#its not a totally ridiculous premise like these other ones

[bloomfish]

If something isn't on here I either consider it objectively a decent episode, or completely irredeemable/boring in a way that doesn't count as "so bad it's good" (killed by death, for instance.) It needs to be that specific kind of ridiculous early Buffy campiness that ends up being very entertaining!

[infizero]

every time i so much as think about that scene where light looks at porn magazines while scowling i go into hysterics its genuinely the funniest thing i've ever seen

[ryin-silverfish]

Ping Jinchuan: A 19th century Sci-fi Shenmo Novel

Like all popular novels, when something sets a trend, many imitators follow suit, until the formula becomes its own genre of sorts.

FSYY is one such genre setter. Specifically, the "Battle of Arts" (斗法) formula, where immortals and deities are added into a historical event——usually a war, but it can also be something like Admiral Zheng He's voyage——and proceed to use said setting as an excuse to battle it out using spells, magical treasures, and formations.

It's such an enduring formula, late Qing novels were still following it. And because it's the 19th century, western technology and ideas were entering China and making their way into popular culture.

My first exposure to the results comes from Legends of the Eight Immortal Attaining the Dao (八仙得道传), where the narrator occasionally interrupts the story and goes: "Electricity-based technology is totally the work of Mother Lightning, guys!"

Why am I telling you all these random facts? Because Ping Jinchuan ("Quelling the Golden Stream") is that, but turned up to eleven.

Technically, FSYY is set in Shang dynasty China. Technically, Ping Jinchuan is an obscure 1899 novel about the quelling of rebellions in Qinghai and Tibet during the 18th century by the historical general Nian Gengyao.

However, considering that FSYY has 11th century BCE gunpowder weapons, and...the entirety of Ping Jinchuan, I really doubt the claim of the latter novel's author that the story is based on the eye witness accounts of his ancestor, who worked as an advisor under Nian Gengyao.

But if you insist, here's a rough summary of the historical background: the first war Nian fought in Tibet happened during the reign of Kangxi, because the Dzungar Khanate invaded Tibet.

The second rebellion Nian quelled in Qinghai, during the reign of Yongzheng, was started by  Lobzang Tendzin. He fought against the Dzungar Khanate with the help of Qing army, but rebelled together with local chiefdoms and Mongol leaders when he was not granted the rulership of Tibet afterwards.

(Confusingly enough, during the reign of Qianlong, there were also 2 other rebellions by the chieftains of "Greater and Lesser Jinchuan" in northwestern Sichuan, which might be where the novel's name came from.)

Naturally, the novel proceeds to tell a "Battle of Arts" story, about Tibetan Buddhist monks, Muslims, Daoist sages, and the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church duking it out with typical Shenmo novel treasures...and 19th century magitek.

There is potential for some serious analysis about Qing military expansion, violence on the frontiers, how foreign religions and people are perceived through the framework of popular fiction, etc. But honestly, after seeing the above summary, are you really here for *that*? 

I'm not, because I don't know nearly enough about the historical context, and the entire premise is ridiculous enough to defy any attempt at taking it seriously——unless the attempts are ironic.

Case In Point

The novel starts off pretty tame: Lobzang Tendzin, "King of Jinchuan", wanted to send his own Dalai Lama candidate to Tibet after the previous Dalai's death, as part of a power ploy to make himself the de facto ruler of Tibet.

He allied himself with Galdan, the Dzungar ruler, to force the Tibetans to accept his candidate at gunpoint——literally.

Their firearms and cannons got stopped by a Lama named Ding Chan, who used his meditation power to summon divine warriors and fend off the first wave of attack.

However, his meditation was broken by the plight of Jinchuan soldiers disguised as female refugees, and later, Galdan assassinated him in his sleep with a firing squad during a treaty talk organized by the Qing.

Emperor Yongzheng was not happy and sent Nian Gengyao and Yue Zhongqi to quell the rebellion. Also, Nian is actually the Heavenly Dog Star incarnate, who learned martial arts, classics, war strategy, and all sorts of neat stuff in his youth from a poor Buddhist monk.

Later, said monk and Yue's master sent a bunch of their disciples to Nian and Yue as reinforcement, before the battle began. 

Then, in Chapter 4, Nan Guotai was introduced as the fictional son of the historical Belgian missionary, Ferdinand Verbiest. Nicknamed "Little Lu Ban", he was well-versed in the arts of western machinery and firearms, and the first sign of the story going completely off the rails.

The first "Battle of the Arts" round was pretty standard——Five Phase Formation, magical breaths, treasures. But Nan was ordered to make 15 "mechanical carts" that could produce flames, in conjunction with a field of landmines, to assist in the breaking of the Five Phase Formation. 

Despite the similarity, they aren't tanks, but more like...trapped cargo trailers/RVs. Basically, they had "doors and windows" with built-in mechanisms that only allowed entry into the carts and could not be opened from the inside, and once the enemies were trapped, the carts became giant incinerators.

After losing the first round, the King of Jinchuan put up a recruitment poster for "talented followers of the Three Religions"...except the Three Religions weren't Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, but Islam, Buddhism, and Daoism, since the story is set in Qinghai, where there was a notable population of Hui people (Chinese Muslims).

After seeing the poster, Galdan's wife decided to seek help from her own master, the Patriarch of the Snowy Mountains. He is a Muslim sage with 12 powerful disciples...who all wielded typical Daoist treasures.

They all got overshadowed by the next round of Steampunk Shenmo Battle, though, when an unrelated Daoist showed up with his trump card: "Strong Water", a.k.a. magical hydrochloric acid.

The magical HCI was then put into giant glass syringes and fired at Nian's troops, resulting in significant casualties. To bypass the HCI syringe cannons, Nan unrevealed his latest invention: the Skysoar Orb, a.k.a. hot air balloon.

The Qing troops then mounted firearms and cannons onto the air balloon, flew it above Galdan's camp to a height where the HCI syringes couldn't reach, and started shooting. However, they were all mortals, and got decimated when the enemy immortals flew up to take control of the balloons, forcing an emergency landing via needles.

After that, the hot air balloon was manned entirely by immortals, until Galdan covered his camp in a mesh of barbed wires, blocking the aerial fire but also making it impossible for him to use his own HCI syringes.

Then a little 13 years old immortal, Gengsheng the Acolyte, joined the Qing army, who's the reincarnation of the Lama executed by Galdan's firing squad. Abandoned at birth and adopted by a Daoist master, he was able to fly on clouds since he was 8-9 years old, which he used to travel to Europe. 

While he was there, a Swedish sage gifted him a powerful treasure——the Electricity Whip, which can be used to electrocute people to death...but also magically heal injuries with its currents.

I have trouble visualizing the thing. Is it a literal whip of lightning arcs (since it's described as being able to turn into a white beam), a taser, an electric cattle prod, a plasma whip, or the unholy lovechild of all the above plus a tesla coil?

Hilariously, the Electricity Whip treasure of the Nikola Tesla Sect (/sarcasm) stopped working when exposed to "dirty stuff" such as a woman's magical handkerchief. Classic folk magic style. 

After a bunch of boring fighting sequences, 6 of the 12 disciples of the Patriarch decided to get the big formations out, which were broken by buckets of pig blood. 

…Yeah, that's pretty much the extent of the author's understanding of Hui customs and Islam. (sigh) The surviving disciples went to get the Patriarch for help, who casted an AOE spell of poisonous smoke, water and fire to block the Qing troops' path...

Annnnnd Nan to the rescue again! With the help of Nian Gengyao's monk master, he built the Earth Travel Cart: a magitek subway train shaped like a pangolin, able to carry a hundred people and move a hundred Li per hour. It didn't need rails, you just dug a hole in the ground, put the train in, and it started tunneling through the earth on its own.

The entire army used 500 of these magical subway trains to bypass the Patriarch's AOE spell coverage, forcing them to retreat to their home base, Tianshan (Heavenly Mountain). Which is a real mountain range in central Asia and Xinjiang province, and going there from Qinghai is plausible. Kinda.

