week_in_readings (2/nov28-dec4.2020)
Dec. 6th, 2020 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fwcuthis week i reread [far from the tree], and i read a memoir [in the dream house] and then i read an extremely horrible and wretched book [the burning god] but it finally got fun and the things i wanted most to happen in the book happened... but they happened in a really bad way. and then i woke up and the post-book hangover set it. i also read, another incredible fic [you can come through]. and i think those are the only things i read this week. so the count is low, and perhaps very low in intellectual value ... i don't know please don't look at me. Anyway this will get long.
< Far From the Tree > aideomai
what do you want me to say? it's far from the tree. of course it was as good the second time around. i was actually reading for the james/lily secret foreshadowing that draco was actually Dad, but....nothing was really on the nose or terribly clever or like...buried in the text that u would only catch-on a reread when u know. but that doesn't mean it wasn't GOOD. everything about this fic is still so perfect i don't know i have like 3 different versions of a review and they're all like scattered to the wind ... but like, what more can i say!!! i'm a girl with deep wrist pain i don't have the physical luxury to write down MORE thoughts! but draco being so possessive was so sexy, especially when it's countered with harry who wants to be Wanted.... stealing a joke from lin but like... wow it really is like NCT Dream said, you're my missing puzzle piece.....
< In the Dream House > Carmen Maria Machado
oh this was so good. i cannot stress how good this was. it was so good. i'm hoping to reread before i return it, but my track record is uhm ..... anyway. it left me with a lot of thoughts and some wandering questions - a lot that was separate from the subject matter covered. i think it's hard to talk about this book because it's covers the author's abuse, and it was catharsis for the author to be able to write it out and convey it to her readers, and i think the way for me to respect that and value it is by reading it and going 'that was so fucked up. you didn't deserve that. and i believe that this happened.' so when i talk about this book, i'm not commenting on her experience or saying anything about it....that's not for me to say, her words are her own. i'm instead either talking about her experiences unrelated to that relationship, or just the way she wrote the book itself. it's important for me to make this distinction but i don't know if it conveys all my sentiments anyway.
- early on, she mentions an aunt who was horrible to her during her girlhood and her mother excused that away as due to the aunt's chronic pain, and the author mentions that she develops the same condition later in her life, but she's never mean to kids. / i was thinking about this yesterday, and just wondering. my mom told me about how my grandma used to take away my brother from her, and how he used to cry ... and how experiences like that in early childhood have effects on kids and their psyches ... and again it's the question 'why didn't my mom step in to help me' .... my grandma is back in town, except now she's being mean to my five year old cousin, and the other day her parents came over and they were both stressed out and my aunt was near tears, because both of them are powerless to do anything to help their daughter or get my grandma off their backs ... and this isn't a question to the author, but just in general, about how hard it is to reconcile the idea of your parents who are supposed to be your protectors, failing in that responsibility and the idea that they were suspect to the same abuse and as powerless as you were. mostly, i've gotten out unscathed by grandma (she doesn't care for the girls) so i think it's easier for me to look at it like this. but i guess if anything is comparable, like i've been mad my whole life that my brother was allowed to be such an asshole to me, but i've realized that i can't ask my mom to step in because then he's just an asshole to us both, and i don't want to subject her to that more than i have to.
- on a unrelated note, have you noticed how good writing is just good use of metaphor. or like, as of recently. i feel like it's a very popular trend in writing now, especially with more personal pieces that are also supposed to double as artform .... especially the formula of like:
(i) lists subject of metaphor
(ii) informs reader on subject of metaphor
(iii) draws connection between subject of metaphor and what author is relating it to
(iv) boom. emotional impact achieved
obviously, there are soft limits like writing style and readability and what counts as 'metaphor' but it's still...interesting! i do like this style of writing a lot, reading this has just made me realize that.... everything else i've read has operated on the same principle. anyway. it's beautifully executed here and was used in insane ways at some parts (the Dream House as Choose Your Own Adventure) but was weak at other times. but for when it worked, holy shittttt.
