#it's a complicated russian novel

[dolokhoded]

hi sorry for bugging you, but i love your peanuts art! also do you have any random peanuts headcanons? i’d love to hear them

but of COURSE !!! here's a bunch of them.

schroeder has autism, that's pretty standard i've seen a lot of people say it, but it's the realest headcanon ever. best autism rep schroeder peanuts.

also marcie has adhd. that one has no basis i just decided it

the whole gang declared some random day snoopy's birthday when they were little and they celebrate is every year even when they're older. it's not even his real birthday. but he gets presents from everyone so it's okay.

(charlie brown probably knows his real birthday too he just didn't bother)

violet is aromantic and randomly came out to schroeder at senior prom and then she was just like. "this conversation never happened btw."

(semi-came out anyways. she didn't really have a term for it but you get it)

lucy really likes to sing ! she's not like aspiring to be a singer or anything but she enjoys it and she's pretty decent at it

rerun and lucy argue a lot more than linus and lucy did once he grows up a little. of course it's just a sibling thing and they really love each other but just like

in my brain, linus is like maybe 2 or 3 years younger than lucy and rerun is about 5 or 6. so imagine that when lucy is at the end of high school and really getting serious and working hard because you bet my girl has ambitions

rerun is a tween. have you ever met the unbridled chaos and horror that is a tween boy.

he's definitely the problem van pelt child. but he's great we like him

i <3 the van pelt siblings

ooh this is such a cliche but schroeder was lucy's emergency prom date. y'know that trope in literally every teen media ever that i never really got until derry girls

lucy's asshole boyfriend broke up with her like. an hour before prom because he was in love with another girl

(this guy's not a Complete Asshole in my brain he was just. In A Situation too. i dont know why i've given him so much thought but he has redeemable qualities, his relationship with lucy was pretty decent before that happened and he was TRYING HIS BEST OK !!!)

and lucy completely Loses it because 1) her boyfriend was in love with another girl the entire time 2) she has no date anymore 3) she cant show her face to prom alone after this that's EMBARASSING LINUS 4) she really just wanted to go to prom

so linus sees all of this going down and he rings schroeder and he's like hey schroeder what's good

and schroeder bolts to their house. in astronomical speed. then acts like he's totally chill about it he's just trying to help out his friend

tee hee i care them

this was not supposed to be that long but then i started rambling about their senior prom anyways that's all thank u for the ask bye

#peanuts #god do i have to tag all of these characters. wtf. #(<- PERSON WHO IS LITERALLY INTO COMPLICATED RUSSIAN NOVELS WHERE EVERYONE HAS 9 DIIFFERENT NAMES) #lucy van pelt #rerun van pelt #linus van pelt #charlie brown #schroeder #violet gray #does marcie have a last name i dont think so #did i forget anyone #actually i dont care. posted #asks

[thalassous]

did you know theres history?

#war and peace #war & peace #discor(e)d #natasha pierre and the great comet of 1812 #complicated russian novel (thanks faye!!!) #driftwood variety #im not tagging this one let it be vague as hell. #enjoy.

[anotherfandomtrash]

I want one of them to take my hand and walk me away from the last 12 chapters of the epilogue to some fun place 

#doodlies #some silly people from the complicated russian novel #war and peace #boris drubetskoy #ippolit kuragin #julie karagina #mary bolkonskaya #it's their wedding #alphonse berg #vera rostova #why is there so many boris' #well he saved my from politic talk a few times so i'm own him #i don't have anything funny to add #i'm going to bed #have a nice day

[enobariasteeth]

Waiting for the bridgerton girlies to discover war and peace

#it has everything a girl could want #it’s regency era. it has Paul Dano as Pierre my beloved #I mean it’s hella confusing but entertaining #bridgerton #please I need someone to talk to about it #ITS A COMPLICATED RUSSIAN NOVEL EVERYONE HAS 9 DIFFERENT NAMES #I’m talking about the most recent (I think) mini series and the musical #war and peace #paul dano #great comet #natasha pierre and the great comet of 1812

[panszy]

nearly at the end of brothers karamazov and i don't want it to end i need at least another thousand pages please god don't let it end