I'm still skeptical about the novel's claim that the path through Tianshan is the only path leading into Jinchuan proper, but whatever.

The Patriarch put his most powerful formation on said mountain pass——the Ice Freeze Formation, which will insta-freeze immortals, mortals, and flying birds alike when they step in range.

Then comes the craziest part of the entire novel. Honestly, everything after this chapter is pretty boring and formulaic, which makes it the perfect note for this article to end on.

Nan suddenly revealed that the current Roman Pope is the grandson of Matteo Ricci, who's the mentor of Nan's dad, and took his hot air balloon to Rome to get reinforcement. To no one's surprise, the Pope's treasure is a cross.

The Pope agreed and took his 12 disciples——supposedly because it's the same as the number of apostles——to the snowy mountain.

He gave a cross and a white candle to each of his disciples; they walked straight into the Ice Formation and broke it by holding the two holy objects up in the air, while loudly chanting (a highly localized translation of) "Hail Mary!"

After making his grand entrance, the Pope neutralized the Patriarch's spell attacks and turned his last disciples' army of soldiers back into their true forms——a bunch of farm animals.

He then told the disciples that as the Roman Pope, he had authority over "Russia, England, France, Netherlands" and all the European nations, and he'd leave the Patriarch to mind his own business if he surrendered and stopped interfering in the war.

Three of the four examples he gave aren't even Catholic, but maybe the Protestant Reformation just never happened in this novel's 18th century world because Pope Magic.

The Patriarch accepted the cease-fire treaty, went back to teach his religion to the population of northwestern China, and that's pretty much it. His last female disciple (Galdan's wife) got her troops' firearms neutralized by the Pope's cross, taken prisoner, and executed by Nian. 

After revealing that the Qing immortals' power also came from the Grace of Our Lord and Savior, and that was why westerners couldn't use spells (but could make electricity-based treasures?), the Pope flew back to Rome on Nan's air balloon, exiting the novel once and for all.

Which is a pity, because in the second half of the novel, one of the defeated foes escaped to (Ottoman?) Turkey to beg their king for reinforcement, and the Russian Tsar agreed to help the Jinchuan troops to make his French wife happy. I want my Papal 13 vs. Russian Orthodox Bishops Shenmo battle, dammit!

Food for thought: if the Pope was Matteo Ricci's grandson, and Matteo Ricci was also a mentor of Ferdinand Verbiest, Nan's dad (historically, Ricci died 13 years before Verbiest was even born)...

...Is this a timeline where the Jesuits won the Rites Controversy, Ricci cultivated himself into the first Catholic immortal, and ushered in the age of Syncretic Daoist-Catholic Steampunk? 

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

i think you're onto something with the romance novels world and plot points needing to mirror the kind of outlandishness of the love story. bc the main characters are already inherently acting absurd just by falling madly in love in a month or whatever and then if you add in the contrivances of romance tropes, it starts to feel like whiplash trying to pretend the characters live in any sort of grounded "normal" world. Like when the author adds in a family conflict subplot where the MC is like in absolute shambles because her mom said something slightly passive aggressive at lunch. that reads as more jarring to me than like conflict being something ridiculous that her mom doesn't want her being a marine biologist bc they come from a long line of fishmongers. Give me absurd drama to match the over the top dialogue and character emotions, I knew it would be unrealistic it's a romance novel! I guess this applies more to romcoms, but the same would apply I think to an analogous serious scenario. Or at least that's my take on it

okay so having just finished genuinely the most boring romance novel I have ever read in my LIFE I'm going to expand on this a little so thank you for sending an ask that gives me such a great platform to do that

I personally generally prefer a romance that just gets fucking silly with it, like really outlandish. A Lady for the Duke (Alexis Hall) is obviously the dream, being a whole swoony historical trans-affirming fantasy, but contemporary fake relationship stories can also be fun in their sheer ridiculousness, like Love, Hate, and Clickbait (Liz Bowery), which I actually liked, and Unfortunately Yours (Tessa Bailey), which I did not like but was very funny. and let's not forget queen Helen Hoang's Bride Test, which has a premise that dances perilously close to human trafficking but all works out in the end!!!

BUT HAVING SAID THAT. I don't think that something needs to be totally implausible to be a good romance. two of my very favorites romance novels anywhere ever are Helen Hoang's Heart Principle (no one should be surprised Hoang is on her twice I adore her) and Akwaeke Emezi's You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty. both of these books are very grounded in reality but with very uncommon situations to heighten emotions and add urgency; in Hoang's case it's a character's adult autism diagnosis + death of a parent and in Emezi's case it's a very sudden and #problematic attraction coming out of absolutely nowhere. the stakes are very real, mostly centering around being true to yourself v disappointing your family, but the circumstances are still wild enough to make you say "god DAMN" and keep turning pages. hell, I'll even be extremely generous and include Mistakes Were Made (Meryl Wilsner) which is kind of a flop but does have the intriguing premise of "what if you were fucking a milf but her kid was YOUR BEST FRIEND and it was a secret?"

those are like the two sweet spots TO ME, and this book I just read (which was Thank You for Sharing by Rachel Runya Katz, I feel so bad putting it on blast but I know people are going to ask) really solidified it for me because TYFS didn't fall into either of those categories. I'm going to say something absolutely insane, which is that multiple times while I was reading it I found myself wishing that the book was fanfic, because on its own it just... didn't bring a lot to the table? it falls into the grounded category but doesn't really bring any of those heightened stakes to the story, it's just 330 pages of people in their late twenties complaining about dating and their office jobs. if I wanted that I could just ask my group chat! there's nothing particularly particularly gripping about watching made up strangers do it!

but then I was like oh hang on... if this was two fictional characters who are usually fighting with swords or throwing cars at each other or something this would be so gripping. it's literally the coffee shop AU principle, right? like seeing people in a very mundane setting having an office job and going to a bar is very shrimpteresting when they're normally defusing space bombs. I was explaining this to my housemates and I couldn't think of a straight couple to apply it to (the book is m/f) so I said Naruto and Sasuke, which is crazy because I've never seen a single episode of Naruto, but like. idk Naruto being a museum curator who has to work with Sasuke, a marketing specialist who he had beef with a summer camp 14 years ago, sounds kind of compelling, right? definitely more than just two people I don't know.

there's a post on here that I think about a lot that talks about why advertising a story with tropes doesn't work for original fiction as well as it does for fan fic because knowing the tropes is more helpful when you already have a sense of investment in the characters and their personalities, and I think this is related to that! I think sometimes you NEED to have a wider sense of scope for the characters for them to be interesting in a very mundane setting!

ANYWAY. much to consider, etc.

[communistkenobi]

re: Trek: I was hit with a lot of the same feelings when I finally went and watched TOS a couple of years ago. There's a brand of Star Trek fan who really believe in what the show wants or at least claims it wants to be--a progressive vision of the future--but are incapable of seeing it for what it was lest they cede ground to the fans on the reactionary end of the spectrum who like it for pew pew guns and sexy green ladies. For what it's worth, the Federation isn't portrayed as a post-scarcity post-money society until TNG but it's not something they do more than pay lip service to

I think this gets into the limitations with individual character representation as a metric for “good” politics in a show. It has a comparatively diverse cast and that is historically significant, I understand that it’s groundbreaking, and I’m not downplaying that or saying those things don’t matter or had no impact culturally. but those individual representations are imbedded within the undergirding logic of the show, which is that the Enterprise is a ship meant to make contact with “new” “undiscovered” civilisations, measure their “development” on a singular scale that is premised on settler colonial ideas of land development & capitalist logics of expansion and growth, and then force those societies to fit into that particularly colonial mould. Multiple times the resolution to the plot of an episode is destroying any unique aspects of a culture that cannot be captured by those development metrics, and this is unambiguously presented as a good thing. This show is deeply invested in the maintenance of racial hierarchy and western hegemony, and its diversity and progressive elements must always be placed within that context. It’s racially progressive in some ways yes, but only narrowly, and in fact the necessity for good racial representation is the fault of those undergirding logics! We wouldn’t need good racial representation in the first place if those systems did not exist. “Good intentions” on the part of the writers do not negate the fact that the final product uncritically reproduces a western vision of culture, one that sees the west as manager, mother, teacher, and policeman to the rest of humanity.

