palethaesia

[palethaesia]

So with Oppenheimer coming out tomorrow, I feel a certain level of responsibility to share some important resources for people to understand more about the context of the Manhattan Project. Because for my family, it’s not just a piece of history but an ongoing struggle that’s colonized and irradiated generations of New Mexicans’ lives and altered our identity forever. Not only has the legacy of the Manhattan Project continued to harm and displace Indigenous and Hispanic people but it’s only getting bigger: Biden recently tasked the Los Alamos National Lab facility to create 30 more plutonium pits (the core of a nuclear warhead) by 2026. So this is a list of articles, podcasts and books to check out to hear the real stories of the local people living with this unique legacy that’s often overlooked. 

Keep reading

[palethaesia]

You'll get there boys...

[palethaesia]

✨My Top Reads for the First Half of 2023✨

Thanks to StoryGraph (sold to me by many zealous friends), I have the power of stats for my reading wrap-up these past six months! Since finishing school, I’ve made a conscious effort to make a dent in my TBR pile and also rediscover my love of other people’s stories to help my own drafting process. Because I use much of the same brainspace that yells excitedly about fiction to yell intellectually for the sake of writing term papers, everything I read/wrote/dove into felt tarnished by the stripe of academia. Luckily, with some distance (and the wise words of Alix Harrow) to help me out of it, I really enjoyed a lot of what I read these past six months. Below are some mini-reviews (meaning, coherent yelling) of my 5-star reads so far this year! I don’t like trying to describe what I like (this is why I could never be an editor of a litmag) though this list does feel representative of my tastes.

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko. I picked this up in January because I saw it on a lot of “dark academia” lists, and I truly think this is the only book that deserves the name, since it is indeed very dark and very academia (studying and the subjects of study are actually main components of the plot, which should be a given for the genre and yet so often isn’t). Some main highlights for me were the sympathetic narrative voice and the uncompromising directness of approach, but I think what makes it shine objectively is the incredible pacing. For a book where, to some extent, “nothing happens,” it was nevertheless a compulsive page-turner and left me feeling as though I was being remade in the process of reading it. If the world were not so deeply terrifying, it would be one of those novels I’d want to live in.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. I read this back to back with Vita Nostra, which was good because nothing else would have been a satisfactory follow-up. As far as SF goes, I usually tend to space opera, so this was very much up my ally, but there were so many delicious and satisfying layers to this novel, beyond the setting: the rich and glittering world-building, the authentic sense of history and culture, the tensions and obstacles facing the characters that never felt orchestrated for the sake of plot but followed naturally from the dictates of the world. Also, Arkady Martine’s prose reminded me a lot of Robin McKinley’s (I know she’s a fan, which made total sense), and a McKinleyian style is rare enough that it added extra points of delight. I’m very much looking forward to what Martine does next; she’s a wonder.

Babel by R.F. Kuang. This book actually lived up to its hype for me, mostly due to the ending, though also for its technical excellence. Despite the density of scholarship and occasional moments where connections between characters felt forsaken for message and plot, it was very much a novel I would want to study in terms of stakes and individual motivations. Kuang pays her homage to other dark academia novels—the middle chapters of hiding a murder were especially well done and enjoyably evoked Secret History—yet delivers something entirely her own. A theme I personally resonated with, though I never saw anyone else speak of it, was the sensitive and effective way she used the topic of biraciality to map onto Robin’s and Griffin’s individual arcs and how nature, as well as nurture, split them along the line of empire. Kuang is, simply, brilliant.

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo. Sequels are tricky for me. There are times when I find them vastly inferior to the first book of a series; and there are other times when the middle book of a trilogy is my favorite installment. This was one of those occasions, much to my own surprise, since I enjoyed Ninth House a lot and kept my expectations low after seeing some of Hell Bent’s advance reviews. This novel made its precursor feel nearly like a prequel, mostly because of how its plot centers on Darlington’s disappearance, which had taken up so much space in Ninth House; but also in its more thorough exploration of its central characters. As with Ninth House, the intersection between the magical abilities and the characters themselves didn’t entirely line up, but Bardugo was really aiming at a book 3 with this one, and I’m very hopeful that’ll pan out.

Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather. I love big books and I cannot lie, but I think I’m more often in awe of novellas because of their ability to deliver a complex story and world within such a small space. I loved the world-building in this one and its haunting echoes with our reality today, but also the conscious focus on religion in its futuristic setting, something often skated over in post-apocalyptic or dystopian literature. I definitely think this will be a book I’ll want to read again for the purpose of studying craft, especially since Rather is also an accomplished short story writer, which is also relevant to my needs.

