#Philosopher's Walk

[inefekt69]

Kyoto, Japan

[ofliterarynature]

AUGUST 2024 WRAP UP

[loved liked ok nope DNF (bookclub) reread*]

True Grit • A Sorceress Comes to Call • (Fit for the Gods) • A Short Walk Through a Wide World • The Chestnut King* • Where the Drowned Girls Go • The Hollow Boy* • The Philosopher's Flight • The Whispering Skull* • Death by Silver • Grandma Gatewood's Walk • Across the Green Grass Fields • Tales from the Hinterland • The Screaming Staircase* • Ascension • Running Close to the Wind • August Kitko and the Mechas from Space

* * * * * *

Lockwood & Co - time for a reread! I really like the idea of ghost books but struggle to find ones that I like, but these are perfect! The worldbuilding and story structure is somehow just what I want - just enough rules to give them the confidence to be bad ass AND tension for when they royally screw up, and a fantastic, case-book type narrative where the characters are going about their lives, fighting ghosts, and not actually getting to the titular case until halfway through the book. Love it! I need more like that actually. (I recommend The Angel of the Crows)

Tales from the Hinterland -since I finally read The Language of Thorns I figured I should get around to this too. I didn't like the related novels all that much but WAS interested in the stories, but it's been so long I've mostly forgotten their context. I didn't mind it, and I think Albert has a better grasp on the language and form of fairy tales than Bardugo, but the inescapable grimness of the stories quickly became repetitive and boring.

Across the Green Grass Fields - it took me a bit to warm up to this one, but once we went through the door I had a good time! I think this is probably my favorite of the individual door stories so far. On the other hand, I usually like the ensemble books, but Where the Drowned Girls Go didn't quite work for me this time, but it might be one that just needs a second read.

Grandma Gatewood's Walk - I've seen this one around (most recently at a Hocking Hills gift shop) and finally picked it up since my library had it on audiobook. Unfortunately it was doing a lot of things that annoy me about certain nonfiction and while it was readable and interesting, I wouldn't say I enjoyed it or would recommend it.

Death by Silver - a gaslamp mystery/gay romance that was fun! If you like a mystery that is, the "romance" coasts along on the "old school friends/hookup buddies" line and doesn't really get any development (or steaminess), but things do keep moving and it was a nice enough read that I'd maybe try some of the author's other work (but maybe not the sequel)

The Philosopher's Flight - I don't even know. It *was* a good read that moved along well, BUT... I don't want to lay everything at the feet of "it was written by a man," but it definitely had its effects. Stories about girls and women going into a man's world and showing them all up are pretty common and catnip to me (Keladry my beloved), but something about a man doing it in a women's organization that exists in a patriarchal society WITH a heavy political-unrest plot going on as well, and despite the abundance of female characters none of them are well developed? And the main character is just a bland-ass dude? It really didn't sit well with me, and I do not want to read the sequel.

The Chestnut King - I'm glad to be done with this series reread. They're honesty just a perfectly middling MG fantasy series, slightly dated but charmingly midwestern in many ways. Kids would probably enjoy it more, but there's not much for an older reader.

A Short Walk Through a Wide World - going in I knew this was being pitched as sort of cozy, and being comp'd to Addie Larue (which I didn't like in execution). Fairly accurate on both counts tbh, and I thought the curse in this one worked much better - the problem with Addie was that the inability for anyone to remember her didn't allow for any connections to make things interesting, whereas A Short Walk's not being able to stay longer than a few days or ever return offers *just* enough to be heartbreaking. Unfortunately there just wasn't much of a shape to the overall story and I was so bored I almost DNF'd. If you're more into the books being marketed as "cozy fantasy" you might have a better time of it than me.

Fit for the Gods - aka "Greek Mythology Reimagined," which feels self explanatory. Anthologies are always a bit of a mixed bag, but I really liked this! Especially compared to the previous anthology (Sword Stone Table), there was only one story I didn't really like, but otherwise really vibed with everything else! I also learned that most of my myth knowledge that's stuck around is from Percy Jackson, lol. (Not to mention the reincarnation story that mentioned Percy Jackson! I cackled XD)

A Sorceress Comes to Call - LOVED!!! Regency house party, magic, murder, mystery is so so SO up my alley. I've seen people call this a stressful book, and I get it, the mother is awful and things are definitely tense, but something was telling me that things would turn out ok for the main characters and I was able to enjoy myself lol. It also helped that it became quickly obvious that the mother was very full of herself and overconfident, even if she was terrifying. I think this is tied with Thornhedge for my favorite Kingfisher so far, though I might rate this a little lower on quality. If you liked this I really recommend checking out the Greenwing & Dart series by Victoria Goddard!

