Reading/Viewing Rec's?

[labingi]

It's that time again, when I ask for reading/viewing recommendations. The last time I did it, it brought me Banana Fish, so maybe I'll get lucky again:)

I'm looking for something, ideally, that I can wax fannish over, which typically means novel or series length, though X-Men: First Class is a recent exception to that--well, partially; it's got a lot of franchise behind it.

Things I like:
* Dark (but not hopelessly bleak) stories.
* Provisional (or gray) endings.
* A focus on deep human relationships with emphasis on the underrepresented ones: friendship, family, professional, random people interacting--or any mix of relationships where multiple relationships are presented as important (i.e. people have more than one person of importance in their lives).
* General avoidance of cliché (or doing it so well it ceases to be clichéd)
* Settings in other times, places, universes, etc.
* Dialogism: all important characters are allowed to speak from their own perspective. Or let's just say good characterization.
* Moral ambiguity or genuinely interesting moral problems.
* Slash or BL, mainly because it's more likely to hit the relationship points above.

Things I Don't Like
* Gender cliché (unless done very, very well)
* Donnean solipsism (A and B are in love, and everything else is reflected in their eyes--I can only think of two stories that really get away with this in a way that passes muster for me--Wuthering Heights and Mirage of Blaze: two of my fav's. Of course, WH is a giant critique of the whole thing on one level. And MoB is just... very complex).
* Stories about teen angst, unless done very well, like Buffy.
* Stories in which people's personal lives are the only thing that matters.
* Unvarnishedly happy endings

Any rec's? I'm happy to look at any medium: novels, long fan fic, anime, manga/comics, live action series...

Comments

[louderandlouder]

Hmm...sorry to rec the thing I've been talking about for weeks, but -- I don't remember whether you said you know the Tinker, Tailor miniseries well or Smiley's People. If you aren't lifetime-saturated with Smiley media, I think the first and third novels fulfill all of these except for gender cliche (a minor part of the story). It may be a little weak on genuinely interesting moral problems, but I think they hover around the story anyway because the characters are the type to consider such things with rigor, sort of like Death Note. It's certainly very strong on friendships, co-worker relationships, and relationships between various kinds of enemies.

[labingi]

I very much have it in mind to put these books on my reading list. I think I will enjoy them a lot; I doubt I will feel fannish about them, unless my tastes have changed more than I think they have from when I last encountered these stories. But I do look forward to reading Le Carré.