I've been looking into non-English horror, specifically older ones (mostly pre-war), and I've made a small list of authors/works that might qualify for it. I say might, because with some works I don't know whether they're actually horror or not. Can anyone help me with this? If you know whether a work on here is horror or not, or if you know of a non-English horror work that I've missed, please let me know!

• ? E.T.A. Hoffmann - Tales of Hoffmann (1815-1819)
• Nikolai Gogol - "Viy" (1835)
• Jeremias Gotthelf - The Black Spider (1842)
• Guy de Maupassant - "The Horla" (1887)
• Hanns Heinz Ewers - Alraune (1911) // "The Spider" (1915)
• ? Gustav Meyrink - The Golem (1915)
• Stefan Grabinski - The Dark Domain (1918-1922)
• ? Horacio Quiroga - The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories (1925)
• ? Bruno Schulz - The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories (1933-1937)
• Jean Ray - Malpertuis (1943)
• Roland Topor - The Tenant (1964)
• ? Giorgio de Maria - The Twenty Days of Turin (1975)

Ones with a question mark I'm not sure on whether they qualify as horror or not. I'm also aware of the tradition of Japanese ghost stories, but as far as I've seen the best collection for that is Japanese Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn, and that was written in English. Other older Japanese works I know about are Ugetsu Monogatari by Ueda Akinari, and Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edogawa Ranpo, but those are more gothic collections than horror.

卒業 Sotsugyō Graduation Part 2

^{April 1952, Occupied Japan, Tokyo}
"All great students experience profound loneliness at times. At Gakushuin we are blessed though to have close friends, and consistent support. My service as the student body president exposed me to many places as the school representative, and more importantly to almost all my classmates. I cannot be prouder of all you, I hope you are proud of me." - Prince Akihito, Student President Graduation Speech
Theme Song: Broadcast, Akihito receives his diploma
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High School Diploma Academic Transcript

Official Senior High School Transcript
Student: Emperor Apparent Akihito 皇帝らしい 明仁
Sex: Male 男
Date of Birth: 1933 年 12 月 23 日
Period of Enrolment: 1940年4月1日 - 1952年3月31日
Grading Scale: Excellent (5) , Very good (4) , Average (3) , Sufficient (2) , Poor (1); Excellent - A, Average - B , Poor - C

Subject	Exit Grade	Credit	Remark
Classic Japanese	A	5	The Prince’s dedication to Ueda Akinari is an honour to his family and their legacy. His mastery of kanji, and rhetoric is impressive, and he demonstrates a clear understanding of structure and prose.
Contemporary Japanese	A	5	The Prince has shown impressive mastery of modern kanji and diction. He is well spoken, well written, and is capable of forming complex arguments with convincing structure.
English	A	5	English has become a tool of the Prince that is both exemplary and complimentary to his other subjects. His participation in English club has served him well, and he should be proud of his conversational ability.
Health & Physical Education	A	5	The Prince’s participation in polo is quite fitting. However, it is his role in the baseball team which inspires and leads his school cohort. I am most impressed with his contribution to National Sport.
Mathematics	A-	4	Mathematics is a field that the Prince is impressively scholastic. His participation in medical endeavours has encouraged him to consistently improve his grade in this subject.
Geography	A-	4	The skill of geography is demonstrated in the Prince. He has shown impressive understanding of mountain formation, and national Japanese geographic challenges.
History	A	5	The Prince shows mastery of the sengoku jidai, and meiji restoration, he also has managed clear demonstration of classical European history including the Roman Empire.
Social Studies	A	5	The democratic foundations of modern Japan are embedded in the Prince’s studies. He is deeply engaged in constitutional literacy, and has undertaken some studies in Western European legal structures.
Science	A	5	While most of the school curriculum focuses on physics and biology, the Prince’s focus on chemistry and medicine has helped him immensely. He is deeply talented in scientific affairs, and I encourage him to take these studies further.
Music	B	3	The Prince has learned piano to a degree he should be proud of, I advise him to continue practising.
Fine Art	B	3	The Prince’s mural organisation skill was significantly better than I anticipated. I congratulate him on his managerial ability and student leadership.
Craftsmanship	B	3	The Prince’s ability to muster his classmates in cooperation for the school garden was impressive. I commend his student leadership.

I hereby certify that the above statement is correct. 上記の記載事項に誤りがないことを証明いたします。
School Name: Peer’s School, Gakushuin. 学習院
Address: 1 Chome-5-1 目目白 Toshima City, Tokyo 171-0031
Principal: Reginald Horace Blyth 鬼島 レジナル
Date: 1952 年 4 月 30 日
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Summary

Emperor Apparent Akihito has graduated High School. He’s a baseball nerd who loves studying medicine. He received almost all A’s though he took a hit in some creative arts studies, and as such does not graduate Valedictorian. He was student president. He will now go on to attend Gakushuin University, with overseas components at Harvard and either Cambridge or Oxford.

DARK FANTASY OF “DRAGONS” VS “HUMANS” ON AN EPIC SCALE… “RAGNA CRIMSON” KEY VISUAL AND 3RD TRAILER RELEASED. FIRST EPISODE ONE-HOUR SPECIAL ON 9/30 PREMIERE SCREENING AT SHINJUKU PICCADILLY
Download Key Visual and Stills: https://spaces.hightail.com/space/KqaZhv1tze
View Trailer 3: https://youtu.be/Yvn9il7Bv1Q
It was announced that the first episode of ”Ragna Crimson” will be a one-hour special on 9/30/2023. The popular manga turned anime of an ultimate battle of humans against dragons, the “absolute strongest beings” that conquer the world with its mighty powers. Along with a new key visual and the latest promotion video, the names of actors Junichi Suwabe, Fairouz Ai, Mamiko Noto, and Hiroki Touchi were announced as additional cast members. The anime’s opening theme “ROAR” was made public as well. This is performed by the four-piece rock band ulma sound junction. To top all of the excitement, a premiere screening will be held on 9/2.
“Ragna Crimson,” created by Daiki Kobayashi (serialized on Square Enix’s Monthly “Gangan JOKER” magazine), follows the journey of a boy named Ragna, a young “dragon hunter.” He uses a silver sword to hunt dragons for money. The title is an ultra-tough, ultimate isekai battle story at an unprecedented scale with powerful action sequences. Since the anime was announced, this title has garnered a lot of attention both domestically and internationally.
The first episode, which will be aired on Saturday, 9/30, has been revealed as a one-hour special. The newly released key visual shows the protagonists Ragna and Crimson in front with powerful rivals Ultimatia and Woltekamui looming in the back. The visual has a strong dark fantasy taste with characters that seem seconds before zooming into battle. Woltekamui, one of the stronger enemies voiced by Junichi Suwabe, and other dragons are shown more in detail in the new promotion video, along with the slime voiced by Fairouz Ai. This PV, with its freshly released opening theme “ROAR” by ulma sound junction, is from a must-see title from the season starting in October.
There will also be a premiere screening and a talk show by the cast at Shinjuku Piccadilly, a theater in Tokyo, on Saturday 9/2. The full one-hour episode will be shown, followed by a talk show including Chiaki Kobayashi, who plays Ragna, and Ayumu Murase, who plays Crimson. The event is an opportunity to enjoy the long-awaited first episode before anybody else, and hear some happenings at the voice recordings. Pre-orders have started on Lawson Ticket, so be sure to get your ticket to visit the theater.
With the new key visual, mind-blowing action, and a powerful storyline, “Ragna Crimson” is definitely one of the top-ranking titles of this Fall. Don’t forget to come back for more information of this amazing title.
Official Website: https://ragna-crimson.com
Ragna Crimson starts on 9/30/2023
RELEASED
“Ragna Crimson” EP #1 One-Hour Special on Saturday, 9/30 / Key Visual and 3rd Trailer Revealed / Opening Theme “ROAR” Performed by ulma sound junction / Comments from Additional Cast Members Junichi Suwabe and Fairouz Ai / Premiere Screening on 9/2 at Shinjuku Piccadilly
■ BROADCAST INFORMATION
TOKYO MX, BS11: 25:00 09/30/2023 (JST). First episode will be a one-hour special / MBS
■ ORIGINAL STORY
Daiki Kobayashi (Serialized in monthly “Gangan JOKER,” Square Enix)
■ STAFF
Director: Ken Takahashi
Character Design: Shimpei Aoki
Scriptwriter: Deko Akao
Art Direction: Asuka Komiyama (Cosmo Project)
Color Design: Taeko Mizuno (Studio Road)
Director of Photography: Atsushi Sato (studio shamrock)
3D Director: Makoto Endo (Tri-Slash)
Editor: Kentaro Tsubone (REAL-T)
Sound Director: Fumiyuki Go
Music: Koji Fujimoto (Sus4 Inc.) / Osamu Sasaki
Animation Production: SILVER LINK.
■ CAST
Ragna: Chiaki Kobayashi
Crimson: Ayumu Murase
Leonica: Inori Minase
Slime: Fairouz Ai
Chimera: Mamiko Noto
Golem: Hiroki Touchi
Ultimatia: Reina Ueda
Woltekamui: Junichi Suwabe
Grymwelte: Takehito Koyasu
Disas Trois: Shunsuke Takeuchi
Temruogtaf: Kozo Shioya
Future Ragna: Nobutoshi Canna
■ CAST COMMENTS
Fairouz Ai (Voice of Slime)
- This title has extremely unique characters starting with Crimson, but the Slime is one of the strange characters.
- The story is pretty serious, with Ragna going through a lot of agony and having his precious things taken away. But the Slime brightens up the scene with its non-conforming character. I believe its charm is where he just keeps his own pace, and I tried to express that!
- “You stupid hoomans, watch the show or else!” (saying in character)
Junichi Suwabe (Voice of Woltekamui)
- Woltekamui is very very strong.
- He will appear later in the show as an extraordinarily strong enemy that confronts Ragna and his friends.
I look forward to see how the fierce battle scenes in the manga will be shown in the anime.
- Oh, just in case, this “strong enemy” never becomes a comrade. He’s a real bad guy!
- Please look forward to the anime “Ragna Crimson!”
■ OPENING THEME
- ulma sound junction “ROAR”
■ COMMENTS FROM ULMA SOUND JUNCTION
- We started reading the manga after hearing about making the OP theme. We just couldn’t put the books down until we finished reading.
- We tried to express the very heavy storyline, hard action sequences, Ragna’s strength that causes inner conflict, and Crimson’s bottomless cunning, which is almost bewitching.
- There are so many appealing characters. The protagonists and dragons both have a lot of drama, too.
- Justice is quite a different concept when you seeing from Ragna’s and the dragons’ aspect. You will see more to the story when you switch angles. It’s a deep story that could be received in different ways by different people.
- As a fan, I truly look forward to seeing the battle scenes that are so ferocious that sound and thoughts seem to be left behind. We will be following the show to see how the future of the characters turn out. I hope you enjoy our song.
■ ULMA SOUND JUNCTION PROFILE
- The band ulma sound junction is a four-piece progessive rock band made by close friends who grew up in Ishigaki-jima, Okinawa prefecture.
- The bands performance sucks in listeners in with their upredictable but impressive melody line. Their concept is being a “cinematic core” of sound.
- Hisao Tamura’s (Ba&Vo) strong vocals has a tribal music mood, while Tamotsu Kasemoto’s (Dr) highly intuitive drums accompany vocals with its progressive beat. Yoshitaka Yamazato’s (G) emotional yet eccentric lead guitar sets the tone, while Shun Fukusato (G) arranges change the songs into a pop anthem that has a strong message. “ulma sound” is made by these four members that make music that has potential to become truly world-class.
■ “RAGNA CRIMSON” PREMIERE SCREENING AND TALK SHOW
- Date: Sat. 9/2/2023 open at 16:15 / start at 16:30, 18:00 end
Venue: Shinjuku Piccadilly
Cast: Chiaki Kobayashi (Ragna), Ayumu Murase (Crimson), and others (TBA)
Content: Premiere of EP 1 (1-hour special) followed by a talk show by the cast
Cast appearances might change without notice.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
- TRAILER 1 - https: //youtu.be/NLgQESTCHM0
- TRAILER 2 - https://youtu.be/RdshFiWLQNs
- TRAILER 3 - https://youtu.be/Yvn9il7Bv1Q
■ VISUAL ASSETS
Hightail Spaces: https://spaces.hightail.com/space/KqaZhv1tze
©︎ Daiki Kobayashi/SQUARE ENIX, Ragna Crimson Project
■ OFFICIAL WEBSITE - https://ragna-crimson.com
■ OFFICIAL TWITTER - https://twitter.com/ragnacrimson_PR
■ STORY
- “Dragon Hunters” use their silver swords to hunt dragons to make a living.
- Ragna, a starting out hunter buddies with Leonica, a genius dragon hunter with a tremendous score, to battle dragons every day.
- Ragna has only one wish --- “I wouldn’t complain if can’t become strong. I just want to be with Leo.”
- But his small wish is brutally shattered by an attack of a “superior dragon,” a being much stronger than any dragon they had fought with.
- Seeing the strong enemy in front of him, Ragna remembers a bad dream he had been suffering from for the past few days. In his dreams, Ragna was stronger than anyone else, but living in a devastating future life in solitude, with nothing to save and protect.
- What is his future trying to tell him? What path should he take now?
- Ragna takes one step forward to avert his devastating future with a new buddy called Crimson, who is a bag of mysteries.
- His enemy has ultimate strength. He fights against a forced destiny. Fighting beyond the limits!
- An ultra-tough, ultimate isekai battle story begins!
■ CHARACTERS
- Ragna: A young dragon hunter starting out. He becomes the buddy of a strong hunter named Leonica. Though he is not talented, he works hard to assist Leonica.
- Crimson: A very cool-blooded character skillful in magic and conspiracy, but the true identity of Crimson is unknown. Crimson wishes Ragna to defeat all dragons.
- Leonica: A 12-year-old who travels with Ragna. Known as “Leo.” A very talented dragon hunter, who everybody calls a “child prodigy.”
- Slime: Crimson’s servant creature. A slime-like being that devours dragons. Slime usually takes the form of a human boy, and looks down on everybody except for Crimson.
- Woltekamui: A superior dragon ranking the Second Seat of the Blood of the Wing. Also known as the "Lightning Claw Dragon." Skillful in using lightning and has tremendous speed. Stronger than most of the superior dragons.
■ COMICS
“Ragna Crimson” Comics Volumes 1-12 On Sale
Read the latest episode in monthly “Gangan JOKER” (on sale 22nd monthly) from Square Enix.
Volume 12

