#the worldbuilding is fascinating so far and it's a little book

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2023: DRIFTWOOD by Marie Brennan.

This is another one I picked for the Driscoll Vibes, but make it Fantasy and turn the Melancholy Dial all the way up (instead of Most Of The Way Up, which is the setting for Driscoll): Driftwood is where worlds go to die in the wake of their own personal apocalypses. Featuring snow drifting through the woods from our cabin trip last weekend.

#books of 2023 #books #book photography #driftwood #marie brennan #hocking hills #it was a delightful little trip!! #Just Enough snow for me haha #(aesthetic but easy on my poor car) #in btw #driscoll #the worldbuilding is fascinating so far and it's a little book #i'm enjoying it a lot!! #i did very love her lady trent memoirs so i immediately ordered this one as soon as i found out it was a thing lol

[literary-illuminati]

An Arbitrary Collection of Book Recommendations

(put together for a friend out of SFF I've read over the last couple of years)

Cli-Fi

Tusks of Extinction and/or The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler. They’re pretty different books in a lot of ways – one is a novel about discovering a certain species of squid in the Pacific might have developed symbolic language and writing, the other a novella about a de-extinction initiative to restore mammoths to the Siberian taiga – but they share a pretty huge overlap in setting, tone and themes. Specifically, a deep and passionate preoccupation with animal conservation (and a rather despairing perspective on it), as well as a fascination with transhumanism and how technology can affect the nature of consciousness. Mountain is his first work, and far more substantial, but I’d call it a bit of a noble failure in achieving what it tries for. Tusks is much more limited and contained, but manages what it’s going for.

A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys. In a post-post-apocalyptic world that’s just about figured out how to rebuild itself from the climate disasters of the 21st century (but that’s still very much a work in progress), aliens descend from the sky and make First Contact. They’re a symbiotic civilization, and they’re overjoyed at the chance to welcome a third species into their little interstellar community – and consider it a mission of mercy besides, since every other species they’ve ever encountered destroyed themselves and their planet before escaping it. Awkwardly, our heroine and her whole society are actually pretty invested in Earth and the restoration thereof – and worried that a) the alien’s rescue effort might not care about their opinions and b) that other interest groups on earth might be more willing to give the hyper-advanced space-dwelling aliens the answers they want to hear. Basically 100% sociological worldbuilding and political intrigue, so take that as you will.

Throwback Sci Fi

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky is possibly the only thing I’ve read published in decades to take the old cliche of ‘this generic-seeming fantasy world is actually the wreckage of a ruined space age civilization, and ‘magic’ and ‘monsters’ are the remnants of the technology’ and play it entirely straight. Specifically, it’s a two-POV novella, where half the story is told from the perspective of a runaway princess beseeching the ancient wizard who helped found her dynasty for help against a magical threat, and half is from the perspective form the last surviving member of a xeno-anthropology mission woken out of stasis by the consequences of the last time he broke the Prime Directive knocking on his ship tower door and asking for help. Generally just incredible fun.

Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh is, I think, the only thing on this list written before the turn of the millennium. It’s proper space opera, about a habitat orbiting an immensely valuable living world that’s the lynchpin of logistics for the functionally rogue Earth Fleet’s attempt to hold off or defeat rebelling and somewhat alien colonies further out. The plot is honestly hard to summarize, except that it captures the feel of being history better than very nearly any other spec fic I’ve ever read – a massive cast, none of them with a clear idea of what’s going on, clashing and contradictory agendas, random chance and communications delays playing key roles, lots of messy ending, not a single world-shaking heroes or satanic masterminds deforming the shape of things with their narrative gravity to be seen. Somewhat dated, but it all very impressively well done.

Pulpy Gay Urban Fantasy Period Piece Detective Stories Where Angels Play a Prominent Role

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark stars Fatma el-Sha’arawi, the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities in Cairo, a couple of decades after magic returned to the world and entirely derailed the course of Victorian imperialism. There’s djinn and angels and crocodile gods, and also an impossible murder that needs solving! The mystery isn’t exactly intellectually taxing, but this is a very fun tropey whodunnit whose finale involves a giant robot.

Even Though I Knew The End by C. L. Polk is significantly more restrained and grounded in its urban fantasy. It’s early 20th century Chicago, and a PI is doing one last job to top off the nest egg she’s leaving her girlfriend before the debt on her deal with the devil comes due. By what may or may not be coincidence, she stumbles across a particularly gruesome crime scene – and is offered a deal to earn back her soul by solving the mystery behind it. Very noir detective, with a setting that just oozes care and research and a satisfyingly tight plot.

High Concept Stuff That Loves Playing around With Format and the Idea of Narratives

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente is a story about a famous documentarian vanishing on shoot amid mysterious and suspicious circumstances, as told by the recovered scraps of the footage she was filming, and different drafts of her (famous director) father’s attempt to dramatize the events as a memorial to her. It’s set in a solar system where every planet is habitable and most were colonized in the 19th century, and culturally humanity coasts on in an eternal Belle Epoque and (more importantly) Golden Age of Hollywood. Something like half the book is written as scripts and transcripts. This description should by now either have sold you or put you off entirely.

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez is the only classic-style epic fantasy on this list, I believe? The emperor and his three demigod sons hold subjugated in terror, but things are changing. The emperor, terrified of death, has ordered a great fleet assembled to carry him across the sea in pursuit of immortality. The day before he sets out on his grand pilgrimage to the coast, a guilt-ridden guard helps the goddess of the moon escape her binding beneath the palace. From there, things spiral rapidly out of anyone’s control. The story’s told through two or three (depending( different layers of narrative framing devices, and has immense amounts of fun playing with perspective and format and ideas about storytelling and legacy.

I Couldn’t Think of Any Categories That Included More Than One of These

All The Names They Used For God by Anjali Sachdeva is a collection of short stories, and probably the most literary thing on this list? The stories range wildly across setting and genre, but are each more or less about the intrusion of the numinous or transcendent or divine into a world that cracks and breaks trying to contain it. It is very easily the most artistically coherent short story collection I’ve ever read, which I found pretty fascinating to read – but honestly I’m mostly just including this on the strength of Killer of Kings, a story about an angel sent down to be John Milton’s muse as he writes Paradise Lost which is probably one of the best things I read last year period.

Last Exit by Max Gladstone – the Three Parts Dead and How You Lose the Time War guy – could be described as a deconstruction of ‘a bunch of teenagers/college kids discover magic and quest to save the world!’ stories, but honestly I’d say that obscures more than it reveals. Still, the story is set with that having happened a decade in the past, and the kids in question have thoroughly fucked up. Zelda, the protagonist, is kept from suicide by survivor’s guilt as much as anything, and now travels across America working poverty jobs and sleeping in her car as she hunts the monsters leaking in through the edges of a country rotting at the seams. Then there’s a monster growing in the cracks of the liberty bell, an in putting it down she gets a vision of someone she thought was dead is just trapped – or maybe changed. So it’s time to get the gang together again and save the world! This one’s hard to rec without spoiling a lot, but the prose and characterization are all just sublime. Oddly in conversation with the whole Delta Green cosmic horror monster hunting subgenre for a story with nothing to do with Lovecraft.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh is a story about aliens destroying the earth, and growing up in the pseudo-fascist asteroid survivalist compound of the last bits of the human military that never surrendered. It stars a heroine whose genuinely indoctrinated for the first chunk of the book and just deeply endearing terrible and awful to interact with, and also has a plot that’s effectively impossible to describe without spoiling the big twist at the end of the first act. Possibly the only book I read last year which I actively wish was longer – which is both compliment and genuine complaint, for the record, the ending’s a bit messy. Still, genuinely meaty Big Ideas space opera with very well-done characterization and a plot that does hold together. 

#meta #book recommendations #sff #sharing this mostly so I don't lose it next time my laptop dies #and also hey why not

[gffa]

Do you have a favorite reference/visual guide in the Star Wars fandom? If so, why is it your favorite and are there any info bits you enjoy reading?

Far and away the best guide book that Star Wars put out was Star Wars Propaganda: A History of Persuasive Art in the Galaxy.

