#god the language and style of this!

[razorsadness]

Trans

     “The D.J. Speaks”

“O.K. imps, snot-freaks, pill-elves, hi-fi fairy-fury flipsters and intelligences, its out, all out now onto the rooftops—

Your only chance left now is to come out here into the naked star-fright and freak it out alone.

Yes, out until it’s scared the living Fainlights out of you; jumping you out of your star-split wits and back into your sprite mind.

Released in your new fledged LSD lieutenantries above the cities of the West—

Luftpost TV antennae-quivering falconries suddenly checking in the new-alerted starlight as you realize some fresh gleaming ledge of intelligence on which to alight.

—Was it witch I said then? Yes, witch-kids, witch-kids, riding out on your broomstick wavebands night after night.

Behind their mumbo-jumboing guitars, each group another coven of them—

                                         Trans—

                      Trance—

TranceSISters shrieking the bisexual superhet electronic guts out of them coast to coast and trans— atlantic and all the way back round again and again and again—the hair of those trance atlantic telephonists left crackling behind them.

And then up— up and round the whole Van Allen belt and back tingling with ions! —The whole billion brain-valved telepathic wavelength left blasted behind them.

And then finally off— off blowing that long cool solo out into space you never want to come back from but must, must for this final chorus when the whole heavy nuclear combo starts laying it down— blasting the dumb-ox blockbusters out of your old conventional consciousness—

                                        WHAT?

you think this is just some little railway sidings halloween or something? No baby, this is the real H-bomb witch stuff flying around in here tonight so just you mind your spooks and cues and smile, SMILE cause you know this only that little D.J. joke your D.J. daddy’s been having with you all this while. You know, that old saggy god story about how this week again ‘The Eve of Destruction’ will be going like a Bomb.”

—Harry Fainlight (The Paris Review no. 39, Fall 1966)

[hinamie]

playing around w slightly different hair renders

[mumblesplash]

heartbreaking: this viral post is saying things you completely agree with in the most irritating way possible

[leavingautumn13]

people who don't know them sometimes jump to conclusions about diamond city's detective duo.

closeups under the cut

[alluralater]

@ the gorgeous girl in my apartment building with the trans tattoo on her thigh that i met in the elevator one time last summer and now see everywhere, i need you to know i think about you randomly at night and i yearn to take you on a date. you’re so pretty and you were so nice and sweet and when you complimented me i felt my cheeks get super hot but remember i was moderately cool about it?? i could see the numbers counting down to the end of the elevator ride in my periphery and i didn’t want to waste my time being flustered so we started complimenting each other on everything, and you were blushing too?? anyways i should have asked for your number but i didn’t because all the trans girls i know are cuffed and everyone in my building is too so i didn’t wanna be weird and make you uncomfortable if you were dating someone and only looking to make friends. i think about you some random moments and everytime i go to do my laundry i question if i should dress up a tiny bit better just in case i see you. also uh… why does your laugh sound like music?

someone get this to her like a message in a bottle thrown desperately into the ocean please

[kastillia]

Gott ist tot.

[jevilowo]

It's Irish Language Week next week so to cope I'm making a shitty comic teehee

[danothan]

everyday i log onto the internet i am forced to fisticuffs combat the halbarry default yaoi allegations. THEY’RE NOT A BASIC BRUNETTE/BLONDE JOCK/NERD DYNAMIC THEY’RE MORE THAN THAT (coping)

[chialattea]

Isabela warmup

[savebylou]

Asked if he was looking to retire, he said: 'Oh god no, I'll probably drop dead doing what I'm doing.

'As long as I think there's a need or a purpose and it's something I can do well, I'm up for it.'

It was then revealed that he signed a deal with Netflix for the show and - clearly not afraid to shout about his talent scouting prowess - called it Simon Cowell: Midas Touch. A source revealed to The Sun that Simon is in the end stages of finalising the deal with the streamer. They said: 'Netflix is the perfect place for his new show and Box To Box, who are producing the series, have worked with them before.

[The article link is from 2019, but that article doesn't say anything about the name and they haven't comment recently if this title, so who knows].

Full article here.

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

hi i will get to ur comments normalstyle soon BUT giggling over this because i also sat and cringed at this for Several Minutes. staring at this line telling myself they are teenage boys they are teenage boys dakota is rawdogging this shit barehands style zero gloves zero sanitation other than good old fashioned Soap and Water theres no way they have a sharps bin. theyre capes this has to be a semi-frequent occurrence. someone please get them a sharps bin......

IM GOING TO GET THEM A SHARPS BIN. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. AT LEAST PUT THEM IN A CARDBOARD BOX OR SOMETHING FIRST. NOT JUST. IN A PAPER TOWEL. IN THE TRASH. RAWDOGGING IT. whoever takes out the trash next is going to need to be so careful. the guy in me who has spent a normal amount of time in lab settings is going to go fucking feral on these teenage boys.

