superborb

I considered doing a year-end wrap up, but realized that I didn't track all the stuff I consumed at the beginning of the year and my memory is therefore too bad to do that. Maybe next year, if I keep up the media diet posts?




( Books: A Man Called Ove, The Ghosts of Birds, A Marvellous Light )

( Movies: The Wandering Earth, Cats (2019), Fantastic Fungi (2019) (DNF) )

( Other visual: Love, Death + Robots, A Man Who Defies the World of BL, Nodame Cantabile, Mr Queen (DNF), Johnny's Countdown )

I'm grateful that Dreamwidth exists as a mostly non-commercial space for fandom and non-fandom activities alike.

Inspired by jjhunter's (annual?) offer to gift paid time, I'd like to offer to buy a month of paid time for anyone in my community (aka if you see this post!). Paid time features are here.

Please comment below if you'd like to try a paid account out! Comments are screened. If coming from twitter/tumblr, please comment here and not there! This is because to gift paid time, I'll need your Dreamwidth username. 

In the interest of fewer credit card transactions, I'll keep this offer open for one week (until Dec 7) and send everything out at once! 

✨ holiday love meme 2021 ✨
my thread here

I'd always been too shy to do love memes before this year, but growing up seems synonymous with becoming brasher haha!

I hope everyone is having a good day, whether or not they're celebrating! I was told on Monday that I was in charge of Thanksgiving, then Tuesday my sister said she was getting Wednesday off and if we could do Thanksgiving a day early? But I think we pulled it off well! I can't seem to hotlink the twitter pictures, so here's a link to them. 

Originally this was meant to just go into a monthly round up, but it was a bit too long ^^;

Anyway, this book was ULTRA hyped, as a queer Chinese-inspired historical fantasy! The premise: the second daughter of the Zhu family goes from less than nothing--a child during a multi-year famine with a fate of nothingness--to found the Ming Dynasty.

Unfortunately, I didn't like it overall.

Let me start with what I did love: General Ouyang, the eunuch general of the Mongol forces, in service to the empire and Prince who executed his family to the ninth degree, who still feels desperate admiration and love for Esen, the shining perfect Mongol warrior son of said Prince. Good tormented feelings, A+, STELLAR ending scenes, will be looking up fic of him stat.

But despite moments of shining glory like that, and some other good interactions and scenes, the majority of the book was just-- lackluster. My main impression was that the world (and maybe half of the characterizations?) felt pasted on. Characters would have an interesting thought, but then it wouldn't feel integral to their worldview. The world never felt lived in or had depth.

Part of this came in the form of moments where I had to stop and forcibly reconcile with the rest of the world. For example, "it was like seeing that the road ahead had collapsed down the side of the mountain, but not being able to stop" -- from a peasant who has never known anything but famine and seen the army only at a distance? What could she possibly have been on that could have that inevitability? When the love interest gets described with phoenix eyes at one point and willow leaf eyes in another; these are distinct and different eye shapes? The methane as having scent -- perhaps there are other gases being released in that area, but the description of it uses a coal mine, where it is famously odorless. I could go on, just lots of small details that required a "did I misread" stopping.

The other half of the uncomfortableness was how much of the early narrative made me feel like I was being told something that didn't need saying. It was very in your face, let me describe everything so you don't misunderstand level description. This handholding and lack of mystery is generally something that doesn't appeal to me, though perhaps appeals to others.

HOWEVER, saying all this, I do think a lot of these issues may be debut novel problems? There was the skeleton of interesting characters for sure, and confidence in not telling too much comes with experience. Also, if you're interested in queer Chinese-inspired historical fantasy, your choices are somewhat thin on the ground (in English anyway).

This is one of the best movies I've watched in recent memory! (I... need to re-organize my tags so I have a separate cdrama and movie tag, don't I. Hmm.)

The premise: a novel has been published that describes the friendship of Li Ansheng and Lin Qiyue, bringing all those painful and happy memories of the past to the front of Ansheng's mind. Once upon a time, they were the best of friends. Yet despite their painful separation, in their hearts, the other was the only one who truly loved them.

I cried for most of the movie, and it felt earned. The relationship between Ansheng and Qiyue was so complicated and emotional, and both actresses were incredible. The movie did some good foreshadowing and repeated and reflected themes and imagery too. Using bras to represent freedom and womanhood, a bit of an easy reference perhaps, but done well.

I don't know how to say anything more without spoilers; I usually am quite lax with spoilers and reading spoilers, but I think this is worth watching unspoiled! Some ROT13 spoilers:

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ANYWAY it was so good and I'd highly rec it!

It's really hilarious how quickly I'll read an ebook that's on my phone vs one I have a physical copy of, and I really think it's that I can hold the phone one handed... I never feel motivated to read on my bf's ebook reader either. Do they make tiny e-ink devices? Are those too limited by screen refresh rates to be doable? Anyway, I have three physical library books + a gazillion unread ones sitting on my bookshelf and those have stayed unopened all month. Alternatively, the time pressure of an ebook that disappears in two weeks vs a physical book that I can have out for months...

