Insignificant Soup

anyways one of terminology we have coined to talk about music is "Knee Music" which is derived from the fact that album covers that show a person's knees tend to sound the same as each other. It's kind of a sleepy, grungy indie folk pop sound with youthful-sounding, vocals that affect a candid and vulnerable feeling.

or anyway we found multiple album covers with knees in quick succession, and they all sounded the same, hence "Knee Music"

For a while, his method was slightly different, instead choosing a random genre and listening to it until he found a song from that genre that he liked.

you can find things like: * this map of chang'an when it was the capital of the tang dynasty

or * this reference on the various measurements and units, their conversions to more widely known western units, and their regional/dynastic variations or * this list of sayings related to marriage

for starters, the main character’s name is “alberino bacchus” which i can’t even type without laughing, but everyone calls him al. THEY LITERALLY CALL HIM AL. every time the novel forces me to see both his names together i start yelplaughing. alberino bacchus should be serving as a low-level courtier under the house of medici but instead he’s a quantico-trained forensic examiner who lives and works in “westlake,” which could be—anywhere, really. it could be in ontario or utah or new south wales or spitalfields or some disneyland version of new hampshire. and what about al’s coworkers, you ask? why they’re named “olga moroz” and “bart hardy” of course. BART HARDY you cannot make it up, i keep having to put the book down to laugh in sheer delight.

equally charmingly, the ML’s name is “herstal armalight,” because “herstal” is definitely a given name for sure (in belgium) and because so many people are surnamed after semiautomatic rifles. but the best part, THE BEST PART, is that very early on (none of this is a spoiler btw, everyone’s introduced in chapters 1-2) there are brothers who are apparently important members of “a latino gang” and you’ll never guess what their names are, YOU’LL NEVER GUESS: richard norman and thomas norman. WHAT IN THE MS-13 IS GOING ON HERE (and they have the additional hendry cox advantage of being fully reversible!)

it's just so completely dazzling and wonderful to have that ongoing realization: this is literally what anglophones seem like to the average danmei author, just incoherently-named language-garbling white monsters who are basically cartoon characters, hollering and trampling around the world being implausible. i love it so much, it’s just like every time the spirealm takes a moment out of its plot to drag capitalism. like YES PLS ROAST US MY QUEENS. cf. also priest's glorious bored refusal in sha po lang to ever give "the western pope" 1) a name or 2) any kind of an ending. he's simply not that important or interesting. merely evil, in a hat, when needed, then goes away and conveniently dies (…maybe? we think? she doesn’t even really make that very clear).

extra bonus: realizing this is IDENTICAL to how all my cdrama fanfic reads, whether historical or contemporary, no matter how much research i think i’ve done into coastal fujian or dongbei or hangzhou, no matter how many baidu pages i’ve laboriously translated. i’m literally a tween from nebraska who makes up preposterous elaborate romantasy names having never been anywhere further than mall of america, who thinks people from new england have a british accent. humiliating. i am glorying in being dragged this hard. if i were dumb enough to try to write a cultivation novel it would read EXACTLY like this.

OH MY GOD YOU'RE A GENIUS??? also i'm a dumbass, i didn't think about ANY of that. WINE AND GUN!!!!! (also someone on bsky said, hilariously, that lavazza mercader is just when you name a character after whatever objects you can see when you look around your office) and also!! preorders for vol 2 were announced today which i'm SO hyped for, look at this pretty pretty cover! desperate to know what happens next with these weirdos (affectionate) #teamherstal

I did start reading the fan TL that I could find but the translation isn’t the best ?? It’s just a little clunky sometimes. (I believe an explanation of Albariño’s first name will show up in vol 2). But I’m worried it’s going to take years to release this series. Looking forward to finally getting the next Rosmei volume, it is so pretty!! And the postcard art … (I did notice they changed translators so I really hope it remains just as good and stylistically similar.)

for starters, the main character’s name is “alberino bacchus” which i can’t even type without laughing, but everyone calls him al. THEY LITERALLY CALL HIM AL. every time the novel forces me to see both his names together i start yelplaughing. alberino bacchus should be serving as a low-level courtier under the house of medici but instead he’s a quantico-trained forensic examiner who lives and works in “westlake,” which could be—anywhere, really. it could be in ontario or utah or new south wales or spitalfields or some disneyland version of new hampshire. and what about al’s coworkers, you ask? why they’re named “olga moroz” and “bart hardy” of course. BART HARDY you cannot make it up, i keep having to put the book down to laugh in sheer delight.

equally charmingly, the ML’s name is “herstal armalight,” because “herstal” is definitely a given name for sure (in belgium) and because so many people are surnamed after semiautomatic rifles. but the best part, THE BEST PART, is that very early on (none of this is a spoiler btw, everyone’s introduced in chapters 1-2) there are brothers who are apparently important members of “a latino gang” and you’ll never guess what their names are, YOU’LL NEVER GUESS: richard norman and thomas norman. WHAT IN THE MS-13 IS GOING ON HERE (and they have the additional hendry cox advantage of being fully reversible!)

it's just so completely dazzling and wonderful to have that ongoing realization: this is literally what anglophones seem like to the average danmei author, just incoherently-named language-garbling white monsters who are basically cartoon characters, hollering and trampling around the world being implausible. i love it so much, it’s just like every time the spirealm takes a moment out of its plot to drag capitalism. like YES PLS ROAST US MY QUEENS. cf. also priest's glorious bored refusal in sha po lang to ever give "the western pope" 1) a name or 2) any kind of an ending. he's simply not that important or interesting. merely evil, in a hat, when needed, then goes away and conveniently dies (…maybe? we think? she doesn’t even really make that very clear).

extra bonus: realizing this is IDENTICAL to how all my cdrama fanfic reads, whether historical or contemporary, no matter how much research i think i’ve done into coastal fujian or dongbei or hangzhou, no matter how many baidu pages i’ve laboriously translated. i’m literally a tween from nebraska who makes up preposterous elaborate romantasy names having never been anywhere further than mall of america, who thinks people from new england have a british accent. humiliating. i am glorying in being dragged this hard. if i were dumb enough to try to write a cultivation novel it would read EXACTLY like this.

No, no, and NO.

AO3 does not live in “the cloud” because that is other people’s computers, and other people’s computers are vulnerable to censorship.

AO3 is on its own computers. It does still have to be housed somewhere, and I suppose a determined enough hater could try to find that place and go after it, but it’s a lot harder than sending spurious complaints to Amazon or whomever going “BadWrong things are hosted on your cloud service!”

AO3 is not “in the cloud.” AO3 is stored on physical machines that the OTW owns.

Uber is a fucking shell game of a company designed to leech investor capital and output bootleg cabs.

Nvidia posted a profit in 2023 of $4.37 billion. This is like someone stealing less than a penny from me.

And they lock this kid in a prison hospital for LIFE?