True Grit - meh. Picked this up through a combination of podcast rec/book sale find/needed to read another classic. The kid's got spunk, but that's all I've really got to say. Came very close to dnf'ing, but at least it was short.

DNF

Ascension - 25%. I was really looking forward to making a "if I had a nickle for every book about a mountain mysteriously appearing somewhere it shouldn't, I'd have two nickles" joke, but alas. This started off pretty good, going with the classic "I found these papers among my brother's affects after a long mysterious life" that I was REALLY excited about. Then we actually got to the story and the main character was just Most Special Genius Science Boy, and the way his ex-wife was being written was absolutely bleh. I looked a bit closer at the reviews and decided to dump it. (Other mountain book is My Volcano and you should read it!!!! It's so weird!!)

Running Close to the Wind - 11%. Was this funny? Yes. Was this super horny? Yes. Was this funny and super horny? Super yes. I can really appreciate what was happening here, it's just unfortunately not a style I can consume in anything larger than small bites. I decided to part ways before my feelings really soured.

August Kitko and the Mechas from Space - 41%. I honestly did like what I read, it just wasn't speaking to me? I can see this being a great book for someone, I just had other things I wanted to read more.

[vriskaserketdaily]

thoughts on tgirl vriska ? she’s real to me but ur like the #1 vriska enjoyer on my dash so I was wondering what u think

im gonna be real after going into the tag every day for the past 3+ years and seeing every possible take and headcanon my bar is so low that i'm just happy we're in agreement that vriska is a girl

tgirl vriska is a well-supported read of her character, but not the only valid one in my opinion. that being said, if you're a hardcore cis vriska truther, you do yourself a great disservice by ignoring her dysphoric characterization---whether you read that as early-transition transfem dysphoria, lesbian butch dysphoria, alternian caste dysphoria, or any combination of the above.

i do not, however, read her dysphoria as transmasculine in nature, and maintain that vriska's gender (girl/woman) is extremely important in understanding her role in the story, her relationships with other characters, and how the concepts of heroism, protagonism, justice, and strength impact her narrative. a transfem reading does not detract from this, nor does it particularly enhance anything to me, someone who already read vriska as a dysphoric lesbian & therefore already accounted for some form of Gender to be going on regardless of the hypothetical birth-assignment situation.

basically, my personal opinion is that her trans status is a nice garnish but irrelevant to what already is a fascinating, compelling, and well-rounded (dare i say, strong) female character. the fact that she's a female character is more important to me than the fact (or headcanon) that she is a trans character, because i regularly see and cope with the most asinine and blatantly incorrect headcanons and takes about her on this earth. you're asking a man dying of thirst whether a gallon of ice water or a gallon of merely cool water is better.

my bar for sexuality headcanons is likewise on the floor. y'all don't have to agree with me on the lesbian reading but as long as we concur that she's wlw then everything is a-okay by me. my final message 2 da world: never go into the tags of your favorite character.

[the-anime-man]

Based exclusively on the season 6 trailer and the season 6 finale teaser for game changer, my prediction for what the game is is this:

All 7 of them are checked into a hotel and get locked in their own rooms and must figure out how to escape said rooms similarly to the escape the greenroom episode, maybe it's a 'first person out wins' scenario?? Idfk, but if what i described is the two parter, i am so fucking goddamm excited dude

[hanzajesthanza]

i do actually headcanon that angoulême had some friends spread throughout beauclair & throughout the sansretour valley. but they weren’t good friends. just… “i know a guy” type of deals. very golan drosdeck type of random association like. you’re nineteen. how do you know all of these people. idk. it’s a small criminal underworld after all. but like drosdeck she would have debts with all of them and none of them would be willing to help her and some still are looking to scam her. and despite her… ‘worldliness’, she is still quite naïve

[9w1ft]

Don't you find the strict rules of society in Japan overwhelming for you and the kids?

not one bit

[age-of-moonknight]

“8-Ball,” Vengeance of the Moon Knight (Vol. 2/2024), #5.

Writer: Jed MacKay; Penciler and Inker: Alessandro Cappuccio; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit

[smaller-comfort]

In conclusion:

On the one hand, I do have a lot to say about this story. On the other, it's been a weird few weeks and I probably need to take a break from the internet for a while, in general. (Am I going to? Probably not.)