#ive reached a particularly good bit and i am waiting to be able to savour these couple chapters properly because i dont want them to end!! #blorbov from my complicated russian novel indeed

[pensivetense]

my brain 2day b like

THIS IS ALL IN YOUR PROGRAM YOU ARE AT THE OPERA GONNA HAVE TO STUDY UP A LITTLE BIT IF YOU WANNA KEEP WITH THE PLOT

#in that font too #cause it’s a complicated russian novel! everyone’s got nine different names! #so look it up in your program we appreciate it thanks a lot la dee da

[glitteringpoet1685]

It's so funny to me that Pathologic classic has been retroactively labelled as a walking simulator on steam bc like yeah technically it is I guess, but imagine looking for your typical short and sweet, low stress, story focused walking sim game and ending up in the 60+ hour, occasionally rage inducing, "it's a complicated Russian novel" plague game where people frequently throw knives directly into your skull with impeccable aim.

#pathologic #pathologic classic hd #walking simulator #pathologic game

[indigostudies]

What are those apps you usually post in your productivity updates?

hi! here's a breakdown of apps i use, as well as websites and other resources i've used/use for my learning (mainly chinese, though some of these resources can be used for other languages as well).

apps i use every day:

dot languages: this is a chinese-specific app where you select your hsk level, and then read articles at that level. there's a pop-up dictionary, an option to show pinyin, post-article vocab practice (audio, matching, translation, and writing), and the option to have your articles either in simplified or traditional.

TOFU learn: a blend between flashcards and writing, you can find decks for various things, including hsk level-specific decks, and you learn new vocab with the stroke order and then write each new term three times—once with an overlay (so the term is visible), and then two times from memory. there's also a review function, which helps you practice terms you've already learnt, and each term has audio that goes with it. i use it for chinese, but there's decks for esperanto, french, german, italian, japanese, korean, norweigian, portuguese, russian, spanish, swedish, and turkish.

the pleco dictionary app: my favourite chinese dictionary app; allows you to translate from english to chinese or chinese to english, has options for writing, radical, vocal, and keyboard entry, and has both traditional and simplified characters.

ankiapp: this one's not particularly complicated; it's a flashcard app, where you can make your own decks or download decks other people have made. it uses a spaced repetition system to help you remember terms—you rate yourself from worst to best on how well you remembered the term, and that determines how many times it'll pop up afterwards. it also gives you an overall grade for each deck, which is a nice way to measure your progress.

duolingo: probably my least favourite of all of the apps i use; the chinese course isn't the best, and now that they've removed the notes/grammar information option, there's no way for people who aren't already fairly familiar with the language and its inner workings to learn them if they exclusively use duolingo. it's okay for maintenance practice, though, but i'm already almost finished with the entire course and i would say it barely reaches to lower hsk 4, so i wouldn't say it's a good tool if you're more advanced.

apps i have but use less often:

readibu: this is sort of like dot in that it's an app for reading in chinese with a pop-up dictionary. however, that's where the similarities end; readibu has novels, short stories, and articles aimed at children, and each of those are further split into genres. readibu also lets you add your own web-pages and read them on the app, so you can use its pop-up dictionary with them. it's aimed more to intermediate and upper intermediate learners, with hsk levels ranging from hsk 4 to hsk 6. the only reason i rate dot above readibu is because dot has a larger range of levels (hsk 1 through hsk 6 i believe? but it may go higher) and exercises built in to help you learn the vocab.

the chairman's bao: also a chinese reading app, though if you use the free version, you only get one sample article per hsk level (hsk 1 - hsk 6). i believe that every so often you get a new sample article for each level, but i'm not sure what the interval on that is. it also has a pop-up dictionary and a flashcard option for saved vocab.

du chinese: another chinese reading app; it has articles divided into newbie through master (six levels in total, though they don't line up perfectly with the hsk in my experience), and new articles are free for a certain period of time before becoming locked behind a paywall. there's a pop-up dictionary and a vocab review/test option for vocab you save.

memrise: flashcards with audio, depending on whether you're using an official course or a user-generated deck. decent, but it can get repetitive.

hellotalk: not exclusively chinese, but i believe it started off mainly aimed that way. you set your language, and then your target language, and then you can talk to native speakers who have your language as their target language. potentially incredibly useful, but if you're like me and extremely introverted you may have a hard time using this app, since it requires a lot of one-on-one interaction.