- again this is kind of my fault, but like....the author is bisexual and like, she doesn't really talk about it much [though, what is there to talk about?] ... anyway from the way she wrote it, it was kind of like she chose to only engage women in relationships at some point - which i'm not against, and i can imagine why someone would make that choice. but it also like, filled me with this kind of inevitable doom of like ... You Will Choose. i can't explain it but it's like the bisexuality paradox of <you are not half straight or half gay You Are Bisexual> but like being bisexual Is Like <you are half gay and half-straight> ............................................................. i dunno it's not something that really bothers me but i do find myself wondering anyway
< The Burning God > R.F. Kuang
Ms. Kuang i will kill you. no. i will write a rin/daji fic so horrible and so filled with marathon lesbian sex and so absent of Altan Trengsin even though rin is having a Sexual Thought and it will become so popular and renowned and such a pioneer work that you will have to read it and be so shamed by the ao3 author's note where i leave links to my 3 part, 3 hour long youtube commentary video essay Tearing This Series into pieces. anyway i think i kind of enjoyed it. the character assassination to my 1pick. she was like 'well...he doesn't have qara anymore so he can't be weird and dreamy....that now means he's a reasonable person to deal with' YOU FUCKING HATE GAY MEN!!!!!!!!!!!! NOT ONLY DID YOU HATE CRIME YOUR INDIGENOUS GAY CHARACTER IN THE FIRST BOOK, BUT YOU HATE CRIMED HIS BOYFRIEND IN THE SECOND BOOK BY KILLING HIS TWIN SISTER, AND THEN YOU HATE CRIMED THE BOYFRIEND HIMSELF IN THIS BOOK. NOT TO MENTION! NOT EVEN TO GET INTO! THE AMOUNT OF STRAIGHTIFICATION RIN DID ON ALTAN THRU HER OWN FANTASIES OF HIM. god there’s so much to unpack and i don’t want to paragraph spam. I think i need to dedicate an entire post to just being mean about this book. It does not deserve to merit so much thought or effort or time from me but like. HATERISM! So i’ll do that at some point.
anyway i guess like, goddd. it's so funny that this is considered a 'grimdark' and like yeah nearly everyone is dead by the end but the only death that mattered was like....altan in book1.......and everything else had no resounding impact on rin or anything........like rin lost her hand this book but that changed virtually nothing or had any lasting consequences. also rin like causing extreme bodily harm and pain to kitay by channeling her powers..... fuck it i guess nothing has consequences! or like. rfk focuses on the wrong things she tries to tell this story. i think there genuinely could be something good There. somewhere in tpw, it just was written by the worst writer imaginable. i don't knowwwwww tpw really doesn't deserve any kind of thought from me
< you can come through > moodmaker
>wow it's like, one author you really like writes a pacrim au where they triangulate your otp in the most desired way possible....but for it to happen TWICE? like i really don't know the genuine math behind this, but if i'm thinking about is via statistics/subconscious effects/etc ... so ao3 user moodmaker and ao3 user rensshi are both nctzen writer mutuals and definitely like have some circle overlaps [the fun of looking at anyone u think writes well on ao3 and realizing they are either mutuals with ash or have mutuals in common with ash...hilarious TBH] so it is very very possible that twitter user mythsick either read/saw - okay it occurred to me to look at the claiming period of 00ff to see if this was a sustainable theory and actually, um. No. of course i don't know about other circumstances [prompt switching/etc] but... wow.... bar from them maybe discussing the logistics and universe building details of pacrim, it's like....near pure coincidence that they both ended up writing the fics of my dreams. so that just means my extreme psychic power has paid off. screaming i'm so sorry this makes me look so crazy. and also i've mentioned nothing about the fic. but man. i know things are not *for me* and it is completely By Their Own Merit that both authors wrote these intensely insanely good fics....but holy shit the product of their merit and work being my dreamfic. *stares into -* *stares into * *stares into * some of us are going insane just thinking about it all still........
anyway my favourite thing ever is triangulation where, i'm just going to cut in the line:
(2) the fucking dynamics of it!!! i love when first_love is challenged by first_choice like i think it's everythinggggg. i also love the work that went into uncovering that reveal piece by piece, and while That's Happening, At The Same Time, we're also looking at how renjun was clearly just ignoring all the warning signs of his own haechandisease ... i don't know it was so fun to be like 'I Know What's Going' while starting to read and just having that be completely flipped on you. the reveal that haech got jaemin because RENJUN actually got haech ... dimensional mind chess has been played and Lost. i also looooove that renhyuck are at odds throughout the fic and the constant push-and-pull where one is combative while the other isn't....everything is sooo.....it is sooo..... and obviously re/pacrimisms... the moment where they reach out and grab each other's hands against the waves of memory....so powerful. im broken.
(3) the first time scene. t-t this deserves it's own section because to me it's everything and i also love first-time-on-the-brink-of-tragedy trope..... the palpable desperation coming from hyuck, and the framing of why renjun agrees....not because he wants to out of the same desire, but because haech deserves at least this much from him.....and that is Alll..........oh it's so fucked up also because they're both desperate re/different things. renjun thinks hyuck rejected him, and hyuck is reeling from pre-emptive rejection ... and it's all so deliciously written in how they can't interpret or understand what they're doing... the way this first time has to be separate from any perceived intention and also the context leading into it .... but was weaponized through out the entire fic anyway..... everything is so perfect it's so perfect..... to me it so perfectly culminated what their root conflict was...and how it serves as both the climax and the resolution of this fic, because it's here where are their problems are revealed, and it's through the recontextualizing of this act where thye finally understand what the other had meant. AUGH. i also have some thoughts re/ how their inability to understand/be transparent with e/o here ultimately meant they weren't ready to be drift partners anyway, and it's only when they resolve this persisting roadblock 4 years later, that they can be Drift Partners. AUGH.
