#but that last section on that first page reminds me (like so much in my life) of the Lemire run (and a bit of the Ellis run)

[age-of-moonknight]

“Blood Moon Rising,” Moon Knight (Vol. 9/2021), #19.

Writer: Jed MacKay; Penciler and Inker: Federico Sabbatini; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit

[iamasaddie]

Never Have I Ever read a Librarian! Marcus P fic. 🥰 I’m not really a Marcus P kinda girl, more of a Dave York (iykyk) girl BUT as someone who works at a library, Marcus P would be the best guy to get lost in the book shelves with 🤭😏

Hi, birdie <3 This is actually such a sweet idea! I haven't seen fics like this either! At first, I was just gonna send this ask out sending writers that see this your idea for a fic. But then I thought about it and something hit me, so here's my take on librarian!Marcus Pike. I gave it my own twist, but I hope you can still enjoy it <3

you're such a heavenly view

paring: Marcus Pike x f!Reader rating: explicit (18+ minors DNI) word count: 2.1k~ summary: He wants to be in love again. He's just not really sure how. a/n: This was written on a whim. Thank you to the amazing anon for planting the thought of librarian Marcus in my head <3 Not beta-ed, all mistakes are my own so pls don't plagiarize them. warnings: pining, Marcus Pike is shy and horny, male masturbation; no use of y/n MY MASTERLIST

Marcus loved the quiet. 

He loved the whisper of turning pages and scribbling pens being the only noise in the spacious library he worked at. A humdrum nine-to-five that most people tried to escape became his salvation. He felt calm, at peace, a feeling that wasn’t prominent in his life before.

When he came here over two years ago just to help his old friend out, with his heart ripped to shreds and falling apart, the walls of this place held it together. And then you and your gentle smiles as you checked out books put bandaids all over it, so it started healing.

Marcus first saw you a year ago, by that time he was already comfortably moving along the labyrinths of the abode of books, knowing every section almost by heart. He still remembered your tiny manicured fingers nervously tapping the reception table as he looked through the computer base for the availability of Giorgio Vasari’s "Lives of the Artists". Before you, art section was one he never frequented for two reasons: first, he didn’t need the reminder of the past that he tried to separate from his present; and second, he knew pretty much every book there by heart. 

As his eyes bore into the screen, looking for the right title, with his peripheral vision he saw you burning a hole in the side of his face. Marcus couldn’t help but chuckle, it was a while since a beautiful woman had been interested in him. Or since he noticed. You hurried to stray your gaze away, and his smile became bigger, now showing his teeth. You saw him noticing you and got flustered, that only meant that you staring was intentional. Marcus confirmed that the book you needed was available, but since it was a rare edition you couldn’t leave with it. The library was surprisingly empty for the first month of autumn, but at least you wouldn’t have any problems with staying and doing your research there. You nodded, agreeing with him. The place was quite cozy, you thought that to yourself the moment you entered from the windy autumn street.

"Let me show you to the art section, it’s pretty difficult to navigate these corridors the first time you’re here." Marcus left the librarian desk he had been occupying for the last year and motioned his hand to the right direction.

"Only the first?" You raised your eyebrows and smiled. Damn, you were beautiful in your flared jeans and a big white t-shirt with a warm-looking sweater on top. Your hair in a messy bun, either it was messy because of the wind or because you wanted it to be. Anyway, you looked fantastic like that, so Marcus smiled back automatically.

"Well, the first fifty."

You laughed, and he stumbled at the sound. Marcus felt his cheeks burn with pride, he forgot how pleasant it was to make a pretty girl laugh.

It was over a year ago, and still he remembered that beautiful sound you let out. One of the beautiful moments you shared that he kept sealed in his mind. Even though all your interactions were friendly, and sometimes borderline flirtatious, something always stopped Pike, and he got used to seeing you leaving with a nod and a tight-lipped smile, now almost never lifting your eyes up to meet his as you sat studying behind one of the many similar wooden tables. 

He cursed himself, cursed his cowardice and the fact that he got panic attacks any time he tried to tell you a compliment. He hated that he became tongue-tied whenever you asked his opinion on one of the books you checked out. And when his brain was swarming with knowledge, the influences the author had, or the way the work was transcending the time it was written in; his mouth only said ‘it’s a good book’ or worse ‘it’s not bad’. He wanted to punch himself, but that would mean lifting his arms that were numb and limp on both sides of his body.

Today was not an exception, unfortunately. Marcus was sitting behind his desk, pristine, clean and occupied only by his work computer and a book he had been reading during the quiet times. You came over less than half an hour ago, saying your usual hello and asking about yet another book on art. You’d almost read them all, and Marcus was frantically thinking what would happen when you check out the last book from the art section, a place in the library that no one else went to. He told you where to find a copy of "Janson’s History of Art" and you nodded, going in the right direction without needing his help anymore. You didn't look up at him when you took your usual place near the window and placed the book on the table.

Marcus sighed, looking as you brows furrowed when you read something and started rewriting it in your notebook. Art section was your place. Yours and his. It was special, at least for him. He had walked you there exactly forty nine times. Not because you couldn’t remember where to go, no, you were confident in your stride the third time; but because it became a sort of a joke between the two of you. Sometimes you’d just come over and ask him to show you where the art section was, telling him that it was only your 21st, 33rd, 45th time in the library and you didn’t have the opportunity to learn all the right turns yet. He laughed, but always walked you there. Sometimes you were silent, sometimes you’d ask him silly questions (‘What is the rarest book here?’ 'First edition of Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince and Other Tales" with the author's inscription.’; ‘What is the worst thing a person did in the library?’ ‘Tried to rip a page out of the first edition of Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince and Other Tales"’; ‘Did you stop them?’ ‘Kind of.’; ‘Is the horror section haunted?’ ‘Yes.’). You hadn’t asked him to walk you to the art section for a month now. Marcus even wanted to suggest it himself, but his tongue felt too heavy and big for his mouth whenever he tried.

So he was left with watching. Just like dozens of times before. As he quietly observed from a distance, Marcus couldn't help but lose himself in the beauty of your presence amidst the mundane decorations of his workplace.He thought that he knew you face better than his own by now. The structure of your cheekbones, the curve of your lip, the depth of your cupid’s bow. He could close his eyes and draw you in his sleep. You were engrossed in the book when another wave of hot air from the AC above you tousled your hair. Winter this year was abnormally cold, so to keep the building warm Marcus had to turn up the temperature on the AC pretty high. Maybe he overdid it today. He saw you wiping a lonely droplet of sweat running from your temple. Yes, he definitely overdid it today.

He reached to stand up and go to the temperature controller when you started tugging up your usual bulky green sweater, and dropped back into his chair as the material of your sweater and t-shirt stuck together, so you almost took both items off. Marcus choked on his saliva seeing so much of you that he never saw before. Sure, you wore knee-length shorts and oversized t-shirts during summer, sometimes you even put on a dress when it was too hot for anything else, but this was different. The swell of your naked stomach, the almost-not-there lacy edge of your black bra, fuck, it felt so intimate. 

Marcus squeezed his thighs under the table, his cock getting hard with every thought his brain provides. Fuck, it was really not a time or a place for a boner, but you looked so… He pinched the bridge of his nose, shutting his eyes and trying to relax, but instead of that he saw images of your naked skin over and over again, followed by fake scenarios where he ripped the shirt off you, kissing your willing body with his greedy mouth. Marcus could almost feel the softness of your skin under his palms, and he bit his lower lip at the phantom feeling, trying to suppress a moan.

He didn’t notice how his legs brought him to the secluded area of the art section, his hands hysterically pulling out his stiff cock from the confines of his pants, while his mind completely shut off. 

It was almost primal, the incandescent feeling inside him that made him spit in the palm of his hand before wrapping it around his shaft.

"Fuck," his whisper was quiet, even though it was unlikely that anyone could hear him anyway. There were less than eight patrons when he left the main hall, all of them engrossed in their literature of choice, and he still had an hour before he had to close.

His spit-slicked hand tightened around his cock as he moved it up and down, circling the weeping head every time. Goddamn, he was sick. Fucked up. Getting hard after seeing the stomach of the girl he had been swooning over for almost a year. What in the teenage hormones was this bullshit? 

Your skin, the swelling of your stomach, the tiny dip of your belly button. Fuck, he wanted to dip his tongue in the little canyon of your body and hear you suffocating on giggles.

Up, down, up, down.

He looked down, watching his hand methodically moving around his fat cock. As he got closer to his orgasm, the veins that led from the base to the tip of his cock became more pronounced, the head getting darker with every stroke. "God-fucking-dammit, baby," he dropped his head back, punching a wall but barely noticing any pain as he got succumbed by his pleasure. "So fucking gorgeous. Mine. Mine. Only mine."

If anyone heard Marcus, they’d consider him a psycho, his hoarse whisper feverishly calling someone his when he was the only one in the room. He didn’t give a single fuck. In his little fantasy, right now, you were his. Only for him to touch, only for him to love. He tripped over the edge, as his mind flooded by the memory when you first laughed at his joke, and he came all over his fist moaning your name as quietly as possible, as four thick ropes of cum painted his skin pearly white.

Marcus didn’t hear the footsteps, orgasm claiming every sense in his body until he heard a quiet ‘oh’, the voice too familiar to mistake its’ owner.

"Fuck, fuck, oh God, sorry, this is not what you think it is." His eyes went wide at the sight of you. You were pressing your copy of "Janson’s History of Art" to your chest, face curious and almost… amused? He pulled his boxers up, trying not to wince when the thick rubber band scratched the sensitive skin of his spent cock.

"Isn’t it?" You raised your eyebrows at Marcus, and he remembered that he was still standing in front of you with his pants fully undone and his boxers stained with the cum he wiped on them in a hurry. 

"No." He shook his head frantically, tugging on the zipper and trying to quickly zip it up when the hem of his shirt stuck in it and he cursed, almost tearing it out.

"So you weren’t just masturbating thinking of me, and the fact that you moaned my name as you came was just a coincidence?"

'How long had you been standing there?' Marcus thought. He heard your steps closing in on him, but didn’t dare to raise his eyes to see the disgust on your face. Instead, he continued fighting with the zipper.

"Yes," he nodded, and then immediately shook his head. "No. Look, I can explain." Marcus searched his brain for the right answer, for something that could fix all of this mess, but coming up empty. His sigh was deep, almost hurting his lungs as he gave up. "Okay, I maybe can’t explain, I’m just… Sorry."

"I’m not." 

He snapped his head up so fast that the sides of his vision went black for half of a second. "What?"  

You were close. Very close. If you reached your arm out you could help him with a zipper he abandoned in stupor.

"I was planning to come over at the last moment tomorrow and ask you to walk me here," you stepped even closer, placing your hand on his chest and feeling the rapid fire of Marcus’ heartbeat. "You know, for our last time."

He just nodded, the blood pumping in his ears made it almost impossible to understand what you were saying, so he just stared at your lips, unconsciously licking his.

"And then," both your hands circled his neck, burrowing in the slightly damp hair at his nape, "I was going to blow you right against the rare editions shelf."

"Wha..—" 

Marcus wasn’t able to finish when your lips crushed into his, tasting each other for the first time. Suddenly, he wasn’t so tongue-tied anymore.

PLEASE WRITE A COMMENT IF YOU ENJOYED THE STORY ♥︎

[6okuto]

Monster mhin headcannons???? Or just mhin headcannons in general I've been starving with the lack of mhin content lately

MHIN HCS 3

gn!reader | mhin time! :3 i'm going to let the knowledgeable and big brained people mostly take care of monster mhin bc I fear a girl like me is silly and less capable...

as for my limited monster thoughts it'd be nice if their first transformation was done to protect you rather than an involuntary thing and letting it act as a symbol for your growing relationship. but Who Knows at this point

i assume there's some level of lost conscience when they transform So if there's a scene where some part of them refrains from hurting you I Will Start Eating Tree Bark.