Before I read this book, I don't know that I was that excited for it, but I found it thoroughly fascinating to read because it was such a great idea and it was pulled off beautifully--it's an in-world book of essays about the history of the galaxy and the use of art used to sway both sides of the various conflicts. So it tells the history of the galaxy, from the prequels to the sequels, through characters within the universe, while also being halfway a poster book of really fantastic political-style art pieces.

My favorite was the Republic vs Separatists sections (I am a prequels bitch after all) but the Empire vs Rebellion art pieces and the commentary and history that went with them were fantastic. This is one of the few books I recommend in physical form if you can afford it at all, because the pieces look nice in digital form (I have both), but a little photoshoppy to my eye. But holding this book in my hands I could see it was very much designed to be a print book, they look so much better there. You can see some more examples of the posters here or, if you want to know just how much I loved this book and some examples of why it hit me so hard, I have an essay here that explains more about what it's like. My other favorite guides are two other in-universe books: - Star Wars: Scum and Villainy: Case Files on the Galaxy's Most Notorious has great art, great in-world character notes, great tidbits about the worldbuilding, and even our only glimpse at a possible IN UNIVERSE CALENDAR SYSTEM - Star Wars Galactic Maps: An Illustrated Atlas of the Star Wars Universe has great art, fun in-world character notes, and is just really, really fun look at what a guidebook from inside the GFFA would look like.

#lumi.txt #star wars #meta #novels

[veliseraptor]

February Reading Recap

Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer. I didn't find a whole lot new in this book, as far as thinking through questions of how to deal with art made by people who have done things or hold opinions that one finds morally reprehensible, but it was a well-written and thoughtful probing of the subject nonetheless. I really appreciated the fact that Dederer was comfortable (or, if not comfortable then at least accepting) of coming to a place with no easy answers. rea

Stars of Chaos: vol. 1 by Priest. I'm not sucked into this one yet, but I am intrigued by it enough that I'm going to keep reading. I haven't hooked into the main relationship, and it hasn't had the same level of delightful banter (at least, as yet) that I have enjoyed in other Priest novels I've read, but I do have volume 2 sitting on my shelf and I'm looking forward to reading it.

System Collapse by Martha Wells. I find that I've liked the early Murderbot books a lot more than the later ones, and this one unfortunately continued that trend. I don't think the series has overstayed its welcome for me yet - I'll probably continue to read it, at least for now - but I find myself losing interest.

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone. I said I was going to reread it and I did! And it didn't blow me away in quite the same way I remember it doing when I read it the first time around several years ago, but I still really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed it enough this time around (and was still compelled enough by the worldbuilding, which I do remember being a big part of what stood out to me), that I plan to reread the rest of the series as well. But while, again, it didn't blow me away the way I remember, I would say that I generally recommend it, particularly as a fantasy that is doing some things different.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (Manhua): vol. 5 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. I am only and specifically reading the volumes of the manhua that have Yi City in it, so I'm pretty much exclusively assessing this based on my Yi City feelings. And while overall I feel like the art style isn't working for me in a way that is impacting my ability to really get into it there was at least one panel that really conveyed something and made me Feel Things, so it gets credit for that. I am enjoying the experience of doing Yi City in a whole new format, though, that's enjoyable for the sheer "getting to do Yi City, again, but in a different medium this time" reason.

We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinker. I read this book for a book club I'm in and I found it rather too didactic and the ending a little too pat. The family dynamics were strongly written and I sort of feel like Pinker could've written a stronger book that was just about a family without the part about New and Suspect Technology. I wouldn't even say that I necessarily disagree with the points I think she's making in this book, but I would say that it went a little too hard and a little too obviously on making those points.

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. I liked this one and particularly as of the last...idk, five pages or so, I'm so on board for what comes next. I am promised that it gets even weirder and given that it was already fairly weird...I'm fascinated by the worldbuilding here, and the conceit of the Enlightenment-style contrasted with the future setting is a fun one. I'm looking forward to more.

Ring by Koji Suzuki. I was neither scared by this book (though perhaps I was ruined by knowing the whole thing more or less beat for beat) and did not particularly enjoy the experience of reading it, and then the part where Sadako was revealed to be...genderweird? somehow? unclear to me what the author was going for exactly, sort of tanked it for me. I probably will not be reading the rest of the series unless I get truly desperate for horror to read.

Ashes of the Sun by Django Wexler. I don't know that I'd say this was the highest quality fantasy I've read recently but it might be the new-to-me one I've liked the best in a while. It was a lot of fun, very fast-moving, and I was intrigued enough by the entire set-up that I pretty much immediately put the second book on hold at the library after finishing this one. Maybe it's just been too long since I read a new-to-me fantasy book that really grabbed me, but I liked this one rather a lot and even if it was maybe more "fun" than "good" I'm still calling that enough to give this one a loose recommendation.

#reading recaps #sometimes i read things

[splat20]

Another part of Icewind Dale that's been fucking grueling so far though... Ngl a part of me is actually fascinated by the historical fantasy worldbuilding done by A Certain Kind Of History Dude who clearly has no idea how history has ever actually worked. The hoops they jump through to convince you that history has never been what might be called "political" is, in its own way, kind of impressive.

Conflict has never been about stuff like colonialism, it's all about nebulous human themes like Tradition. Conflict is about Economy and Economy never involves anything like class or culture. Only trout. The entire machinations of this society revolves ONLY around trout. (I'm now genuinely harping about the trout, it's just really dumb ok.) Conflict is about different groups just being fundamentally different, usually with a clear evil one. Conflict is about all groups being greedy about THEIR FUCKING TROUT because it's just a nebulous human condition to be greedy. Racist also. And poor people are just poor because they aren't ambitious, as a little aside.

It's so...... ashistorical but also deeply uncurious about our own actual real life world right now.

So many "high" fantasy books are like this. The Certain Kind Of History Dudes have too much power in this genre. They get praised for their worldbuilding and it's just the most shallow understanding of how anything works ever.

And more nefarious is the way this seemingly innocent ignorance so quickly and easily justifies stuff like "well, it's totally chill for good guys to kill bad guys... because they're from a bad guy society." Drizzt will tie himself in knots if he has to kill the worst human you can possibly imagine, but swats down random orcs no problem. The way that seemingly creates no cognitive dissonace at all for these writers needs to be studied in a lab. It's all fun and games when we're talking about monsters, but then you think about how that translates into the real world using the exact same mechanisms and that isn't fun at all is it? The ways racist men can tell themselves they are good people follows similar mental gymnastics. Why are "humans" deserving of infinite grace and forgiveness even at their most evil but "orcs" are understood to be inherently a lost cause? Why really? What is that mechanism really? It's been particularly egregious as I'm trying to slog my way through The Crystal Shard because, like, we can generously say that the "barbarians" are based on vikings, but ngl all I'm getting from this dynamic is Salvatore playing "cowboys and indians" but with white people. The general underlying vibes... And maybe that's what I'm trying to get at with what I'm describing in the fantasy races too. If you take off the mask, it all just feels like "cowboys and indians." A trope so deeply embedded in American genre fiction which has always just been incredibly racist this whole time.

These books are such whiplash because unfortunately I do love the characters but boy I wish I could save them from these books sometimes. The Crystal Shard has been soooo much worse than the other books so far imo, so I'm hoping the series chills tf out again generally.

#this has soured my enjoyment considerably but unfortunately i am cursed with investment at this point #jarlaxle come back #everything's going to shit without you babygirl #also where is catti brie tbh #i feel like catti brie isn't in this book because if she was she'd just be like 'everything happening here is macho and stupid' #im just saying maybe we didnt need wulfgar at all and you couldve just given the cool hammer to your daughter just saying #legend of drizzt #racism cw #fantasy racism cw

[thelordofgifs]

End of Year Fic Recs

Thank you @sallysavestheday for the tag and the kind rec 💕

Recommend up to 5 series or multi-chapter fics from 2023 that everyone should read (multi-year WIPs count, if the last update was in 2023).

Recommend up to 5 single chapter fics/one-shots (long or short) from 2023 that everyone should read.

Recommend up to 5 fics NOT from 2023 that everyone should read (oldies but goodies).

