huayno

[huayno]

does anyone have the long image post of the psycho gundam from zz that's all busted up

[huayno]

battler, i'm doing something extremely wicked

ougon no beatrice, she is a char

[huayno]

ougon no beatrice, she is a char

[huayno]

martamaxxing

#stop making me stay out this late!!!

[huayno]

All my haters become craters when I hit them with the meteorite

#once again: #char

[huayno]

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

What is it, and why you should read it.

(Art by purple)

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere is a currently updating webserial by author Lurina. It's one of my favorite things I've read in a long while and I'd like to convince you all to give it a chance.

My elevator pitch is this: A time-loop murder mystery directly inspired by Umineko, with a lot of similar vibes to the Locked Tomb Trilogy - partially due to it's meditations on grief and mortality and partially due to it's far-future magical sci-fi world where we follow a fucked up lesbian necromancer on a task she is determined to see through to the end. A deeply complex, unique, and believable world that plays hosts to one of the best interpersonal dynamics I've read.

In a future so far-flung that it is past the heat death of the universe, humanity has constructed a new society that is post-scarcity but not post-stratification. Utsushikome of Fusai is one amongst a class of prodigious young medical arcanists (essentially grad students) who are invited to visit a recently legitimized conclave of top-of-the-line researchers studying immortality. Accompanying Su is her best friend Ran, a fellow arcanist. Over the course of the novel we begin to slowly unravel exactly what ulterior motives have brought them to this conclave and how events in their childhoods and years of working toward their shared goal has warped their relationship into what we now see. This relationship is the crown jewel of Flower's narrative, and getting to peel back the layers of it as you read is a delight.

Like Umineko, Flower is a murder mystery that prevents itself with in-universe Rules that dictate the murders' parameters, meaning there's a lot to chew on for anyone who likes solving mysteries. For those that don't, like myself, Flower offers instead a richly developed world and plenty of open questions about the sociopolitical and metaphysical implications of its own worldbuilding.

Below the cut, I'll go into more detail about the series (without spoilers!) for those of you whose interest has been piqued.

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere is currently ongoing, updating every few weeks. It's several hundred thousand words, so if you're looking for something substantial to keep you entertained, you've got it. As you might expect from the length, the pacing is decently slow. I don't see this as a bad thing at all, because within this pacing Lurina dripfeeds the readers enough new and interesting information at a regular rate that it never feels like your time is being wasted. But if you can't handle slow burns, I wouldn't recommend this one for you.

If you enjoyed the Zero Escape series and liked that they stopped solving murder puzzles to infodump about fringe science, I think you'll get a lot out of Flower. Characters are frequently interrupting their life-or-death scenarios to have lofty, philosophical and political discussions. It's a ton of fun if you like reading characters argue.

'People have to sleep.' 'People have to work.' 'People have to die.' But those were just vague rules, phrasing I'd used because it had been easier in the context of that conversation. What really mattered, on the day-to-day level, was the idea that it was all for something. If someone invented a elixir that made people not to need to sleep, it would, in retrospect, recontextualize all nights everyone ever wasted sleeping as wastes of time. Not something that occurred for some inherent purpose, but whims of circumstance, a tragedy of when you happened to be born. If you accepted that all unfair things in the world could be removed, if only someone knew how - fatigue, labor, death - then to exist in the world we had now, with all its grotesque imperfections, was to know that you had been violated by fate.

Along those lines it's just got a sense of humor I really enjoy. Pretty dry and cavalier. It manages to keep the mood light without feeling like it's undermining it's own stakes. I'm particularly fond of Su's penchant for telling incredibly depressing suicide jokes that just Do Not Land.

The peer pressure cut into me like a hot knife. I hesitated a little, biting my lip. "Well, uh, okay. I'll just tell a quick one." I swallowed, my mind quickly scrambling. "Okay, so, there's a woman who runs a dispensary for second hand goods. She sees a man come in who's a regular customer. He's kind of a mess-- Has a big beard, a bad complexion. He buys a razor, and tells her he needs it to clean himself up, because he has a date." I could see that I now had Ophelia's attention and that Kam was looking pleased with herself, but Ran was watching me, too. I could see the look in her eyes. It screamed at me, with such vividity that it could be sold at an art gallery: You better not be telling a suicide joke right now, or we're going to have a talk. But it was too late. The wheels were already in motion.

As I mentioned up top, the relationship between Ran and Su is just one of my favorite interpersonal dynamics ever. Period. The author is playing some insanely complicated 5th dimensional yuri chess and I am absolutely here for it as someone who likes characters who are deeply devoted to each other in a way that is deeply deeply fraught. I cant emphasize enough how obsessed I am with what they have going on.