[divinekangaroo]

Started reading Lymond Chronicles after @deadendtracks' comment that SK must've read them too / based Tommy on Lymond....

and like i'm what, at ch3 or 4 maybe and...

yeahhhhhhhhhh XD

[stargazerlillian]

Pain and Panic as they appear in "Hades: Horn of Plenty" (Part 1).

(Source)

[coquelicoq]

it's interesting, a few people on my post yesterday about the dandelion dynasty told me they were taking it as a rec for the series, but i didn't actually recommend the series in that post. it's making me think about whether i would rec it to people, a question i hadn't fully considered yet (as it is a very different question from "do i like this book?"). so this is me figuring out the answer to that question. i'll keep it spoiler-free (though i make no promises on brevity).

i just finished book 3 (of 4) and each installment has left me more invested than i was before, but the series started out very slow, and i didn't really get into it until halfway through book 2. i wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people bounce off the first book; i didn't, but only because 1) i almost never give up on a book that i've started (it's a character flaw of mine 😕) and 2) my trust in ken liu is ridiculously high because the other stuff i've read by him is so beloved to me. so my reaction to feeling kind of meh about book 1 was "okay, let's see where he's going with this" rather than "i guess this just isn't my cup of tea."

i should say that the problem might just be my own ignorance/lack of familiarity with the form. i don't read a lot of epic fantasy - in fact, lord of the rings is the one series that i have given up on reading a couple of times because it just left me totally indifferent. so if you like epics, you are starting out way ahead of me and can maybe just ignore the rest of this post lol, but i think i had to adjust to what the form is asking of me and what it's best suited to accomplish before i could get fully on board.

the main thing i struggled with is the writing, like the actual sentence-level mechanics of voice and style. this surprised me, because i usually find his writing very beautiful, or, when not beautiful, i can get a sense of the effect he means to achieve by employing a certain style. but in this series, the writing came across as kind of awkward and one-note to me at first, and i couldn't see a reason for it to be that way.* the dialogue especially - different characters don't really have different ways of speaking, they all feel pretty much the same. this was one of the main things i had to adjust to, but i do get it now. i don't just mean that i got used to the style and it doesn't bother me anymore, though that is true; i mean that i now understand the effect he means to achieve by employing this style, which gives it purpose and inextricably ties it to the story he's telling (this becomes especially clear in book 3, as it's directly related to a major theme of that book). if the style were different, he would be telling a different story; that's the sign of a successful execution, i think.

i said in the tags on yesterday's post that one reason the series doesn't have much of a fandom on here might be that the characters aren't natural blorbos. of course every character is probably the blorbo of somebody somewhere, but i don't know that these characters were designed to be blorbos, if that makes sense. not that they're plot devices either! every single one of them is conflicted and complicated and compelling, and most of them are followed over a period of many years, so we see them develop as people over time. but there is no protagonist, for example. you could also say that every character is a protagonist. the "list of major characters" at the beginning of book 3 is six pages long, and there are stories to be told about each of these characters, and none of them are told in isolation. but in a way, the characters themselves are not the point, or if they are, it's in aggregate - it's in the ways they're all complex, the ways they all have motivations that make sense to them (and that make sense to us, once we get to know them). and it's about power and the roles that the characters play in their society, rather than the roles the characters play in the story. or maybe those are the same thing! because ultimately, the main character of this story is the society. and the plot is the history of this society, rather than the journey or life of a single person or handful of people.**

(sidenote, there will be a period during book 1 when you will think to yourself, "wow, all the women characters are super one-dimensional and the narrative doesn't seem to respect them." this is on purpose. just keep going.)

the plotting is intricate while also feeling very organic. he's got dozens of plates in the air at once, he's maintaining them over a long period (these books are MASSIVE), and he's somehow making it seem like a real history, not like an author pulling strings. i haven't finished it yet, but my guess is that he's going to pull off a very satisfying conclusion that's at the same time very open-ended. definitely looking forward to it.

and the worldbuilding. oh, the worldbuilding. this is some of the most detailed, complex, realistic*** worldbuilding i've ever encountered, and he covers SO much ground. you want linguistic worldbuilding? you got it. philosophy? it's here. psychology of empire? coming right up. the nitty-gritty of everyday governance? buddy, pull up a chair. mechanical engineering? how much time you got?? (it better be enough time to read 3504 physical pages, because that's how long this series is.) and he's drawing on chinese history and cultural narratives rather than slapping lipstick on a tolkien clone (see his comments here, but stop reading at "In this continuation of the series" if you want to avoid spoilers). he WILL go on for a hundred pages about a single invention, but it's SO interesting that he is allowed. this is a story about how technology (including language, and schools of thought, and agriculture, and...) shapes, and is a product of, its time and place and people, so again, this is all to purpose. but it's also just. really cool.