Recommend up to 5 of your own fics (completed or WIP) from 2023 that everyone should read.

Five WIPS from 2023:

we will make this place our home by @leucisticpuffin. 200k, AU, kidnap fam. The loveliest softest 1970s AU! It feels like reading all my favourite cozy childhood books and the characterisation is impeccable (Maglor my DARLING). Cannot recommend enough.

seabird by @welcomingdisaster. 24k, AU, russingon. "Give me a quick russingon prompt for smut week," Lena said. I obliged. This happened. Anyway the dynamics are so so good and the characterisation is so so good (Maedhros you little IDIOT) and the suspense!! is so good!! Everyone go and read it immediately.

ashes, ashes, dust to dust — the devil's after both of us by @that-angry-noldo. 9k, AU, Finarfin and Maedhros and Maglor. Maedhros and Maglor come up with a plan to capture the High King of the Noldor in return for the Silmaril. SUCH good m&m (I am a single-issue voter ok!) and incredible Finarfin/Eonwe dynamics as well, I cannot wait to see where this fic goes next.

Atandil by @eilinelsghost. 105k, canon compliant, Finrod/Bëor. The best worldbuilding, THE most gorgeous flowing heartrending prose, absolutely incredible characterisation... I am so so obsessed with this series you can't imagine. Still weeping over part 14 a month later.

And Love Grew by @polutrope. 8k, canon compliant, kidnap fam. A newer WIP, but I'm already so hooked! So far the characterisations of all the Fëanorians have been delicious and there are SO many compelling OCs as well.

Five one-shots from 2023:

Sea-Bells and Sunlight by @actual-bill-potts. 4.5k, canon compliant, Finrod and Lúthien and Beren. Lúthien finds both Finrod and Beren in the Halls of Mandos. LOVE the shifting dreamlike nature of Mandos here, and my darling Lúthien is so so perfect. Also all the Finrod feels... aahhh.

Somewhere To Return To by @searchingforserendipity25. 4k, canon compliant, Maedhros and Maglor, russingon. Just the softest loveliest most heartbreaking post-Thangorodrim fic. LetMaedhrosNap2k23.

the world to come by @arrivisting. 4k, AU, Fëanor/Nerdanel. A chilling imagining of Arda Remade, featuring some incredible Fëanor characterisation and the most gorgeous beautiful prose.

Quicksilver by @clothonono. 26k, AU, Indis/Míriel. Beautiful beautiful writing and wonderful characterisation. One of the fics that made me adore Indis.

What Will the Kinslayer Lord Do Next? by @tanoraqui. 3k, canon compliant, Maedhros and Maglor. Ok this is a spin-off of The Minstrel and the Star which you should also read because it's excellent but. again. SINGLE-ISSUE VOTER. and this is a top-tier m&m fic, all that tenderness and grief and bitterness and some delicious musings on the Oath and Silmarils.

Five older fics:

and one man, in his time, plays many parts by @lintamande. Canon compliant, Maglor and his younger brothers. One of my favourite Mithrim-era fics.

seven years of holidays by @jouissants. 10k, AU, kidnap fam. Elrond and Elros find a strange elf in the woods. Excellent kidnap fam dynamics and absolutely beautiful prose.

A reason to live (a reason it is not permissible to die) by Chestnut_pod. 27k, canon compliant, Eärendil/Elwing. Absolutely incredible Sirion worldbuilding and a wonderful depiction of Elwing.

elves, once by @ceescedasticity. 43k, canon compliant. THE most horrifyingly plausible theory of how orcs came to be. Both heartbreaking and fascinating.

It's the New World, Darling by @avantegarda. 107k, AU. A truly delightful 19th-20th century AU of the silm. Nothing makes me laugh as much as Victorian!Fëanorians.

Five self-recs:

The hard bit!

Ilimbë. 15k, canon compliant, Fëanor/Nerdanel. I still think this is the best thing I've ever written! Check it out if you're interested in Greek mythology, or in baby Fëanor making an idiot of himself.

the fairest stars. 78k, AU, Maedhros & Maglor, russingon, Beren/Lúthien and more. Probably my favourite of my fics, if not objectively my best. I know I love to hate on tfs for being completely insane, but I'm also pretty proud of it. It's got some of my best m&m, a rather in-depth exploration of the nuances of the Oath of Fëanor, and SO SO MANY cliffhangers. A silly bullet point fic that is also somehow the one I've put the most thought and effort into over the year.

in the breaking. 2k, canon compliant, Maedhros & Maglor. Still very fond of this one.

Inflection. 9k, canon compliant, kidnap fam. A very difficult one to write, but I'm proud of the result.

The Stranger. 928 words, canon compliant, Maedhros and Maglor. A very tiny little ficlet, but I like how I captured the post-Thangorodrim dynamics here.

Going to tag everyone I mentioned here, if you'd like to share!

#silmarillion #fic rec #my writing #tag game #a lot of fics here! go forth and feast #missed sooo many incredible fics off this too

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Out of curiosity what do you dislike about Ada Palmers books

so tbc i made my way thru vol 1 of terra ignota and the first bit of vol 2 before quitting, so im working with a limited sample. but such is the case with dismissal! so here goes:

the prose is... bad. its very likely i should just develop a higher tolerance on this, ik im effectively gatekeeping myself from some very conceptually solid fiction over a relatively superficial skill detached from the stuff that really deeply matters, but the style on a sentence-to-sentence level is just very underwhelming, which is a particular problem when in universe its supposed to be elevated and uplifting (like the speech at renunciation day). i dont mind purple prose but it like marries imo the worst aspects of purple and bland, its a chore to get thru it

the pacing feels sort of mechanical and arbitrary,. every fifty pages, on the dot, theres another twist pulled from the Twist Bag! im told this im proves but its a) not enough to make up for the other deficits and ii) a common thing said when it takes a certain amount of time for ppl to inure themselves to an in fact persistent defect in a long work

Your Kink Is Not My Kink (But Your Kink Is OK)

i do not care about these characters. its hard for me to go into more detail bc i have little grip on what makes characters "work" for me in general but i just. dont care what happens to any of them (besides best not-girl eureka weeksbooth 🤤)

the worldbuilding. by far the biggest letdown. ppl will tell you—repeatedly, at length—that this is the great strength of the series. do not listen to them! they are misguided. ada palmer is really good—gifted, even—at the first step of worldbuilding, much moreso than most writers! shes top notch at coming up with a broad element of the society that makes you think "whoa, i want to know how that works!" and then... you never do. the depths are never plumbed. the depths are never even adequately hinted at. nor are the depths even conspicuously hidden from view! she just... tells you that there are a bunch of totally complicated details, trust me guys, look here i came up with some technobabble and some percentages like i totally promise theres stuff going on behind here! but there just, so aggravatingly obviously isnt! the technobabble does not even give the illusion of depth, the way (imo) it does in almost nowhere, it gives the appearance of earnestly trying to project such an illusion. tears me out of the immersion every time. its probably worth mentioning that i know from firsthand reports that she is into larp stuff irl, which is notorious for attracting ppl with a high tolerance for would be un-suspensors of disbelief. which, again, may be a virtue on their part! but if so its one i lack, at least here

i was talking to birdblog who suggested much of it might be that the work is very capital-L Liberal, and i am very not. which i think is kind of true, but less in that this is a drawback it possesses and more that its a virtue it lacks. theres lots of fiction i enjoy that is transparently committed to big philosophical/moral/political claims im vehemently opposed to! off the top of my head: any shakespeare that involves kings, any bernard shaw that involves Society, log horizon (at least s01, havent seen past it), nausicaa of the valley of the wind (the manga, the movie is sort of opaque philosophically), a bunch of outright propaganda films from wwii (american, british, russian, japanese), several kipling short stories...

but like, i think that a visceral sympathy for the earnestly felt message of a work of art does help one excuse other flaws, and i suspect a lot of my fundamentally Liberalism-oriented friends are able to enjoy the series bc the author shares that same basic vision. which is certainly like, an interesting one! but on its own its not enough to compel me past the artistic demerits by being either spiritually akin to encourage me or sufficiently weird and novel to fascinate me

anyway, tell me why im wrong, terra ignotans! humani nihil a me alienum puto

#ask #spacific-sunrise #terra ignota

[approximately20eggs]

what's the stormlight archives?

