Shabba's Blog

[kaapi-writer]

Review of The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne

TL;DR: 1 of out 5 stars.

This review has been cross-posted to my Goodreads. Feel free to add me on there!

If you're wondering just how terrible I found this book, I actually created a DNF shelf because I felt like I couldn't continue with it any further. Should probably add that I have a bachelor's degree in biotechnology, so I'm more familiar with the basis of Cray's work than the average reader.

Theo Cray is a computational biologist. We know this because he repeats this to everyone he meets - all while he secretly judges them for not knowing what that is. Actually, that's all the guy does, seemingly - boast about his profession and judge people. Off the top of my head:

> Implies a forensic tech isn't a scientist because she doesn't know about a fungal infection exclusive to frogs (!!!) - and takes a leap further and says she only collects samples, doesn't examine them. This is patently incorrect since a forensic technician's job requires at least a bachelor's degree in some sort of science.

> Says he hates explaining his work to non-scientists - because of course a freaking police detective should be able to parse a university-level explanation on phenotype plasticity so our hero isn't inconvenienced.

> Makes a crappy inside joke and then notes that his audience doesn't react. Non-STEM people don't have a sense of humour at all!

> Thinks people with doctorates in fields unrelated to medicine/science who insist on being addressed by a title they earned are just hot air. Because they're not in hospitals curing cancer.

> Calls it "emasculating" when a colleague tries to comfort him when a one-time student of his dies.

> Pretends to be humble about a research grant as if he's not been dissing non-STEM people since the first page.

> Did I mention he's scientific? Data gives him a mental boner. Totes.

> All this, and suddenly he goes off track to spend pages on explanations like DNA testing or how GenBank works. But don't you hate explaining your work to non-scientists?

If the author has written this with the intent of it being ironic and wanting us to dislike Theo - that's a great concept, but what makes it great is the apparent authorial intent behind such a premise. Off the top of my head I'm reminded of Madame Bovary. Flaubert was masterful in narrating the story at two levels - one from Emma Bovary's point of view and one as the omniscient narrator who wastes no time in poking fun at her. All we have in The Naturalist is Theo's self-absorbed, insipid monologue, filled with useless interjections about his opinion on everything.

The writing is clunky and strange in places. The dialogue attempts to be witty in places, but I don't know whether it's because I disliked the rest of the book - it fell flat. In some places, it feels like the book was written in third-person and then switched to first-person.

she felt her warm blood drip down the cold flesh of her stomach

with my spectacles and absentmindedly combed hair

My words are terse and filled with self-loathing. "It's not her that I blame."

She could pass as a Brazilian or any other beautiful mélange

Oh, and this isn't even including the plot holes.

> One of Theo's former students, from like six years ago, dies. She took one class under him in one semester. She never contacted him after that, but apparently she told everyone he inspired her(?) and when she dies of a bear attack, his first instinct is that it's his fault because he didn't caution his students enough about the dangers of nature. What?

(Spoilers under the Read More link.)

> After he's already been suspected of murdering the student, he trespasses on to the scene of the crime(!!!!) and destroys evidence, is caught and is then immediately released. What?

> He finds a vague connection (USING THE POWER OF DATA) and does not understand what the shady contact means when she texts him 1004BJ. What?

Theo Cray reminds me of the worst side of STEM - people thinking their work alone impacts the world, as if commerce and law enforcement and writers and mental health therapists don't matter. He's self-absorbed - that's acceptable. What isn't acceptable is that I'm 40% through the book and not one character seems to be capable of putting him in his place, even verbally. Frankly, it might be possible that he gets his just deserts at the hands of someone by the end of the book. But I'm not going to stick around for that long.

[heroacacaps]

[kaapi-writer]

Detroit Metal City Review

(MyAnimeList) // (Anilist)

TL;DR: Beneath the crudeness, this is an amusing and absurd show which is worth watching at least once. The secondhand embarrassment is strong and the story is quite unique. Overall a solid 7 out of 10.

Warning: Profanity and off-colour jokes abound. 

Spoiler-free review beneath the cut.

Detroit Metal City-- not going to lie, the name made me think it was some sort of mecha. With cars. Because I don't listen to KISS, and I had no way of knowing the song this was based on. BTW, the song by Kiss is quite good:

