So I’ve been reading the webcomic Suitor Armor by @thepurpah for a while now, and just realized it’s more than good enough for one of these. I’ll try and keep this spoiler-free, but I’ll give you a brief summary of the premise before I start into what I personally like about it.
Premise: Lady-in-Waiting Lucia and the lady on whom she waits, Princess Kirsi, move to the capital prior to the latter’s wedding to the king. They attend a tournament at which the king’s champion is bested by a magical construct--the eponymous suit of armour--who offers the rose he wins to Lucia, after which, for a number of reasons, he is appointed her bodyguard.
Why you should read it:
A nuanced take on institutionalized racism and gender/sexuality discrimination, and the means by which they are enforced.
LOTS of positive LGBTQIA+ representation.
There is so much thought and care taken with the characters. Not only in each individual, but in how they interact with one another. Every relationship, however tentative, is unique.
While characters do occasionally do or say stupid things, they’re 100% in character when they do.
Lucia’s hair is Best Hair. Fight me.
A character who could have been the whole “Born Sexy Yesterday” trope, but is not, according to the creator: a) Thank you, God! BSY is just so... squick, in the worst way possible; and b) REALLY wanna see where that character’s backstory goes.
I’m gonna get diabetes, there are so many cinnamon rolls.
Baynard is Best Drama Queen.
Is it weird that I think of a 7′ suit of armour as a giant squish-bean?
There is a scene which perfectly embodies those vibes, from the Prince of Egypt, you know...
Takes on ethics, self-worth, and social anxiety that slap like a humpback whale
A slow-burn powder keg on which the fuse is, I am quite certain, getting DANGEROUSLY short.
I don’t usually advocate for aesthetics, being more about the writing myself, but the backgrounds, the character designs, and the clothing choices are all phenomenal.
Seriously, it’s a really good fantasy romance with plenty of intrigue and suspense. If that sounds like your thing, just go read it.
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Haven’t done one of these in a while; I was gonna do them more regularly, but I figured I’d put them together a) when a story enthralls me, and b) when a story is more obscure, and could really benefit from more discussion.
Anyway, Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions has been working on a webcomic over the past few years called Aurora. On initial read I was a bit meh about it, but I re-read it in the last few days, and found it to have really grown on me. It’s also ongoing, but Red updates every MWF, so I wouldn’t worry much about long hiatuses or anything.
The Premise: We start out in the city of Vash, besieged by an army of monsters. The city god--also Vash--takes corporeal form and lays a serious beatdown on the monsters, only to be mortally wounded by the mysterious woman who led the monster army, who then annihilates the city and sucks Vash’s soul out of his body.
This would’ve been quite a short comic, actually, if Vash’s body hadn’t gotten up on its own & seemingly developed its own consciousness. After a nice elf-lady with plant powers named Alinua finds & heals Vashn’t (not canonically his name, just what the fandom called him for a while) and shenanigans ensue, Kendal (his canonical name after he finally picks it) and Alinua leave the remains of the city behind to rescue Vash. On the way, they assemble meet such notable others as:
Erin- pompous intelligent mage dude who’s Red answer to Aang from ATLA (archetypally not emotionally), and who... has a thing in his head.
Falst- cynical snarky catboi, and somehow the most normal member of the team.
Tess- unflappably nice buff lady with just the smoothest, shiniest skin except for that one spot, with a charming predilection for only punching monsters in the face.
Dainix- technically not on the team yet, but guys, c’mon, a victim of the entertainment industry, but wants to branch out into other fields. Has crummy depth perception.
Why you should read it:
Multifaceted characters who are properly explored, light and dark, without going ham on the grim & gritty so often associated with “serious” stories these days.
Kendal is simultaneously the most unconventional demigod I’ve ever seen, incredibly powerful, and doing pretty well considering he’s at most a few weeks old.
On that topic YES KENDAL YOU NEED TO SLEEP TOO NO PULLING YOUR SWORD OUT IN THAT DIPLOMATIC MEETING WAS PROBABLY A BAD IDEA NO IT IS NOT NORMAL TO SNAP CHAINS AND SPEARHAFTS LIKE GLOWSTICKS
The humour is well-placed, fits the characters and the story, and has never yet taken away from a scene or impactful moment.
Thoughtful explorations of trauma, slavery, and the management of negative emotions.
There is nothing more beautiful than Erin making assumptions and flipping his sh#t when those assumptions are brusquely shattered when any and all confusion could have been averted by a simple question
The artwork is a shade rough, but the way the colours pop make the style really stand out; while it looks somewhat like anime, it is DEFINITELY its own thing.
“HOW DARE YOU CALL YOURSELF A GOD!”
Nobody’s a dick for the sake of being a dick; they all have reasons for their dickishness.