All things considered, my notes are a lot less hysterical than I was expecting. Here we go!

The expanding text was a last minute addition, but I'm glad people had fun with it. I certainly had fun with it. The "Pause" at the top of chapter 6 probably makes me laugh the most, but the ones in chapters 3 and 4 were what made me stick the cuts in there to begin with.

I really wasn't expecting to actually finish and/or post this one any time soon (or ever???) but, like I said- a weird few weeks. I don't usually hyperfocus on a single project like this, and lately my brain feels like it's going to implode. Anyway!

Who is the second person narrator in the expanding text? I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Death of the author and all that, but here's some of the background stuff that probably ought to be in the story but isn't:

It's really only a few months between Dreaming Still and Save Scumming; Aephorul wasn't actually lying about the spell being a rush job, and Resh'an absolutely did not do his due diligence before he opened that vial.

They're idiots! That's it, that's the real theme; they make each other stupid, and they mirror each other's poor decision making constantly.

(I'm not trying to be like...a subtle writer. I have these themes and ideas nailed to a two-by-four. I am going to beat someone to death with them. At least, that's how it feels to me, but I realize that may not necessarily translate as well as I think it does.)

After not speaking to each other for a thousand years and then getting thrown back together- however briefly- during the events of the game and Loser Takes All, they're both desperate for any excuse to see each other again. They just have to make things complicated for themselves.

Aephorul really could have just sent a letter, like "hey wanna grab coffee somewhere neutral sometime and ~not argue~ for a little while less-than-three winky face winky face?" (He dictates.) And Resh'an would've replied back, "I don't drink coffee anymore" along with a location and time. (He does still drink coffee; Aephorul swings by Sea of Starbucks and gets him his favorite latte.)

Resh'an intended the time loop to be insurance, in case something did go wrong. Whoops. He can't help it, but he's really only playing twelve dimensional chess with himself. Aephorul, meanwhile, is playing poker. I could torture this metaphor a little more, if you want.

Pure, organic, unfounded headcanon territory! Aephorul can't manipulate time the way Resh'an can- but he does know more about time magic and alchemy than anyone else in the universe except Resh'an. When he's paying attention, he's able to see what Resh'an is doing, and he's on hyper alert after his embarrassing lapse in Dreaming Still.

He doesn't have a clear sense of the events of those other loops, but he does get a pretty clear idea of the emotions he's experiencing. Anger tends to compound itself.

Hokay so. In the game, Resh'an splits himself into 3 "clones" during Garl's borrowed time. Those aren't empty puppets; my theory is he made a time loop, iterated himself, and then reintegrated those loops into the main timeline. That's sort of what happened here. The time loops are separate and concurrent, so my cutesy framing device is slightly misleading; technically no one is going back to restart the loop.

Okay, technically some of them do. There were probably more iterations than just the three in the story. They're not really important, except one of them is going to be a standalone story at some point (no happy ending).

It's not linear. Don't worry about it.

There are some fucked up implications here! This is not Resh'an's first rodeo/orgy/extremely ill-advised gangbang. It's also not the first time Aephorul has sexually assaulted him. It might be the first time those things happen in conjunction with each other, but Resh'an is being fairly literal when he says none of this is new to him.

Does this even rate in the top 10 of horrific things Aephorul has done to Resh'an? It might be like...8th or 9th place. Definitely not in the top 5, in Resh'an's opinion. (He and Aephorul have very different opinions about this.)

The fact that he and Resh'an now have wildly different ideas of what constitutes "fun" is also difficult for him. He'll get there eventually. Maybe.

Aephorul really wants to pretend things between them haven't changed; before they began fighting, they would've gotten up to all kinds of weird and horrifying shit with each other, because it was fun and they were bored. (What's the point of being immortal if you can't use it to spend a few centuries inventing bizarre recreational drugs and weird sex acts? No point at all.) He's not used to asking for permission when he could always just take it for granted that Resh'an would ultimately enjoy whatever he had planned. The fact that Resh'an no longer appreciates his fun little surprises is difficult for him to deal with.

One thing I really hope comes through is the way Aephorul's actions are him being extremely reactive to Resh'an's level of vulnerability. He can be gentle when Resh'an is willing to show that he's in pain. If Resh'an had begged him not to go through with it, chapter 3 wouldn't have happened; if chapter 3 didn't happen, then chapter 4 couldn't happen. It takes Resh'an being completely broken for Aephorul to be willing to show his face. Even then, he can't help responding to Resh'an's initial anger like a complete fucking asshole, before his 'wait, shit, I fucked up' instincts kick in.

