superborb

Haohao, the best singer in the capital, is incensed upon learning there is a new pipa player eclipsing her fame. Naturally, the first thing she does upon meeting said pipa player is to praise her beauty ('even I can't help falling in love upon seeing you') and play a duet with her.

Nominally based on the Yuan dynasty opera, set in the Song dynasty, this drama follows three women as they try to make a life in the capital. Zhao Panr was once a music entertainer, a legal status denoting the lowest social class, but now runs a successful small teahouse as a businesswoman. Sun Sanniang is a former butcher who dreams of her son passing the exams to become an official. Song Yinzhang is the best pipa player, which comes with the entertainer status that she desperately wants to escape.

[Spoilers ahead]
( Spoiler cut! )

I briefly discussed some of this on twitter previously, but wanted to more long-form discuss, which of course means moving to DW!! Anyway, these are somewhat scattered thoughts, but putting it together + talking with people about it always clarifies my thoughts.

I like a lot of things about Discord! I wrote previously that it fannishly descended from the instant messaging programs of yore, and has similar dynamics as places with large group chats to mingle and meet friends and small ones to settle friendships. When it goes well, those are indeed both niches that I personally find essential to a ~balanced social media diet~.

The difference is as fandom increasingly moves to Discord-only, its weakness as a primary fannish platform becomes more obvious to me. There's two main problems IMO: 1) no way to call out important / top level discussion aka curation; 2) difficulty in propagating social norms and thus community feeling. There is also the 3) "difficulty in FINDING a server" problem, but I think that is far less structural.

1: Beyond the obvious difficulty in backreading a busy server, it's really hard to point out a specific message as important without resorting to dedicated 'low traffic' channels or such. Partially, this is a me-problem, as I am completionist... But I also think this means Discord requires an alternate host to serve as repository for longer or more polished thoughts. OR a server with a very strict and different culture than I've usually observed. I wonder if that would be possible with a long slowmode? (For non-Discord users, slowmode means a user must wait a mod-defined amount of time before sending another message, though edits are allowed on previous messages.) In contentious debate, having a slowmode set really helped cool tempers and force a more reasoned argument, but I've never seen it used to force longer thoughts.

Also, "curate your feed" became so central on tumblr, and caused problems on twitter, with its inferior curation tools, that I wondered how Discord-based fandom would deal with it. On Discord, there are even fewer tools to curate other than leaving a group, because everything is intrinsically shaped like a conversation and even blocking people, it's ...shaped like a conversation you're just ignoring one person in?

2: Within a server, you're essentially all in one room with EVERYONE AT THE SAME TIME. And this might work if the group can establish shared social mores, but that's non-trivial to do. One way that LJ had shared norms propagate is through lurking before having to participate; you can still do that, but it's much less interesting to lurk a conversation than polished (or not) public posts. Sure, messaging is probably a native way to communicate for a lot of people in their 20s and 30s, but the norms of that messaging are wildly different (and have changed over time! I was reading an AIM log from LJ days and wow do I message differently now!)

This seems minor, until you have a disagreement and those norms suddenly clash over how you're supposed to resolve a conflict in the first place! One norm I've encountered often is the 'doubling down on shared opinions to distinguish in and out group', which I fundamentally disagree with. However, if you're trying to resolve a conflict and one party is used to seeing conflict as an in vs out group disagreement (and therefore looking for a common opinion) and the other is offended by viewing the world that way, this is not a path to success. Of course, I think the problem of 'how to disagree and still be in community' is at the heart of being a community in the first place, and not a Discord-specific problem.

On the less outright conflict front though, every community has people you like or dislike to varying degrees, and I've discovered that in a Discord server, when you're sharing a space that can't be easily filtered, perceived norms-violations irritate me way more than in any other platform or real life situation I've ever encountered. I don't know if other people feel that way, but I've had enough discussions around it that I think it's relatively common, and more common on Discord than elsewhere. It's the lack of ability to socially get away, perhaps, combined with Discord being a difficult place to transmit those norms?