Oh...and a scene where they've transformed back and you try to help them...them flinching and confused (though their voice comes out angry? frustrated? at first) about why you haven't run away....letting you cover them and bandage their injuries... 😵‍💫

moving on. they're on the verge of if not threatening people when it comes to co-op games like pico park or heave ho, especially if they're playing with people like vere and ais. no one's ever heard them speak this much someone needs to get them out of there

window seat enjoyer :-)

secretly enjoys when you send posts that remind you of them. the first few times they're like ? what do i do with this. but learn to appreciate it even if they don't actually reply in chat (sometimes if you're like "this is u" and it's Too accurate mhin's like Can you stop no it isn't (yes it is))

"when you're complaining about someone and your best friend is meaner" or however that trend goes. that's them. very direct with saying that person sounds like shit and you should stop talking to them

mhin may not like big, loud festivals, but i think they'd enjoy celebrating things with you alone ^^ maybe eating their favourite dish (tang yuan?)....it'd mean a lot to have someone to share with again

also!! having it for the first time and them mentioning their family and the last time they had it with people... the intimacy of it all...

and !! they reciprocate it!! they do!! they take note of any festivities you say you like, especially one that you wish you could celebrate or haven't in a long time. whether it's cultural, your birthday, your pet's birthday—mhin plans something for you and 'offers' to spend time together that day if you'd like. 'offers' as in shows up and mentions they'll be free some time in the conversation

^ more for the beginning of a relationship (platonic or romantic)... it'll take time, they'd be more direct eventually!

they care for you quietly and by...noticing. folding your laundry and putting it away when they know you're busy. picking up your favourite snacks when they notice you're running out. automatically getting ready to catch you or pull you back when the time calls for it. watching you from across the room at a party and noting where you are and how long you've been gone. that kind of deal

mhin's wary and off-put by being spoiled, but if you're stubborn enough, you'll find them using whatever you got pretty regularly. for example they'll tell you they don't Need a new softer comfier blanket, theirs is Fine, but then the one you buy is the only one they ever want to use. they will pretend like it isn't a big deal if you try to tease them about it

they don't like reading things online and would rather have a physical book. not that i'm projecting or anything of course. they take care of them too and don't lend them to just anybody

i think mhin has actual bookmarks, or would at least like them. they might also use a receipt to mark their page but won't fold the corners...

they always put books back where they found them at the library/book store. if they find one in the wrong section, they'll put it in the right place themself

they can get upset, but don't cry super easily, but that's mostly because they've gotten used to suppressing their emotions. they do their best to channel it into anger instead

mhin isolating themself when they're upset,, conflicted over wanting to be happy and letting themself drown in the sadness. but in the end they hope and survive and will continue to do so

hmm... keeps information of their family and history close to them, but at some point i do think they'd (bittersweetly) share stories with quiet fondness

mhin seems like a silver jewelry kind of person but i just think they'd look really nice with gold earrings while pushing their hair behind their ear...

they see You in formal attire for the first time and keep trying to glance at you the entire night btw. they might not take initiative to compliment you, but if you ask if you look alright, they'll say yes you look nice

...? likes earphones more than headphones. can't tell you why i feel this way

light sleeper. i think. they always know when you can't sleep and they'll stay up with you. if you say you'll go sleep somewhere else so you don't bother them, they're like ..? no.

...affectionate mhin....NOOOOO... it takes so long for them to reach that point it's literally like when a cat finally trusts you and lies next to you/on your lap You Cannot Move Now. You're both obligated to stay here and don't Want to do Anything else.

like imagine cuddling them and they hug you back and their grip tightens in their sleep when you shift around. mhin burying their face into your neck and taking a deep breath. please

if you're an introvert and you both finally get home after a long day out, it's just like. Thank god. and i think they'd understand if you'd rather spend time alone to recover ^^ but depending on the crowd there will be a gossip/complaint session at some point

mhin is one of the top LI's for me when it comes to scenes of like, fixing their collar/clothes. the intimacy of them clasping your necklace, the tension and bated breath because you've never been this close. the surprise on their face when you reach to fix their hood etc.

they enjoy sneaking up on you. they end up in some corner of the room and while you're scanning the crowd to look for them, they suddenly speak from behind you. there's a hint of an amused smile when you jump

@semifilms @mitskiologist @sweet-milky-tea705 hiii

[simpinberry]

for my mental health i need hcs of bella ramsey x fem or gn reader with words of affirmation love language ‼️‼️

hi guys i’m back to feed you some more bella content ˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ hope i did this right and that u guys like it :) also tysm for the requests

listen listen!!! after taking a shower she would 100% leave sweet compliments on the foggy mirror for u to read. will add ‘kiss your s/o’ to your to do lists.

will text/send photos of random things that reminds you of her throughout the day. she does this especially when she’s on set and you guys can’t talk much. they have your favorite snack there? sends u a photo and tells u theyre thinking of u. lots of i miss yous, love yous and that she can’t wait to be home to see u again. “text me abt what you get up to today babe” “pedro is making fun of me because i’m apparently such a simp for you, he is absolutely, in every way, correct ;).” “i saw a butterfly today n it reminded me of the pretty tattoo you have”

will watch u like the weirdo she is when you’re getting ready in the morning. sneaks up behind u and repeatedly attacks ur face with kisses. “i have the most beautiful gf in the world” “omg i love this purple eyeliner on you, it rlly suits you” “your curls look really defined today, the new conditioner you got is so good!! my beautiful bby”

is the type to whisper compliments in between kisses. yk like corny spelling out of i love you in between pecks? yep, does that. “i really really like you” “my darling” “mine” “you’re so cute” in between kisses hehehe.

spam texts you when you send/post a photo. in your dms/comment section screechingggg!! my mans is DOWN BADDD. needs and loves to comment “first” on ur posts. they actually make up most of ur comment section. “BABE IM DYING YOURE TOO BEAUTIFUL” “so glad we’ve advanced technology so i can stare at this photo 4life if i want to” “you+this dress= my death”

randomly tweets a photo of you, captioning it “this is my darling, be jealous, gn”

very validating when you’re upset and talks you through it. thanks you for speaking up and communicating abt anything that’s been bothering you. SPILLS THE TEA WITH YOUUU. you have a co worker you hate? she hates them too. listen to me when i say she is on ur side, she is shocked and they’ll even remember stuff you’ve previously told them to add to the fire. best bf frr “thank you for telling me babe, i’ll really keep it in mind next time, i’m so sorry for hurting your feelings like that” “it sounds like it’s been difficult for you to complete (insert task) you’ve been working through it so well :)” “he said what??? yeah like he’s one to talk, go go! continue tell me more i’m invested” “babe you’re honestly so right, this is why i always listen to u”

definitely acknowledges you so so much when you accomplish something. will go on about how proud they are of you, how well you’ve done and how wonderful it is. big or small, bellas on her way to pour her heart out to you. would be unbelievably encouraging throughout the process too, telling you to keep going and trust the progress. “you’ve got this babe, go on :))” “that drawing is absolutely amazing, you’re so talented omg look at the details” “you submitted your assignment?? ahead of time?? that’s my girl frr” “these cookies are amazing, thank u sm for baking them ughh give me a hug you’re the best baker ever, they’re so soft!!”

you guys will be facetiming one night when shes away in a different country for filming. she’s been gone two months and you really miss them. you get a bit emotional talking abt it and they really listen, telling you to let it out. just before you guys hang up they tell you to look at the last drawer of your jewellery box. turns out she wrote you a letter before she left, many letters in fact, for when you really miss them. you can’t help but sob reading it. she attached a polaroid photo of you guys kissing at bottom of the page. she’s so incredibly kind in the letter, telling you how wonderful its been getting to know you these past few months. "hehe youre probably crying from how nice im being" istg this mf even teases you in writing. when you're finished you call her back, they immediately burst out laughing at your blood shot eyes, “hahahhs i knew you’d cry”. sneaks in a ‘you look so pretty even when you cry’. tells you they have more hidden around your room and that when you need it she’ll tell you where you can find more ʚ(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )ɞ

goodnight!! if i made any mistakes, no i didn’t. byebye!!

[canmom]

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, 000-012

Or, what if that mural was the heart of a web serial.

I'm reading The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, thanks largely to the enthusiasm of @azdoine and @lukore on my dash over the last few months.

This is absolutely not gonna be a liveblog in the level of detail of the great Umineko liveblog project. Rather I'm gonna be aiming at something like the comics comints series or those occasional posts on anime. Or indeed what I wrote about Worth The Candle last year. I must create a robot whose purpose is to watch to see if I start writing detailed plot summaries and hit me with a stick labelled 'remember you have a job now'.

That outta the way, let's talk flower!

No, not that flower!

I will start with an anecdote. When I was at university, I ended up attending a talk by court alchemist senescence researcher Aubrey de Grey, who at that time did not yet have a 'sexual harassment allegations' section on his Wikipedia page. The main thing that struck me at the time was his rather spectacularly long beard. But I did listen to his talk about ending aging.

de Grey's schtick is that he, like many people in the transhumanist milieu, believes that medical technology is on the cusp of being able to prevent aging sufficiently well to prolong human lifespans more or less indefinitely. He believes that the different processes of aging can be understood in terms of various forms of accumulating cellular 'damage', and that these will begin to be addressed within present human lifespans, buying time for further advancements - so that (paraphrasing from memory) 'the first immortals have already been born'. He has some pretty graphs to demonstrate this point.

At that talk, one of the audience members asked de Grey the (in my view) very obvious question about whether access to this technology would be distributed unevenly, creating in effect an immortal ruling class. de Grey scoffed at this, saying he always gets this question, and basically he didn't think it would be a big deal. I forget his exact words, but he seemed to assume the tech would trickle down sooner or later, and this was no reason not to pursue it.

I'm sure de Grey is just as tired of being reminded of how unbalanced access to medical technology is in our current world, or the differences in average life expectancy between countries.

So, I was very strongly reminded of de Grey as The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere laid out its major thematic concerns and characters. I was also put in mind of many online arguments in the transhumanist milieu about whether it would be a good thing, in principle, to end death.

In particular, of course, comes to mind transhumanist Nick Bostrom's short story The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, in which death is likened to a huge dragon that demands to be fed trains full of humans every day. In the story, humanity's scientists secretly build a giant gun to kill the dragon. Naturally, despite all the doubters and naysayers who foolishly feel obliged to justify the existence of the dragon, the gun works. Bostrom's imagery is incredibly heavy-handed (particularly the trains à la Auschwitz), but just in case you didn't get it, he also spells out the moral explicit at the end: basically, every day not spent putting resources to abolishing death is adding up more and more bodies to the pile of people who don't get to be immortal.

So far, Flower seems to be shaping up to be a critical intervention into that milieu, with a much more grounded view of death and a much stronger model of society - admittedly not a high bar but it's going good so far!

At the time of writing this commentary, I have read the prologue and first two six-chapter arcs, namely Mankind's Shining Future (1-6) and Pilgrimage to the Deep (7-12).

the general shape of things

We are introduced - from the perspective of sardonic, introverted Su, who is going to be the protagonist of our time loop - to a group of brilliant young medical wizards, who have just been invited to visit the headquarters of a secret society whose mission is precisely to abolish death. Su's grandfather was some kind of controversial luminary who was expelled this organisation, and he also did something to her, which is giving her some kind of ulterior motive to find her way into this society.

We know pretty much from the outset that this is a time loop scenario: Su has been explicitly given the opportunity to replay the scenario in the hopes of find an alternative outcome, by some kind of presently mysterious parties. This first part is the 'control' loop, i.e. probably more or less how things went down 'originally'.

I believe Umineko is an explicit inspiration for this story, and the influence is pretty evident. But parallels with the Locked Tomb series, especially Gideon the Ninth, are also quite noticeable. @lukore spoke of it as the STEM to Locked Tomb's humanities, and I can already kinda see it, although we haven't got into the real meat of the scenario yet. This story began serialisation four years ago, making the two works roughly contemporary. The latest chapter was published in the last couple of weeks - no idea if I've arrived just in time for the ending!

Stylistically, it's generally pretty heavy on dialogue and long asides. The characters are a bunch of mega nerds who love to have big philosophical and political discussions, but their dynamics are well enough realised and their dynamics clear enough that it can double up as naturalistic characterisation. So far, the discussions have been interesting to read.

Below I'm going to make some notes and comments on various elements of the setting and story. In a followup post (because it got too long) I'm going to talk a lot about entropy. Perhaps you will find this interesting!

the world

The first few chapters are dedicated pretty hard to exposition. We find ourselves in a distant-future setting - one in which it seems reality has totally collapsed and then been rebuilt using magic, creating a somewhat oddball universe which lacks things like the element iron, and also electromagnetism. This seems like it would have pretty severe implications for just about everything!

However, the 'ironworkers' have, after producing a series of trial and error 'lower planes' that didn't quite get it right, landed on a fairly close approximation of how things used to be on the old world. Though by 'fairly close approximation' I mean like... it's a bowl-shaped world and the sun and stars are artificial lanterns. But still, there are humans, and they seem to work more or less like we're used to humans working, apart from the whole 'magic' thing.

So, an alt-physics setting. Praise Aealacreatrananda, I love that shit.

While electromagnetism might be out, the more abstract physical principles like thermodynamics still apply, and the humans of this universe have managed to find analogues to a number of things in our world. Instead of computers, they have 'logic engines' which run on magic. Horses seem to have made it in, so we get delightful blends of historical and futuristic concepts like a self-driving computer-controlled horse-drawn carriage taxi.

The biggest difference is of course that in this setting, magic - more on that in a bit - has solved most medical problems and humans routinely live to around 500. The setting is ostensibly a semi-post-scarcity one, although a form of money exists in 'luxury debt', which can be exchanged for things like taxi rides, café food and trips on the space elevator.

Politically, we are told that the world has enjoyed a few hundred years of general peace, broken in living memory by a revolution which put an end to a regime of magical secrecy. There are lots of countries, and an alliance overseeing them.

There's a few other oddities in this world. Something called a 'prosognostic event' can happen if you see someone who has the same face as you, and whatever this is, it's bad enough news that everyone is constantly reminded to veil their faces in public and there's some kind of infant 'distinction treatment' to mitigate the risk. Given that, in the regular world, nothing particularly bad would happen if you ran into a long-lost identical twin, it suggest there is probably something a little fucky about how humans work in this world!

There's evidently a fair bit of effort put into the worldbuilding of fictional countries and historical periods. The important elements seem to be roughly along the lines of:

our world is currently in what they call the 'old kingdoms' period, which is poorly remembered;

next up comes an 'imperial' period of high transhumanist shenanigans in which society was ruled by 'gerontocrats' who got exclusive access to the longevity treatment, but this all somehow led to a huge disaster which destroyed og earth;

the survivors built the Mimikos where humanity currently lives using magic and created some kind of huge iron spike that holds the universe together; there was subsequently a 'fundamentalist' period in which a strict cutoff point was put on human lifespans and a lot of the wackier magic was banned;

now we're onto a new era of openness following a small revolution, while the major political structures remain largely intact.

