Book of the Week: Nan Chan

Author: Tang Jiuqing (唐酒卿)/T97

Genre: cultivation, danmei

Rating: E (mostly for themes but also one explicit sex scene)

My Synopsis: If you’ve ever wanted to read about a narcoleptic and his pet carp who daydreams about eating him, now’s your chance! Jing Lin is content to sleep the rest of his immortality away while his pet carp drinks his blood, but fate has other plans. Forced from their secluded mountain home, Jing Lin and carp-turned-human, Cang Ji, must travel the world to uncover the commonality behind a thread of injustices, how they relate to the eight sufferings of the world, and what the significance of this path is to the men’s shared past. Featuring: mutual homoerotic cannibalistic fantasies!

My Actual Review: here

Translation: complete but the fan translation has been taken down because the novel has been licensed. Below is a link of where to order from the USA:

(and an FAQ guide for the orders)

I haven't posted on tumblr in sooo long.... happy mario movie eve here's a redraw of a thing I did a few years ago 💕

yet another abandoned painting attempt..

The other day one of my friends was like “Where on earth do you hear about all the books you read?” and I’m honestly trying to think about that because I don’t really pay attention to Booktube, Booktok, Book Twitter, or Bookstagram, only occasionally dip back into book blogging, and mostly use Goodreads as a place to track books I want to read or have read rather than searching for recommendations, so I’m trying to make a list of the places I hear about books from besides a few trusted social media mutuals.

Tor.com is one major place I hear about science fiction and fantasy books–they do deal announcements, cover reveals, lists of new releases, and reviews, as well as columns reviewing backlist work. I really like “The Book Queered Me,” for instance, which is people looking back on books that were important to their understand of identity. 

The Book Smugglers isn’t really that active anymore, but they reviewed science fiction and fantasy media, as well as publishing essays and short fiction and I read them religiously for a long time.

Book Riot I read occasionally and they publish bookish news and essays. I forgot I was subscribed to their LGBTQ+ book newsletter for a while and went through the emails I’d been sent earlier this week and that particular newsletter is nice because it highlights a couple books and does a round-up of recent news about queer books.

Austraddle’s book section, especially the Rainbow Reading column, does reviews, interviews, and news related to queer books, mostly queer women. It’s helpful for non-SFF stuff because I’m usually very up-to-date on news in the science fiction and fantasy world but they cover poetry, nonfiction, romance, etc.

We Need Diverse Books is a great resources, of course, and I really like the interviews they do with authors of recent releases.

LGBTQ Reads is an invaluable resource for queer literature–new release highlights, author interviews, lists of books by representation or age/genre if you’re looking for something specific.

Electric Literature is where I hear about more adult lit fic/nonfiction stuff, they also have a column called Novel Gazing in which people write about books that have impacted them and I find that really interesting. They also publish poetry and short fiction but I haven’t read much of that.

The Lesbrary does reviews of books about lesbian and bisexual women, as well as round-ups of new releases. Good resource for keeping up with sapphic books.

Rich in Color reads and reviews diverse YA books and is a good place to keep up with books by authors of color.

Not gonna go out on this limb on a 25k post, but maybe it’s okay that kids today don’t know as much about using an actual computer as we do/did? Is it useful knowledge? Of course it is. So is using a sewing machine or being able to rebuild your VW with a copy of that one book every VW driver used to have. That’s not the right question—most practical knowledge is useful after all. The question should be “is it relevant to the way people live right now.” “How to Keep Your VW Alive” is a timeless fucking classic; my ex and I kept our copy long after he sold his VW. But I’m not buying a copy now because it won’t exactly help me keep my VW ID4 on the road.

