Third Monday will be for a LGBT literature recommendation. This is exclusively for prose works (aka not comics, shows, etc. Just written works), and the fourth Monday will focus on non-prose works. I will link to Amazon for these and may receive payments for referral links. These will tie into the post from the first Monday in some way.
A light novel about a potty mouthed protagonist who accidentally frees an immortal sorceress from her prison inspired by a scandal at Tokyo Medical School.
Plot
Our lovely protagonist, Tanya Artemiciov, is kicked out of her adventuring party by her sexist party leader because he thinks she should be thinking about marriage and kids, not adventuring and the like. This royally pisses her off, so she heads to the wasteland to vent her anger via casting massive explosion spells and cursing like an angry sailor. Seriously, I’ve never seen so many uses of the word fuck in a single chapter than I saw here, and I loved every minute of it. She cuts down the cursing in future chapters, but is still quite the potty mouth.
During her rage fueled explosion rampage, she accidentally frees mythical sorceress Laplace, who is very appreciative. One way she shows this is to kiss Tanya to realign her magical pathways and turn her into a level 100 magic knight, and another is to help her get revenge on her former party leader at the upcoming tournament. While they prepare and get Tanya some more practical armor that doesn’t look like a bikini (harder than you think, because all the armor available for women looks like this), they have to go to some lengths to hide that Laplace, the “Wicked Dragonwhore,” has been freed. Fortunately, very few people know what she looks like. Also, for the record, her personality and actions don’t live down to that moniker. She’s actually quite sweet and hilarious.
On the way, they pick up a third party member, a former assassin turned healer. She was asked by her clan to give up on being an assassin and settle down. Of course, she refused. While her healing is nothing special, her assassination skills are quite honed and powerful, and she fits right in.
While they wait for the tournament, they deal with a magical academy that has a habit of reducing grades for female applicants, using a bunch of random excuses about how men are late bloomers and other nonsense. They threaten the university heads, who are openly discussing this, and get them to back down. The real fun, though, is at the tourney. I will not spoil the fun that comes from that, because it’s better going in cold. If you don’t laugh once at it, I must assume you have lost the ability to laugh entirely.
My opinion of it
It’s hilarious, and if you hate the tropes that fantasy shows all too often, like women being secondary just because they’re women or forced to wear what amounts to a chainmail bikini, you will love this. I sure as hell did. I have very strong opinions on those topics. On that note, I intend to make a post about not offending your audience at some point. The second volume is also worth a read. It’s still funny but has a darker take overall. Also, Laplace is obviously into Tanya, making my Yuri side squee with delight. Hence why it’s an LGBT literature recommendation.
And all inspired by one scandal. While that scandal shouldn’t have happened in the first place, it gave us a great, hilarious story, and an excellent demonstration of how a simple event can inspire a great story.
https://alexjbrock.com/sexiled-my-sexist-party-leader-kicked-me-out/