So, going into this anime with no sense of what metal really entails, I've come out much the same. But it was an enjoyable ride. People will tell you this anime is crass and vulgar. They're right; it is, and I nearly dropped it because I dismissed it as having nothing to offer besides shock humour. But that's where I was not quite right-- it's just that the shock of it temporarily blinded me to the genuinely funny aspects of the show. Negishi Souichi is an average music graduate whose dream is to write those fluffy cupcake pop songs which are super cute and earnest and diabetes inducing. Unfortunately for him, he earns his bread in the role of his alter ego Krauser II, lead of Detroit Metal City, an up-and-coming metal band on the indie scene. The humour in the series arises from his conflict at being the enemy, with his friends and family having no idea of his double life and his own urge to leave the terrible world of metal behind for more pleasant pastures. The secondhand embarrassment in strong, especially when bowl-cut, round-eyed, bashful Negishi interacts with Aikawa, his longstanding crush who loathes metal. It's an Id and Super-ego sort of situation, with Negishi's rational, traditionalistic side wanting to move away from metal while his inner Krauser emerges at the most inopportune moments, usually around Aikawa. She and the rest of the supporting cast are fairly run-of-the-mill; part of me questions why Aikawa even tolerates Negishi when he acts crazy, but then the point of this show isn't really making sense. Everything related to metal music is exaggerated to absurd propotions, with Krauser's crazy fans taking the erratic and murderous aspects of his persona in stride and praising accidents as deliberate showmanship. This is all made funnier by the VAs for Negishi and Krauser, who do an excellent job narrating events. I have to attach a warning though: the word rape is thrown around a lot and until you get used to it in the context of the show, you might have a hard time ignoring it. In my opinion, the show isn't misogynistic, merely absurdist to the extreme, and it makes fun of rape jokes as it does patricide and the image of violence attached to metal culture -- but you may feel differently. Detroit Metal City isn't something you really understand, just something that you half-laugh, half-cringe at but can't look away from. As for the technical aspects, the music is quite decent. The OP is very catchy and I can't stand the ED because the lyrics are too cheesy. The art style is very...unique, with a combination of stills, jerky motion and flash-style movements that suit the narration. Overall, I think the creators wanted a memorable, absurd anime and they succeeded. Definitely a one-time watch for me, but an interesting one.

[albino-penguin]

This was a project fro my graphic novel drawing class. I thought it’s finally time to post it.

This is base on personal experience and its just basically my general struggle with art school. :/

Keep reading

[kaapi-writer]

Tfw you find a super-relatable comic.

[goodobservationshirley]

Mystère à la Tour Eiffel

[lezziemanville]

I dont know what this is but I want to be on it.

[profeminist]

Mystère à la Tour Eiffel: The French Lesbian Eiffel Tower Murder Mystery Period Costume Drama of Color in Which ZERO Lesbians Die that You’ve Been Waiting For

[waytoomuchinformation]

YAAAAAASSSSSSSSSS

[ottermatopoeia]

you’ve heard of ‘Korean Gothic Lesbian Revenge Thriller’ now get ready for ‘French Lesbian Eiffel Tower Murder Mystery Period Costume Drama of Color’

[gonegrls]

I’m living for this

[kaapi-writer]

PSA THAT MIYA ATSUMU HAS A TWIN BROTHER

OH MY GOD

(Also i know someone out there is writing fanfiction already lol)

[misutorekun]

Pretty daddies and their babies just because (♥ω♥ ) ~♪

[itsyourturndreaming]

he’s been here for not even a chapter and I already love him

[kaapi-writer]

His face was very heavily creased, and into each crease he had tucked some worry or other, so that it wasn’t really his own face any longer, but more like a tree that had nests of birds in all the branches.

Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

[vimeo-deactivated20240328]

Watch these amazing 3D printed sculptures, designed to animate when spun under a strobe light. 

[kaapi-writer]

This is just incredibly soothing

[freifraufischer]

Okay, some fandom history, why show writers and authors say “for legal reasons” the can’t read fan fic.

Back in ancient times in the 1970s there was a show called Star Trek the Animated Series.  It was on the air as fandom culture around Star Trek was really taking route and there were many fanzines (things on actual paper that people bought) being published and the first conventions to attend.

David Gerrold was a writer for Star Trek the Animated Series who had also written one of the most famous episodes of the original series The Trouble with Tribbles.  While he was around the production office for STtAS he was introduced to a couple of fans who proceeded to tell him all about their ideas for an episode–essentially a sequel to his famous episode–which it so happens he had already written a script for.  When that episode aired he received a letter from one of those fans lawyers demanding “credit”.  It so happened that he could prove that the episode existed before the meeting but the involvement of lawyers and a threat to sue became widely known.

Marion Zimmer Bradly was, before recent horrifying revelations decades after her death, a titan of fantasy writing.  She also welcome fan fiction and published it in anthologies and in a magazine she published.  One day she opened a story sent to her and the plot of the story was essentially the plot of a a novel she had nearly finished writing.  More than a years worth of her work was now unpublishable because it was provable that she had read this story with this similar plot and she couldn’t prove the work on the novel existed before she saw the story.  She stopped publishing anthologies and fan fiction and in particular the MZB story is the one a lot of professional writers know as representative of the dangers of fan fiction.

So when a writer says they can’t read fan fiction for legal reasons it’s that their own lawyers are protecting them from outside lawsuits.

And this is why knowing your fandom history matters.

