#howl's moving castle castle in the sky the hunger games books the first three books of the queen's thief series the goblin emperor

[sisterdragonwithfeathers]

so I just finished The Empty Grave and

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

(overwhelmingly positive, I have so many thoughts, I may have to learn how to draw clothing just for this series, I am going to own it one day)

anyway what should I read next?

no rhyme or reason I don't need something similar if nobody says anything I might start on Dune for the heck of it

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

the larger courier six verse, media influences

tagged by @sybil-writes ty

the bibliography for this thing is extensive. my taste is wide and omnivorous. i try to drop what i was thinking about when i wrote a particular bit into the author’s notes, and i think i’ve credited all the direct references, but I consume a lot of dystopia and post-apoc media and harder scifi/fantasy with rules, and i don’t keep an accurate running list of shit I like, so i’m certainly not going to get everything in one post. this is mostly me looking at the very limited number of books i have with me and frantically looking at wiki lists like “yes read that liked that stole that”. if i link everything i will die. if you have trouble finding a specific thing lmk tho. this feels real goddamn pretentious like Ah Yes Look At The Media I Have Consumed but here goes 

music: one of these days I will drop links to the network of playlists I have for these kids, but they’re all of Spotify and not super accessible. Danger Days, a post-apoc desert graffiti/neon/cars album by My Chemical Romance. the soft, nonsense love songs off Pretty. Odd by P!ATD. the poppy but sad neon bullshit of Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die also a P!ATD production. Wasteland, Baby! by Hozier, specifically Talk and Dinner & Diatribes. Halsey’s cover of I Walk The Line, Rihanna’s Desperado. Everything by Orville Peck but mostly Roses Are Falling and Take You Back (The Iron Hoof Cattle Call). Instrumental stuff: the opening to Silverado, the Billy the Kid musical, bits of Lawrence of Arabia. It’s Been A Long, Long Time. Fitz & The Tantrums’ Get Away. Mother Mother’s album O My Heart. Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach. 

filme: 

the Dollars trilogy ofc

the sheer bullshit nonsense of Wild Wild West and Blazing Saddles and Turbokid. 

a lot of the interaction between many characters in a tight space from Stagecoach. my dad really loves John Wayne, so I am constantly thinking about Monument Valley even though that’s nowhere near the Mojave. honestly whenever i’m thinking about how to describe landscapes I’m thinking about The Searchers, even though I have a lot of problems with that film. 

the colorful nonsense future of The Fifth Element. 

the gritty self-surgery and prospecting of Prospect (2018). 

SO much Trigun and Cowboy Bebop, for space western flavor and the same sort of analog-cassette-future. u kno how everything in Star Wars looks like it’s been there forever? the absolute opposite of a slick Apple future? that. 

god I wish Firefly was...good

Akira, bc every time I think about motorcycles the Akira motorcycle slide gif plays in my head. 

speaking of which probably a decent chunk of Adventure Time, esp the Super Porp episode. 

a smidge of how a platonic trio works from Samurai Champloo. 

anything with a big sprawling market and a chase scene, even though the only things I can think of are Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and the first Indiana Jones. oh Skyfall also

the set dressing from Tank Girl

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. look I just really like airships and retrofuturisum but art deco

honestly a lot of Ghibli- the aviation fantasy of Porco Rosso, the gardens from Castle In The Sky, a lot of Sophie Hatter energy from Howl’s Moving Castle, the underground bits in Nausicca, the otherworldly sea from Ponyo (except the Fallout sea is probably much emptier). the lovely homey-ness and gadgetry of Sherlock Hound. 

almost certainly some Metropolis for how I think about cities

thinking a lot about The Incredibles and earlier James Bond movies recently for that sort of sleek but still small physical gadget spycraft 60s bullshit

the team and found family dynamics in Leverage

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. the more recent film which I have stolen ENTIRELY too much of the Angel + Blondie + Six dynamic from 

mad max: all of them, to some extent, but a lot of Fury Road. I have a theory about how the Dollars films take place in reverse order, bc of how they feel next to the Mad Max films. The first Mad Max film is about a specific person in a specific place and time doing really specific things. it feels like a movie made off the info of someone who was there. GBU also feels like that- it’s really place-specific in a way? The second Mad Max film is a little hazier, and focuses on mostly people trying to accomplish a goal. For A Few Dollars More also feels a little hazier, like it’s a little more metaphorical/a morality tale and it’s being told by someone heavily embellishing secondhand events. the third Mad Max movie is just over the top nonsense. feral children living in the wreckage of an old plane escaping in a working plane? sure. why the fuck not. For A Fistful Of Dollars also feels like this. of COURSE this big bad gunslinger drifts into town and escapes in a coffin and invents the bulletproof vest. why the fuck not. 

books: i like shit that goes beyond the wander/scrounge/defend trio of verbs. 

the trying to wrap your life around a huge unknowable event from Roadside Picnic, 

too much Le Guin and Butler to really fit here, 

god if anything i write ever has a tenth of the flavor of Kill Six Billion Demons i’ll be happy, 

the postwar feel of Vonnegut and Heller,

Margaret Atwood’s biopunk Oryx and Crake trilogy 

the incredibly sad decaying biopunk/mutation/last days novelette The Drowned World by JG Ballard. 

the space-opera political machinations from the Ancillary trilogy by Ann Leckie. 