Writing a far-future setting is hard, because trying to deal with the weight of history without the story getting bogged down with worldbuilding details is a fiddly line to walk. The Dying Earth series of Jack Vance might be a relevant point of comparison. Vance leaves the historical details vague - there are endless old kingdoms and strange artefacts and micro-societies for Cugel and co. to stumble on. Far more important than the specifics of history is establishing the vibe of a world that's seen an unimaginable amount of events layered on top of each other and is honestly a bit tired.

Flower makes things a bit more concrete and generally manages to make this work decently well. I do appreciate the asides where Su talks about, for example, the different architectural styles that layer up to make a place, or the way a technique has been refined. It establishes both that Su is the kind of person to notice this sort of thing, and also helps the world feel lived-in.

the names

The story doesn't do a lot with language. The story is written in English, and the narration will occasionally make reference to how things are phrased (e.g. how divination predates the suffix -mancy). We can probably make the standard assumption that this is all translated from $future_language, with the notional translator making a suitable substitution of whatever linguistic forms exist in that language.

The characters are named in a variety of languages. Our main character's full name is Utsushikome of Fusai. We're told that this is "an old name from Kutuy, and means something like 'mysterious child'" - so Kutuyan is one of the languages spoken in this world. It's blatantly got the same phonotactics as Japanese, and indeed if I search up 'Utsushikome', I find an obscure historical figure called Utsushikome-no-Mikoto, wife of the Emperor Kōgen; she has no article on English Wikipedia, but she does have a brief one on Japanese wiki. Just as Su says about Kutuyan, 'Utsushikome' is written 欝色謎 in Japanese, but it relies on archaic readings of those characters and wouldn't read that way in modern Japanese. We could perhaps assume a good old translation convention is in effect where Kutuyan is replaced with Japanese.

A lot of characters have Greek names, as do various setting elements. One exception is Kamrusepa, or Kam, who is named for an ancient goddess of medicine worshipped by the Hittites and Luwians. I know basically fuck all about Hittites and Luwians but it's a cool little nod to mythology, and it won't be the only one!

I'll run down a list of characters and my comments about them in a bit. But many are named after gods or other mythological figures.

the magic

Most of the divergences come from magic existing. Certain humans are 'arcanists', who are able to use the 'Power', which is a magic system with a highly computational flavour. Thanks to Su's expositional asides, we know that an incantation is something like a short program written in cuneiform with the ability to gather information, perform maths, and manipulate particles. An example we are given is a spell called "entropy-denying", which is the following string of cuneiform:

"…(𒌍𒌷𒀭)(𒌍𒁁𒀭)𒅥𒌈𒆜𒈣𒂠, 𒋢𒀀𒅆𒌫𒃶,𒈬𒊹."

We're told that spells always start with phrases ending in 𒀭, and end in 𒊹. Beyond that, I'm not sure how far the author has actually worked out the syntax of this magic system - probably not in too much detail! Seems like the kind of thing it's better to leave vague, but also she seems like kind of nerd who would (positive). It's conceptually a reasonable magic system for a world where more or less realistic physics applies.

The use of unusual scripts for a magic system isn't that unusual - the old European occultists who wrote the [Lesser] Key of Solomon loved to write on their magic circles in Hebrew, and in modern times we could mention Yoko Taro's signature use of the Celestial Alphabet for example - but the specific use of cuneiform here seems like it might be a little more significant, because a little later in the story the characters encounter a mural depicting The Epic of Gilgamesh, which of course was recorded on cuneiform tablets. Remains to be seen exactly what these allusions will mean!

The magic system is divided into various disciplines defined by the different ways they approach doing magic, with the disciplines breaking down broadly along the same lines as the modern scientific disciplines. For example, our protagonist is a thanatomancer ("necromancer" having become unfashionable), which is the discipline dealing with death; she's specifically an entropic thanatomancer, distinguished by their framework viewing death as the cessation of processes.

Magic relies on an energy that they refer to as 'eris' (unknown relation to the Greek goddess of strife and discord). We are told that eris must be carefully apportioned across the elements of a spell or shit blows up, that it can be stored, and it accumulates gradually enough that you don't want to be wasteful with it, but so far given little information about where it comes from.

Magic in this story generally seems to act as a kind of 'sufficiently advanced technology'. It's very rules-based, and used for a lot of mundane ends like operating computers or transport. Advancement in magic is something like a combination of basic research and software development. But the thing that makes it a magic system and not merely alt-physics is that it's at least a little bit personal: it must be invoked by an individual, and only certain people can operate the magic. We're told a little about how wizards are privileged in some societies, indoctrinated in social utility in others, and expected to be inconspicuous in the present setting. It's not clear yet if you need some kind of special innate capacity to do the magic, or if it's just a matter of skill issue.

With one exception, our main characters are a gaggle of wizards, and exceptionally skilled students at that. They're at an elite institution, carrying high expectations, even if they are themselves fairly dismissive of the pomp and ceremony. They have grandiose plans: Kamrusepa in particular is the main voice of the 'death should be abolished' current.

the cast

We're entering a cloistered environment with high political stakes hanging off of it. Even if I hadn't already heard it described as a murder mystery, it would feel like someone will probably be murdered at some point, so lets round up our future suspects.

Su (Utsushikome) is our protagonist and first-person POV. She's telling this story in the first past tense, with a style calling to mind verbal narration; she'll occasionally allude to future events so we know for sure narrator!Su knows more than present!Su. She's got a sardonic streak and she likes long depressing antijokes, especially if the punchline is suicide. She will happily tell us she's a liar - so maybe her narration isn't entirely reliable, huh.

Su is more than a little judgemental; she doesn't particularly like a lot of her classmates, or people in general, and generally the first thing she'll tell you about a character is how well she gets on with them. She introduces the theme of 'wow death sucks' in the first paragraph, but she is, at least at this point, pessimistic that anyone will manage to do anything about it for good.

Her magical specialisation is entropic thanatomancy, roughly making processes go again after they working coherently.

Her name is a reference to an obscure Japanese empress, as discussed above.

Ran is Su's bestie from the same home country. She is generally pretty on the level. She likes romance novels and she is pretty sharp at analysing them. She will cheerfully team up with Su to do a bit or bait someone else when an argument gets going.

Her magical specialisation is Divination, which is sort of a more fundamental layer of magic, about gathering information by any means. In medicine it's super advanced diagnostics.

Her name is too short to pin down to a specific allusion. Could be one of a couple of disciple of Confucius such as Ran Geng, or a Norse goddess of the sea.

Kam (Kamrusepa) is the de facto class prez and spotlight lover. She's hardcore ideological, the story's main voice of the de Grey/Bostrom death-abolishing concept so far - I think she straight up calls someone a 'deathist' at some point. She loves to tell everyone what she thinks about everything, and getting the last word.

Her magical specialisation is Chronomancy, so time magic. It's described as secretive and byzantine, but also it can do stuff like (locally?) rewind time for about five minutes. No doubt it has something to do with the time loop.

As mentioned above, she's named after a fairly obscure ancient deity of healing and magic.

Theo (Theodoros) is a fairly minor character. He's scatterbrained and easily flustered, he has a similar background to our protagonist, and he's not great with people. His name is shared with a number of ancient Greek figures, so it's hard to narrow it down to one allusion. I don't think his magic school has been mentioned.

Ptolema is a cheery outgoing one, someone who Su dismisses as an airhead. And she is at least easy to bait into saying something ill-considered. Her specialisation is applying magic to surgery. As a character, she tends to act as a bit of a foil to the others. Bit of a valley girl thing going on.

'Ptolema' is presumably a feminised version of the renowned Greek philosopher Ptolemy.

Seth is the jock to Ptolema's prep, and our goth protag Su doesn't particularly like him either. ...lol maybe that's too flippant, I may be misapplying these US high school stereotypes. To be a little more precise then, he's pretty casual in demeanour, flirty, likes to play the clown. He specialises in Assistive Biomancy, which revolves around accelerating natural healing processes.

Seth is named for either the Egyptian god (domain: deserts, violence and foreigners) or an Abrahamic figure, the third son of Adam and Eve granted by God after the whole Caim killing Abel thing.

Ophelia is someone Su describes as 'traditionally feminine' - soft-spoken, demure etc. (Gender in this world appears to be constructed along broadly similar lines to ours). Indeed we get a fairly extended description of her appearance. Her specialisation is Alienist Biomancy, which means introducing foreign elements to healing (not entirely sure how that differs from the Golemancy mentioned later).

Ophelia is of course a major character in Shakespeare's Hamlet, best known for going mad and dying in a river.

Fang is the only nonbinary member of the class, noted as the most academically successful. They're not on the expedition, but the characters discuss them a little in their absence, so maybe they'll show up later. It seems like they have a bit of a rebellious streak. Their magical specialisation is not mentioned.

Fang is a regular ol' English word, but I gave it a search all the same and found there's an ancient Chinese alchemist of that name. She is the oldest recorded woman to do an alchemy in China, said to know how to turn mercury into silver.

Lilith is the teenaged prodigy in computers logic engines, and Mehit is her mother who accompanies her on the trip. They've got a big Maria and Rosa (of Umineko) dynamic going on, with Mehit constantly scolding Lilith and trying to get her to obey social norms, though in contrast to Maria, Lilith is a lot more standoffish and condescending to the rest of the gang. Lilith specialises in 'Golemancy', which means basically medical robotics - prosthetic limbs and such. She spends most of her time fiddling with her phone logic engine, and will generally tell anyone who talks to her that they're an idiot. Sort of a zoomer stereotype.

Lilith is named for the Abrahamic figure, the disobedient first wife of Adam who was banished and, according to some Jewish traditions, subsequently became a demon who attacks women at night. There may be some connection between Lilith and the lioness-headed Mesopotamian chimeric monster Lamashtu, which I mention because Mehit is an Egyptian and Nubian lion goddess.

'Golemancy' is probably playing on the popular fantasy idea of a 'golem' as a kind of magic robot, but given the Jewish allusion in Lilith's name here, I do wonder a little bit if it's going to touch on the Jewish stories of the Golem which inspired it - a protective figure with a specific religious dimension.

There are some other characters but they're not part of the main party on their way to the function, so I won't say much about them just yet. Also it's entirely possible I went and forgot an entire classmate or something, big whoops if so.

the events

In true Umineko tradition, the beginning of the story narrates in great detail how the protagonists make their way to the place where the plot is going to happen.

To be fair, there's a lot of groundwork to be laid here, and the characters' discussions do a lot to lay out the concerns of the story and sketch out the setting, not to mention establish the major character relations. A murder mystery takes a certain amount of setup after all! There's plenty of sci-fi colour to be had in the 'aetherbridge', which is a kind of space elevator that lifts you up to a high altitude teleporter network. (It's technically not teleportation but 'transposition', since teleportation magic also exists in the story, with different restrictions! But close enough for government work.)

They go to a huge space citadel, which is kind of a transport hub; some cloak and dagger shit happens to hide the route they must take to the mysterious secret organisation. They find a strange room with a missing floor and a mural of the Epic of Gilgamesh, albeit modified to render it cyclic. What does it meeaaaan?

The idea of a secret society of rationalists is one that dates back to the dawn of ratfic, in HPMOR. It was kinda dumb then, but it works a lot better here, where we're approaching the wizard circle from outside. The phrase 'Great Work' has already been dropped. I love that kind of alchemical shit so I'm well into finding out what these wizards are plotting.

the dying

A lot of the discussions revolve around the mechanics of death. Essentially the big problem for living forever is information decay. Simple cancers can be thwarted fairly easily with the magic techniques available, but more subtle genetic slippages start to emerge after the first few hundred years; later, after roughly the 500 year mark, a form of dementia becomes inevitable. It's this dementia in particular that the characters set their sights on curing.

One thing that is interesting to me is that, contra a lot of fantasy that deals with necromancy (notably the Locked Tomb series), there appears to be no notion of a soul in this world whatsoever. The body is all that there is. Indeed, despite all the occult allusions in the character names, there is very little in the way of religion for that matter. Even the 'fundamentalism' is about an idea of human biological continuity that shouldn't be messed with too much.

Su distinguishes three schools of thought on death, namely 'traditional', 'transformative' and 'entropic'. The 'traditional' form attempts to restore limited function - classic skeleton shit. 'Transformative' sees death as a process and uses dead tissues together with living in healing. Su's 'entropic' school broadens this 'process' view to consider death as any kind of loss of order - a flame going out as much as an organism dying. At the outset of the story, Su has discovered a 'negentropic' means to restore life to an organism, which she considers promising, even if for now it only works for fifteen minutes.

This is an interesting perspective, but the devil is in the details. Because processes such as life or flames, necessarily, result in a continuous increase in the thermodynamic entropy of the universe. And yet this idea of death-as-loss-of-order does make a kind of sense, at a certain level of abstraction.

Elaborating on this got rather too long for this post, and I think it can stand alone, so I'm going to extract it to a followup post.

the comments

As is probably evident by the length of this post, I am very intrigued by The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere. The setting is compelling, and it seems like it's got the willingness to bite at the chewy questions it raises instead of acting like it has all the answers, which is I think one of the most crucial elements for this kind of scifi. I like how unabashed it is at having its characters straight-up debate shit.

Of course, this all depends where they go with it. There's so many ways it could be headed at this point. I hear where it's going is 'dark yuri' and 'Umineko-inspired murder mystery', so that should be really juicy fun, but I do end up wondering what space that will leave to address the core theme it's laid out in these first few chapters.