I think Said’s discussion of Orientalism is once again very instructive: it’s not just that the show might be individually racist or sexist to particular characters or groups of people in a given episode. These things are bad yes, but they are surface level bad, and focusing only on them obscures the larger issue at hand. The deeper problem is that it operates on an orientalist epistemology, a way of knowing and seeing the world, one that necessarily excludes the basic conclusion that, like, the measure of a civilisation does not need to be premised on economic growth or European cultural modes, & in fact the idea that you can “measure” a culture unilaterally is itself a western construction. that scale is a tool of colonial development, one that is backed by a system of racial hierarchy that must be violently enforced to be realised in the world. Star Trek is by no means unique or special in this regard; this is the state of western media in total. I’m just uncomfortable with how uncritically fawning people are about it.

I’m also not privy to the discourse around this show, I’m an outsider encountering Star Trek for the first time as an adult and I’m largely ignorant of the 8-odd decades of discussion about it. But like, you don’t have to allow the reactionary crowd to control your understanding of the show! Saying it’s a fundamentally colonial narrative does not dismiss or diminish claims about racial diversity or representation in other areas, nor does it mean a reactionary interpretation of the show holds more weight. Those people are not worth considering, they have nothing of value to contribute to the discussion of the show’s politics. Like you can accuse me of having high standards or that my demands are ridiculous given the show is old, but I’m being bombarded (and have been bombarded) with claims that Star Trek is socialist, is progressive, is better than Star Wars politically, etc. and I don’t think those claims stand up to basic scrutiny unless you are willing to downplay or dismiss how deeply racist, ableist, misogynist, etc the show is, and further you have to ignore the basic fact that the show does not work if you reject or take umbridge with its imperial framework

[spevvy]

One of my occasionally-visited special interests (fellow autistic followers will totally get this—yknow the ones you keep in the locker and bust out when you're feeling a particular kind of way or you're getting the dopamine itch for the nostalgia of an era you never experienced and frankly would never want to experience??) is the history of the Mafia. Pretty sure I picked this one up from my Dad who was a murder mystery/western aficionado through and through but had that little tiny part of him that bloody loved a gangster film (no pun intended). Anyway I've been bingeing Boardwalk Empire the last few days and I've fallen down the rabbit hole again...

Gotta preface this by saying my nerves alone would never let me be around that whole scene in real life, let alone back in the day during the bootlegging and all that lot. I have no hidden desire to be a gangster's moll or anywhere in that kinda circle, not even especially from a morality perspective, just from a "my guys I don't wanna be sitting around my house fretting about who's gonna kill me in horrible ways" perspective. I just find the entire premise both fascinating and unintentionally hilarious.

The thing I find most fascinating about the Mafia is how absolutely absurd it is, and frankly the absurdity of it all is probably how it took the best part of 100 years before anyone properly unmasked them to the world. I mean really.

There are a massive bunch of these utterly amoral human beings who commit UNSPEAKABLY HEINOUS crimes and they've all got nicknames like "Lucky" and "Needle Nose" and "Bugsy" and "Babyface". MEYER LANSKY WAS CALLED "THE BRAIN", IF THEY HAD A GUY IN THE GANG CALLED "PINKY" THEN THEY WOULD BE A LITERAL CARTOON.

When they go to war with other families, the wars are called completely incongruous things like "The Slot Machine War" and "The Porn War". This just sounds like a falling out between a group of teenagers over what they should spend their pooled allowance on.

Also who was the first one who was like "yknow what, lads, if we're gonna get anywhere as criminal overlords, we've got to get ourselves ORGANISED. Crime is nothing without a decent hierarchy system—just look at the Church!! #satire" Just the very term organised crime feels like a complete misnomer. "We're gonna get into extortion and racketeering and prostitution and bootlegging but HEAVEN HELP YOU IF YOU MISFILE ANYTHING OR WRITE SOMETHING IN THE WRONG DIARY SLOT!!! A GOOD CRIME IS AN ORGANISED CRIME!!!!!" This is the best argument for the initial Mafia bosses being neurodivergent I can possibly imagine.

And the most unequivocally nonsense thing about it all is that, up until the 50s, the Mafia was like a ghost story, nobody really knew for sure that it existed, it was as much mythology and folklore as real actual evidence of its existence. But then when it came out that it was a thing, the entire US government kinda went "meh yknow what, just leave em, it'd be too much effort to get rid of the lot of em at once. Just yknow, stamp hard on some bits so we look like we're making an effort"—and now EVERYONE KNOWS WHO THEY ARE!!! Everyone knows what the families are called, who's in charge, names and faces and everything, who does what, and they're all just like "lol yeah we're the Mafia you can't catch us teeheehee" and they still all have ridiculous nicknames like Jaws and Fingers. They have videogames and books and TV documentaries about themselves and everything, the brazen DNGAF-ery is absolutely astonishing.

Like legit if you wrote this out as a fictional story of a load of destitute (potentially ND, don't forget you need the creativity, attention to detail and organisational skills of the neurodivergent community to get this thing off the ground!) immigrants hopping a ship to a country on the other side of the world, who end up ostensibly taking over the entire national government and law enforcement with absolutely no fear of retribution or capture and the guys in charge are a bunch of little old men smoking cigars on the golf course calling each other Bug Eyes and Smiler—and in some sort of peculiar way, no matter what horrific things they do, they never really come across as the bad guys but just as some loveable rogues keeping one step ahead of the law... well. NGL but it would sound COMPLETELY LUDICROUS, nobody in their right mind would publish it.

It's unbelievable. It's genius. It's like rubbernecking a car crash, you don't wanna know but you can't help but gawp. I mean seriously, fair play lads. You're all completely dreadful, but you do it with pizzazz. Meanwhile, I can't even be a little bit cold to someone who is actively being rude to me without losing sleep for a week because of the levels of guilt involved in case everyone hates me. 👀🤦🏻‍♀️

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - Things are Very Mixed

May 2023 Wk 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying most.

Ongoing Series - Thai

Step By Step (Thai Tues WeTV & Gaga) ep 3 of 10 (MDL still says 12, but Gaga still says 10) - The subs are janky on YT, so you might want to watch this on Gaga. This is such a good show, it just feels so much more authentic to an office environment and first job then anything else I’ve seen in BL. Now that might be because it has western source material, or it might be because it is actually kind of old-fashioned (it’s been years since I worked as an office grunt). While the authenticity may be a little triggering for some, I love how much tension it adds to the leads’ dynamic and the quality of the narrative. I also really love the brothers’ relationship, now that we got to see them on screen together for a bit. Walk of shame was great! Oh look, character development, how novel. This is what Boss & Babe should have been. Not sold on the sides tho it’s nice to see a faen fatal as the main character in a dynamic for a change. 

La Pluie (Sat iQIYI) ep 2 of 10 - This one is really grabbing me by the throat. I love the starter concepts, what a fantastic twist on a meet cute not to mention soulmates. I hope we spend more time with the vet and his coworkers, they seem awesome. And another surprise, the guy we think is being set up to be the brother’s love interest is now clearly interested in the wrong brother. I love the trope subversions going on with this show! 

