It's probably inevitable (even necessary) that the people who devote their lives to becoming as good as possible at some particular art or trade or w/e also develop a horrible outsized and self-congratulatory conception of how important and vital and fundamentally human it is. Doesn't make listening to them wax poetic about it in an interview any less insufferable though.
Okay not to be a hater about a book I haven't read but like, this is the blurb for Goodreads' 'most popular new fantasy'
and I mean - this is not any sort of moral issue or anything. But I really struggle to conceive of a how this could be written in a way that doesn't make it transparently clear that its main goal is pandering to and flattering the egos of its imagined audience.
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In pulling together the Kickstarter funding for the pilot episode of my paranormal rock musical audio drama Everyone Leaves Alive (out now!), one of my backers generously gave at a level where I agreed to write an original song for him. When asked what to write about, he said either municipal zoning or car dependency.
LYRICS
Well take a good damn look
At the ride you’ve got
A truck the size of Texas
in the CostCo parking lot
A hood high as a flag pole
and there’s just one catch:
your monumental Chevy
has a blind spot to match
All the cyclists are shaking
a disaster in the making
There’s a reason they think you’re a pig:
You don’t need a truck that big
And just from making car hoods
of a kickass larger size
In eight years, three thousand
more pedestrians have died
And people shrug and say that
it’s the land of the free
(Free to get pulped by an SUV)
Is it worth it, the lost lives?
Worth it, the gas price?
Worth it, just to own those libs?
You don’t need a truck that big
It’s not as if you’re moving
loads of two by fours
Your flatbed is as empty
as those words of yours
Yeah you live in the suburbs
you ain’t hauling hay
but we pay the blood tax
for your cosplay
All he punchlines are waiting
'bout overcompensating
are you prepared for that type of dig?
You don’t need a truck that big
Well, it’s a driver’s world,
carved into this land
Public transit swept away
by Big Oil’s mighty hand
They say “jaywalking”
if I just cross the street
The only question left is
how much dirt I’m gonna eat
Hear that El Dorado thunder
oh it’s mankind’s classic blunder
Hubris, final form: a giant rig
You don’t need a truck that big
You don’t need a truck that big
You don’t need a truck…
Heaven Will Be Mine is a really interesting game that also makes no sense. There's tons of in universe lore documents for you to read and it makes even less sense. You play througha couple endings with a couple characters and it makes even less sense. It only gets more incomprehensible has you experience more of it and I'm worried if I keep going it might all snap into focus at some point and my brain will break in response.
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It's crazy that social media broadly never adopted the queue, an iconically great Tumblr feature. I love the feeling of hurling posts into a void through which they will later emerge in an orderly fashion.
also I'm still just thinking about the clarified, what the fuck do you mean this book has empty spaces dolls in it
what the fuck do you mean they use he/him pronouns
me:
I cannot fucking wait for you to meet [REDACTED] (author's note I meant Iscend here)
her:
look I can only assume that if Baru encounters one (1) female clarified she's going to immediately [the entire plot of RESCUE HOUND]
me:
no comment
her:
she was already like "wow this is so hot I can almost overlook him being a man"
every now and then I see people passing screencaps of these posts around, and in the months after I made this post there were people checking in on me assuming I was going through grief or depression or something
to set the record straight, the context is that I had covid and was bleeding from my throat and lungs, but for some ungodly reason, I was feverishly driven to drink lemonade and kept screaming and writhing because I was pouring fizzy lemon juice on open throat wounds
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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The Eye of the Leviathan, MA Carrick (14 July). In an alt Spanish Golden Age, a faerie changeling teams up with his replacement to defeat conquistadors.
The Intrigue, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (14 July). Historical fiction about a con artist who falls for his victim's niece—all while they in turn are scamming him.
The Dragon Has Some Complaints, John Wiswell (14 July). An argumentative wild three headed dragon infiltrates a dragon riding academy.
The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood, HG Parry (21 July). King Arthur threatens to rise in WWII era England.
*The Lord of the Wood, EM Anderson (21 July). A clockmaker stumbles into an enchanted forest and its cursed master.
*The Felicity Complex, August Clarke (21 July). A young woman is created to serve paranoid billionaires in an apocalypse shelter.
The Demon Star, Jesse Aragon (28 July). Dune-esque epic space opera about a futile battle against the gods.
