Then found a tumblr post about Romantic Fantasy that took me back to the vanished world of twenty years ago:
1995 was a big turning point. In a single year, while Sailor Moon was finishing up season S and moving on to Super S, the following powerhouse anime were released: Fushigi Yuugi, Magic Knight Rayearth, Wedding Peach, Gundam Wing, Evangelion, and Slayers... The impact of that year and the following (1996 was the year of Escaflowne and Hana Yori Dango) was immediately obvious if you went to SF&F cons in the US. The cosplay shifted, the panels shifted, there was a lot of sudden interest from women in what had been presented as a mostly male genre often erroneously equated with porn. Many women I had formerly discussed Bradley, Lackey, McCaffrey, and Rawn with were now discussing CLAMP and Takeuchi-sensei and the best places to get reasonably-priced import manga.Bref: I spent this morning in Somewhere Else.
See also the comments to the romantic fantasy link for emo Vanyel and his bff Fluttershy.
The Prince emerges from the interval between A Grief Observed and Barthes' Mythologies. Slim paperbacks will do this. Two down, one to go; but I wonder where a substantial hardcover might be lurking?
