Recbox for HandmaidenOfHorror

[beyondthealgorithm_mod]

Username: HandmaidenOfHorror

Preferred Genres: literally any!

DNW Genres: none!

Preferred Media Types: Any, though given I don’t live in an English-speaking country I may have difficult access to English language books

DNW Media Types: None!

General Likes: Stories dealing with trauma of any kind, psychological/cosmic/abstract horror (think of the best creepypastas around rather than mainstream horror movies and novels), mysteries, complex constructed worlds (both scifi and fantasy), LGBT+ themes (I can forgive most clichés if it’s an explicitly LGBT story)

General DNWs: shallow, clichéd plots, especially typical rom-com

Fandom Preferences: Any

Requests for Content Warnings: Animal and child abuse/death

Examples of Media Enjoyed: Kaze to Ki no Uta, anything by Hagio Moto (Poe no Ichizoku, Thomas no Shinzou, Gin no Sankaku, AA’ etc.) or Riyoko Ikeda (Versailles no Bara, Onii-sama e, Claudine!), Angel Sanctuary, Tokyo Babylon & X, Earthian, Loveless, Noir (anime), Captive Prince, Pandora Hearts, Black Butler, Far Sector (DC)

Examples of Media to Avoid: MCU/DCU (but I like some of their comics and their other animated adaptations), rom-com, Twilight & derivative teen romances

Streaming Services I Can Access: None, but I’ve always managed ;)

Languages I'm Comfortable With: English, Japanese, Polish, I may try reading in Chinese but I’m far from perfect, and I forgot most of my German and Russian

Comments

[wolffyluna]

I have a two-for-one rec for things you might enjoy!

We Know The Devil is a short (~1.5-3 hours) visual novel about three troubled teens at a summer camp that tries to un-trouble them through hard work, singing about Jesus... and putting them in an abandoned cabin to fight the Devil. It's psychological/religious/magical realism horror with beautiful atmosphere. The dialogue is great, and feels realistic to how late night summer camp conversations feel, if not what they are actually like. And all the major characters are LGBT. Warnings for heavily implied child abuse, the fact that while the camp is not explicitly a conversion therapy camp, it does come across that way.

Heaven Will Be Mine is a longer sci fi visual novel made by the same people as We Know The Devil. Earth sent people out into space in giant robots to fight an unknowable, alien Existential Threat... which turned out to be pointless. So Earth is asking them to come back, whether they want to give up the freedom of space or not. You pick one of three pilots to play in each run of the game, as you try and grapple with your relationship to the other pilots and the factions you are part of (which have varying attitudes of "Let's go back to Earth," "Let's stay in space and bring everyone else to space" and "oh, so you think us being in space makes us less human? COOL.") It's got some beautiful worldbuilding it gives you in bits and pieces that you have to try and puzzle out. And being in space is a metaphor for being LGBT-- but all the main characters are textually LGBT too, and it leads to an interesting interplay of the metaphorical and real. Warning for child abuse.

[leahandillyana]

Thank you, these seem really interesting!