3: It is unfortunately a really opaque barrier to finding servers; getting access to comms, even if it required an essay, or figuring out a crufty forum feels different than 'make friends and become cool enough to get an invite'. This problem becomes more difficult to solve when fandom is less active on other platforms, decreasing the ways you can make friends! Even worse, you can't easily lurk to learn the social norms beforehand.

However, fandom is just bigger now too, which means there are many more public Discords available, from which to splinter off. In some ways, it's a return to requiring active involvement in order to get access, instead of being able to passively consume from the firehose of public twitter/tumblr. It's harder to go track a specific person you think is cool back to their fannish home, but easier to find someone to chat with at all hours of the day. (And lead to friendships and new servers spawned. Ideally.)

I don't know! I don't think Discord is even a good primary fannish platform, but it does seem to be where people are moving, for better or worse. At least I find it more amenable than tumblr, which means I might not disappear until the next migration?

Two rec requests for:
1. Joinable Discords for general cdrama or book chat? Most of my general cdrama chat is happening in the Qi Hun server and book chat on DW, both of which are lovely, but I'd like a little more.

2. Blogs or news sites? Something with a relatively high interesting story to article count ratio OR more in-depth stories. (I'll rec one to start: I feel like sixthtone's articles have gotten better and meatier over time! Focused on stores about China, with a wide coverage.)

A little early because I'll be traveling without my computer! (I'll check DW when I get back, since I haven't quite gotten the hang of mobile DW yet either...)

The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Ruth Ozeki: The story of Benny Oh, as told partially by his book, partially by himself, primarily after the death of his father, when his mother starts hoarding things and he begins to hear objects. Although the somewhat chaotic and elaborate descriptions would seem to be not to my taste, the prose actually worked really smoothly and well for me? I think the internal structure and careful attention to rhythm pulled it off. I found the descriptions of his mother's hoarding extremely unsettling, which I don't think has happened to me before. It was very unmoored in time/location and none of the characters were that compelling to me, so although it was an engaging read, I found it somewhat unmemorable by being so incohesive.
(PS: Disneyland is not in Florida.)

Things We Lost in the Fire, by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell: A collection of short stories set in Argentina, primarily along the lines of magical realism / social commentary. From meitachi's rec. The book seems billed as macabre and dark, so I expected more unsettling feelings from this collection, but I think it fit more as 'ghost story' than 'horror' levels of dark. While the stories were interesting social commentary (mostly on gender and poverty, always with the undercurrent of the desaparecidos) and I read them like potato chips, I think they're a little bit unmemorable for me? A common problem with short stories I guess.

Strange Beasts of China, by Yan Ge, translated by Jeremy Tiang: A novelist who once studied cryptozoology learns about and tells the stories of a series of beasts, slowly coming to understand her own story in the process. Recced by excaliburedpan! The beasts are a rather straightforward metaphor for marginalized groups (as the author herself says); although I don't usually check goodreads, I was startled at the number of reviews that seemed to miss the point, is that normal? I enjoyed the imaginative beasts and their stories, the snarky relationship between the main character and her underclassman, and the slow reveal of the main character's backstory. I was not super impressed with the translation, which came across monotone, and I thought the social criticism was very unsubtle (though I guess maybe not, given the goodreads reviews...). Overall, I liked it a lot, as a book that tried to tell a complicated story about humans and beasts interacting and mixing.

Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger: In a world very similar to ours, but where some myths / magic are real, our protag has a family secret that allows her to raise dead animals; her cousin dies and comes to her in a dream to tell her he's been murdered. From sophia_sol's rec! It read more MG than YA to me, and in that light, it was perfectly cromulent. I enjoyed the characters and their interactions. However, it always felt weird that the world and its history were so similar to ours yet had these magics that should surely have affected things. If you're in the mood for MG, this would suit.

Ted Lasso S2: In season two, the show gets a chance to add more complex characterization and relationships, as the team tries to win their way back into the top level of English soccer, the Premier League. It remains mostly unstressful, except I kept getting VERY NERVOUS in all the Nate scenes because he was becoming more and more of an asshole. Two points annoyed me: the improper spotting and joking about someone having their neck crushed by weights is not actually funny??? And the TV psychology privacy practice of Sharon, the new team psychologist, discussing specific patients with her psychologist without anonymizing it. I remain very into the Ted/Trent dynamic, even if on screen interactions were sadly scarce. Overall, remains an entertaining and mostly light series, with enough humor to act as a hook, but not too much second hand embarrassment.