Overall, if this and Worth the Candle are what modern ratfic is like, the genre is honestly in pretty good shape! Of course, I am reading very selectively. But this is scratching the itch of 'the thing I want out of science fiction', so I'm excited to see where the next 133 chapters will take me.

Though all that said, I ended up writing this post all day instead of reading any other chapters or working, so I may need to rein it in a bit.

[ambers-archive]

who am i, darling to you? (iv)

loss of my life

Bookmarked on page fifteen, the last page of chapter three, the closed book in your hands stand still against your heavy heart. You were waiting to read chapter four together with her. The story of Rapunzel was your favorite princess story. One of a long lost princess with beautiful long hair who fought to live the life she wanted. And she was able to fall in love in the midst of it all. 

It was a staple bedtime story; you went to sleep hanging onto the words.

Sometimes when you see your mom in your dreams; you can hear her sweet voice reading you the stories, and you can feel her gentle kisses even now. A beautiful yet haunting reminder of her. 

You never got to read chapter four, and you haven't been able to move the handmade bookmark since your mom stopped on chapter three seventeen years ago. It's her birthday today, seventeen years of missed laughter, hugs, and love. Maybe it would have been bearable if you had someone to share the burden with, someone who knew her just as intensely.

But the only two other people were dead along with her.

"Alright, let's go over our story one more time," Hotch says, his voice low as he walks into your honeymoon suite.

It had been a few days since you two checked in, it was a beautiful suite overlooking the sea. You loved the sea and the feeling of sand between your toes, but just like many of the things you loved - it was just out of your grasp.

You were spending the days discussing specifics of stories, anniversaries, birthdays, and first kisses. All set to disappear into an imagined world and meet him in a love story that was not yours. You two weren't hopelessly in love on your honeymoon, and Maya wasn't you. That story was only saved for last, hidden deep within your heart under-heading the section labeled grief. 

Because where else can one store unspent love. 

You've never even held him, but your feelings for Hotch are nothing short of love. You've never held him, and yet you have memorized every dimple, freckle, and crease by his eyes.

He has never touched you, and yet has touched every fiber of your being. 

And so many sleepless you stayed up, next to him, feeling his heartbeat you wondered what it would be like to press yourself against his larger body. To tuck yourself underneath his arm and lay your head against chest as if you belonged there all along. 

You resisted of course. 

“We met at one of the galleries I was showing; you bought all of my paintings and asked me out to dinner later that night,” You respond quietly, your hand still ghosting over the peeking bookmark. Feeling the lines of the book's spine, it was a small but thick paperback book. Not worth much, but to you, it was priceless, one of your most prized possessions.

You manage to catch the last of his question, all your focus on your self-inflicted sorrow. "Ages?"

"Um," You start, trying to piece the story together; it's buried somewhere deep in your head, this past week has just been so hard. You always visit your mom on her birthday, but now you know it won't be possible.

Your pain was always such an imposition.

"If we're going to do this, I need your undivided attention,” Hotch’s voice breaks through your head. You turn to face him, his eyes focused on the case file, not even sparing you a glance.

"Sorry, sir. It’s just a lot to think about.”

“I told you it would be. If you’re not ready for this, Agent.” You wish he would stop calling you Agent, it's an unnecessary boundary he's creating to distance himself from you. 

“I am,” You cut through his words, swallowing the dryness forming in your throat. "Of course, I am." You repeat back, standing up straighter this time, trying not to let the indifference in his words bother you.

He passes you his notes, filled with Maya and James's life. Their story, their family. They're respectively twenty-six and forty, so a little off here and there. James has a big family that Maya is able to fall into, two brothers and a sister. No kids yet, they're just enjoying life with the two of them.

It would be perfect if it was yours to truly live in.

Perfect, just not yours. Always yours to love, but never to keep.

"This case is one of the most important the team has had in a long time. Everyone is counting on us; memorize the notes. We should take this opportunity to meet other couples tonight at the welcome dinner." He pauses for a second, surveying and noticing the book in your hands. You defensively put the book away, shielding your memories from his judgmental eyes, ripping yourself away from any judgment, away from a job that punishes you for caring.

"I can't do my job successfully if I'm always watching over my shoulder, babysitting a capable agent," he says, as he walks out of the room, selfishly avoiding your eyes so he can shield himself from the pain he's inflicted. The door shuts quietly, but no thoughts seem to take over, and you suddenly feel small. Like a child who's been abandoned, left alone, and to fend for herself.

༺༻

You sit there, staring at the closed door, trying to steady your breathing. The silence in the room grows louder, as if it were taunting you, reminding you of your isolation. You clutch the book tighter, as if it could anchor you to some semblance of stability.

Minutes pass, maybe hours. Time blurs as your mind drifts between memories of your mother and the pressing reality of the case. The sun slowly sets, casting long shadows across the room. 

And you wish you could just sit there and wallow in your misery but the reality of the case pulls you out, your feelings will just have to wait. 

As the orange from the evening sky peaks through the curtains, you hear the door open again. Hotch steps back into the room, his expression softer yet determined. "Strauss wanted to have a conference call with the director. She thinks the welcome dinner is a good approach."

You look up from the case notes, the soft glow of the bedside lamp casting a warm light over the room. "When should we start heading there?" 

"In about an hour, we should get there early to take in the environment. The Unsub could be anyone." You nod as he finishes the last of his sentence, the tension is still there letting you loose only to suffocate you once again. 

"Just give me a few minutes to shower." You say not meeting his eyes.

Making your way to the shared bathroom you let the warm shower engulf you. Wishing to wash away your insecurities and the weight of the day. You close your eyes and visualize the tension fading with every drop of water, but it doesn't last nearly as long as you would like it to. Reluctantly, you walk out of the shower as your obligations drag you back.

Thinking of these small things makes you believe she is an actual person, not just someone you and the team invented. The details bring her to life, giving her a heartbeat within your imagination.

You rarely had time to dress up since work took most of your time and energy. You take the time to do your hair and for a second you get to engage in something fun, a constant which was sperate from the rest of the world. Reaching instinctively to play with your bracelet, you sigh.

It was an evil eye bracelet, or as your family called it, nazar. It was a gift from your Nani (grandmother); she said it would keep you safe from everything evil. You smile to yourself, thinking about her words and the warmth they still bring you.

If only there was someone else who loved you just as much now.

Hotch's knock on your bathroom door pulls you out of your trance, "Just a second!" You say adjusting your dress. 

Taking one more look in the mirror, you open the door, surprised by how good he looks. He always wore suits, but before you stands a man in a dark gray shirt, tucked into his trousers, his usually neat hair now slightly tousled, framing his face.

You smile at him, for a second forgetting that you're upset at him.

"I didn't know you had curly hair," he says, looking at you with a small smile on his lips. You mirror him briefly, putting on your earrings.

"It's hard to maintain, especially at work, so I just straighten it a lot." You had your hair moved to the side; you can't remember the last time he had looked at you for so long.

"It suits you."

"I get it from my mom. Everyone told me I look like my dad growing up, but the one thing I got from her is the hair," you say, looking for your shoes. Hotch is standing behind you, hands in his pockets.

"You don't talk about them much," he says, his tone softer now, more curious than probing.

"Once I start, I can't stop."

"I was the same way with Beth, especially around Jack. But there are people who care about you here, including me." You don't know when he came so close to you, his face now merely inches away, his presence suddenly more comforting than intimidating.

Suddenly, your perfectly guarded emotions come undone. "I have so many memories of her; it's an overflow sometimes."

"Then let's start small. What is your favorite memory?"

You let out a small smile, walking towards the dresser and pulling out the book to show him.

"Rapunzel?" he asks with amusement. "I didn't know you liked fairytales."

"My mother did. She used to read me a ton of them, but this one was my favorite."

Recognition flashes in his eyes as if he suddenly remembers something. "I'm sorry, it's not hard when people we love leave." He knows grief better than most people. Although you weren't there when Beth died, you can still see remnants of who he used to be underneath.

A man torn between the love for his wife and duty.

"I think you're wonderful despite everything you've gone through. I know it's easy to feel responsible for what happened, but it wasn't your fault," you say softly, still holding onto your book.

Hotch nods, taking his hands out of his pockets and resting them on your shoulders. It's hesitant, as if he's unsure, but you don't mind.

"I was mad at them for coming home so late," you whisper, meeting his eyes.

"My dad promised to watch a new movie with me. I waited by the door all night. But they never came. Today is her birthday, and I'm missing it."

"This is why you always take this week off?" He asks.

Nodding, you tighten your grip on the book. "I always visit her grave, and since they're buried together, I visit my dad's too."

Before you can take in what's happening, Hotch lets his hands fall from your shoulders with a look of determination. And before you can ask him about the welcome dinner he starts walking towards his keys. 

"Tell me where."

"W-hat about the dinner?" You ask barely able to register the man in front of you. 

"We will have other opportunities. Right now, you should be with your mom on her birthday. I spent too long letting this job keep me from the people I love. I can't see it happen to you."

"It's all the way back home."

"That's alright. I can probably call in some favors and have the jet get us there in a few hours," he says earnestly.

You look at him, taken aback by his determination. "Are you sure? What about Strauss?" 

Hotch nods opening the door for you. "You're honoring your mother. I'll explain the situation, don't worry about her." 

How could someone not fall in love with him?

taglist: @zaddyhotch @mrs-ssa-hotch

[king-paimon]

Houseki no Kuni Chapter 104 Thoughts: "My Way" By Frank Sinatra

Hello everyone! I hope your month had gone by well. Mine had been...eventful, to say the least, though I suppose things could have turned out much worse.

Anyways, that's not what this is about. I just finished going through the latest chapter and... wow. That last image. Many fans have pointed out the signs, and I think it's safe to say that those last few pages confirm how this long saga is finally going to end...

BUT before I get into that, as always, I'll share some of my thoughts in this post. This will be long and ramble-y as usual (I truly meant to keep it short this time, I swear! It just kept getting longer and longer...) and I may come back to update some things. And as always, please feel free to share your own thoughts!

BTW: After reading this chapter a few more times and struggling with a title for the post, "My Way" by Frank Sinatra kept popping up in my head. It's honestly pretty fitting. That's why it's my title now. Please look up the song and lyrics when you get the chance and you'll hopefully see what I mean.

View of Humanity Through Untainted Eyes (Or lack thereof...)

Like the last couple of chapters, this chapter was dialogue heavy and it was admittedly hard to pick which parts I liked the most. Eyeball's (Or should I address him as "Brother"?... I'm sticking with "Eyeball") dramatic performance at the beginning was very funny and informative. It really showed how much he not only hated humanity and yet valued the professor during her final moments. And his talk with Phos at the end of the chapter was engrossing. But for this section, I'll mostly focus on Phos's interactions with the pebbles; I'll focus more on the first pebble in the following section.

Phos has truly become a teacher/mentor-like figure ( and dare I say even parental figure) for these pebbles, especially because of how they spoke to them. Phos literally reminded me of a thoughtful pre-school teacher with how patient they are with each of the pebbles and giving them the chance to express their differing opinions and giving what I think were appropriate responses. In some ways, Phos's mannerisms in this chapter reminded me of Adamant, though Phos's approach with these pebbles seems more gently, at least to me.

Hmm...You know what's funny? As I was writing this portion, a little thought popped into my head claiming that Phos may have inadvertently adopted more of Adamant's habits than I first realized. I'll try to explain more on this in the next portion.

But let me first go back to another thing that I liked about Phos's interaction with the pebbles: their individual responses. It could have been so easy to have the pebbles all be likeminded after hearing the history of humans, but that's not what we got. Each pebble had their own opinion; some were curious, some were scared, some were right in the middle, and a few seemingly blasé. I don't know why but I like how these varying responses further emphasize that the pebbles individuality goes deeper than their varying appearances and mannerisms. And I'm also thankful that Phos and Eyeball weren't seemingly perturbed by their responses... at least Eyeball wasn't.

"I want everyone to be happy": Naivety or Profound Point of View?

Now let's focus on the main pebble, because of course, out of all the responses, their response to Phos and Eyeball had the most weight despite how simple it sounds on the surface.

You can argue that the pebble's response was due to their naiveté, but I think this pebble has repeatedly shown that their nuanced view of the world around them is sophisticated and mindful. After being told by Phos and Eyeball about how fascinating and yet awful humans were and even acknowledging humanities good and bad qualities, the pebble still believed that everyone deserves happiness, even those considered "bad".

I couldn't agree more with Eyeball and Phos on this page:

At first, I thought that these innocent and yet wise responses reminded me of old Phos, but the more I thought about it, this couldn't be further from the truth. While Phos was also very naïve at the beginning of the story, I think they were to lost in their own heads to truly think outside of their own unrealized desires, even when they claim their actions were to help everyone. So if you were to tell old Phos the stories of humanity and ask them the same questions, I don't think we would have gotten the same answers the pebble gave. And the more I think about, I doubt Phos would have ever made the same conclusion at any point in their story. There's nothing wrong with that, but that just has me thinking... It's interesting how this small pebbles seem more empathy for others than the previous human descendants, from the Lunarians, Admirabilis, and the even the Lustrous, even though they looked more human.

Tell me what you think! This was weird character analysis tangent and I'm curious to know if anyone has feels similarly or differently. But speaking of Phos's character... Onto the next section!

