a coup solve.

on taiki's count...like, it is incredible that he could push through and bow his head to asen. i LOVE that for his character. he IS a monster. and there's been hints here and there that black kirin/kokki DO have extra special abilities, so why not that? (the tears of blood....BABE....) and yet at the same time i feel that that has gone against a completely concrete piece of worldbuilding: namely, kirin cannot bow to anyone but their emperor. it is literally a plot point in taiki's first book.

so, on the one hand, i love the story this tells about him and his desperation and how fucked-up he is. and he DID get hit with the esui after killing that guard! so there's some kind of consequence. but....he shouldn't have been able to bow at all. i suppose it's just an unwritten, nobody-tried-that-hard-before sort of rule, but it does slightly rub me the wrong way.

back to risai. love love love. (except for that bit where she was railing against the universe, that got really old quick???) i love that none of this could have happened without her. SHE is the reason tai can be saved. she went to kei fully intending to trick youko to her death, almost immediately pulled back, and made the rescue happen anyway.

all of the backstories about the different temples, regiments, retainers, etc. i ended up soooort of skimming (i guess i read it without comprehension, which is nearly the same thing) so i really think that could have used some editing. FASCINATING how they kept going toward and away from kan'you mountain.

FASCINATING how gyousou fucking got himself free right as everyone starting looking for him. what he said about heavenly providence giving him the black suugu has to be the case.

someone's post i read the other day theorized that heaven itself had made asen start a coup because gyousou was running damn close to losing the Way (and so quickly), so i went into the last few books with that in mind, and i am not opposed to that reading of the situation. i mean, asen obviously had his weird complex about it all and fully could have intended on the coup anyway--and had access to merceneries and rousan etc--but the writing of it DOES seem to indicate that gyousou was going too hard, too fast, AND he was described post-mountain to have found some sort of inner peace. soooo. (also, like. how did that father know to send offerings into the mountain....)

SO. svsss people! if you're in an exploratory mood, this series is japanese but based on chinese historical aesthetics, girl/boy gets pulled to another world and it turns out they're the emperor/emperor's really important magical unicorn, respectively. (not to each other.)

i read these originally in the tokyopop translation back in the early 2000s (also when the anime was made) but seven seas is licensing a new translation, so clearly they think it'll appeal to you guys! a bunch of them are already available.

there's no romance whatsoever, a lot of it is political drama or fighting, but the characters are amazing, the ties between emperor and kirin (the unicorns) are sooo interesting, etc. (i am someone who does not enjoy reading about politics and fighting, and i still cannot put these books down. i love them.) immortal kings (gender-neutral) and their sexy, sexy assistants who can transform into flying horses. it's great.

ALSO. if you don't want to purchase. a particularly dedicated fan (RIP eugene) completed translations of all the books over a decade or more, and you can read them all here/on the site he links.

reading order: i think they're all great and would just start from #1. if you have trouble with the politics, names, etc. you can watch the anime first so that you have their faces in your mind! The OG book 1 (SS 1+2, youko + keiki) and its section of the series focus on female mcs, and the anime starts there.

but if you're coming from danmei, i can imagine that you might want to start with the male/male sets, so SS book four (enki + shoryuu, originally book 3) or the whole taiki + gyousou saga (SS book 3, OG 2). enki + shoryuu first appear in youko's story, and everything is connected but i think the different stories are designed to be able to be read standalone, so.

pithy summaries: taiki (black hair, above) is a twink who falls for (/chooses as his emperor) a hot white-haired army general. there is no way they don't have a weird codependent relationship in the later books. enki (blonde hair) similarly falls for a jaded young samurai lord and now they're both 500 years old and stuck ruling together. (one of the books is about a courtier rebelling against the emperor and i really want them to fuck.) (the emperor spends his time at brothels drinking and listening to music. he's like if shen jiu wasn't totally insane). youko (red hair) gets chosen as empress by a tall blond himbo who might be thought of as a lan wangji w/o his wwx. her best friend is a twink who turns into a rat and then she falls in with an ex-princess and a peasant. the closest this series gets to romance is youko x the rat. it's amazing.

this concludes me plugging 12k....please watch/read!!!

Tasogare: Live In Tokyo

12k

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