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2/6/2016
Q67
Similar to how Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has a 3-arrow strategy to remedy the economy in what people term “Abenomics,” what would be the Murakamics 3-arrow strategy? Please don’t tell me you don’t have one! It doesn’t actually have to be about economics.
(Third Vacuum Cleaner, male, 54 years old)
​
A67
Murakamics is quite powerful.
The first arrow: feign ignorance
The second arrow: hide any embarrassment
The third arrow: fight back
We could all learn from cats. This is basically what they do to get through life.
Meooow
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2/6/2015
Q68
In your codename selection event awhile back, you gave me the name “Honolulu Lulu.” (Although, strictly speaking, it’s become more of a nickname) ^^;
(idk wtf she’s talking about, here’s the original sentence: 以前、コードネーム募集で「ホノルル・ルル」を頂戴し、大事に使わせていただいております（厳密には、そこからさらにあだ名風に変えていますが（＾＾；）
Inspired after reading aloud to children, I’d like to read and study picture books and juvenile literature. Do you have any memories of your own childhood books, whether picture books or chapter books or so on? I’d be so happy if you could tell me about any memories or recollections you might have.
(Honolulu Lulu, female, 45 years old)
​
A68
Dear Ms. Honolulu Lulu, I remember you well. How have you been?
I read a variety of books as a kid, but there aren’t any that stand out in my memory. However, as an elementary student, I ran a fever one day and missed school. (As a kid I got sick pretty easily for some reason). I lay huddled in my futon reading a kid’s version of the old ghost story collection, Tales of Moonlight and Rain. I was reading “The Carp that Appeared in my Dream” and fell asleep in the middle of it. My dreams that night were so heavy and thick, and I woke up dripping with sweat. The excitement of the story must have been too strong for me, I suppose. From that day forward, I became obsessed with that book.
Just the other day I paid my respects to the author’s (Ueda Akinari) grave in Kyoto. It was very nice to see. It’s private property, though, so it might be hard for most people to go see it.
–