( Under the cut: Detention (2019), Crying in H Mart, Liquid Intelligence, Becoming Eve, Invisible Cities, Day of Becoming You (DNF), On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous )

My workplace will give some money to orgs that you volunteer for. It's new of this year, and all the places I volunteered for before were all in person, so I'm casting about for something. Needs to be 501(c)(3) and I think they need to fill out some forms or answer questions if they're not already listed. Ideas?

Twitter sent me a Twitter anniversary notif recently, it seemed like a good time to reflect on ~returning to fandom~ last year. Also I refuse to read five books in five days, I think my brain may be turning into mush.

Some disconnected thoughts:
1. I always was a little sad that the fandoms I was in were not well documented. I don't know if it was just that the fandoms were smaller (probably for the animanga ones) or more private (...definitely for jpop/kpop which had more locked stuff), but I'd go look at the some long write up in SGA or HP fandom and be-- envious. Part of this is that I have a truly awful memory, reading other people's recollections helps me remember in turn. (I'm great at googling and searching through notes though, so I can pretend!) But also, I think it's the nostalgia for a tiny slice of the internet that few people remember and that is impossible to reconstruct, so much having disappeared over the various LJ deletions and locks.

2. High school me was an idiot, which makes me look on young idiots in fandom with more tolerance. But the resurrection of high school esque clique behavior by adults is so irritating. Sometimes it feels like fandom devotes its time primarily to voyeuristically hating one person, or group, or idea, in order to solidify its in-group dynamics. Then I block on twitter or hide on DW until those things stop appearing and life is better.

3. Speaking of twitter and discord and tumblr, beyond its speed, one thing all the new generation of socmed has in common is the lack of information preservation. Articles on the youth's use of socmed made me realize this is a feature. Perhaps in some ways it's better-- more like natural communication in person. But I love backreading people's journals through tags. I miss that part of it. Tumblr could get the closest to that experience, but it's just not as easy because most people don't curate with that intent.

4. But I don't know if I have a real fandom anymore. Qihun is closest I suppose, tiny fandoms 5ever. But the bulk of my writings are-- food pictures and musings on twitter. Bookblogs and media reviews on DW. Is that still being in fandom? My reading list on DW is mostly book-and-personal, with a handful of fandoms that I'm not fully in. Don't get me wrong, I love book reviews and personal blogs. But I miss meta. Fic still being posted elsewhere and all, meta is what I feel like I lack.

5. I'm so lucky though. It turns out, it wasn't just college causing me to drift away-- it really was that I didn't understand the tumblr experience. (I've gone back to following tumblrs of interest on my RSS reader.) I can enjoy myself on twitter and discord, while keeping a reasonably active DW reading list, and be happy with that balance. It would be hard for me, coming back, if I couldn't use all of those. DW alone wouldn't have been able to feed my fannish feelings in smaller fandoms. It would be hard to make friends on twitter alone, but then it's hard to meet people through discord without an 'in'. (Though I suppose I have met good friends through discord alone.) So for me personally, I'm lucky that I could use all three.

6. I'm so lucky too, for making good friends through fandom once again, after I felt so lonely in the post-grad life. Friends who I disagree with, who challenge me, who clarify my views, who I learn so much from. Friends who are cozy marshmallows of joy. Friends who share this interest of taking something we love and making it more.

As I was on vacation for like a month (post... still forthcoming), my media consumption dropped way off. Still, got to read a bunch of stuff on planes.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: Two enemy agents travel through time + universes altering events to favor the future in which their side wins, begin to exchange letters, and fall in love. I'd have loved it if it were half as long, but it felt, well, approximately twice as long as it needed to be. Fluffy language, and I thought it rather neatly tied together the foreshadowing at the end.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine: An independent space station living at the edge of an expansionist empire receives a demand to send a new ambassador. Mahit is, like the previous ambassador, a huge fan of the empire's culture, but is without some critical tools an ambassador from her station would normally rely on, namely a functional copy of the previous ambassador's memories and consciousness to guide her. I really loved that the historical referent was something more obscure and you could really tell that Martine knows that history inside and out. As a result, it felt like a unique and rich exploration of colonialism and politics. I do think it tried to guide me on what to think a little too much-- sometimes the narrow and twisty plot was a little too narrow. Still, I found this book to be really meaty and well worth sinking your teeth into.

Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney: The wealthy daughter of a mining family has finally found the line where she will have to take a stand, when her father forces an exchange of a tithe of men in exchange for oil. This reads extremely YA to me, in a negative way. The plot was rather straightforward and the problems always immediately solved. There /are/ really interesting and imaginative details in the worldbuilding though! Just not very satisfying and felt rushed.

Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley: I thought this was very interesting, the way it skipped between the hypermodern and the alliterative / playing with the original poetic form. Definitely easier to read than the translation I read in high school English class haha.

Also I've been reading They All Say I've Met a Ghost for reading club and watching Couple of Mirrors (livetweeting under #coupleofborbs here), but I'll probably do full reviews for those when I finish. Ooh, I should also compile the more interesting poems from the Shijing / 19 Old Poems for poetry club! We're onto Mulan now, doing some short one offs for now. Over on dankodes if you want to check it out!

tl;dr An extremely well executed mystery period drama, with an excellent main cast.

Instead of a premise ("mystery period drama" actually covers it pretty well), I'll start by introducing you to the main four characters.

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