Our Skyy 2 (The Eclipse) eps 5-6 - FirstKhao are just ridiculously cute as a couple. Honestly? Aye just seems like he would be a lot of work as a lover. I’m not as wild about the premise of this installment, with the film clips and stuff (as I was of NlMG’s installment). And then, the singing. Oh well, you can’t have everything. I gotta say, First is a great crier, although I don’t think this story warranted his tears. In the end? My feelings on this installment were mixed, the movie storyline didn’t grab me and the birthday storyline seems a touch mean spirited, but I do think it adds substantially to the original Eclipse rather than feeling superfluous or slapdash like many of the other Our Skyys. So I’m going to go with 8/10 

Future (Thai Sun YouTube & Gaga) ep 6fin - More of the same (which I like) but I’m glad it ended. Didn’t need to get dragged out. Such drama over nothing. In the end? This is just a soft sweet cotton candy fluff piece about a younger boy who pursues an older boy and then manufactures silly gay drama. Nothing wrong with that. But I don’t think this style of BL really appeals to a very large market share. Will I rewatch it? Sure. Will anyone else? Nope. 7/10 RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS.    

Pastsenger (Thai Weds Gaga) ep 9 of 12 eps - And now the amnesia trope. I’m not a fan. This is such a pulp. At least it ends next week? Groan, no 3 more eps.  

A Boss and a Babe (Fri YouTube) ep 10 of 12 - one thing I realize I like about this main couple’s dynamic is that the seme/uke seems earned, where it didn’t in Echante. I don’t have much else to say except it’s crazy when a narrative betrays its characters like this and why to poor ForceBook keep having to deal with it? 

The Promise (Thai Weds YT & WeTV) ep 7 of 10 - Honestly, who wears an all white outfit to play around with coffee beans in the countryside? I LOVE the faen fatal, he’s so good, courageous, honest, and morally sound. He even gives his rival fair warning. Nan should totally go out with him. I made awwww noises over the faen fatal! I NEVER do that. I guess Phu was right all along? Nan won’t date a friend. Ultimate friend zone. Well shit. This show. Ouch. 

House of Stars (Thai Mon iQIYI) ep 1 of ?? - There seems a slight horror element which I do not like and it’s also confusingly like Melrose Place or something. Everyone is sleeping with, or wants to be sleeping with everyone else. It’s kinda hilarious to watch something where all the actors are supposed to be good actors but it’s a pulp so they just really aren’t. So far my main issue is I can’t keep them all straight in my head (pun intended). 

Tin Tam Jai (Tues Gaga) ep 10fin - There is very little I enjoyed about this show. The entirely forgotten side dishes gave us 5 min of excellent high heat and then vanished, but otherwise this show sucked in the wrong way. It’s forgettable and I intend to do just that. 5/10  

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Our Dining Table AKA Bokura no Shokutaku (Japan Thurs Gaga) ep 5 of 10 - The way these two are very quietly yet thoroughly falling in love with each other is executed with such grace and subtlety that only Japan could have handed this out. It’s not even “falling” it’s more like sliding gradually into love. 

Love Mate (Korea Thurs Viki) eps 1-2 of 8 - Launched very much openly gay so that’s fun. Also very much bubble too, so no one around them cares. So: Seo is a player jaded older uke (fun character type we don’t see often) and his seme is a romantic if arrogant weirdo. Can you see my hands clapping? Combative trope activation! Absurdity. How fun. Also workplace harassment but hayho that’s BL for ya. (Also a nonBL Kdrama specialty.) ALSO whole office in on seme-stalker’s side? All in all, it’s odd and questionable, but I’m into it. Why am I like this? 

Happy Merry Ending (Korea Thurs Gaga) eps 3-4 of 8 - OK I’m not super into the main couple but I love all of the surrounding characters. The overly protective best friend with a crush is giving bad advice but it’s understandable and he’s super hot so I forgive him. And the idol character is a wonderful addition, he is my baby. Also, evil ex is v evil. 

Vian the series (Vietnam YT ) - I thought this was gonna be Tiktok only but apparently it’s showing up on YT too. It’s cute! My cat boyfriend (which is more common that it should be) and this seems to be Vietnam’s installment (we got Thailand’s last year). The boy playing the cat is the prettiest human being on the planet. Fight me. No fight him, get scratched. Serious tho. Holy hairballs. Look I don’t really like vertical content but I am watching this for him. Meow, indeed. 

The Day I Loved You (Vietnam YouTube) eps 2-3 of ? - BL Express’s first impressions mirror mine. Niks is so flipping cute. Rich kid is so into him, so is bestie. So much gay macho posturing. So much bi fear and het shame. But also it’s killer to get a femme main characters who isn’t being mocked. Dancing trope continues (better than singing together). It is kinda Heartstopper goes Pinoy BL. Honestly, I prefer kids a little drawings to terrible sound effects. This is better than it or we have any right to expect. 

Naked Dinner AKA Zenra Meshi (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 4 of 12 - There is a lot I like about this drama, except the weird central conceit of the naked dining. But the romance part is cute, if a tad simplistic. 

My Story (Pinoy Sat YouTube) ep 4 of 10 - chukchuk went missing and so did my interest in this show. I’m DNFing this one. 

Dancing together, the baby sub-trope of 2023. (The Day I Love You) 

It’s Airing But ...

Love Syndrome (Thai Sat WeTV) stopped at ep 2 of 12 - I’m just not into any aspect of it (except Lee Long Shi) - saving to binge if the end is solid.

Venus in the Sky (Sat YouTube) pilot/tester?) 0 of 10 - not entirely sure what’s up with this one distribution-wise, but the pilot was classic university-set pulp. I hope it happens because the leads are cute with good chemsitry and I thought it was fun. However, this pilot holds together as its own little short too.

Stormy Honeymoon (Vietnam) - meh

In Case You Missed It

Actors Bas Suradej (2 Moons etc...) and Copter Panuwat (so much BL) have left Starhunter. So Copter and Kimmon will part ways as an on-screen pair (RIP KimCop). Their upcoming show Boy Never Smiles will still air, but will likely be their last together. (source) 

Restart After Come Back Home (highly recommended), Athlete, Capture Lover, Tkumi-kun, His the movie (recommended) and also a bunch of the dark stuff like Forbidden Love and Shortest Distance are all leaving Gagaoolala soon. So watch ‘em while you can. A few are also on Viki, but many will be difficult to get hold of without Gaga. 

I finally finished the second season of The Reason Why He Fell in Love with Me (Japan Gaga) and gave it a 4/10. I just don’t like or recommend any of the installments of this franchise, but if I had to pick, it’s season one. 

Make a Wish finished at 6 eps. Stars Fluke Natouch (OhmFluke UWMA etc...) & Judo (The Miracle Of Teddy Bear) in medical-fantasy about a doctor who sees ghosts and a deity who resides in a Bodhi tree that earns merits whenever he fulfills a wish. Based on a y-novel by Sammon (Manner of Death, Triage). I will watch it if I get hold of it, but for now... who knows how it went? 

Here’s a really interesting podcast ep from 99% Invisible on captions and captioning.

Next Week Looks Like This:

Coming in May 2023:

5/18 - Starstruck (Korea ????) - A boy has had a crush on his childhood friend for a long time. Stars Zuho (Kpop SF9 - noted good egg) opposite rookie actor Kim In Sung (the one with the crush).

5/27 The Luminous Solution (Thai ????) 10 eps - Thana is having trouble at work and in his relationship. He can't seem to catch a break. So he makes a wish to change everything. The wish has a price.

5/27 Takumi-kun Series 6: Nagai Nagai Monogatari no Hajimari no Asa (Japan) - NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS (but that has never stopped Japan before) and no, I have no idea where to get it, why would I ?????  (Say it with me everyone: Oh Japan, must you?)

2023 forthcoming BL master post (see comments, some are inaccurate, NOT KEPT UPDATED)

Defining Gut Wrenching from The Promise

Honestly you gotta be so careful who you case as the faen fatal, sometimes he steals everyone’s hearts. I caught a BAD case of second lead syndrome. 

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Future reviewing itself for us. 

