amber waves

[meikuree]

it's only been a month or so since my last entry but it feels like it's been a million years

• february was massively busy with multiple deadlines in single weeks but i've just dusted off the last important Big Thing i had to do. happy for it, i can now sit back and faff around without the sticky residue of guilt in my bleakly limned soul and so on
• anyway! below are some happy things that have happened recently

fandom

• I have done no writing since my yuletide treat last december, lol. life is just a lot fuller now and I have less mental energy to open word docs and write. I do still daydream and spin up phrases to use in hypothetical future fic in my off time
• i'm a very visual person I think, which is traditionally a codeword for I never developed disciplined means/funnels of writing and am trying to hide that but for me also does come from a piece of advice offered by ao3 writer montparnasse once, which is that you have to work for your craft. my process often involves going about my day and noticing odd or unexpected mundane connections. in my notes i've jotted down things like: "yellowjackets - remnants of food in sink drain like a pre-raphaelite garden: explosion of reds, greens, browns; dirty brown water = oxblood red' and 'blue eye samurai - cracked lineaments in teapot covers like nitamago'.

fragrances

• i've been looking for fragrances that'd fit zenin mai's vibe, as a treat to myself. I don't usually buy merch for any shows, and a fragrance is a nice, idk, useful thing that could also still give me joy because of a self-constructed connection to a fictional character. this is actually just my way to sublimate my despair over the fact that I still regularly get into emotional pits over fictional women at my age
• as a recap, this is what zenin mai looks like:

• i don't know the first technical thing about perfumeries or the alchemy of fragrances, but i've googled so many eau de parfums by now that I know some basics, i think. i'm on the hunt for something dark, sophisticated, and most importantly brooding, either floral/fruity (more mainstream) or metallic (more avant garde).
• black orchid, dark violet, plum, or black vanilla as the top notes might do nicely
• and not required, but it would be nice if there was some sort of """"east asian"""" element in it like japanese incense, hinoki wood, japanese pear, osmanthus, lotus blossom, or water lily among the notes
• a dash of secret sincerity or devotion among the base notes would be the last thing to really top it off, to parallel mai's eventual sacrifice. i'm stumped for this one: maybe lotus blossom, water lily,  white musk, or yuzu...?
• an eclipse theme or motif would alternatively be great too: black vanilla, white musk, black lily, etc.
• some fragrances I've been eyeing: tom ford's black orchid/velvet orchid, alkemia's madame x, pulp sonnet x
• what I am actually doing though, because I prefer to repurpose things from family and friends is asking my sister to hand me her old unused perfumes and seeing if anything in that pile fits

reading, literature, etc.

• finished Convenience Store Woman (3.5/5, generally enjoyed it, some bits worked much better for me than others) and Tender Is The Flesh (1/5, did not enjoy much at all from the concept to execution). the latter was billed to me as a dystopian cannibal slaughterhouse novel which piqued my interest, so of course as a literary cannibalism lover I picked this up as a potential comfort read while I was ill in bed. but it just kind of annoyed me. more to come in an eventual review post.
• i'm currently reading The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, a Malaysian author who grew up in penang. I'm having conflicting responses, which is generally a good thing -- it's a sign I'm being challenged -- I like the prose style generally and historical details of post-WW2/Malaysian Emergency-era malaysia and the cameron highlands setting, but the pov character and misalignment of focus between form and content are giving me pause... and also squicky feelings. I'll also elaborate on it in a forthcoming post.
• I will say, though, that this book would nearly be a wonder for me, if not for one or two missing components in its equation: the romanticised and simplified racial politics, the pov character who seems to build her life around men even though the driving force of the entire story is an emotional debt to her late sister, etc.
• or, you know what, I could just summarise and clarify my complaints as such: I love hard-headed, ruthless, and cruel women (who may still have a counterintuitive warmth at their core), but I long for a story about women who are ruthless even though and perhaps even because they were raised by women, live by creeds yoked to women, and who subvert that usual idea about the love of women being a saving balm. something like the lesbian worldview of tazmuir's books, where the cruelty, pain, joy, liberation, debt of lesbians both psychosexually torturing or uplifting each other are centre-stage
• on that note, another friend recced Exordia by Seth Dickinson to me with the headline that there's a mother pursuing a revenge quest against her own daughter who gave her PTSD, and [rubs my hands together in glee]. I hear the book also has nice nightmare and body horror fuel, which: [happy cackling]
• some friends shared this Elizabeth Knox post recently: "In purgatory stories are street lamps." I like the discussion of kitset language and the aversion towards speedy or glib diversion during difficult times, because it's put into words something I've thought about often: when I am going through a difficult patch, I similarly prefer to read affectively difficult things. I don't like conventional escapism in reading, or rather my escapism looks very different from the usual and involves reckoning with darkness. as I've aged I've had less patience for books that tell me the same things as the generation of books that have come before them, which I call a quality of lacking mystery, or riskless behaviour; I don't really want to be comforted or told feel-good motherhood statements about how there's always a light at the end of the tunnel. I want to face difficult problems without any solutions, that may never have solutions in human lifetimes
   

