#i don't have a coherent point about this but it is a LITTLE fascinating! like this made it into his autobiography!!

[batsplat]

Casey Stoner, Pushing the Limits

GP11:

GP12:

x

[vaguely-concerned]

Stray Gods Character Design Thoughts

In order we're going Pan, Apollo, Persephone, Eros, Aphrodite and a little bit of Venus! Disclaimer that I have no professional experience in character design at all, so these are only my vibes-based ramblings and observations purely for fun and because my brain simply won't shut up about this game haha. Also I will freely admit Pan probably gets the most attention in this because of who I am as a person and where my heart truly lies at the end of the day lol

PAN

Ok, first of all I have so many questions and they all delight me. This guy is the god of the wild places ("Where else would I be, but among the trees and the wild things?"), he lives in a magical garden on top of an office building... and he’s walking around everywhere in an expensive three piece tailored suit (when Freddie accuses him of being a sleaze in a cheap suit he protests mildly that his suit is anything but cheap haha). The cut of it is really carefully thought out and planned, but the bold colours under the grey coat and (studied I am sure) careless details like the tie also make it fun and playful. Which is pleasingly coherent with the general theme of his character in the writing too and I adore it.  

This is not the point, I know, but I’m wondering how he makes that work just like. Practically now. Has Athena fixed up Olympus with in-house laundry service? And other sentences I did not expect to type out today lol. Ah well he’s wily I’m sure he has his ways. 

I can't heap enough praise on it, this design is SUCH an interesting and elegant marriage of the immediately recognizable satyr features and thus animal symbolism with all its added pagan weight in a post-Christianity setting, and the sort of ‘man of wealth and taste’ imagery of the devil at the crossroads they clearly want to evoke, especially in his first scene. And partially through his mannerism there’s also an added element of like… eccentric but surprisingly competent college professor — just look at the way he carries himself whenever he isn’t putting on the charm or when he’s being guarded and self-contained. That little hands resting on his back pose exudes ‘nerd’ so deeply to me haha. (Incredibly fuckable nerd, to be sure, but still!)

you don't fool me buddy I know what you are. I know all the trouble you went to to get a book.

His body language shifts very quickly between wild playful expressiveness and a sort of nonchalant urbane detachment that borders on coldness sometimes, and it fascinates me. Especially since that more refined unavailable side seems to be something he’s deliberately cultivated, to some extent. When Grace calls him out on how boring it sounds to just let yourself go numb and distant to survive, he doesn’t deny that at all, only saying that at least it’s been quite effective. 

Putting the rest under a cut to save people's dashes! I may, as they say, have gotten a tiny bit carried away.

Physically he’s not very imposing — he’s only a little taller than Grace, and the shortest of all of the love interests, which I find somehow very charming and also plays into him being more of a guile-based character. “Seeing as I am neither big nor truly bad, it behooves me to be wary of those who are both” indeed!

I’m fairly sure he’s the character wearing the most layers. Even his hands are mostly covered by gloves. He partially covers up his eyes with the tinted glasses — interesting, as one of the features that most give his real nature away with their sidewise pupils, and the lenses are tinted purple as the complimentary colour to yellow, so it downplays just how bright they are. All together it’s very much a ‘well, he’s certainly got to be in there somewhere’ sort of vibe at times. (Since he also seems to care about his clothes quite a bit — he complains about scuffing his pants during the climb in the Medusa mission if you go the lockpick route — I have drawn the conclusion that getting him out of all of that must take quite a bit of time, no matter how much practice he’s probably put in over the years of meeting 'delicious people' lol) 

It’s a design that manages to give, at the same time: animal-featured ancient god, deal with the devil, teacher, overtones of con man if you’re inclined to be Freddie-levels of uncharitable lol, eccentric rich weird uncle… there’s a lot going on here and somehow it all works haha. He isn’t wearing any jewelry at all unless you count the glasses, which now that I’m looking at the rest of the character designs in this game is actually fairly rare among them!

His eyes really are incredibly bright when uh naked as it were, though. I like the implication that he is aware of this and actually goes out of his way to downplay it, even when he’d normally be wearing glamour anywhere it would strictly matter for it to show. Between that, the meaningful zoom in on him at the Underworld when Apollo says that all the Idols can be themselves there even if they don’t look human, Pan claiming he’s been distrusted and side-eyed by the others basically since the beginning and seeming kind of frustrated and hurt about it, in his deflecting way, and the implication of a hierarchy among the Idols at least under Athena’s leadership in this stained glass painting (notably all the visibly non-human Idols/hangers on are at the bottom, and Hecate, Asterion and especially Medusa are the characters most affected and confined by the oppressive status quo Athena upholds)...

this one! sing it with me now EVERYBODY LEAVES THIS PLACE ALIVEEE ok we can move on

you know, some possible Subtext and Implications going on here, I’d say. (It is only potential subtext and implication, though, so, you know, take my extrapolations here with a grain of salt!) He certainly doesn’t do himself many favors with the persona he’s built up in regards to being trusted and included either, but his status as a little bit of an outsider does seem to precede that so I feel like it’s more of a response than the main cause. Along the same lines he gets much more testy about the Green route of ‘I Can Teach You’ than he does about you just not choosing him in the Red one, he takes that pretty gracefully. So it is the being deliberately kept on the outside and openly distrusted and dismissed that gets to him. (To be clear I don't think openly distrusting a strange guy showing up in your living room like that is at all unreasonable either haha I just think the nuances of his response are enlightening as to where he's really coming from)

this one isn't even to illustrate anything it's just because I love him so much and think he's pretty I'll be real with you all

Anyway I just keep thinking about how incredibly tender it would be if sometimes, when they’re in private, Grace takes his glasses off to see his eyes better and he lets her. That shakes something deep in my soul apparently. That fucks me up but like in a good way.

APOLLO

- Apollo’s style of dress leaves his navel helpfully exposed for the copious amounts of depressed gazing he habitually subjects it to. (I say this not entirely without affection.) 

a crumpled tissue of a man

In keeping with his incredibly emo mode, there’s very little colour involved and he doesn’t take much care to present anything with care (look at the state of that shirt and tell me if Apollo has picked up an iron in the last forty years), BUT interestingly he’s not entirely open and unadorned, he does wear that network of jewelry across his chest and neck. Which I think is to show that the old Apollo is not entirely gone (“There he is, god of the sun”), even if he has been a sack stuffed with sad for a long time now. I wonder how many of these things are leftover preferences from being only Lucas — presumably the tattoos at least are from before he fished Apollo up from the sea? If I’m reading the vibes right on that, the blue of the tattoos and the gold of the sun… thingy he wears with the jewelry are the main splashes of colour in his design aside from his hair, and they’re both ‘leftovers’ from both his previous lives, surfer bro and solar deity recently fallen on hard times. Physically he would be tall and imposing, parodically built, except that he carries himself with all the confidence and panache of a damp depressed dishrag. 

