myrdschaem

I finished the Chernobyl book! It was really heart-punching, wring your heart out interviews of all sorts of people. Some who lived there, some who were drafted into helping with clean up, some scientists who were trying to get objective facts out, some local officials making choices that focused more on calming panic than protecting people. People speak very frank all throughout and that makes this book strong. The first and the last individuals both are harrowing love stories to the husbands who died in clean up. It's the sort of love that is epic and more cheesy than all other couples and sadly they proved it both when their husbands start becoming sicker and sicker, staying by their side. They brought me to tears with ease.

All of the persons in the book are worthwhile to listen to though. Another case that was fascinating is the people who stayed or who kept coming back. It's their home and that was their way of life, in a way they didn't seem like they could imagine anything else. Multiple people crossing into the forbidden area to get the potatoes into the ground because that's what has to happen. No matter that no-one should actually consume any of the products - but of course they were mixed with others and sold anyway later. Officials kept worrying about how to fulfill their five-year plans while the military had to scrape off the topsoil and bury it for safety. Bonkers.

In fact, there were regulations and recommendations for radiation exposure and everyone broke them constantly. Maybe they don't see anything getting bad right now and keep going or they are given useless radiation meters or they are all just ignored. It resonates a lot with what I experienced with the Covid policies actually. Scientific evidence that is translated into best practices was/is just ignored because no-one wants to take the responsibility of issuing unpopular orders. Hard choices like transplanting villages or not producing anything in the zone anymore were either done much later or never. Even easy stuff like giving out iodine tablets, which were in storage just in case of nuclear war (!), got skipped because they might be needed later. A lot of people suffered as consequence.

The interviews read fast and are all personal. I assumed there would be some facts between when I bought this, so I wouldn't recommend this as an introduction on the whole thing. I will track down other reading I guess. This rec comes with a bunch of triggers, specifically animal death and anything with radiation sickness, cancer and death, including of children.

In other news, I'm slightly fixating on the newly released Shin Megami Tensei V. I don't have it nor do I plan to buy it right now but the urge. I love that they just straight up fused the protagonist teenager with a buff demon to make a superior femboy. Iconic! In fact, the protector demon seems very fussy and concerned with his teenage charge, so I ship that of course. The game play looks addictive. I admit I usually go for story over cutting edge graphics or cool gaming, but SMT games make what could be repetitive turn-based rpg play fun as fuck. The demon collecting aspect is great as always. I have seen some screenshots from talking with demons that are hilarious, like asking whether the protagonist is a top, middle or bottom, demons afraid of human fans, demons asking you to step on them and more. I am hyped, honestly.

Instead of buying SMTV, I caved and bought SMT IV to scratch the itch. I have played Apocalypse, the sequel to that game, before. It works beautifully to scratch my need. I'm at least 25 hours in with a ton of resetting when a random encounter suddenly wipes the floor with me and I. Love. It. Even though it's challenging and always a danger, the whole thing is addictive. I'm happy to grind, collect demons I'm missing or trying to fuse something cool. It's the best.

I started tracking recs roughly a year ago - as evidenced by the numbers, I missed nearly 20, but it's still going, so that's something. It's still more Star Wars recs with the bulk being QuiObi, the pairing I liked as a teen looking back on the first prequel. And some Soulmate Goose of Enforcement crack.

( Read more... )

Ok, September was extra shitty for me and my mental health. I'm back, trying to pick up some pieces, so six week round up it is. Some phases include remembering Attack the Block exists & crying about Moses, scrambling to find works for CCPA submissions, sudden swerve into the Mortal Kombat, which I have never played, pairing Sub-Zero/Scorpion and crying about Pride (2014 movie) for a solid few days. I am also operating under the premise that making podfic of something is enough of an endorsement to already be a rec, haha.

( Six weeks of fanworks )

This week is almost all from the Star War... Oops. I swear I will go back to Transformers and Overwatch too, but this week was mostly Codywan fanworks since there was a theme week.

