#things i read

[lordrawrxe]

A couple of things I've read in the recent past and liked

Books

Girl In White Cotton by Avni Doshi

Still Born by Guadalupe Nettle

Simple Passion by Annie Ernoux

Books Currently Reading

The Lonely City by Olivia Laing (yes @ijaazat's reccs)

Decolonising the Mind by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

On Photography by Susan Sontag

The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen

The Truce by Primo Levi

Articles and Essays

The Myth of Objective Data by Melanie Feinberg

Guardian's amazing graph on the Boris Johnson scandal

On Capitalism and marriage and other such things by Daniel Tutt

[solidrain]

favorite things i read - february and march 2023

short stories:

“Calf Cleaving in the Benthic Black” by Isabel J. Kim - incredibly haunting and descriptive story about two space scavengers coming across a cryogenically frozen child and a moral conundrum

“What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear” by Baoshu, translated by Ken Liu (from Broken Stars) - such an interesting and fresh premise if you have even a decent knowledge of modern chinese history, explores the nature of time and history

“The Brain Box” by Regina Kanyu Wang, translated by Ken Liu (from Broken Stars) - a sharp and incisive story about the narratives we tell ourselves about our own identities and relationships explored through maybe the creepiest surveillance technology imaginable

“You’ll Understand When You’re a Mom Someday” by Isabel J. Kim - a possibly demonic creature possesses a woman’s body and navigates the trials and tribulations of marriage, motherhood, and contract law

“Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler (from Bloodchild and Other Stories) - this one is probably a classic of science fiction at this point, but here i am as another person to reiterate that this is very well-crafted and intriguing

essays:

“The Idea of Children” by Madeline Lane-McKinley - a critical analysis of the political position of the child

“Book of Lamentations” by Sam Kriss - a satirical review of the DSM-5 as if it were a dystopian novel

books:

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata - very dark and graphic in some parts, but i really liked it. the narrative really pushes the protagonist to the edge of what a reader may find sympathetic, but it’s an incredibly well-crafted journey from childhood abuse and trauma to alienation in modern society to the gruesome end. lots of content warnings for abuse, rape, incest, murder, and cannibalism.

combining february and march cuz uh i can’t believe it’s already april?? anyways, lots of short stories read (although i think i’m gonna take a break from reading short fiction for a while) and a few books, of which earthlings was the only one i really liked. gonna try to pick up some more novels and poetry in the coming months.

[just-french-me-up]

'ao3 needs a like and dislike button'

what you need, my algorithm-rotten minded friend, is a grip

[starbuck]

“…to me” is one of the most powerful disclaimers we have on here… is this character analysis accurate? debatable. but it’s real… to me.

[spitblaze]

[guy who doesnt watch shows voice] yeah ive been meaning to watch that show

[roboticnebula]

Pros of re-reading your own fic

a good time;

Has exactly the tropes you like and the characterization you want to read;

Gratification: yes you did finish a thing and yes you did do good;

just a very fun time all around.

Cons of re-reading your own fic:

Is that another TYpO

[inkskinned]

please i love you i'm begging you bring back suspension of disbelief bring back trusting the audience like. i cannot handle any more dialogue that sounds like a legal document. "hello, i am here to talk to you about the incident from a few minutes ago, because i feel you might be unwell, and i am invested in your personal wellbeing." "thank you, i am unwell because the incident was hurtful to me due to my childhood, which was bad." I CANT!!!!

do you know how many people are mad that authors use "growled" as a word for "said"? it's just poetics! they do not literally mean "growled," it's just a common replacement for "said with force but in a low tone." it's normal! do you hear me!! help me i love you please let me out of here!!!

[moodsandtenses]

There's something hilarious about how so much subsequent media has positioned Vampires and Werewolves as, like, binary opposite entities, and then you read Dracula (1897) and realize that wolves are that guy's preferred solution to every problem. You'd say something to Dracula about "ah yes, werewolves, vampires' great eternal enemies," and he'd just be like "you mean my subcontractors?"