fun, misc

• went out to a gay bar with some friends recently, and got tipsy off an embarrassingly small amount of alcohol. we got our friend who's a spanish native speaker to teach us some Very Important Phrases for Lesbians, and walked out into the (quiet) streets after singing "FUERSA LESBIANAS!" and "FUERSA FEMINISMO!" the most fun I've had in a while. 
• sometimes I've wondered if the concepts of slow death and cruel optimism (both from Lauren Berlant, 2011) appeal to me precisely because they capture the effects of attrition, unnoticeable but constant pressures. my self-inflicted constant rush to meet deadlines due to my excellent procrastination skills is not remotely comparable to those things, but, well. metaphorical constellations!

Comments

[luckyzukky]

that yellowjackets snippet is lovely, so guttural, finding dirty and bloody things in the most domestic. very fitting for the show!

also i've been meaning to read convenience store woman so it's cool to see you mention it. i'll have to check out some of the other books you've mentioned

[meikuree]

thank you, that's so kind! <3 it struck me as a shauna-coded observation when I wrote it down. hopefully I'll break the yellowjackets fic ice sometime!

CSW was a fun, absurd, and tragicomic read, and I loved it! sayaka murata has a similarly comedic and WTF short story here you may be interested in: A Clean Marriage https://granta.com/a-clean-marriage/

would love to know your thoughts when you read CSW!

[luckyzukky]

hope you can break that ice soon! i loved the fic you wrote about callie and shauna, it was incredible <3

tragicomic and absurd, love to hear that! definitely moving it up my mental to-read list even though i have a hard time reading anything that isn't comics or fanfic haha. definitely bookmarking that short story for later too, thank you!

(and thanks on the misty icon compliment, i had a fun time making it and some other yellowjackets gif icons :D)

[meikuree]

so, hilariously, I’d forgotten I wrote that fic until you mentioned it! I suppose I’ve already broken the ice. but I /would/ like write an ensemble YJ polycult fic sometime. thank you for the kind words and loved your fic too! going to run and comment

[luckyzukky]

ahahahah happens to the best of us! i forget about my pre-2022 fics often until i get a kudos email or i'm just idly scrolling through my profile or something and i'm like, oh yeah i wrote that LOL. so i totally get it! polycult fic sounds like a blast by the way. and thank you so much!!!!

[meikuree]

btw, I love your icon? bloodstained Misty ftw!!

[deadfinch]

very curious about those Very Important Phrases for Lesbians as i'll be in mexico next week, trying to skate by on the halting, extremely domestically-oriented spanglish that i speak with my partner at home. and me & the girls will definitely be going to a gay bar while we're there.

