moondal514

[moondal514]

Reading Recap February 2025

Some more rereads but also I’m making my way through my tbr list, which is nice. I actually got some new releases in here! So I can say officially say I’m being current not just reading older stuff 😂

The Stone Sky, N. K. Jemisin

The finale! God this whole trilogy is fantastic. And heartbreaking. I really appreciate the whole message about empire and societies built on the suffering of others never being able to last and the way the whole series has this undercurrent of hope running through it even as it is bleak. I will admit, I was a bit underwhelmed by this book compared to the other two books in the series, partly, I think, because I saw the ending coming. But I still really enjoyed this book and I think this whole series has been cemented as some of my favorite books of all time

FLARE Magazine, Issue 1

A very new lit journal that centers around stories from writers that are disabled and/or chronically ill. While I very much support the mission of this magazine, I was unfortunately dissatisfied with the quality of the writing for most of the pieces here. However, I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt since it’s this magazine’s inaugural issue, and I hope the quality of stories submitted will be improved as time goes on. Essentially the only pieces from this issue I did like are “Y’all Say Eugenicist as If Eugenics Is Inherently Bad lol” by Audrey T. Carroll, “Iterations” by Brady Alexander, “Art of Noise” by Ilari Pass, and “MDD” by Leisly Ann

Bicoastal Review 7

Poetry-centric journal. Overall I found the quality of the works here quite good. I appreciated that each work on the journal’s website included a recording of someone reading them out loud, but unfortunately sometimes the recording icons covered up parts of the poems themselves and ironically made it harder to read the poems. The standouts for me include “Fable of New Weather” by Adam Houle, “Picking Up Cicada Carcasses in Texas” by Leia Bradley, “The City” by Nancy Burke, and “The Art of Drawing Boats” by Hayley Phillips

17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future, Jon Bois

I’m like eight years late to the party on this one but wow I loved it. What an innovative reading experience. I don’t think anything I saw about this story on social media could’ve prepared me for what I read, but I really had a good time with it. What a wonderful love letter to the cultural staying power of sports and humanity’s capacity for care

Remnants of Filth: Vol. 6, Rou Bao Bu Chi Ro

This volume contains both my second favorite part of this novel and the beginning of my least favorite parts of this novel, so I’ve come out of it with mixed feelings. On one hand, I really do love the whole sad backstory about the Chu family and all the drama and fucked up reveals in the Huntian Cave part (also known as Yue Chenqing’s Xue Meng moment, poor kid). On the other hand, everything that happens after that is the point at which this novel starts to get too ridiculous for me lol. However, Mo Xi spends at least a quarter of this volume crying, so I had lots of fun

Summer Sons, Lee Mandelo

I read this one because it’s an entry into the “a book with a traumatized fucked up gay character named Andrew mainly taking place at a college in a southern US state” genre. I kind of had issues getting into it for about the first 100 pages or so, but Andrew’s whole deal fascinated me so much that I pushed through and in the end I had a good time. Which is to say, the second half of the book appealed much more to me than the first half lol. Overall, it was decent and definitely worth the read. I liked it

Joshi BL

Anthology of BL manga one-shots told from the point of view of female side characters. While none of the stories in this collection jived with me, I really liked the concept of this anthology a lot. It’s nice to see a sympathetic and nuanced view of characters that would usually be hated or villainized in the types of stories that they appear in and the archetypes they inhabit

Catching Chén Qíng Lìng: The Untamed and Adaptation, Production, and Reception in Transcultural Contexts, ed. Cathy Yue Wang and Maria K. Alberto

Still haven’t watched more than three episodes of CQL and I don’t plan on watching more. But since I do run around in the MDZS fandom, I was supremely curious to read some academic fandom analysis anyways. Overall this collection was very enlightening and informed me of a lot of context about the history of this fandom and danmei fandom culture in general I didn’t actually know. The essays I liked the most were “A Full Account: Queer Structures and Narrative Democratization in Mo Dao Zu Shi” by Andrea Acosta and Lillian Lu, “Iterative Violence: English (mis?)Translations of Mo Dao Zu Shi and Chén Qíng Lìng” by Chang Y. Ng, “Allegations of Chinoiserie: Guo(o)feng, Authenticity, and (Self-)Orientalization in Chén Qíng Lìng and Its Companion Album” by 墨客 hunxi, and “MDZS in Diaspora: Negotiating Chinese Americanness through Modern AU Fanfiction” by Haley Wu and Jiaqi Kang

Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

Discord book club reread! It’s so fun how differently this book reads when you revisit it compared to going into it knowing nothing. It’s like a totally different story when you actually have context for some of the shit Gideon doesn’t know about or is full on ignoring. Canaan House in particular is a completely different place, with the remnants of Jod’s crew pre-lyctorhood completely haunting the place in ways the reader can’t appreciate until reread

The Summer Palace and Other Stories: A Captive Prince Short Story Collection, C.S. Pacat