For my second Fantasy Bingo, I challenged myself to complete a full card reading only books published before 1899 – precursors of the many modern genres of SFF, bascally. This covers things ranging from legends that were passed down orally for millennia to Gothic novels. I’ve had a lot of help from users of this subreddit: most of the books I ended up reading were mentioned in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/Fantasy/comments/mo4gqs/bingo_card_reading_only_precursors_of_sff_any/
Now I feel slightly less ignorant of where some of the references and tropes of modern fantasy stories come from, but mostly I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface… it was great, though. Hopefully this will inspire other people to re-discover these old and dusty books!
I was also planning on doing a “normal” card, but I’m 5 books away from completing that one and I won’t make it on time... :/
I’ll give mini-reviews of all of these “classics” below, but before I go into detail I’m not 100% sure of the validity of two of them, and I’d like to bother the mods about it (or in other words, beg them to accept these choices), if that’s OK: for the “published in 2021” square, which was super tricky considering my theme, a friend translated for me the first sci-fi short story ever written in Bengali: Niruddesher Kahini, by Jagadish Chandra Bose, originally written in 1896. But, well, it’s a short story, not even novella-length, and my friend’s oral translation wasn’t published… and for the Nonfiction square, I went with an article written in 1889 by Anatole Le Braz, “Le Cloarec breton, d'après la poésie Populaire”, which is also relatively short (20-30 pages, I think) and the only reason it took me as long as 2 hours to read it is because I insisted on deciphering the parts written in brezhoneg. So, if either of these doesn’t work, let me know, and I’ll swap it for a more recent book!
Now let’s move to the interesting part: the mini-reviews! Or rant-y anecdotes, depending on the books. I’ve added little hearts (<3s) in front of the ones I very much recommend, if you want to skim the reviews and focus on these ones.
​
First row:
Five Short Stories: Mabinogion, unknown authors, late Middle-Ages, 19th Century translation by Lady Guest. Just like characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the knightly heroes from Arthurian tales had their own side-stories and epic crossovers. And similar constant retelling of the stories, changing some elements each time to fit the current reader’s tastes. And some stories about sidekicks no-one but hardcore fans knew. That’s what these are, not stories focusing directly on Arthur et al. but on the other knights, or on other characters from Welsh folklore. These stories feel old and patchwork-y, some of them were probably passed down orally for centuries before being written, then edited much later by Guest. But that’s part of their charm!
<3 Set in Asia: Tales of Moonlight and Rain, Ueda Akinari, 1776. Another collection of tales, this one made me wish I learned Japanese: apparently, the prose is fantastic… the translated version I read is still beautifully dreamlike, though. I loved the atmosphere of these stories, as Akinari explored different times and settings in Historical Japan for these supernatural tales. I very much recommend that book (especially, for non-Japanese people, if you can find a version of it with copious footnotes, there’s a lot of cultural and historical context there!)
<3 A Selection from the A-Z Genre Guide: Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, 1818. Another great book – I wasn’t expecting such depth at all, having only been exposed to the “mad scientist in pointy castle” version of Frankenstein before… The characters are so much more than that. Both Frankenstein and his creature are sometimes monstruous but mostly very human, heartbreakingly so. And on a side note: as a woman going through all these old books, this was a nice respite from all the deeply bigoted sexism everywhere else. The narrator is writing a letter to a woman, and he’s treating her like an actual human being, which is huge.
Found Family: Beowulf, unknown authors, written in 7th Century but likely composed much earlier. Beowulf is the original barbarian (sorry Cuchulainn, uh, let’s say you’re the original berserker, does that work for you?). He solves his problems by punching them, and if it doesn’t work, he punches them harder. Which, apparently, is a sound strategy. Kinda. The epic poem is about him drinking with his pals, seeing them dying like the drunk idiots they are, punching a nasty creature until it’s dead, making new friends, and punching a nastier creature. I wish it didn’t drag on for so long: such poems were written with tons of repetitions to be easily re-told by bards but eh… my D&D character would tell it in 2 minutes tops, and then she’d beat him in a drinking contest. Still an interesting read, though ^^
First Person PoV: Dracula, Bram Stoker, 1897. Not at all the first vampire story, as I learned later! But its iconic place in culture makes it an interesting read. Like for Frankenstein, it’s not the story I expected it to be, most of it takes place in the UK… but I’m not complaining, it’s more interesting than I expected. Also, the moral of the story wasn’t meant to be “don’t be sexist idiots and share information with the other members of your group, you’d figure this out much earlier”, but that’s what I’ll remember anyway, sorry Bram.
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Second row:
Book Club or Readalong Book : The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886. For a change, this one is exactly the story I expected it to be. It wasn’t bad, just, not my favourite read of this card… still interesting for its cultural significance.
New to You Author: Histoire Comique des Empires et Etats de la Lune, Cyrano de Bergerac, 1650. « new to me » in the sense that I’d never read anything by him before, but teenage me was Cyrano’s n°1 fangirl because of Edmond Rostand’s play. Don’t judge. It’s a travel story to an imaginary country (located on the Moon), which the author uses to criticize French society of his time… like Lucian’s True Story much earlier, or Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels later. It’s different from most other fantastical travel stories in that it has an unhealthy dose of pseudoscience and bad philosophy, but that makes it funnier ^^ Also, a necessary read if you’ve loved the De Cape et de Crocs comics as much as I did (if you haven’t read that series and understand French, then what are you waiting for, you should be halfway to your local book shop already).
Gothic Fantasy: The Monk, Matthew Gregory Lewis, 1796. Aaaand a book that I strongly disliked. In that book, bad men rape women, and good men rape women and own slaves, but see, they’re the good ones. Women tend to be trophies for all these fantastic men. The author tries to bring some depth to the characters and tries to make us relate to the bad people because it’s not entirely their fault if they’re bad, see? But that’s… how things work in the real world, not a big psychological breakthrough. It's all so shallow. That book was famous in its time because it was scandalous: it has Satan, sex and torture, and unsurprisingly it was one of Sade’s favourite books for those reasons. But there’s nothing more to it than its dated “scandal”, which isn’t scandalous anymore by our time's standards.
<3 Backlist Book: Lamia, John Keats, 1819. That one’s a poem, roughly novella-length… I love its reversal of the Enlightenment trope of “reason is good and it defeats the superstitions that enslaved us”. And it’s beautifully written, the atmosphere is lovely,… it’s a nice read (that is, if you enjoy this kind of dreamlike mood as much as I do).
<3 Revenge-Seeking Character: Táin Bó Cúailnge, written around the 9th Century but actually much older. I’m glad I got the opportunity to discover Cuchulainn, the ugliest hero in the entire world! Hephaistos is nowhere near his level of ugliness: Cuchulainn has 7 fingers per hand, 7 pupils per eye (yup), hair of three colours (enough of each to cover a person’s head, so, a lot of hair). And in that form, he’s deemed to be extremely beautiful, which says a lot about what the average iron age Irish person looked like. Fortunately, he can go berserk and turn into an eldritch abomination to win all the ugliness contests. The story follows him as he goes from taunting then slaughtering all other children in kindergarten to taunting then slaughtering everyone in the opposing army, and, uh, it’s fun. Also, the story is old: the legend was formed at some point in the 1st millennium BCE, and it’s very interesting to see how some elements were likely phased out of it over time without completely disappearing (like women fighting in the army), and others haven’t changed that much over the millennia (like the administrative regions of Ireland).
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Third row:
Mystery Plot: Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872. One of these many vampire stories that were written before Dracula. With a lesbian vampire, mind you (for extra 19th Century scandal points). Like Dracula, this book revolves around solving a mystery: what is the mysterious disease called “oupire” or something like that by the locals? Who is this evil Marcilla who looks so much like the clearly-innocent-not-at-all-a-vampire Carmilla? Why do I wake up so tired every morning with bite marks on my neck? Am I in love with Carmilla, oh no I’m a woman it must be sisterly love haha? Obviously, there’s no real mystery for us. But it’s still fun.
<3 Comfort Read: Voyage au Centre de la Terre, Jules Verne, 1864. I found one of the few books by Verne that I hadn’t yet read as a child, yay :) It was a nice, nostalgic read. And surprisingly, the science in it (the Earth is hollow, and you can visit the vast underground caves) isn’t that absurd considering radioactivity hadn’t been discovered yet, so the Physicists couldn’t explain the Earth’s temperature knowing that it had been around for long enough for incredibly diverse organisms to evolve. Sure, that model didn’t answer the question, but neither did any other, so… shrug emoji 19th Century science aside, Verne has a great sense of humour, and reading his children’s books is always a pleasure.
Published (translated, in this case) in 2021: Niruddesher Kahini, Jagadish Chandra Bose, 1896 (if the mods let me use it). The first sci-fi story to be written in Bengali, and likely the first sci-fi story in Indian literature in general, was written as part of a commercial contest for a hair oil! It’s inspired by a simple fluid dynamics experiment, and even though it’s a short read, it takes the time to make fun of the European colonial powers, so bonus points for that.
<3 Cat Squasher: Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot, 1849. The best national epic poem ever (again, apologies to Cuchulainn, he’s cool and all but not that cool). It’s based on a set of much older stories revolving around the same set of characters that Lönnrot put together and modified to make them fit a linear storyline. I absolutely loved the descriptions of the world, with its vivid colours and the many species of trees and animals, and the delicious feasts… I don’t think I’ve ever read legends that put so consistently nature at the centre of the narrative, as a source of beauty (and danger, and yummy food), and I loved it. Although, as a woman from the 21st Century, I’m obviously considering that the “evil and ugly witch” Louhi, who kept being insulted and betrayed by all these manly heroes, is an absolute badass and the only true hero of the story.
SFF-related Nonfiction: Le Cloarec breton, d'après la poésie populaire, Anatole Le Braz, 1889. Le Braz is mostly known for his amazing collection of legends around death from Brittany, La Légende de la Mort en Basse-Bretagne, which will teach you among many other things that here we have the stupidest-looking personification of Death: the blade of his scythe is mounted the wrong way, because he’s just not very smart, OK? But Le Braz collected a lot more stories: this article focuses on the “clerk”, basically the equivalent of a high school student who was studying for the sole purpose of joining the clergy because back then and there studying for any other purpose was unthinkable. He explains how apart from other young men (farmers of fishermen, no other options) that clerk is, a semi-mystical figure who risks being tempted by pretty girls, alcohol, or the devil himself before finishing his studies… it’s a very interesting read!
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Fourth Row:
Latinx or Latin American Author, replaced by:
personal rec from Fantasy (2019 card): The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole, 1764. I got some recommendations for Latin American writers that sounded great, but unfortunately the few that had been translated to English or French had been written in the mid-20th Century at earliest… classical literature from the 19th Century just hasn’t ever been translated, no matter how popular it is in South America, which is a shame. So I replaced it by a square from an earlier card, making the lazy choice of the one that would fit most of the books I read.
The Castle of Otranto is considered to be the first Gothic novel, and it has strictly no vampires. The writer initially pretended to have found the manuscript and not written it, and later changed his mind when the book became successful… as far as gothic novels go, it has kind of an archaic structure, it feels more like a 17th Century novel (to my very uneducated self), which makes sense after all, 19th Century gothic didn’t appear all of a sudden. It’s an interesting read, and has interesting characters, but seeing the women being docile pushovers is grating, to put it mildly.
<3 Self-published: Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blake, 1794. I basically read Blake’s entire bibliography, not so much for the poetry but for the pretty pictures. Blake’s mystical personality fascinates, and so do his texts, but the texts themselves don’t have much of an effect on me… however, the combo of hand-written texts, illuminations and illustration, in a late 18th-early 19th Century style inspired by medieval manuscripts is fantastic. I could spend hours staring at these pages.
Forest Setting: Phantastes, George MacDonald, 1858. The hero explores fairyland, probably trying to find love in the process by chasing after impossibly beautiful women. I understand the book is inspired by romanticism, with its beautiful but dangerous nature, mysterious castles in the woods, perfect women and magical things happening randomly, and while usually I love dreamlike atmospheres, it just didn’t work for me, I found it lengthy and tedious… some scenes were beautiful, I just wish it had contained the same story in 1/4th of the pages.
Genre Mashup: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain, 1889. I like time-travel stories, and with Mark Twain’s sense of humour, it can’t be bad. We’re following a self-absorbed American from Twain’s time as he Western-Isekai-s his way through a made-up medieval society to become The Boss, a capitalist hero (much cooler than these stupid knights of the round table). It’s a fun, light read: we make fun of the backwards knights as they go grail-hunting and mistake an eclipse for an act of great magic (shame on you for stealing that one, Hergé), we cheer for our liberal hero as he fools them all, creates increasingly complex inventions and gets out of sticky situations, and we laugh at the obvious inconsistencies in said hero’s ideology, because what’s a fantastical travel story without some critique of contemporary society. It’s a nice book.
Has Chapter Ttiles: Nibelungenlied, 13th Century. The song itself is probably based on some older elements, Germanic and Latin, with a mix of historical events and figures from the 5th-6th Centuries CE, and some older legends in which Germanic gods were over time edited out and replaced by Christianism… It has that patchwork-y feel of old stories. It tells the story of a bunch of unlikeable knights and kings who betray each other, gaslight women, kill innocent bystanders and go to mass. And they’re virtuous heroes, especially when they virtuously sacrificed thousands of lives to save their own. When the women retaliate, they’re just being mean, but women shouldn’t be trusted anyway, that’s why men pre-emptively rape and gaslight them. On a more serious /less depressed note, it’s an interesting look into the power dynamics of noble Germans in the early Middle-Ages, but the same critiques as for Beowulf apply: it’s looong and all the characters range from “deeply stupid” to “impossibly, even stupider”.
​
Fifth Row:
<3 The _ of _ : The Epic of Gilgamesh, 2nd millennium BCE. The first written story we found remnants of, and it’s a fantasy story (or a mythological one)! It was the equivalent of a best-seller back then, which explains that we found se many fragments of it. Its cultural significance must have been huge, 3 to 5 millennia ago. It’s the story of king Conan the Barb… king Gilgamesh the mighty and his enemy/BFF/lover Enkidu, the man of the woods who discovered that civilisation was actually pretty neat after spending a few nights in the bed of a prostitute. A side character is also the literary ancestor of Noah from the Bible (except his ark is much more clunky, given its description it’s either a sphere, which is not great for stability, or a huge wooden cube in which he hoards all the different animals to add their biological distinctiveness to his own, resistance is futile or something). That character is actually a mythical figure from the Mesopotamian religion which the Hebrews later re-used as part of their own mythology. It’s also interesting to see that the misconception according to which civilisation is a women’s thing that made men softer and less savage (afaik disproven by modern archaeology, the transition to agriculture actually led to higher gender disparity) is as old as humanity's oldest written story (that we know of)… for all these reasons and more, it’s a very interesting read.
First Contact: A True Story, Lucian of Samosata, 2nd Century CE. A great fantastical journey parodying some older stories (the author kindly explains than none of it happened, he’s not pretending to having been on impossibly journeys like many authors before him did). In the first book, he visits the Moon; in the second book, his ship is eaten by a whale (that happens all the time), in the third book he meets sentient animals, including “Turkey chicken” (poules d’inde in my translation) which, wait… that’s when I googled it and realised that Lucian’s story is only two books long and ends on a cliffhanger. The first translation I read was a 17th Century French translation by Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt, who’s known for his veeeery loose translations (called “beautiful unfaithful” for a reason), which, in this case, meant he took upon himself to write two extra chapters and conclude the story. I later read a more faithful English translation, but I still prefer Perrot’s version, which would have fooled me if it didn’t have turkeys ^^
Trans or Nonbinary Character: Paradise Lost, John Milton, 1667. It’s Bible fanfiction, and I don’t mean that as a derogatory term: fanfiction is nice (see the critique just above this one). Milton is trying to expand on some of the “plot holes” of his faith’s mythology, and in my opinion creates more plot holes in the process, but Paradise Lost is beautifully written. The angels are non-binary, but I wouldn’t call it good enby representation by any stretch of the imagination: they’re all clearly male (except the one poor female-presenting demon, Sin, who didn’t do much wrong and gets repeatedly raped). And it’s funny how much the author insists that Satan is an awful person, while also making them a badass main character. I’m not sure Milton would have thought that “Satan is cool” would be the main takeaway from his poem, but it kind of is, sorry Milton. Oh, and also, a lot of references from His Dark Materials including its title come from that poem, which was a nice surprise.
Debut Author: Micromégas, Voltaire, 1739. Yet another fictional travel story, this time of an alien who’s clearly meant to be superior to us filthy humans in all regards, for a change. It has Voltaire’s signature wit and criticizes his time’s society without taking itself too seriously, so it’s a nice read!
Witches: Medea, Euripides, 431 BC. I also read a few other plays and poems featuring Medea, she’s such a great character… and I loved her in Euripides’ play, she’s both relatable and inhuman, but then no more inhuman than those male heroes whose callous selfishness is so easily excused. It was interesting to see (in a slightly depressing way) that these “modern” feminist arguments were already mentioned 2500 years ago…
​
And that’s all for these mini-reviews! I hope they made you want to (re)discover some of these classics. As for me, I still have a ton of old books on my TBR list, but next year’s bingo is probably going to focus more on books published in the past decade, both because supporting contemporary authors is important and because as you may have guessed from my frustration in some of these critiques I need a healthy dose of feminism and queer characters in my SFF :)

I'm looking for dark, unexpected, and/or weirdly connected short stories similar to Yoko Ogawa's Revenge collection. Loved Neil Gaiman's everything short. Not a big fan of Stephen King. Just finished "Tenth of December" by George Saunders and I was not impressed.
Thank you!
Later edit, to include all the great recommendations:

• Pretty Monsters, Kelly Link (available online: Lull, Catskin)
  
• Homesick for Another World, Ottessa Moshfegh
  
• Story of Your Life, Ted Chiang
  
• stories by Roald Dahl (Tales of the Unexpected, Switch Bitch)
  
• Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado
  
• Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges
  
• King in Yellow, Robert Chambers
  
• Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Thomas Ligotti
  
• Teatro Grotesco, Thomas Ligotti
  
• Grimscribe, Thomas Ligotti
  
• Eleven, Patricia Highsmith
  
• The Veldt, Ray Bradbury
  
• The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury
  
• stories by Shirley Jackson
  
• Strange Happenings, Avi
  
• The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster (novels)
  
• St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Karen Russell
  
• Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Karen Russell
  
• Orange World, Karen Russell
  
• Bloodchild, Octavia Butler
  
• The Evening and the Morning and the Night, Octavia Butler
  
• Speech Sounds, Octavia Butler
  
• H. P. Lovecraft (Solaris)
  