hello and jbksgsbdgs boy am I glad you asked!!!

the short answer is very simple. the stormlight archive is a book series by brandon sanderson. it's also part of the cosmere, which is basically his interlocking fantasy universe, but like all other book series in the cosmere, stormlight can be enjoyed on it's own, separate from the rest :)

the long answer: oh my god. oh my goddhdbshsvsh these books are by far my favorite books that I've ever read. and there is so much I love about them

first of all, there's a huge cast of absolutely fascinating and diverse characters with really differing viewpoints on the world and I love them all a whole lot. they're all so well written and amazing and many of them are intentionally written as very problematic people and it's hgdgdbgssvgs it's wonderful and so interesting to read. there is a healthy amount of war criminals in this book series (at least 4 I can think of immediately)

non-demonized DID rep? autistic rep? accurate portrayals of depression and ptsd? stormlight has it!

gay rep? yes. ace rep? yes. bi rep? yes. this series said queer rights

poc rep idk how exactly to explain. no one on Roshar, the planet stormlight takes place on, is really white as we would see it, according to branderson. but there's a fair amount of fantasy racism and classism within that, so proceed with caution. I cannot personally speak on whether the themes related to this have been handled well in the book, as I am white, but I can say that the fantasy racism is not portrayed as a good thing within the narrative, and their are viewpoint characters from multiple in-world ethnicities and on both sides of this conflict.

with that being said the worldbuilding is immaculate. the whole world feels alive and breathing, like it just goes on even after you shut the book. every culture feels rich and detailed, with regular "interludes" that often take the form of everyday people in the world that just gives it life and depth beyond just the plot and the main characters. some of it's downright funny too. in one of the dominant religions in the world, men can't learn to read and women's left hands are like. considered sexually explicit??? lots of memes about these two details in particular. but anyway if I can make my own worldbuilding half as amazing as Sanderson's I'll have something to be very proud of

the magic system is also great. without saying too much, you sort of make promises to your own personal little fairy who is also your friend and sort of your therapist and in exchange for really really meaning those promises you get superpowers! also there's these things called shardblades which are giant glowing murder swords that can cut through solid rock. and also shardplate which is basically a mech suit but high fantasy flavored. these are powered by the light that comes from the basically-hurricanes that regularly pommel the entire continent. hence the name stormlight. (really fascinating how the world has been built to accommodate these storms btw)

also, do you like crabs?? there are so many crabs! almost all life on Roshar is some form of crustacean. there are tiny cockroach crabs, dog-sized crabs that are really just crabs that are dogs, crab people, big crabs to pull heavy loads like oxen, fucking kaiju-sized murder crabs that live in chasms, and even more types of crabs! if you've ever thought "man, I wish the concept of carcinization had been taken to the extreme in this high fantasy setting," the stormlight archive is for you!

with all of that being said: stormlight may sound off the wall, but it does cover some *extremely heavy* topics. does it cover them well? I would certainly say so, as would a lot of other people, but ultimately that's not really something I can be the judge of on my own. a really big theme, for example, is the morality of violence, particularly as a means of protecting people. there's also a lot of focus on the trauma people have suffered over the course of their lives, and how they move on from that and recover. Sanderson is not the sort of author to pull his punches with the heavy themes. and I love that about these books, too.

if you're interested after that heavy ramble, the first book in the series is called The Way Of Kings. they're hefty books but really amazing once you get into them, and especially once you've hit your first Branderson Plot Twist™️ (he's known for his masterful trope subversion, and these books really show off that skill). if you do get into them, please let me know. I'd love to hear what you think :)

#the stormlight archive #brandon sanderson #cosmere

[jacketpotatoo]

1, 8, 10 and 43 for the bookworm ask :)

1.Name the best book you've read so far this year. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Such an engrossing writing style and such an interesting book to think about in the context of the true-crime genre (which is a genre I don't really dip my toe into because the ethics of it all), as well as the fictionalisation of 'non-fiction'. Also if we're counting plays then Angels in America by Tony Kushner is GREAT.

8. Favourite Queer fiction book(s). The locked tomb books (Tamsyn Muir) and This is How You Lose the Time War (Amad El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone). What I love about tlt is how its very essence is queer. It's not just because gay people (which I love don't get me wrong), but it's the Found Family, the exploration of love in all its forms, the gender of it all and the absence of gender of it all. It's engrained into the very fabric of the world and its themes. Time War does it similarly but it's less about character and worldbuilding and more about the style of it all - it's more about the poetry. And the poetry is gorgeous. I wrote a little something about that here if you want to check it out! I would like to read more queer lit but uni hates me

10. Favourite Classical literature Currently obsessed with The Odyssey (Emily Wilson's translation specifically). Frankenstein is structurally brilliant and also fascinating to me. Mary Shelley is so metal for writing that at 18 and keeping her husband's heart in a chest after he died. Icon! Talked about that more on my goodreads so I won't go into it here but yes. I read Jane Eyre recently too and loved it.

43. Title of a book you own that's in the worst physical condition you have. Explain what happened to it.

It was in fact my copy of Jane Eyre and long story short, it did not survive the rain in my little tote bag :,)

#i love books #thanks for the ask! #jp rambles #asks #answered #ask game

[thecurioustale]

(Re)introducing the Author

I have two main series: a fantasy series called The Curious Tale and a sci-fi series called Galaxy Federal.

For those who are newer here, or wouldn't mind a refresher, here's a little about me and the kind of stories I write:

My name is Josh, pronouns they/he. (I am agender but I don't get upset if you gender me masculine; I do it myself sometimes out of force of habit.) I am 41 years old and live in Washington State not far from Seattle, in the beautiful but troubled United States. I am left-handed, hence my proudest epithet, The Sinistral, and I have been a writer for basically my entire life—even as a kid!

I published my first and so far only novel in 2015, Prelude to After The Hero, which you can currently buy as an e-book or read for free in HTML. Additionally, I have published countless worldbuilding articles and meta-discussions of my fiction over the years (see my previous post about Curious Tale Saturdays), and countless nonfiction essays and personal musings on my personal journal, which in more recent years I have updated much less frequently (but am still active on).

As an author I mostly write stories about "power" and "beauty." I'll have more to say about my specific stories over the next couple days when I do corresponding (re)introduction posts for The Curious Tale and Galaxy Federal, but the bottom line is that I am very interested in human potential, both at the individual and collective levels, and in the beauty of being alive and experiencing "the world," i.e. our material reality and our own headspaces within it. Other topics that interest me and frequently show up in my writing include justice, creation (both the acts and products of creating), civilization, Illumination (what many would call wisdom or "enlightenment"), ambition and desire, animism, and the poignance of the fleeting nature of all things.

I am fascinated by liminality and subliminality; boundaries; vast indoor spaces; megastructures; mysteriousness; "the magical"; surrealism; absurdism; nostalgia; pathos; journeys that do not involve backtracking; and other such things as generally might describe a vast world with hazy horizons lit in twilight. I also strive in my writing (less successfully, I fear) to convey a sense of mystery and wonder.

At the same time, I am also fascinated by human emotionality and subjective experience; personal relationships; the human condition and the human psyche; and narrative life arcs. Some who know me through my nonfiction or by talking to me in person have been surprised to see how passionate and emotional my fiction is.

My writing style tends to be long-winded and self-indulgent; deliberate and precise; esoteric and bespoke. I usually set a slow pace, and seldom indeed will I resort to cheap action or thrills. Most of my fiction is either long-form play-by-play scenes in high resolution, or Tolkienian epic narration far removed from the ground level.

With certain exceptions for key locations, I usually don't reuse a given location in a story; the locations are usually new from scene to scene, and thus there is a lot of environmental description throughout the whole length of my works and not just at the beginning. This creates a certain quality, where everything is always new, that I find engrossing.

