headstone | Reading

I have worked. Uh. A lot. Over the past three weeks. o_o But now it's the weekend, and I don't currently have a rewrite to work on, and March Break lies ahead; the spring crunch isn't finished, but it's on hiatus for the week, and a normal workweek is a breath of fresh air at this point. (Also I'm taking a couple of days off during it.)

Yesterday work wrapped up early enough that I had an actual evening, so I was finally able to start Butterfly Effects, the fifteenth (!) InCryptid book. ("Finally" is a bit of a stretch, I guess, since it's still the release week, but this is a Sarah-narrated book. Mostly. SARAH.)

So my hopes for the weekend are pretty much: avoid napping (I don't find naps restorative and feel groggier after than before I started); finish reading Butterfly Effects; watch this week's The Pitt and hopefully the temporarily-streaming production of The Importance of Being Earnest with

scruloose; get

scruloose to redo my undercut; and (also with

scruloose) do a second round of advance-prepping ten or so bags of the dry ingredients for my breakfast banana bread while also baking up a new batch of loaves. I think that last will also require decanting cinnamons from bags into jars, so maybe we'll manage a bit of other spice decanting/sorting while we're at it.

Current Mood: groggy

shadaras

mm, in service of Remembering To Post, a bit from the thing I'm working on right now:

Quail and Olive’s does serve both quail and olives, but turns out to be named for the proprietors, a married Orcish couple who tease them about being on a date until Rhei waves their hands and says “We’re friends” in an exasperated tone that, wonder of wonders, convinces them it’s true.

Later, most of what Mouse remembers is that Rhei keeps pushing more onto Mouse’s plate and hands them the wrapped bag of leftovers—“to share with your father”—because they had ordered far more than it was possible for two people to eat. Mouse doesn’t remember the taste, just the warm light and the way Rhei banters with Olive and smiles at Mouse, including them even though Mouse barely speaks aloud, too overwhelmed by the richness of the food and the way they’re assumed to be a person and not a slave.

Rhei leads them back through Adrium’s streets, calling a glowing orb to their hand to light their path. At Mouse’s start—Adrium is not a city of mages but a city of merchants—Rhei says, “Elf blood,” rather apologetically. “El sighs over the odd array of spells I’ve learned to cast, but light is useful and not too hard.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Mouse says, because Rhei seems to expect some response.

“If you want to learn, you can. Not from me,” Rhei adds a moment later, laughing. “I’d be shit at teaching magic. But Tsarra—she’s the magic-user on retainer at the House—or El probably could teach you the basics. Don’t worry about it right now, there’s no rush, but— It’s an option, should you desire it.”

Desire is something too big for Mouse to consider right now. They’ve desired little things in the past—clean new clothes, a full night’s rest, a piece of cake—but the only big thing they could think of is the freedom they have just begun to attain. They nod, say nothing, and let the strange feeling of possibility bubble through their chest. It feels like anxiety and anticipation, and Mouse can’t look too closely at anything but the longing to see their father again.

(otherwise: work is work, school takes too much time and is sometimes very visibly "we need to say you've been in this building for X number of hours" more than "we have specific things to teach you", and Daylight Savings Time stealing an hour throws off my bodyclock so much.)

umadoshi

Last week was once again mostly swallowed by work and I'm very tired, plus I have to final-read a rewrite this afternoon.

Between Friday night and yesterday, I managed to read a couple manga volumes and

scruloose and I saw the new ep. of The Pitt.

That's all I've got right now.

Current Mood: exhausted

skygiants

Sometimes you read a book at exactly the wrong time, and you're like 'god this stupid big fat fantasy novel. Why are you six hundred pages. Why is everybody Sexy. What's the point of you. I'm tired' and sometimes you read a book at exactly the right time and you're like 'thank god! actual worldbuilding!! somebody had a good time getting weird with this! please tell me more about how weird you're getting!!' and I think I could easily have gone either way on Tessa Gratton's The Mercy Makers depending on the four books I'd read just previous as well as the time of the moon. But as it happened, at the point I read it I was really hungering for something, ANYTHING that felt like it actually cared about depicting a unique and distinctive society with characters that felt like they actually belonged in that society, and The Mercy Makers gave me that in spades, so I ended up really high on it! I had a great time! Please understand that I mean it lovingly when I say that it felt like a visual novel high fantasy dating sim!