Zurrith is, in all honesty, just The Worst.
Conversely, Shrike is Best Bounty Hunter.
The worldbuilding is interesting (I’ve always loved the animism angle), and the magic system(s?) manages to hit that sweet sweet balance between systematic and organic
Turns out Erin can be a real Kerin sometimes.
And the Three-Way Tie for Best Hair Goes to: Kendal, Alinua, and Dainix; Shrike is runner-up, and I strongly suspect she hates it.
Anyway, it’s a fun fantasy romp with a ton of classic tropes used in interesting ways (I mean, it’s Red; why’re you surprised?). Check it out, it has its own website (comicaurora.com), and if you haven’t heard of OSP’s work and love history, myths, and stories in general, go watch their videos on youtube.
Hey, so at the recommendation of Red from OSP, I binged Daughter of the Lilies, the brainchild of Meg Syv, over the last 2ish days, and I’ve gotta say, it’s a really entertaining story that I am 100% into for the long haul. I won’t give any major spoilers, but here are some good reasons to check it out:
Orrig. Orc. Russian accent. Hairy chest. Best Dad.
Brent. 1/4 Orc. Kind of an ass when we first meet him. Swiftly, plausibly, becomes sweet borderline himbo who’s only slightly an ass.
Lyra. The likeable asshole who’s more likeable than asshole.
Thistle. Cinnamon roll.
The dynamic of these adorkable dumb-dumbs starts a bit shaky imo, but gets pretty fantastic.
nuanced looks at racism and how we treat the so-called dregs of society.
powerful, accurate looks at mental illness, anxiety, the power of intrusive thoughts, and how solid, healthy relationships can really help with that.
Karen gets OWNED.
In-universe fanfiction that’s better than the racist, sexist, caricatured original.
The author is Christian, and there are Christian concepts and perspectives in the story, esp. regarding forgiveness and free will, but Syv never once lets the message overtake the story. Well done.
A stable, happy romance between two secondary gay characters that Syv has made 100% clear WILL NOT end tragically.
A front & center relationship that is between two characters who, even on the off-chance they don’t get together, have awesome friendship chemistry.
So I recently finished reading Scythe, the first book in the Arc of a Scythe trilogy by Neal Schusterman, and I feel.. a little conflicted.
First, let me say that, objectively, it’s a well-written story, and Schusterman--take a look at his bibliography--clearly knows what he’s doing. To summarize, the story follows two protagonists, Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch, who are chosen by a scythe to become his apprentices. In this far future (the 24th and a half century, roughly), human beings have attained immortality*, and all our needs and wants are provided by the Thunderhead, an artificial intelligence that grew out of the Cloud we know today, and, as far as I’ve read, anyway, it seems to be entirely benevolent.
Now, though, I should come to the asterisk beside the word immortality. Naturally, humanity’s population exploded with all this lack of death and everything being provided for us, but we still needed some form of population control; we needed a way to die. Hence the scythes; they glean people, and the people they glean stay dead. Naturally, this gives the scythes tremendous power, and they’re treated by the world as such, usually with varying degrees of fear or sycophancy.
And--I’m going to try and avoid spoilers throughout this little commentary--this all has a serious impact on our protagonists, who are both compassionate people who live in a society where death is all but a bad memory.
There’s a fair exploration of all this within the story, but I can’t help but feel it takes a back seat to The Plot, in which Citra and Rowan are forced--through means I won’t go into--to compete for their promotion to proper scythes, and the winner will be forced to glean the loser. And it is through this plot contrivance that Neal introduces a number of typical YA tropes.
Again, the man knows his stuff, and he handles them all very well, and does a number of things that surprised me throughout (yet still made sense with hindsight) and kept the story entertaining, but at the same time the little voice in the back of my head (yes, that creep) was saying “You didn’t have to do this, Neal! You didn’t have to make this a typical YA story!”
And while that little voice often seems to take immense pleasure in ruining good stories for me, he (they? I haven’t asked my little voice how it identifies) may have a point here. Because here’s the thing: you don’t need to have a big overarching plot to make or keep a story interesting. And I feel like it may have gotten in the way here.
Bear with me. Neal makes it clear neither Citra nor Rowan knew anyone, prior to meeting their teacher-to-be, who had died; it was a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend sort of thing. And they are abruptly taken from several degrees of separation from death to ground zero, watching people die over and over and over again. In a society that does virtually nothing to prepare people for the end. Not that this information is withheld in any way. With the chances of any one person dying grown so astronomically tiny that it’s plausible for a person to live ten thousand years, human culture as a whole has fundamentally changed, with the most obvious consequence being that Citra and Rowan have no clue how to deal with death because their society has no idea how to teach them.