Also I can’t believe this guy is walking around everywhere in sandals. Apollo makes sad flip-flop sounds wherever he goes, including when he steps up during ‘The Trial’. That’s so amazingly pathetic (affectionate). 

We can see from the photo with him and Calliope that he wasn’t always quite this much of a mess. Once, he did his shirt up a whole maybe four buttons and wore something that wasn’t beige!

Intellectually I acknowledge that it's a design meant to provide fanservice, even though I personally could not consider this guy in a sexual or romantic light if you gave me a thousand years to build up to it. (I've said it before but if he's anything to me, he is the incredibly fail father figure continually letting me down in tiny ways I never had.) Godspeed to the Apollo-enjoyers out there, though, Summerfall gave him those abs and that poor little meow meow energy just for you and it's your right to enjoy that

- Pan and Apollo also bring out some really interesting contrasts both as characters and designs when you hold them up against each other:  

Once you scratch the surface a tiny bit Pan clearly has just as much self-loathing as Apollo (“If Athena had taken me up on my offer, the Idols would have been better off” uh. Okay buddy we’re gonna have to process that one together later what do you say), but where Apollo is completely helplessly open in his misery at all times, you need to unbutton Pan at least three layers until you get a honest or straightforward emotion out of him and I think that’s amazingly carried through into their visual designs. It's Good Visual Storytelling Brent   

PERSEPHONE

- I’m fairly sure the colour of Persephone’s suit is supposed to evoke pomegranate seeds. See and judge for yourself I suppose: 

She also has details on her coat that depict foliage and growing plants, but colour-wise they and the rest of the detailing is in the blue-green that symbolizes the Underworld and so death. Her jewelry is gold, which — and I’m about to do some reaching here, I’ll be big enough to own — could play in with Hades being the god of riches as well as of the dead/the underworld. Probably it’s because it works well with the colour scheme, but I’m going to pretend that it’s because even if she didn’t get the throne she did get that motherfucker’s hoard when she killed him <3 Love that for her. Her jewelry is more rose gold than Apollo’s yellow gold, too. Watch me go for even more of a reach: between the necklace and the watch, those round discs of gold remind me of the coins put on the eyes of the dead but like you know repurposed since she doesn't need them to pay the Ferryman. I never promised I'd be reasonable in this did I.  

The short hair works real well for the butch vibe and looks amazing no notes, but I think it’s also a deliberate way to differentiate herself from her younger self — when speaking of Demeter’s death, she says that moment was also the final death of that young her, ‘that girl with the long hair who loved her gardens’. Clearly the Idols do a lot of reinventing themselves over the ages in more and less conscious ways.

She has a tattoo of what looks to be foliage and a skull across her left chest and arm. I really like that idea of her having the testament to both sides of her — goddess of spring, queen of the underworld — directly on her skin, under two layers of clothes that each represent those aspects. The one on her arm looks like stalks of grain tied together to resemble the bones of the hand/forearm, maybe? which is metal as fuck, needless to say. 

She is TALL and scary and the staging always plays that up, Grace tends to look up at her like O.O. I love how sharp she is too. 

Also she is incredibly hot but you don’t need me to tell you that you all have eyes I assume. 

EROS, APHRODITE and VENUS:

- I love literally everything about Eros’ design except his hair. Not even the concept of the haircut and colours or anything, just the way it’s rendered. It looks like one strange flat cap I can’t quite make understandable in three dimensional space as hair in my head lol. Other than that it’s a banging design though, the delicate see-through material over the leather BDSM harness is genius. Choosing this form of sensuality and attractiveness for him to embody -- one that is so deeply queercoded -- also works super well. The warmth and vulnerability of his body language on top of it is *chef's kiss*. just. please define his hair a bit more and it's perfect haha.

- I'm not sure I have that much to say about Aphrodite’s design except that of course she is beauty she is grace etc., it takes a lot of thought to make such a simple design shine and by god did they do it she’s so stunning. Also interesting how her dark blues and greens with cool/silvery details contrast with Venus’ warm reds and pinks and… brass? Idk I don’t really understand jewelry haha. All warmth and soft romanticism, anyway, it looks nice. (Side note but I love Venus’ rose tattoo.) Eros and Venus have much more matching colour schemes and they both bring those islands of warmth standing around Aphrodite in her shimmering ocean coolness. (Which of course is something she has to deliberately put on before going into public these days, and is unselfconsciously glamorous in the way of an old timey Hollywood starlet, as the blue route of 'The Ritual' lampshades)

:') *whisper* everybody...

Venus is wearing pearls, which is pleasing considering her connection to Aphrodite (and the backgrounds of the 'Lost in a Moment' variant of 'The Ritual')! and both of her and Aphrodite's outfits go for a shoulderless look to great effect.

ETA: When the camera is close on Aphrodite you can actually see that she has dark circles under her eyes, only partially covered by the makeup :'( I didn't notice that before I played through 'The Ritual' on a bigger screen today

All in all I just want to acknowledge what a fantastic job the character designers at Summerfall Studios have done! There are some really fresh new takes on these mythological figures here, and it makes so much sense within the world the game presents without resorting to well-worn and tired iconography, I really do admire it greatly.

[yellowocaballero]

Been a fan of your fics for YEARS. I was just telling my friend how despite how much I read fics I never actually love them, with some of your fics (especially TMA) as the exception. Felt the need to reread some of them and saw you reblogged some ISAT fanart. So. Any thoughts on ISAT you'd like to share?

Hope you have a wonderful day!! So happy I found your fics again!!

I avoided answering this for a while because I was trying to think of a way to cohesively and coherently vocalize my thoughts on In Stars and Time. I have given up because I don't want to hold everybody here all day and I have accepted that my thoughts are just pterodactyl screeching.

I love it so much. I have so much to say on it. It drove me bonkers for like a week straight. I have AUs. It's absolute Megbait. They're just a little Snufkin and they're having the worst experience of anybody's life. Ludonarratives my fucking beloved.

I am going to talk about the prologue.

The prologue is such a fascinating experience. You crack open the game and immediately begin checking off all of the little genre boxes: mage, warrior, researcher, you're the rogue...some little kid who's there for some reason...alright, you know the score. You're in yet another indie Earthbound RPG, these are your generic characters, let's get the ball rolling.

Except then you realize that these characters are people. You feel instantly how you've entered the game at its last dungeon, at the end of the adventure. They have their own in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They get along well and they're obviously close, but not in a twee or unrealistic way. They have so much chemistry and spirit and life. I fell in love with them so quickly.