slowly: i haven't actually gotten around to using this, but it's sort of like a digital penpal app, as i understand it. you can learn more about it here.

websites and other miscellanea:

this massive mega drive by @salvadorbonaparte (languages, linguistics, translation studies, and more).

this masterpost by @loveletter2you (linguistics, languages, and language learning books/textbooks).

this masterpost on chinese minority literature by @zaobitouguang

the integrated chinese textbooks by cheng and tsui, which are the textbooks i use for self-study—there's textbooks and workbooks, as well as character workbooks (though these can easily be cut out without suffering from the loss).

mandarinbean: graded readers, hsk 1 - hsk 6, with a pop-up dictionary and the option to read in traditional or simplified

chinese reading practice: reading, beginner through advanced (three levels), with a pop-up dictionary and some additional notes included on vocab and language-specific things non-native speakers might struggle with or not know.

hsk reading: graded readers, hsk 1 - hsk 6, divided into three sections (beginner, intermediate, advanced). does not have a pop-up dictionary, but does have an option to translate the text, post-reading quizzes, and notes on important vocab with example sentences.

my chinese reading: reading from beginner to advanced (four levels); has a pop-up dictionary, the option to play an audio recording of the passage you're reading, notes on key words, things that are difficult to translate, grammar, and post-reading comprehension questions.

the heavenly path notion website, which i would say is one of the best resources i've ever found, with a massive number of guides, lists of chinese media in a variety of forms, and general resources.

chinese character stroke order dictionary: what it says on the tin; will show you the stroke order for a given character.

hanzigrids: allows you to generate your own character worksheets. i use this very frequently, and can recommend it. the only downside is if you want to create multiple pages at once, you have to pay; however this can easily be circumnavigated by creating only one sheet at a time. you can download the sheet as a pdf and print it out for personal use.

21st century chinese poety: a resource i only came across recently; has a massive collection of contemporary chinese poetry, including translations; much more approachable than classical poetry, which can often be incredibly dense and hard to parse due to the writing style.

zhongwen pop-up dictionary: if you're reading something in chinese on a website that doesn't have a pop-up dictionary, this is a must. i've never encountered any words that it doesn't have a translation for so far, including colloquialisms/slang. i use it to read webnovels, and it's been a fantastic tool. you can also save vocab by hitting the r key when you're hovering over a word/phrase, making it easy to go back and add terms to your flashcard deck(s).

chinese reading world: a website put together by the university of iowa; split into three levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced), with thirty units per level, and ten modules per unit, as well as multiple proficiency tests per level. each module is split into three parts: a pre-reading vocab quiz, the reading with a number of comprehension questions based on it, and a post-vocab reading quiz. it also rates you in relation to someone with a native proficiency based on how quickly you read and answer the comprehension questions, and how many vocab questions you get right.

jiaoyu baike: an extensive chinese-to-chinese dictionary, put out by the taiwanese ministry of education. you can find an extensive write-up on it here, by @linghxr.

social media etc: see this post by @rongzhi.

qianpian: another chinese-to-chinese dictionary; @ruhua-langblr has a write-up on it here.

this writeup on zero to hero by @meichenxi; initially aimed at chinese learning, but now has expanded greatly.

music rec's: this masterpost by @linghxr.

tv/film: youtube is a great place to find chinese tv shows and films, and they often have english subtitles. if you can't find something on there, though, you can probably find it either on iqiyi or asianvote, which have both chinese and other asian shows and films (though you'll want an adblock if you're going to use the latter). i use these a lot to watch things, and have discovered a lot of media through these, and then novels through those when i went searching to see what they were adapted from.

polylogger: a website for logging the amount of time/type of language study you do. has a wide variety of languages, and the option to follow other people. still, it's a fairly basic site.

#chinese langblr #chinese language #chinese learning #langblr #chinese #mandarin #langblr resources #resources #汉语 #indigostudies #inbox #indigo ink

[altarwaiting]

And this is all in your program You are at the opera Gonna have to study up a little bit If you wanna keep with the plot 'Cause it’s a complicated Russian novel Everyone’s got nine different names So look it up in your program We’d appreciate it, thanks a lot

insp

#the great comet #great comet #broadwayedit #musicaledit #musicaltheatreedit #theatreedit #natasha pierre and the great comet of 1812 #natasha pierre & the great comet of 1812 #* #omg this took FOREVER can u tell I gave up on like half of these?