Friend to Closed Off Guardian: The barrier between Phos and the pebbles

While I was typing the paragraph that focused on Phos's mentor-like persona, I made a small realization. Is it just me or doesn't Phos's interactions with the pebbles feel different now? Yes, I pointed out that Phos is acting like a kind teacher in this chapter and I could be overanalyzing this, but while this interaction is cute on the surface, I can't help but feel there is more to this interaction. This is why I brought up Adamant, for Phos's interactions with the pebbles in this chapter reminded me of a certain aspect of Adamant's old relationship with the Lustrous.

As you may recall, Adamant assumed a leader/guardian role with the Lustrous over time. He had many reasons of doing so, including for their protection, but assuming this role came at a price; Adamant ended up keeping the Lustrous at an emotion distance. With the exception of Antarctictite and eventually Phos and Euclase, Adamant closed himself off from forming true close relationships to the gems, for their sake and his, effectively creating a barrier between them. This barrier only became obsolete after Adamant finally relented and opened up to the Earth gems after Phos's first attack on them, and even if it were just for a short time, Adamant and the Lustrous interacted on a somewhat equal footing.

Now lets go back to how Phos initially interacted with the pebbles. Not long after Phos found the first pebble, they didn't interact like how Adamant used to with the Lustrous. The two talked freely and sang together without a care in the world. Though Phos and this pebble are vastly different in many ways, it was clear that Phos saw them as a friend. An equal. And Phos was happy.

But now look at how Phos interacts with the pebbles now. I don't see Phos's interaction with the first pebble or any of the pebbles the same way anymore. Yes, Phos encourages the pebbles to speak freely, but to me, it feels like the same can't be said about Phos now. Phos isn't speaking as freely as they did before. They are selective in how they address the pebbles, kind of like Adamant. Phos is acting more like their guardian rather than their friend... like Adamant used to. Phos is fully embodying Adamants old role now and it's a little sad the more I think about.

After being alone for so long in more ways than one, Phos had finally found beings who treated them like a real friend. But because something in them changed, Phos is now slowly but surely assuming their role as the pebbles guardian and in doing so, that friendship connection is being replaced by a similar barrier that Adamant once donned.

Like I said, I'm probably overthinking this and giving Haruko Ichikawa more credit than what's due, but I just can't help but think about the parallels here. What do you think?

Acceptance: The End is Near

The last thing I'll touch on are the last few pages because...wow.

If I remember correctly from posts made by some keen eyed fans, the story had been hinting that the main sun is about to die. And one of the final stages of a star's death is that it would expand into either a red giant or a red super-giant, which was being depicted in that last image.

And if I'm interpreting those last few pages correctly, it seems that both Phos and Eyeball are aware that the sun will eventually consume the Earth. It will take a couple more thousand of years, but as we've seen here and in the previous chapters, time doesn't matter. The real end of everything is coming and those two are accepting it.

Yup. It looks like we have true confirmation for how this saga is going to finally end. And just like those two, I'm ready for it. Not out hatred or anything truly negative towards this series... I just feel like I'm ready for that final curtain call for this unique, thought provoking, and strenuous story.

I just hope the end will be a worthy end.

WHEW. This post ended up being even longer than I originally intended! Sorry about that. Regardless, I hope you liked it. Please don't hesitate to share your thoughts, even if you don't agree with me!

Until next time!

[bitemegamer]

Log 01: A Note and Meeting Qiu and Tamarack (Long Post)

Something about this intro... It makes my heart ache in the best way possible. It's the start, the start to a new section of a new life. It is the Fall, the air is cooling down and I can feel it hitting my nose.

*Forgive me, I shall be using MC thoughts as that of my own and basing things off of how I would react, I shall be using first person writing

I decided, since my MC is 10 and I was a little bit of a nut at this time, I would have him believe that it was a ghost that poked him instead of him being rational about it.

He gets greeted with this paper, and... Honestly, how WOULD your little kid thoughts (esp that of someone who did believe in ghosts) think this meant?

*I blurred the last name for my own reasons, thank you very much*

I really, truly wished to be Nancy Drew or one of the Hardy Boys. I spend so much time watching mysteries with my mom. Probably way too much time.

Too bad I am going to break those rules, Mother! Muahahaha! I am a little troublemaker. Just kidding. However, it's okay. I have a way to bend the rules... Just a little bit ;)

*Proceeds to go to the woods, which to me feels like straying even further??? tbh, knowing myself as a kid, I would have done this without thinking too deeply*

Oh where shall I be going? On a cool quest! Off I go to the amazing and great unknown!

WHAT??? Man... :( I know for a fact I would have been so upset, yet a little relieved. Had I gone further into the forest, I might have freaked out just a little bit.

The ghost inhabits this building.

Also, random thought/feeling/vibe that I am feeling... This reminds me so much of when I was a little kid doing my own thing, just wandering about and feeling like the whole world was amazing and whimsical. As a kid, I would always go out of my way to have some sort of fun and adventure... Even if that meant getting lost or making something out of nothing.

A RACCOON!

If I end up dying, let it be known that I met the end of my life with the coolest animal ever.

I'm sure said kid feels very different about a total stranger being in their backyard climbing up their fort.

lol, he thinks I'm quirky...

I mean... You were the one who sent the note... Right? Right? Oh God, never mind--

Don't look at me like that *SOB SOB* I'm trembling over here as if I am some sort of scared little grey hound!

Nice to meet you as well, Qiu!

*Snorts*

OCD Autism meeting and seeing someone with ADHD for the first time be like (joking):

I decided to be a little more nicer to him and politely just point it out to him:

This honestly does beg the question for me... How often has Qiu lost something simply from people just not telling him that he dropped his pages.

That's it, Bud. You. Me. We're going to be in it together. You're never going to lose something like that again while I'm around you.

He'll listen to me, but he will have no idea what I am talking about. At least he tries.

Making art out of trash... I see.

Yeah... Maybe my joke about ADHD might not be as much of a joke as I thought it was.. Hm...

Oh... OH... She's so cute, she makes me wanna cry..

Tamarack really went: 'Wow, okay, *bye*.

Well... Since I have exceeded my image limit for this post, I do believe that I can have this a closing moment... As of now, my MC has met both of the wonderful romantic/friend interests and I think they're both so wonderful!

I know that I am currently playing the Demo at the moment, but goodness this is so cute. This reminds me so much of my days after school and spending time with my friends around this time period.

I can't wait to finish this intro out and write more about my silly little thoughts... Until then, I hope you guys have enjoyed my little comments. I love doing that when I play games.

[bitchsister]

the curt x bucky x gale spanking drabble was amazing but now i’m thinking of curt being spanked with his plug in 😅

Curt’s voice was getting louder, his already reddened cheeks growing pinker as his frustration settled deeper into his belly that growled.

“Curt, watch it.” Gale warned, sucking his teeth as he shook his head. “Why don’t you get a snack, hm?” He watched as Bucky pulled his hand away from Curt’s thigh, his eyes rolled as he rubbed his temples. “We’ll be ready for dinner sooner, if you let us finish.”

This is before Curt manages his “outbursts” better with Gale help. I’m also shortening these a smidge, so I can write more, faster!!!! And share more of these with you, without so much of a wait 🫶🏼🩷

This ask was also paired up with this one, since Galey is a little more comfortable! I got a couple requests after this one too for more dommy Gale, so enjoy!

This is a LCAU drabble 🩷

There wasn’t so much a tension as there was a race to the finish line. Gale was stressing, and so was Bucky. Curt, of course, was focused on anything other than his paper due at midnight. “I want — mm,” Curt splayed his palms over the desk, his back arched as he leaned himself into it. “I want Italian, I think.”

“You got the session claims over there?” Bucky looked over at Gale, his hand slowly reaching over to pat Curt’s knee and hopefully keep him at bay, but everyone in that very room knew good and well they had very little time left ticking before he became insufferable.

“Yeah. Got ‘em.”

The sound of pages flipping filled the room, and the fountain trickling from the open window leading out to the garden where Curt had been spending most of his day, writing his paper on his laptop with sunglasses perched over his freckled nose, his bare ass begging to be looked at, even if by a neighbor.

“You ‘member that mushroom pasta? The one from—“

“Curt,” Gale spoke, unable to focus on the color coded and alphabetized tabs separating each section of Bucky’s case file. The stress of the days nearing closer and closer had been hammering him down, too. Not to mention, this could be their last partnered case for quite awhile — he was taking advantage of working with Bucky and picking his brain for as long as he possibly could. “We don’t have time to talk about dinner just yet.”

“You’ve got a paper due.” Bucky patted his knee again, turning his watch toward Curt who shoved it away with a scrunched nose.

“He’ll extend it for me.” He flashed a grin. “M’his favorite.”

Bucky glanced at Gale, and Gale back at him.

“Like the time I did a whole bunch’a acid and forgot I had a presentation due the next morning.” Curt hopped up on the desk, his lip caught between his teeth when he landed right on the plug that nestled itself perfectly into him. His first and favorite — no app included, no pulsating or vibrating. Just a pretty blue, like your eyes, Bucky had once told him.

“Didn’t know you were skating by, Curt.” Gale tilted his head and Bucky chimed in, “Here I thought you were doing the work all on your own.”

“Oh, come on.” Curt rolled his eyes, “You know I ain’t skating by. My eye is twitchin’. I’m stressed just as much as the two of you.”

Bucky’s own eye twitched at that, “Didn’t know batting your lashes and asking for an extension was the same as working a high profile murder case.” In that moment, he was rudely reminded that he’d be on television again. “That the whole world is criticizing.”

“Ah, how hard it must be to have a nation call you the Courtroom Casanova, for god fuckin’ sake.” Curt recalled all the tweets he’d seen from the girls all over the world absolutely fawning over the man he knew the taste of, knew the smell of, the way his tongue felt on his neck.

He knew the sounds he made in his sleep, and his favorite type of toothpaste.

He knew what made his cock hard, what made his mouth water.

I’m just gonna say Bucky is Daddy material. #CourtroomCasanova

I’d let Mr. Egan yell in my face about how I’m guilty for hours and still say thank u. #CourtroomCasanova

I’m fucking droooooling. How am I supposed to listen to the evidence when he looks like THAT? #CourtroomCasanova

#CourtroomCasanova trended nationwide for a week straight.

“Do you think that diminishes the work I’ve put in?”

“Well, do ya think one extension diminishes all of mine?”

Curt’s voice was getting louder, his already reddened cheeks growing pinker as his frustration settled deeper into his belly that growled.

“Curt, watch it.” Gale warned, sucking his teeth as he shook his head. “Why don’t you get a snack, hm?” He watched as Bucky pulled his hand away from Curt’s thigh, his eyes rolled as he rubbed his temples. “We’ll be ready for dinner sooner, if you let us finish.”

Curtis stood and threw his arms up, clearly not willing to back down from whatever this was. “You both been sayin’ that for three hours now — since fuckin’ lunch! Don’t you people get hungry?”

“Not as hungry as growing boys.” Gale teased, and it only made Curt angrier.

“I’m full-grown.” A retort that hardly sounded sure, but even despite Gale saying it, he knew as much was the truth. Curt was well beyond his growth spurt days, but it felt like the right time to remind him of his stature. Small. Throwing a fit. Acting like a child. “Goin’ for physicalities is a cop out. And below the belt. Ain’t they teach you that in whatever school you went to?”

“How about your grammar, then?”

“Fuck you.” Curt turned to storm off but Gale quickly caught him by the wrist from where he sat, his neck craned slightly to take him in head to toe.

Curt had since dressed himself since his lounging in the garden, his ankle socks crisp white with bloodstains around the tops from skinning his knees while skating, his shirt a borrowed Fleetwood Mac tee that hung to his mid thighs, a relic from Bucky’s time in college — it hung so low, it was impossible to tell if he’d even bothered to put a pair of shorts on or not.

One of Gale’s brows had risen, “What was that?”

“I said fuck. You.”

He stood then, grabbing both of Curt’s wrists and holding them with a now-practiced precision behind his back with one hand, hips shoved into his backside to force his chest onto the desk. “Well, maybe we’ll talk about that foul mouth of yours, then.”

The tshirt had ridden up just slightly in that position, risen just above the curve of his ass and revealing a pair of Adidas shorts that he’d most certainly stolen from a drunken sleepover with one of his girlfriends on campus, the particular cut of them riding too far up on his thighs to be anything else.

“What about it?”

Curt certainly had not been expecting for Gale to be the one to rise from his seat, but it had come as a pleasant surprise, one Curt would later shower him with praise for.

His shorts were shucked down to his ankles, shirt pushed to the middle of his back to reveal a pair of spread thighs and a beautifuly plump ass, a little blue plug nestled between its cheeks visible once he parted his feet far enough. “You always got something in there, don’t you?”

Bucky had found himself entranced, glancing up from his phone that he answered emails on every so often to catch a glimpse of his boys, learning to play all on their own.

“Gotta, since the two of you hardly look my fuckin’ way.”

A loud crack reverberated through the room, the sound bouncing off of the bookshelves filled to the brim with literature shared by the three of them — Navigating the Therapeutic Alliance, Landmark Cases in Constitutional Law, and Hypersonic Aerodynamics: Pushing the Boundaries of Flight.

“Now, you know that’s a lie if you’ve ever told one.”

Curt had risen on his tiptoes, his back arched at the bottom of his spine. “Mm, no.” His eyes had turned into the ones he would wear whenever he was getting what he wanted — soft little slits. So feline. So serpentine.

He looked right at Bucky with them. “I ain’t ever told a lie.”

And his fangs were sunk right into him.

Gale’s thumb pressed against the baby blue plug nestled between his cheeks, begging for attention but so natural in its spot there where Curt hardly ever walked around without anything stuffing him up, whether it be his own fingers or something Gale or Bucky bought for him.