But Sif doesn't. Sif kind of hates them, because they will not stop saying the same damn thing. They walk the same paths, do the same things, make the same jokes, expect Sif to say the same lines. They keep referencing a Sif we do not see, with jokes we never see him make and heroic personality he never shows - they reference a Sif who is dead - and Sif can't handle that, so he kills them too.

They become only an exercise in tedious frustration. Sif button mashes through their dialogue, Sif mindlessly clicks the same dialogue options, Sif skips through the tutorial, Sif blows through the puzzles. Sif turns their world into a video game. Sif is playing a generic RPG. Sif forgets their names. They are no longer people with in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They're the mage, the warrior, the researcher, and...some random kid.

I did not understand the Kid's presence at first. I had no idea what they contributed to the game. They didn't do anything. As a party member in a video game, they're a bit useless. Why is the Kid there?

Because Sif's life isn't a video game. Because the kid isn't 'the kid'. They're Bonnie. Bonnie, who the party loves. Why is Bonnie there? Because they love them. There is no room for Bonnie in the boring RPG that Sif is playing. And then you realize that Sif is wrong, and that they've lost something extremely important, and that they'll never escape without it.

Watching the prologue before watching ISAT gave ISAT the most unique air of dread and horror, because you crack open ISAT and you see the person Sif used to be. You realize that Sif used to be a person. Sif used to be the person who made jokes, who gave real smiles, who interacted with the world as if they are a part of it. And you know you are sitting down to watch Sif lose everything that made them a person, to lose everything that made them a member of this world, and turn them into a character in a video game who doesn't understand the point of Bonnie at all.

At the climax of the game, when the others realize that something is deeply wrong and that Sif physically cannot tell them, they realize that there is nothing they can do. So Bonnie declares snacktime. And for the first time they have snacktime.

What is snacktime? Classic JRPGs don't have snacktime. There's literally no point to a snacktime - not in a video game, and not in Sif's terrible life. It's not fixing this, because nothing can fix this. But Bonnie gives Sif a cookie and Sif eats it.

It's meaningless. It's a cutscene. It didn't save Sif and it didn't change a thing. It will make no difference in the end.

But it did make the difference. It made all of the difference in the world. Bonnie is a character who you really don't understand the point of before you realize that Bonnie was the entire point.

ISAT is about comfort media. Why do we play the same video games over and over again? Why do we avoid watching the finale of our favorite shows? What is truly comforting: a story with no conflict, or a story where you always know what is about to happen? Do you want to live in a scary, uncontrollable world, or do you want to play Stardew Valley? Do you want a person or a character?

When I beat Earthbound for the first time (and if you don't know, the prologue/ISAT battle system is just Mother) and watched the ending cutscene where the characters part ways and say goodbye...I felt a little bit sad. I wanted them to be together forever. But that's something only characters could ever be.

[somebodyssherlock-heterodyne]

God I cannot get this out of my brain so here goes.

Dick Grayson and "It's strange to know this world I loved loves me best dismembered." Dick Grayson and being chip chip chipped at until, to the world, you're a handful of bite sized pieces that don't fit together. Shattering is easy to understand. Shattering is everything going to shit in one fell swoop but when you shatter you can still fit the pieces together. You can say "this was whole once."

But Dick didn't. That's his whole thing: he bends and bends and bends. He didn't break. He got worn down and down and down. He got a lot of being viewed from only one angle at a time- Wayne kid, boy wonder, sidekick, hottie, Nightwing, spy, the list goes on- all these boxes too small for a person that he bent to fit because he had to, or he thought he did. All these tiny little pieces of himself that got scraped off by the edges of those boxes, until he's just six or seven pieces of himself bent to fit in different molds and he picks and chooses which piece of him to show you. Which tiny little bite sized piece of him to bet on the kindness of your teeth.

And despite the fact that he's this worn- he still has an absolutely unflinching core? There are things you'll never convince him to sacrifice and that's it. You'll never manage it. Period. You can give up now or you can give up later.

He's absolutely fascinating to me. There's so much of himself you can get him to sacrifice- sometimes without him even realizing, or realizing but thinking it's normal- but the moment you touch the core of him- that one piece that just can't be taught how to break- you're screwed.

There's so much of himself Dick Grayson just... doesn't seem to think is worth bothering to protect? And then there's this little core he guards like a dragon. The world can take and take and take everything else. This little piece is his.

I honestly have no coherent point to make here. Just thinking about Dick who will let himself be broken down to a point of being basically dismembered, will let people take and take and take, but there's this one little piece you reach for and get your hand bitten through. He has standards for what people can demand of him and take from him and do to him! They're just! A tripping hazard in hell!

[birdmitosis]

Keep seeing your analysis-ish posts in the tags and man. I wish I could make coherent posts about this game like that but whenever I try it just comes out like this

misery

also I see you are a voices enjoyer so I am obligated to ask what you think about voice of the contrarian bc he is my fav (he just like me fr we are best friends we are going to go get waffles together)

Aaahhhh, ironically my brain has been MUSH and so I didn't respond to this right away, but it's been giving me fuzzy feelings for days ;-; It is so kind of you to say... My analysis stuff is mostly me rambling and trying to sort out my own thoughts, LOL, so I'm glad it's at all coherent! I constantly feel like I'm in a state of

over this game, at least, so I get it. As for Voice of the Contrarian, I absolutely adore that voice! He's not my top fave but he's easily in my Top 3. I love him so much in The Stranger chapter and especially if you get her first and get any variation of the "Strange Beginnings" endings; I love his development and the quietly positive relationship he develops with Voice of the Hero, with the Stranger, and even in some ways with the Narrator. I love the way he tries to defend the Long Quiet in the "A new and unending dawn, and everyone hates you" endings! I love him in The Razor and The Moment of Clarity paths, I adore him in The Fury chapter... The only chapter he even mildly annoys me in is The Wild, and I think that's just because my first experience with that was the one with Opportunist and Paranoid and there was something so... emotional in that experience, and Contrarian really doesn't want to let you just sit with that emotion. That's not really a bad thing, though, not inherently, and it also says a lot about his character at that point in the game! (Honestly, my one quibble with the game is that since he says in the "Strange Beginnings" version of the endings that he's been at the cabin since you left him there, I honestly wish it became impossible to get any route he appears in if you get the Stranger first. That might be annoying and even a little unfair; I'm sure that in practice I wouldn't like being entirely locked out of The Razor and The Moment of Clarity if I went with The Stranger for my first vessel. But it'd make that part make a bit more sense, right? Then again, if you say to Hero "I thought you died whenever I looked in the mirror," he says:

"I don't think that's wrong, but I'm not sure it's right either. ... There's still a piece of me nestled close to where it all began. I can take you there... I can take you to her heart." Which I... think might imply that while the voices are all broken-off shards of you, they're also in pieces across each chapter you do? Which has some fascinating implications and does make Contrarian's thing work better. He is also still "where it all began," where Hero takes you.) ANYWAY that was some rambling about non-Contrarian things, or at least not strictly Contrarian things. Suffice to say that I really, really love that character; I think that in a situation where the other voices are learning to be individual people especially he could be really supportive and helpful there, because he has possibly the biggest personal arc of any character in the entire game. And I love that for him. (I also ship him hard with Voice of the Hero, and have a bunch of other more minor ships with him, including Contrarian/Hero/Narrator a little? SO YEAH THAT TOO.)