Go Ahead (以家人之名) (DNF): Three unrelated kids grow up together as family and support each other through family troubles. Given the presence of ZXC, this must have been a halfcactus rec, lol. They were very cute as children, and I really did love the two dads trying to parent them together! It was just a little overacted / contrived and I can't build up the motivation to keep going... I think those who like modern family centric dramas would like it (based on the episodes I've seen!), it's just ultimately not my favorite genre, you know?

Bad Buddy (DNF): Two boys from neighboring rival families have competed since they were young; when they became close at the end of secondary school, one is sent away. Now, they've both entered university in rival faculties. Livetweeted here! Everyone loved this so much, and indeed, the fast pace and tightly focused scenes were great! I just... find the friends hating each other thing very stressful and all the really cheesy romance scenes Too Much q_q. Not for me, but definitely if you like tropey BL, I'd recommend.

The Male Fairy Fox Of Liao Zhai 3 (男狐聊斋3): A fox demon (fairy?) can't ascend until he repays the life debt from being rescued by a human a thousand years ago. Recced by douqi! Livetweeted here. The plot and characters are pretty much standard, but it is quite overtly gay and the fighting is very swoopy, so it's a satisfying 1.5 h movie. (No Eng subs yet.)

CODA (2021): The only hearing child in a Deaf family needs to decide between staying to help her family fishing business or leaving for music college. Choosing singing as the plot device is rather loaded, and unsurprisingly led to some criticism of the movie. Overall though, it was pretty formulaic in plot, with enough well executed scenes and acting to make it worth watching if it's a genre you like.

I realize that I mostly pull 'from x's rec!' links from DW search, but this doesn't work for if the post was flocked / recs I got off DW. HMMM, but I'm so bad at remembering where I got a rec from!

The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo: The story of the former empress is recounted to a cleric from an order dedicated to faithfully recording history. I enjoyed the slow reveal and the pacing was quite good, but the last chapter that explicated what had been strongly hinted at earlier was a little redundant; generally not as subtle as I expected going in? A short, interesting read.

The Thursday Murder Club: a Novel, by Richard Osman: Four people living in an upmarket retirement community come together every Thursday to solve cold murders, and when an actual murder occurs, set up to solve it themselves. Very ...witty is probably the right word for the type of humor. Funny in one-off sentences, but I found it somewhat difficult to read in one go as a result, and had to keep putting it down when it got repetitive. A fluffy sometimes amusing novel, with what reads to my USian eyes as rather conservative politics.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, by Patricia A. McKillip: A fantasy novel with the window dressing of fantastical beasts, but really about consent, power, and fear. From dolorosa_12's rec! I thought the ending, though foreshadowed, was a little bit too deus ex machina to be fully satisfying? Beautiful prose without being self-conscious about it, such that the prose read in an effortless way. (Difficult to pull off!) I kept feeling like this was rather dark YA -- midway through, I decided I must be getting the wrong impression and this must be adult fantasy, but wiki seems to have it under YA? Anyway, short and packs a punch.
CW: sexual assault, child marriage

The Disordered Cosmos, by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: Discussion of racism in science, with dashes of popsci particle physics and autobiography. From chestnut_pod's rec. Could have used a stronger editor with an eye towards continuity between the chapters, especially what had been introduced already and what needed to be defined. The popsci explanations were a bit confusing IMO, but I did know most of the general ideas already, so I can't totally judge accurately. The meatiest chapters were the ones in the latter half, which centered around particular faces of racism in science, but unfortunately I did not find them particularly novel.

Once, It Was Love: Very short manga about a woman whose husband suddenly stops being able to see her. From x_los's review. I guess like a good thriller, I really wanted to know what would happen next. We get to understand the motivation of the female characters explicitly, but only ever the male ones through their actions; the stalker's motivations are clear, but the husband's never become so.