Slowly, Gale’s lips parted to dribble a trail of saliva on the sweet, pink little path beneath it, the spot right below the plug and just above his balls, so tight and tan, sprinkled deliciously with soft hues of pink and red.

“And that makes you a liar.”

Again, the sound echoed from the opposite cheek, it’s redness quickly mirroring the other while Curtis moaned softly against the sturdy oak beneath him, not even a creak heard beneath his weight.

With curious eyes and an even more inquisitive touch, Gale found himself spreading Curt to get a good look, watching as he showed off and tightened himself around the plug that wiggled each time he did.

Even with his hands still grasped securely behind his back, Curtis found a way to fuck himself.

It was, at times, astonishingly impressive

[goldensunset]

you wanted me to talk about ooparts from twewy. ok. this song is an absolute hot mess and it’s one of my absolute FAVORITES. but specifically only the version that plays when you fight konishi in final remix (‘ooparts -give me a chance’) the original is. eh. but the difference between them is not the thing that matters to me anyway so i guess i like the original too

first and foremost. i have gone through the process of color-highlighting the lyrics (screenshotted from the wiki) to point out which song each line comes from to visually represent just how much this massive word mashup borrows stuff. i also just straight up put the names of the songs next to some of them but i couldn’t fit them all or else this would be a mess lol. please enjoy

🍎red: ‘hybrid’ (both english and japanese)

🍊orange: ‘detonation’

⭐️yellow: ‘game over’

🍃green: ‘owari-hajimari’ (japanese)

💎light blue: ‘someday’ (both english and japanese)

🫐dark blue: ‘satisfy’

☂️purple: ‘twister’ (both english and japanese)

🌸pink: ‘make or break’

•‘surely there was a better way to convey this information’ no there wasn’t

•most of this information is on the wiki page but i’ll have you know i discovered most of these connections by myself anyway long before i ever even checked the trivia section. also there are a few that i caught that the wiki didn’t. not to flex or anything. but y’know what credit really isn’t important anyway it’s really all about sharing information within a community so. peace and love

•there is a bit of a liberty taken with ‘you’re getting out of control’ bc the line in game over is just ‘you’re out of control’ but i still think it counts as a connection

so basically i think this song is really cool and amazing not just bc the music goes really hard at about one minute in (but only specifically in the one where you fight konishi, at least in final remix) but mostly because it represents a few of my favorite things about twewy. the whole ‘melody/vibe over lyrics’ thing twewy has going on where it says hey who cares if these lyrics are in any way comprehensible; what matters is that it’s a lot of fun to sing

but beyond that? ooparts also does the thing that twister is known for but even better. aka word salad lyrics that may not have any innate meaning in the words themselves, but they matter BECAUSE they’re word salad. apparently the intention behind twister’s nonsense lyrics is to represent all the different clashing ideas in shibuya. it’s diverse and noisy and weird and it all comes together into something fun. ooparts does the same except its lyrics aren’t even random words; they’re from other songs in this game. including twister itself!

to me it really feels like a turning point in the game when you fight konishi, the final week’s game master, the last actual valid legal boss within the framework of the game, and you have this crazy wild song playing that, through its lyrics, serves to remind you of everything else you’ve encountered in your insane journey. it’s a culmination of all your struggles and you’re here to see it all through

and the call-and-response lyrics back and forth between the two vocalists are soooo fun! it feels like teamwork: the song. like truly this is the moment of revenge and triumph for neku and beat. they’ve made it this far and nothing can stop them now. they’re not afraid of konishi they’re hyped up to defeat her. and konishi is such a great villain with a really tricky and unique boss fight so it feels super satisfying to finally get the better of her! it’s not about fear it’s about fun! and when the beat switches on the chorus to something so much brighter and smoother… feels like that moment in the battle where you break through one of her gimmicks and you can see clearly now

in conclusion: i love the weird telephone beep song with the strangest lyrics known to man

[a-moth-to-the-light]

Most-Listened of March 2024

[last month]

This was such an exciting month of releases--Purplekiss, Day6, BLEACHERS?? Chung Ha gave us a couple of songs, Nina Suárez came back out of nowhere, Lucy dropped a single, OLIVIA RODRIGO IS BACK?? I've been super excited for the J-Hope album, too, but I haven't been emotionally ready to check it out, yet, since I want to have the energy to really love it! Not to mention the Seori EP-- PLUS Bol4 and StayC both dropped some covers of huge 2019 k-pop hits.

And that isn't all. The highlights of my month were seeing Bruce Springsteen (only my favorite artist ever.) and Gregory Alan Isakov in concert(s)! So honestly, I'm a little overwhelmed by just how exciting music is right now. (It doesn't help that this month gave me my first album of the year candidate, too!!) This post will be my opportunity to go a little wild, then :)

1. Leopardos -- Ine Güemes

I should not enjoy this listening experience as much as I do. That whistling noise should annoy me by now, after all these listens, right? ... Right? Nope. I love it. This song is so soothing, it's literally the musical equivalent of a deep breath.

2. Appaloosa Bones -- Gregory Alan Isakov

Concert prep + THE sulking song this month. Look, I'm a guy who needs my daily floor time (floor time. perhaps you require it.), and it always involves considerable sulking. (At this rate, you're gonna see a sulking song on this list every single month. It's a tradition now!) I've been losing it about "Was I that gone? / Man, I hope not / Glad you found me when you did" and "The pages slow / in the room I called your name" and "They haven't made no pill / To get us across the winter time" ...

3. All Things End -- Hozier

You know what ended? My eight-week class. *sigh of relief* All things end, truly! Now I just need the reminder that this semester will end, too...

4. Death To My Hometown -- Bruce Springsteen

I'd never heard this one before, but I ASCENDED when I heard it live (the horns section was. fantastic.) and I left it on repeat all month post-concert.

5. The Ledge -- Fleetwood Mac

This song makes me proud of my music taste, honestly--see, I can like weird experimental stuff, too! It sounds wonderfully, comfortingly crowded--like the ambient noise from a nearby café, or like falling asleep with the TV on. I don't know, it's just a feeling I find myself really enjoying. I'm also SO deeply in love with the round-style singing (see: "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" rounds in middle school choir) Fleetwood Mac sometimes does (see: my obsession with "Paper Doll"), and they do it in this song !!

6. I Don't Want to Know -- Fleetwood Mac

I like this one for the same reason I like "Second Hand News"--that cheerful self-deprecation just never fails to draw me in. ("Second Hand News" is still better, though!)

7. Smart -- Le Sserafim

Does anyone NOT like this song? I missed the Eve Psyche hype train last year, so this one's hitting me doubly hard. I think the sweeter tone of "Smart" suits Le Sserafim's vocals much better, and the production is just plain adorable! This has been my go-to song during classes, when I need something to cheer me up without making me too overwhelmed.

8. Luz -- Ine Güemes

That vocal processing is SUCH a standout--so soft and hazy and fluffy, just a fascinating texture when you really focus on it, but endlessly pleasant when you leave it on loop and zone out, too. (Look, I REALLY loved this album this month.)

9. Nota de Voz -- Los Hermanos Laser

Classic indie boy music! I like "Azul Plateado" from this album, too, and I have a feeling the whole album will hit for me during the summer--I tend to like that exhausted-sounding alt-rock stuff a whole lot around July & August :)

10. Light Sprite -- Baby Pantera, Isabella Lovestory

Thanks for the rec, @pocima !!

11. I Am Right On Time -- Bleachers

This is a weirdly muted album for Bleachers (especially on the heels of "Stop Making This Hurt" and "How Dare You Want More" from their last album), and this is the most weirdly muted of them all--I really feel like it should be... more, somehow? But it's still quite a cathartic listening experience, and I keep coming back to it!

12. Really Like You -- Gyubin

I've started giving myself 30 minutes of reading time in the mornings, to help me wake up and not be completely miserable about it, so I've been reading a whole bunch of webtoons. (Hell, maybe I'll read a book one day!) This one's the perfect cutesy webtoon soundtrack, and I think it might be here because I left it on repeat while reading Blooming Season?? (I just finished catching up with Jackson's Diary, and I think I'm gonna start Death of a Pop Star next!) Anyway, Gyubin sounds lovely here, can't wait for a comeback!

13. Self Respect -- Bleachers

The production on this song is just SO exciting overall!! But I'm mostly here for the saxophone. God, it's not even that much of the song but it's gorgeous !!!

14. Nieve Sin Fin -- Ine Güemes

Nice aesthetic piano :)

15. Rush -- Twice

I love how dizzying this song is--it's chaotic and overwhelming in the most wonderful way! I was a little disappointed by it when I first listened to the album, I think because their vocals here are much softer than usual. When I let myself get swept away in the production, though, I totally get the appeal.

Five-Star Songs (& Albums!) This Month

BBB -- Purplekiss (the tiktok-music trend finally got me last year--against my will, admittedly. unfortunately for me, "bbb" is a fantastic example of that easy-listening, viral-tiktok sound from a group i'm already obsessed with, so of course i'm a huge fan. great vocal performances and silky songwriting? yeah, it's great--the muted aesthetic doesn't bug me at all--and i actually kind of love the super-short horn sections in the chorus. they're surprisingly full-sounding!)

Beam Beam -- Jeon Soyeon (i didn't get this one at all when it first came out, but i've warmed up to it over the years--and this month it just HIT. it's the perfect showcase of soyeon's energy, and it's such a rush!!)

Death To My Hometown -- Bruce Springsteen (five stars bc it has the words "robber barons" in it!!)

Girl I've Always Been -- Olivia Rodrigo (i keep underestimating olivia rodrigo's power as a performer. of course she could make this country-sounding track work. of course she could make it my favorite from the album in an instant. who am i to question??)

Hey Joe -- Bleachers (a sing-along for the politically disillusioned. happy 2024, fellow usamericans. well, at least the harmonies here are delightful!)

Jesus is Dead -- Bleachers (i mentioned that this album is unusually muted for bleachers--not dull as in 'boring in terms of production or songwriting', but dull as in dead-eyed and zombie-like. the vocal delivery, especially, is unusually bland and flat. "jesus is dead" is definitely the best use of this half-asleep, grayscale aesthetic on the album--a song as hopeless and monotone as its delivery. it's strange and stylish and messy, too, AND there's also a sax solo ?? and it works great ?? i admire it so so so much--i'm very surprised this didn't make the most-listened list, i've been looping it a whole bunch.)

The Ledge -- Fleetwood Mac

Self Respect -- Bleachers (re: saxophone.)

White Rabbit -- Jefferson Airplane (i don't think it's much of a hot take at all to say this one is fantastic. i heard it for the first time in february, and i've been completely obsessed since!!)

Heráldica -- Saramalacara (okay, i've had like. a week. with this album, but it was love at first listen--and "humo" already had my heart, anyway. the atmospherics are breathtaking, the production crisp and intense, and saramalacara's voice // the vocal production here fits SO well!! there's a song called ".tumblr" that's definitely worth checking out, though i enjoy every song on here !! except "_cuervos". i admire that one but god it disturbs me i never want to hear it again.)

Qué Nos Mantiene Despiertos -- Ine Güemes (first album of the year candidate of 2024 !!! not much of a surprise, i'm sure, given my top 15. more breathtaking atmospherics, but in the exact opposite direction of heráldica! this album is full of really unique textures, but all that chaos doesn't make it any less soothing. each song is distinct, but they all come together into this sweet, fluffy youtube-lofi-mix type of experience--and look, i'm a college student. could i ask for anything more in an album?)

[magnorious]

A Lightning Thief Retrospective, 16 Years Later

Good grief, I am old. *Spoilers ahead*

In the spirit of the resurgence of appreciation for this series, I’m doing a retrospective on the books that single-handedly got me to love reading. No matter how old I get, Percy and co will always hold a special place on my bookshelf and in my soul. 16 years later and I have my own books to show for it.

*Disclaimer, I have read the books multiple times in the interim, but I first got my hands on it, and first fell in love with it, in 2008.

So: The Lightning Thief

The Greek-verse isn’t Riordan’s only series to open with a fourth-wall-breaking element, nor is it the only series to open with a “if you’re reading this, be warned” narrative (Maximum Ride comes to mind) but, at least in the paperback edition circa 2006, the last lines on the first page read:

Am I a troubled kid?Yeah, you could say that.

And I just… it’s so Percy. It’s perfect. You have no idea what it really means on your first read through but sixteen years later after growing up with these books, that line just makes me grin like the little kid that’s still inside.

As I kept reading, I tried my best to remove my “victim of the hellish IB Program, literary analyst” hat. This book spoon feeds you exposition in a really palatable way. We’ve seen the museum scene adapted twice now and while older me thinks that’s really convenient timing, it does a lot of legwork while also being short enough to keep the attention of its intended audience. It is also very, very good at foreshadowing, and setting up major payoffs, for events later in this book and beyond.

“Mr. Brunner” looking at the stele of the unnamed hero like he’d been to her funeral

Luke’s scar in the firelight making him look evil

Percy’s affinity for water and the sea, peeking into Cabin 3 before it’s his

The Fates’ electric-blue (remind you of anyone’s eyes?) string

“Someone summoned it,” Chiron said. “Someone inside the camp.”Luke came over….

Ares’ curse on Percy

Speaking of foreshadowing – prophecies. Since all five books have them, I’m dedicating a section in each review to each one.