• Edgar Allan Poe (The Tell-Tale Heart)
  
• Pump Six and Other Stories, Paolo Bacigalupi
  
• The Shell Collector, Anthony Doerr
  
• The Relive Box, T. C. Boyle
  
• Fresh Complaint, Jeffrey Eugenides
  
• Things We Lost in the Fire, Mariana Enriquez
  
• The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez
  
• Willful Creatures, Aimee Bender
  
• Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link
  
• Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link
  
• The Birds and Other Stories, Daphne du Maurier
  
• A Cathedral of Myth and Bone, Kat Howard
  
• Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, Alissa Nutting
  
• Tokyo Decadence, Ryu Murakami
  
• Night's Master, Tanith Lee
  
• Can Such Things Be, Ambrose Bierce
  
• The Complete Short Stories, Mike Carey
  
• The Arabian Nights, translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton
  
• The Collected Stories, Roger Zelaznys (5 volumes)
  
• Zothique, Clark Ashton Smith
  
• The Emperor of Dreams, Clark Ashton Smith
  
• Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams, C. L. Moore
  
• The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales, Rudyard Kipling
  
• The Great God Pan, Arthur Machen (novella)
  
• Antisocieties, Michael Cisco
  
• Secret Hour, Michael Cisco
  
• The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Laird Barron
  
• Occultation and Other Stories, Laird Barron
  
• Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, M. R. James
  
• The Algernon Blackwoods Collection, Algernon Blackwoods
  
• William Hope Hodgsons
  
• Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, James Tiptree Junior
  
• The Best Noir of the Century, edited by James Ellroy
  
• North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud
  
• Everything That Rises Must Converge, Flannery O'Connor
  
• What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, Lesley Nneka Arimah
  
• Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory, Raphael Bob-Waksberg
  
• Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins, Emma Donoghue
  
• Forward (Sci-Fi collection)
  
• The Refrigerator Monologues, Catherynne M. Valente
  
• Franz Kafka
  
• The Monster of Elendhaven, Jennifer Giesbrecht
  
• Night Shift, Stephen King
  
• Skeleton Crew, Stephen King
  
• Gutshot, Amelia Gray
  
• Dark Lies the Island, Kevin Barry
  
• A Perfect Day for Bananafish, J. D. Salinger
  
• All That Man Is, David Szalay
  
• Tales of Moonlight and Rain, Akinari Ueda
  
• The Consumer, Michael Gira
  
• Zoo, Otsuichi
  
• Isaac Asimov
  
• Joe Hill
  
• A Guide to Being Born, Ramona Ausubel
  
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison
  
• Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By, Anna Jane Grossman (non-fiction)
  

I've been tracking my reads throughout the year trying to read evenly between male and female authors and also trying to hit the goal of at least 20% of my reads by word count to be by a non-white author.
In total I'm ok in the M/F department and just a bit under that 20% for non-white authors, but looking closer I noticed that inside them the male authors amount only to 25.7% of the total. I'm waiting for The Fires of Vengeance in November, but I'd like some extra titles for my TBR. So, any recs for non-white male authors? I'd prefer if they were standalones or short series (3 or 4 books at most) and I don't care where they land in the Fantasy-Science Fiction spectre or even if they're Horror.
To attune the recs, here are some of my favourite reads of this year: Bloody Rose, Jade City (and Jade War), The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, Network Effect, Parable of the Sower, Foundryside, The Rage of Dragons, The Heroes, Piranesi, or The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.
[I'm sorry if the terms I use are not the most correct, I'm a white European and English is not my native language so keeping up with terminology is sometimes difficult.]
EDIT: Thanks everyone for the suggestions, here is the list of all the recommendations for easy access:

Title	Author	Link
Cemetery Boys	Aiden Thomas	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52339313-cemetery-boys
Scarlet Odyssey	C.T. Rwizi	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51072332-scarlet-odyssey
The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria	Carlos Hernandez	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25362907-the-assimilated-cuban-s-guide-to-quantum-santeria
Imaro	Charles R. Saunders	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1535273.Imaro
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe	Charles Yu	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7726420-how-to-live-safely-in-a-science-fictional-universe
Version Control	Dexter Palmer	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25733442-version-control
The Rage of Dragons	Evan Winter	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41952489-the-rage-of-dragons
The Devourers	Indra Das	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27245999-the-devourers
Songs of Insurrection	J. C. Kang	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33097240-songs-of-insurrection
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps	Kai Ashante Wilson	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25819519-the-sorcerer-of-the-wildeeps
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories	Ken Liu	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24885533-the-paper-menagerie-and-other-stories
Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky	Kwame Mbalia	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39884337-tristan-strong-punches-a-hole-in-the-sky
The Three-Body Problem	Liu Cixin	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20518872-the-three-body-problem
Black Leopard, Red Wolf	Marlon James	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50608676-black-leopard-red-wolf
Friday Black	Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37570595-friday-black
The Haunting of Tram Car 015	P. Djèlí Clark	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36546128-the-haunting-of-tram-car-015
The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday	Saad Hossain	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43459662-the-gurkha-and-the-lord-of-Tuesday
Throne of the Crescent Moon	Saladin Ahmed	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11487807-throne-of-the-crescent-moon
Engraved on the Eye	Saladin Ahmed	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16034384-engraved-on-the-eye
Tales of Nevèrÿon	Samuel R. Delany	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/85866.Tales_of_Nev_r_on
Babel-17	Samuel R. Delany	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1199688.Babel_17
And Now His Lordship Is Laughing	Shiv Ramdas	http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/and-now-his-lordship-is-laughing/#:~:text=And%20now%20his%20Lordship%20is%20laughing%2C%20the%20sort,tears%20streaming%20down%20his%20cheeks%20as%20he%20laughs
The Vanished Birds	Simon Jimenez	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45422268-the-vanished-birds
Mongrels	Stephen Graham Jones	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26156471-mongrels
Rosewater	Tade Thompson	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38362809-rosewater
The Murders of Molly Southbourne	Tade Thompson	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34417038-the-murders-of-molly-southbourne
The Water Dancer	Ta-Nehisi Coates	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43982054-the-water-dancer
Exhalation: Stories	Ted Chiang	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41160292-exhalation
Riot Baby	Tochi Onyebuchi	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43719523-riot-baby
Tales of Moonlight and Rain	Ueda Akinari	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/237118.Tales_of_Moonlight_and_Rain
Crux Skullcrusher and the Definitely Evil Sword	Vichet Ou	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52731008-crux-skullcrusher-and-the-definitely-evil-sword
The Ballad of Black Tom	Victor LaValle	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26883558-the-ballad-of-black-tom
Moon of the Crusted Snow	Waubgeshig Rice	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39082248-moon-of-the-crusted-snow
Ninefox Gambit	Yoon Ha Lee	https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26118426-ninefox-gambit

TSPDT 46 in 2020, which it its highest ranking; TSZDT 436 in 2020, which is its highest ranking; Director: Kenji Mizoguchi; Writer: Yoshikata Yoda; Matsutaro Kawaguchi (adaptation); Hisakazu Tsuji as Kyuchi Tsuji (idea); Akinari Ueda (stories); Watched it July 31st on the Criterion Channel
97 minutes. Fair warning I am going to be making a few assumptions below but they are well intentioned and I am wide open to correction if I am off from anyone that knows Japanese history better than I do (which would mean anyone that knows practically anything about Japanese history).
WWII ended in 1945 and Japan took an especially big hit. Horrible part of history, but here we are 8 years later with a deep reflection on greed and blind ambition. I have to imagine it's not a coincidence. These are all universal themes, but when a country goes through an economic devastation there is a window of time where entrepreneurs will attempt to take control of their own lives.
For this farmer, he was not content living in squalor and was stunned at how much money he made from his hobby. It's a completely human reaction to want to go back to that well and try to see how far that skill can take you. I've worked with entrepreneurs exclusively for the last 7 years and can tell you they are all Genjuro's and there have been many romantic partners left to fend for themselves while they go "build an empire".
I think the mistake he made was not making the second, and larger, set of pottery. That feels like a natural extension of what anyone would do if the first batch sold out. I don't even think he made a mistake navigating pirate-infested waters to try and hawk his wares. It's a good metaphor for any risk for young business owners. When a woman promised him wealth and fortune if he forget his entire life and committed exclusively to her, it was the mistake to stay. The ghost as a metaphor for the allure of wealth and status was perfectly executed, as was his subsequent fall.
If it's not obvious, this film had a particular effect on me as it brought up a lot of emotions from people I know that have gone through this exact experience. The humility and wisdom that comes from failure in business is invaluable, but the experience is haunting and it was very powerfully captured here in Ugetsu.
https://www.criterion.com/films/369-ugetsu

I read tons of American and British novels and want to explore books from other countries. I prefer non-fantasy over fantasy but any book is fine. Some countries I only know 1 author so suggestions for those are okay too!
Countries that I read: Germany (Hesse), Czech (Kafka), Ukraine (Gogol, Bulgakov), Ireland (Wilde), Nigeria (Achebe), Japan (Ueda Akinari), Russia (Nabokov), Colombia (Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez), Vietnam, France (Cazotte)

A lot of these books are shorter and/or novellas; I definitely wouldn't have been able to do this if I was reading door stoppers! I originally wanted to do all hard mode but that ended up being too hard, so there's 2 hard mode cards and 2 mixed. Thank you so much to u/thequeensownfool for the awesome format, and also for the idea of stats, which I totally wouldn't have thought to do. I really enjoy finding weird off the beaten track books to fulfill Bingo, and then piecing all the books together like a puzzle.

The Stats

Book related:

• Books were 74% mainstream published, 19% indie/self published, and 7% public domain.
• 60% were library books, 20% were books I bought this year, 18% were books I already owned.
• 61% were paper books, 36% were ebooks, 3% were audiobooks.
• 65% were books I was already planning on reading, 35% were books I picked up for bingo.

Books that qualified for the most hard-mode squares:

1. Armed in her Fashion (8)
2. Pyre at the Eyreholm Trust (7)
3. Tales of Moonlight and Rain (6)

Hard mode squares that the most books qualified for:

1. Standalone (30)
2. LGBT (22)
3. Hopeful (21)

Hard Mode Squares that the fewest books qualified for:

1. RAWWKeeping up with the Classics (1)
2. Published 10 years before I was born (1)
3. Goodreads BOTM (2)

Diversity related:
(These are rough estimates; in some cases it wasn't apparent)

1. Authors were 31% male, 67% female, and 1% neither.
2. Authors were 84% white, 16% POC.
3. Authors and/or Protagonists were 71% non-LGBT, 29% LGBT.