And it’s funny, because I tend to read along with those posts and nod my head, because back in my day we HAD to know all that computer stuff. And then for some reason today, I remembered a conversation my mom and I had with my grandma in the mid 70s when I was a teenager. Grandma made my mom’s wedding dress. She worked at a department store doing alterations on foundation wear, which if you look at 1950s foundation wear, you’ll realize was both necessary and difficult. So she was shocked when I said most of my friends didn’t know their way around a sewing machine. “But how do you make sure your clothes fit?!” Well, Grandma, people don’t wear heavy foundation wear any more and clothes don’t need to be as tailored as they did back in the day—it’s 1975 and the only alterations I need to do is hemming my flares so they just touch the floor when I’m wearing platforms.

Now you can back up and look at the broader picture, the one that says, but your car should be repairable by you as long as you have clear instructions, and you should be able to alter your clothes or make your own, and yes, you should know how to organize the files on the desktop of your laptop. But the fact that for the most part it’s become easier and easier to just not do those things (if they can be done at all) isn’t exactly the fault of Kids Today. And it’s certainly not meeting them where they are or even trying to understand why they feel they don’t need that knowledge if, instead of looking at why they don’t have it and maybe even don’t need it, you just decry their lack of the Deep Wisdom.

it's hard to be a shipper

what ship is on your mind right now?

maybe a bit of a weird thing to post during alectopause but honestly I'm a little excited about the fandom after the series is finished for good. Maybe it's just because of how I engage with most fandoms on this site but there's something to be said about a ""dead"" fandom, yknow?

Being able to discuss a story in its entirety, critical analysis (and loving a story despite whatever flaws you find in it), tamsyn writing a different book and the more personal interactions within a fandom past its peak are some of my favourite things about getting into fandoms on this website, it's great!

But hey, maybe I'm just a weirdo that's a bit too much into a dead body

Heeseung in "Teenage Romance"

I mean it was just SUCH. A PERSPECTIVE SHIFT!!! It was-- UGH.

Like, you're watching episode 1 of Calamity, and you open with "Fire." Just that reminder that THIS IS GOING TO BE A DARK STORY. You know this, this is what you're signing up for! These characters are awful! They're all lying about various stuff! They have these ambitions and secrets and lies that will lead them all to RUIN. And you're watching this story unfold, and it's so tense because you KNOW that the Calamity happens. It's already heartbreaking because it's not so much that you know they *can't* stop it, but because you know they *don't*! It's in the lore! It's in the timeline! The Calamity is a thing that happens! TWO THIRDS of the population dies!!! TWO THIRDS!!!

You spend three episodes wondering how the Ring of Brass will mess everything up so bad that the world gets as bad as it can possibly get. Two thirds of the population! Dead!

And then in that fourth episode, Brennan flips that shit on its head. Because he brings in a worse tragedy. One where EVERYONE dies. No one makes it out of Exandria. Complete and total annihilation. And then gently introduces the idea of... what if you could save some of them?

That last fight had characters with HP in the single digits, no spells left, and it was unwinnable if the goal was to win the fight. But the goal changed and became to just survive long enough. You know they can't all survive this. But you sure as shit can hope that they can last those crucial 18 seconds. Just enough to make the difference between losing everyone, and not losing everyone.

It became a story not of how they lost two thirds of the population, but about how they saved one third. And it was an absolute master class in how to use tragedy to tell a story of hope.

genuinely, if you're one of the people who believes it's the palestinian people who are committing these crimes and who is excusing them because of it, unfollow me. its hamas. you're making excuses for hamas. i can not believe we have reached a level of stupidity and glorification of violence where people will look you in the eyes and tell you that this is just how oppressed people act. that they just go on killing sprees ever so often. that is gross and untrue.

I’ll be real, yall were all about “cringe culture is dead” until hazbin hotel came out and now suddenly we’re cool sending anon hate and bullying people over this show…

Shadow scribble from a while ago :) (+ a little bonus)

f1.com doesn't have the new suit designs up yet so daniel, yuki, valetteri and guan yu are just there like those paper dolls you can attach clothes to 😭😭

helpppp them lmao

the apollo kids:

some people think you can’t be cool and cute at the same time. i, however, have a huge brain and am able to recognize that coolness and cuteness are not mutually exclusive and can, in fact, coexist