#post: 2020 books read

[5-pp-man]

no you don't get it. i literally love stories where they dive into people's hearts/minds (literally or figuratively) sm it's my favourite type of storytelling.

[rotisseries]

chapters 51 and 58 of bloodmarked are absolutely CARRYING bree/nick/selwyn polyamory truthers

[princehendir]

Hey so. remember all those posts that were being made like, well into 2022 that were like "stop writing the pandemic into fiction I'm here for escapism"? Does anyone else still not know what the hell they were talking about.

[hanzajesthanza]

you guys… we did it!!!

just wanted to thank you everyone for being a part of this blog… “big things to come soon”

[deanmarywinchester]

finally finished the death and life of great american cities after carrying it around for months not reading it and was reminded of an essay I wanted to write months ago about the actual star (the novel about a radically open/democratically surveilled utopia) and times square red times square blue, which embroiders on some of the death and life’s ideas about benevolent social surveillance. and the point of the essay, which I’m not writing at least until I read more people responding to jacobs, was basically: who is social surveillance good for?

both delany and jacobs paint a pretty utopian picture of city streets in which order is kept by constant eyes on the street and a duty of care felt by the community. delany specifically includes unhoused and sex worker communities in his idea of the fabric of a neighborhood, and although I was already suspicious of how his ideal social surveillance interacts with marginalized communities, I was even more surprised at how much the death and life relies on the idea of creating an ideal environment for spending money to make a neighborhood function.

it frequently invokes small shopkeepers as goods in that they keep peace over the streets to ensure that customers feel safe there. so if you’re not a customer and your presence makes customers feel unsafe, die I guess? sometimes the book also conflates unvisited (+ therefore dangerous) spaces with uneconomically productive spaces. this can make intuitive sense; if people don’t frequently pass something like a library or park on their way to engage in the economy in some way (work, shop), it can become a dead zone with easy opportunities for crime

but this feels so cynical! ‘if you’re not making and spending money there’s no need to go places’ is so bleak. I don’t know. maybe this made more sense in jacobs’ time because there was more of a culture of eating your meals at cafeterias and patronizing your local pub and drinks weren’t $14 and people weren’t constantly warned that eating out was what was keeping them in debt. because right now I would kill for more places where I could go hang out for free but in jacobs’ mind those places would become dead zones. and maybe they would! if my neighborhood had a free community center I can easily see nobody going because there’s nothing to be gained by it.

this post got away from me but the point is “how do we create a community that includes people on the margins and places with noneconomic uses when everyone is living in atomized units and spending all their time surviving.” also “why don’t we live in the dispossessed.”

[fullscoreshenanigans]

Okay, since you're asking for, well, asks:

What would you change to make Andrew a more compelling villain? How should his arc have been dealt so we, as the fandom, would be more fond of him, despite Andrew killing of at least two fandom favourites?

Swap him out with Isabella and give me the Isabella pursues the kids AU that S2 teased to facilitate the Grace Field escapees having a talk about the trauma she put them through that I crave or have him take Phil to Lambda.

Joking aside, almost anything that makes his conflict more personal with characters as individual characters rather than them as a monolithic group of cattle children would work for me, or giving him a personality beyond "Peter's lackey from the Ratri branch family with a one-dimensional hater boner for the cattle children."

I'd like him to stick around longer to simultaneously build up a greater antagonistic dynamic with the kids and show them strategizing how they'll neutralize him in an environment they aren't as familiar with, but are still knowledgeable enough about so the reader is privy to most of the elements in play and can deduct how at least some of them factor into the plan ahead of time, and then look back on any they missed without feeling cheated because they were introduced earlier rather than in the moment. Something along the lines of the kids luring him to a location the search party visited while looking for the Seven Walls.

Alternatively, an area they actively avoided because of rumors, like what evanescent puts forth here in always a riddle inside my head (aesop’s kin).

Comes with the potential bonus of providing more insight into demon world culture on top of adding a factor of risk of both sides trying to utilize the area to their advantage while trying to avoid succumbing to it themselves, especially if they ultimately decide to keep the group together as opposed to splitting up until the threat is dealt with.