Tiny king of the GMMTV cameo. (Our Skyy et al)

Frankly if this weren’t such a bad story, Cher might be one of my favorite BL characters. (Boss & Babe) 

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? BTOB's - Wind & Wish (I don’t consider myself Melody but I make no case for that statement)

[therulerofallpotatos]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love ❤

I'm cheating and adding five more.

And the Walls Come Crumbling Down which is a stallison fic and the only one I ever wrote. It's special to me. I love how people responded to how I wrote Scott and I loved exploring the potential between Allison and Stiles. I wish we had more of them bonding in canon. I really do.

We are Who we Choose to Follow which is another steter fic. Statistically likely to be steter, this list. I wrote and posted 74 for the teen wolf fandom, 99% were steter. Looking at the premise you can see I have a type

Through Thick and Thin I Stand by You which is a pregnant Stiles fics where she gets an abortion because I'd read a thousand where she kept it and I wanted to try the other way. It might have been the first common trope I looked at, loved, and wanted to go left instead of right when I finally wrote it myself. This is the same habit that led to me writing Hold Me Close and Pin Me Down (unposted).

Will You Press the Button? was also special because it was so dumb but I really loved what came of it. I don't write crack fic. I write serious fic and then marvel in the irony of the objectively ridiculous premise. Other people call it crack later.

I'm going to put Warning: She Bites for the last one because it was a good experience writing a kink I don't have in the slightest from the pov of someone who very much has that kink. There was the slightest bit of discomfort at times that I feel is good for you as well. Keeps you grounded. and exploring the nature of certain things has its own value as well. Plus, yknow, it was fun. It was a fun thing to write.

Tagging ten authors total: @wincestation, @leavesdriftinginthewind, @nonamemanga, @beri-allen, @badmoodbatflowers, @realisticintentions, @cosmic-lullaby, @graciebirdie, @chaoticstupiddm, @insomniac1994

[littleraeofsunshineda]

I've decided in my nostalgia for mid-2010s fandom (ah blissful torturous teenagehood) what this fandom/pairing needs is more fic rec lists

To that end, and without overestimating my total lack of influence whatsoever, I present the first installment of

Cullrian Fic Recs

This inaugural list featuring my favourite trope for them of all the tropes: Misguided Pining/Insecurity

Various AU lists will be forthcoming but for now these are shorter fics which also mostly fit the game canon. Enjoy!

take all my loves, my love - susiecarter - M - 2566 words

If you need a tasty treat to sell you on Cullrian in under 3k, this will do it. They're fuckbuddies. Dorian thinks he know what it is: he's obviously wrong. Deliciously angsty miscommunication, achingly lovely resolution, all in a ridiculously tight package.

this song is about you - susiecarter - M - 11,257 words

Now your appetite is whetted, enjoy its sister-fic - these are the only two cullrian fics susiecarter ever wrote and I mourn that fact routinely. This features some truly delightful imaginings of a second Wicked Grace game where Cullen isn't the one losing clothes. Also featured: hot drunk sex, Dorian's hang-ups, exquisitely sweet virgin!Cullen that is never soppy. 9/10, losing a point because there's not 100k of it. Cullen’s POV.

Checkmate - Kauri - E - 6521 words

Another lovely thing that packs a whole bunch of feels into a very few words in a way I'd frankly kill for (my style is more... verbose). Progresses from Dorian setting out to seduce Cullen to a romcom-worthy yet understated confrontation with his own expectations for relationships.

Mutually Beneficial - Verayne - E - 13,364 words

Billed in the tags as Dorian's fairytale, this delivers - the two make a political alliance to encourage positive interactions between the Templars and rebel mages in the Inquisition force. There are sexy duels that also smack you in the heart. There is my second favourite Inquisition trope after the Wicked Grace: the Winter Palace. The end makes me squeal every time.

Treading Water in the Wishing Well - springdreaming - E - 11,672

I'll avoid saying too much about the plot of this one because it'll give spoilers, but the fantastically romcom-worthy premise is that Sera fancies Lavellan, but Lavellan and Cullen fancy each other. What does she do? Recruits Dorian to help split them up, obviously. Genuinely funny at times which is as you expect with good Sera writing. Pining like an exquisite knife. Dorian's POV.

[hyog-blog]

The Blooms at Ruyi Pavilion review/opinion

Okay, I've just finished watching The Blooms at Ruyi Pavilion, and despite all its setbacks and numerous plot holes and excessive dramatization /and I mean there's A LOT of drama in the second half of the whow/, I just loved it to bits. Zhang Zhehan and Ju Jingyi look ridiculously cute together. He's the reserved type of guy who doesn't show his emotions easily /but when he does it's a treat for the eyes/ and she's a young sweet thing with a very mischievous character, carefree attitude towards life, and a darker undertone /with her being able to glimpse into the future and trying to prevent things from happening/.

So, watching these two stumble upon each other in a series of (un)fortunate events was real fun and how they slowly developed feelings towards each other (although she was desperately trying no to, but while avoiding the guy she just kept stumbling upon him more XD). The second couple was also beyond sweet, but in a hotter and more cheerful way - they actually got to have some time to develop their romance naturally, without being dragged into all possible near-death situations, so in that sense, they are a more classical couple, but exceptionally delicious, watching them develop feelings for each other was very yummy and they do look very good together.

Also, the sisterhood is strong in this one, like a very healthy sisterly relationship that is both sweet and protective and very natural. Basically, I loved everyone's acting in this, the main evil-not-so-evil guy, of course, was far from original, but I was kind of okay with the screen time he was getting, but I've got to admit I skipped a lot of scenes with him XD /the character was slightly annoying in the second part of the series, but the actor is very good-looking/

The plot had some fun and strong points (mostly relationship-wise), the RuYi Pavilion's secret identity was a cool touch, the owner was also kind of badass (while she was there). The whole premise of kill-em-all to take revenge is a bit old but bearable. The characters are quite fresh and the actors delivered them masterfully. I won't say anything about the ending, but it was a bit of a floppy flop XD Well, I wasn't too disappointed, despite being invested into the main characters to some degree. I say the whole show is an emotional roller-coster but in general, it's very enjoyable.

DO WATCH the modern-day specials wtih ZZH and JJY, those shorts are beyond lovely. A type of reincarnation AU I'd totally watch. Plus, they do look ridiculously good together as a modern couple as well.

After watching the BTS, I'm really amazed at their acting skills because they laughed SO MUCH, omg, ZZH and JJY are like two kiddos giggling, dancing, and playing around, an absolute bliss to watch.

[fridayyy-13th]

20 questions for fic writers

tysm @three-magpies-in-a-trenchcoat for the tag!!

How many works do you have on Ao3? 4

What's your total Ao3 word count? 13,296

What fandoms do you write for? i used to write for the Hermitcraft fandom, but i've discontinued the one fic i started for it and moved on to The Magnus Archives. i've got a couple story ideas for other fandoms, but idk if they'll go anywhere.

What are your top five fics by kudos? well, i've only got four! but from most- to least-kudosed, there's: - Double Trouble (Hermitcraft, rated G, incomplete multichapter) - Know What Can't Be Shown, Feel What Can't Be Known (TMA, rated T, oneshot) - Time Enough to Spend Some Time Alone (TMA, rated T, oneshot) - Here, Nowhere, Somewhere With You (TMA, rated G, oneshot) and i'm totally not salty my two most kudosed fics are an incomplete work and something i posted at 3am, respectively.

Do you respond to comments? hell yeah! i love answering comments <3

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? gotta say Time Enough, bc it's more refined than its predecessor, Know What Can't Be Shown (man i really need to stop giving my fics such long titles, i always end up shortening them when referring to them). but for reference, both are pre-Unknowing jmart kiss fics; it's a favored headcanon of mine. Time Enough also spends more time musing on how Jon and Martin are feeling—that is, they feel Bad. Absolutely Terrible. sad and scared, both for the Unknowing and for each other.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Here, Nowhere, Somewhere, absolutely. the ending itself is pretty open, but Jon and Martin have reunited post-MAG 200, admitted they still love each other after its events, and found themselves Somewhere Else. it's the most hopeful.