The Books

A few notes: hard mode books are in bold, substitutions in italics. Some authors are repeated, but they should only show up once per card at most. Happy to talk about any and all of these books!
Novel Reviewed on Fantasy (Review by me)

1. The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
2. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
3. King's Blood Four by Sheri S. Tepper
4. Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johanson

Non-Western Setting (In translation)

1. Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari
2. The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
3. Tempests and Slaughter by Tamora Pierce
4. A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar

Five Fantasy Short Stories (Short Story Collection by Same Author)

1. The Refrigerator Monologues by Cat Valente
2. Carnacki the Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson
3. Sum: Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
4. The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. LeGuin, Books and Roses by Helen Oyeyemi, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, The Girl that was Plugged In by James Tiptree Jr., Cat Pictures, Please by Naomi Kritzer

Adapted to Stage, Screen, or Game (Adapted Twice)

1. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
2. A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Borroughs
3. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
4. The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. LeGuin

Hopeful Spec-Fic (Not The Goblin Emperor or Becky Chambers)

1. Radiance by Grace Draven
2. Small Spaces by Katherine Arden
3. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline Le'Engle
4. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

Takes Place in One City (Secondary World)

1. Updraft by Fran Wilde
2. A Face Like Glass by Francis Hardinge
3. Pyre at the Eyreholme Trust by Lin Darrow
4. The Vampire Knitting Club by Nancy Warren

Self-Published (Fewer than 50 reviews)

1. Heroes for Ghosts by Jackie North (It has 135 reviews now but didn't at the time)
2. The Bone Grove by Monday Tieger
3. The Collared Knight by Tara McGolden
4. The Magpie Lord by K.J. Charles

Published Before You Were Born (Published 1982)

1. Sorceror's Legacy by Janny Wurts
2. An Informal History of the Hugos by Jo Walton (substitution: fantasy-related nonfiction)
3. Gawain and the Green Knight by Anonymous
4. Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

Goodreads Book of the Month (Participated in Discussion)

1. Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
2. Circe by Madeline Miller
3. The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang
4. The Black Tides of Heaven by J. Y. Yang

Featuring a Library (Plot Relevant)

1. The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
2. Heirs of Grace by T. A. Pratt
3. Thick as Thieves by Megan Whalen Turner
4. In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

Historical Fantasy/Alt-History (Non UK or US)

1. The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden
2. The Tempest by William Shakespeare
3. The Odyssey by Homer
4. The Henchman of Zenda by K. J. Charles

Published in 2018 (Debut)

1. Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
2. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
3. Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee
4. The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

Artist/WriteMusician Protagonist (Magic art/music)

1. The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor Lavalle
2. The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo
3. The Healer's Road by S. E. Robertson
4. Space Opera by Cat Valente

Mountain Setting (Cave Setting)

1. The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley
2. Beowulf by Anonymous
3. BLack Sun Rising by C. S. Friedman
4. Contagion by Erin Bowman

fantasy 2017 Top Novels List (Bottom Half)

1. Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence
2. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
3. Red Sister by Mark Lawrence
4. A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

Fewer Than 2500 Goodreads Ratings (Fewer than 500)

1. Finding Baba Yaga by Jane Yolen
2. Barbary by Vonda McIntyre
3. Armed in Her Fashion by Kate Heartfield
4. Love for the Cold-Blooded, or The Part-Time Evil Minion's Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero by Alex Gabriel

One Word Title (One Syllable)

1. Ash by Malinda Lo
2. Gone by Michael Grant
3. Stray by Andrea Host
4. Authority by Jeff VanderMeer

Featuring God as a Character (Main Character)

1. To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust
2. The Birthgrave by Tanith Lee
3. The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
4. Starless by Jacqueline Carey

Author Using a Pseudonym (More than One)

1. The Time Traders by Andre Norton
2. The Girl with all the Gifts by M. R. Carey
3. Moon of Three Rings by Andre Norton
4. The Course of Honor by Aviolot

Space Opera (Non-Military)

1. The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
2. The Freeze Frame Revolution by Peter Watts
3. Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee
4. Behind the Throne by K. B. Wagers

Standalone Fantasy Novel (No Shared Universe)

1. Sunshine by Robin McKinley
2. A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge
3. The Power by Naomi Alderman
4. An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

RRAWKUWTC (Participated in Discussion)

1. Words are My Matter by Ursula K. LeGuin (substitution: fantasy related nonfiction)
2. Balam, Spring by Travis Riddle
3. A Princess in Theory (substitution: non-fantasy novel)
4. Dune by Frank Herbert

LGBTQ+ Database (Not in Database)

1. Dark Space by Lisa Henry
2. The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison
3. Widdershins by Jordan Hawk
4. Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner

Graphic Novel/Audiobook (Not Saga)

1. Age of Bronze: A Thousand Ships by Eric Shanower
2. Thor: Goddess of Thunder by Jason Aaron
3. The Dream Hunters by Neil Gaiman
4. An Empire in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir (substitution: YA)

Featuring the Fae (Fae Protagonist)

1. A Tangled Web by Mercedes Lackey
2. The Element of Fire by Martha Wells
3. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
4. The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey

Books are grouped roughly by theme and ranked, with 1 being my absolute favorite of each group. Feel free to ask which bingo squares any of them qualify for, or which rankings you agree or disagree with! (For anyone curious, of all the books I read I ended up with a 36% male 64% female authorship split, and a 45% primary world/portal fantasy, 39% secondary world fantasy, and 16% science fiction genre split).
Books exploring personhood/robothood:

1. The Murderbot Novellas by Martha Wells: a rogue security android with social anxiety just wants to watch TV in peace, unexpectedly develops feelings. For fans of Anne Leckie and snarky robots.
2. Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon: an old woman is left behind on a failed colony planet and makes first contact with aliens in the midst of developing higher intelligence. For fans of survival stories, language development, and “get off my lawn” cranky old ladies.
3. Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee (Machineries of Empire #3): Developing a government that doesn’t run on torture is harder than it appears, and explorations in Jedao 2.0’s unhealthy relationships. For people that want to cry a lot about clones, spaceships, and onion plants.
4. A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (Wayfarers #2): a spaceship that’s been downloaded into a human body struggles to adjust to human life. For fans of warm fuzzy feelings and cyberpunk aesthetics.
5. The Girl with All the Gifts by MR Carey: a very smart little girl that may or may not hunger for human flesh has a heartwarming friendship with her teacher. For people that like creepy child protagonists and subversions of the zombie genre.

Fairytales:

1. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik: a moneylender’s daughter must turn silver to gold for an elven king. Also: fire demons. For fans of Katherine Arden, Rumpelstiltskin, and female friendships.
2. The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo: a series of short stories set in fantasy Russia, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands. For people who like the original endings of fairytales, people who think the creepiness factor of nutcrackers is underrated, and people that like really, really pretty books.
3. Small Spaces by Katherine Arden: a delightful middle grade book about a farm haunted by possessed scarecrows. For fans of Goosebumps, corn mazes, and the harvest/Halloween aesthetic in general.
4. Chalice by Robin McKinley: A dreamy fairytale about a beekeeper and a fire mage learning to work together to preserve their idyllic country domain. For fans of McKillip, opposites-attract romances, and BEES.
5. Ash by Malinda Lo: a retelling of Cinderella where Cinderella falls in love with the kingdom’s huntress instead, and also there are creepy fairies. For people that like reading about girls awkwardly in love.

Old-school Spec-Fic:

1. The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson: a really nice translation with language that’s spare but clear and very easy to read. For fans of the original, people that have feelings about ancient Greek conceptions of honor, and people that love rosy fingered dawn.
2. Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari: a series of ghost stories written in 18th century Japan. For people that have a lot of feelings about cherry blossoms, mountain mist, and/or the transience of this sinful world, people that think double suicide is a reasonable and somewhat romantic course of action in the face of minor inconvenience.
3. Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu: A creepy short novel about a young woman and her intensely homoerotic relationship with another young woman who may or may not be a vampire. For people that think plot is overrated, people that thought Dracula needed more lesbians, and people that like to swoon.
4. A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Borroughs: a man falls asleep in a cave, wakes up on Mars, and has lots of daring adventures there, being generally cooler and smarter and braver than everyone he meets. For fans of mary sues, good old fashioned rugged American can-do attitude, hot alien babes from noble warrior cultures (and for people willing to overlook some unfortunate racial implications of the aforementioned).
5. Carnacki the Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson: a series of ghost detective stories written in 1913. For people that are still really excited about the concept of electricity, and people that like to invite their friends to dinner parties and monologue about the mysteries they’ve solved at them while smoking a nice pipe.

Books with Feminist Themes:

1. The Refrigerator Monologues by Cat Valente: a series of vignettes about the girlfriends and wives of very thinly disguised Marvel and DC superheroes that have been killed for the sake of enhancing the guy’s story. Beautifully written and bitterly, unrepentantly angry. For people who want justice for Gwen Stacy, people who felt Suicide Squad did Harley Quinn wrong, and people that are already leery about Mera’s depiction in Aquaman.
2. Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison: a plague shreds through North America, killing women at an unprecedented rate and making the survivors unable to bear children. For people that want their books unrelentingly grim.
3. The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen: a newly crowned teenaged queen grapples with effective economic policy, household management, and foreign relations. For fans of logistics in fantasy and strong-willed protagonists.
4. Armed in Her Fashion by Kate Heartfield: a misanthropic wet-nurse sues the queen of Hell in 14th century Bruges. For fans of Chaucer, Bruegel, and people that want their fantasy to seem suitably medieval.
5. The Power by Naomi Alderman: women spontaneously develop the ability to deliver electric shocks, and the world promptly goes to hell. For fans of historical mutability, the takedown of the patriarchy, and watching train wrecks as they happen

Coming-of-Age stories:

1. A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge: a young girl with the ability to eat ghosts gets a bear spirit stuck in her head during the English Civil War. For people that sympathize with having politically divided families, and people that like bears.
2. Tempests and Slaughter by Tamora Pierce: three best friends that attend mage school in fantasy Egypt will in no way become archenemies when they grow up. For fans of cozy magic-schooling narratives, talking alligators, and other Tamora Pierce books.
3. Thick as Thieves by Megan Whalen Turner (Queen’s Thief #5): a slave-scribe in fantasy Mesopotamia gets stolen by a spy from fantasy Greece, resulting in the world’s most awkward roadtrip. For fans of the Epic of Gilgamesh and buddy comedies.
4. Sunshine by Robin McKinley: a baker gets kidnapped by a vampire gang. For people that liked vampires before Twilight made them cool and people that have strong feelings about the proper consistency of a chocolate chip cookie
5. Starless by Jacqueline Carey: an assassin is trained to protect an immortal princess gets roped into saving the world. For fans of coming of age, desert settings, active gods, and training montages.

Books about relationships

1. The Course of Honor by Aviolot: a (free!) completed webserial about the arranged marriage between a prince and his cousin’s widow. For fans of misunderstandings, hurt/comfort, huddling-for-warmth, and other wholesome fanfiction tropes.
2. Heirs of Grace by Tim Pratt: an art student inherits a kooky old house filled with magical artifacts in Meat Camp North Carolina, and has to work with a cute local lawyer to avoid the unfriendly family members she’s inherited along with the house. For fans of fixer-uppers and chivalrous country boys.
3. Dark Space by Lisa Henry: A lowly space marine gets accidentally alien soulbonded to a recently rescued prisoner; they proceed to have lots of feelings and lots of sex. For fans of gay space erotica, gratuitous angst, and tropes dialed up to 11.
4. The Healer’s Road by SE Robertson: two young healers get to know each other and themselves on a year long job touring a foreign countryside. For fans of character building and friendships (the relationship is platonic, but it gets a level of focus in the story that you usually only see with romances)
5. Radiance by Grace Draven: A human princess is married to an orc-like prince as part of a treaty, and must adjust to his country and customs. For fans of characters that communicate like adults and are friends before becoming lovers.

Non-Linear Stories

1. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton: Our protagonist wakes up in the equivalent of an Agatha Christie novel in a body he doesn’t recognize, and is given seven chances to solve a murder. For fans of Groundhog Day, dreary English landscapes, and who-dunnits.
2. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino: you are reading a list of reviews on fantasy. You are curious about the book by Italo Calvino, but as you find postmodernism suspect, you are unsure if it’s quite what you’re looking for. You open the Goodreads link, but it takes you to a completely different book by a different author. Surely this must be a mistake.
3. The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins: murderous adopted siblings vie to seize control of their father’s eldritch empire, who may or may not be god. For fans of weird shit and cookouts.
4. The Freeze Frame Revolution by Peter Watts: the crew of a wormhole building ship considering revolting against their AI, which is complicated by the fact that they’re only awake for short stretches over millions of years. For people that want space to feel really really big and people to feel really really small.
5. Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlives by David Eagleman: a series of forty different ideas about what happens after we die. For people that think “plots” and “characters” are overrated, and miss talking to drunk philosophy majors in college.