[mindstriker]

plspls PLEASE tell me anything youd like about owb...... im playing through nv for the first time and have yet to get to the dlc.... i have a passing knowledge of it but not much, and i am obsessed with these mad robobrain 2.0s and their relationships with each other and the courier

oh god almighty i don't even know where to START. i have gone insane over this specific DLC in the past to such a ridiculous extent that i'm in the middle of making an actual informative essay about it. styled the same way i write actual academic papers. i think i hauve COVID or whatever.

Off the top of my head, one of the things I love the most about OWB at first glance is the way it beautifully ties into the world of the Mojave itself and the other story DLCs (minus Honest Hearts) in subtle and yet fascinating ways that are a lot of fun to discover yourself or to tie together. Playing the NV DLCs, you'll find Big Mt.'s work in places you'd barely expect- slowly piecing together with every new bit of information the extent to which some of their work "breached containment", so to speak. You'll also find ties to other DLC stories scattered throughout the DLC area itself, keepng a beautoful, believable coherence between OWB and the outside story. It's an absurd, comedic terror of a DLC, to be sure- and yet, it's so grounded in the world of Fallout that I find it doesn't wreck your disbelief. Like some OTHER bizarro Fallout content has for me in the past. Looking at you, "Zetans" bullshit that I hate.

I'm also a big fan of the environmental storytelling throughout the entire DLC- something as simple as exploring the homes of the Think Tank in their secluded little vault-esque shelter (where I presume they sheltered out PART of the war before transferring to the brain tanks for longevity, OR which they potentially just lived in Pre-War) can tell you so much about their characters that you'd just never really pick up otherwise. The characters are simultaneously hilarious and... I mean. Heart-wrenching if you're willing to let your heart bleed for a bunch of demented amoral scientists whose entire Pre-War job was to try and resolve the war in America's favour in the nastiest ways possible. I personally find something so compelling in the unique ways their memories and personalities are equal parts warped by the passage of time and the recursion loops impacting their thoughts, and true to the people they were Pre-War.

(If I'm being vague about a lot of this, it's because I think some things are fun to find yourself and if I explained everything I liked about the DLC I'd probably just end up rehashing every single character and most of the plot points in the entire thing.)

Also it's just straight up fucking yonkers over bonkers. You get called a Lobotomite. You get to watch the world's worst co-workers (who have been cooped up in robot bodies living in a state of induced dementia together for the past god-knows-how-long) argue with each other like the world's pissest pack of schoolchildren. You get to hear some guy shriek at you about the terrors of Communism and the horrors of his high-school nemesis RICHIE FUCKING MARCUS for a solid five minutes. The entire thing starts off with an absurdly long insane conversation cutscene. One of the Think Tank members also like canonically cums in your gun. What's not to love, I guess.

[veliseraptor]

January Reading Recap

Thousand Autumns: vol. 3 by Meng Xi Shi. This book is - I don't want to say growing on me because it was never not one I was enjoying, but it certainly got interesting in a new way in this volume. The shift in the relationship between Yan Wushi and Shen Qiao feels like an important one, even if it doesn't last, and the glimpses at a background for Yan Wushi not elaborated upon certainly have me intrigued.

I have the whole epub of the fan translation for this one and might end up just reading it through to the end without waiting for the official translation volumes to come out (though I'll probably read those too, because I like reading more than one translation where I can).

Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracies Became a Health Threat by Derek Beres, Matthrew Remski, and Julian Walker. Sometimes you read a book on a really interesting subject and it just kind of makes you want to read a better book on that subject. Based on a podcast of the same name, this book was...fine? But it remained relatively shallow, and heavy on the examples rather than the analysis. It was more of a survey of instances where health and wellness/conspiracy thinking intersect than it felt like it was taking a deep look at where and why those intersections happen. It was interesting, and I learned some things, certainly, but it didn't quite dig as deep as I wanted to go.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. What a fascinating piece of work. I don't have a whole lot of coherent things to say, except that I don't read a lot of memoir and I'm glad I read this one. I think I liked it better than I liked Machado's short story collection - certainly it was doing very interesting things with form and style in a narrative built loosely on the skeleton of a memoir. It's funny, because I could see myself finding the conceit here irritating or pretentious, but for whatever reason I think the vulnerability of the project undercut that aspect for me.

Dead Country by Max Gladstone. Mostly this book reminded me that I really want to reread the Craft Sequence, so I started doing that. Calling this an intro to that world feels weird - it doesn't really feel like an entry-point to me, despite the fact that it's being marketed that way - but perhaps that's me with the benefit of having read the other books but slightly too long ago to clearly remember them. (Hence the reread.)

Based on my vague recollections I remember liking his other books better than this one, but that's me comparing some books I really liked to one that I enjoyed but wasn't blown away by. But I'm still coming back to read the next one in this series, so I can't speak too harshly of it.

Faraway Wanderers by Priest. I really enjoyed this one! I love the way that Priest writes banter/interplay between two characters, and she definitely has a thing for people who are equally fucked up being fucked up together that I appreciate. Another thing to appreciate about this one is how (relatively speaking) tight it is - there's not a whole lot of wandering, despite the title, and the plot keeps moving in a pretty linear direction from start to finish. I love my longass cnovels with multiple arcs, but it was a little refreshing to read one this contained. It's not in my upper echelons of danmei I've read so far, because it doesn't hit my favorite tropes quite as hard, but I'm glad I finally got around to reading it.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh. Probably wins my favorite book I read last month challenge. The ending got a little deus ex machina for my taste, strictly speaking, but not so much that it ruined my experience - and I genuinely enjoyed the refreshing experience of reading a book that was digging into some messy shit in a way that I found satisfying. I felt like some of the character development could've used more breathing room/space, but maybe I'm just picky about that, and the propulsive pace did keep me reading this one so fast I think I finished it in two days.

This is really petty but I also appreciated the author's willingness to have the protagonist/narrator be not the picture of good progressive politics. It allowed room for the, you know, development, and in the current genre climate I don't take it for granted.

Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman. I don't quite know what I feel about this one. The basic argument Guriev and Treisman are making is that dictators have changed strategies in the 21st century from what they call "dictatorships of fear" to "dictatorships of spin." I think the main critique I came out of it with has to do with the authors drawing too stark a line between their dictatorship "types" and not necessarily acknowledging that a leader can move between them, or use elements of more than one "type" in different places. Like any binary, it obscures fuzziness of categories and potential overlap in favor of trying to make clear distinctions. This is particularly visible in the way that their writing about Putin feels dated just from the initial 2022 publication date.

There were a couple other things that struck me as weird (I suspect the authors might be a bit to the right of me, and there's at least a whiff of classism about their characterization of "the informed" as a class of people); on the whole it felt worth reading but also like a book I want to talk to someone else about to help process my thoughts.

Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I love Tchaikovsky's work, and this conclusion to the Final Architecture series is no exception to that. And that's all, she wrote.

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi. I wanted to like this book more than I did - not that I didn't like it, but there's so much interesting stuff going on that it felt like didn't quite add up to a greater whole. A solid three star read, though, in the sense of "I'm glad I read it, and if someone else mentioned they were reading it I would probably provide my favorable impression, but I'm not going to go out of my way to recommend it to others."

There's definitely sequel bait at the end, though, and I probably will read the sequel if/when it appears. I'm intrigued enough, and the setting/worldbuilding is different enough - to get me that far.

--

I'm currently rereading Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone (Dead Country made me do it) but have We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker proximately on my list for a book club; I'm on a bit of a fiction kick looking at The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan, The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang, and Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer as possible next-ups as well. I'll get back to my long, long nonfiction to-read list eventually. (in the meantime I've got my long, long, long fiction to-read list.)

[zannolin]

I would love love love to hear your thoughts on the Skull

i don't even know if there's anything coherent in there i'm just so Fascinated by all the characters and dynamics in lockwood & co. like setting aside lockwood and his general unhingedness lucy and the skull might be one of the most interesting if not The most interesting relationships in the series. he's one of the only type threes in known existence. one of the only ghosts who can actually talk. and she's one of the only people ever who can hear him. first off that's already a bonkers setup but the fact that it's this huge deal to have a type three except lockwood & co happens to have a type three who is just like. the most annoying little twit you ever met? iconic. on brand. unbelievable. i'm obsessed with how 99% of the time it's wildly irritating and snarky and crass and then sometimes—it's not. sometimes you get glimpses of what used to be a living human person, but you have to wonder what the Skull was like when it was alive and hadn't spend like a hundred years alone and dead with no one to talk to. and the fact that it's most afraid of loneliness? and afraid in many ways to move on? it's clinging so hard to the world of the living. it point blank tells lucy in the hollow boy it wants to come back, which is at least part of why it's a type three. and sure it's an absolute dickhead but also it helps lucy. a lot. in unexpected ways. and when someone steals it she risks everything to get it back.

also deeply fascinated by lucy taking it when she leaves the company. did they even talk about that. she took the skull in the divorce.....

(don't get me started on the girl-skull roommate situation it tickles me to no end)

and then like. how things end. idk man. idk. i haven't got that far in my reread yet but sometimes. i remember the end. and i go

you know.

[dachshund-games]

Ok I've seen nothing but countless theories about puppet history lately but here's my it's-not-10pm-and-im-actually-coherent take

See this box right here? This generator looking bitch? Well, she's got a tube that's connected to the stage. The professor was being really defensive about it AND we got that close up of the box. She's gonna be important I can feel it.

Next: What's up with the professor's lighting? Does it seem more red than normal? I went back and looked through some old episodes and in the beginning it's always more of a purpleish blue. Even across seasons this lighting stays the same. Like look at these two shots. The first is from the Pinkerton episode, the second is from the new one. The new one even seems more washed out and less rich than the other.

Next, the glitch at 13:11. When I first saw it I thought it was my computer being weird, but then I went back and saw it happen again. I've looked at that glitch so many times. While this may be completely incorrect, the colors of the glitch kinda match the colors of Asmodeus. And if it's not that, it's a glitch in the power supply from that generator and our little blue ballsack is a hologram or something similar. For the life of me I can't get a sc of the glitch so just go back and watch it.

Now, the weird voice at 13:50 (and other places). I saw someone else say that this is a genie voice, and I honestly can't tell if he's impersonating the noise the algorithm machine makes or that the genie (or whatever thing is controlling the professor) fucked up talking for a sec and he went haywire.

Now, this may just be me, or does the professor look more sinister this season? We know he has a weird fascination with flesh but something about the eyes seem wrong. Under the lighting in the theater they look completely red as opposed to their normal brown. I don't think that they're using a different puppet but who knows.

And, at 20:09, Ryan says "You know a lot about ghosts, professor." and the professor replies "Yeah, yeah I do." Now, this may just be another callback to ghost files, but also, could the professor be a ghost himself? Or met ghosts when he was canonically dead?

ALSO, RYAN WON? But, I went through the video (and while I may have counted wrong) Sara got 4 points while Ryan only got 3. Is this going to be a pattern where Ryan always wins?

In conclusion, I didn't cover every single thing in this post, and I might not, but here are my takes for now. More episodes are gonna have to come out to know for sure about some of these things, and I am very excited for when they do.

[addledmongoose]

Good Omens Fanfic Friday (08 Mar 2024)

Probably the smallest list I've made yet, due to the sheer size of #RAINBOWROAD.

#RAINBOWROAD (407K; Rated E) by @nieded

Human AU. This has been recommended on the GO subreddit several times now, and for a very good reason. It's an extraordinary series that I honestly can't say enough good things about. No, really, I can't. I'm lucky these sentences are coherent, because I'm so addicted to reading these I'm living on the bare minimum amount of sleep needed to keep my brain from melting.

There are currently five completed works in the series and a sixth in progress, but the main story is told over the three long works, so there's no reason to wait for the sixth work to be finished before you start reading. You could skip the two shorter ones completely without it affecting the story, but they're both just as interesting and well-written as the main story.

Crowley is a veteran Formula 1 driver whose personal life caused a rather unpleasant fall from grace. Now he drives for the only team that will sign him, and he's constantly scrutinized by the team's management for any sign of bad behavior. Aziraphale, who in this story is called Ezira Phale (first and last name) is a rookie F1 driver who is picked up by a new team run by distillery owner, Gabriel and his sister, Michael. #RAINBOWROAD is both a beautiful and realistic love story between the Ineffable Husbands and a story dedicated to the author's love for racing.

You don't need to know anything about Formula 1 racing, because the author explains everything in such a fascinating way that you'll be talking pole positions and using words like chicane and name-dropping real life drivers in no time. I literally didn't even know which kind of racing Formula 1 was until I googled it, and this story will make you fall in love with the sport (even if I still don't intend to actually watch any races). (If you like how Old Vines (190K; Rated E) was an exquisite ode to wine and winemaking, this is similar).

