yellin bout stuff

So you've discovered my "secret hideout"... Hmm. But you should be the only one so far, right?

The breeze up on the roof is quite pleasant. The view is rather wonderful too, especially when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom.

I come up here to sit for a while when I want to be alone. It calms me too.

Now, this hideout is a secret between you and me. I ask that you keep it to yourself.

You seem surprised. Did you not expect me to prepare my own meals?

My duties with the Shogunate leave me little time for such things. Given that, I suppose your reaction is understandable.

Even so, on the rare occasions when I have time to spare, I find cooking rather enjoyable. It offers a welcome taste of ordinary life, would you not agree?

Hello everyone! I have managed to find some clean cover art for delicious in dungeon, buried in some promotional italian pamphlet (JPOP Direct)! Some of the files were even separated in layers, i'll put it after the cut

in which murderbot is a very normal terracotta soldier and ART the dragon spirit of a chinese junk who dwells in the ship's keel. they meet in the ming dynasty perhaps, when ppl are sailing places extra willy-nilly.

*Nüwa is the mother goddess in chinese mythology, known for creating humanity from yellow clay and repairing the sky.

thank you @mutualrapport for hosting the event! original prompt below.

I'm tired, boss... (now 6:30 am)

Mountain of chocolate

Family arts, part 5/?

uh.

huh.

hm.

Anyone who has followed this blog for a minute knows I am a huge fan of Isabel J Kim's short stories and was hotly anticipating this book. To the point I got scared I wasn't going to like it. Fear not! It's as exciting and strange as her short fiction, with more room to let the characters breathe.

Sublimation is set in a world exactly like ours—except when you step over a border with the intent to emigrate, you are split in two, leaving behind a separate self: an instance. The novel follows two pairs of young Koreans with American instances: Rose, traveling back to South Korea for her grandfather's funeral and speaking to her Korean instance Soyoung for the first time ever, and her childhood friend Yujin and his American instance YJ, who talk to each other like right & left hemispheres of the brain.

The first half of the book is deeply introspective, tracing the space between Soyoung and Rose and the legibility of each woman's desires—to her instance, but also to herself. What makes you you? What part is genetics, upbringing, the people you've surrounded yourself with? Why do you want what you want? Told in second person, it's a funhouse mirror of self-recognition and alienation.* The narrative is interlaced with reimaginings of Korean folk tales, the Odyssey, and the Garden of Eden as they play out in a world of instancing.

The second half pivots to a technothriller plot as Soyoung/Rose and Yujin/YJ's lives collide with the greater political and technological forces trying to control instancing. This part of the book is rapidly paced, complete with a naked knife fight and a big cinematic finish, but it also has some fascinating experimental writing and insights into the characters.

I've texted a dozen people I know about this book—my uncle who loves Dark Matter, my coworker who loves diaspora lit—because it's such an interesting & fresh blend of genres. For anyone interested in doppelgangers, body snatching, women with nothing to lose, the inability to return home, and strange prose.