Diverse Voices:

1. The Poppy War by RF Kuang: a peasant girl in fantasy-China attends the imperial academy and learns to blow things up by getting high, which is all well and good until the Sino-Japanese war breaks out. For fans of fantasy-school deconstructions and for people that like their grimdark really grim.
2. An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon: an autistic scientist races to uncover the secrets of a generation ship modelled after the antebellum south. For people that like getting punched in the heart.
3. Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse: a fascinating look at a postapocalyptic American southwest based on Navajo mythology. For fans of trickster gods and badass protagonists.
4. The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle: a retelling of Lovecraft’s Horror at Red Hook, except that the real eldritch evil is racism. For fans of 1920’s Harlem and people tickled by the thought of Lovecraft rolling over in his grave.
5. Dread Nation by Justina Ireland: reconstruction-era America, but with zombies. For people that like cool scythes and thought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a wasted opportunity for social commentary.

Books with a Body Count:

1. The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. LeGuin: humans colonize a forest planet and enslave the native inhabitants, who can only survive by learning and emulating human violence. For people that have always wanted to read a really dark take on Avatar.
2. Bird Box by Josh Malerman. An apocalyptic horror story in which anyone that opens their eyes outside sees something and goes mad. For fans of A Quiet Place and claustrophobia.
3. Red Sister by Mark Lawrence: a girl’s life in a convent that trains assassins. For fans of cage fights and people that understand/remember that little girls can be some of the most vicious people on the planet.
4. The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley: a retelling of Beowulf in a suburban planned community, focused on the mothers of Beowulf and Grendel. For fans of magical realism and Stepford-Wives-as-horror.
5. Contagion by Erin Bowman: a surveying team answers a distress signal on a faraway planet, only to find everyone dead and a strange black algae growing in the water. For people that think there should be more eldritch space horror books, people that want to read about teenaged idiots making poor choices dying from space zombies.

Best o’ the Best (My Personal Top 5 Favorites):

1. A Face like Glass by Frances Hardinge: a young cheesemaker with a grotesque face finds herself in the royal court of a deadly decadent underground city. For fans of fallen London and Josiah Bancroft, people that really love win, cheese, carnival masks, or the thrill of a few casual assassinations.
2. The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden (Winternight #2): Vasya’s story continues in this beautiful homage to Russian fairytales. For people that want to have feelings about the interplay between Russian mythology, Christianity, and womanhood. Also for people that find ice demon kings really hot.
3. Space Opera by Cat Valente: Earth must compete in an intergalactic Eurovision contest to stave off planetary annihilation. For people that want to read the literary equivalent of seeing Freddie Mercury live while high on LSD And In Space.
4. The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Leguin (Earthsea #3): the wizard Ged sails to the ends of the world to save magic. For people that want a cozy and beautifully written meditation on the necessity of death.
5. Circe by Madeline Miller: a retelling of the Odyssey and various other Greek myths from the perspective of the nymph Circe. For people still mad about the treatment of every woman in Greek myth ever, and for people that think turning people into animals is 100% a reasonable course of action in certain circumstances.

As I sat down to chart my reading for the 2018 Bingo squares, I had trouble thinking of something to read for the “Nonwestern Fantasy in translation” square, since I was trying to do a full bingo card on hard mode of books I already owned.
Then I realized I had a contender: the beautifully named Tales of Moonlight and Rain, written by Ueda Akinari. I’d had the book forever, detritus of an undergraduate class that had the book on the syllabus but hadn’t actually ended up requiring it.
It’s a collection of Japanese ghost stories published in 1776. Now, when I say ghost stories I don’t necessarily mean horror. They aren’t meant to be scary per se, but rather to be atmospheric and provide a nice setting to illustrate morality and philosophy, kind of similar to western fairytales before Grimm went and ruined everything. Less horror and more a lot of people arguing with ghosts about Buddhism. Which is more fun than it sounds.
The Background
You can very much skip this part, but for people that know nothing about 18th century Japan it might be a helpful bit of context. So as it says in that one “History of Japan” video that went viral, in the early 17th century a military warlord conquered Japan and inaugurated a really nice 200 year stretch of peace. No war meant prosperity and thus up popped a middle class that suddenly had money to spend on things like books, which they could read because the country was weirdly literate due to a bunch of administrative decisions made by the new government that we won’t get into. So! all of a sudden there’s a bunch of popular literature being produced for consumption by commoners, not nobles. And everybody loves a good ghost story! (Other popular genres include morality stories of the “if you do not respect your parents you’ll die horribly” type, a ton of romance that also usually ends with everyone dying horribly, and erotica. Which is sadly not fantasy, but I am more than happy to talk about it if anyone is interested in the Japanese Early Modern equivalent of Fifty Shades of Gray).
The Setup
The book is set up as an academic text, so you can skip a decent amount of it if you’re only interested in the stories. Along with a lengthy introduction, each of the nine stories includes its own introductory notes that explain the importance of the characters, the setting, and other references and allusions that a reader in 18th century Japan would have picked up on immediately. I found that the character notes are fairly important to understanding the stories; the setting ones less so. Without further ado, on to the stories!
Shiramine
A wandering monk prays at the grave of a deposed emperor, and is horrified when the emperor’s ghost appears and explains that rather than acceding to death gracefully, he has been consumed with vengeance and sworn a pact with demons to kill off the people that wronged him. So they argue a lot about the ethics of being a ghost and swearing a pact with demons to kill off the people that have wronged you. As one does. The description of the politicking and the emperor’s fall should be interesting to ASOIAF fans, even though it’s a bit tough to keep the names of the nobles straight. Still, the argument is interesting from a moral standpoint. I think I might side with the ghost.
The Crysanthemum Vow
A rather sweet story about a Confucian scholar that falls in love with a sick samurai and nurses him back to health, while also being properly filial to his mother. The samurai has to go off to do samurai things, but makes an oath to return to his beloved, and there’s a lot of tearful promises and embraces. (I say they’re a couple; some people apparently argue it’s just a really intense male friendship but there’s a lot of tearful embracing and also “chrysanthemum” was common slang for gay sex for reasons that are explained in the book, so that’s a thing you know now).
The Reed Choked House
If you only want to read one of the stories, this is the one to go with. A peasant farmer (that is still really fond of quoting classical literature; the author just can’t help himself) goes to sell silk in the capital and leaves his wife behind. War breaks out and for one reason or another he can’t get back home for seven years. And when he does, things are… different. Creepy and poignant and genuinely moving.
The Carp of my dreams
A rather cute little story about a monk that’s kind to koi fish and likes to paint koi fish and ends up becoming a koi fish and having a little fish adventure to tell his friends and feudal lord about.
The Owl of the Three Jewels
A sightseeing monk takes his son to go see a famous temple, and they end up hiding in the temple overnight because there are no available inns. Except apparently a bloodthirsty prince and his retainers died nearby, and the monk gets awkwardly roped into a midnight dinner party/poetry reading/suicide pact with the ghosts. It is less than ideal. It has the same issue as the first story, where if you’re not as familiar with the history all the nobles’ names and relationships can be a bit overwhelming, but read the explanatory notes first and you should be fine.
The Kibitsu Cauldron
A note about this story and the next one: they are sexist. But it’s the kind of charmingly old-timey sexism you get in Chaucer or The Taming of the Shrew where you can’t help but being kind of like, “oh you.” So, the story: a philandering young man named Shotaro neglects his devoted wife for a prostitute, leading to a variety of unfortunate happenings. He has a very unique defense of this that I haven’t heard before that basically boils down to “if I don’t take her as my concubine and buy a house for her, she’ll be forced to work for other men less honorable than me.” Which, okay then.
A serpent’s lust
The story: a useless boy named Toyoo is seduced by an evil snake lady named Manago. It doesn’t make a ton of sense that she’s interested in him in the first place, because he is dumb as bricks and has nothing to recommend him other than being very pretty. Again, sexism abounds, but it’s inadvertently rather funny. Manago does a number of shady things like giving Toyoo stolen temple offerings as presents, casting an illusion on a ruined manor to make it look like a brand-new house, and literally vanishing into thin air right in front of him. But when she gets asked about it all she has to do is widen her eyes and say, “could I, a woman, do such a thing?!?” and Toyoo is like “huh, you’re right,” which makes you wonder if he’s ever met a woman before.
The Blue Hood
A monk becomes obsessed with a pretty boy, and when the boy dies he is so distraught that he eats the boy’s flesh and becomes a murderous cannibal, which is shocking because as you know, usually only women do such things (no comment on that one). Another monk fights to save him through the power of zen poetry.
On Poverty and Wealth
A samurai that really loves money (which samurai are not supposed to do) has a light night chat with the personification of gold. This one is honestly just a philosophy tract about Buddhist and Confucian theories of wealth, and you can definitely skip it.
In Conclusion
So: why read this short story collection? It’s for people who love their language beautiful and lyrical and poetic, especially in descriptions of nature. It’s for people with an interest in feudal Japan, or East Asian religion or philosophy. But more than that, it’s for anyone interested in seeing a very different way of constructing a story, from the plot structure to the tropes to the morals and meanings. I’ve often heard people say that fantasy pre-Tolkien is fascinating because the stories are unconventional, without so many of the genre tropes that were codified by Tolkien and we now take for granted. It’s like how conlang creators sometimes say that people who have studied only English and Romance novels will often start out with using an s to indicate plurals in their conlangs- there are so many elements of the fantasy we read that we take as universal but aren’t actually so, and only by reading something that grew out of a completely different literary tradition do we realize it.
Bingo Squares:

• Novel that was Reviewed on Fantasy
  
• Non-Western Setting [HARD MODE]
  
• Short Stories [HARD MODE]
  
• Novel Adapted [HARD MODE, 2 films, a play, and two novelizations]
  
• Published before you were born [HARD MODE for those of you born in 1786]
  
• Historical Fantasy [HARD MODE] (Though it was written in 1776 the stories are set a few centuries earlier)
  
• Artist protagonist
  
• Author Pseudonym
  
• Mountain Setting (Shiramine and The Blue Hood take place in the mountains)
  
• Fewer than 2500 ratings (1244)
  
• LGBTQ [HARD MODE]
  

Ugetsu or "Tales of Ugetsu" or "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" or "Ugetsu Monogatari" (雨月物語) is a 1953 Japanese Drama-Horror film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi and based on stories in Ueda Akinari's book "Tales of Moonlight and Rain".
Now, a little backstory first. A lot of Japanese cinema eras can be traced back to one movie that sparked said craze and went on to inspire countless other movies. In the revival of J-Horror (90s-2000s) we have classics like Ringu, Ju-On, Kairo but the movie that sparked it all and went on to inspire a great deal of content from those movies was Joyuu Rei (Don't Look Up).
On the same note, when speaking of the folkloric era of J-Horrors with giants like Kuroneko, Kwaidan, Onibaba, you also have a movie that inspired those. And that movie is Ugetsu. Ugetsu went on to inspire a great deal of content from Kuroneko, Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan, Onibaba and even two segments form Kwaidan (The Black Hair and Hoichi the Earless).
Often when talking about Ugetsu, people compare it to Kwaidan because this also features many themes and plots but this time under one story, all merged together. However, there's a clear distinct difference between Kwaidan and Ugetsu which in my opinion changes everything. The viewpoint. In Kwaidan, most of the tales were told in a full Kabuki fashion, in a fantasy way. As if you're a kid listening to these tales from the comfort of your bed, blown away by stuff maybe blown out of proportion and amazing visuals.
On the other hand, in Ugetsu, you're in the story. You live the tale. You're in the middle of the action. You see it as it is, dark, grim and sad. No color (the movie is black-and-white), not a lot of fantasy kabuki elements.
The story of Ugetsu centers around 4 main characters. 2 peasants and their wives. We have Genjurō, a farmer / potter, his wife Miyagi, his friend Tōbei and his wife Ohama, in the middle of a civil war torn Japan. The movie centers its plot around certain themes of morality and etiquette. Greed, lust, pride, honor. Genjurō represents greed. He figures out a way to profit off the ongoing war by selling his wares and earning a fortune, thing which prompts him to put his life, his families life, and his friends life in danger in order to make more wares to sell while the war is at his doorstep. Lust comes in later and revolves around Tobeis wife, Ohama.
Tobei is defined by pride. He's desperate to throw his life away and become a samurai so he can be feared and have everything he wants. The movie, like a lot of movies in the folkloric era of J-Horror is strongly affected by post WW2 mentality. This movie critiques the imperialism, aggressiveness and pro-war extremism of Japan before and during WW2 and also critiques the way common folk are affected by the decisions of the higher ups and suffer for their mistakes.
The only good character in this story is Genjuros wife, Miyagi, who constantly worries about her husband and only wishes for her to live happy with her husband and son, away from greed and war.
Despite this movie being low on Kabuki elements compared to future movies of this era, it does feature some Kabuki ideas. The soundtrack mainly, featuring one of the most extensive amounts of traditional Japanese instruments. Besides drums to signify the constant threat and impending doom of the ongoing civil war, we also have Biwa, Koto, Shamisen, Shakuhachi, Horagai and many many more. This makes the soundtrack extremely varied and entertaining to hear, adding more layers to the overall atmosphere and immersion of the movie. And on top of that, we also have slight musical elements, featuring various scenes of characters singing songs which reference the themes of the movie, tease future scenes or comment on current ones.
The camerawork is stunning. The black-and-white shots are aided greatly by great lighting work and mist which adds a layer of mysticism and tension, akin to Onibabas tall grass. As for shot composition, it features extensive wide shots, panned shots and odd angles again to signify the ongoing tension and scale of the war.
The action is slow and steady. The best comparison I can come up with is Audition. Where 70% of the movie is rather non horror related and slow, more of a drama / romance. And then near the end it goes all out into the paranormal. So it is a slowburn. But one that greatly pays off as long as you can get yourself immersed in the world and appreciate the culture and morale it presents to us.
The movie doesn't showcase extensive amounts of violence or even fight scenes however it does feature gore in the form of decapitation and stabbings but nothing too extreme.
The acting is nothing out of the ordinary for a movie in this era, featuring overacting and theater style dialogue, it does a good job to convey important ideas while also adding a nice layer of passion to it. Some people might be turned off by it but it is the norm in the folkloric horrors of 50s-60s so you can't get away from it.
The movie features no CGI nor many special effects as a lot of the movie is just a character drama and the supernatural elements at the end are handled via camera tricks and hidden characters thus keep it clean, a bit like Ju-On.
Since the movie features two plots. One involving Genjuro and his wife and another one involving Tobei and his wife, we have two climaxes which happen at relatively the same time. However, the main plot is obviously Genjuro and his tale of greed, an idea very common in this kind of movies, the finale is dark and sad however the ending is even sadder once you look into it but I'll get into that in the spoiler section.
_____________________SPOILERS_______________________
For starters, lets see how this movie went on to inspire countless other movies. For once you have the looting and somewhat isolated location which went on to inspire Onibaba.
The supernatural elements of the Lady Wakasa and her home, of them being spirits returned from the dead to lure people into their illusion home. This went on to Kuroneko.
The idea of a man, abandoning his wife and life of poverty to marry a rich woman went on to work its way into the first segment of Kwaidan. Furthermore, the prayers written on Genjuros body to repel the ghosts went on to be used in Hoichi the Earless.
Now, in regard to my favorite scene, I'd count the death of Miyagi. This scene really angered me. As we see her fleeing the city with her son on her back and a small pouch of food just to feed him, she's cornered by a band of defeated samurai who steal her kids food and as she begs them for mercy not to starve her kid to death, they stab her and leave her to die while her kid watches and wails. It's a really dark and brutal scene. It came pretty unexpectedly since so far the movie painted all our characters as "indestructible" because the movie doesn't feature a lot of violence. What also sets the scene even more is how in the background we see the 4 samurai fight over the pouch of food as she's dying on the ground. This, for sure, went on to inspire the first scene of Kuroneko of the samurai grossly stuffing his mouth with rice as the mother and her daughter in law get raped to death.
The fate of Miyagi is really a sad one but acts as a catalyst for our characters to change. The only pure and good character in this bunch has died at the hands of their negligence. And after death, Genjuro is still connected to his wife, he hears her ghosts voice in his head. And what pains us the most is that that she's not mad. She's glad that her husband is back to normality and lives the life she always wanted. However, she's no longer alive to enjoy this life. And this is something she constantly backhandedly mentions. That everything is great. That everything is amazing. Everyone is happy but because of their negligence she can no longer enjoy it. She can no longer live a peaceful life, watch her son grow. And yet she's not mad. She's happy for them. For she's the only pure and non selfish character in this tale.
________________NO MORE SPOILERS____________________
Overall, Ugetsu is one of the cornerstones of the Folkloric Golden Age of J-Horror. A movie with a legacy so big it rivals the one of Joyuu Rei in the revival and Female Prisoner in the Pinku era.
It is a movie i highly recommend to any fan of classic J-Horror, especially Kwaidan, Kuroneko, Onibaba and Yotsuya Kaidan. It is truly a piece of history and it was astonishing to witness where my favorite era began and what inspired everything. My only regret is that I didn't cover this movie earlier.
This was my 130th review on this subreddit so let's celebrate that instead. And with Ugetsu down, we only have one more popular J-Horror that I grossly missed for unknown reasons. And that's Versus. Tune in tomorrow for that. After we're done with Versus we can safely say that we've covered every huge J-Horror from across all eras and we can go back to our underground niche J-Horrors.
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046478/

Yesterday I tried to share a compilation with all the lore I have been scavenging. I do not know what happened, it may got no attention or got lost (never appeared in /new or in a sub search) through a process I do not understand.
I will try today as a wall of text and hope to be more lucky.
Please enjoy it and beware potato english.
Through the series we can see several humans transforming into another beings around the world: the people of Oolacile are mutated into beasts (bloathead) or human souls (humanity phantom); the Ghrus are known to be previous abyss watchers serfs, namely they were acolytes in Farron's keep; the Sulyvhan's beasts adopt a preying like attitude after a riposte, the implication being that they were humans; the people following the path of the dragon are becoming into serpents; in Lothric and the Undead Settlement we see people turning into trees; we also have pilgrims trying to change into angels. Are these events just random occurrence? Or do they follow a pattern, thus begging for an answer?
About humanity
When we begin the game we have with us the darksign, it is that item that marks the accursed undead and that allows you to return, at a cost, to a bonfire. It is not until we associate ourselves with Londor and accept Yoel help that we additionally acquire the dark sigil. From that we can think that the effects of the undead curse have been split in two parts in dark souls 3: the dark sigil and the darksign. That would mean that they have different effects and origins. Now let's examine what these two marks are.
The darksign is a ring of fire and from its description we know that it produces affinity for the fire. Then from the dlc2 we obtained this additional bit of information in the ringed knight’s weapons

'The arms of early men were forged in the Abyss, and betray a smidgen of life. For this reason the gods cast a seal of fire upon these swords, and those who possessed them.'

It seems that the darksign is the mark of the seal used by Lord Gwyn to contain the abyss. I will call it Gwyn's seal from now on because two different items beginning with dark are prone to confusions.
Instead the dark sigil is a circle filled with dark and part of the description reads,

'The darkness of humanity seeps from this bottomless pitch-back hole'

from the use of the word seep it seems that humans are full of dark, and that they just keep on producing it, until it cannot be contained inside the human body, and then it keeps oozing out of it. The dark sigil would then be that formation near the heart of an undead that keeps on suppurating the darkness from within a human.
Another difference between the undead in the first ds1 and the ones in ds3 is their sanity. Most npcs would go hollow and be mindless after they lose, or achieve, their goals. Hollows in ds3 keep their sanity. The insanity we see in ds3 is what we see in the moundmakers, which can be seen as a perverted way of devotion to the gods, and Oceiros, which is like a supernatural cosmic horror insanity. There is also some old ds1 hollowing in Lothric or the undead village but it is far from being the only and overarching theme of the mindlessly hollowing we experienced in ds1, which at the same time is some kind of liberation. Look how different the hollows are that now our crestfallen got inspired by our acts and try to achieve something in unlife!
So without making any wild assumptions Gwyn's seal is made to contain the dark sigil and, if you consider it was intended to contain darkness, it was working wonderfully in ds1. Indeed, the darksign in ds1 was so powerful that it devoured people humanity turning them into hollows and forcing them to steal humanity from other fellow humans to keep their sanity.
But in ds3 we know that both marks have split. The split could be happening for several reasons: after each linking the flame decays in strength and the same is happening to the seal; Gwyn is no more and so he can't place his seal or maybe the people forget how to impose it; the goal of dark souls 2 was to cure the curse, maybe the bearer succeeded; there was a firekeeper (maybe Shanalotte, maybe Gundyr's) that traversed the abyss and maybe is the results of her efforts (fire keeper soul); maybe we are just ashen one's (that we have to relearn how to go hollow, reobtaining the sigil, is a fact) and I am over speculating.
A very good piece of evidence comes from Yoel's dialogue:

'We pilgrims of Londor are keenly aware. That those branded by the Darksign possess something quite special'.

I understand that sentence as stating two things. First, not every undead it is branded by Gwyn's seal, this seems clear. Second, I would argue that you possess something special in the sense of something helping you fight the pus of humanity, this is more open to interpretation.
So humans problematic is as it follows: in one hand if you possess too much humanity you are a hot mess of greed, love and envy, who is always in conflict and could explode with pus of humanity eventually. In the other hand, when you are devoid of humanity you turn hollow. The concerns in dark souls 1 is about hollowing while in dark souls 3 is about the exuberance of the dark soul.
In most areas of the game people is fighting with the spreading of the dark soul, in some of them clearly and in others a strong case could be made in favor of the contamination product of the dark soul. The cathedral of the deep, well, it has clearly succumbed to the dark. In the undead village there are some evangelist from the cathedral of the deep and the dark ended up with a cursed and rotting tree in what seem a major cult place (the place where we fight the place, a walled square with four tower that seems very much like a cloister, making the place a monastery). In Lothric we see people bursting with pus of humanity and we also see that the dark souls ended up corrupting the drakes in the castle. The consumed garden is probably the place where we found most pus of the man enemies. Carthus ended up in the abyss, one very strong manifestation of the dark. About the profaned capital I am just going to see that 'it is much too dark'. A case could made about the swamp in Farron's keep being a result of humanity. The swamp in the cathedral of the deep can be related or maybe identify with the deep and the swamp in the ringed city it is described as abyssal swamp (Preacher's right arm, white preacher head, iron dragonslayer armor). Irythill and Anor Londo seem to be doing okay, although the waters in both places are in the standard state of pollution as in the rest of the game: swampy. Maybe the cold it is slowing the process of decay.
The main character as a failed contender to link the flame experienced the definitive solution to the pus problem, being burned by the first flame turned the undead into ash and completely sealed the dark inside him (unless he choose not to...), after being burnt by the first flame it seems that an undead, lord of cinders or ashen one, can enjoy a deserved rest within a tomb until the bell awaken him to duty (to be burnt again).
For the rest of undead we are shown basically three different adaptations to fight the humanity. That people spend so much time finding ways to contain the darkness makes dubious that people would just forgot how to impose the god’s seal (although who knows with so many dark/fire cycles). The blue clerics (and the pilgrims of Londor) choose to tightly contain it in shells to avoid spreading it. In the cathedral of the deep bloodletting seems to be the main way to cope with the dark. The evangelist would add to the bloodletting the act of setting fire to the undead to consume the dark. Then, from Londor, an innovation came: the pilgrims would not simply try to contain the humanity, they will try to embrace it.
Elements of angelic faith
In dlc2 we have finally seen where the angels came from, we see two of them developing from Londor pilgrims. I would assume that they incubate the darkness on their shells until an earth remnant and an angel appear. During the main game we are told about the existence in Lothric of the angelic faith that was initiated after the heavenly daughter Gertrude got in contact with an angel. In that city a faction of Lothric knights would appear, these knights would be known for wielding halberd that required unhuman strength (winged knight halberd). What else, at a visual level, this faction have in common with the pilgrims? They carry huge, spherical armors, it would not be far fetched to assume that it serves the same purpose of the pilgrim's shells. Namely, they are accumulating their humanity in there, maturating it to produce the angelic transformation (think about the Harald armor, Smough but then, what about the Catarina onions? Hmmmm). In fact, the winged knights were able to produce three knights with fully developed wings as we see in the top of the grand archives, their wings even have feathers.
About sticky black stuff disposition among the undead
The story of the cathedral of the deep and the undead settlement can be easily summarized as: lack of sanitary conditions. They exemplify some of the troubles originated by not properly disposing of humanity. Problems that range from walking trees to cathedrals which walls are infected with tree and flesh matter, waters polluted, infected with insects and lots of crazy people. It should not be a surprise that they share a similar problem because both locations shared a common creed. The cathedral would send evangelist to the village, at first to teach them the faith and how to purify the place, although lately they would also obtain victims for the rituals, sacrifices and eating taking place in the cathedral.
At its foundation probably the cathedral of the deep was a nice place built around a beautiful scenery where the way of white established their faith. They would purge the impurity within man, the dark souls, through bloodletting and then would use it in their rituals. This is stated in the notched whip:

‘The Cleansing Chapel uses whips such as these in order to produce the drops as puddles to wipe clean during its rituals.’

The evangelist would also produce blood with their weapons the spiked mace:

‘Choice weapon of the evangelists of the Cathedral of the Deep, mentors of the dwellers of the Undead Settlement. Its long, sharp spikes cause great pain and bleeding.’

Sadly they soon would contaminate the place with the humanity byproduct of their rituals where bloodletting were occurring, probably they were throwing the product of the rituals in the water nearby the cathedral as well as cleaning their chalices with it. When these human dregs began to be problematic the people would confront the deep and the dark, unaware that their own rituals were the origin of the problem. Then they would little by little succumb to the dark and begin to worship it, in a Nietzschean way. And finally we would have the meat devourer Aldrich. I think it is possible to identify four different stages in the cathedral evolution:
1) As a sacred cult place of the way of white, they would help people with the humanity problem through bloodletting.
2) The humanity begin to infect the lake, this mark the beginning of the deep. People would fight back the darkness and create narratives to inspire themselves to fight and contain the deep. The transition from 1 to 2 is hinted in the Deep protection spell:

'The deep was originally a peaceful and sacred place, but became the final rest for many abhorrent things. This tale of the Deep offers protection for those who worship amidst those horrors.'

The mere existence of 2 is strongly implied in the deep ring:

'In the Cathedral slumber things most terrible, and as such, the deacons require a grand narrative, to ensure they do not falter in their duty. A philosophy, to ward away the madness beckoned by the grotesqueries at hand.'

3) The people would eventually stop fighting against the deep and they would dive into the dark. This mark the beginning of the evangelist bringing sacrifices, some of them kids like Anri and Horace, from the undead settlement and they would end eating up people. At some point McDonnell came from the boreal valley and the deacons learn sorcery.
The movement from phase 2 to 3 is seen in the following items: the Deep braille divine tome

'Intended to teach divine protection to the deacons of the deep, but later, dark tales were added to its pages, such that it is now considered a thing profane. '

the Dohry's gnawing miracle

'Those who linger too long on the brink of the Deep will often slip. Dorhys is sure to have wallowed in this darkness, intoxicated by its peril.'

and the Deacon set

‘In time, those dedicated to sealing away the horrors of the Deep succumbed to their very power. It seems that neither tending to the flame, nor the faith, could save them.’

4) We know that the angelic faith eventually reached the cathedral of the deep. The two kind of statues (one in which an angel is coming out of a petitioner and other in which an unidentified mass is coming out of a knelt figure) we find in great numbers around the cathedral suggest this development. We know that the angelic faith originated in Lothric. Rosaria as a maiden of Gwynevere were from Lothric and probably were in close contact to Gertrude and learnt the faith form her. I think is safe to assume that Rosaria came from Lothric to preach among the preachers. Using her divine’s power she created an alternative to the dispose of humanity using it to reform people, earning the title of mother of rebirth.
The last two stages would coexist without major troubles, although it is possible that when Rosaria came Aldrich could already be a Lord of cinder. Anyway, the fourth development open up some possibilities. Are the man grubs the same as the remnant the angels left in earth but without the rooting? They appear visually similar, to me, and they attack us using a light spell. Is the grub we found in the cage above Gertrude her remnant after her angelic part flew away?
Similar events would take place in the monastery in undead village. A nice visual cue can be gathered from the first place where we are supposed to encounter an evangelist in the undead village. She is in an open space, in the center of which there is a big tree and on top of that tree there are several corpses burning... This is probably exactly what happened in the church of the settlement since long ago until the tree decide he had enough and begin to move. The evangelists of the undead village would smash people with their maces, spilling blood. And that blood would go directly to the roots of the tree, feeding the tree with yummy dark humanity. They would also burn the corpses and the vapors would also contribute to contaminate the tree.
About Lothric we know that they use two different ways of eliminate the humanity. Through the ritual we see after we kill dancer we know some kind of bloodletting was happening. They combined it with some kind of elimination using their drakes. The drakes would probably set fire to the blood and consume human bodies. This is reminiscent of Midir story and proves that you can use a dragon in such a way. It is unclear if the drakes would end up bloating just through this process of cleansing or if it would take much longer, until the Lothric civil war, where the drakes probably eat the invaders that approached the castle.
Concluding thoughts, remarks and Japanese stuff
Now is the part in which I will talk about japan culture while basically knowing zilch, as a good Lorehunter should, and after that I, complacently, will feel awesome. Ok, I‘ve had my share of shonen by I am not in any way an expert in Japanese culture. Of course in this section the insight will be increasing from one paragraph to the next.
It seems that in dark souls 3, humanity's power is the power to mutate. It could happen in a controlled fashion: angels, serpents and Rosaria’s way. Or through a mix of attitude and environment: if you are hollow, devoid of will and do nothing you are a tree; if you live in a swamp, jumping around poison you are a venomous creature (Ghrus); if you act like a beast (attacking nonstop, being a savage) you are a beast (Pontiff’s crocodiles); or in a burst of rage like Manus if you lose your dear pendant. I think I am just letting out of that list the corvians and the white preachers, they could be easily included in, although I am not sure they are not entirely different races. Other topic I am not convinced about is if this was the original intended effect of humanity in the first instance of the series. I would say that it is not and it seems to me as a direct influence from Bloodborne. By the way I could repeat this list for what we see in Bloodborne almost item by item, and I think is a good reason of why Gherman’s mercy theme is so prevalent in his character, but I am afraid Redgrave would say it is the most stupid thing he ever read.
It is usually said when discussing the topic of impurity that just by casually contacting it you are fucked. This is partially true. First, it is not what we see in the series, sometimes, as an exception, something marginally decent happen. It is true that by being in contact with something deem impure you are in a bad position but it is not a complete doom sentence, there is hope based in how you decide to react to the problem. I think the classic Ugetsa Monagatari (Tales of moonlight and rain) by Ueda Akinari show a magnificent example of what I am talking. In that compilation of tales two almost identical stories take place: the Cauldron of Kibitsu and Lust of the white serpent. In both stories the main character enter in contact with the supernatural and their different reactions marks the salvation or doom. I will not spoil which is which.
Please, while yelling about how bad and manipulative Gwyn was, consider that his solution allowed humans to remain useful. The hollowing process also had an attitude part, you need to lose your hopes, dreams and wishes for it to happen and the seal would avoid you to contaminate the lands or become something nasty. He was good and bad, well, aside the dragon genocide part, that was just bad but that's all humanoid's fault and which god is not guilty of a genocide or two?
When Nobel laureate Igor Tamm was captured by a group of soldiers he was asked to prove that he was a mathematician by producing the expression of the error in a Taylor expansion, he got it and this saved his life. If my life would depend on telling how the dragons and the angels are produce, why they are different and what's going on I would say something along this lines. Dragons are all about balance. They are from an age in which the separation of fire and dark did not took place. They are grey meaning they integrate the black and the white. They are a perfect mix of the souls, the normal souls, with which we level up, and the humanity souls. This is, very partially, suggested by the connection of the path of the dragon with meditation. Angels instead are all about disparity. That’s why you obtain two things after the process (yeah, it is dragon ball's Piccolo). You are just separating the light and the dark souls you have. You keep refining it for a long process, keeping them separate and after a long period you will have it. I would say that the angel is the luminous part and that the poor thing that remain in earth is the dark part.
There is some, strong in my opinion, connection in the series between the dark and the trees. It was already present in Demon’s souls, the old one have a lot of tree like qualities. I think this work through symbolic thought, the roots are always hidden, always beneath the earth, always dark, in some way they feed of dark. At the same time you have the counterpart of the branches and leafs, with leafs feeding of light. So the trees are this contrast between light and dark. Let's not forget that the arch trees were present in the age of gray.
There is also a bunch of different kind of winged creatures, more or less, linked to the angelic faith: the pilgrim butterflies, with their purple laser and with tree like wings; the pontiff shares similar wings to the butterflies’ ones; the angels on the top of the archives, with feathery wings; the real angels that shoot light spells and have what seems, to me at least, tree like wings covered by a white membrane. A serious attempt to classify them seems foolish to me due to the scarcity of data. My poetic solution to the feather absence problem in the angels of dlc2: maybe they are like trees (maybe what they left at earth develop into a full tree) and they experience a fall of feathers in winter.
This line of reasoning bring me to an additional point, assuming the existence of dragons have nothing to do with the angels (they are independent life forms), that the thing angels left in earth evolve into an arch tree and that the arch trees have associated an angel... were we scrapped of an entire arch race during ds1 intro?
I would probably be very dead now.
There is also an open topic in the exposition I made, I am always talking about the wrong ways of cleanse the humanity. But what are the proper ways to clean it? What we see in ds1 is that we burn it at a bonfire (first flameTM) although it later would be drawn to the firekeeper (ds1 firekeeper soul description) and in ds3 the firekeeper directly cure it.
As summary, humanity has become difficult to contain maybe because a split between the undead curse maybe because the god's seal has weaken and as result humanity is generating all kind of mutations.
I have other two wall of text, that I will try to post tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

"The beast has attached itself to you out of lust for your beauty. You, for your part, have been bewitched by the shape it took and have lost your manly spirit. If henceforth you summon your courage and calm your restless heart, you will not need to borrow an old man's powers to repel these demons. You must quiet your heart" from "Tales of Moonlight and Rain," Book Four: A Serpent's Lust by Ueda Akinari
I've had a long, miserable day. I got an email a couple hours ago from a professor letting me know that I missed the final exam and will probably fail the class now. I just passed two weeks on nofap but after reading that email nofap seemed pretty insignificant. As I tried to shake that off, I started to prepare for my last final exam and this quote came up. It reminded me what nofap is about: calming my restless heart. I've had some pretty severe experiences with anxiety so I think this quote has special significance towards me and my situations.

Pretty much as the title says. I've been suggested Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari, but anything else would be really awesome!