...At least it was until I got into trouble with my NAS. Now a huge three weeks of updates but also with a lot of pod together recs too! There are some awesome, awesome creations in there.

( Read more... )

History and Politics of Wuxia by Jeannette Ng

Great short introduction into the foundations of the genre which has gotten popular here recently too. Untamed/MDZS and so on all come from the tradition. Ng also talks about Han supremacy which is also part of the genre. In light of wuxia getting popular in Hong Kong first and also as a counter the Cultural Revolution, this makes sense as a diaspora genre. However, mainland China has embraced and even claimed Wuxia for itself and instrumentalizes it.

I admit I only know the bare bones of the genre as well. I have been reading a complete translation of Outlaws of the Liangshan Marsh, one of the genre fore bearers, for a few years - I usually go for full text with classic works, it just so happens this one is 2000+ pages. Despite being one of the four classic Chinese novels, it was at least partially transmitted via folk story telling.

Every chapter has some sort of fight in it and, I can't emphasize this enough, all of them end on a cliffhanger. E.g. the ending of the chapter I am currently at:
"And because of Zhu Tong's request, there was turmoil in Gaotang Prefecture and strife in the Liangshan Marsh stronghold. A noble patron of learning fell into the clutches of the law, a hospitable relative of the emperor was cast into a dungeon.
What was the demand which Zhu Tong made? Read our next chapter if you would know."

It's very easy to imagine, say, traveling story tellers narrating one chapter one evening and then leaving it like this for the next night. With up to over 100 chapters, it's an action series in words and uses an actual To Be Continued to have you hooked.
 

A more comprehensive look at the fallout of the story "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter".
I liked it overall when I posted about it here and only added on later that there was speculation about it being malicious. Well, it wasn't. Isabel Fall is trans, but this clearly hurt her deeply. In this very depressing read, one positive thing I want to take away is the concept of reparative readings of art (vs. paranoid) as something to more consciously practise. I hope Isabel Fall will come back in some shape or form, because she deserves to be whole and her story made me feel things, which is probably the best marker I have for good art.
 

Finally, platforms fandom uses are making bad choices:

- Tumblr introduces paid posts. Everyone I know hates it and I feel like we are just waiting for a fan getting sued because they monetized their fan content. I wish it doesn't happen, but I don't have that kind of faith in the world.

- GDrive is going to change their security and as an unnecessary result, a lot of links may become broken. This is mostly horrible for people like podficcers, who often host there for streaming. I am not scared for currently active podficcers, but I am sure older file links will get broken. Especially devastating since the audiofic archive broke a few years back, so there is a high chance that some will have zero working links.

Finding good hosting for multimedia fanworks is a big struggle. Outside podficcers, I think only vidders have it worse.

 

( So have some vid recs to cheer me up again. )

Again after a fortnight - I will try to pick it up again. Long post is long and there is more Clone Wars in this. I finished watching the series now. Also some Overwatch femslash and a lonely Hikaru no Go fic.

( Read more... )

A bit late again here. Mostly I have been reading Clone Wars fic and being underwhelmed, I admit. But there were still some outstanding works. The first one deserves to be over the cut even!

But can it run Doom? by gifbot. Doom (Video Games), Crack Treated Seriously, Rated T, Warnings for Graphic Depictions of Violence.
If you missed the news, this fanwork is not a fic, it’s… Doom run on ao3, played by everyone who is currently checking the page. As far as I know, it’s not going well for the readers, but what an achievement. Shitpost of the year, easily.
Some technical explanation on what is going on - mostly the Doom is run on a remote server, gets input via links and rendered as an endless gif, but. technicalities. So yeah, of course ao3 can run Doom, why did we ever doubt that?
( Read more... )

It’s the return of the crosspost to pillowfort! Except I have twelve more I made on dreamwidth in the meantime. I will see about porting them over in batches over time so I don’t flood people.
( Read more... )

Straight into it.
( Read more... )

Wow, made it through another ten. I’m kinda surprised I keep it going this long, even with little feedback, and at the same time not at all surprised that I am procrastinating like this.

( Read more... )