I'd also like to see Andrew deducing Phil is a child of interest, either before he arrives at Grace Field due to his score and whatever else might be in his file or while he's at Grace Field and picks up on any odd behavior. Something for the reader to follow along with to build up tension and give us insight into both his personality and reasoning in a more lowkey setting to build anticipation for when he's in a higher energy one like confronting the escapees. It was most likely to save on page space, but him showing up at Grace Field only to do nothing with the encounter but use the fact he talked to Phil to taunt the Grace Field escapees in chapter 111 was such a letdown. Him doing something to Phil besides killing him offscreen makes for a more immediate threat than one of the many kids at Grace Field the audience might be aware of but doesn't have nearly as strong of an attachment to maybe getting shipped out at the two-year deadline. It also shows him taking some initiative on his own prior to the escapee confrontation when up until that point we just see him following Peter's lead.

Him following along the escapees' trail from Grace Field and stumbling across the coordinates to B06-32 Ray left carved in the tree would also be something deliciously angsty to taunt them with in their first encounter, chiding them for being sloppy. There's no guarantee they wouldn't have eventually been found anyway and no one really blames Ray for it given the circumstances, but still, the guilt of leading them to the location sooner rather than after they were long gone and putting Yuugo and Lucas into the position where they had to sacrifice their lives for them, oof.

Further rambling under the cut that turned into a semi-tangent:

Isabella is my favorite villain for, among other things, how intertwined she was in the children's lives. Very high personal stakes with a betrayal from someone who almost all of them believed was a normal, loving mother, to say nothing of the anguish Ray's biological connection to her brought him.

Leuvis made things more personal with Emma by going after children she saved earlier in the day to taunt her and affirmed to her face they were fundamentally opposed in their goals, making conflict unavoidable. He also killed Lucas and Yuugo's friends, forcing them to live separately with that guilt for over a decade.

Legravalima forced Mujika into hiding for 700 years after having her entire clan slaughtered, and she had an interest in the full score trio as the most delicious meat that was forbidden to her, making her one of the two key figures responsible for Norman ending up in Lambda that leads to a dramatically charged meeting between them in the imperial capital. It's a bit more distant of a connection, but it's workable for me when combined with her acting as a vehicle for criticism of systemic exploitation to maintain centuries of hegemony and how it inevitably implodes on itself. I half count Sonju here because their confrontation is also charged when they finally do meet, but it's never alluded to at all prior to this so there's zero build-up, and even in the "Two Destinies" story from the third light novel we don't see them interact.

Peter is the thirty-sixth Ratri to uphold the promise, giving some twisted credence to his assertion he is the father of the current generation of cattle children. He took advantage of Legravalima's greed to become the other key figure in Norman ending up at Lambda (though we don't get to see them interact much. We knew he was in conflict with his brother, the man who sought to end the Neverland despite knowing how critical it was to maintain the balance between the two worlds and how he should view it as an honor, since he was introduced. Again I have to fall back on the symbolism of what his defeat represented—his entire identity founded on a purposefully manufactured hierarchy and how he couldn't comprehend existence outside of that rigid mindset, of there not being an inherent inferiority to the cattle children that made their fate as food deserved—since on its surface his suicide is highly unsatisfying. Roughly a hundred chapters of build-up, and he just conveniently offs himself. No final stand, pathetic or grand, that pushes the characters to act or challenge something about themselves (yet again giving a shoutout to @salsae's vowsverse for having Emma shoot Peter and how for better, not only explores the toll that takes on her, but also how it affects the people around her).

Andrew's mindset is essentially the same as Peter's, so there's some symbolism in his wrath consuming him and contributing to his demise, but it's devoid of Peter's familial conflict. His meeting with Phil is framed in a sinister light that makes it reasonable to worry about his safety, but Shirai states in the mystic code book he never intended to do anything with it beyond using the meeting taking place as a way to briefly taunt Emma.