World War Z’s accounts of survivors has always felt like reading terminal entries from Fallout games. 

Philip Reeve’s Fever Crumb trilogy, for its interpretation of high-tech artifacts and archaeological reinterpretation of those artifacts. 

Tales of the Bounty Hunters. Tales from Jabba’s Palace. 

A Canticle for Leibowitz of COURSE. 

the original three books in the METRO (2033, 2034, 2035) trilogy, for their tight dense locations and resource management and life-threatening travel/exploration. 

the Family Trade comic by Jordan & Ryan, for setting and intrigue and a very unorthodox power source  

Elizabeth Bear’s short story And The Deep Blue Sea, about a different kind of courier. 

how Gibson’s The Sprawl trilogy (a trilogy i have MANY opinions about, not all of them positive) does worldbuilding when it implies a vast sprawling richly imagined world with casual in-universe references that you can extrapolate a lot from.  

The Gernsback Continuum, for making me think about stranded architectural bits that survived

a little bit of the Empress’ energy from Cavendish’s The Blazing World. 

the short story The Rational Ship by Caro Clarke, about a ship that runs on orgasms, from the EXTREMELY out of print Memories and Visions: Women’s Fantasy and Science Fiction edited by Susanna J. Sturgis. i’ve scanned it in as a pdf and will send it to anyone who asks. the stories in this volume are WILDLY varying in quality and terf-yness. i would not buy this book on purpose. 

i think each separate Vault storyline is a tiny separate Lost World story, so just pick your favorite and insert it here. 

Westerfeld’s Leviathan trilogy was FORMATIVE for baby me. biopunk! big trans energy! SKY WHALES 

fucking hate  Paolo Bacigalupi for what he does to his female characters but Ship Breaker was good from what I remember of it

there are three very oblique Sherlock Holmes references in “blow a kiss, fire a gun” for my own amusement. 

Fallout scifi seems to be very Verne and Wells and Burroughs derived? a lot of very pulpy  “pseudojournalistic realism to tell an adventure story with little basis in reality.” or “hey look at this COMPLETE NOVEL i found in a bottle by the sea OR locked in my weird great-uncle’s things, i shall retell it to you here” 

idk i think The Road and the Hunger Games have so profoundly shaped the state of the genre, there’s probably at least a little bit of both these things in here even if I didn’t particularly like either of them. There’s also a lot of super bleak post-war stuff I read but am not necessarily incorporating, like Nevill Shute’s On The Beach. probably some Dune in here too if i’m being totally honest. why have a desert if there’s not going to be a giant worm, Fallout: New Vegas???

jesus i gotta read more lady authors. there are probably way more that i’m not remembering bc almost all the books i own are in a storage unit seven hours away that i haven’t touched in three years. there are probably way more comics also. 

OH not a book but the decaying-rich-people-paradise of Bioshock. pity how they never made a third game 

[bookandslugclub]

literary first lines

Pride and Prejudice: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Moby Dick: Call me Ishmael.

Anna Karenina: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

1984: . It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

Farenheit 451: It was a pleasure to burn.

The Time Machine: The time traveler (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.

Catch-22: It was love at first sight.

The Bell Jar: It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.

David Copperfield: Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

Slaughterhouse-Five: All this happened, more or less.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.

The Martian: I'm pretty much fucked.

The Great Gatsby: In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

The Catcher in the Rye: If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how

my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

I Capture the Castle: I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

Scaramouche: He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

Cat's Eye: Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.

Don Quixote: Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.

The Princess Bride: This is my favourite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Mr and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

Peter Pan: All children, except one, grow up.

Howl's Moving Castle: In the land of Ingary where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three.

The Hobbit: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'?.

The Color Purple: You better not never tell nobody but God.

One Hundred Years of Solitude: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Scaramouche: He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

Notes from Underground: I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: The year 1866 was signalized by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten.

Charlotte's Web: 'Where's Papa going with that ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

Frankenstein: I am by birth a Genevese, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic.

Of Mice and Men: A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy.

The Trial: Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.

Gone with the Wind: Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it was caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.

The Stranger: Mother died today.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: They're out there.

Neuromancer: The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

2001 A Space Odyssey: The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.

Jane Eyre: There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

The Outsiders: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I only had two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.

A Clockwork Orange: That was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dum, Dum being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard through dry.

To Kill a Mockingbird: When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

The Hunger Games: When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.

Life of Pi: My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

Invisible Man: I am an invisible man.

Mrs Dalloway: Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

The Old Man and the Sea: He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

Cat's Eye: Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.

Midnight's Children: I was born in the city of Bombay...once upon a time.

Good Omens: It was a nice day.

The Handmaid's Tale: We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

The Hunger Games: When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.

Kindred: I lost an arm on my last trip home.

Never Let me Go: My name is Kathy H. I am thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years.

Gravity's Rainbow: A screaming comes across the sky.

Lord of the Flies: The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon.

Ulysses: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

Rebecca: Last night I dreamt I want to Manderly again.

Murder on the Orient Express: It was five o'clock on a winter's morning in Syria.

In Cold Blood: The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there.'

The Picture of Dorian Gray: The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

The Knife of Never Letting Go: The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.

IT: The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.