In terms of the three most popular conventions, political intrigue, violence, and sex and romance: My writing mostly rejects the treacherous political intrigue genre conventions that are so prevalent in sci-fi and fantasy today, even though "politics" is definitely an integral part of my writing (and I am not shy about sharing my opinions, though I try to do so through specific characters rather than on narratorial authority). When it comes to violence, there is a lot of death and killing and suffering in my work, but I am not a big fan of writing extremely graphic violence and torture, mainly because I don't have the heart to dwell on it in great detail most of the time. (It's very draining for me.) And on the sex side of things, I eschew tacked-on romantic subplots and in general I would say that there's too much damned snogging in our contemporary storytelling, but I definitely do explore and depict matters of love and sex in my work in my own way—though not at a very high frequency, and, I would like to hope, never gratuitously. (Unless the gratuitousness is a tongue-in-cheek joke that we're all in on—which can be said of many other aspects of my writing as well.) I never write explicit, graphic sex scenes, although I do sometimes write sex scenes.

Which reminds me: My stories tend to have a lot of "competency porn" in them; my characters are usually intelligent, thoughtful, and logical. Ignorance and luck are not big plot story drivers for me, generally.

My favored characters tend to be some combination of fat, left-handed, and female; and, of them, my central protagonists additionally tend to be extremely powerful, demigodlike individuals who are able to operate within their respective domains virtually without limitation. In critical respects my characters are only vaguely-defined; I usually avoid character archetype trope reinforcement, so my characters are ideally as internally diverse as real-world humans are...which means you can't actually know them right away. And that opens the door for you to project your own personality ideas onto them. Which...I suppose is a feature?

I have a cinematic mind, and I think my stories are best appreciated with a strong visual imagination. I try not to smother readers with too many unnecessary details, though I confess I am only partially successful at this and often find myself hanging on every word of my lengthy environmental descriptions. I think some of my most satisfied readers are those who enjoy digesting these elaborate visuals as a reward unto itself.

I am a big believer in the idea that obvious story setups should have payoffs, that narrative arcs should eventually be resolved, and that plots and subplots should be be highly interconnected. I am chiefly theme-driven in my writing, as opposed to character-driven or plot-driven, and oftentimes the central purpose of a given scene will be to express one particular idea (or more than one)—either a conceptual idea, or a specific moment in the story. If you read the Prelude and remember Silence's introduction, I wrote that entire scene just to be able to describe the image of Silence in silhouette standing against the evening sky, and her powerful, predator-like movement as she turns around.

Add it all up, and my stories are definitely out of the norm for today's fashions and quite possibly for any fashion in history. They are slow and heavy and long. Their vastness belies their thrilling internal intricacies and shapes. The characters are highly realistic. The plots tend to feel emergent and organic. Or at least I think so. I am very much "writing the stories I want to see."

My stories tend to be incredibly long. Like...just know that going in. There are many sources for "tight," "fast" writing in the world. I am not one of them.

Oh, one more thing: There are various types of representation that are important to me and which I don't see the current state of sci-fi and fantasy storytelling doing a good job of delivering, so I explicitly lean into that, on top of my natural proclivity to write these kinds of characters anyway. So, if you're ever reading a scene and you find that the demographics of the people in it are noticeably unusual for contemporary American fiction, that's why.

More about me as a person: When not writing, I am a fan of sunsets, sunrises, and twilight; clouds and water; saying "Merciful McGillicuddy!" a lot while sighing loudly; solving Wordle; trying mostly in vain to gain weight; and being a curious information sponge.

#The Curious Tale #Galaxy Federal #Silence Terlais #Author Bio #I have no idea if this is actually what people want to know about an author. #When I read author bios in books or on websites they're usually lamentably generic #“Sam likes to go fishing.” #“And owns two dogs and a hamster.” #That's great for you and all Sam but what does it really say?

[semper-legens]

162. Tender Is The Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica

Owned: No, library Page count: 219 My summary: All the animals are dead. A freak virus made them dangerous to humans - and, importantly, inedible. So the world governments came up with a solution. Cloned humans, harvested for their meat and skin, anything that a person can use. Marcos works in an abattoir, processing these clones for consumption. But when a purebred female is gifted to him, Marcos realises a new opportunity. What if he can replace the son he lost? My rating: 2/5 My commentary:

Well, this book wasn't good. It's such a shame - I love strange books with weird or grotesque premises, if an author wants to explore something taboo there's a chance that they'll have the kind of creativity that I really enjoy in a story. And this had so much promise! In a world where we can no longer eat the flesh of animals, we instead clone humans and slaughter them for meat. That's an interesting idea (if, granted, somewhat played out in the kind of dystopia/sci-fi I like) and with some development, could make for an interesting story. Unfortunately, this book was not that. I found very little to like about it beside the premise, and if I was going to be uncharitable, I might even note that the premise itself seems to be chosen to carry the weight of a mediocre story. Certainly, I probably wouldn't have bothered to give this one the time of day without it. I'll go more into why I reached this conclusion under the cut, but the short answer is - it's just not that great.

The idea of cannibalism is one of our great taboos, and a particular fascination of mine. The problem is that in this novel it seemed to be used more for shock value than being an integral part of the worldbuilding, because the idea of cannibalising human clones as presented here really falls apart when you examine it for more than a minute. The change has happened over our protagonist's lifetime, yet everyone in the world is suddenly inured to the idea of eating people? You'd think it'd take a generation or two for the idea to become that ingrained. Similarly, the infrastructure for creating and slaughtering these clones has come up very quickly - alright, it's a plot point that they've repurposed things like old slaughterhouses, but given that this world doesn't seem to be that far in the future, how did we get perfect cloning technology that easily? As well as the ability to artificially age said clones, presumably, given that they seem to be producing enough meat to feed everyone despite all of the clones mentioned having adult appearances. (Unlike in the real meat industry where juvenile animals might be used, or where the animals slaughtered reach maturity much faster than humans.) If we can make clones that perfectly, why do we engineer them to be basically people instead of just unthinking, non-sentient slabs of meat? Surely that would be psychologically easier for everyone involved.

There's also the mention that the elderly and infirm are being used to produce meat, but that never really gets developed or goes anywhere. Likewise is the protagonist's idea that the virus which made animals inedible was either manufactured by the government for population control reasons (if people eat people, the birth rate goes down…despite the mass-produced 'meat' being explicitly clones I guess?) which is mentioned by the protagonist and then basically treated as fact despite that not mattering to the story and us not seeing any real substantive evidence of that. Like real conspiracy theories, there's not much there that stands up under scrutiny.

But beside all the worldbuilding holes, this book is just boring. Strip it of its surface-level gimmick, and what you have is a book about a man who has lost his kid, his wife's leaving him, he gets into a very questionable quasi-relationship with someone he's definitely exploiting, and that's about it. The protagonist is unlikeable, even without his abuse of the clone-woman 'Jasmine', cynical and bitter and hating of literally everyone without many redeeming qualities. His quest to replace the son he lost with one who is his blood via 'Jasmine' just reeks of toxic masculinity and the importance placed on virility, but this isn't really explored or examined at any length; I think it's actually meant to humanise him. Which it doesn't, because he is an odious little man. I hated him, and without him, there's very little left in the book to enjoy. Bleh.

Next, a world where wishes are bought and sold.

#Tender Is The Flesh #Agustina Bazterrica #bookblr #book blogger #book blog #2

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 13 – A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Okay, getting back into writing these reviews before I fall so far behind that catching up is just impossible. Memory is the first book this year that I’ve actually read before; I’m rereading as the first choice for a theoretical book club with some friends. Honestly quite enjoyed the experience, if only because trying to jot down some things to say when discussing it forced me to take it a little slower this time.

To get the technical details out of the way – the book won the Hugo, and did basically deserve it. The writing’s lovely and occasionally downright poetics, the two leads are both insanely compelling, and the court intrigue is appropriately convoluted and byzantine for what is obviously Constantinople IN SPACE. It’s just overall a joyous read.

So Martine’s clearly very fascinated by the experience of having your standards of aesthetics, and sophistication, and civilization defined by a culture which has never even bothered to notice your existence. The simultaneous rapture at being in the heart of the universe that you’ve read about your entire life, and deep alienation knowing you’ll never actually be a part of it. How ever most of the people trying to be friendly and compliment you don’t even notice how patronizing they’re being. And so on and etc. Mahit’s internal monologue does a really good job of selling the ambivalence of it, especially in the party scene.