He also lacks the long history Leuvis had with Yuugo and Lucas. You could argue this speaks to how there's a disconnect between the upper echelons who profit off the exploitation of those at the bottom and the banal mundanity of it all, and how his death in the jaws of a wild demon was indicative of the indifference of the universe, but to me it feels empty when earlier villains gave us conflict that was simultaneously symbolic and personal.

(Mystic Code Book Chapter 4 | December 2020 Exhibition Interview)

The children maintaining their "whiteness"/innocence would have been fine by itself if it was preceded by a more prolonged pursuit that would at least give us a peek into Andrew's past and personality while also showing the children carefully crafting plans ahead of time like they did in previous arcs so we could follow along with them and build up anticipation due to being provided with all the potential elements in play.

Instead, he shows up at the bunker when we as an audience have spent very little time in it and only learned about its intricate tunnel system during the raid, he blows it up, and then he shows up again instigating a hostage situation. After the enormous blow of losing Yuugo and Lucas interspersed with the deaths of children who were meant to stress the gravity of the situation (but with their lack of focus it's frustratingly obvious they're cheap canon fodder; we don't even get their names until the chapter 119 bonus sketch) on top of all ten members of the Goldy Pond crew surviving Goldy Pond despite some suffering injuries that could have justifiably killed them, there's a lack of tension for seasoned readers when Alicia and Dominic are on the chopping block.

Such a frustratingly disappointing character who doesn't even have a fun personality to make up for it.

[darkacademiaarchivist]

damn three years ago i was reading radio silence for the first time and then listening to welcome to night vale after finishing it and falling in love with fiction podcasts (i am a victim of the radio silence to fiction podcasts pipeline)

[tantai-jin]

fic writer meme!

thank u rachel @fruitdaze for the tag!!! <3333333

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

23 since 2016 lmao,, i don't remember exactly how many i posted on lj from 2012-2015 but it wasn't a ton, probably 10-15 that were like 50k altogether

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

124,765

3. What fandoms do you write for?

it's been all over the place since 2020 lol but p much only chinese media like danmei novels, movies, cdramas. used to write kpop rpf but prob won't return to that even tho i still like and follow many groups

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

给你给你 (yunfei)

换一世身份姓名; heaven to myself (canglan)

not-that-small talk (tell me honestly) (bts yoonkook LOL)

새벽 rush hour (yellow light, slow) (bts taegi LOL)

捡一个梦; reach for a dream (canglan)

5. Do you respond to comments?

i usually do, although i'm often quite late LOL i have a couple fics where i didn't reply to all the comments after a certain point and then i just stopped 😭 or if they are a guest user or only leave emojis as a comment then i don't reply? but ofc i see every comment

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

uhh i feel like the only thing i wrote that is complete and has an angsty ending is 捡一个梦; reach for a dream bc it was a missing scene from an angsty arc of the show. or lol jk same scenario applies to 余光 (remnants of light) bc it takes place before the end of yuwu and not in one of the happier moments

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

either 给你给你 or 换一世身份姓名; heaven to myself bc they're both disgustingly sweet and affectionate at the end

8. Do you get hate on fics?

nope! either i am writing for tiny ass fandoms or like, my fics don't get enough traction to attract haters LMAO

9. Do you write smut?

not a lot... the incomplete bingqiu au i posted has the most explicit scenes so far but i am still too shy writing it. i have to practice so that i can write more than 3 sentences of sex in a single day and actually finish the wips i started 😭

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you have written?

i have before! nothing crazy tho bc it was just kpop rpf and it would be like, two idols from the same company that have interacted multiple times! lmao. sometimes i think abt crossovers for cdramas that are relatively tame such as: two actors that have been in the same drama multiple times are reincaranted and those 2+ dramas are their different lives... but it's so niche in eng speaking fandom and i haven't fully written one out yet. also does it count as a crossover if u put characters from story A into the setting/setup for story B bc i do that a lot but i think that is fairly common at least for ppl to imagine

