Discussion Masterpost - This is How You Lose the Time War
If anyone doesn’t like how I referred to them/quoted them, please let me know, and I’ll fix it immediately!
Summary: This is probably the most active discussion we’ve ever had! Isn’t that neat? Generally, people had one of two reactions to this book. Some people absolutely adored it, and it’s easy to see why. They mentioned the beautiful love story and emotional (not to mention gorgeous) letters as what made them enjoy the book so much. Others found it too difficult to grasp. This was mainly due to the unusual and lyrical prose, that left them feeling lost and confused.
Book Reviews:
Elfspectation’s review: “I wish it was a little… easier to read? Normally I love scifi but this was much more high concept than I’m accustomed to.”
My Review: “I could appreciate the crafting of the metaphors and images but was never really moved or touched by them. Red and Blue felt like mere ideas and not real people”
Rey’s Review: “I dived in, already bracing for the angst and the banters and the underlined fluff of course. And it did come, through letters, through gestures.”
Ann’s Review: “I love time travel stories, and this book did have an unique approach. Yet the universe remained very vague, and distant.”
Generalblizzarddreamer’s Review: “It reminded me of an elaborate chess game. Just the whole idea of these to groups of people going head to head and trying to trick the other person reminded of the strategy needed for winning a good game of chess.”
Melissa’s Review: “The concept is beautiful, I just wish more time and thought was dedicated into it because this feels like a middle school fantasy when it should be something way more complex than that.”
Megan’s Review: “I was also SUPER CONFUSED the whole time I was reading”
Questions and Asks:
Ann shared that the book might be turned into a TV series, and asked “Do you think it would translate well to the big screen?”
I answered: “I’m very sceptical. The best thing about the story is the letters, and I just can’t see how you would translate that into film.”
V answered: “If its animation I think there’ll be a lot of stuff to play around with..So if that really does happen..I am so up for it!”
Minerva asked Ann and me: “What did you think of the book, how could this book relate to other time travel books, in general if you could time travel to a part of your life; what could you change and why?”
Ann answered: “This book was very vague about actual time-travelling… rebraiding strands of time, going deep under cover in the time-line, there even seemed several timelines… It wasn’t very clear to me.”
I answered: “I think there’s so much to admire here: the creativity and uniqueness, the gorgeous writing, the letters. It’s such a beautiful book! But at the same time, it has some major flaws.”
Ann asked: “Sometimes Red and Blue would start their letters with little nicknames and play on words. [...] Did you have favourite ones?”
I answered: “There was one that I liked so much I made a note of: ‘0000FF’. It made me laugh :)”
Ann asked: “Which character intrigued you more? Blue or Red?”
I answered: “I think Red intrigued me more, just because her world seemed so alien.”
I asked: “How does This is How You Lose the Time War compare to other novels in the [sci-fi] genre?”
Generalblizzarddreamer answered: “It’s more lyrical than other sci-fi books and relies more on the character to tell the story rather than the plot that the others rely on.”
I asked: “What did you think about the allusion to Romeo and Juliet?”
Ann answered: “I didn’t think it really applied [...] the characters were rather world-weary, while the youthful romance of the play was the tragedy of it all.”
Elfspectations answered: “I was thinking that maybe the hint in that passage was that this book parallels a version of Romeo and Juliet in a Strand where it was written as a comedy.”
I asked: “Do you think that people can truly love each other through words alone?”
V answered: “I think it’s a very pure and intimate way to fall in love.You don’t know the external appearances so you fall in love with what they truly show you, their thoughts and the connection which grows slowly.”
V asked: “I am quite confused about the shadow that followed red..I didn't really understand who it was or what it was and its significance. What do you think it meant?”
I answered: “I think it was Red herself. [...] she went back in time and traced their steps, and this future Red was the shadow.”
I asked: “Do you wish the book had been longer? If so, what would you have liked to see more of?”
V answered: “I would’ve actually liked to read more about how did the war came into being..or what position were red and blue in and why they did what they did”
Ann asked: “I was sometimes reminded of The Starless Sea as I was reading last month’s pick. Did you have similar feelings?”
I answered: “Both books have what I think is called purple prose (?) where the writers use language that’s very poetic and metaphorical, but sometimes they go a little overboard.”
I asked: “How did you feel about the setting and plot being secondary to the character's love story?”
Generalblizzarddreamer answered: “I think I would have loved to see more of the love story but the plot and setting was fascinating to me :)”
Other Cool Stuff:
This interview with the authors of the novel, talking about their writing process and how they came to work together.
This fanfic that Amal El Mohtar personally recommended (thanks to Ann for sharing!).
A very cool artist, Laya, made wonderful artworks based on this book. My personal favorite is this one.
This cool journal spread by Emma, based off the book.
I just learned that the Christmas Bonus is a thing. An antiquated vote winner from 1972 that somehow has never been adjusted for inflation. I guess it’s similar to the fuel payments around COVID-19 if they kept on happening every year..?
I can’t believe it survived all of the Winter Fuel Payment discussion.