the last thing i'll say, and this is mainly for other ken liu fans, is that one of the things i most love about his short stories is how they tap into emotions i didn't even know i had, as though they're reaching inside of me and drawing to the surface ways of experiencing consciousness and love and mortal life that i had no idea were in there. this series is not causing emotional revelation for me in the way his other stories do, which isn't a bad thing - i don't mean to say the series is not engaging or that it inspires no emotions! i just mean, iykyk. if you've read the paper menagerie and are expecting that experience, you will have a better time here if you leave those expectations at the door. i am invested in this book because it's engaging my intellect, curiosity, sense of wanting to find out what else the characters will learn and what's going to happen next...less because it's turning my heart inside out inside my chest. and like thank goodness, because i don't think i could survive four entire 900-page books' worth of that! but anyway. word to the wise.

tl;dr: yes, i recommend it, especially if you like epic fantasy. if you're a fan of ken liu's other work, this is quite different, so just know that going in!

*this opinion is of course subjective and not universally shared. for instance, see this review of book 3 (full of spoilers, so don't actually read it lol) which says "There's Liu's voice to hold onto, though — beautifully deployed here and fully in command of the language of his imaginary universe." so ymmv. maybe it's an epic fantasy thing.

**this is making me realize that the story is commenting on this very thing through a tension between bureaucracy (founded on interchangeability) and monarchy (informed by a specific personality). dude. that's so meta!

***though sometimes i'm like, "really? you scaled up that invention to use untested on the battlefield in the span of like two weeks? sure, jan." so sometimes he falls down a little on translation of ideas into logistics, but it makes for such a great story that i'll allow it.

[talentforlying]

one of these days i'm going to write up all that i've changed from azzarello's bullshit era and the one (1) piece i've kept from milligan (and also changed) and the only thing currently stopping me is that it is going to be so, so inside-baseball incomprehensible. and i almost never want to go reading/screencapping azzarello and milligan to add references but i Want to add references.

canon is goop, just know that we continue to ride the bus down "hellblazer ended at #250 and looks like swiss cheese before that" street.

[lost-technology]

My brain's been chewing on a weird, small worldbuilding-tidbit that I was thinking of having a passing mention of in a '98 based fanfic. The idea applies to all, though. So, I've been seeing some youtube videos and arguments regarding religion and the usual rhetoric that "as societies modernize, religion goes away" and the old idea that "one day, religion will be nothing more than a curious relic." I disagree with this. I'm a little freak who retains spirituality even though I reject most of the dogma I used to adhere to. I think there are more people like this than advertised. It also annoys me because, historically, how many CENTURIES have people been saying this? Philosophers in the 1800s, I think even some in the 1700's were so utterly SURE that in the future nobody would be religious anymore - yet, here we are. Like it or not, it's still...a thing. Anyway, people have been waiting for and assuming the Pure Secularist Future for frickin' ever and making assumptions about sci-fi universes. "What does God need with a starship?" and all that. Meanwhile, in TRIGUN, which does things differently, one of the main-catalyst characters, the protagonist's beloved mommy openly talks about believing that her dead boyfriend is in Heaven and refers to her birthed-from-a-human-created species children as "angels" or being "like angels." Plant-engineers in the manga refer to Plants as "having the appearance of the messengers of God." Anyway, the main thing is, here is Rem, a scientist who lives on a spaceship occasionally throws out Christianese in everyday speech. (I don't remember her doing such in the manga), but in '98 and Stampede, it's there when I'm pretty sure that some of the youtubers I've watched recently would think she probably shouldn't be on a space-science team because "300 years from now, people like her won't exist." Or if they do, they should be barred from science due to "being crazy." It got me thinking, what if there's a social turn-around in the Trigun universe? What if the creation of the Plants and the discovery that they pull things from "a higher dimension" actually revives spiritual impulse in human society? Maybe there's not any particular controlling dogma that anyone adheres to anymore during the spacefaring age, but maybe it is not uncommon at all for people to believe in "God," or in "Heaven" or the concept of angelic beings because, well, here are creatures that contact a mysterious, unknowable dimension and essentially do supernatural feats. I mean, it's RIGHT THERE, so maybe it's not considered "unscientific" to have a spiritual lean anymore. Just food for thought... because Rem likes talking about angels and ISN'T looked at strangely for it or told to "be more rational." Maybe at that point in time, viewpoints like hers are considered the most rational thing in the universe.