The book does an excellent job of actually selling the palace district as a site of imperial grandeur, too, every building buried in symbolic aesthetics and ritual significance. But also just, like, actually impressive and grand to read about. All the contrasts between the oveflowing abundance in the city and life on Lsel are fascinating too – Martine makes really good use of the little worldbuilding quotes at the start of chapters to sell the difference. The one that really stuck in my head was a quote from a tourism

guide explaining all the myriad fine dining choices for tourists visiting the City followed directly by a Lseli agricultural report about how new hydrophonic techniques had increased rice yield sufficiently to support a whole hundred non-replacement births in the next generation (it helps that all the Teixicalaanli food legitimately sounds pretty amazing). Though the time where Mahit’s internal monologue short circuited over the idea of carrying a pregnancy to term in your own body – wasteful! Depriving the station of a necessary laborer for months and months when perfectly good artificial wombs are right there! So decadent – is a close second.

Martine is, as I understand it, a Byzantinist, and oh boy can you tell. The city’s a little bit Tenochtitlan in the aesthetics and the religion, but it really is overwhelmingly space Constantinople. The theoretically absolute emperor dealing with mobs in the streets willing and potentially able to acclaim a usurper, the constant risk of legions doing the same, the basic fact that there’s a vast empire which is viewed as nothing but an adjunct or extension of the capital city which is the entirety of all political life and the place everyone whose anyone needs to be, and so on.

In a way, the obvious Byzantine-ness of the Teixicalaanli makes them seem less imperialist than just imperial, at least from Mahit’s perspective. Which is to say, well, first of all that ‘empire’ has far too many meanings and distinguishing them is hard, but the Teixicalaanli don’t expand like the British or French, in constant competition over captive markets and strategic locations, they don’t feel some glorious burden of manifest destination or a mission civilisatrice that requires universal dominion. They already are the universe, or at least everything worthwhile in it, they go to war like medieval kings or Roman princeps – to win glorious victories and so show the empire they have the right to rule it.

The relation between Lsel and Teixicalaan – well, if suffers from the standard space opera lack of scale, first of all. The stationers number in the tens of thousands – the empire must be in the hundreds of billions, minimum. ‘Realistically’ Six Directions would never have found out about the imago device because relations with them would have been handled by some mid-ranking provincial governor, only showing up in travelogues and fanciful ethnographies. But leaving that aside, Teixicalaanli myopia also means that the cultural imperialism that the book’s so fascinated by is oddly...blameless? Teixicalaan presumably has brutal campaigns dedicated to stamping out native cultures and integrating them into the empire, but there’s hardly one directed at Lsel. The general sense you get is one of vaguely tragic inevitability – that the mismatch in size and wealth is such that of course any sort of even slightly free exchange of media and ideas will lead to Stationer culture being overwhelmed. Makes me think about arguments around CanCon regulations.

(The whole Roman, medieval feel of the empire means it all kind of calls to mind various Germanic elites actively reaching for Roman iconography and institutions to legitimize themselves as much as anything, though of course that’s not really right.)

The book’s politics are, I think, a bit limited by the degree it’s laser-focused on the very uppermost tip of imperial society – the book seems to know this too, given the thirty page digression into cyberpunk two thirds of the way through (speaking of which, I absolutely adore the fact that the elegant, ritually harmonious and utterly aesthetic architecture lasts about three metro stops away from the palace before everything starts turning into economical concrete blocks). Which isn’t really a knock on the book, but I do think some of the praise of it does get a bit overblown; there’s a limit to how much insight you can really have on imperialism when you’re so focused on the stories an empire tells about itself in its most rarified and luxurious heart.

In much the same way there’s something very, I don’t know, ‘written in America in the late 2010s’ about the political imagination the book allows itself. There are people who don’t want the world to be the world, and maybe they can help a bit, but the actual players in the game of thrones are corrupt oligarchs and populist warmongers, you know?

All that said, the book sure does portray a city that views itself as synonymous with civilization. I only realized there was a Teixicalaanli word for foreigner that wasn’t ‘barbarian’ when one of the probably-terrorists made a point of using it during the whole cyberpunk interlude. Which retroactively makes, like, every single other Teixicalaanli character in the book waaaaay more of an asshole. (fanfic thought - Teixicalaanli attempts to talk even vaguely respectfully to/about foreigners as analogous to people trying to be gender neutral or talk about nonbinary people in really strongly genedered languages, right down to the awkward neologisms that the ‘average citizens’ rolls their eyes at. What’s the Teixicalaanli term for ‘the woke plague.’?)

Also – not really a better place to put this in, but something I really do like about the worldbuilding is that no one has anything like the same ideas of what constitutes political legitimacy as the contemporary liberal default? Lsel is a corporatist state, where political power is divided between what are basically guilds who seem to have wide remit to make policy within their jurisdiction, with only one seat on the council seeming to have any sort of election. And Teixicalaan is, of course, a bureacratic-verging-on-stratocratic monarchy, with a strong sense of popular involvement in government, but through demonstrations and rioting instead of any formal process. It’s enjoyable that neither place is actually, like, familiar.

The motor of the book’s plot is byzantine (or Byzantine, I suppose) court intrigue, and as someone who loves polite conversations and poetic allusions followed directly by assassination attempts, I adored it. That said, I’m going to be a slob demanding everything be hand fed to me for a minute and saying that it all got positively opaque by the end. Which is, I suppose, entirely realistic, given Mahit’s position and role in everything, but still I wanted an Agathe Christie drawing room denouncement so bad. Was Ten Pearl actively backing the coup? If not, what was up with the Sunlit? And the Cityshocks? Why was the Information Ministry so politically passive and uninvolved in a literal coup attempt? How was Eight Loop involved in the whole final resolution, given it was her people keeping the emperor safe but it was Nineteen Adze who was with him on camera? All these questions and more, unanswered and, probably, irrelevant! But like, inquiring minds want to know.

Though speaking of the coup, I really did absolutely adore how, like,incompetent and amateurish both coup attempts were? Which seems like it would be a plot hole, but actually it’s probably the strongest argument the book can make for Six Direction’s immortality plan – the empire has been peaceful for so long no one remembers how to do a coup.

Anyway, yes! Extremely good book, Mahit and Seagrass are absolutely great protagonists. Not at all sorry I’m peer pressuring people into reading it.

#book review #a memory called empire #arkady martine #book club #sff

[gffa]

I’m a little over halfway through the first Lockwood & Co. book and I’m enjoying it, it’s very cute and I think the worldbuilding continues to be really interesting.  One of the most fascinating things is how technologically far behind our own world it feels, that the first book was put out in 2013 but the internet doesn’t exist in this world, cell phones don’t seem to exist in this world, despite that it feels relatively present-day in setting. I imagine that it wasn’t just the economy or culture that got derailed by the Problem happening, but suddenly everyone and everything had to devote all their resources to figuring out how to deal with it, including the tech fields of study.  And it doesn’t sound like it was very easy, either!  Even something like 40 years later, they still don’t seem to know that much about how to deal with ghosts other than basically iron + silver + salt + fire. Furthering the problem is that only younger kids can even see the ghosts, so you can’t send adults out to study the ghosts better, you can only rely on maybe their own memories of faded talent, if they ever had any to begin with. I also like the changes the Netflix drama made, as far as I’ve gotten--it’s little things, but the kids being a little more supportive of each other, Barnes being a little less antagonistic and more gruff-but-caring-because-he’s-scared-for-these-kids, and I really like the backstory with Lucy and Norrie, that was a lovely touch. I’m curious to see how the second half of the book goes, if it has the same pacing as the show, and then eventually get beyond the second book because I definitely want to know more about what the hell caused the Problem!

#lumi.txt #lockwood & co.

[mahou-furbies]

Now caught up with Sleepless Domain

Sleepless Domain has been a part of this blog since the very beginning; I created the blog in August 2016 and my first Sleepless Domain fanart is from September 2016, when I had read everything that was out so far. But after that I just somehow never touched it again, and have been saying I’ll get back to it for years. Since magical girl webcomics are apparently a boom here at Mahou-furbies now, it was finally a good time to catch up.