Under the Skin (猎罪图鉴) (2022): Mostly episodic cases as a forensic artist joins the police force and works with a captain who initially hates him for his role in the death of his mentor years ago. I think the problem is the best parts of this show were things like... extended art scenes and their bromance relationship once they get to know each other, neither of which was enough to compensate for what I disliked. Some of the characters were compelling and the pacing was pretty good too. I had a longer rant here, but I've cut for length: the gist was too much 'TV logic' leading to thin/unrealistic plots, asshole cop behavior, and weird cuts / cases not resolving satisfactorily. Although they tried to be sympathetic to the circumstances of female victims and perpetrators, it went too far into 'reveling in their pain' territory for me; additionally, having two male leads and a few stereotypical male and female cop roles meant the show overall landed more sexist than I think they intended. Episodes 17-18 were probably the strongest, doing a great job with tension and bringing in threads from earlier in the series; I especially liked how it recontextualized how surveillance was treated during the show. Also, the captain introduced in those episodes did an exceptional acting job. Overall, I think I should perhaps stop watching Chinese cop shows and the very constrained stories they can tell.
CW: gratuitous extended on screen domestic violence, tragic lesbians

Dream Boys 2006 Kanjani8 v KAT-TUN (DNF): I watch partied the first hour of this, and the juniors tap dancing was my favorite number. So much inexplicable plot happened in the first hour that I am scared what happens in the remaining 1.5.

Cyphstress: Online group puzzle in the vein of an escape room. The first half was too straightforward and tedious at points; the second half was occasionally frustrating. I think the problem was that (for me) there wasn't much of a feeling of satisfaction at solving the puzzles; just an 'I guess that's the solution...'? Still, it was fun to do as a group activity!

Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes: A rather long (though not as long as I thought as I was reading, the last 12% is an index) pop sci book summarizing the historical and current state of research on Neanderthals and speculating (pretty conservatively?) about the unknowns. (From narie's suggestion!) Scientifically, it did not dwell on the pieces I was more interested in (how were the reconstructions done etc), in favor of tons of detail about exact remains (reasonable, and even interesting when they reappeared in later chapters). I had complained about pop sci books not having enough detail; this attempts more successfully to be basic survey of the field than most, but lacks the citations and further readings that something for the scientific audience would have, and that I did miss. The flavor text in the beginning of each chapter were largely uninteresting, and the prose did sometimes become... purple. I'd only rec this if you were very interested in nonfiction or Neanderthals and also a fast reader. Favorite footnote, explaining how they knew the babies were breastfed: "Nitrogen in part tracks the place in the foodchain, and since babies are effectively eating their mother’s bodies, this makes them look like hyper-carnivores."

Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki: Speculative fiction combining deals with the devil, interstellar refugees, and violin prodigies. I was skeptical of the opening scenes, which were a bit jarring as they tried to combine those very different strands, but was quickly sucked in. I didn't overall think it quite worked all the bazillion elements it tried to sprinkle in into one whole story (food/location shout outs, wildly varying levels of description, anti-trans violence, in addition to the intrinsic everything about the premise). Also, I'm not usually a fan of the intrinsic genius trope. However, it had great momentum and I did compulsively read the whole thing in one shot, so I would rec if the premise seems fun.

Delicious Romance (爱很美味): Short drama about three 30 year old women navigating work drama and their love lives, hyper targeted to 30ish women. Very much 'it's the journey, not the destination,' and ends on an ambiguous note (setting up for a movie sequel). The more meta-ish pieces were very natural and fun-- e.g. they have the kid versions of the leads, who are very well cast, providing backstory and commentary and those scenes are nearly all very well done. Generally, when it's good, it's not afraid of being cynical or making sharp commentary, mostly about the pressures on women. It also presents a positive view of drag, even if the gay guy is a bit shoehorned in. I guess overall, maybe half of the show (early on, then again towards the middle-end) was engaging, but half was full of super cringey, unrealistic plot lines. Lots of choices for humor or how workplaces work being done for the effect, and then post justified or just left to drive the plot. (Allergies in show have no relationship to real life; spelling out of harassment/sexism so you get The Point; very rosy view of the work needed in a restaurant.) Ultimately, the major problem was that the show did not meet the expectations of the usual cdrama strength of interesting, compelling characters and relationships, which is core to a show like this. I'd only recommend this for people who are both really into this genre and have free time.