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i don't think so... again, my fics do not get a lot of traction so i don't think it's likely lmaooo

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

i think there was an exo one translated into russian a long time ago but i don't even remember which one lolllll it might have been on my livejournal

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

not a whole fic yet but ive brainrotted a plethora of aus with friends before such as but not limited to mingqian actors au with lianzi (very intricate with multiple variations) and a Bunch of cdrama and yuwu stuff with another friend :')

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

i cannotttttt pick only one but ummm in the last yr-ish it's been a rotation of tantai jin/li susu + mingye/sang jiu from cyjm, mingqian from liu yao, xilian from yuwu (🤪)..... bingqiu from sv (always).... i should stop for now that's Tew Many. but i think once i finish spl, changgu will also be up there

15. What is a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

i feel like i'm cursing myself by typing this out but perhaps the bingqiu i posted one chapter of..... even if i could write all the p With p parts that i wanted to include, i was also a little stuck on the ending and idk if i would be able to write it in a way that doesn't feel like a cop out or just weak in general 😢 but i do like that au and i think my writing for it so far was p decent... so who knows...!

16. What are your writing strengths?

i think i am pretty good at dialogue that sounds 1. natural and 2. true to the characters! i try really hard to make imagery sound original(ish) and evocative, and to make a character's Yearning palpable

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

intricate plot, action, sex (takes me forever to write and haven't done it in as much detail as i would like to tbh)

18. Thoughts of writing dialogue in another language in fics?

i love it! i did it a little in my yunfei fic and instead of directly translating the line of chinese right there i just included the meaning in the next line of dialogue, like "what do you mean [thing they just said]" + i did it like that bc the tone of it just felt so much more natural to me in mandarin for that specific convo. not that it was something untranslatable (it wasn't) but it just felt comfier to me. i also like the thing ppl do where you can hover over the text and it will show the translation but idk how that html works HAHA someday i would like to give it a go

19. First fandom you wrote for?

exo.......... lmao

20. Favorite fic you have written?

overall i think it would be typhoon season (my incomplete but not abandoned cisswap girls ximang in hk) ! i had it fermenting in my brain for like 8 months before i wrote it, which meant i had figured a lot of the stuff for the beginning out and it was much easier to write than normal since i was not deliberating so much in the moment. i think the pacing for it was good and the reveals of backstory were placed well, and i think i adapted the characters well too even if it's only a first chapter and they haven't done a lot yet. i wanna write them again but it's been rly hard for me to think abt that specific au for many months lol. i also think my recent yzy gegedidi fic had a lot of yummy scenes even if i see some flaws in some parts of the fic's progression... but i spent enough time on it already so i will not go and fix it anymore 😌 peace

i think all my writer friends were tagged already...... this tagline (like a bloodline) will end with me

[coffee-without-anesthetics]

I now arrive at the unspeakable center of my story: here is the start of my despair as a writer. Each language is an alphabet of symbols whose usage assumes a certain past shared between its speakers; how to convey to others the infinity of the Aleph, which my memory fears terribly and cannot comprehend? Mystics, in an analogous situation, would organize symbols; to define divinity, a certain Persian spoke of a bird that's somehow all birds; Alanus de Insulis spoke of a sphere whose center is everywhere, its perimeter nowhere; Ezechiel spoke of a four-faced angel who turns to the east and to the west, north and south. (My mentioning of these incomprehensible analogies isn't in vain- they have some rapport with the Aleph.) Maybe the gods wouldn't refuse me a proper metaphor, but this story would then be tainted by literature and falsehood. Besides that, the fundamental problem remains with no solution: which is to count, even fractionally, an infinite set. In that gigantic instant I momentarily saw millions of delightful or maybe horrible events: none of them surprised me as much as the fact that they all occupied the same point and did not overlap, nor were they transparent. What my eyes saw was simultaneous- what I write happens one after another, because that is how language preserves it. In any case, I managed to save something.

Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph . ( polish translation by Andrzej Sobol-Jurczykowski, and back to english by me . )

[bones-n-bookles]

Not my books, but two books in my room rn that I wanna buy myself someday xD

Conservation Canines: How Dogs Work for the Environment, by Isabelle Groc, published 2021; owned by @petrichorpaws

How to Help Gun Dogs Train Themselves: Taking Advantage of Early Conditioned Learning, by Joan Bailey, first published 1993, revised 14th printing 2008; owned by a friend

[thoughtfulfangirling]

“There is a luxury in self reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, which gives us absolution.” 

-The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wild

[atomicniire]

Moss remained stubbornly uncommitted- to origin, to gender, to genes, went by "she" this time but not others

Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer

[jennablackmorebooks]

Thinking again about adapting a couple of my characters from ~2012 and I've got the perfect names for adapting them but... they didn't really... do anything? in the stories they were in. So how do I make a story with them. They had jobs and names and cute-coloured uniforms. That's just about it. And yet!

[skrs-cats]

have you read the more current arcs past oots? i know your more a lionblaze fan but ive been reading some of the more recent books and have been surprised by how much dovewing is in em especially tawnypelts novella and tigerhearts super edition, they got quality dove content

anyways thank u for singlehandedly keeping pot3 alive

ive read every book past oots up til... more or less ig the middle of tbc? ive read tigerhearts se as well as squirrelflights hope but the only other book i think i remember reading outside of the main series is nightstars manga (ive been meaning to read brightheart's but i keep forgetting ToT)

i havent read tawnypelts novella but knowing that dove is mentioned a lot in it makes me 🥺 im glad she still has a somewhat active role if at all, but being shadowsights mom was probably rough... not to mention her sister

thank you for enjoying the pot3 content WAHHH ngl ive always had a tiny quiet kind of fear thinking about how i dont know how to move on LMAO but im glad people still likes the posting nonetheless!!!

[gigamuffin]

Ahoy! I need inspiration to continue man o' war-ing on through the Aubrey Maturin series. (No matter what I do, I can't finish Fortune of War.)... What do I do!? Yours Faithfully, some weird person.

I struggled with Fortune of War too, I struggle to read, period! So I'm probably not gonna give good advice, but here are some things that got me through this series.

I was tag teaming both reading and audiobooks. Having my own paperback copies of the books was a HUGE help, both as physical copies and as ebooks (aka epub files). Being able to read back when I didn't catch something in the audiobook was my lifeline. (How you would get those is entirely up to you, nudge nudge wink wink.)

An advice for catching what you read in general is highlighting and writing stuff down, I did this anytime there a summary of where they were going and why, etc. Write down a condensed version of the mission in words that's easier to understand.

The other option is learning to cope with missing bits. I read all of it, but I didn't read all of it, you know? I would say I have not read the Mauritius command, even if I've gone through it three times I cannot tell you anything past the first chapter. There are chunks of this series I cannot retell even if I tried, I cannot tell you what the main plot of the yellow admiral is. I got through this series with only a vague understanding of a good chunk of it. And if you asked me what fortune of war is about, I probably wont be able to tell much besides, America and espionage intrigue ft. Diana.

[ineffablefool]

My household just finished watching Bullet Train (2022), and I cannot remember the last time I’ve felt such sheer *delight* at a new-to-me movie.  Everything keeps happening so much, and it shouldn’t all work together but it does, and Brad Pitt plays a secret agent codenamed “Ladybug” who is the exact opposite of no chill.  Like, all the chill that other people are not?  It’s because he took it.  He has a very good therapist.

The movie is a huge pile of potential triggers (bright flashy things, lots of gunfire, blood and what I consider a small but non-zero amount of gore, so very many onscreen deaths including those of major characters...), but if anyone watches the Netflix preview trailer thing and thinks “huh, there’s no way this can actually be as delightful as they’re trying to make it look”?  No, it is.  It is a zillion miles away from being in the Soft Zone(TM), but it does involve the use of Thomas The Tank Engine characters as a way of reading people.  Apparently one shouldn’t be a Diesel.