You shall go west, and face the god who has turned.You shall find what was stolen, and see it safely returned.You shall be betrayed by one who calls you a friend.And you shall fail to save what matters most, in the end.

The whole point of these things is to drive you crazy trying to figure out what they mean before they play out, making you rotten suspicious and paranoid. The book does go line by line in the end and explains how each element was resolved. It’s both very deceptive, on purpose, but easy to grasp for younger readers. I think the prophecies in Titans Curse and Battle of the Labyrinth are superior, but it does its job well.

—

The whole book, likely intentionally so, with an ADHD protagonist, isn’t filled with fluffy narrative. There’s a ton of one-sentence paragraphs and Percy’s personality always shines through, even from page one, a la Holden Caulfield. Even when it’s an exposition-heavy scene, or just traveling while on their quest, nothing ever *lingers*.

Percy is direct in his observations and his narration jumps about from thinking about some random comment another character made that’s poignant in the moment to funny descriptions of the mythic world, to pitching his two-cents on the matter, expressing his annoyances with Annabeth, etc, all in a snappy and easy to keep up with manner. He doesn’t wax poetic, that’s not who he is and that’s not the story this book is telling.

For anyone intimidated by chapter books (re: me at that age) this book is endlessly approachable. He doesn’t have *too much* personality to be distracting, but he has enough to be more than a reader-insert everyman.

I don’t necessarily believe he’s twelve, but he does have that childish immaturity with his narrating and I forget if it ages with him. Since I brought up Maximum Ride earlier, she’s a child protagonist who does not read like a 14 year old girl, she reads like a quirky caricature written by a middle-aged dude.

**Side note, upon my re-read, it came to my attention that the Disney show inexplicably skipped the cutting of the thread with the Fates scene that is like, foreshadowing for the entire series**

*Side side note, Percy isn’t the one who came up with Wise Girl, it was Clarisse. Chapter 6**

I also forgot just how big a temper Percy has. He contemplates kicking Smelly Gabe in the balls for being mean to Sally, with zero care for the consequences. Not to mention the whole “Gabe would love to give away free appliances” schtick. He’s such a little sh*t and we love him.

For a book that’s largely action adventure, it balances the slower moments with the fight scenes smoother than butter. Percy’s demigod-ness gives him quite a bit of plot armor and excuse to survive these fights as a mostly-untrained twelve-year old without making him unrealistically over-competent.

The world building, at least in my opinion, feels like it looked at Harry Potter and went “I can fix that”. There’s not one cabin of demigods rudely and unfairly and problematically labeled Wizard Nazis, (except Grover insinuating that Hades’ kids were actual Nazis in WWII…. Hmm). The Mist exists to hand-wave away everything mortals aren’t supposed to see. It gets really creative with modernizing these myths and making them more child-friendly, and does a good job at urbanizing it, for lack of a better term. The concept of mapping Ancient Greece onto the US is neat, for American readers, and the explanation of “traveling Western Civilization” makes sense. The Underworld having traffic and toll booths was funny.

It treads the razor-thin line of “paganism is real” as well as it can, I think. It focuses less on “creation of the universe was definitely this” and more “the forces of nature have names and faces,” and sidesteps the giant sinkhole of Christianity and Christian readers with “we shan’t deal with the metaphysical,” and says nothing more about it, or demigods who grew up religious, or the other pantheons (yet). Beyond a throwaway dead preacher who Grover argues likely sees the underworld through his Christian kaleidoscope.

The series also doesn’t suffer egregious plot holes, only some continuity errors (like Blackjack). One that comes to mind in TLT is that if Camp contacted Sally about watching over Percy, Sally knew his dad was Poseideon. So how did the whole “I want to watch over your son cause he’s interesting, hm, can’t put my finger on why. Say, who’s his dad?” never lead anywhere? But it doesn’t break the immersion, certainly not for young readers.

It’s interesting how, looking back after knowing the entire story, how the seeds of doubt are right there, in your face, from the moment Percy learns the gods are real. It’s almost a meta self-fulfilling prophecy how things go so wrong for these characters, it’s so obvious.

SInce it is an adventure, the places they go are all wildly and entertainingly different. The garden gnome emporium, St. Louis Arch, Waterland, the Lotus casino, Crusty’s waterbed store. Each provides their own challenges and take full advantage of “mythology is real”.

Let’s talk about the villains, and how Hades was not done dirty this time. I’m going to presume that it’s bias on part of the characters for the whole “Hades’ kids were Nazis” and it’s absolutely on Chiron for insisting that Hades is the culprit when he sends Percy on his quest. Nowadays, especially with the staggering popularity of Nico, Hades has been pretty well redeemed in the eyes of a casual reader. But I think, at the time it was written, making Hades not the villain here was fantastic. He’s still a god, still a jerk, still dangerous, but he’s not the Devil. He drew the short straw and is an introvert written by salty extroverts.

Luke, for a twist villain (read my post here for a deeper analysis) and Ares as a tool of Kronos worked really well. If anyone got the Slytherin treatment, I guess it would have been the Ares cabin, but… he’s a jerk. His kids got his temperament, thus they are jerks. But even then – Ares was just a tool, a crude hammer swung alarmingly well.

Setting up your series-defining villain as a disembodied voice pulling strings is nothing new, but it comes with the benefit of two thousand years of real-world mythology backing up this entity’s power. Kronos is basically a non-entity in this book, but what he does is effective, and kudos for making readers’ skin crawl with the near-tragedy at the edge of Tartarus (foreshadowing!!!!!).

Something else the book does well is having a very well-written and uniquely motivated reluctant chosen one. Yeah, we’d all rather be demigods than Tributes, but being a demigod has drawbacks that being a wizard doesn’t. They don’t shy away from the risk of kids getting skewered and mauled, even if you don’t actually see it happening. This is dangerous work.

And, Percy calls it out – he exists to be used. That’s all demigods are worth to the Olympians. So, he’s going to use this quest to rescue his mom. He doesn’t give a damn about his dad, he doesn’t care about the looming civil war, doesn’t think it’s even the right thing to do, except to prevent the nuclear fallout that said war would cause.

He’s not one of those whiny “I just want to be normal” protagonists like no child in the history of ever has dreamed of if they were in their hero’s shoes. He’s also not pumped and jazzed and excited about being a demigod. They’re the victims of abusive and absent parents and, for a kids series, I still think such a sobering subject was handled really, really well.

You want to be a hero like Percy. You’re rooting for him from the first page. Discovering all his new powers is fun, daydreaming getting claimed right along with him. It isn’t dated with pop culture references and most of the humor lands (a novel experience that does not last forever, unfortunately). He’s sassy and sarcastic and his in-character ignorance and naivety opens the door for plenty of smooth exposition and letting the reader discover the world through his eyes, without feeling lifeless.

Speaking of personality, his rapport with Annabeth grows pretty decently over the course of the book, from being super catty to getting embarrassed on the tunnel of love ride, as if anyone would really care. They have their spats, but the budding friendship is realistic and she doesn’t feel at all like the girl hastily written in because the author forgot to include one.

She has her faults, but that’s the point. She’s also a victim of godly propaganda, and twelve, and literally burdened with hubris. All three of them bounce off each other well, each bringing different strengths and weaknesses to the trio, building each other up and bickering to tear each other down because, you know – twelve.

—

I read somewhere that the first five books all pay homage to some of the most famous Greek myths. Lightning Thief’s myth is that of the original Perseus with these familiar beats shared by both:

Murdering Medusa via reflective surface

Wrongfully convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and punished by Zeus

Hermes’ winged shoes

Hades’ missing war helm

Obtaining a cool new sword

Rescuing his mom from the Bad Guy

Not dying tragically

Princess Andromeda (the more famous Perseus myth adapted by Wrath and Clash of the Titans) does make an appearance in Sea of Monsters.

The joke people used to make about the fans of the series is that reading PJO does not make a mythology expert, but that isn’t the point. The books opened the door to further research at your own pace and maybe fostered love of a subject and culture you’d go on to study later in life.

This review is about the book, not the show, but it is a disservice to the book to cram nearly ten entire chapters of content, out of twenty-two (156 pages in the ‘06 paperback) into two episodes both less than an hour long. No wonder the premier felt, night and day, far inferior to episode 3. Episode 3 wasn’t sprinting the entire time.

Overall, the missing-persons-turned-possible-child-terrorist subplot stayed its welcome exactly as long as it needed to and every time I think about this book I forget it’s even part of the story. The payoff is really at the end with the free appliances and, of course, Gabe’s just desserts.

The book is absolutely, transparently, the first leg of a relay race, not one of those “I wrote this and it was successful now I have to come up with a sequel” stories and all the seeds of development for the series at large were expertly scattered.

The worst I have to say about the book is this: The constant “Thalia, daughter of Zeus.” There’s at least seven of them across the book and the whole title almost every time she’s mentioned reads a bit strange.

It’s paced excellently, with a few slow beats for good character development in between locations. The foundations of our heroes are solid, all the twists and turns with the true villains and the real meaning of the prophecy was well done. For the book that began a multi-series world of interconnected pantheons with new publications still coming out today, it’s humble and smart and, for a “children's” book, anyone can enjoy it, no nostalgia required.

[the---hermit]

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

I have read this book at the speed of light and I have no idea how that happened. For some reason I expected to find this book harder to get into, and yet after the first 40-ish pages I couldn't put it down, and ended up reading it in three days and a half. This novel has been all over the internet for a while now, but only after speaking to some friends who were enthousiastic about it I decided to give it a try. I specifically bought it for my holiday, because I thought it would be the perfect time to dive into a long book. I can confirm that staying at the seaside is the best way for me to really get into a book like this, and after the great reading experience I had I am really excited for the other two books in the series.

This fantasy novel heavily inspired by China focuses on a main character of poor origins who hopes to escape her desitiny by getting into a military academia. The theme of war is of course predominant, and the more you get into the book the more it becomes central. I feel like the biggest strenght of the book was the world building, the heavy histoical inspiration works amazingly, and throughout the whole story it feels like a very realistic world. The fantasy element was a surprise to me, but it was really interesting and I cannot wait to see more of in the rest of the series. As I was saying war is central in the story, and it is not depicted as the very common epic fantasy battle between good and evil. It is war. It's brutal, violent and scary. All feelings surrounding it are complicated. It's not an easy to digest book in this sense, if you don't like reading very graphic violent scenes, it is not the book for you. But all of this makes the war you are reading about feel very real, and it's terrifying. Anger and rage are also central to the plot and they slowly become bigger and bigger as the story goes on. There have been only a couple of things I have not liked in this book. Firstly I found there were a couple of very predictable scenes (see more in the spoilery section below the cut). They were marginal elements, but still they brought me a bit out of the story and reminded me that yes I was in fact reading a book of fiction. Secondly and mainly I don't feel like I became attached to any of the characters at all. While reading the book I was into the story, but as I finsihed I have not really thought of any of the characters. I would have loved to know more of some, but I feel like just know them at a surfice level. I am a plot over characters person, but still after reading a 600+ pages I was not expecting this. A friend gave me a really interesting interpretation of why that choice might have been made, and it definitely gave me some perspective.

Overall I would really recommend this book. I would check the trigger warnings before, since as I said it's very graphic and heavy. With this being said I think it was a great addition to my fantasy collection, and I cannot wait to get the second novel.

Spoilery section regarding what I think felt very predictable in the book:

In general the first part of the book set in the academia felt a bit predictable overall, but especially the fact that at the end of the first year the main character and her rival get to be the ones to fight in the last big trial was so obvious. It was so predictable, I honestly don't know what the author could have done to avoid it, because I understand that scene was fundamental and necessary, but I didn't like how predictable it was. Also the fact the after the battle at the war capital the main character's best friend is among the survivors felt super predictable to me. I like the character but the way everything was set felt unsurprising, I was expecting her to find him and again that made it feel much more fiction-y to me. I don't know how to explain it, in a book that feels so brutal and real small elements like this bring me back into reality and remind me that it is in fact a fictional story.

[squibflower]

More on Sigma since yall ate up the last post tysm guys (*´꒳`*)

Anyways as I was saying Sigma has done some shit that proves he’s not a UwU baby and here I’ll explain to you more. 

Sigma, unlike the rest of the DOA doesn’t want to just jump to violence, that’s not his thing since he knows his ability really isn’t meant for combat. Though he will still do it as seen multiple times. It also never once says he regret hurting/killing multiple innocent civilians. “Oh but Dazai said he didn’t see Sigma as a terrorist at all 🥺🥺 therefore-“ nope. Shut up 😍. Compared to Gogol and Fyodor, Sigma is not a terrorist. He hasn’t done nearly as much as they have, but he still is. Now I’d like to bring attention to the fact that the casino is actually Sigma’s REWARD for the use of his skill. Therefore, due to his part being over in the plan as Dazai said, he had no reason to fight on the frontlines. Yet he still did it to protect the casino, which was being used for terrorism and stuff. Hmmmm…. If he was an UwU innocent baby why would he do this? It’s because he’s not please shut up I’m actually losing in from people acting like that. Just note this past section is only from the first few pages of the 18th novel. We’re no where near close to being done!! Remember when The hunting dogs asked him to shut down that casino? Here is his reaction to that:

I personally don’t think this is how any UwU baby would act… idk just my thoughts. He literally yelled at them, didn’t even try to politely explain why he wouldn’t do that he just told them to fuck off. Now we have Tachihara and Teruko walking along just doing their job (stop hating Teruko for doing her job it makes me so mad) and just getting stabbed by a random civilian. Here we see Sigma, literally making stuff up as he’s using people as literal weapons whilst knowing damn well you’re not supposed to do that. He literally uses the fact that as police Teruko and Tachihara can’t hurt them as a way of ENCOURAGING people to harm literal government figures. He had no hesitation to do that to people, unlike when he hesitated to use the plane on the casino, showing that at this point he is valuing a CASINO over HUMAN LIVES (B-but the casino is his home 🥺, ok and? Would you manipulate innocent people into literal weapons to protect your house? I don’t think so) It’s important to note that this is the only thing Sigma really owns, so he is defending it in a state of panic. It still gives him no right to do such things though. No I’m not trying to make Sigma sound like a bad person he’s my favorite bad character and it physically hurts to see all the mischaracterization I cry myself to sleep bc ppl r like this. As Fyodor said: “You won’t find a scarier thing in the world than a common man who is desperate” and we know that bc sigma said “If it’s for the casino I’ll do anything” here’s a little reminder:

Now yeah he was having a little breakdown about it, like who wouldn’t. Can someone not show emotion without being called UwU soft? Seriously? If you were in that situation I bet you’d want to spring outta that room crying too. And yet here we are, he’s still using on and you know how? He’s shooting at Teruko with big ass guns. I don’t think owning those is legal in the slightest. 