High on the Hog ep 1: Exploring African American cuisine, with a focus on history; the first episode is set in Benin. (From dolorosa_12's rec) I really liked one of the interviewees, Jessica Harris, who was very knowledgeable, but the show was somewhat superficial in focus, not going in depth on the history or food. For example, at one point they eat foods that are meant to be foods that predate the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but it involved both corn and chilis? I'm not sure if I missed something obvious, but it would seem that that would need some more words of explanation. There were some interesting scenes, I just need higher information content in my documentary style shows.

Passing (2021): In 1920s NYC (and shot in black and white!), a black middle class woman unexpectedly meets her childhood friend, who has married a white man and now passes as white. From silveredeye's rec! My little brother observed that this felt like English class, with all the ~symbolism~ etc etc, but I thought it was in a way that I enjoyed? I also totally called the foreshadowing of the [rot13] sybjrecbg snyyvat vaqvpngvat gung fbzrbar jnf tbvat gb snyy bhg bs n ohvyqvat naq vg jnf tbvat gb or nzovthbhf jung unq unccrarq, so perhaps I was just in the English class mode haha. It was rather heavy handed in the commentary on class (the childhood friend can cross class boundaries while the protag enforces her class boundaries) and also when they reiterated the characters' motivations to make sure you picked up those details. Anyway, I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure it'll be something I come back to?

Monument Valley: A cute little puzzle mobile game, recced by halfcactus. I can't say it was really worth the $4 though, for maybe 2-3 hours of easy content? It comes with the base 10 levels, and a small Ida's Dream standalone. There's some more chapters and a sequel game to buy, but it was just rather boring and fiddly (the mobile controls on spinning were not great). Great art and music though.

Presenting six narratives about globalization, and then showing how they recombine and interact to deal with complex issues.

This is very much a book that fits my personal taste in political discussion, trying to take people where they are and understand why they have the perspective and values they do, while cutting out all the ad hominem and points designed to distract. I first heard about this book here.

I originally thought I'd find the right-wing populist chapters most informative, but actually it was the corporate power one, because it had a lot of detail on trade that I previously had not organized mentally in as precise a manner as the book laid out. So for that chapter alone, I'm happy I read it. The chapters describing the narratives--establishment, left-wing populist, right-wing populist, corporate power, geoeconomic, and global threats--I found to be the most useful in clarifying and organizing political patterns. The second half of the book was less novel in the points it tried to make, but I think still valuable. It's just that the book was retreading ground on diversity of narrative, integrative teams, etc that I had spent quite some time thinking about already.

The authors were careful in how they presented each narrative and what its proponents would say, but this sometimes led to minimal pushback when there was no narrative that naturally disagreed. This was especially obvious in some of the arguments wrt China. However, it's not like I didn't read other parts with a critical eye, it's just that the China related arguments felt distinctly more one dimensional, even as they tried to convey complexity. It didn't quite manage to become multidimensional the way the domestic arguments did because of the limitations of the six Western narratives they chose. They do have a chapter on non-Western narratives, but it's pretty superficial as they themselves acknowledge.

My major complaint is the wild misuse of math in the section where they tried to make an argument from probability distributions without seemingly any knowledge of how probability distributions (or correlation) worked. It read like some mathematical economist wrote something careful and then it had been poorly understood through reinterpretations. Basically the pet peeve of 'using the /idea/ of math to make an argument' without really understanding the math.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this to people who would like to understand more about political narratives, but haven't perhaps done as much reading on it as they'd like. It would be ideal, in my opinion, for a high schooler who wanted to know more about the world but hadn't had the time to learn patterns passively. An adult who is well read on the subject would find it obvious. Very readable and casual in tone.

Two girls grow up as best friends and become haenyeo during Jeju under Japanese rule. Young-sook is the daughter of the chief of their collective of divers, while Mi-ja is the orphaned daughter of Japanese collaborators, a despised background. Heartbreak comes from the dangers of the sea, but even more from the unrest that followed from war and rebellion.