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If you have other books similar to these that you'd like to recommend, please hit me up!! I'm always on the lookout for new SFF to read :)

[palethaesia]

This is so well-written. Exactly my thoughts on his character

the appeal of yeojeong as a normal guy who’s just a little bit off. not enough that you would notice when talking to him, of course, but it’s just there, under the surface. a disturbance. and i think it’s interesting because typically you have two types of guys somewhat adjacent to this: guy who seems totally normal but is secretly sadistic/a psychopath, and then guy haunted by a traumatic/troubled past, who has that secret layer of torment running beneath the surface of their image. but yeojeong breaks through these archetypes, and i think part of it is because he’s just so…calm. it’s not that he’s living a double life (kind doctor by day, killer by night) or hiding part of his past (everyone he worked with knew about what happened to his father, and watched his downward spiral during his college days). he’s not the typical male character who is, at every attempt, trying to outrun his tragic past (even though he does run once or twice); he’s not haunted by flashbacks, or suffer from PTSD in the way that is usually portrayed in dramas. and i think part of that is because the glory is a story about victims. it’s dongeun’s story, first and foremost, even though it is also yeojeong’s story, and hyeonnam’s story, and sohee’s story. but it’s a story about dongeun’s pain, and when it’s not about her pain, it’s just about the pain of victimhood - unlike other dramas, this isn’t a show where male pain outweighs the rest.

so yeojeong is just a normal guy. he’s handsome. he has a good career. he’s a plastic surgeon, an interesting choice when both his parents were/are hospital directors, and his father seemed to have worked in the er or something of the sort prior to his death (or at the very least wasn’t a plastic surgeon). something could be said here of yeojeong choosing the ‘safe’ path as a doctor, a path where he cures pain and makes people happy without the added risk of being attacked by one of his patients. there’s no proof of that in the show - why he chose to be a plastic surgeon - but it’s an interesting thought path to travel. 

dongeun says he must have lived a good life. that he’s never had to worry about the path that he’s on. and that’s true, to a certain extent. to everyone, including her in the beginning, yeojeong is perfectly friendly. he’s perfect, but not the perfect that people perceive as too perfect (i.e. the guy who’s hiding things); he has his moments where he spazzes out, gets into fights, goes crazy over dongeun texting him back, teases his mom. he’s perfectly well adjusted (a perfect contrast to dongeun’s ‘maladjustment’). he wears flip flops to work and gets the same coffee order daily. he plays go with old men in the park.

he likes to listen to the fizzing of vitamin tablets in water because it calms him down. is this a strange thing? only because he thinks it’s important enough to mention to his therapist. he does it at work too - drops the tablet in, closes his eyes, rests his head. he does it at home - drops the tablet in, opens the drawer, draws a knife. it’s about the noise. bubbles rising to the surface, like bubbles rising from underwater. he stays underwater until the last possible moment, when he has to break the surface in order to breath. dongeun makes him feel like he’s at the eye of a storm - a deceptively calm center, while everything else rages outside. and i think it’s kind of important that he makes that comparison, when he’s someone always seeking that calm. the soothing noise, that makes him feel lonely.

so he’s just a normal guy. a normal guy who receives letters on a regular basis from the prisoner who brutally murdered his father. he doesn’t like letters, he tells dongeun. who knows what he does with the letters - does he keep them? does he throw them away as soon as he sees them? he must have read some of them; maybe you only need to read one to know what is in the rest. maybe he’s still reading them; maybe he keeps them without reading, an invisible torment. it’s not what he does with the letters that matters, but that he receives letters at all. 

can you still call it a haunting if you’ve almost made your peace with it? if you’re living with it? 

he’s just a normal guy, who looks his therapist right in the eyes and tells her that she couldn’t fix him. he diligently attends therapy for years on a regular basis, even though it doesn’t work. he finally abandons it when he moves to semyeong, because he chooses to embrace dongeun’s revenge. he chooses his own revenge, too, in a way. the dark part of him that he can’t escape. the one that makes him pick up the knife, who asks dongeun who to kill before she even tells him she wants any of them dead, even when he’s a doctor from a family of doctors, and doctors don’t kill - they save lives instead. 

you couldn’t fix me, he tells his therapist calmly. so calmly. as if there’s not a bloodied man sitting next to him, a man he dreams of killing. the man is just life to him, just like the letters are life to him to. a dulled numbness. an acceptance of it. 

is your son going through hell? can you even tell it’s hell, if it’s what you’ve become used to? is it hell when you’re a doctor dreaming of murder? is it hell to no longer be tormented by dead men and living murderers who send you letters? is it?