Additionally, as stated, the worldbuilding in Flower is top tier. The author clearly understands how every part of her world functions, which makes the moral quandaries and politics presented all the more impactful because they're very believable. It's hard to talk about Flower's world without spoiling too much of the specifics that get slowly revealed, but it doesn't fall back on any typical sci-fi standard fare and feels like a breath of fresh air amongst recycled and repetitive worldbuilding tropes.

A lot of really fun side characters. Strong voices for all of the supporting cast (♥♥Kamrusepa♥♥) and even though not every character gets their own arc, they all clearly have plenty of interiority. Once again, another thing that makes Flower feel very believable despite it's absurdities.

Autism

"Did you notice anything out of the ordinary with anyone?" She eyed him. "Anyone who seemed tense?" "Saoite, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but half of our class is so autistic that they constantly seem tense. You might as well ask me to find a specific turd in a sewer." "Just answer the question, please," she replied flatly.

Guys it's really good just trust me I don't want to spoil you for the more intricate plot beats but they're doing some crazy shit here. It's never a bad time to support an independent author's project. If you're sick of corporate mass-media and stuff needing to be marketable, getting into independent works owned and supported by individual creators is a great way to push back against that. I highly recommend it.

#periodic reminder to read flower

[huayno]

liberal rhetoric is really really pervasive even among people who would object to the premises if you spelled them out explicitly. the gestures involved in calling biden a war criminal are probably preferable to demanding a fair share of the spoils of imperialism but the result is an incoherent discourse all around

[huayno]

does it even matter if it's plausibly "retaliation" for a proximate act in direct violation of sovereignty tho? does it matter if you can trace a justification thru something legible to international law and liberal politics of punishment? maybe this is rhetoric you can use to convince the odd person still straddling the fence, but doesn't our conviction long precede this? the fact of occupation is unacceptable, and time and time again it has been made clear that no solution is possible except by force. is that not enough? even if it was two weeks ago, before the bombing of the consulate, i am sure you would not be condemning the missiles raining on the military bases of the occupation. even better if it was two decades ago. right? these are the rules of international legitimation and we do not have to play by them.

[huayno]

Is there something in hdwr that you want to see addressed or even something you wanted to be different? I’ll give you an example like since both saeko and miwa broken up with their exes I feel like the end of this manga is soon so with that in mind I don’t think I’ll see more of saeko’s relationship with her body and that is something I wanted to see more. When her past was revealed was that the reason why she didn’t want to be touched? Why she wore earrings etc there’s even comments made by other characters but then it’s never addressed: when she was with yuria visiting her family. yuria says she wanted to see saeko in a wedding dress and she’s like no. Or when yuria and saeko finally get intimate saeko’s bra top is mentioned. You know what I’m trying to say? Maybe this is me projecting because I thought saeko was written to be a top. I don’t even know anymore.

i often appreciate granularity but i would have to reread to give a real opinion on this tbh

#✉️ #how do we relationship

[huayno]

#when i said the worst people in umineko are kinzo erika and george

[huayno]

everyone's experience of reality is subjective, except for ushiromiya eva's, which is ontologically correct

[huayno]

IK it’s never getting finished but have you read Ciconia (by Ryukishi)?

i haven't even read higurashi yet

#i know. i know. #✉️

[huayno]

Telecommunications in Greece, 1970-1979.

(OTE Museum of Telecommunications)

#ph

[huayno]

nuts how much of contemporary queer culture (whatever that is) is attempting to hit at something araki basically nailed in the early 90s. and everyone’s also still watching araki like it’s outsider stuff. i love him to be clear, like he’s foundational for a reason but he is foundational at this stage

#what i call 'criterion collection transgression' #film

[huayno]

Tony George-Roux (1894-1928) - Une Martyre

illustration from Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal", 1917 edition

#art

[huayno]

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (鉄男), 1989, dir. Shinya Tsukamoto

#when your soul isn't weighed down by gravity #film #tetsuo: the iron man

[huayno]

“There are not two sexes, there are n sexes; there are as many sexes as there are assemblages. And since each of us enters into several assemblages, each of us has n sexes. When children discover that they are reduced to one sex, male or female, they discover their powerlessness: they lose the machinic sense and are left only with the signification of a tool. And then a child really does fall into depression. They have been damaged; their countless sexes have been stolen!”

— Gilles Deleuze, “The Interpretation of Utterances”

#gilles deleuze