I've always been leery of Lisa See due to the rather western gaze of the marketing around her books. Ungenerously, her tendency towards over-explaining when applied to this setting frames things as exotic to the reader, as if in some way it is foreign to the narrator. It was only when a truly weird scene with a (modern day-ish) doctor occurs and the doctor spends pages speculating out loud about what could be causing the problems only to conclude that it was the bends that I realized it was... See's style instead of low key Orientalist. So it merely is VERY ANNOYING and off-putting.

It does reveal the importance of marketing though: her audience probably does want that over-explaining even if it's out of place, and it certainly shows off her research into the setting. (It did not even occur to other members of the book club I read it with until I pointed it out, but they were Asians a generation older than me, which I think really makes a difference in expectation of Asian American literature.)

My other complaint is that it's sometimes tonally inconsistent, varying wildly between plain and formal description/speech, but that's more minor. Other reviews online seem to take umbrage in the chores descriptions (but that's what they would have been pre-occupied with?) or the depiction of violence (WHY read anything set in this time period/location?) but I don't agree. 

But! what she does well really reveals why she is a bestseller: her female friendship and disagreeable women portrayals ranged from good to incandescent. Those complicated characters! I was not super pleased about the origin of the crack in their relationship (a boy, really), but it was turned deftly enough into an interweaving with the traumatic experiences of the time and of women in that time, that it is more accurately, a boy and the secrets and trauma around him, which at least is not trite.

I can't say I'll be seeking out more of her work, but-- I'm sad about it, if that makes sense? Good female friendship in a non-Western setting in English is hard to find, but I simply have a very low tolerance for over-explanation.

CW: If you know anything about this era of history... violence, massacre, rape, domestic violence, death of major characters.

cortue prompted: Thoughts about "balancing" the amount of time spent on the internet during isolation

tl;dr, I don't tend to think of time on the internet as differently allocable than other time.

I think there are obviously modes of human interaction that are not well replicable on the internet: casual interactions tend to be a lot more superficial without body language, and it's much more difficult to have the large group splitting into smaller conversations experience with any of the existing platforms. While you might split off a thread or get distracted with another platform, this drops any other conversations in an opaque way.

Meanwhile, there are modes of interaction that are better done on the internet: updating all your friends at once, staying in contact with acquaintances you don't see regularly, and of course, meeting people who you normally wouldn't have met (e.g. in fandom).

All of those kinds of socializations and like, chatting with friends in general, I don't really feel bad about "wasting time on," because I definitely by default spend less time on it than would be optimal for my socialization meter? I'm sure this is not true for everyone, but I am (and have always been) less inclined to reach out and maintain friendships that I /know/ I would enjoy and be happy doing. So if socializing on the internet lowers that barrier, I'm all for it.

I also heavily curate my various social media and will unfollow people readily if it doesn't seem like following through that platform feels social, which is, of course, not a judgment on anyone's use of a platform for their own needs. If a person is more non-socialization informational stuff, I prefer to subscribe through my RSS reader, to better separate those streams. (And obviously all of that is fuzzy choices.)

In non-social uses of the internet, the aforementioned RSS reader is where I get most of my news. It turns out, interesting and informative feeds are so difficult to find that I rarely worry I spend too much time there. It helps that it's easy to flick through after reading a title if it's not a subject I care about at that moment, and that it's super asynchronous and can wait until I have time.

There is /one/ part of the internet I know I'm in trouble when I start lapsing into, and I try to avoid, which can be summed up as "low quality, I just want to read anything." But it's not exactly something I want to balance, as it's usually a sign I'm depressed. This is if I'm reading fics on AO3 that I don't even find compelling, but are words I can stuff into my eyeballs, or if I've fallen into the depths of YCombinator Hacker News or Reddit. I guess other people doomscroll, but I don't have social media feeds that are deep enough for me to do that? At the beginning of isolation, I was totally in that mode for MDZS fics; I was reassuring bf that this was total normal behavior for me, but it... was normal /depression/ behavior. Anyway, that's time badly spent.

So I suppose it's not really that I think all time spent on the internet doesn't need balancing, but that I want to spend my time on things that are enriching, and if I'm filling those needs on or off the internet, it doesn't matter which? Not all needs can be filled on the internet, but for example, I'm just as happy to read books on the internet as off.

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