warming up my brain today by remembering all of the fantasy worlds i threw myself into as a child. every day i remember more books i read that really defined my mental biome (i was, definitively, a book kid, and all of my neural architecture was formed more by books than anything else for sure). at the time i remember thinking that the things i liked were pretty common, but they come up much less than i would have expected them to as an adult so here's a list of the one's i've remembered (no particular order because i dislike list hierarchy)
warning there are spoilers in like every one of these postulations so read at your own risk!
w.i.t.c.h. graphic novels / books (there were graphic novels and written books of the same stories).
the book versions always had three or four full color gloss pages of the graphic novel at the front and back of the book, and i would treasure those pages, looking at them over and over again until i had pretty much burned all the images into my brain. my parents didn't really believe in graphic novels (or someone didn't, maybe my babysitter, idk) but i was rarely allowed to get a full comic book and was relegated to the novellas only. so i would treasure and obsess over the few pages of illustration i was permitted.
these books were definitely a huge part of my "i like girls" core charge, i knew i was more of an irma type but i wanted so badly to be cornelia because i thought she was so pretty and kind of bratty in a way that i found very compelling. in hindsight, she was definitely an early archetype for (one of) the kind(s) of girl(s) i found myself crushing on a lot in middle/high school -- blonde, bossy, studious, maybe snobby or otherwise just popular. she was the one with earth powers which i've also always thought were the coolest because you can make flowers grow and volcanos explode and generally just do the most with? (other examples are toph from avatar and persephone. goddess of the spring behavior)
anyways i also remember being annoyed that everyone aligned me with will vandom bc i used to hate being automatically affiliated with characters just bc they had red hair (although in hindsight i was and probably still am a lot like will vandom). hay lin had the best clothes and the coolest character in general (she's still a fashion inspiration to me tbh).
eragon
i've definitely talked about this one before but it gets brought up less than i expected it to as an adult. this one seems to be the most common though? i loved the first book so much and like most other people had issues getting thru the second one but i loved saphira and the dragonrider bonding so much. my name in pictochat was always icedragon bc of it
okay, this is one that really feels like it fell by the wayside. i never saw the movie and i presume it was pretty bad but i LOVED artemis fowl. it was like if the hobbit and all my high fantasy books met die hard or something which to me was awesome... also i loved anything that was about a 13 year old genius because i definitely thought i was something of a genius when i was 8 years old. artemis fowl really had everything, from spy story action scenes to code breaking to elvish to mystical lands. the biggest thing i probably took away from this was my love of jade (the stone). artemis' bodyguard had a younger sister who was also training to be a bodyguard (in the family line of bodyguards who had always protected the fowls, i believe) and she had a long braid with a big jade ring braided in at the end of it that she would use as a weapon. i always wanted to do that with my hair.... thinking.........
the golden compass
i could go on about the golden compass for. an unreasonably long time. i always wanted a pantalaimon of my own and would dream about finding one of the rare tears in the veil of our reality into another... i used to practice how i would use the subtle knife (meditation) and talk to my imaginary daemon at home. i still believe cats can see the doors between worlds and that using Dust to represent a universal energy is one of the most elegantly written allegories I've ever seen... I think i finished His Dark Materials when I was starting middle school and it opened my heart and spirit to the nature of the cosmos, and of love and loss and eternity. the words exchanged between lyra and will on their final meeting pretty much defined my idea of love (and still do until this day).
spoiler alert i'm going to post the quote here so don't read it if you want to read the amber spyglass or something also i'm gonna talk about stuff in the book so just skip ahead maybe if you want to read it still
"'I will love you forever; whatever happens. Til I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, until I find you. I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you... We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont' just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight...'
