Recbox for WolffyLuna

[beyondthealgorithm_mod]

Username: WolffyLuna

Preferred Genres: Sci fic (esp space opera and military sci fi), fantasy, romance

DNW Genres: First person shooter video games, episodic series where events re-set to zero after every episode.

Preferred Media Types: Books, visual novels, video games, short animated series (~12 episodes or less), podcasts.

DNW Media Types: Live action tv series or movies.

General Likes: I love media with "I did not expect that, but I should have totally guessed that was coming!" twists. Media I can really sink my teeth into and analyse, either from a theme perspective or a "who is the killer?" perspective. Characters with traumatic backstories, explorations of trauma in general. Worldbuilding. Queer characters. Villains with sympathetic-but-not-necessarily-good justifications for their actions. Action scenes. Characters who cannot be together romantically for [insert reason here]. Tragedies. Bittersweet endings. 'Earn your happy ending.' Badass women. 'Shippy' moments and romantic comedy elements.

General DNWs: Unplanned pregnancy as a major plot point. Plots that revolve entirely around abusive relationships (either romantic or familial.) In visual media, high amounts of blood/gore/torture scenes.

Fandom Preferences: I have a slight preference for fandoms with femslash potential and a reasonable exchange presense, but it's a slight preference, and I'd still be interested in male-heavy canons or canons without much of an exchange presence.

Requests for Content Warnings: Torture in written works, underage sex, rape in general.

Examples of Media Enjoyed: The Machineries of Empire Series by Yoon Ha Lee, Warhammer 40k, Mo Du by Priest, Mo Dao Zu Shi by Moxiang Tongxiu, Sarazanmai, Revolutionary Girl Utena, My Next Life As A Villainess, The Tensorate Series by JY Yang, The Magnus Archives, The Adventure Zone, The Silmarillion, The Reluctant Royals series by Alyssa Cole, We Know the Devil

Examples of Media to Avoid: Most of my examples of media to avoid are covered by either my genre or medium DNWs.

Streaming Services I Can Access: Youtube Red, Australian Netflix (not all things on American netflix are on there), Cruchyroll, Animelab.

Languages I'm Comfortable With: English

Comments

[leahandillyana]

I'd like to recommend three manga series that hit nearly all of your likes!
Pandora Hearts by Jun Mochizuki takes place in a fantasy world where magic users are hunted and sent into the "Abyss". Main character, Oz Vesallius, gets snatched by witch hunters during his coming of age ceremony. While in Abyss, Oz makes contract with Alice, a monster in the form of young girl, and the two escape. However, they find out that ten years have already passed in the outside world. This is a series where nothing is what it appears to be, and unfortunately no character has a happy ending. The series has about the same amount of torture, gore and body horror as Modaozushi. There’s an anime, but it ends just before the first plot twist of the manga.
Madoka Magica by Gen Urobuchi and Hanokage is a franchise where girls can become magical girls and have their wishes granted – however, not only are the enemies they fight very dangerous, but also being a magical girl is not what it seems to be. The franchise follows Madoka Kaname as she discovers more and more truths about the setting, and the story is made of several miniseries. The suggested reading order is as follows:
Madoka Magica (you should start here as all the following works reveal spoilers very early on)(3 volumes)
The Different Story (gives backstory and more importance to Mami and Kyouko)(3 volumes)
Sadness Prayer + Oriko Magica + Oriko: Extra Story (introduces four new magical girls) (7 volumes)
Wraith Arc (directly follows the end of the main storyline)(3 volumes)
Rebellion (directly follows Wraith Arc)(3 volumes)
It also has several spin-offs, out of which I find three of particular interest.
Homura’s Revenge (follows a different ending to the main story) (2 volumes)
Taruto Magica: The Legend of Jeanne d’Arc (follows the titular historical character as a magical girl) (5 volumes)
Magia Record (originally a cellphone game, this story is centered around a cult of magical girls who found a way to prevent witches from ever appearing and girls who oppose them – the manga and anime only follow the slow-paced beginnings of the game, which is available only in Japanese)(3+ volumes)
Warnings: The manga has about the same amount of torture, gore and body horror as Modaozushi has. There’s an anime adaptation of main story and anime film adapting Rebellion.
Black Butler by Yana Toboso is a really weird manga. Nominally set in 1880s, the technology level, characters’ world views and some elements of fashion resemble 1960s more than the supposed setting. A supernatural detective story, it follows Ciel Phantomhive, a 12 year old orphaned aristocrat, and Sebastian Michaelis, a demon who made contract with Ciel and masquarades as his butler, in solving supernatural crime in Victorian Britain. The series’ appeal depends on whether the reader is able to wade through lots of nonsense to enjoy the good parts. The manga offers surprisingly deep portrayal of trauma and its effects on people, sympathetic characters with tragic backstories who nonetheless do awful things while remaining at least somehow good at heart, and many plot twists. There are two different anime series, but the older one goes its own way after a few episodes and is not nearly as complex as the manga. The other anime series adapts some arcs faithfully.
Warnings: The manga has about the same amount of torture, gore and body horror as Modaozushi has, and furthermore second flashback arc (nestled within Blue Cult arc) features scenes of child abuse, including a fade-to-black rape scene. Furthermore, there’s a transgender recurring character who is misgendered by all other characters, including a non-major character who is openly transphobic towards her.

[wolffyluna]

Thank you so much for the recs! I will go check them out!

[shadaras]

Have you read The Expanse? (it's also a TV show, but the books by James S.A. Corey came first.) It's a great solar-system level sci-fi series with a lot of great worldbuilding about what it's like to be in space, political divisions between people, and also some weird alien stuff. The first book is a bit frustrating because it's the part with the biggest focus on white-man-pain, but if you can push through that there's a ton of diverse characters to love.

(Gideon the Ninth is also very in your wheelhouse, but I assume you've heard of that via exchanges and the like?)

I think you'd also like Can Ci Pin by priest, if you haven't already read it. Galaxy-spanning sci-fi, lots of cool action, a fair amount of political scheming, the main leads spend literal years separated for ~reasons~ (but are both very strong and powerful people in their own way, if kind of morally compromised), everyone's fucked up for various reasons. (It's dude-heavy, unsurprisingly, because it's danmei, but there are some cool women in there.) (cw for a plague arc that gets resolved safely, and there's some stuff that happens that can distinctly be read as torture but I can't remember if it was explicitly framed as torture.)

[wolffyluna]

Thank you for the recs! I've read the first book of the Expanse, but I'll go check out the second one!

I also haven't read Can Ci Pin yet, so thank you for the recommendation for that!