And the characters! I LOVE Ezira and Crowley so much here! Ezira has enough of Aziraphale's traits that he doesn't feel like a completely different character, but he's a 25-year-old adrenaline junkie whose first love is driving very fast cars, not books or food (though he still loves both). The author does a great job of making Ezira very good at his job but not supernaturally so. He's a rookie driver; he's not magically better than the top people in the field (including Crowley), but you can see the talent there. His placements feel very realistic. Crowley is probably a little closer to his demon counterpart, from his clothes and shades to his snarky personality. He's extremely good at his job, and like Ezira, he loves what he does.

Newt makes an appearance as another F1 driver, while Anathema is an engineer. The Them and Warlock are all grown up, working as mechanics and engineers for various teams. Beelzebub is Crowley's agent, and their snarky and short-tempered, but secretely soft, personality works really well with Crowley. There are some great original characters, too, who will stick with you just as much as the canon characters.

The second book is very angsty, but it does get better by the end. I had to take a day off reading it and take a look at some lighter stories before I could go back to it. But once I did, I forewent sleep to finish it.

The third book is set several years later when they're both veteran drivers and a well-established couple. I haven't finished it (because I did have to actually sleep at some point), but the author writes that it's more fluff-oriented than the first two, and I have no reason to doubt them.

This is one of the most professionally-written and utterly fascinating Good Omens stories I've read yet.

***

A.Z. Fell & Co. Est. 1800: The Bookshop Chronicles (as told by Yelp) (18K 11/? chapters; Rated T)

Normally I only recommend stories that are complete or nearly so (within a couple of chapters), but I feel like this story can be read without waiting for the whole completed story, because currently it's seasons 1 and 2 (and in-between) told through Yelp reviews of the bookshop. This is the kind of genuinely delightful story that keeps me smiling from the first moment, especially when Aziraphale and Crowley start bickering in the comments. Then there are the commenters who are convinced Aziraphale and Crowley are cryptids and present some rather convincing evidence. The Whickber Street shopowners pop in on occasion, along with Jimbriel and Inspector Constable. Try to read it with the workskin on, because the author makes the story look like Yelp reviews.

[lookupthewordjokeinthedictionary]

Logan wanted to try drawing the Sides (+ himself) as well, so we now have his drawings to grace our presence

Let's get started (it will have our little bonus details, I never would've left you like this!!)

Our happy pappy Patton!! He heard Logan was gonna draw him so he missed no opportunity putting on Logan's glasses and posing right in front of him. Logan will be drawing everyone with very harsh lines, including Patton. More on his drawing style later though ;). Through his sketches, you can really tell what he deems more important for each side (in this case, it's Patton's smile) as he puts it in the very centre.

Moving on, we have our Prince Roman! Logan really wanted to accentuate (and place at the very centre) how self absorbed and lost in his imagination Roman is. He drew him kissing his sword because what better way to show the physical manifestation of ego of how unrealistic they are.

Virgil!! Logan took point about how Virgil draws himself smaller than all other sides (like in my first post about them all) and acted accordingly! I personally really love how they seem to understand each other very well and sympathize with each other's struggles. He drew him happily posing with his birthday cupcake, as he should!

Our reptillion repscallion is in the house! Can we acknowledge that Logan has Janus related trauma? We still have no idea what happened to him when Janus snatched him away in POF. So I took matters into my own hands and made Logan draw him as a disney villain. He has a sinister smirk, the infamous hook, his cape is flowing in the wind. Our Lord of the Lies is looking in the distance, slits for eyes. I think it there's one dark side that has managed to get under Logan's skin, it's Janus.

Look at how adorable Remus is!!! Hhhhh I love him and I'm sure Logan does too (you don't have to ship it but I ship it and that's that). He is shown eating his deodorant, a vacant expression as he calmly stares at the distance. Logan can understand that the Duke has no actual impact on him. He can (and will) figuratively undress him with logic. He is just a silly little guy after all.

Lastly we have Logan. He has a closed book in the centre of his sketch, which I find fascinating. I believe the book itself is a metaphor for all of the knowledge that he possesses, as logic, as the overseer of Thomas' language Centre, as the manager of Thomas' right arm (if I'm not mistaken). But the book is closed. The knowledge isn't only not being used as of this moment but it's closed, it's disregarded. Like Logan is being disregarded. Hence the look of hurt and disgust on his face. There is no use for him if knowledge has no power.

As for the harsh lines all over the place, this explanation will be a little long but I'll do my best to be coherent.

Logan is, as far my understanding of the canon goes, as war with himself. His whole arc consists of him realising his importance in the creative process. His job is not to only keep Thomas at check, but to also urge him to create things that are informative, coherent and hold intelligent value. As of right now, Roman is the only one who's handling the creative process (who's being censored by Patton) so the creative process is stuck in a family friendly, full of criticism and stagnant ideas sort of situation. Unless Thomas (and Roman) realise the importance of Remus and Logan in the process, the product will forever be incomplete.

So, you might have thought that Logan sketching the sides would be full of harsh, symmetrical lines, devoid of any character. But even though his appreciation for perfection can't go unnoticed (as it is a big part of who he is), I can't personally pretend like Logan wouldn't figuratively kill it at creating and drawing and writing and sculpturing and singing and acting and and and and...

Conclusion: Logan is precious and must be protected at all costs (also he should be given a little more power, he knows the sides almost as good as Janus and Patton do)

[zorlok-if]

That's enough Goncharov for tonight...

IDs in alt text, transcriptions below.

It began snowing last night.

When you awoke this morning, it was like a shimmering white blanket had been draped across the city, covering every surface. The rough concrete sidewalks sparkle in the sunlight with a collection of footprints already cutting through the snow. You try to discern coherent paths, but there are too many tracks. It just seems like a barrage of individual prints forming a somewhat convoluted line through the city streets.

As you walk, you find yourself switching between consciously placing your feet in the spots left by previous travelers and venturing off on your own into somewhat slippery, untouched territory. Your laser focus on the trail makes your trek to work much faster than normal. Before you realize it, you've reached the office. You enter into the lobby.

No one else appears to be here. Not yet.

All in all your commute wasn't terrible. At least, it wasn't as bad as you expected it to be based on reactions you'd seen online.

Sometimes you don't get people. They're fascinating, but you don't always understand them.

Some people see a little bit of snow and say things like "Winter is the worst thing to ever happen to this city", "snow was created by God to spite us", "cold like this will be the death of me", or something to those dramatic effects. Others wax poetic about the arrival of winter, analyze what snow means and how it forms, or create artwork depicting snowy landscapes both familiar and unfamiliar to yourself.