[every-character-ever-poll]

TABAQUI THE JACKAL - The Gray House

Credit to Allinor on DeviantArt and @chasmou respectively

PROPAGANDA:

He's in a wheelchair, hates time, hoarder, and is never quiet. I wanted to give this lil guy - and the book - some attention > [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10002469-i-don-t-like-stories-i-like-moments-i-like-night]

Honestly the book excerpt might be better propaganda. The Gray House is a novel written in Russian originally

#poll #tabaqui the jackal #the gray house #дом в котором #image included #has propaganda #week five

[minimalist-language-learning]

February roundup - Russian

Years ago, I started learning Russian. I bought novels in Russian and a textbook. But this textbook wasn't really beginner-friendly. In every new lesson, the dialogue contained many new words but only few words from the previous lessons. The author probably wanted the learner to study the whole vocabulary list before going on but I didn't like this approach. After only a few lessons I felt too overwhelmed and decided to focus on Japanese instead.

On February 13th, I tried it again and now I'm much more optimistic. I gained more experience as a language learner through Japanese and can use that now with Russian. Plus, I discovered the Refold Russian server on discord which is a very helpful place for finding resources and guidance.

I want to reach a point at where I can understand the novels in Russian that are waiting on my shelf.

In this post I want to share what I did so far, which resources I used and my thoughts. I think I'll post one update every month.

(YouTube) Comprehensible Russian: Zero Beginner (watched: 38 of 75 videos)

Easy to understand even for absolute beginners. The first 10 or 15 videos are very easy with lots of repetition. After around 15 videos the complexity slowly increases. 

Assimil (Lesson 1 - 10)

Compared to the textbook I used years ago, Assimil introduces the language in a much more beginner-friendly manner. I like it so far.

(Anki) Russian starter deck (this one)

This deck was recommended in the Refold Russian server on discord. It starts with simple sentences and contains lots of explanations. I did 10 new cards per day.

Short Stories in Russian for Beginners by Olly Richards (Story 1 - Story 3)

I looked up many words, but the stories are not too complicated. They introduce many common words and repeat them regularly in their stories, which helps to get used to them. I tried to listen to the audio book while reading but it’s too fast at my current level, so I focused on reading for now.

This book is aimed at beginners but I think it's difficult for complete beginners like me. Ideally, you are already familiar with basic vocabulary before reading this book. Otherwise, you have to look up almost every word (like me). However, after reading two stories, I noticed that recognizing and understanding words became a bit easier (in the beginning, all new words looked somewhat the same). It's hard if you start almost from zero like me, but it's possible and you'll make progress.

(YouTube) Different Let's Plays

I watched a few videos of Russian native speakers who are playing games I'm interested in. Like Animal Crossing or Метро: Исход. They are too difficult for now, but they are also motivating and make me want to keep going. 

(YouTube) Easy Russian

Too difficult for now, but I really like their videos. They have subtitles in Russian and English, their topics are interesting and the people from Easy Russian do a great job.

(YouTube) Russian with Max

It’s too difficult at the moment but I like his vlog videos so far. He visits many different places and explains a lot and there are subtitles which is great. I started to look up words from one video. 

(YouTube) Video about pronunciation from RussianPod 101 (this one)

I liked this video. It's well-structured and not too fast so that you can comfortably follow along.

...

These are the things I did in Russian in February! I feel like I already learned much more than during my previous attempt, but I'm still at the very beginning of course. I'll post another update at the end of the month.