A Trade of Blood, Robert Jackson Bennett (11 August). The latest Holmesian biofantasy mystery.
Daggerbound, T Kingfisher (25 August). The sequel guy trapped in sword romance, this time m/m.
Wickhills, Premee Mohamed (8 September). A rogue intelligence agent is on the run while trying to hunt down a scientist beneath the city.
A Snake Among Swans, Hannah Kaner (8 September). A young heir marries an old warlord to save her country—and destroy her new kingdom from within.
Bodies of Magic, Freya Marske (15 September). The evil magic medical school murder mystery.
Dead Beat, Leigh Bardugo (15 September). The latest Alex Stern novel, in which a door to hell opens on the campus of Yale.
Mazywood, Tananarive Due (22 September). Multigenerational thriller about a Black filmmaker discovering the story of his grandmother, an actress.
The Thief and the Traitor Bride, VL Bovalino (29 September). A spy is sent to infiltrate enemy territory to find a relic—with her estranged husband.
*The Unhaunting, Micaiah Johnson (29 September). Horror about a suspiciously unhaunted house.
The Scarlet Ball, Nghi Vo (6 October). A young Vietnamese woman assumes a debutante’s name and face to compete for a demon husband.
A Wall is Also a Road, Annalee Newitz (6 October). An alien grad student studies ancient Pompeii.
Horngard, Elizabeth Moon (6 October). Big epic fantasy over the struggle for the throne in a neglected kingdom without a ruler.
The Book of the Dead, ed. Jonathan Strahan (6 October). Anthology arranged around the theme of death with an impressive turnout of authors.
Milkteeth, Caitlin Starling (20 October). A vampire broodmother struggles to control three fledglings.
The Slantwise Histories and Other Stories, Alix Harrow (20 October). Collection of short stories by the author.
Call Me Traitor, Everina Maxwell (27 October). A woman forged into a magical weapon must ally with a rank and file soldier on her mission to track down traitors in the desert. f/f.
Code and Codex, Yoon Ha Lee (27 October). Ancient jail traitor 2!!! Space linguistics edition.
Chateau Reverie, Natasha Siegel (27 October). Attendees to the Auction of Secrets bid their deepest truths in hopes of winning a wish, set during the French Revolution.
Saved by the Spell, Tanya Huff (3 November). Magic school from the point of view of a very tired teacher dealing with a new hero.
*new to me or unvetted titles.
Part 1 is here. January and later new releases beneath the cut:
Kill Your Darling, Mariana Costa (12 January). The reluctant millennia-old avatar of evil tries to break free of his fate—and his counterpart, the avatar of good.
The Flower Court, Kate Elliott (12 January). Two women, a lowly servant and the empress' most sophisticated handmaiden, are co-opted into searching for a noble's sister.
Godburned, Foz Meadows (26 January). A man forced into being the tool of a god reluctantly teams up with an investigator to find three missing children.
Where Fire Reigns, Jared Pechacek (2 February). The unknowing messiah is stolen by a fugitive airship crew in a salt desert.
The Literary Remains of Cornelia Fayen, Johanna van Veen (2 February). A romance author fleeing the reveal of her sapphic affair gets caught up in her brother's cursebreaking scheme.
A Devil of a Crime, T Kingfisher (9 March). A retired devil and a retired angel team up to solve a murder mystery.
Tyrant in the Cracks, Hache Pueyo (16 March). A professor and his assistant travel though alternate realities on a tropical island country.
*The Fall of Elvenesse, Kai Ashante Wilson (23 March). As elves face the apocalypse due to their cruelty, the last saint must venture into Elvenesse to ensure the survival of the free peoples.
The Seventh Banisher, AK Larkwood (30 March). Gothic fantasy about two cousins struggling to survive on an island in order to win their great-aunt's fortune.
The Lady of Thorns, Tasha Suri (1 April). A condemned prisoner is sent a quest to kill the Lady of Thorns in her labyrinth to win her freedom.
The Animals We Became, Finn Longman (2027). Retelling of the Welsh story of the flower bride. Reportedly contains t4t shapeshifting.
“That’s actually fairly accurate,” Maryam mused.
It was a little endearing how Angharad lit up, like she’d been handed a second helping of honeycake or a respectable reason to stab someone.