My immediate instinct was to scrap it but apparently the more popular/obvious idea is to increase it. I hope that’s more of my leaning towards minimalism than anti-boomer sociopathy, but even folding it into pensions† would have the benefit of automatically adjusting it for inflation.
The Triple Lock is so untouchable. What brilliant and dooming branding.
† There are more beneficiaries than just pensioners, but c’mon, it’s £10.
I don’t like Liverpool — not just because they’re top — but a bunch of irrational, historical reasons:
Traditionally defensive counterattacking football. I don’t think it bothers me as much now, but I hated it as a kid because I thought “big teams” shouldn’t play that way.
Don’t like Fowler, Owen, Gerrard, Redknapp. Probably a circular argument here, but vague memories of bad England games?
Quick free kicks and scoring when players are down. This one against Fulham in 2018 still bothers me. It's probably more confirmation bias at this point because all teams are pretty horrible.
Mo Salah goes down in the box a lot.
They have the most boring kit.
Carlsberg is a bit rubbish. (Though it'd be nice to see CPG sponsors again.)
I prefer Everton in the Merseyside (Dyche, Rooney, Yakubu, Pickford).
Benítez and Houllier weren’t as memorable.
Szoboszlai is probably the only player I like in the current team, but he always looks really scruffy with his socks down.
Anyway, I said I’d try and do a reset… but one team has to be my least favourite and Liverpool is full of players that have played for Liverpool.
Dad has been watching a lot of alternative media lately, but this one channel of a pro-China AI-generated Elon Musk has been bothering me (MuskTalk007). It's only been up for a month, so hopefully this kind of thing doesn't stay around long. And doesn't end in a rug pull.
Wrote a long thing about this, but in summary:
1. I’m worried that ideas are shared that don’t match my worldview
broadly undermines institutions, governments, etc.
I’m annoyed that I can’t defend my worldview better
(but it feels good when I can demonstrate something as false)
2. I’m worried how convincing AI/DIP can be
and disappointed that / pity people who believe it’s real
especially for scams
3. I don’t like the aesthetics of it
4. I am annoyed at the idea of state-funded propaganda
and just generally what to do about digital warfare / social media
I’m pretty neutral towards Star Wars. The original films are fine, but I think the rest of them are pretty bad (admittedly, that’s very heavily influenced by the meta-content). But it always felt like something that I was supposed to like when I was growing up, even though it’s more of a Gen X thing.
That whole pre-internet merchandising / marketing pipeline is kind of amazing to me: everyone seems to have different entry points into the old extended universe which… might(?!) be interesting to explore.
I’m certain that a significant part of my brain is dedicated to repressing the ability to become a fan of anything for fear of appearing even a tiny bit cringe.
I genuinely don’t understand the security threat that TikTok poses. It just seems really weirdly xenophobic and that’s becoming particularly bothersome lately.
I seem to recall something about clipboard data being sent over the network (prior to iOS 14), but that’s about all that I could find. Maybe I have too much faith in Apple’s sandboxing. I feel like some video preference information is a lot less valuable than social graphs (huge social engineering vector) or say, all of your passwords. Many other apps and websites suck up phone numbers, IP addresses and network identifiers - I feel that’s fairly benign.
There’s a psyops / propaganda angle, but I find that a pretty weak cause.
I just can’t get the idea out of my head that it’s a boomer issue, but I’ve gotten really shit at doing research these days.
(Personally, I stopped using it because it would suck hours from my evening. Whether it’s good for society and banning it for that reason is a totally different question.)
Kind of sad that I didn’t get in at all the other points. I think buying some would probably alleviate some of the bias that I have.
Does investing in stocks provide more “value to the world” than investing in Bitcoin? I think so. Maybe the utility of cryptocurrencies depends on their overall value so it’s helping to “invest” in the technology, but my effect is probably infinitesimally small either way. I do see it like art / commodity investment, which isn’t “valuable” in my mind (and why you don’t get compensated for it).
Environmental cost is probably overblown, but it’s much higher than cash and intentionally inefficient. One thing that I can’t find evidence for is that it must be one of the easiest ways to convert electricity to money, which means that it “absorbs” any of the work done to reduce worldwide demand. (In the same way biofuels create perverse incentives, I think). Need to research this more.
Possibly some other side-effects (basically GPU shortages).
Do I actually care about ethical investment? Probably not. I think I don’t own crypto because it’s stressful and I’m lazy.
Basically, it's horseshit. I've always bought into the idea that personality isn't fixed, and how people react to things depends on a lot more than one's intrisic personality. But even horoscopes are fun to think about.
I'm mostly Introverted, and 50:50 for everything else. (Today, I'm ISTJ.) It's a combination of not feeling strongly about most things and how my answers generally depend on the first context I think of when reading the question (work, social, specific memories, etc.).
I wonder if I would do anything differently if my superpower was knowing other people's types. What can you do when armed with this knowledge (besides avoiding ESFPs)?
Most people have interesting stuff to say about extraversion/introversion, but trying to figure out what any of the other letters represent will totally stall a conversation.