#langblr #languagelearning #languageblr #self study #language learning #study russian #learning russian #russian language #language study

[memory-the-unconscious]

Can you tell me about Middlemarch? I've been dying to read some George Elliot hehehe. I don't know why, but I'm quickly prepared for her to become one of my fav writers

Yes, of course!! I have absolutely adored George Eliot ever since I read Middlemarch a few years ago. I love the way she weaves a slow, careful narrative where little things appear so insignificant and yet so beautiful--a story where the importance lies not in the drama or the scale of the plot, but in the emotions and inner reflections of the characters. I also do love her style, from what I've read of her in English. Keep in mind, I did read Middlemarch entirely in the Russian translation, so I can't reflect or comment on the style of that novel specifically, but I am about 100 pages into Mill on the Floss in English. She does an incredible job at portraying the various accents and speech patterns from different layers of society in a way that doesn't feel over the top, and is instead authentic and genuine to the way the characters are developed. She also has many complicated, human female heroines, which is something that is really special in novels from that period (and, arguably, still :( lol). I love everything about George Eliot--her life is super interesting too, and there are so many books of hers that I can't wait to read in the near future! I am especially impatient to read Silas Marner, Daniel Deronda, and Romola (which is actually based on one of my favorite painters of all time, Artemisia Gentileschi).

I hope this helps, and I hope you enjoy the experience of George Eliot's writing. It's slow, and profound, and just really truly lovely. :) I would love to hear some of your thoughts while/after you are reading!

And I'll end on my absolute favorite Middlemarch quote:

"[...] for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

#middlemarch #george eliot #romola #mill on the floss #reading #book recommendations

[qqueenofhades]

Okay, y'all. I had An Dream (TM) last night that I need to run by you, because, in short, What the Fuck Was Actually Going On. I Need to Know.

It started in a weird rundown Target Starbucks, where I had somehow been hired to work/cover someone's shift for just one day and was convinced that I had worked before in the waking world (i.e. not in dreams). I also seemed to be aware that I was dreaming and was discussing how weird it was that you remember things and histories in dreams that haven't happened in real life, that it looked awfully familiar to somewhere I had been before and where I was convinced that I had worked (for the record, I haven't, though I have worked at similarly crappy kiosk Starbucks and Mmm No Thanks).

I got a strange order for an excessively complicated drink from a customer I didn't see. The lights went out and I couldn't find any coworkers. Then someone appeared, gave me a book with a diagram on the cover and a wad of cash, and told me to follow the diagram and it would take me to some place I was happy (?!?!?!?).

Okay, so. It's a dream, what else do you do. I follow the diagram, and after some misadventures and side quests, find a fancy bookstore that looks like a Barnes and Noble but isn't. I wander into the equally fancy cafe, then back out. I get on an elevator with a bunch of other people to go to the first floor, to browse the stacks. The door shut, off we went... and then did not come out anywhere near an ordinary bookstore. In fact, we were informed, we had been sent on a seven-year adventure to solve a dangerous mystery, and it started NOW.

The basic premise of this adventure was that you went through different doors and ended up in different places/times in the world. There were also complicated rules governing which door would open and when; you were given a watch that would turn red or green depending on the portal status of various nearby doors. You could use a door to escape your current location at any moment (presuming it was open) but the more you jumped, the more difficult it got to escape where you were. There were also Trolley Problem-esque moral conundrums where if you used the door for yourself, it might prevent a friend or teammate from getting through and being trapped. We were all being hunted by a villain named Ograndar, whose name couldn't be said aloud or it would summon him (we started calling him O and/or writing it down). He looked like an average young man in a green sweater. It wasn't specified what would happen if he caught us, but it wouldn't be good. It was also implied that he was a reincarnated Roman emperor of some kind (one of the crazy ones) and if we went through a door that took us to Ancient Rome, we would be trapped forever and unable to get home.

I traveled to various EXTREMELY detailed locations that I remembered despite never being there before: a water park in Abu Dhabi, a noodle shop in Taiwan, a giant mega-mart in America, and then the last place: a regional KGB office sometime in the USSR. The officers were speaking Russian, but I was able to understand it, and I was also apparently the person in charge of hunting down The Villain Known As O in this time period. The clue lay in a cheesy niche 1980s fantasy novel, but we only had one copy. It was in Dutch, except for one page that was inexplicably in Latin.

Myself and my KGB-dream-minions were all trying to read this book when my alarm went off and I woke up.

Please tell me what the hell was going on.

