#windcalling

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

The first thing they have to do figure out what's happening to all the letters that he and Shijie have been sending for the past thirteen years. Wei Wuxian figures that whoever's responsible for that is not only to blame for Jiang Cheng's suffering, and Jin Zixuan's, but is probably at least partially to blame for the machinations around Jin tower.

"And how are we going to do that exactly?" Jiang Cheng asks.

"Shut up," he says. "We're working on it."

Intercepting two letters at two different sects at the same time - he's not even really sure how he did it. It's also sealed, so no one but Jin Zixuan or Jiang Cheng could have opened them, which would have been a real disaster.

Then again, he wouldn't have thought anyone would intercept them in the first place, so it's possible - no, if they'd read the contents of the letters, they'd know.

“Oh!” Suzie says, looking even more delighted, and then frowns to herself. “Wait, I thought you were still unpresented, though. When did you present?” 

“What time is it?” Kon asks. 

“Um–I think about six or so?” Suzie says, peering back over her shoulder. “Maybe? I don’t remember if I looked when I came in, I can–” 

Kon was possibly too subtle for Suzie there, yeah. 

“M’presenting now, ‘zie,” he huffs, closing his eyes for a moment and nuzzling into the pillows in his arms as he re-hugs them. He thinks he felt more stressed-out about that earlier, maybe, but he doesn’t really remember, like . . . why, exactly? 

painfully advancing forward sentence by sentence

“How did you even get these?” Mu Qingfang said, fascinated.  He’d certainly used some of these plants before, but they were usually in dried or powdered form.  He’d never had access to the fresh variants.

“Oh, you know.  Around,” Shang Qinghua said. “You run into a lot of things when you’re running all over the continent trying to sell melon seeds, haha.  Perks of distance coverage!”

1. book you’ve reread the most times?

The Wolf House, by Mary Borsellino, by far. (which is technically five books, not one, but i own them in one volume)

for a while, i could see how much of my writing style i absorbed from that book, although it's changed by now. a very formative book (in the horny vampires and messed-up power dynamics senses) i need to do another reread of

9. when do you tend to read most?

right now, i tend to read on my commutes to and from work. although only sometimes, because i get self-conscious about the faff of pulling a book out of my bag when the train is packed with people

15. recommend and review a book.

oh ouch, i'm not sure i'm qualified for reviewing books. if it were someone else asking, i'd just recommend Ninefox Gambit, but uh...

A Madness of Angels, or The Resurrection of Matthew Swift

urban fantasy set in London, written by someone who loves London. Matthew Swift, an urban sorcerer who died years ago, is brought back to life, but... different. one part revenge quest (on whoever killed him, and why), and one part reverse murder mystery (ie. who resurrected him, and why). it has a fantastically interesting narrative voice, making really good use of a first person POV

it's heavy on the lush description in a way that's a narrative choice for his particular city-sorcerer POV (there's two books in a sequel series, not from his POV, which have a very different narrative voice)

33. How Do You Feel About Lan Qiren

Okay so. As typical with...characters Cygna has opinions about...the question is, do you mean the Lan Qiren we're given in canon, or the Lan Qiren that happens when you fill in a person who - basically, who is the main character rather than a plot device with legs. And I don't mean that in a bad way! In writing, not everyone can be a main character. And some characters exist primarily to - well, MDZS is a romance, so all characters fundamentally exist either to make the leads kiss or prevent them from kissing.

I think Lan Qiren has thoroughly internalized the attitudes of the Lan Sect, even when they are shitty and even when they cause him suffering, and that's. Less than good, in many respects. But at least it's consistent! ...Honestly there are fundamentally two different Lan Qiren...s... depending on whether he's written as particularly strict and stern for a Lan Sect elder...or unusually open and reasonable. The latter is kind of terrifying but I don't think it's out of the question, and my favorite LQR fics tend to put him on that end.

I do always feel for him, that whatever life he'd thought he'd have when he was young got shelved indefinitely because his brother Could Not Be Bothered to lead the sect, or parent, or get a woman's consent before marrying her. (I do not feel for Qingheng-jun.) LQR did do some C- parenting, but At Least He Tried.

49. Is Nie Huaisang More Of A Goody Or A Baddy?

I don't really think that's a helpful question to ask about a character? He's sure a guy who does some stuff! And has some reasons! But, like, weighing them against each other morally is...I don't know, I don't particularly enjoy that.

He is the guy who brought his mob-violenced best friend back from the dead! That's pretty cool, especially if you like Wei Wuxian and think that him being alive is a net positive. And that did lead to finding out and punishing some really uncool crimes. We're into that, right? (mumble mumble inherent flaws in retributive justice mumble)

But he is very much also the guy who looked at a depressed and outcast teenager and, rather than helping him, instructed him on how to not only kill himself but destroy his own soul, to make that previous paragraph happen. That is...less cool. There's no indication that Mo Xuanyu was a Bad Person who Deserved To Be Driven To Suicide (uhhhh, if you think that that's a degree of bad that someone can be, which: no), or even that he had harmed NHS in any way. But he was convenient!

A lot of the MDZS characters have this duality to them - WWX most of all, but as other characters are meant to reflect him, they pick it up to. And I think that's cool! And like - the cultivation world in the book's greatest single flaw, probably, is sorting people into Always Good or Always Bad.

Congrats! It is a tome.

alright so the thing I find really funny about it is... I don’t know if you’ve read anything else by Hofstadter, and it is impossible that I am gonna keep straight what anecdotes is in what book, but the dude is so rambly! Personal object lessons and exactly how a music affected him and what he thinks of people who are doing music wrong and reviewing some books he read and aren’t numbers cool and over-explaining his exact thinking process during thought experiments.

And you know, whatever. Some authors are just rambly. More probably wish they could get away with it.

Except that one of the theses of IAASL is that, if someone gets to know you well enough, their brain will create a personality matrix of you that sees the world from your perspective, and that this virtualized personality is - in a way that Hofstadter apparently personally truly really believes is meaningful - a valid extension of one’s self. And you don’t need to know them personally. If they could get enough of themselves into a book? Totally counts.

SLIGHTLY LESS INTERESTING THAN IT SOUNDS LMAO... my friend group and i started using “i’m at soup” for “i’ve fallen down a rabbit hole somewhere and now i’m several hypothetical situations deep,” and then the name stuck for an au-of-an-au

... and then it migrated over into the initial au, as one does

Aww, thank you!

Pinboard is one of my favorite sites and it is absolutely worth the money, if you’re ever interested in tagged social bookmarking (they even have a tickybox where you can self-identity as a member of fandom and it will show you popular links among fandom users) -- and I’m glad you are getting some use out of my recs! I need to read some more of these stories I have saved and add them to Pinboard.