-- this is a bit disingenuous for me to say, I haven't actually played more than a bit of any of the long visual novel high fantasy dating sims I'm thinking of, but I have read extensively through

alias_sqbr's write-ups of them and the book profoundly reminded me of something like [

alias_sqbr's description of] My Vow To My Liege, where a player character has to play a lot of really dramatic political games to decide the fate of the kingdom, while surrounded by Hot People, and different elements of the plot will play out depending on which Hot Person she's closest to --

Okay, so we are in a fantasy empire that is built around a central religion that values Balance and forbids Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques. Our heroine Iriset, of course, is an atheist who's wildly gifted with Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques, and is also the daughter of a criminal mastermind. Iriset and her father have carefully crafted a secret identity illusion so that everyone thinks that someone else is the Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery Mad Scientist Genius and that the famous criminal mastermind's daughter is just a nice girl who's not really involved, so that when her father eventually gets arrested -- as indeed is the inciting incident of this book -- Iriset can hopefully stay free and rescue him instead of also getting arrested herself as a famous magical heretic.

For some reason, however, after her father's arrest, Iriset -- whom everyone knows is a criminal heiress but, once again, thinks is a nice and sweet criminal heiress who's not really involved, rather than an amoral heretic mad scientist -- is sort of non-consensually invited to become one of the handmaidens of the Emperor's hot sister as part of complex political schemes, so she spends the rest of the book in the palace, where she meets the following hot people:

- the Emperor, an earnest and well-intentioned young man who is really devoutly religiously dedicated to maintaining the Balance of the Status Quo
- the Emperor's sister, Iriset's boss, whose job as per official tradition for the Emperor's sibling is to be a priestess who placates the religion's divine devil-figure by going and being really sexy at a shrine every day, but has political visions and ambitions for the Empire far beyond her Sexy Role
- the Emperor's fiancee, a very sweet princess from neighboring island kingdom, who is a fundamental element of the Emperor's sister's overarching plans for an empire that expands through marriage alliance instead of conquest
- a mysterious, suffering, untrustworthy fairy sort of creature who has been publicly imprisoned behind the Emperor's throne for the past several hundred years and is now just sort of a standard part of the decor

In addition to these obviously romanceable characters, Iriset also has an existing criminal boyfriend on the outside of the palace who she's attempting to get in touch with and coordinate with about Operation Rescue Her Dad, and she also meets a palace maid and a fantasy-nonbinary magical architect (uses one of several archaic gender forms) who in the dating sim version of this would probably be secret or hidden routes.

The first, like, two hundred pages or so of this six hundred page book are mostly just Iriset wandering around the palace, trying not to be too obviously a heretical mad scientist, building various schemes for father-rescue and trying not to get distracted by much she would quite like to bang any or all of these hot people. And, again, at another time I might have gotten bored, but at this point in time I was really just enjoying the slow rich worldbuilding. It's weird! It's interesting! Everyone always wears elaborate masks and facepaint except for the foreign princess who's confused by the whole system, and we've reinvented a different kind of four humors system so everybody's like 'well of course she would act this way, she's got too much ecstatic force in her system', and the political conversation about marriage reform refers to the law that forbids conquered peoples within the Empire from marrying within their own ethnic group for a certain number of generations, and there are several archaic genders that are no longer used and people have chat about how actually we should bring them back because two is an imbalanced number and four would be much more balanced -- what I'm trying to get at is that it feels like the people in this book think in ways that are shaped by their world, and not by ours. The plot in its actual happenings is constantly contriving itself so that Iriset will be pushed into a position where, eventually, she'll have to Rebel Against Empire, but the thought patterns that get us there feel distinctive and grounded in the world and setting that Gratton has built.