[tawnysoup]

Finally now that the comic is fully public on comicfury, I get to share it with all of you here, too <3

If you enjoyed, please consider supporting by buying a PDF of the comic on itch.io: https://tawnysoup.itch.io/home-in-the-woods

[willgrahamscock]

my favorite customer service slip ups

[earlgraytay]

God, there really is nothing like 20s detective fiction to remind you that prejudice is a social construct.

You'll have a story with a crossdressing thief which is mildly transmisogynistic but completely devoid of modern vitriol; it literally comes off as "here is a fun oddity that lets me be Clever about French grammar"

And in the very next story you will learn fifteen different slurs for Italians

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[nephritebabie]

oof

[yeah-yeah-beebiss-1]

in case you were wondering how things went down at the pokemon world championships this weekend:

-during the top 8 of the TCG masters division, chilean player fernando cifuentes was running a gimmick deck that consisted exclusively of four iron thorns ex and a whole ton of control-focused trainer cards in a strategy that either completely shuts down opponents or shits the bed entirely

-through skillful play and some good luck, fernando made it through 2 days in a tournament with over 1100 players to get to the quarterfinals

-fernando lost 2-0 to ian robb, who was running regidrago vstar (widely considered one of the best decks in the current format)

-in an overexuberant victory celebration, ian did what can only be described as a jacking-off gesture, on a stream with tens of thousands of viewers run by a company with very firm player conduct expectations

-the judges determined that this warranted a penalty of game loss, but for some reason, rather than applying it to ian’s next game in the semifinals, they applied it to the one he had just won in the top 8

-(it should be noted that the prize money for making top 8 is $15k while top 4 is $20k, so this jerking gesture cost ian robb $5,000)

-nearly an hour after fernando came to terms with his loss and the end of an impressive run, he was told that he was to get back on stream because he’s now playing in the semifinals due to winning by default

-the player he was up against in the semifinals was playing a deck (miraidon) that happens to get shut down hard by iron thorns’s gimmick, so fernando wins the semifinals

-said player, jesse parker, had notably had an undefeated run throughout the whole tournament up to this point, and likely would have continued that streak had his intended semifinal opponent not gotten a game loss penalty for miming a lewd act on stream

-meanwhile, the other semifinal winner is japan’s seinosuke shiokawa, running a deck (roaring moon) that players had largely written off as underwhelming months ago

-the grand finals are on the following day, so saturday evening was abuzz with a lot of people baffled by the absurdity of the situation

-come sunday afternoon, the grand finals are set to begin, with fernando cifuentes running iron thorns and seinosuke shiokawa running roaring moon

-it should be noted here that the roaring moon deck doesn’t rely very much on abilities, so iron thorns’s gimmick has very little effect - this is basically an even matchup

-fernando wins the first game of the set, and seinosuke wins the second

-the third and final game of the set is a bonafide cheek-clencher, with both players reaching a state where a single KO will win the game, but fernando manages to clinch it at the last minute

-and that’s the story of how a guy pretending to jork it led to the first instance of a pokemon world champion who also lost the quarterfinals

[beaft]

google help me

[mumblingsage]

I'm wondering if, as a society who cares about vulnerable people, we could stop saying "traumatize" when we truly mean "upset"?

I am sick of hearing sad books or movies "traumatize" their readers. I simply do not believe that happens. A traumatic experience might be adjacent to books (I have vivid memories of books I was reading around certain experiences and even how the contents of those books affected my processing of the experiences). But it's not caused by the book. And, y'know. The weather is Christofascist Censorship Attempts outside.

Meanwhile from the other side I continue to be surprised at just how badly people fail to understand trauma and traumatic experiences in general. Watering down the term isn't helping. Find other hyperbole to express that The Bridge to Terebithia gutted you, chewed on your heartstrings, and made you cry your first pair of contact lenses right out of your preteen eyes.

(ETA here although it's impossible to edit reblogs: over the months since this post really took off, there has been valuable discussion in the comments. I stand by the passion with which I wrote this post and with the general message, but not all the exact wording. I talk more about the way I'd re-write this post in a response here, replying to an addition that added a ton of useful context [other additions touched on similar themes, but that person had it all together in one reblog]. With that said, I am muting this post.)