Most people, you imagine, don't notice or really care about the weather. They see flurries floating through the air and think something like, "Hmm, I guess it's going to be cold today," and that's it. If they do care at all or have solid opinions on it, they don't feel the need to expound upon them online.

You personally lie somewhere between all these extremes—a center point in a triangle. You view the return of winter as something beautiful but ephemeral. The novelty will wear off and there's a potential for things to turn nasty or murky, but for now the snow is just enchanting. Marvelous. Almost surreal.

You wish you could see it from inside the office, but there are no windows visible from your cubicle. All you see is a numbing wash of felt covered half-walls, stained carpet squares, and pock-marked ceiling tiles.

You sit down at your desk with a heavy sigh, surveying your bare surroundings with a gaze that's 10% disappointment and 90% ambivalence.

It's time to begin your day. You turn on the computer.

[eruherdiriel]

Dedra Meero and D*enerys T: Fandom Reactions to Female Villains

Note: This post assumes Dedra and D*ny are villainous characters. You've been warned (twice now). GOT critical, minor spoilers for both shows ahead (characterizations more than plot points). I am not discussing anyone's enjoyment of a character, rather, I'm examining interpretations of villainy and who we root for in a narrative.

I've watched Andor twice, and both times I was struck by how similar Dedra Meero feels to D*ny. So far, however, Dedra's arc is more coherent and the audience seems more united in how it views her, which fascinates me. (I know some are rooting for a redemption arc for Dedra, which I will discuss more later. By definition, that means there's something about her that needs to be redeemed, so I am assuming those folks generally accept her as a villain in her current state.)

Both Dedra and D*ny are women in a man's world who, in order to rise within a corrupt and oppressive system, adopt the brutal tactics of that system. They believe in said system even if it treats them unjustly for being women. Dedra believes that the Empire should be the ultimate power in the universe, that rebels should be rooted out and crushed, and that horrifying torture and manipulation are acceptable actions to achieve the outcome of keeping the Empire in power. D*ny believes in the Targaryen dynasty, that they are rightful rulers of Westeros despite being colonizers, and that dragons (a weapon no one else has, nevermind that the narrative tells us over and over that burning people alive is Not Good) are an acceptable way to achieve her goal of sitting on the Iron Throne.

The fact that they face obstacles and encounter misogyny everywhere rightly stirs in the audience sympathy for them. Syril's obsession with Dedra is terrifying to me, as is Viserys's assault of D*ny. With Dedra, the sympathy generated from these circumstances doesn't seem to outweigh all the heinous things we see her do and make people actively root for her. Meanwhile, D*ny made it through 8 seasons of Thrones with a large cheering squad intact. There's a few reasons why that could be.

Even on a show like Andor, where characters are allowed to be morally messy, Star Wars is an inherently binary, good vs. evil universe. The Rebellion vs. the Empire. The light side of the force vs. the dark side. Thrones lives in the gray. Sometimes that's not the right term, but it's how the audience is told it should see characters. At its worst, Thrones sanitized more villainous characters and dumbed down more heroic ones to keep everyone "gray," thereby oversimplifying and misrepresenting what it means for a character or action to be morally gray. Character motivations were buried to preserve plot twists, which led to confusion among some of the audience over who the ultimate heroes were. Andor shows us Luthen instigating an Empire crackdown and asks audience members to question his methods while also making the case for them. Cassian's trigger finger is ruthless, but how many times does that save his life? Save the life of someone he loves or someone else who will play a key role in the Rebellion?

Andor is also 12 episodes in (of 24 planned); characters are going to complete their arcs a lot faster than characters did on Thrones. That accelerated time line has an effect on fandom engagement, how much time people spend with a character (potentially allowing them to build more sympathy for said character), and how much time they have to transform that character in their mind (headcanons, fanfic, etc., all things I love but can convolute discussions about the original text). We also know less about Dedra than we did about D*ny, and very little about her personal life. Still, Dedra feels human, so don't mistake this for thinking she is a poorly drawn character. She's not.

A word on redemption: For me, Star Wars doesn't have a great track record with successfully completing redemption arcs. I know some people feel differently. But given the quality of Andor season 1, I think this show could do a villain redemption and do it well, but I don't want it to (please hold your tomatoes). It's enough for me that our good guys are doing shady things on behalf of the Rebellion. It's enough for me that the villains have sympathetic qualities. I still want them to be villains. Especially with Andor, the themes and plotlines are so resonant of the challenges we face in the real world that one of the few ways the show maintains the catharsis of entertainment is through good defeating evil. And it's important to me that Dedra stays a villain because there are villainous women in the real world and we need to remember that. It's part of why I was never bothered by the idea that D*ny would be a villain as well.

(I want to acknowledge the role actor's external comments might have had on viewing these two women as villains. I won't go into it too much because it feels a little icky saying I agree with one person's comments about a character they played and not another's, and also because I wish actor/writer/director etc. comments weren't taken so seriously in fandom. Also, I have not combed through every interview the actors have given so I only know the highlights, and I want to be fair to them that maybe their views have changed or they've said contradictory things elsewhere. /Disclaimer. To sum up, Emilia Clarke emphatically stated in post-S8 interviews that she stood by D*ny and "never saw [the ending] coming." Maybe this gives some fans "permission" to feel that way as well. Meanwhile, Denise Gough called her character a fascist [I know almost nothing else about Denise but I LOVE her for this comment.])

[thatonebirdwrites]

22 for any fic & 1 for Unraveling Realities

22. What is something you learned about yourself as a writer from the experience?

For Unraveling Realities, I learned a lot about juggling POVs. I also am learning how to insert immersive details and little details while still keeping things somewhat concise. I know I tend toward Tolkienesque descriptions, so I've been able to practice ways to still be descriptive but in a way that uses fewer words. For my Korrasami fics, particularly Shared Moments, I learned how to build up a complex arc and lay down the crumbs and foreshadowing, so the payoff two books later feels satisfying to the reader.

I, of course, doubted whether I pulled it off, but the comments at the payoff chapter has been so encouraging. Folks shared how satisfying and fascinating it was to gather up the crumbs and foreshadowing starting in book 2 and see it blossom into a climax several books later.

It was a major challenge to write, and I learned so much about writing longer series.

Start to finish, how long did it take to plan and write? Did you take breaks during the process? (For Unraveling Realities).

I'm technically still writing it, but majority of the chapters have their crucial big-plot scene in them. The first Act and majority of second are complete, while the third is being written/edited.

How long to write in full? The idea was conceived in October 2023. I wrote a practice one-shot called "Confessions" and tossed it up on AO3. The positive response by commenters pushed me to write dig into what the end of Season 4 looks like if Lena and Kara already had a heart-to-heart about Kara's secret.