Do you get hate on fics? not yet, thankfully. i'm not a well-known enough author for that lol.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? i do not! and i doubt i ever will. props to everyone who does, though.

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? i don't really write crossovers, at least none i ever planned to publish, but i do have a couple fusion AUs in the works (that is, taking one story's premise and combining it w/the characters of another). and funnily enough, both are based on songs.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? i sure hope not.

Have you ever had a fic translated? no. though if someone offered to, i'd be honored!

Have you ever co-written a fic before? technically? a friend of mine and i made a couple AUs for a few different MCYT fandoms that never really went anywhere, but i've never co-authored something that's made it to publishing.

What's your all time favorite ship? probably jonmartin. i've read a ridiculous amount of fanfic for them, and i think pretty much all my WIPs feature it if both Jon and Martin are there (sometimes i'll make them queerplatonic, and sometimes they'll be part of a poly ship like jongerrymartin, but jmart tends to be pretty Do Not Separate in my mind lmao).

What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? ages ago i was reading this one rom-com webcomic where two people wound up as roommates bc the landlord accidentally rented the single apartment to both of them, which i thought was a really cute premise, but then BAM there was some really awful transphobia in it. when called out in the comments, the author doubled down, so i snatched up the concept and decided "i'm gonna make this t4t out of SPITE." but uh i've found spite doesn't work very well as a fuel source for my work, and i can get the same awkward domesticity/mutual pining out of a safehouse fic, so it'll probably just stay buried in the WIPs folder.

What are your writing strengths? dialogue. or at least, making a character's dialogue sound like their voice. vocabulary, things like stammering or using filler words, cutting oneself off or pausing a bunch, that sort of thing. though sometimes the dialogue itself feels a little clunky. i also think i'm rather good at writing emotional scenes, especially once i'm in the editing stage of things.

What are your writing weaknesses? over-editing. my utter beloathed. i sometimes get really caught up in trying to make everything as clear as possible, when that just makes the work 5,000 words too long and takes way more time to do. i'm trying to be better about it.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? i think it's neat! but if you're monolingual you should read up on writing bilingual/multilingual characters beforehand, don't just wing it.

First fandom you wrote for? probably Pokémon? i'm not entirely sure.

Favorite fic you've written? Time Enough, hands-down. (though uh, hypothetically, if i wanted to make some small edits to it, would it be weird to do so? especially seven months after posting? there's a handful of lines i wish i'd phrased a bit differently.)

tags (no pressure!!): @radical-dadical-rafael @dramaticdads @winterswrandomness @ollieofthebeholder @ladydragonkiller @incandescentis @cornmazehater @jewishjon

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

Tagged by @batrachised. Thank you!

1-How many works do you have on AO3?

102. We will not discuss the number of fics posted on the ff.net account I maintained in high school.

2-What's your total AO3 word count?

298,956. Lower than I would have expected, actually. My longfic days were primarily, again, in high school, so on AO3 it's mostly shorter one-shots.

3-What fandoms do you write for?

Currently on a Blue Castle kick. Previously my main fandom was Les Mis, mostly bookverse, and prior to that I spent a decade or so as a Harry Potter girl. I have dabbled in other things, but none of them deeply enough for me to consider them actual fandoms that I am in.

4-What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

In the darkest time of year -- Hadestown, post-canon. I believe this is also the fic with the most notes on tumblr.

The Black Sheep and the Mad Muggleborn: a love story -- HP, post-canon. I really liked writing this one and, like all my HP work, now have deeply conflicted feelings about it.

And I could be enough -- Power Rangers 2017, character study. I only wrote 2 fics for this movie and I adore them both so much.

Stormforged -- ASOIAF, alternate ending. This was written for Femslash February and represents the sum total amount of time I have spent thinking about ASOIAF since reading the first four books in a week during standardized testing week back in high school.

We rose with voices ringing -- HP, alternate post-canon. Can you tell I default to song lyric titles a lot and also enjoy musicals?

5-Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I am trying to be better about this! For a long time I didn't because I hated everything I wrote the moment I published it and the only way I could publish at all was to throw a fic out the door and never think of it again.

6-What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

You know, I'm not sure. I haven't done full on angst in a long time. Probably either Waiting for sunrise (LM) or With nothing to remember (also LM). Honorable mention goes to Real in its consequences (still LM) which exists solely to take a ridiculous premise seriously.

7-What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

It's new and still my beautiful child, so this one goes to Ties That Bind, Bonds That Strengthen (TBC).

Oh! Honorable mention to The title of citizen (LM Animates-verse). It's... it just has to be read to be understood, tbh.

8-Do you get hate on fics?

Not since the old aforementioned high school era ffn account, where I once got flamed for writing het. Ah, the good old days. (It wasn't even endgame het, lol.)

9-Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Nope. I've played with some fade to black and a couple, like, sensuous bed scenes, but I find it boring to read so I don't write it.

10-Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I have come to love crossovers, honestly. I like putting characters into Situations. Can't think of any particularly crazy ones though.

11-Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I've ever found or been told about, although realistically with how much I've written and how long I've been doing it I'm sure there are some out there.

12-Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, but I can't off the top of my head remember which ones, unfortunately.

13-Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

No. I am a dreadful co-writer. I will, however, build a world with you at the drop of a hat. Shout out to @steelplatedhearts for the PoTC mermaid worldbuilding we did years and years ago that I still think about fondly.

14-What's your all-time favourite ship?

It varies. Right now unfortunately it's the two leads from the Forbidden Hugs story, which is unfinished original fiction. Fandom wise, I still like me some Logic and Philosophy.

15-What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Anything started earlier than this year, unfortunately.

16-What are your writing strengths?

I like to think I have gotten decent at having an entertaining narrative voice without it being too distracting.

17-What are your writing weaknesses?

Plot? What plot? Plot is when people sit in rooms and have conversations about their feelings, right? What do you mean Events must occur? I'm calling my manager, this doesn't sound right at all.

18-Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Mostly feels needlessly pretentious, honestly. I don't know if I've ever really even considered it.

19-First fandom you wrote for?

HP, starting at age, oh, 14 or so.

20-Favorite fic you've ever written?

Again, Ties That Bind is still my beloved child, but I have a huge soft spot for both Power Rangers (2017) fics. Oh, and underdog fav status to Never go anywhere, never see anyone, the nichest of niche crossovers where Mary Bolkonskaya befriends doesn't-even-get-a-canonical-first-name Aunt Gillenormand.

Tagging @lemeute, @manyswarmsofbees, @amarguerite, @ohhgingersnaps

[treesap-blogs]

Saturday evening post!! “The Merciless Ones” review by Namina Forna

Hello, Tumblrians! As you all might know, I read The Gilded Ones back in January, and really enjoyed it! Namina Forna pulled me into the story with the brutality outlined in the first half, as well as the strong friendships that powered Deka’s journey throughout, and all of the possibilities for exploring the series’ world. Unfortunately though, the ending was clunky to say the least, and it..created a bunch of flaws in the narrative that’d been set up until then. Overall I wasn't jiving with it. But! Seeing as it was still a solid novel, and it displayed Forna’s potential as a writer (it was her debut novel I’m pretty sure? I’ve unintentionally read a lot of those, goodness), I immediately put The Merciless Ones on by TBR! To which it was ordered by a librarian, and it arrived around the last week of the month :).

I have incredibly mixed feelings about this book, though. Of course, when reading a book that expands on an ending that I disliked (the same thing happened with Six Crimson Cranes to some degree?), it’s logical to assume that I as a reader wouldn’t really enjoy it as much, although I was hoping it would show some promise. It did, in some part! Firstly, I was waiting to see some of the political aftermath of the ending, and we saw that with the Alaki’s treatment, and a bit of inclusion on how the blood ceremony was handled after that (it was basically no longer practiced, spoiler). It integrated more of that brutality present in TGO, especially with the beginning starting off with a bang, as the first sentences are literally about two corpses Deka finds.