[palethaesia]

Moon Dong Eun & Joo Yeo Jeong

Anne Carson 🥀 The Glory (2022) 🥀 Vladimir Nabokov🥀 Trista Mateer

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Jenny George, "Tin Bucket"

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"The trick...is to make it look real."

[six of crows, leigh bardugo || a searing burst of light, shadow and bone || hunger: a memoir of (my) body, roxane gay || every monstrous thing, shadow and bone ||recollection of my nonexistence: a memoir, rebecca solnit || the blinding knife, brent weeks || like calls to like, shadow and bone || no funerals, shadow and bone]

[palethaesia]

God....it was hard hitting realizing they were taking only one single thing from those whales. But again. This film hits so much harder if you're indigenous. Because all I can see is our Buffalo. Their tongues being torn from their bodies and furs taken. Fields and fields of their corpses left to rot. Meat wasted. Generations of life lost. All for the sole purpose of selling as delicacies to rich people somewhere in Europe. The tongues. Just a single part. Everything else was left to rot.

Our people starved. Mountains of their bones photographed to proudly show how they would starve us out. To come begging to them for help or die. Our very way of life gone. The buffalo who's hooves shaped our plains and its ecosystems. Beautiful, intelligent, strong animals. The creatures we followed in life to survive. Creators reminder of the balance of all life. Us and them, together in life.

Taken for the gain of white men. Slaughtered in the millions. Nothing but carnage. Only now hundreds of years ago with so much love pain and effort do we finally have them back. It's hard to imagine such cruelty. To have that mirrored back hurts. It makes the raw pain of taking something from an animal just for a fucking millionaire to stay young. Destroying yet another culture. Not just an animal. A whole other society for humanity's selfish wishes. It's too painful to think on too much.

Please just share and donate about the Buffalo projects. Once again, this movies impact should not be lost.

[palethaesia]

book quotes that i will never recover from

"he is half of my soul, as the poets say. " - song of achilles

"write me a letter telling me how to live the rest of my life without you." - how to make friends with the dark

"they were my birthday presents." - shatter me

"she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes and the depth of his laugh." - clockwork princess

"my name is sam cortland... and i will not be afraid." - assassin's blade

"you chose me four years ago. would you choose me still?" - these violent delights

"we were all supposed to make it." - crooked kingdom

"i remember everything." - the invisible life of addie larue

"come home and shout at me. come home and fight with me. come home and break my heart, if you must. just come home." - cruel prince

"i wasted all those yesterdays and am completely out of tomorrows." - they both die at the end

"you hated the idea of me." - the final gambit

"bob says hello." - house of hades

"abuse can feel like love. starving people will eat anything." - nightfall

"i missed you only with an ocean between us. but if death was separating us... i would find you." - queen of shadows

"i loved him. i love him. as best i could." - we were liars

"i'm the villain, even in my own story. but you were supposed to play a different role." - finale

"i will find you again in the next world—the next life. and we will have that time. i promise." - a court of wings and ruin

"i spent half of my time loving her and the other half hiding how much i loved her." - the seven husbands of evelyn hugo

[palethaesia]

rent was due

[palethaesia]

I made a Google drive with the first Chain of Thorns chapter

Here you can read and download it so you don't have to make an account or anything ☀️🥹✨

I would really appreciate it if you say that ima best girl in comments😌

[palethaesia]

Jennifer Willough, from “The Sun Is Still A Part Of Me”, Beautiful Zero: Poems

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queerplatonic love

platonic love - rose mannie | touched by another no2 (2010) - amanda tonkin-hill | hopepunk humanity - via we heart it | romance is boring - los campesinos! | best friends - by larry sanders | platonic soulmate - zishan jahangir | 8/30 - madeline jubilee saito | the beginning of the end by @sunbleeding | tongue tied - grouplove

[palethaesia]

long distance love

wong kar-wai // e. e. cummings // jorge damiani // rocio montoya // frida kahlo // li-young lee // evan cohen // mary oliver // holly warburton // clifton gachagua // sanna wani // anne magill // craig santos perez // jungho lee

[palethaesia]

sandman (2022) // frankenstein – mary shelley // the last days of judas iscariot – stephen adly guirgis // why didn't you stop me – mitski // speeches for dr. frankenstein – margaret atwood

[palethaesia]

you know what’s a trope that never gets tired is when theyre bouncing around in the plot and suddenly an important name crops up- it’s blorbo bleebus. and some dude is like who the hell is blorbo bleebus. and we immediately cut to our new friend blorbo bleebus pulling the most absolutely buckwild shit you’ve ever seen

[palethaesia]

Benedikt reuniting with Marshall:

Roma in a random alley: