yellin bout stuff

main on silvrang, fandom art on shaydradraws. here there be absentminded liveblogging and reblogging of books, games, and shows. currently: #shayreads murderbot, #shayreadswof, #shayplaysgenshin. previously #shayplaysplarceus, #shayplayswolfquest

[yumenosakiacademy]

"But you, my child, born under a pen... Why should your fate not transcend these pages?"

[laios-daily]

[laios-daily]

[laios-daily]

[genshin-impact-updates]

Happy Birthday, Kujou Sara!

You seem surprised. Did you not expect me to prepare my own meals?

My duties with the Shogunate leave me little time for such things. Given that, I suppose your reaction is understandable.

Even so, on the rare occasions when I have time to spare, I find cooking rather enjoyable. It offers a welcome taste of ordinary life, would you not agree?

It is nothing special — only a few simple home-cooked dishes. Still, if you do not mind, please sit and join me.

[shaydraplays]

Yippee yay one of my libraries on libby added the adventure zone comics! Time to enjoy the full color glory of tres horny boys on my phoane

I have a lot of fond memories of listening to the podcast episodes of taz balance while doing my first job in undergrad servicing the garbage bins. I can still smell the compost

[inkeatons]

Hello everyone! I have managed to find some clean cover art for delicious in dungeon, buried in some promotional italian pamphlet (JPOP Direct)! Some of the files were even separated in layers, i'll put it after the cut

[inkeatons]

searched a bit more and found also volume 3,4, and a piece of 6!

[shaydraplays]

I remember 2 dreams this morning since i kept waking up in between them. One was a wolfquest dream where Lost River was filled with humans, and I was a second-year werewolf subordinate in a werewolf pack. We were wolves that could turn into humans, not the other way around, so I was a young adult.

My mother was looking for a safe place to birth and raise pups, so the pack was roaming all over. I had to keep an eye on my little sister, a yearling wolf. For a moment we were thinking of settling at a den near the riverbank, and mother started digging it out, but then a horse with a rider clopped past so she abandoned that venture.

Then we found a nice abandoned hotel, north of some wolverine traps which was a bonus. The hotel had a boltlocking back door that opened to a parking lot, and I couldn't shake a feeling of dread looking out the back door window, like something bad would come from that direction.

Someone knocked on the back door, but it was just my human friend who knew I was a werewolf. She needed a place to store her luggage for a while, so I said it was okay - mother's chosen den inside a sofa was in a different room, while the room with the back door was the one I hung out in with my sister and granddad. My friend watched me strangely while i play-wrestled my little sister.

My second dream was a lot shorter. I was playing a pokemon mainline game and had to battle a group of manectric. One of them was shiny pink but i couldnt catch it and had to knock it out, which i agonized over for a while.

[wigglybunfish]

in which murderbot is a very normal terracotta soldier and ART the dragon spirit of a chinese junk who dwells in the ship's keel. they meet in the ming dynasty perhaps, when ppl are sailing places extra willy-nilly.

*Nüwa is the mother goddess in chinese mythology, known for creating humanity from yellow clay and repairing the sky.

thank you @mutualrapport for hosting the event! original prompt below.

[drawn for the prompt: an AU of ART and MB's first meeting and conversation - e.g. another look at their first meeting from a fantasy, historical, or (non-canon) sci-fi lens! Any perspective is fine. The only constraint is that it cannot be set in the canon universe. Any visibly non-canon AU- fantasy, human, historical, etc. - anything goes!]

[dragon-fly-art]

I'm tired, boss... (now 6:30 am)

Mountain of chocolate

Family arts, part 5/?

(previous) - (next)

[anonymousalchemist]

I had a sublimation x project hail mary crossover dream where you DONT instance if you go to space. Theres no people out there. However, Grace may have instanced when he went to Erid. Do people instance if they go to space?

uh.

huh.

hm.

"it depends."

[carys-the-ninth]

Anyone who has followed this blog for a minute knows I am a huge fan of Isabel J Kim's short stories and was hotly anticipating this book. To the point I got scared I wasn't going to like it. Fear not! It's as exciting and strange as her short fiction, with more room to let the characters breathe.

Sublimation is set in a world exactly like ours—except when you step over a border with the intent to emigrate, you are split in two, leaving behind a separate self: an instance. The novel follows two pairs of young Koreans with American instances: Rose, traveling back to South Korea for her grandfather's funeral and speaking to her Korean instance Soyoung for the first time ever, and her childhood friend Yujin and his American instance YJ, who talk to each other like right & left hemispheres of the brain.

The first half of the book is deeply introspective, tracing the space between Soyoung and Rose and the legibility of each woman's desires—to her instance, but also to herself. What makes you you? What part is genetics, upbringing, the people you've surrounded yourself with? Why do you want what you want? Told in second person, it's a funhouse mirror of self-recognition and alienation.* The narrative is interlaced with reimaginings of Korean folk tales, the Odyssey, and the Garden of Eden as they play out in a world of instancing.

The second half pivots to a technothriller plot as Soyoung/Rose and Yujin/YJ's lives collide with the greater political and technological forces trying to control instancing. This part of the book is rapidly paced, complete with a naked knife fight and a big cinematic finish, but it also has some fascinating experimental writing and insights into the characters.

I've texted a dozen people I know about this book—my uncle who loves Dark Matter, my coworker who loves diaspora lit—because it's such an interesting & fresh blend of genres. For anyone interested in doppelgangers, body snatching, women with nothing to lose, the inability to return home, and strange prose.

*There's apparently a percentage of Storygraph users who DNF here, saying it's "slow" and the POV is "confusing." My Harrow the Ninth-loving followers will have no troubles.

[shaydraplays]

Ive been isopodding

(isopod by sbug games is on sale on steam for a few more days!)

[shaydraplays]

I described Sublimation to my partner as "Everything Everywhere All At Once but as a book in a different font and also Korean" and I stand by that after finishing the book.

[summoningspark]

i can't believe the book that was marketed to me as "it will make you feel weird about being from places" is making me feel weird about being from places.

[shaydraplays]

I just finished reading isabel j kim's first novel Sublimation and that was a time. I alternated reading the ebook and listening to the audiobook (both from a library app). truly an unhinged way to experience the story. I would listen to parts and then reread them to make sure I got it right, then read on and relisten to parts on the train to work to get the narration.

I had to yank my earbud out in the train during the first research study session and messaged my sister who lives in a different country, then i listened to it at work with both earbuds in to make sure the quality of it wasn't an artifact of me only listening through one earbud. The research sessions in the ebook had borked formatting, or at least i dont think that was intentional because the audiobook versions of this text was a lot more legible, for lack of a better word. These all really enriched my experience and I'll be thinking about this for A While.

[summoningspark]

That was an extremely cool description of reintegration it was so immersive and striking i felt like i was experiencing but what! happens! to! your clothes!