[kaapi-writer]

Book Review: The Giver by Lois Lowry

(Goodreads link)

TL;DR: A touching story, but lack of proper world-building and preachy undertones along with a need to shove the author’s point of view down the reader’s throat make this an unsatisfying read. 2 out of 5 stars.

Review with slight spoilers under the cut.

I went into The Giver ready to give it a chance but also ready to drop it at the first annoying YA cliche I came across. God forbid there was some special snowflake teenager who was entrusted with saving their community. What I came across was in a way, worse. The cliches, which definitely annoyed me but were far from bad, took a backseat to the actual story which was arguably so. The protagonist belongs to a community that is, well, communal. Everything comes to them through the established governing body - food is delivered to the doorstep, announcements are made to give people instructions, even interpersonal behaviour is governed to an extreme degree. For example, there is no unique birthday - there is a single ceremony held at the end of the year where all the kids are assumed to be one year old. Children are described by their age (Ones, Fives, Tens) while adults are classified by their occupations (Birthgiver, Nurturer, Engineer.) Now, obviously that's messed up, and the author has no qualms telling us this in big loud letters. Fair enough, but my issue is - where's the backstory? What has caused the government to take such extreme measures to curtail individuality? I mean, of course there must have been some reason, and no doubt the history lesson would increase the depth of the story. While great pains are taken to depict how people live, there is little to no explanation as to why they live like that, just a brief conversation where it's clear that the government thinks availability of choice is the root of all evil, and thus they remove any and all choices. The author takes great pains to show that this curbing of freedom also restricts people's emotions and turn them into robots, and she'll find no arguments from me there. The protagonist, Jonas, is a special child of course, but his conversion from one of the mindless to someone who thinks is skimmed over without proper exploration. If feeling were so natural to people that one would take to it like a duck to water, then why is he alone aware of "deeper" feelings that arise from human experience? The whole thing seems too convenient, a simple story of black actually being white. The sad part is, it took me sleeping on the message of the book to parse what it actually said - it successfully swayed my emotions long enough to give it a 3 star rating before actually moving it down to the 2 it deserves. This book would be great for an average 12/13 year old to read, yes, but they might not possess the critical thinking to go beyond the scope of the story. There's a reason a "special" protagonist is a cornerstone of YA literature - at an age when everyone is becoming aware of their individuality, having something that stands out, the way Jonas' ability does, is an experience everyone craves. But it is pretty dangerous to place individuality above all else, to pretend all families are happy and loving, to pretend choosing your words is a burden rather than a way to make things easier for everyone. If I ever read this book with a member of the target audience, I'd feel obliged to make sure they understand that not everything about the Sameness is inherently bad, because the book doesn't do that in my stead. Of course, it's not all bad, hence my two-star rating. The idea itself is quite unique, and the book is a pleasant if not particularly enticing read. I made my way through it like one does a chore, with a certain absent-minded comfort that arises from monotony. The ending was quite vague and the climax didn't hold enough tension for me - I found myself tsking in the last couple of pages. I think what upset me most about this book is how it could have been so much more, even if it had been done ham-handed, rather than this pale little tale. At one point, Jonas analyses his sister's words in retrospect, and comes to the conclusion that though she said she felt angry, what she actually felt was shallow impatience and exasperation. Similarly, the reader needs to analyze what this book shows vs what it claims, and draw their own conclusions on where it stands.

---

If you’d like to discuss more books, you can find me on Goodreads!

[kaapi-writer]

Multishipper Mondays (Fanfic recs)

So I’m starting a new series where I recommend fanfic I like every week. Hoping to catalogue the fics I like and what I like about them (without spoilers, of course!) I’ll try to keep rotating the ships I like (I like a lot of them.) Currently it’s only the Haikyuu fandom. I also classify them by length:

Short: 0 - 10,000 words

Medium: 10,000-30,000 words

Long: >30,000 words

THIS WEEK’S RECOMMENDATION: Resolved by Crowne_of_Winterthorne

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Word Count: 4597 (Short)

Ships: Iwaoi

Summary: There are three ways to get Oikawa to shut up: hit him, kiss him, or… A University fic where Oikawa and Iwaizumi take care of some of that unresolved sexual tension that's been building for years.

My opinion: I mean...PWPs, right? They’re harder to write than they look. A good PWP has to have the following things: good descriptions of the mechanics of sex, believable interactions between the characters, varying degrees of emotional intimacy (or lack thereof) and more importantly, the writing has to convey what they’re feeling. Since Iwaoi is my OTP and I am a very picky reader, Iwaoi fics which make for good PWPs are a rarity for me, and this is a recent discovery. Both Oikawa and Iwaizumi are in character and the back and forth ensues even as they have sex. Quite enjoyable.

[dithe-r]

[dettsu]

I’ve always wondered if they talked about cats 🤔🤔🤔

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[tnktrash]

Swanky