Overall though, it had the same issues as its predecessor but intensified: Plot twists felt predictable(except for one?), and the foreshadowing was very obvious because of that. Around the 1/3rd mark I just started making fun of Deka’s “guesses” being proven right again.

SPOILER SECTION!! If you want to read ahead, sure.

Firstly, Melanis got to be cartoonishly evil in the ending. I actually giggled when Deka (foolishly and half-hazardly) tried to convince Melanis into joining her side because The Gilded Ones were lying the entire time (..shocker), to which Melanis just prided them on their sexist cruelty lmao💀 like okay “that just makes me love them even more!” jdkwnfkensof 

Actually, everyone gets to be cartoonishly evil by the end?? Goodness.

Speaking of the gods and their sexism, I..don’t know how to feel about how it was handled here. It felt like there was too much “both sides-ism” in the narrative now, even if Deka’s internal monologue says multiple times that the male monarchs/authorities went totally overboard and shouldn’t have created the misogynistic society that literally tortured Deka (and literal millions) in this series!! But now we have a reason for that oppression(kinda), and it feels weird. Why does there need to be a logical reason for it? Fine, I guess it’s for plot reasons because of how the Merciless and Gilded Ones are counterparts of each other (the former essentially being a genderbent version of the latter), and eventually turned against each other, yada yada yada…

It felt like Forna wanted to make the gods complex or interestingly evil but..I don’t know, execution wasn’t really that great. 

Deka is also ridiculously overpowered?? I completely forgot she was said to be wholly immortal in TGO, and for most of the book it just makes her feel detached from the other characters and a chunk of the stakes of the narrative. Especially with how she literally is for most of the time?! I might not be original for stating this (shoutout to a helpful Goodreads reviewer, I wish I remembered your user, bless), but what made the first book really stick was that even with the fantastical elements it still felt human. Britta and Deka’s unconditional friendship, how the Alaki supported each other, their very human emotions and struggles despite what you’d expect from the premise carried it. For TMO, we got a false(?) McGuffin, along with Deka being very different from her friends..being truly immortal, the only one who can communicate with the gods, kind of being a god herself. It’s..huh. AND NOW SHE CAN GIVE OTHER PEOPLE ABILITIES?! NOT JUST ABILITIES BUT IMMORTALITY?!?! SLOW DOWN😭 (At least we establish she has some limits though, because her physical body is taking physical damage by the end. How the hell does she even work though?! Is she a soul? Something incomprehensible to the human mind, vast and cosmic?? But then how was that formed, is she just..separate from the body she was born/created with? That raises so many questions!!?)

Anyhow. It really set in that I kind of excused how rushed Kaita and Deka’s romance was? They started out with a rivalry or “hating each other”, had one conversation and suddenly they got googly eyes for each other. I’m thinking of this because their “development” was mentioned somewhere in the book, as a way of signaling to the readers how far they’ve come. But it?? Sure doesn’t feel like it in retrospect haha. He also doesn’t do a ton in the book, except for when they legitimately tried to redeem Deka’s father because he’d “realized his mistakes” or some bullshit and he talked some sense into her (BC HER FATHER LITERALLY TORTURED HER?? WILLINGLY!! SHE LITERALLY CHANGED HER APPEARANCE TO NO LONGER HAVE HIS CHARACTERISTICS BECAUSE SHE WAS TRAUMATIZED BRO🧍). I like that Kaita did that actually because I was like “TALK YOUR SHITTTTT” like Deka wdym “I hated my father all this time😔and for what reason😢” Kaita literally was like HE BEHEADED YOU!! Such a stupid part of the book like girlie I get having parental issues but I was gonna lose my shit fr if Forna used his death as a means of redeeming him chkwncosnfoenforn.

That rant aside though, again, Kaita was mostly useless.

I also just found a lot of stuff to be unintentionally funny this time around because the plot got to be nonsensical after a while. There was one part I did find genuinely funny though less so because of the bad writing and more so just the way events played out?? One of the highlights of this book in my opinion was when the Merciless Ones(the male gods) were trying to mess with Deka’s memories and she knew and was just so fed up of being manipulated by gods she just walked out of their chamber lmfao.

One last complaint! Not digging the sudden introduction of romantic relationships for this book. The first one was so based around platonic ones, and found family even, that it kinda took away from that :(.

Ok! Complaints aside! I’m a little intrigued by what they established with White Hands — will she get to explore her own gender and identity outside of what the Gilded Ones pushed onto her in the next book? (Does that mean they could be non-binary like Thandiwe?) Are they technically intersex, therefore making their story also kind of work as an allegory for forced intersex surgeries? I’m kind of intrigued, as a non-binary reader.

Last things I feel like discussing for this section!! I was pretty stoked that Karmoko Thandiwe was revealed to be non-binary! They were my favorite of the Karmokos in the last book, probably one of my favorite characters overall, their introduction just stuck with me and was so metal. (The “I’ll cut your tongue off and put it in a jar to keep me company” thing caught me so off-guard lmao but it was also kinda badass.) I do feel like the confirmation of it was a little awkwardly worded, though (as are most instances of NB rep unfortunately because it’s often expected that the audience won’t automatically catch on, so we gotta have their gender and pronouns be explicitly stated). Karmoko Huon being trans surprised me though! I’m not gonna lie, maybe there were some hints I could’ve been missing out on because Deka was like “oh yea! I guess I picked it up from the specific way she was shut out from society and ostracized” and I just? Couldn’t remember any of that really standing out?? Or maybe it’s like the Kaita relationship thing where not as much really happened? Anyhow. The influx of queer representation was unexpected but good, although I feel like they only got surface-level on how queer people are oppressed in a multitude of ways in this world, specifically in the case of alaki/women? I guess I get why that was the case though, because Deka is our POV and she’s not queer in any way. Point is though I just wish there was a bit more time spent on that, not because I want to see people suffering on the pages even more(heaven knows there’s enough of that for this series), but so there could be a little more care put into discussing it? 

I think that’s all the spoiler-y stuff I have to discuss!

End of spoiler section!! You may proceed :)

Like the first book though, I liked the action scenes! Even if the plot they were part of was kinda clunky the way the fights played out were solid in my opinion. (And there were a couple times where some batshitery popped up mid-battle and I was like “OH FUCK!” and nibbled on my imaginary popcorn.)

Overall, it feels too harsh a descriptor to call this “worse” than TGO, but I just wasn’t vibing with it as much. All the gripes I had with book one were more prominent here; it felt like the feeling I had reading the ending was extended to approximately 300 more pages. (I’m aware the book is longer than that. The number is there for a reason because it wasn’t that the entire time.) Deka’s backstory stuff just gets increasingly convoluted.

But, with all that’s said and done, I’ll still be seeing how this series ends, because I enjoy most of it and am too far along this journey with these characters to just abandon them. Consider TGO a complicated favorite, if you will.

Book rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars.

Paz, signing off!

(Book trigger/content warnings: Torture, gore, PTSD, grief(death of a parent), references to homophobic and queerphobic abuse.)

[jj-fink]

Eden of the East takes modern Japan’s reality—economic downturn, political stagnation, and social isolation—and infuses it with an almost fantastical premise: What if a select few individuals were given the power to "save" their country?

I went into Eden of the East expecting a fun mystery with some political intrigue, but I didn’t expect it to hit so hard on real-world issues—both in Japan and globally. The show drops you into a world where twelve strangers, the Selecao, are given ten billion yen and told to “save Japan” however they see fit. They can use the money for anything, as long as it works toward improving the country. If they waste it or fail, they’re eliminated. It’s a wild premise, but underneath the thriller elements, there’s a lot of social commentary that still feels relevant today.