(this will spoil the twist in the beginning)

Even back when I first read this, the beginning had a very strong hook for me. That is, the pink leader in the colour-coded magical girl team is way more powerful than the others and also a little bossy, which causes friction in the team. If you've been following me for any meaningful lenght of time, you've probably noticed that complaining about spotlight-stealing pink heroines is a well-documented hobby of mine, and so is playing with tropes associated with said pink girls, so rest assured I was very into this. Now that I think of it, Sleepless Domain may even be the first instance of me seeing a story do this.

‎

However at the end of the prologue the team other than the pink and blue girls gets killed and the pink one loses her powers, and it is revealed that the blue girl Undine is the real main character. And the actual story is also very interesting, but I remember being all "noooo I wanted to read about the dysfunctional team instead!" when I first read it. Looking at the dates the webcomic was barely out of the prologue back then so that was probably the reason I never managed to continue reading; it's not that I didn't care about Undine, but at that time I had to re-calibrate my expectations so much that it was difficult to get back on track especially with webcomics only releasing a page at a time.

That's it on my expectations, let's move to what the story is actually about. The premise is that at nighttime monsters appear, citizens hide in their homes behind a magical barrier, and magical girls patrol around to take out the monsters. In civilian life magical girls are celebrities and have managers and merch and such. Undine learns that the incident that killed her team wasn't just a random monster and that instead there was some kind of sinister purpose behind it, and starts investigating.

On the more character side of things we have Undine and the pink girl Tessa, who both struggle with survivor's guilt. Undine finds companionship with a popular and straightforward magical girl Heartful Punch and her training club, and while she faces setbacks, she also eventually manages to have healthy communication with her friends who look out for her. There were delightfully many instances where avoidable drama started brewing, but then the characters sat down and talked it out. Still I also like it how it's not just one heart-to-heart pep talk, and instead Undine needs and gets reassurance through the story. Meanwhile the de-powered Tessa transfers to a normie school and says she's ok, but in a great use of visual comic book storytelling we see her panels become all fractured.

Overall this is yet another really strong magical girl webcomic and I recommend you to check it out (unless you think Madoka ruined the genre, then this is not for you). The art is really good, the worldbuilding gives a fascinating take on magical girls, the main story is compelling and there's a ton of good character stuff and of course I'm a sucker for a magical girl school with various magical outfit designs (also the henshin are drawn really well). Undine is a sweetie and it's easy to root for her, and I can always get behind the main character having a blue colour scheme. Still HP for best character, though I'm most interested in Tessa's story.

#sleepless domain #review I guess

[thelivingautomaton]

welcome back to "additional galaxy brain thoughts on the wheel of time". today i will be Considering(TM) book 3 and the first ten or so chapters of book 4, mostly repeating and building off of my livetweets. tl;dr: robert jordan is a genius and i am the chucklefuck going insane over The Narrative Of It All

now that we're making good headway into the books, i think it's interesting that rather than grouping thoughts/observations based on concrete material stuff (i.e. events, lore, characters), i feel like i can start grouping observations based on narrative themes and motifs that keep cropping up, so let's start by talking romance

okay so like. i do kind of get why people think the way robert jordan writes (or rather, doesn't write) romantic relationships is weird, and i DO kind of wish that he did a better job of like, threading the line between "i am going to leave explicit conversations and thoughts about romantic feelings unsaid and let the reader see what's going on through the actions of pov characters, knowing that they have to filter a character's thoughts and words through said character's inherently unreliable/biased perspective" and skipping straight to "these characters have now Realized their feelings and are just going to speak them out loud now even if it feels like there's been little to no buildup"

that being said. i think it's a fascinating way to actually depict romantic arcs, because to a certain extent it feels...true? like, sometimes people really do be completely oblivious about their own feelings for the longest time, and then all of a sudden they have some epiphany for no real reason and are like "oh shit i love this person!" or alternatively "oh shit i DON'T love this person!" also rj gave himself a built-in excuse by being able to handwave and go "idk, ta'veren!" which is honestly a little based of him

(i will probably talk more about this downthread but rand just casually warping the pattern as he's making his way to tear and the way that that manifests as like...townsfolk deciding en masse to marry each other, or defeating whitecloaks by making them look foolish without undue violence, or giving a starving town a bountiful harvest? makes me insane to think about from both a worldbuilding/narrative perspective -- literally what if you were a walking hurricane of Narrative pulling threads and lives after you in your wake, literally WHAT IF -- and also a character perspective, because it gives SO MUCH insight into rand as a person that THAT'S how his ta'veren magic manifests. anyways)

i think that of the various romantic entanglements that have really happened so far, this worked best for depicting perrin and faile BY FAR, which feels like maybe a hot take? but my GOD their relationship makes me feel crazy in the best way. i'm already a sucker for the slap-slap-kiss dynamic, but i also adore how faile initially sees perrin as a puzzle she wants to figure out and how she's so good at putting some pieces together (like that an aes sedai, a warder, and an ogier all together must be important, and mysteries like that will lead her either to the horn or just to being part of a big important story), and how she's the only person that really makes perrin lose his cool and speak without thinking (the scene where he and then moiraine accidentally blab everything about the dragon and the horn already being found was fucking hysterical).

AND THEN PERRIN GOING IN TO TEL'ARAN'RHIOD TO RESCUE HER???? and swearing that after this he'll only call her faile like she wants??? freeing her first as his wolf-self (which, also: insane concept, love it, thank you rj) but then finding a door and chains he can't break as a wolf, so he has to manifest himself as a man and a blacksmith and use the hammer? AND THEN WAKING UP AFTER BEING MAULED BY DREAM BIRDS WITH FAILE LEANING OVER HIM AND HE JUST WHISPERS "my falcon"????????? FUCKING. AUGH

so like, it WAS a jarring surprise in a way at the start of book 4 that suddenly perrin and faile were definitively In An Established Relationship, but then i thought about it for 3 seconds and was like, okay actually maybe they didn't need to have an explicit "i have feelings for you" scene. maybe "my falcon" WAS that scene. your honor i love them

by contrast a lot of the other romantic relationships have had a lot less focus or screen time that ISN'T just "uh oh, suddenly i realize i have feelings for this person but can't act on them for xyz reason", i.e. nynaeve/lan, rand/elayne, and rand/min (ESPECIALLY rand/min, although conceptually i'm kind of obsessed with Guy Who Is The Narrative's Biggest Chewtoy falling in love with Girl Who Sees The Narrative Most Unambiguously But Cannot Affect It) which is why i think they fall a little more flat for me, at least currently

that being said, i can largely get behind rand/elayne based on their first meeting in the palace garden (oh to be a farmboy with a concussion and have your wounds delicately bandaged by the daughter-heir with her own richly-woven kerchief!) and the scene where they tell each other that they're "very fond" of the other, which was SO cute and dorky

it's funny in a way because i almost feel like the romantic scenes between two characters in love are more of an afterthought than scenes where characters who are friends talk ABOUT their romantic feelings for others and how to go about dealing with them, because THOSE scenes really shine with how much light they shed on the non-romantic interpersonal connections

specifically thinking here of the one-two combo of moiraine briefly making a comment to the girls about her own romantic prospects (or lack thereof) followed by nynaeve bringing egwene and elayne wine so the three of them can talk about rand and what to do with elayne's feelings, egwene's lack thereof, and how to deal with berelain

(sidenote: you truly have to hand it to berelain for the hustle and the chutzpah to just directly walk into the dragon reborn's chambers, hair done face beat tits out, and ask if he's DTF)

anyway i love those kinds of scenes because they just feel so NORMAL, you know? like, the girls are, politically and magically speaking, three of the most important people on the god damn continent. but they're also teen girls! (except nynaeve who's like, 24, but you know what i'm getting at) they're gonna have normal girl talk! it's gonna be filtered through their extreme circumstances but they're gonna have normal-ass wants and feelings and desires!