Need to start an Angharad Tredegar has a praise kink evidence file
The forthcoming battle no one needs to have, doesn't even need to be named, in a place that doesn't even really matter strategically because we said so and there are a dozen reasons to keep the war machine churning. Part of the reason aspects of this anime are going to be evergreen is that this is the same story all the time, all over. I said Amestris has reminded me of Prussia, and the story itself has reminded me of the Vietnam to Iraq pipeline, aspects of the Ishbal extermination remind me of the Armenian genocide, I am sure I have mentioned other things because the bummer of the deal is that these things repeat over and over and over again, and it is a mistake to think "Oh, X would never do that" I think they might though!! And I am a dilettante in all but American History, someone with a more expansive education in...probably any history can tell you about similar situations in those countries and places.
And I think this is actually a really good aspect of this show; I also think because of it this is probably one of those shows that can attract a "enjoying media as praxis' element which I find annoying, but if it exists it has not found me to my face and I wish is a very pleasant 'please don't involve me in this in any way'.
Anyway, to the point of what I'm actually saying, I think he's talking about Liore, but the point is, IT WOULD NOT HAVE TO BE LIORE. It could be anywhere, because Amestris is a military state that is trying to be constantly in conflict for a wide variety of reasons: Colonial power--it's 1915 and land grabs are not quite out of favor, resources, as a show to other powerful countries, but also something to consider is that feeding poorer and less connected kids to the war machine is a method of control. I have very strong feelings about this by dint of personal experience and so I'm not going to go into lest I VASTLY overreach what the show's trying to say, mea culpa. But the point is that there WILL be a battle, because there has to be a battle, because the battle is a part of the government and a controlling factor of a very powerful group in Amestris that, if they got their shit together for like...A WEEK, could overthrow the entire government. I mean the government should be scared shitless of these Alchemists. Roy and Ed teaming up ALONE could put a fucking hole in the government.
So i actually do thing they find these alchemists young, who are very good, and I do kind of think they must quasi-intentionally break them against the wheel of military service. How else could they possibly control them? I think the same of the young men of Amestris/so many fucking places in so many times. You have to go. There's a battle. I promise it will make you a hero. What battle, where? Who knows. Who cares. I promise you the world. You are so strong, you will be fine, it's all glory. There's a battle. Go and die for it. Go and kill for it. A bayonet is a weapon with a working man at both ends. Kill a man you have more in common with than the ones sending you. God forbid you ever realize that. And be shattered by it. Then maybe we'll give you chance to get out.
PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT ANYTHING THAT COULD EVEN REMOTELY LEAD TO ME REALIZING SOMETHING OR KNOWING SOMETHING NEW. I hate having to do this, but I’m trying to watch this completely cold, like a 13 year old on her couch!
Do not:
Confirm
Deny
Mention anything about what BroHo or the Manga do (let me get there!!)
Correct me–this includes mentioning something I should have seen but forgot.
Contexualize something culturally or historically
QUICK LINK TO THE SPOILER-FILLED FUNTIMES DISCORD HERE. THEY WOULD LOVE TO HEAR THE THINGS YOU KNOW AND YELL ABOUT ME. THERE ARE MANY DISCUSSIONS THERE
Obsessed with the ways in which Yoshiki is just turned into an anxious shepherd mix by the power of his own homosexuality. I love you. Your mix of sentimentality and horniness is incredibly winning.
Please do not spoil me! I am watching as i liveblog, I have no knowledge of what is to come! Please please please do not confirm, deny, hint, supply outside information like interviews, or anything like that!
However! You can go lose your SHIT over on the Disco
The conflict here, the way he thinks this is terrible, this is terrible, this feels so good. This is a horror but of course it's textured with this sexual energy. Fake!Hikaru is literally inside him, and it goes from feeling odd to feeling good, but it has this tone of wrongness to it, a feeling that he should NOT be enjoying it. Because so much of it is about his conflict with his own homosexuality. This is a feeling he's enjoying but he feels he shouldn't, the desire and disgust and pleasure and horror are all part of the same complicated idea running through his head.
Please do not spoil me! I am watching as i liveblog, I have no knowledge of what is to come! Please please please do not confirm, deny, hint, supply outside information like interviews, or anything like that!
However! You can go lose your SHIT over on the Disco
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I went to a panel once about translation where part of it was a game where the various translators had all looked up the opening passage to Neuromancer in the language they translate from, then translated it back to English to talk about the differences. The Russian translator had three versions, because as she said, "Russian don't care about copyright."