#hilary for ts #this is not the first time my subconscious has been Overactive #or for that matter given me excellent novel ideas #but also please tell what the fuck was going on #was that the devil or

[wobblydev]

Why is the IWW over a century old, and yet we still haven’t seen the One Big Strike yet?

a very good question. the answer is complicated and there are wobblies more versed in the nuances of the union's history, but i can sum it up briefly.

the early union, although very powerful in many industries especially timber and coal, were always split between ideological factions. the early days of the russian revolution would exacerbate this schism, weakening the union overall.

the nail in the coffin was dealt by the united states government in the form of the largest mass trial in american history which witnessed the dissolution of every existing IWW branch, the prosecution of all sitting officers and the passing of novel and sweeping anti-union legislation aimed directly at dismantling us.

for decades, the wobblies existed in a liminal space between legal and criminal. we organised locally where we could but membership dwindled to almost nothing.

due in large part to the crises of late stage capitalism, the union is enjoying a resurgence. membership ebbs and flows as new wobblies join up, burn out or get disillusioned, which is a sad symptom of organising.

to get on top of my little soap box, an actual general strike will require at least a decade of difficult, measured, calculated organising on the part of everyone in the union and then some more. it is possible however.

a strike the likes of which will actually swing the balance of power towards the working class will be met with violence from corporations and their state lackeys, for which we all must be prepared.

that preparation will require not just workplace organising but also community organising to build structures of support for the most vulnerable.

organising for real power is difficult and slow. some days i am optimistic we are making progress while other days i am afraid we are too scattered and beaten down. it all remains to be seen.

i recommend anyone with the inclination to improve the conditions under which we are all struggling sign up, get involved immediately by getting trained, and get organising.

#iww #union #get trained #get organising

[highladyluck]

Would you be so kind as to write a quick little "why you should/shouldn't read" for the Vorkosigan saga? Doesn't have to be specific, but it sounds like you're having a lot of fun over there and I want a reason to join in on another unreasonably long and convoluted-sounding book series. Also it sounds like you're ready to gush about it at a moment's notice

Ooooh, with pleasure! The Vorkosigan saga is a collection of short stories, novellas, and novels written across 30+ years by Lois McMaster Bujold, focused on Miles, the disabled scion of one of the most politically powerful (and progressive) feudal lords of the 3-planet Barraryan empire. Barrayar was a colony planet settled by a couple ethnic/cultural groups from earth (I’ve spotted Russian, French, & Greek and I think there’s a 4th) and they ended up left to their own devices until around 200 years ago when they were discovered by the rest of galactic society (other human colonies).

They have a cultural trauma around genetic mutations due to being atomic-bombed by a neighboring empire about 4 generations ago, and Miles’s life is shaped by the attendant prejudices around this. He isn’t actually mutated but he looks like he is, due to teratogenic damage from an attempted political assassination (chemical weapons + fetus = very short kid with brittle bones & chronic pain). He copes by being extremely desperate to prove himself, and is consequently pretty reckless with his physical body & mental health, but he’s protective of people he is responsible for & puts a very high price on personal integrity. (Reminds me of Rand and Mat, of course.)

There’s some ‘progressive for the 90s’ terminology/attitudes about queer people that are dated at best and wincingly off-base at worst, but that’s really the only complaint I have, and I think that has begun getting better as I go along. (I have similar issues with RJ.) It’s a series very much concerned with the politics of reproduction, in a way that still feels rare in science fiction. The implications of the technology of the uterine replicator on power, gender, sexuality, morality, and culture are explored. Worth noting is that the books also have some heavy torture scenes and occasionally deal with sexual assault. I think it is handled well & is not gratuitous but it’s definitely content warning territory.

The honor-based-checks-and-balances feudal structure of Barrayar is contrasted with various realistically flawed democracies (Komarr tends towards ogliarchy & the Beta colonies are a partially-automated semi-luxurious gay space socialist democracy), the other empire (Cetaganda is like the Byzantine empire if it was built on mad science eugenics), and various other interesting government models (Jackson’s Whole aka the libertarian goblin market, the Quaddie’s ascended engineer’s union, etc). The feudal structure is an exciting place to have the conversations about women’s labor (literally and figuratively), personal expectations, and societal responsibility that Bujold is interested in, because the personal and the political are so dramatically and obviously intertwined there.