I had a random revival in my interest in the Captive Prince fandom in the middle of the month and it reminded me that I had forgotten to read this short story collection. I very much enjoyed all of these stories, but the highlight was definitely “Pet,” the Ancel-centric story. I had previously wondered why exactly the fandom found Ancel/Berenger so compelling and what made them interesting characters and, well, now I have my answer. I also very much enjoyed seeing some of the events of book 1 from Ancel’s pov because the added context definitely adds a lot

The Sunshine Court, Nora Sakavic

Reread done in anticipation of The Golden Raven. It’s been said before that this book reads like a JereJean fanfiction, and lowkey I agree, but that’s not to say that I still don’t enjoy it. Though I’m not as taken with this book as I am with the original All For the Game trilogy, I’m still very invested in Jean and what will happen to him. Honestly my biggest struggle with this book is that the setting is my childhood stomping grounds, and so knowing the setting so well really messes with my suspension of disbelief (how I wish Nora had the foresight to place Jeremy and the Trojans in a random made up college in California instead of the very real USC)

The Golden Raven, Nora Sakavic

Still reads like a JereJean fanfiction, even more so perhaps, but once again that isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it. I loved the Trojans, I loved the cameos from the Foxes, I loved the games, I loved the fucked up Raven shit, I loved the Jean whump, I loved seeing Jeremy’s messed up family dynamics and bad coping mechanisms, and I loved the JereJean tension. But I have to say, I think this is my least favorite of Sakavic’s books so far. I had so many issues with the pacing and there were so many little plot threads introduced all at once that got dropped or forgotten (hopefully to be resolved in the next book?). I also found the handling of some of Jean’s issues to be kind of poorly done, but well at this point I’m used to that sort of thing in this series 😂. I think the fact that it was all originally meant to be one book shows a lot here. But I reserve my overall judgment until Jean’s story is complete, and there are so many scenes from this book I’m going to be rotating in my brain for a while

Rejected Lit, Issue 9

Continuing to try to get myself into poetry more seriously through trial by fire. I will be the first to admit that I’m not a very good connoisseur of poetry as its own genre, but I’m trying. The overall quality of writing in this magazine is very good, though some of the poems fall very much on the side of “…I don’t get it” lmao. The standouts for me include “Jennifer’s Body” by Ruby Ferris, “Pale Green Speck” by Oswaldo Vargas, “The Migration” by Talor North, and “Warfare” by Hanaa Ibrahim

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Ken Liu

I held off on reading this collection for a long time for two reasons: 1) I hated The Grace of Kings and 2) this was a rec from my little brother, whose book recommendations for me are usually very hit or miss (case in point, Grace of Kings was also a rec from him lmao). Luckily this one was, for the most part, a hit. Not all of the stories were created equally and I definitely liked some more than others. Some of the stories were so incredibly corny I was rolling my eyes as I struggled to read them, and some of the stories induced such a strong emotional reaction in me that I almost cried. But overall I enjoyed this collection and found it to be a good read. My favorites included “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species,” “Simulacrum,” “The Waves,” and “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary”

[moondal514]

All I want is to come back to their side and head to a new future. Because I know, this is the last time. ―

Link Click: Bridon Arc

[moondal514]

sometimes i'm having a bad day, but then i think about Whitespine Uncaged and i start having a good day again

[moondal514]

In another time

[moondal514]

Liu Xiao infiltrating already established couples to recruite them to be memebers of his polycule

He truely is that dude that's in every friend group

Even with the Li siblings

[moondal514]

The care with which the golden raven establishes Jean and Jeremy to be suffering the same kind of abuse in different fonts flies past poetic and into straight up mathematical precision.

Jean is the Raven hate sink. Nobody in the Nest is okay, but in an environment where every weakness is mocked relentlessly, Jean the significantly younger foreigner who won't (can't) speak english is the obvious standout, and Riko and the Master clearly signal that they won't punish abuse against him, so he becomes the target of their violence as a collective outlet.

The Knox/Wilshire siblings are all equally under their mother's controlling thumb, and none of them are coping well with the matter. They end up taking it out on Jeremy, since their parents already focus their ire on him for not staying in the closet or adopting the new family name.

Edgar Allen brags about the myriad of fantastic amenities they award their athletes, including high end cars and guaranteed professional careers, that they're never going to get to enjoy because the Nest demands too much of them. The Wilshires are fantastically wealthy, but more of that wealth is spent bribing their wider social circles to isolate the children than it is given to them for their own discretion.

The Nest implodes when Ichirou snubs Riko from their father's funeral, prompting him to almost kill Jean, and give up their greatest defensive talent in the process. The Wilshires explode because, by design or simple scheduling conflict, they entrusted their suicidal youngest to his drug addicted older brother in a large social event, because making both boys miserable was simply more convenient than getting either of them the psychiatric care the family had full access to.