also sorry but it will never not be funny to have a compare-and-contrast switch of povs in the middle of a chapter, like egwene leaving rand thinking "aw, i know he was lying when he said he also didn't love me, at least he's not taking it too hard!" and immediately going to rand thinking "i....don't think egwene believed me about me loving her like a sister"

when's mat gonna fall in love huh. like on the one hand i think it'd be neat to represent the full spectrum from "immediate established relationship" (perrin and faile) to "relationship that takes time to figure out" (rand and elayne/min) to "no relationship, just vibes" (mat) but on the other hand it would be SO FUNNY.

actually this kind of dovetails nicely into my next group of thoughts, which is mat cauthon: the rogue of all time

i'm dedicating an entire bullet list to him because book 3 is the first we get with his pov and his real character (without an evil dagger eating his soul) and good fucking GOD

this man really woke up from his magic coma, ate the equivalent of 4 full meals, walked outside, challenged TWO skilled swordsmen to a fight, WITH HIS QUARTERSTAFF, purely for shits and giggles. AND THEN HE WINS. and then has to prop himself up on his quarterstaff so he doesn't immediately fall over. THE SCENE OF ALL TIME

(sidenote: i am continually surprised by how much i like galad and gawyn. i think there's something interesting to be said about how they serve as parallels/foils to rand, but also, i would like to see more of them, and i would like to see more of the goofy-ass sibling dynamics between gawyn, galad, and elayne. thank u)

and like, he literally just DOESN'T STOP being The Most Guile Hero Rogue Ever. getting his hands on the amyrlin seat's "i can do what i want" permit! breaking in to the palace in caemlyn so he can actually literally give elayne's letter to morgase with his own hands like he promised! (sidenote, i have a lot of percolating thoughts about mat's luck and love him testing things to see how it works, like figuring out that it works best when it's random -- my additional takes are that it also only works for things he outright says or promises he'll do, a la "making a wager", and that it works better the more the odds are against him. fucking immaculate concept, thank you for this rj.) blowing a hole in the side of the impenetrable fort with fireworks he's been carrying around for half the book!

but i also think he's such an interesting counterpart to rand and perrin because (like lanfear points out in her dialogue with him) he's the only one of the three ta'veren who DOESN'T have to be tempted to glory, who DOES want to be more than a farmer/shepherd/blacksmith

...i was about to add "who ISN'T running from his role in the narrative" except then i realized: that's actually not true at all, mat is 100% running from his role in the narrative just like rand and perrin, he's just doing it in a different way (i.e. embracing his weird ta'veren magic but running from the deeper implications of why he has that magic and what he should bend it towards beyond just "fuck bitches get money")

...which then dovetails nicely into my next thoughts, Dear God The Narrative Of It All

THE NARRATIVE OF IT ALL!!! the boys each dealing with the inner conflict between refusing their role, embracing it for the wrong/selfish reasons, and fulfilling it because it's their duty and nobody else can do it and it has to be done! MY GODDDDDDDDDD

i think this manifests in the most interesting way with the bubble of evil scene at the start of book 4, specifically how what manifests for the three boys is a personification/symbolic representation of each of their respective conflicts: perrin versus the axe, mat versus the cards (i.e. his luck), and rand versus his reflections

and each of those fights has some specific details that make it really clear imo that what they're fighting is themselves, or a subconscious part of themselves. the axe tries to kill faile as well as perrin, and perrin thinks that if his own axe harms her he might actually die. mat sees the faces of nobility on the cards (the amyrlin seat, queen morgase) because he's the one who's most averse to nobility, or those in power more generally (i.e. aes sedai). rand SPECIFICALLY has to defeat his reflections by absorbing them into himself, and SPECIFICALLY thinks that if he's defeated, the reflections will fight each other until there's just one that has his face and his life and his memories...just like how his life is already being coopted and warped by the image/role that others see him as (i.e. the dragon reborn). robert jordan you are making me SICK (compliment)

also, literally every comment someone makes about how they're all changing, or specifically how rand just wants to be rand al'thor the shepherd, makes me want to scream cry and throw up. IT'S SO MUCH. my current favorite crackpot theory is that when all is said and done and the last battle is won, one of the boys, probably rand, is gonna wind up just walking off into the sunset as an anonymous traveling bard/gleeman.

like i know rand is supposed to shed his blood fighting the dark one and everyone is pretty sure he's gonna die horribly from Channeler Madness if not during the last battle, but come on. for my own sanity if nothing else i have to believe he'll get to the end alive, SOMEHOW. and like, i think it would be really beautiful if after suffering as the dragon and as a tool of the pattern, he's able to just...travel, and be free, and tell stories instead of being part of one. and he even liked playing the flute for his supper! just let me have this, PLEASE

the other big thing that has me going "oh my god the narrative of it all" is the way that dreams and the dream world are becoming bigger parts of the story, vis a vis perrin's wolf dreams and egwene using the stone ring to go into tel'aran'rhiod, as well as the sheer amount of space dedicated just to lanfear fucking with all of their dreams for no apparent reason other than being dramatic and evil. insane concepts, i love it all, i love SYMBOLISM

i had some other thoughts (mostly about the structures of books 2 and 3 being super similar but book 3 allowing the main characters to exert more agency and get pushed around by the plot less) but i think those i covered pretty well in my twitter thread. anyway i just got to the exposition dump about the redstone doorway that can answer three questions and am now eagerly awaiting the time when everyone insisting they can't or shouldn't go inside gets forced to go inside regardless and shit immediately goes fucking crazy, because it's gotta happen, right? <3

#wheel of time #wot book spoilers #oh wait one more thing: i love the aiel. i don't have anything intelligent to say about them i just love them and their multifaceted cultur #robert jordan really out here giving the girlies (me) everything they want in a massive high fantasy series!!!

[livlepretre]

So with your hype about the Wot series, I'm seriously thinking about watching 😌 would you say its at least a fair interpretation of the books? Or would it be better to read the books and then watch the series or vice versa? 🤔

YOU MUST, IT'S THE BEST

and I spent the day mulling this over, and:

I think the answer comes down to what your preferred way to experience the story is.

Like, I should put it out there that the first 11 books + prequel in the wot series comprise my absolute favorite written story of all time. I'm extremely biased! The depth of the characters and the psychological journeys they go on, as well as the wacky amazing chilling worldbuilding and adventures and the relationships they have with each other are just mind-bogglingly good. The kind of story that gets your pulse racing and makes you hold your head in your hands and laugh out of sheer disbelief and delight frequently. It will also break your heart. So be forewarned. (I say the first 11 books, because sadly the author Robert Jordan died while writing the final book, which was split into 3 novels and written by another author, Brandon Sanderson, based on the notes RJ left behind. While it was nice to have an ending to the series, I don't really consider it the ending-- more like, pretty good fanfic. But it has its moments.)

Basically, I think that if you are a patient reader that can get into the worldbuilding and slowly drawn out characterizations, then reading is optimum because the books are the story I rave so much about. (I say this as not the most patient reader, haha) But the weird thing is that, at least in my opinion, Eye of the World (Book 1) is written in a very different style from The Great Hunt (Book 2)-- book 2 onward is written in a more modern and accessible style, whereas book 1 tries hard to get into the style of Tolkein, but that makes for dryer reading. I had a few false starts trying to get into the series before finally, finally getting far enough in to get invested on like, my 3rd or 4th attempt. (Literally the prologue makes no sense until finishing the 3rd book. I almost think people who are having trouble jumping in should just be told to skip the prologue because as fascinating as it is in retrospect, it's word salad to someone just starting the books. Unless you've seen season 1 of the tv show? which takes me to...)

If you would prefer to dive right into the world, and see if you like it and want to spend time with the characters, then the show is in many ways faithful. There are certain elements that feel a little off to me, and they had to condense a number of things to adapt the sprawling story to 8 episodes, but I do think it's quite good. It gets at the heart of the characters and their journeys even while remixing narrative and plot elements. I think watching season 1 at least would be a great way to jump in, and if you like it, OH MY GOD DO I RECOMMEND PICKING UP EYE OF THE WORLD. (I wouldn't skip book 1 even if you've seen season 1 because there is enough difference that I think it would make starting with book 2 a little confusing)

#asks #finnismyoriginalsin #wot