She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him -- didn't speak to him in her head, didn't relive every moment they'd been together, didn't long for his voice and his hands and his love. She had never dreamed of what it would feel like to love someone so much; of all the things that had astonished her in her adventures, that was what astonished her the most. She thought the tenderness it left in her heart was like a bruise that would never go away, but she would cherish it forever.”
also, there is a scene with pantalaimon -- when lyra has to go into the land of the dead to honor her vow -- and in order to do so, she has to sever her bond with pan, which is this series is an actual physical (although not tangible) bond that causes immense pain to sever, but which is also another brilliant allegory for relationships with others, with the self, with comfort, and taps into themes about womanhood, references old witch initiation rituals, about motherhood and codependency and the fear of death and rebirth and etc etc. that section of the book moved me in ways i was too young to comprehend when i read it, i only knew that i wept about it for days once i did. the way that lyra's scar never disappeared, but healed in a way that was new but strong in its own rite, i felt the ghost of that effect on me.
i could go on for paragraphs more, but his dark materials might be the single greatest piece of literature i've ever read. the infinite meaning of the allegory, the way that philip pullman is able to present so much complexity without being reductivist or taking a simplified stand -- and the fact that it's written for children and is able to do so much... the way some people talk about Neon Genesis Evangelion, this trilogy was for me. genuinely a travesty that so many people only know the remakes for film/TV.
okay ALSO HOW COULD I FORGET the alethiometer ???? the title object for the first book. the alethiometer is a golden compass-type tool but instead of directions and magnets it's a ring of symbols, a divination device of sorts. each symbol has a plethora of potential meanings (described by lyra as "levels", sort of each one at a different depth than the other) and only those with the natural gift can interpret the alethiometer, because it's based so deeply in intuition. there is no point where lyra knows why she can interpret the alethiometer, she's just able to ask a question and understand the answer through some jungian intuition. and when the power leaves her, she's not in control of whether or not it comes back, and it's another truth she has to accept.... a parallel with this other series i'm going to mention later called a great and terrible beauty....
homestuck is relatively self-explanatory, only because if you follow me anywhere else online you've definitely seen me talking about homestuck. not only was it some of the first media i consumed that handled LGBTQ stuff in like.... a normal way? like without the weird pomp and circumstance that usually comes with mainstream gay characters (oh my god they're gay now they have to come out or be bullied or have some sort of life crisis or whatever). they would just be like "hm i wanna date this girl so i'm gonna do it" and there was never like a whole. "omg but i'm also a girl is that wrong" thing. except for the one storyline where the characters are struggling with their being gay but it makes sense for those characters and it's also so not their whole personality. that was one cool thing about it that i really appreciate and was definitely part of the reason that it had such a grip on tumblr when i was on there.
aside from that, it was just... brilliant? one of the funniest things i had ever read (and maybe still to this day). the music is my single biggest font of inspiration still, the animations were great, and the storyline could put christopher nolan to shame in every capacity. i also think that the classpect system in homestuck is the most effective personality test there is and is also so cool. dude the classes are each affiliated with nuanced ways that a person operates in the world and in their relationships with others and the aspects have so many layers to it sort of like the alethiometer in the golden compass -- which oh my god i forgot to write abt give me a second --
basically there's rich web of ways that these traits can be defined and play out, but which still overall fit into a relatively well-defined grid. it's definitely a comic that can be read lightly and enjoyed as a bit of entertainment, or which can be deep dived into eternity for all of the allegory and mystery it offers as well. if i could only read one thing for the rest of my life this would be in contention (also because it's 10000000000 pages long lol)
a great and terrible beauty was another book that had a profound affect on me as a girl approaching womanhood in the world... in the way i understood my own spiritual power, mystique, freedom, and, not unlike the golden compass, the way i understood love as well.