Jean is technically out of the Nest, but he is still firmly under the Moriyama's thumb and there is no amount of technical freedom that will let him forget it. To cope, he tends to hit, scratch and choke himself, turning his grief and frustration into a physical pain he can quantify.

Jeremy does his best to act as your average LA rich boy, but there's no amount of placating that will keep his mother from pulling back his leash at a whim. To cope, he sleeps with people who treat him badly, mentally giving both himself and his parents a tangible reason to be disappointed with him, rather than accepting that their prejudice is not his fault.

Jean and Jeremy were raised to believe that they are at once fully competent and capable, and utter failures who cannot be trusted with anything and will inevitably get everyone hurt. And its only now, staring at each other, that they can see just how deep the contradiction runs.

[moondal514]

madoka magica is so scary im so glad middle school isnt real

[moondal514]

"you don't like mpreg?" i don't even like fpreg

[moondal514]

gay love can should must and will pierce through the veil of death and save the day

[moondal514]

polycule with character A who's a woman when she's with character B except for when he's with character C because that shit is neither gay nor straight, tis a warriors bond and character B who's only a woman 5% of the time she's with character A because that's the largest amount possible she can stand to be Perceived Like That and then never any other time with anyone else, but also knows he's constantly on the verge of being shoved into no good awful bad domestic horror story of being character C's wife (not necessarily through any fault of character C) and character C who is tragically cishet but wishes so so so bad he was a woman also so she's actually a woman 100% of the time with both characters but no one can acknowledge this ever or the universe will explode

[moondal514]

harrowhark nonagesimus ⚔️

[moondal514]

Can they flirt, aftg edition

Andrew: can but hates it. Makes him feel desperate. Also the man of his dreams registered none of it and literally only responded to Andrew being a weirdo so clearly it's all a scam.

Dan: yes, but can't see it as more than an act for when you want to get into someone's pants. Makes life hell for Matt before they start dating. Makes life *very fun* once they do.

Allison: absolutely. Does not respect any man who falls for it.

Matt: learned from watching guys try to flirt with his mom and her boxing friends, so his tactics are somewhat...demographically skewed. Eats shit when trying to romance Dan.

Aaron: Contrary to what second-hand accounts may tell us, this man is oozing charisma. Med student jock who goes to therapy, it's the whole package. If he were nine inches taller he would be the main character.

Nicky: bagged a man with high school-level grasp of his language. Raised two teens on a bartender salary. The results speak for themselves.

Kevin: nope. This man is fake as hell, star factor is doing alllllll the heavy lifting here. Unless you're as obsessed with exy as he is, in which case you're liable to confuse his attention *on* you with attention *to* you. Many have fallen victim to this effect. There is no support group.

Seth: chernobyl-level "you could fix me" aura

Renee: you're not sure if she's flirting or just being nice. Your friends are no help. Her friends seem to have a monetary incentive in the answer and can't be trusted. Your best shot might literally be praying for mercy.

Neil: ITS A TRAP HE'S STEALING YOUR WALLET

[moondal514]

jean, andrew, and neil should start an “i survived a homoerotic situationship with kevin day” club

[moondal514]

the 5th one on the 2nd row for kevjean? pleasies! (if you feel like it)

-@stabbyfoxandrew

[moondal514]

Shen Qingqiu, pissed off during a peak lord meeting: when I die I want Shang-shidi to lower me into the earth, just so he can let me down one last time

Shang Qinghua: bro c'mon

Yue Qingyuan, abruptly overcome by jealousy so intense that he's on the verge of a qi deviation: but I thought I was the one who let Xiao Jiu down the most...?

[moondal514]

again, again and again

[moondal514]

the funniest part about merlin is the fact that he’s even around for most of the show. like what the fuck is he doing there. no other person with a personal servant is tailed like arthur is. and yet nobody fucking blinks an eye at his presence.

like there are at least three separate occasions where the plot for an episode is uther sending arthur on a super secret confidential mission with the fate of the kingdom at stake, and they have a whole conversation like ‘i need you to understand the importance of the secrecy of this mission.’ ‘understood father, i will take only my most trusted men.’ ‘no arthur, you and YOU ALONE must go.’ ‘i understand.’ and then it cuts to the super secret mission and fucking merlin is just there. like. road trip with my best buddy. what a view. love this horse. like ARTHUR?

everyone always forgets he exists the second a fight happens, too. every goddamn time the knights go on a short patrol that god forbid merlin not tag along for they get attacked by bandits or whatever and merlin doesn’t even carry a fucking sword and after the fight arthur always turns around and merlin is just kinda standing there in the middle of the fight picking at a hang nail. nobody considers it wild that he’s there for all of this. the one time he actually bothered taking a sword off a dead guy to defend himself with arthur saw him holding it and he mocked it like ‘lol the fuck are you of all people gonna do with that’ THEY FULLY EXPECT HIM TO JUST STAND AND WAIT FOR THE FIGHT TO END