But eventually, of course, we are going to have to get some plot and it is obviously going to have to involve Chekhov's Heretical Plastic Surgery and messy identity porn. ( the rest is spoilers )

forestofglory

The last several days my foot has been extra painful and I have been very grumpy about it. It’s really unpleasant and I would like to stop being grumpy already. But I have been reading things while trying to rest my foot and distract myself so have some thoughts:

Ghost Circus written by Adrienne Kress art by Jade Zhang— MG graphic novel about, what else: a ghost circus. The story here didn’t really grab me, but I loved the art, especially of the circus performances. (content note: ghost kids, child in peril)

Lumberjanes, Vol. 15-20 by Shannon Watters, et al.— I have now read all of the main series of these! There’s still some extra stories and graphic novels to check out, but the main thing feels complete. Vol 19 where the campers decide to do one last thing before the end of camp was especially charming. The ending was a bit rushed but narratively satisfying. This whole series was very good and fun and I’m glad I came back to it and read the second half.

Gotham Academy Second Semester— The second Gotham Academy series. This one is all one long arc where the first one was more episodic. I didn’t like this quite as much as the first series, which I adored. Its a little bit darker and less fun. But I still love Maps and Olive and their friendship. I’m sad there aren’t more of these, but at least there are a few more stories where these characters show up for me to read. (Maps reminds me of very early Tim and I think it would be fun if they hung out, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.)

Batman, Vol. 6: Abyss by Joshua Williamson et al— I read this because it contains a story featuring Maps from Gotham Academy. That story was great! (Well except for the fact that some of the art of Japanese characters was bordering on racist caricature– that was not good at all!) The rest of it wasn’t bad– a little confusing because so much of it referenced other story lines and I have no idea what’s going on in comics this decade.

Kindred Dragons by Sarah Mensinga— A very sweet MG graphic novel about a girl who really wants a dragon egg. She lives in a world where fairies bring some girls dragon eggs – but it mostly runs in families and she isn’t from a “kindred” family. It’s set in Canada which confused me at first, but works for the vibe. The book says “volume 1” very prominently so I was a little worried that it would end on a cliffhanger but it's a complete story.

verity

*ghostly voice drifts down from the rafters* if you like my fic... I am doing FTH this year... and you can bid on it here: https://fth2026offerings.dreamwidth.org/129917.html

I'm offering 2ha & MXTX, but if you're interested in other fandoms I've written in 2019-present, feel free to message me before bidding and I'll see what I can do.

umadoshi

Work/life overall: Usually before a seasonal crunch starts at Dayjob I think to post something to the effect of "I'm about to be swamped, so while I'll probably/hopefully manage to keep up with reading posts, commenting will probably be mostly nonexistent, etc. etc.", and sometimes I feel a bit silly about it because I'm not as active a commenter as I'd like anyway and sometimes the crunch isn't that bad, and probably most people reading this already know that anyway...but I have some newer mutuals here now and I didn't think to post it, and friends, this crunch is CRUNCHY. Ohboy.

Media intake: LOL. (Okay, I did actually read a couple volumes of manga last night, and I did show ep. 1 of Heated Rivalry to

scruloose last weekend. But I think that's it.)

Weather: We did get lots of snow early in the week, but somehow yet again didn't lose power. No complaints!

Cats: Last week both of the blues had birthdays! Yona turned four on Tuesday and Sinha turned five yesterday. (It would be very convenient to have a pic of the two of them together that'd make a good icon, but the odds of that ever happening are not remotely good. Have an icon of baby!Yona.)

Current Mood: exhausted

reading

Reading

A scattered weekly proof of life

it's the vibe of a sunday six even if it's more than six sentences

Quick and perfunctory weekly proof of life

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Media Roundup: Grumpy Foot Pain Edition

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Weekly proof of life, seasonal-crunch edition

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