(Pardon the fact its in Russian I got this off of Pinterest) 

This is not legal. Firing these is not legal. And here is the most important part. The sonic gun and this is gonna be in bold bc it’s one of my leading points He showed no hesitation to kill Teruko in one of the most painful ways for a hunting dog to be killed. He forced her to puncture her eardrums as a last result of survival, as he says “This is all apart of the plan” showing that he planed ahead of time to try and kill a hunting dog. This is not something someone who is innocent would do in the slightest. He is well prepared to kill someone without regret. He decided to save a casino instead of his self, and attempted to take Teruko down with him. 

And then we get to the part when he gets saved by Atsushi. He says he didn’t mean to stab the chief. Ok fine he didn’t mean to do that, but he still did it even if he regretted it. Can people not show regret for their actions? Goddamn ok. Also the way he spoke to Gogol- that’s not innocent at all he was downright hating on him. “I hate dealing with this decay member the most” bro even was like: Why didn’t you die man. In no way in his speech does he act soft at all I can’t see how you people got that. Maybe it was from his confused reaction? Or something. And just know this it only the 18th novel I’ve covered so far. I’ll do more in a later part :3 but anyways thanks for reading this I hope both sides of ur pillow are cold and I hope this helped you understand sigma better!! 

[carecrowgames]

Yazeba Read Through #4

We are on Page 18 now, and I am extremely excited, as it seems we have actually entered the rules this time folks! And I thought that might make me go less granular .. BUT as I said I have been wondering how the book would begin to explain to its reader what it actually is, so I just have to immediately hone in on the second sentence of the page.

It's a bed & breakfast of course but it's also this book right here.

There is something about stating these two as a dual existence that just works so well with the magical realism of the bed and breakfast itself. I guess I also just love when a fictional world gets legitimacy as existing similar to how the book (or in this case pdf) does

The playful voice from the welcome section continues here, but as it invites you to explore the bed and breakfast it also gains a gentle tone. The specific metaphor used, the sprawling bed and breakfast standing in for the complexity of a rulebook, both promising to become easily navigateble after some guidance, somehow manages to make both of them a more imaginable space. My mind begins to draw in what's missing within my image of one one with what I know of the other and conjures my own experiences of sprawling social spaces to lend familiarity and extrapolate development over time. I find myself remembering how I got used to life in the computer science faculty until it’s sprawling series of laboratories and hallways were simply another home.

I get away being able to imagine both Gertrudes life in the b&b after months and years pass and my own potential relationship to the version of it that could manifest in my games in it.

This is where the melancholic Amelie OST (the fact that this movie has the same name as one of the residents will break me oh my god. I am only noticing now) reminds me that at some point in this book there are late chapters, the last of which is Goodbye Yazeba and I have to wonder how much this is going to be a story that will have to end. What I can also imagine is the late chapters giving a number of open ending points, that would still allow you to replay some chapters, but this also feels like the kind of story that at some point just. Ends. I think I would find myself feel very content and sad in the healthy measures about that.

As a note, I am delighted to see the playlist I'm making for this already influencing how I interact with the book. The fact that the moon princes melancholic longing was able to carry forward to make me think about how this story might end is just really cool. Can recommend the method!

And now we get the confirmation that there are parts of the book that are off limits to start with - a super cool decision for a ttrpg book honestly. Explaining the choice by likening it to the way some parts of a bed and breakfast might be off limits to a new visitor is so clever too. It continues to build the book-building double reality, and in that playful way puts rules for reading the book down without having to spend much time explaining them immediately. It just makes sense this way!

This is also why this reading experience is extremely different for me than the usual ttrpg book I read. Normally I would have jumped immediately to the playbooks, read up on central mechanics and started browsing different parts of the book as I put some first session prep together. And I know that's not how other ttrpg books are intended to be read either, but the way Yazeba specifically presents itself as overlayered fiction book / bed & breakfast / ttrpg makes me want to engage with it as an authored experience more then I tend to with a ttrpg book, that invites me more to approach it as a box of toys.

 If i were to read it like I usually do though, this is where I would actually feel invited to start jumping, as the page continues to lay out how exactly Yazebas Bed and Breakfast is played it gives us all the needed key elements to get started, and importantly all of their page numbers.

I find this whole buildup so far works really well for me. We've been invited layer for layer to the fantasy and fiction of Yazeba, got first impressions of its central cast, narrative hooks to go along with then and some character voices to lead us along when trying to play them.

Now the book is pointing all the unruly readers with no attention span, who might have been hooked by the fiction, but won’t stay long for rules explanations (that’s normally me!) to exactly where the toys are - with just enough context to use them well. The rest, I would feel if I took on that mindset, can be figured out in play.

I really appreciate when a game recognizes, that not all its players are going to approach it the same way. Laying out different courses through it, that reward different interests and needs is a great way to do so.

The entire part laying out the rhythm of play is wonderfully efficient btw. Every section is at most 3 sentences long, contains bold keywords to keep attention going and manages to leave me with a good grasp of what's going on. For how gigantic this book is, making such short work of the overview feels very restraint, I'm super impressed.

I also love how encouraging the language is. You WILL be able to confidently guide your friends. Remember to take breaks, the bed and breakfast will wait. Rules often are hard for me to keep focus on mentally, and I know for many they can be overwhelming. The use of a strong, friendly and guiding voice here I think really helps keep the mind motivated.

In honor of that, the new song added to the playlist is Ben E. Kings “Stand by me” which, is a song that has symbolized a vibe of positivity and support for me since years now.

Speaking of language, the Nouns for the mechanics integrate so very well into the fantasy. Concierge for the facilitator for example is very flavorful. I feel like this book makes a consistent effort to make the feeling of playing the game make you feel like you’re a part of the b&b and that rules. In addition, Whoopsies and Bingos as names for what I’m pretty sure are going to be weak and strong moves feels like they very much help reinforcing the genre space, making the characters feel less mechanic and more like people with fuckups and cool moments to come, you know?

But now I’m really getting ahead of myself. Afterall the section is about the flow of play and I have not talked at all about it yet!

Let's get this out first: chapters are so cool! They are so cool it makes me want to work out my thoughts on them so bad, that I forget we don't even know much about them yet as far as the book goes. I already know a bit on how they look like from the ashcan (which released along the indiegogo campaign), but that only leaves me burning to revisit them as part of this more!

In addition, i think this is where we actually see how powerful the fiction book/ttrpg double-life the book is living is in communicating information. It is obvious from the text that chapters are at the core of playing out life at the bed and breakfast, being the thing characters are used to play, and putting out what is needed to unlock more chapters and characters (more on that in a sec). They are how you interface with life in the bed and breakfast, but that alone would not give much of an impression of what they are. But the name *chapters* and the consistent fiction book/ttrpg duality that has been build up, immediately conjures the kind of stories they will tell in your mind. We already know what it is like to read a chapter in a story, now our mind is left to ponder what it will be like to play them.

Excitingly, we have learned how unlocking works now!! As I said I already knew how to play a chapter from the Ashcan, but with added context much more about it is coming together. The way the loop works feels super elegant to me. You get familiar with characters and their connected narrative threads, you look at what chapters you are able to play and which might allow you to explore what you are interested in, you slot in your preferred characters and play to find out what happens, you go and check what characters and chapters you’ve unlocked and that gives you new chapters to pull on more threads, and new characters to explore and play with. The entire thing feels a lot like a narrative exploration loop I would design for a video game, which is actually the second time in today’s session that I was reminded of video game design specifically (the first being the way the page numbers create a dynamic playspace that can be explored based on player preference). I am fascinated to see these strategies implemented with how you interact with the BOOK instead of in play loops only.

Talking about game mechanics, the whole Shelf, Journey and Track system reminds me a bit of achievement systems. Which in turn makes me wonder if the game will invite us to look at the potential unlocks and what we’ll need to do for it beforehand. If it did it would give extra incentives to explore the chapters as well as extra prompts of what to do with them. If it doesn’t it makes for nice surprises. I am super curious about this!

As a last note on the page for now, Mementos you can put on your Shelf is another one of these amazing images, that already makes me nostalgic for experiences I didn’t even have yet. It actually reminds me of my favorite game Signs of the Sojourner ~ maybe I’ll add an ost from that game to the playlist at some point.

Aand I think that’s about it for the day. I might actually have even more notes on this tomorrow, but I need to sleep at some point don’t I.

See you tomorrow as we enter Page 19: Characters.

---------------

you can find my other Yazeba readthrough posts under #zeebthrough!

Preorder the game on https://possumcreekgames.com/pages/yazebas-bed-breakfast

[sunnyupsidedown]

Thoughts On: The Last Binding Series

by Freya Marske [goodreads]

Basic Summary of Book 1: Un-magical Robin Blyth takes on a civil servant job that suddenly throws him into the middle of a magical conspiracy. With the help of his coworker Edwin Courcey, they begin to unravel and hopefully attempt to prevent a plot that will change magic as the world knows it.

Books in the Series:

A Marvellous Light

A Restless Truth

A Power Unbound

Book Recommendation For Those Who Like:

Historical Fantasy

Found Family

Mysteries

Rating: M for the nsfw scenes.

Unorganized thoughts and many spoilers below

This might just turn into a ramble on how much I like Jack Alston.

Anyway. I love the way Marske writes romance and interpersonal relationships in general. The characters feel real. Like, things get emotional and they hurt each other, but they come back together. Apologize when needed. Talk. It's an emotional maturity between lovers, between friends, between family, that I enjoy reading. Those hard conversations are on the page and not glossed over and magically fixed. (thinking about Maud and Violet where Maud didn't accept Violet running away. Thinking about Jack apologizing to Edwin. Thinking about Jack and his mom.)

I particularly like the complexity of the relationship between Edwin and Jack. Like. From the first book, you just have the sense that Jack was a bully, which he was from that side of things, but it's more complicated than that. But you don't know that then. The second book you get that Jack just doesn't care. He's mean to everyone so it's not like Edwin was particularly special. And in the third, you can see the growth from Jack, seeing that not everyone he has in good regards speak the same language of insults as he does. And from Edwin, you can see the strength he's gained from learning to love and to be loved. Seeing them interact kept reminding me that they were, in a loose sense, lovers once but they were childhood friends before that.

Seeing the the characters from different POVs was fun! I wish there was more Edwin and Robin from Maud and Violet's POV in the second book, but seeing them from Jack and Alan was nice. I didn't notice in the first book just how much of a nerd Edwin is. Makes my jock instincts want to shove him into a locker (affectionate). It's so cute how much Robin loves him and to see the ways different people notice.

So that's enough about all the other things. Time to gush about Jack lol

First book, didn't even register him as important. Second book, loved him instantly. HE'S SO MEAN!! But he helps out anyway out of some sense of responsibility!! And because Maud reminds him of his dead sister!! And they just won't leave him alone.

Watching Jack slowly finding a reason to live again was so cathartic. My chest hurts just thinking about it. To be hurt and to heal. To push on the wound and realize that at some point it has scarred over.

I genuinely really like characters who have gone through something awful, are a little unpleasant, and at some point learn to heal. I LOVE angst so much!!

Also the romance between Jack and Alan was interesting. I did like it a lot, but I also kept thinking "Give me something tender!!". Which was there between the lines of their play and the respect they showed each other. And then the last bit of the book, but at the same time, I wanted to see more of it.

Another thing that was pretty meh was that I wish Alan and Alan's nullification did more. Yes he did a lot to move the plot along as needed, but at the same time, a lot of sections in his POV, he was just a spectator watching everyone else do things. This kind of happened with Jack a little too.

Other little bits of thought

Love that it was brought up how Jack has slept with half the friend group. I was thinking it but was shocked when he was thinking it too lol

Wish we could see more with Addy and her dynamics with Robin and Edwin

It's so funny how the roman tracks became more important to the plot with each book

Took me waaay too long to realize the great threat is WW1

Wish there was more with Lady Dufey and the fae. I think it would be fun to explore and to hear more about her long life and also what happened after the contract was broken

The first chapter of the third book was so hard to read. Kept having to put it down in case I burst into tears. Haven't had such a strong reaction to a first chapter since The Song of Achilles.

I like Marske's prose. Like her word choices and sentence structure. It's both playful and devastating and I look forward to reading everything she writes.

Okay that's it. Those are my thoughts!