I mentioned in endnotes that I had ideas for a rewrite of Season 5 (a continuation and the consequences of my version of end-of-Season-4 events). Folks in comments urged me to do it.

At first, I wasn't going to leap into such a big project.

But then I asked myself, "Why not?"

At that time, I needed a project to balance the Korrasami epic project (so I didn't burn out completely on that one). I also needed to find a new approach to writing that didn't cause so many flare-ups. Finally, I wanted to practice a different style of writing than what I usually do.

Why not use Unraveling Realities to explore that alternative way of writing POVs, the consequences to events in Confession, and the themes of repair, identity, and healing? Plus, it would provide the necessary opportunity to build a different approach to managing my severely limited energy. (Chronic illness sucks). So I built a Scrivener project for Unraveling realities. (Which is a great way to make an outline without making a full outline. ha).

I labeled the three sections/acts. Within each section, I made chapter-scenes and named each based on POV character and chapter theme. I decided on the fun writing technique where Lena's chapters kept the present-tense POV, and other characters' POV was in past-tense (the SF books that pulled this off were delightful, so why not give it a try?).

Next, I built a section for the lore/worldbuilding details I needed to weave into the tale. After that, I tagged each scene with which major plot point or character arc needed to appear in it. (This made it easy to create an alternate binder in the project for me to filter only for a specific tag. That way I can review a character arc in isolation to verify it's coherent and true to the character's personality and themes).

Then I wrote out several possible endings and scattered scenes in each act. This helps me map out mentally the project.

Finally, I went back to the beginning to write it from front to end. This process of creating a Scrivener project is how I plan a story to be honest. Scrivener is my jam. I officially started writing Unraveling Realities in November 2023. Per my calculations, if the characters don't try to go off the rails and I don't get incredibly ill again, I should be able to finish by Oct/Nov of this year. Considering how long it is? Taking a year to write it makes sense.

On a related note, my writing sessions are heavily impacted by my disability. I have about a thirty minute window to write before I MUST take a break. Last year, I hyperfixated and mismanaged my energy. I swear i always forget how much energy brains use. So when I had to leave home for appointments or errands, I ran out of energy. This meant more hospital visits from collapses.

This year, I am more careful with balancing health breaks and writing. Where I do not get caught in the hyperfixate-loss-of-time trap as often. (I haven't had a hospital visit this year. I'm so proud of myself.)

That's one lesson I keep needing to re-learn: brains use up energy. A LOT of energy, so for a disabled person who has very limited energy resources? I need to be more careful with how I distribute it.

So in the act of writing this fic, I made a conscious choice to carefully balance my time, energy, and rest. This helped me grow as a writer I think. Oh, and less hospital visits is always a win.

Thank you so much for asking!!

[alephskoteinos]

Fuck Repeater Books and Fuck Rhyd Wildermuth (again)

I fucking hate Repeater Books

If you read that Substack article, you find that Rhyd begins with a diatribe about his bafflement at dating someone with neopronouns, and then he talks about right-wing fascists like Matt Walsh and LibsOfTikTok as basically documenting them as "excesses" of "the left".

Are you seriously telling me that nobody at Repeater Books, a respected publisher of left-wing radical literature, bothered to ask Rhyd any questions about his comments about neopronouns or especially the way he talks about Matt Walsh or LibsOfTikTok? Is this what I'm supposed to understand is the case?

By the way, I just love being lectured about ideas that don't connect to the masses or so-called "everyday reality" by a guy who claims to be a Druid and somehow refers to himself as an Autonomist Marxist, who also moved to France to live in the Ardennes and is now almost literally physically disconnected from everyday American life!

Also, note the way he talks about fiction, realism, reality, and "good fiction" or "coherent fiction", in the context of the fact that he hates neopronouns.

I must say I have to appreciate the fact that he cites the concept of Jungian archetypes only a little later on, because at that point it grants me the suspicion that Jungian psychoanalysis, and its later developments in atheistic appreciations of religion and especially neopaganism, might have been mistakes. Makes me think of Austin Osman Spare's phrase, "Fraud and Junk", directed against Freud and Jung and perhaps by extension the whole modern tradition of psychoanalysis. Might want to think about that also when considering the "psychological" model of magic.

The Substack article ends in part with a description of Rhyd's new book as "A clear and engaging history of how left radicalism went wrong and how it can become what it must be again." I seriously wouldn't promote it as anything of the kind. And it just tells me if this text gains purchase to any sizeable extent of the contemporary "Left", then it will prove that the "Left" as it exists today is simply a joke, so hopelessly caught in discursive and intellectual games in pursuit of some correct and totalised anti-capitalist doctrine, and perfecting the discourse that might allow them to win power by so sufficiently critiquing capitalism, that they are willing to accept reactionary discourses of identity that are literally allied with right-wing fascism, even in ostensibly radical of spaces, and throw marginalised people under the bus for the sake of having a "serious conservation". Fuck all of that!

Oh and I suppose I'd best include a rundown of Rhyd Wildermuth's support for bigotry of many kinds:

[twotwinks]

Adam, Even, and Eden

Adam

OH HEY WE FINALLY GOT A BINGO

the adam half of this relationship is just ibara evil laughing and getting up to Shenanigans while nagisa is like "as long as you're happy dear" they've committed so many crimes as a result. also it's so funny when nagisa decides to remind ibara he's the leader for a reason and ibara briefly turns into a Wronged Woman in return. i don't have many coherent thoughts about them but i feel their entire relationship can be summed up with "maybe i can't fix him but i can definitely fuck him" and sometimes that's all you need.

the inventors of gay people, Even (yes i saw that)

definitely one of the most canon couples in the entire franchise, it's hiyojun! they're idiots who love each other no matter how inconsiderate they act towards each other sometimes. in direct opposition to the adam half, these two are probably the only things stopping each other from being gay doing crimes...most of the time. they're so cute with their simple honest affection and casual need for the other's presence. also it was so iconic when they kissed on stage (all three times) man what a time to be alive.

Eden, the second poly unit i ever loved

the fascinating thing about polyeden as a whole is that even though the individual halves enable and even sometimes encourage each other's worst behaviors (especially adam) together they are all actively working to better themselves and each other. nagisa is learning to act on his own and become his own person. ibara is unpacking his childhood trauma and unlearning the things he's been conditioned to do and to think about himself. hiyori is learning that sometimes it's worth it to do something warui hiyori for the sake of the people he loves. jun is learning not to think so little of himself and stand alongside the others as equals. and they all love each other so much, eden is so important to every single one of them that if you even so much as lift a finger against it or one of its members you're in for a world of hurt. they're family too and at this point they wouldn't know what do to without each other. again i really don't feel like i can articulate how i feel about them but just know that there's so much love there even if it looks way different from the usual.