And this by itself is dark and weird and so, so plausible. In western culture, among the privileged, death is more remote than ever before in human history. And even 100 years ago in World War 1, when average lifespans were much shorter, lots of people who went off to war came back with PTSD. Why? Because while everyone knew they must eventually die, their relatively peaceful youths had been spent conditioning them to believe that killing someone else was fundamentally wrong, and that to do so was loathsome. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the propaganda machine was and is a powerful force that can make it easier for one person to kill another, but that deeper conditioning and that lack of experience with inflicting death run so harshly counter to war that it did and does break lots of people, who often spend years putting their pieces back together, and too often never do.
So imagine, if you will, what might happen to someone who hasn’t just been told and conditioned their entire life not to kill, but lives in a culture where dying itself has all but passed away? I was fascinated by the earliest part of the story, that started going into this, and the potential ways these two kids could go, hints at where this traumatic path might take them. And Neal wrote it so vividly. And it was deeply personal, what these two characters felt as they helped kill people as part of a necessary process to help ensure humanity didn’t consume all the resources on earth and starve itself. And their teacher tried his damndest to make sure they not only did all of this in the right way, but that they themselves were psychologically taken care of as best he could manage.
There’s one scene where Rowan has to pick who his teacher will next glean, and I’ll try not to spoil it for you, but it is powerful and awful and crookedly beautiful, both how he slowly spirals at the prospective consequences of his choice, and how his teacher snaps him out of that self-destructive mindset.
And then the plot started getting in the way.
I won’t go into it any further than I already have, and Neal worked well with said plot, but i feel like not having an overarching plot would have made this whole story a creeping slow-burn of suspense as we see these two young people crack under the burden of this calling, and either fall apart or find whatever interpretation or justification they can for what they do. It would also have made it unlike any YA I’ve read, where the story is the education, rather than an addition to it. This could’ve had a powerful lotr feel, that “yes, good things are happening now, but there’s a lot of bitter in that sweetness, and while a lot of evil things have left the world, a lot of ancient wonder has to”. And while there is some of that, it is, sadly, pushed into the background about halfway through, rather than being allowed the focus it deserves.
See, there’s a lot of talk in the writing community that we should be focusing on character arcs as opposed to plot arcs, and I feel like there are a lot of missed opportunities here in YA in general, and this was one of them. And I think what frustrates me about this is that Neal has such a clear grasp of his characters that they, by themselves, could easily power an entire novel or trilogy. He is clearly good enough to pull this off. And he chose not to.
You could argue that I’m seeing the glass as half-empty, and that’s fair; I’m lamenting the story that could’ve been, and not lauding the one that is. But I do wonder, the way things seem to change trajectory partway through, if Neal might have been editorially persuaded to write something more typical. I don’t know, and again, the story he wrote still has lots of good points, and is worth a read. I recommend it, and if you find it half as thought-provoking as I did, feel free to drop me a message; after all, a lot of this is my highly subjective opinion.
I didn’t think I’d be doing this again this soon, but I just had a strong desire to, and my chosen subject deserves what little extra attention I can give it. Anyway, I’ve recently been running through the Iyashikei tag on TVtropes (I recently reblogged some stuff on the topic if you’re interested, and the site itself has a pretty good description), and I stumbled across the manga Yankee-kun to Hakujou Gaaru, or “Delinquent and White Cane Girl”, a romcom which hasn’t gotten an official English release yet. I won’t give any major spoilers, but here’s some things about it I like:
Morio Kurokawa. Main dude, titular delinquent with scar. Dumb Cinnamon roll.
Yukiko Akaza. Main girl, mostly blind (amblyopia). Whacks Kurokawa in the ass with her cane the day they first meet, and gives zero shits about how “scary” he is. Sassy cinnamon roll. Adorable af.
He immediately starts cleaning up his act for her, and is 100% unambiguous about his feelings.
He doesn’t get everything right about how to make things easier for a blind person right off the hop, but he tries his best and learns from his mistakes.
This manga’s really good at feeding the audience lots of useful tips for helping out a blind person without it a) pulling us out of the story, or b) coming off as preachy or pitying.
There’s some powerful commentary here about how society treats people who don’t fit in, and who need a little extra help.
Representation of people with physical disabilities (obviously), but also people with mental disabilities (not a lot so far, but would be interesting if they expand on this), and (so far just) one member of the lgbtq+ community who are not stereotypical in any way, shape or form.
Every character who gets any focus spent on them feels like a person. There are no walking cliches here.
It’s just a really thoughtful, funny story where the thoughtfulness gives the story a lot of depth and nuance that wouldn’t otherwise have been there.
I’m happy to say this is one of my unproblematic faves. If you’ve read it, let me know what you think.
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