It doesn't matter in any meaningful sense- what Aephorul does is inexcusable on every level- but he does erase the memories of everyone who participated in the gang rape, and most of the audience was illusionary. There's a few plot hooks in there that I may or may not pick up in a future story.

But really, I'm done with plot for a while. I think most of what's going to follow this will just be more snarsty porn. Enthusiastically consensual snarsty porn, but snarsty porn all the same.

(Since I'm apparently not done experiencing the mortifying ordeal of being known, I do intend to finish the oviposition story. Someday. Probably.)

I feel like I can summarize a lot of their relationship at this point like this:

Resh'an, face completely neutral and voice pleasant: Say one more word and I am going to mcfucking lose it.

Aephorul: one more word

Resh'an: *mcfucking loses it*

Aephorul: *shocked Pikachu face*

I listened to Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) by Florence and the Machine so many times while editing this that I think I'm now stuck with that as my Resh'an song. Embarrassing.

(Aephorul's song is, unfortunately, still Where's the Girl from The Scarlet Pimpernel.) ("We were cut from the same surly star" come on, how can I not.) (...okay also Bad Touch by The Bloodhound Gang.)

Resh'an literally broke the space-time continuum because he couldn't bring himself to kill Aephorul. This story was, in part, me wanting to work through why. I have apparently decided that it's because they're in a horrifically toxic codependent relationship that most likely will end with them destroying the universe and each other.

...okay, and honestly, when I wrote the end of Dreaming Still I was kind of like "shit, I can't just write the same scenario as Loser Takes All again." I mean. I could. But I had to do something a little different. Then it got out of hand, as things so often tend to.

This is the longest thing I've ever finished! I am actually quite proud of it! It is probably going to be at least a month before I can stand to look at it again. *sighs, and walks into the lake*

[avellanaslesbianas]

they’re very cartoon villain to me

[irusanw4]

Thinking about if a worker ant was bad at counting.

They spend every day working in lovely lines, one of the herd, touching their antennae to those they pass, knowing nothing else. It is bliss to the ant, for it is all they have experienced, and it helps their precious colony.

Until they must look for food. They cannot fall in line. And so they try very hard. They count each and every step, as ants do. But they've never been here before, and the world is full of things to note down, and so they forget a few steps every now and then. It is new to them. Surely these tiny steps won't matter?

Their internal pedometer falls further off-track each time they forget. And finally they find food! Their colony will not starve! And so they heft as much as they can carry and begin the careful walk back, counting their steps.

But they overshoot every now and then, for fear of forgetting. And they can't recall the exact angle they turned. And some rocks have been moved by those larger than them. And so they drift further and further from their original path.

And they do not realize. They are going to do good! This food will feed the colony they adore! It doesn't matter that they have never known anything else. This will surely be the first of many journeys they take to support their community.

But they reach the number that was carefully traced into their mind, and they are not home. And they begin searching for home. For those that they serve. But carrying food is taxing, and they are tired and lost, and they keep checking places they already checked. And minutes turn into hours into days of searching. They abandon their food in favor of moving faster. Even return to eat a few bites, when their hunger gets powerful enough.

But it isn't enough. The colony doesn't even know they're lost. Assumes they were eaten. There's too much to do to worry over a possible distant predator. And the lost ant dies, because ants are mortal and they are flawed, and they never do learn where their colony was. And the colony never does care where they are.

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

Took a brief 20’ walk to get to the station and instantly solved a plot point in my story. The power of walks is UNPARALLED

[lunar-stims]

Starbound crk au. Do we all agree yes or no

[general-illyrin]

[hanssloane]

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: everyday I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one can not walk away from it. Even if one were to walk for one's health and it were constantly one station ahead-I would still say: Walk! Besides, it is also apparent that in walking one constantly gets as close to well-being as possible, even if one does not quite reach it-but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Health and salvation can only be found in motion. If anyone denies that motion exists, I do as Diogenes did, I walk. If anyone denies that health resides in motion, then I walk away from all morbid objections. If one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

Søren Kierkegaard

Journals and Papers, p.412

[kindahoping4forever]

Australia Tour Diary

[edennill]

To be quite honest I strongly doubt the Eldar would have any distinction between philosophy and theology.