((((( huge spoilers incoming )))))
a tragic love story -- star crossed lovers, doomed to fail -- never fails to tug at my heartstrings, and every major piece of media i consumed with this trope absolutely RUINED me as a tween. so a great and terrible beauty (the third book of the trilogy) was devastating enough to me that even though i recently reread the entire trilogy, i never re-finished the last book because i couldn't stand to see the failure of their relationship -- i think he sacrifices himself to save her? after three books of dancing around each other, not being able to confront their feelings, whatever, and then they go to the cave of sighs and they walk in each other's dreams together and have one spectacular moment of spiritual union and then... pain dude
also another book that had a lesbian relationship (as any good witch book set in a british boarding school in the victorian era must). their relationship was very good because it also was not overly pathologized. pip and felicity are best friends the whole first book and it's hinted that they're in love with each other and then it evolves in this very tragic way .. doomed by the failures of the world to understand them and the determination to triumph in their love or however you like... regardless, one of the best depictions of the gentleness/devious innocence/brutal tenderness of young wlw relationships, as well as the way they can be torn apart like wings from a butterfly by those who lack understanding around you. all of that is kind of a side story in the book but it was very important to me hahhaha
uglies which was a trilogy w the sequels Pretties and Specials was also pretty profound to me, i read it before hunger games and it was sort of similar to hunger games but it presented a lot more complex and difficult to stomach questions. i feel like it never got big like the hunger games for this reason (much more grey moral boundaries), although the hunger games as a series --
okay so hunger games was super key. one of the rare ones on this list where the movies felt as important to me as the books, although the movies dropped a lot of the nuance of the books. probably the first media i consumed that really effectively talked about loving someone after trauma / that didn't downplay the sometimes lifelong impact thereof, that some things can change forever, that love/relationships can go through inconceivable challenges and things don't always get wrapped up in a bow at the end. also
although the movies became super corny in how they addressed all the districts/ the nuance of the commentary the books were smart in how they played into the different districts, i always thought it was cool that district 12 was still a coal mining town and how the book drew on such real difficulties that are faced right now still in coal country. near and dear to my heart. actually now that i'm thinking about it that book was a crazy commentary not even on a dystopian future but on how the entire american lifestyle is currently held up by so few overworked and undervalued blue collar labor forces.... pro union book tbh
there were a few other things i really liked and kept up with voraciously but that in the long run i don't feel had as mind-blowing of an effect on me... very entertaining but maybe not earth shatteringly so
- spiderwick chronicles
- actually not even true because i thought the one (the fourth one maybe?) where the sister is depicted in the coffin on the cover... i thought she was so pretty i would stare at her for hours
- a series of unfortunate events (this one is surprising bc i feel like it could have had such an effect but i think by the end of it bc they were coming out as i was growing up it didn't pack the punch it would have)
- egyptology, dragonology, fairyology
- twilight obviously i was obsessed with but i don't think i like. learned from it i just liked twilight (if i learned anything they were toxic behaviors)
- molly moon i remember so little about molly moon but did anyone else read it? i remember it being really good i just didn't have all of them
- emily windsnap (was that her name? the mermaid)
- alanna song of the lioness (okay this one did kind of have an effect on me def made me more of a tomboy than i already was)
- i had a crazy Michael Crichton phase where i read like every book he had ever written except the dumb pirate one bc i didn't trust it like that. but i did read his medical thrillers that he wrote while studying to become a doctor under a nom de plume bc they were pro abortion
- princess diaries book series
okay, wait. i'm going to talk about the princess diaries book series for a second because i might be the only person i know who ever read them. THEY ARE NOTHING LIKE THE MOVIES!!! the movies are so tame and PG rated but the books are so funny!! and also twisted!! in the way where i really want to reread them rn, they read like bridget jones' diary or the devil wears prada, sort of light adult humor beach reading. but in the book princess diaries her dad isn't dead he just had testicular cancer?? and lost a testicle so he cant have kids anymore lol? and her grandma is a chain smoker and a total rude hag and not at all julie andrews in any way??? also the relationship with michael goes on for like 9 books and is super up and down and dramatic and she definitely does NOT fall in love with chris pine in a genovian garden against all odds and save the crown and the Thermopolis family line. also she doesn't live in San Francisco she lives in New York City and the whole thing is so much more psycho from bottom to top please if anyone else read these let me know because they were mind blowing to me and also so much fun
anyways. this feels like an effective warmup and it has gotten the juices flowing around a little more in my brain... as i grew up i knew less and less people who had read the same books as me / who read much at all let alone fantasy/fiction/YA fiction (which i still read sometimes for reasons) so i kind of just. forgot that that's sort of the font of all of my personality and knowledge. nice to reconnect. makes me want to read more anyways lol hopefully i'll have some more down time to do so in the future.
much love also please say smth if you ever had a weird connection to any of these or even more so PLEASE drop a suggestion below if u have smth u think i would like i always want to read more good fiction
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