Japan’s economic struggles, political stagnation, and the younger generation’s uncertainty about the future are all baked into the story. The idea that a handful of individuals with unlimited money and power could “fix” these problems feels like both a fantasy and a critique. Can one person actually save a country? And even if they try, who decides what "saving" even looks like? Some of the Selecao go full corruption mode, others burn out, and a few genuinely want to make a difference—but even the best intentions don’t guarantee success. That whole “if you had a billion dollars, what would you do?” debate plays out in real time, and the answers aren’t simple.

The show also hits on issues that go beyond Japan, especially in the way it deals with technology and power. Eden of the East came out in 2009, before social media became what it is today, but it was already asking big questions about how digital communities shape the world. The “Eden” app in the show is basically an early version of AI-powered social networking, where people can instantly pull up information about anything just by pointing their phone at it. It’s easy to see the parallels to modern tech—how online platforms give people influence but also concentrate power in the hands of a few. Watching it now, it feels weirdly ahead of its time, especially with the way misinformation, online movements, and data control have become part of everyday life.

What really stuck with me, though, was how relatable the main character, Akira, feels. He’s handed this insane power and spends most of the show trying to figure out what to do with it. He’s smart and idealistic, but also kind of lost—like he knows he should be doing something meaningful, but he’s not always sure what that looks like. That’s a feeling I think a lot of people can relate to, especially now, when there’s this constant pressure to be productive, to make a difference, to have some kind of huge impact. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the idea that we should be "changing the world" when, really, most of us are just trying to figure things out one step at a time.

It also ties into bigger questions about power and responsibility, something that comes up in a lot of political and philosophical discussions. The Selecao experiment is basically a crash course in moral decision-making—some of them believe they have to play by the rules, some think the ends justify the means, and some just take advantage of the system. It’s an interesting look at how different people handle power, and whether having unlimited resources actually makes someone a better leader. Spoiler: it doesn’t.

In the end, Eden of the East doesn’t give any easy answers, which is probably why it still holds up. It acknowledges that fixing big problems isn’t simple, and that no one person has all the answers. But at the same time, it doesn’t fall into total cynicism. It leaves room for hope—for the idea that even small actions can matter, and that change happens through collective effort, not just one person with a magic phone and a ridiculous amount of money.

[gravalicious]

“Africans in the entire Americas are both colonised and enslaved. Thus, contrary to “Afro-pessimism” the narrative arc of plenitude before Columbus and disequilibrium during Columbus and equilibrium after Columbus applies also to Africans and not just to the so-called Indians. Thus, US Black nationalism by pursuing among other things an African republic is not anti-Indian sovereignty contrary to Wilderson’s misguided claims. The anti-African myopic historical imagination of “Afro-pessimism” reaches its absurd summit with Wilderson’s’ critique of South African politics. Having joined the ANC, Wilderson plays into the hands of the Congress tradition which centres Apartheid as the primary antagonism. This monumental historical absurdity is monumentalised in the ridiculous Varara/Congress history series called The Road to Democracy. There is some truth to the idea that joining a cult or movement has epistemological ramifications, one of them being brainwashing. It is ironic but then in keeping with the confusing name of “Afro-pessimism” that Wilderson whose analysis is excessively premised on structural logic characteristic of his Marxist inclinations can ignore the structure of white settler colonialism in South Africa and choose to centre Apartheid which is a manifestation of this colonialism at the level of regime since 1948 but not its totality nor a fundamental antagonism, namely conquest since 1652. Given his Marxist inclinations it makes sense since even the so-called Neo-Marxist historiographical tradition of Wolpe and Legassick also made this ridiculous fundamental error in their silly debate around Apartheid and capitalism. This also explains why Wilderson would absurdly valorise the ANC rather than simply dismiss it as a civil rights movement. Wilderson did this by falling prey to the ridiculous factionalism within the ANC due to its ideological prostitution in the name of the “broad church” when he dismisses the Mandela faction which sold out and by valorising Hani as representing the radical faction during the so-called negotiations. Wilderson should just read Hani’s presentation during CODESA to see how he sounded like Mandela. Hani was a militant Marxist with a solid history of liberal nonracialism which defines the Congress tradition.”

Masilo Lepuru - How they mistook the map for the territory: The trouble with Afro-pessimists (2022)

[keytoyourhearts]

Review of Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger (2019)

DISCLAIMER:

               I was unaware of the allegations against this author before reading this novel and writing this review.  My review is honest, but I do not wish to support this author now or in the future.  I urge those who may want to pick this one up to do so second-hand (where you may find my copy).

SYNOPSIS:

Steel Crow Saga follows four main characters, paired into duos, shortly following three successful rebellions that freed three countries from the oppression of the Iron Throne of Tomoda.  The first pair, Sargeant Tala and Iron Prince Jimuro, are trying to return said prince to the Iron Throne to be crowned.  Unfortunately, their partnership is rife with conflict, as Tala’s family was killed following a conflict with the Tomodanese.  She also has a shade, an animal which is soul bonded to the wielder.  The Tomodanese believe this practice to be slavery. The second pair, Lee Yeon-Ji and Princess Shang Xuilan, are working together to capture the Iron Prince to turn him over to Xuilan’s father so she can be named heir to the Shang throne.  Lee is a thief who comes along after the very verbose Xuilan saves her from prison and promises her a shade.

See my full review and rating below the cut!

RATING: 2/5 STARS

MY THOUGHTS:

This novel was an easy read, but it was overall, just fine.  It really did not bring anything new to the table; being advertised as “anime” and something inherently derivative (ie. Pokémon meets The Last Airbender) did not do it any favors despite its interesting premise and story.  Simply put, this was written for a specific type of reader, and I am not that reader.

TAGS: fantasy, young adult, romance, magic, Asian-inspired

CW: racism, colonialism, murder, war, graphic depictions of death and violence (including but not limited to: disembowelment, loss of limbs, decapitation), PTSD, suicidal behavior

RECOMMENDATION: I would recommend this novel for those looking for an easy introduction to the written fantasy genre who enjoy anime, manga, or JRPGs.

THE GOOD:

Overall, this story was fun, simply put.  The author made use of parallels fairly well and often, and I found some of the repetition to be artistic while carefully toeing the line of being overdone without crossing it.  I could not get over the fact that the occupiers became the occupied and then acted like victims lol.  The twist in the midpoint of the book was totally unexpected and surprised me, which was refreshing!

I found the magic system to be compelling, being soul-based.  It was almost like the people of each nation’s soul spoke a different language (metal, animal, people, etc.).  I only wish this was explored more in depth.

THE BAD:

This book is best described as “anime-inspired,” and I mean heavily anime-inspired.  At one point, Jimuro’s glasses flash as if to convey an emotion.  No other reason.  I do not know what emotion; I do not watch anime.  What did this mean??  Also, the author used the “return” command a la Pokémon too often.  It is one thing to be inspired by a franchise, it is another to directly rip off certain phrases.

Honestly, most of the characters were terrible and unlikable, Lee being the worst offender.  She was rude and crude for seemingly no reason and would never let a moment go by without saying something awful and cringey (No, I would not enjoy if a male character delivered these lines either).  Jimuro is literally shocked by everything.  Literally everything.  Xuilan was always touted as so smart but was unintelligent regarding big picture issues.  She probably could not find her way out of a paper bag without Lee’s help, I have no idea how she got this far.

The relationships were a little ridiculous and half-baked.  One couple seemed to fall in love almost immediately, and the other never really paid off in the end despite hints being dropped throughout the story.

This one is just a personal gripe, but I hate when fantasy books involve a good amount of travel and various regions/countries but don’t include a map.  You could include three different pages with the title, but not a map?  I was lost throughout this entire book.

[SPOILER] Finally, the ending.  It was completely lackluster.  I found the man with the purple cloak to be an interesting villain, but his final showdown felt so inconsequential and like nothing we had not seen before.  Every fight scene with him came off the same, so much so that despite supposedly having thousands of shades, only the same few are ever mentioned or called on.