i'm in the middle of Music's Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac by Sylvia Kahan, which is fascinating so far. i'm really looking forward to doing a writeup on it once i'm done. tl;dr: it's a biography of this chick who was the Big Lesbian Money in the Parisian music scene during her lifetime; she personally commissioned a bunch of Composers You've Heard Of and had them debut at her salons and such.

and, yeah, as i said, a full writeup will come later, but rn i'm just noting something that struck me / gave me an unexpected Some Kinda Feeling, idk—

( this is probably all really banal to ppl who read more history and/or queer theory than me idk lol )

This was a really solid page-turner.  I think marketing did this book a little dirty—the cover art gave me romantasy vibes, and the marketing copy called it "dark epic fantasy," but I don't think it's quite either of those things?  It's a full-speed-ahead court intrigue throwdown that happens to be in a fantasy setting.  A very cool fantasy setting, to be clear, and I could imagine some fun building-out-of-the-world if there's ever any more books in this universe, but as-is, most of the action here is about secrets and close spaces rather than magic or battles or romance.

( Read more... )

I managed to miss the explosion of "romantasy" as a genre so entirely that, when I went to a writer's workshop a year and a half ago, and a fellow workshopper read one of my stories and was like "yo, you could totally make this into a romantasy and make bank," I was like "oh cool, thanks! what's romantasy, again?" And when another workshopper sidled up to me afterwards and said, hey, this is good but it is absolutely not romantasy, do NOT take that other person's advice," I was like "oh cool, thanks! uh, what's romantasy, exactly?"

I then proceeded to spend all my time post-workshop frittering around writing a bunch of Exactly What I Want To Write without bothering to learn a single damn thing about The State Of Modern Publishing or researching the market at all, so, y'know, thank you kindly fellow students & sorry that your thoughts were so wasted upon me...!

But even so, I managed to vaguely glean a couple factoids and takes about this whole "romantasy" thing. Y'know, the sorts of takes you see on Tumblrs and in Substacks and such—"let women enjoy things" vs "they're pornographic trash" or whatever. Which sure rhymed with some stuff I remember hearing when Twilight was a hit, so when I finally got around to reading Fourth Wing, I was expecting... something like Twilight, right? Something not-really-to-my-tastes but nonetheless satisfying and pulpy? Like, I read the whole series back then, and while I didn't love them and wouldn't have read them if they weren't a popular phenomenon, like... they were in fact a pretty good time! I remember the third book in particular having a very satisfying progression and a cool final battle! I liked the weird Americana backstory stuff with that Jasper guy! The vampire baseball shit was legitimately charming! It was very easy for me to read those books, even as a judgy know-it-all teenager, and see what the appeal was.

I say this to establish some non-snob credentials because I worry I come off like a dragon here sometimes. "I can enjoy fun and normal and kinda trashy things," I say, persuasively and convincingly.

But like... Fourth Wing... really...?

Even in the depths of my virus-induced delirium, I found myself cringing at so much of the language—every instance of "for the win" was like nails on the chalkboard of my soul; so much of the language was just stupid or self-contradictory on a line-by-line level. And by God it repeats itself, often, as though it's worried you're... only barely skimming the text? only half-paying attention? so you need basic stuff repeated to you over and over? but it managed to do this so much it annoyed me even in the depths of my virus-induced delirium! Ahhh!!! (I commented on Tumblr that part of this might just be a "house style" thing? I guess?? if so I hate it???)

And there's so many logical/plausibility inconsistencies—each minor in their own right, each which might be easy to overlook on their own—but they pile up so much I was just left wondering what the stakes were or what basic facts were or who or what I was supposed to care about, so often, that I was just confused and annoyed most of the time.

Like:

( This section is literally me just scrolling through my Kindle notes and rambling on everything I marked with a "???". It gets so long oh my God. )

( the rest of my thoughts )

...in conclusion I do not think I am the right person to aim to try and write anything in the category of "romantasy" anytime soon.

time for the annual tradition~

Total number of completed stories: Six! They are:

Four Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn fics:
* Man of Letters (Pelleas & Naesala, Pelleas/Micaiah/Sothe)
* a way in the wilderness (Naesala/Leanne)
* Solstice (Reyson & Lillia)
* snake & sweet flower (Sothe/Tibarn/Reyson)

A Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 fic:
* thrash the lake white (Verso &/ Sciel)

And my Yuletide fic, which was written for the James Tiptree Jr. story "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever":
* That Which Crieth Unto Me From the Ground (...er, weird sentient birdlike things...?)

( rest of the meme under the cut )

the good news: my partner got me a fancy audio interface* for my birthday <3 so i can pull nice recordings off my piano now! and i broke it in by recording myself playing Verso's theme <3 it was very fun <3

the grind:

( Read more... )

Thank you in advance, kind stranger! I have requested some rather niche fandoms and I'm SO delighted by the possibility of any fic for any of these. I'm pretty easygoing & omnivorous when it comes to fic-reading, so please have fun writing, and follow your inspiration where it leads, even if it doesn't entirely match the prompts here!

(Also: I'm happy to receive treats!)