In addition to the themes & setting, I’m enjoying it at least partially for the excellent structure of the stories; Bujold never forgets to hang up Chekov’s gun in the first act, but it’s always sneaky so it’s fun to try to spot it. Miles and his entourage are also a delight. These characters try their best, and make realistic mistakes, and are understandable even when you don’t agree with them. I also enjoy how the antagonistic cultures are fleshed out with nuance, much like how RJ introduces the Aiel and the Seanchan as faceless, inhuman enemies and then complicated things by giving them faces & human motivations. (In this analogy, Barrayar is Aiel and Cetaganda is Seanchan.)

For reading order, here’s some tips: https://bookriot.com/vorkosigan-saga-reading-order/

#vorkosigan saga #the vorkosigan saga #wheel of time #wot book spoilers #answered ask #using the RJ comparisons because I’m a WoT blog and so are you #also I like it for a lot of the same reasons I like WoT

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Out of curiosity what do you dislike about Ada Palmers books

so tbc i made my way thru vol 1 of terra ignota and the first bit of vol 2 before quitting, so im working with a limited sample. but such is the case with dismissal! so here goes:

the prose is... bad. its very likely i should just develop a higher tolerance on this, ik im effectively gatekeeping myself from some very conceptually solid fiction over a relatively superficial skill detached from the stuff that really deeply matters, but the style on a sentence-to-sentence level is just very underwhelming, which is a particular problem when in universe its supposed to be elevated and uplifting (like the speech at renunciation day). i dont mind purple prose but it like marries imo the worst aspects of purple and bland, its a chore to get thru it

the pacing feels sort of mechanical and arbitrary,. every fifty pages, on the dot, theres another twist pulled from the Twist Bag! im told this im proves but its a) not enough to make up for the other deficits and ii) a common thing said when it takes a certain amount of time for ppl to inure themselves to an in fact persistent defect in a long work

Your Kink Is Not My Kink (But Your Kink Is OK)

i do not care about these characters. its hard for me to go into more detail bc i have little grip on what makes characters "work" for me in general but i just. dont care what happens to any of them (besides best not-girl eureka weeksbooth 🤤)

the worldbuilding. by far the biggest letdown. ppl will tell you—repeatedly, at length—that this is the great strength of the series. do not listen to them! they are misguided. ada palmer is really good—gifted, even—at the first step of worldbuilding, much moreso than most writers! shes top notch at coming up with a broad element of the society that makes you think "whoa, i want to know how that works!" and then... you never do. the depths are never plumbed. the depths are never even adequately hinted at. nor are the depths even conspicuously hidden from view! she just... tells you that there are a bunch of totally complicated details, trust me guys, look here i came up with some technobabble and some percentages like i totally promise theres stuff going on behind here! but there just, so aggravatingly obviously isnt! the technobabble does not even give the illusion of depth, the way (imo) it does in almost nowhere, it gives the appearance of earnestly trying to project such an illusion. tears me out of the immersion every time. its probably worth mentioning that i know from firsthand reports that she is into larp stuff irl, which is notorious for attracting ppl with a high tolerance for would be un-suspensors of disbelief. which, again, may be a virtue on their part! but if so its one i lack, at least here

i was talking to birdblog who suggested much of it might be that the work is very capital-L Liberal, and i am very not. which i think is kind of true, but less in that this is a drawback it possesses and more that its a virtue it lacks. theres lots of fiction i enjoy that is transparently committed to big philosophical/moral/political claims im vehemently opposed to! off the top of my head: any shakespeare that involves kings, any bernard shaw that involves Society, log horizon (at least s01, havent seen past it), nausicaa of the valley of the wind (the manga, the movie is sort of opaque philosophically), a bunch of outright propaganda films from wwii (american, british, russian, japanese), several kipling short stories...

but like, i think that a visceral sympathy for the earnestly felt message of a work of art does help one excuse other flaws, and i suspect a lot of my fundamentally Liberalism-oriented friends are able to enjoy the series bc the author shares that same basic vision. which is certainly like, an interesting one! but on its own its not enough to compel me past the artistic demerits by being either spiritually akin to encourage me or sufficiently weird and novel to fascinate me

anyway, tell me why im wrong, terra ignotans! humani nihil a me alienum puto

#ask #spacific-sunrise #terra ignota