( General Likes )

I mostly read gen, but I also enjoy very shippy or smutty fic, so long as there's still significant plot and/or character study elements. To that end I also have a list of:

( Smutty Likes )

I mostly enjoy things that stick close to canon facts/settings. However, I do enjoy setting-based AUs when the new setting has a ton of flavor (e.g. coffee shop AUs or standard college AUs tend to be too bland for me, but I've enjoyed stuff like "they're all national park rangers" AU or "US Revolutionary War" AU, etc). Canon divergent AUs / "what if?" AUs are also great if you've got a cool idea for one!

What I've written, bookmarked, and been gifted on AO3 does a pretty good job of showing the range of things I'm most delighted to read.

Do Not Wants (DNWs): AUs where the primary focus is erotic (e.g. omegaverse, d/s verse, slavefic, etc), vomit/feces/piss

Okay, on to the fandom-specific stuff~

( Gilead Series - Marilynne Robinson )

( The True Deceiver - Tove Jansson )

( Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 )

( Teixcalaan Series - Arkady Martine )

on the one hand: last time i publicposted about piano here i got such fun & lovely comments

on the other hand: surely further navel-gazy blathering on that theme would only be boring though

on the other other hand: but i am writing that kind of thing down anyway, for like, My Own Purposes, so like, idk maybe someone else would be curious to see

on the other other other hand: this is all probably incredibly cringe to watch i'm so mediocre at piano for someone who took lessons for so long sigh

synthesis: okay, this post is public rn, but i reserve the write to access-lock it at any time out of shyness/self-consciousness haha. it will probably not be interesting unless you want to hear What I Learned About Piano Today-type stuff~

( Read more... )

anyway yeah. that sure was two thousand words about Picking Piano Back Up As An Adult, please and thank you

I will be at* Worldcon!

* as in, "I live here so it is trivially easy for me to be around Worldcon" haha. I do have a membership & may drop into the con itself but that's not guaranteed yet, something something PTO days

If you're following me on here there's a pretty good chance I'd get a charge out of meeting up irl; feel free to reply here (all comments screened) or shoot me a DM or send me a messenger pigeon or whatever

Okay, yeah, as people watching my Tumblr may have already noticed, I gave Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a try on a whim (mostly because of this post tbh) & I had a grand old time & now I'm here to dump some thoughts about it before I lose them forever.

Full disclosure, a big reason that I got SO into this game (devoured it in ~2 weeks) was because Bird Guy got into it too, at exactly the same time, and did you know it is VERY fun to blast through a big bombastic game in Your Favorite Genre alongside the love of your life? Highly recommend it. We were heckling each other and swapping strategy protips and speculating wildly about the plot together the whole time; it was SO weeby in our household lol.

We historically have somewhat divergent tastes in video games (he plays FPSes, Soulsbornes, and grand strategy games; I tend more toward turn-based tactical RPGs, narrative-driven RPGs, stealth-action games, and platformers). There's also a lot of places where our tastes overlap (we both love a good puzzle game, hence both of us getting oneshot by Blue Prince a few months back, and we both enjoyed e.g. Breath of the Wild), but up until now I don't think he's ever liked anything in the (admittedly fuzzy) space of "big, bombastic, narrative-heavy 90s/00s-style RPGs."

( a list of all the ways this game is a big fat love letter to A Specific Era Of RPGs )

So, yeah, the game nailed a 10/10 on "bottling up a bunch of highlights from the RPGs-of-a-specific-era into a modern Essence Du Jour." This will probably make me sound either sappy or deranged or both, but I really do feel like it let me share something precious and lovely with my husband in a way that finally got him to enjoy it too, and I'm pretty grateful for that. Sort of like the first time I took him to see fireflies in Kentucky because he, a west coast boy, had never seen them before.

Combat, however—combat is very different than any mainline Final Fantasy game, and it rules, actually.

( what the combat is like )

The plot's another thing I was a little apprehensive about going in. The premise sounded a little stilted/weird/cheesy to my ear, and the vague rumblings I'd heard about the game online made it sound like it was all going to be some sort of philosophical-dilemma-disguised-as-a-story sort of deal, which is just not interesting in to me. (I very seriously entertained majoring in philosophy; I've taken classes on "what if we were a brain in a vat tho" kind of dilemmas; I get the appeal. I just don't find it as appealing these days :P)

Without spoiling, I'd say it doesn't really demand deep philosophical wrestling any more than, say, Christopher Nolan's Inception does—it's there if you want it and I'm sure forum nerds are arguing about it at we speak (<3 you forum nerds, you are my people), but it's mostly focused on some broader thematic concerns and the attendant characters. I don't think the characters or their world are quite as juicy in terms of their interpersonal dynamics or as fully-fleshed-out-in-relation-to-their-world as, say, the Final Fantasy 10 cast... but they're interesting enough (Verso and Maelle prove particularly chewy), there's good synergy in the ensemble, and the game REALLY leans hard into the light-and-dark interplay suggested by the title. The bright/charming bits are SURPRISINGLY goofy and silly and disarming for it; the grim bits are grim in a PG-13 way but no less satisfying for it.

Okay that's al lthe general stuff. Some more spoiler-y and off-the-cuff thoughts below—no major spoilers but if you're like "I do not even wish to Know The Name Of Potential Bosses In The Game," yeah, here's your chance to stop reading.

( vaguely spoilery stuff )

oh god also i forgot to mention the soundtrack. straight bangers, every single one of them. i have the sheet music for "alicia" and "verso" sitting on my piano as we speak. truly it is the 90s again and they got their own damn Uematsu lol