[meikuree]

that's a great coincidence, because the native spanish speaker friend I mentioned hails from Mexico! so the Very Important Phrases just included inside jokes like "lesbian threesome" and "lesbian orgy" and learning how to say "colonisadores" and "reparaciones, por favor!" because we're ridiculous. though she did also teach us "vamos lesbianas!" as a rallying cry. but I hope you and your friends have a blast!

[gloss]

Thanks very much for the link to Knox's post -- it's fantastic! Really speaks to how I've been thinking and feeling and my dislike of...whatever it is, glib comfort?? Empty self-validation? Something.

Exordia looks fascinating! Thanks for the head's up there, too.

(I love how you talk about what you like in fiction, btw. <3)

[meikuree]

it's great, isn't it? I don't entirely agree that a definite distinction exists between genre and literary fiction (these boundaries are more porous in reality) but I do like that starting point of transparent language as a point of difference. "as if what was happening in the end wasn't only happening in language," yes. and agreed, the act of reading for self-validation seems dishonest sometimes.

and thank you, I love YOUR book reviews and way of thinking, so I'm honoured! <3

[chocochipbiscuit]

a piece of advice offered by ao3 writer montparnasse once, which is that you have to work for your craft. my process often involves going about my day and noticing odd or unexpected mundane connections. in my notes i've jotted down things like: "yellowjackets - remnants of food in sink drain like a pre-raphaelite garden: explosion of reds, greens, browns; dirty brown water = oxblood red' and 'blue eye samurai - cracked lineaments in teapot covers like nitamago'.

I love this because this is the kind of thing I've been trying to do (and sort of been training myself through reading poetry): trying to notice those odd or unexpected connections, and keeping a notebook (or at least a post-it) in easy reach so I can jot them as they come to me. Like...I'm on the opposite end, I don't feel I'm a very visual person, so I try to think about interesting ways to explain or describe things in writing, or have to think back to things I have actually seen and use those as a point of reference instead of working off a blank mental canvas.

I like the discussion of kitset language and the aversion towards speedy or glib diversion during difficult times, because it's put into words something I've thought about often: when I am going through a difficult patch, I similarly prefer to read affectively difficult things. I don't like conventional escapism in reading, or rather my escapism looks very different from the usual and involves reckoning with darkness. as I've aged I've had less patience for books that tell me the same things as the generation of books that have come before them, which I call a quality of lacking mystery, or riskless behaviour; I don't really want to be comforted or told feel-good motherhood statements about how there's always a light at the end of the tunnel. I want to face difficult problems without any solutions, that may never have solutions in human lifetimes

I also find this very interesting because I've talked with another friend about our different tastes in media, and I think we have different tastes in this way as well; I generally have a much lower tolerance for discomfort/repulsion in my media, or at least have to mentally fortify myself for it in a way that I don't for, say, reading a romance novel. (And I do dearly love romance novels! But they are definitely the 'comfort food' of my literary diet.) But those stories also, because they do dare to engage in more messy, gritty, or fundamentally challenging ways, are also the ones that are more likely to resonate and that I'll find myself revisiting later. But for myself at least, I cannot subsist solely on those, in much the same way I cannot solely subsist on romance novels.

went out to a gay bar with some friends recently, and got tipsy off an embarrassingly small amount of alcohol. we got our friend who's a spanish native speaker to teach us some Very Important Phrases for Lesbians, and walked out into the (quiet) streets after singing "FUERSA LESBIANAS!" and "FUERSA FEMINISMO!" the most fun I've had in a while.

Bwahaha! I'm so glad for you, glad you had a great time! FUERSA FEMINISMO! FUERSA LESBIANAS!

[meikuree]

now I want to ask what you think the central ~engine of your writing process is! visual thinking 'feels' natural for me, now that you mention it, but I'd say it wasn't innate -- I did my time studying poetry as a high school student and training any arts of noticing (quoth Anna Tsing) that now influence how I write.

the pitfall of a visual style of thinking of course is that images will float into my mind but with no connective plot tissue WHATSOEVER so my fic just ends up being a pile-up of vibes than actual story. this is probably why my fic is often written vignette-style. with the leliana/morrigan fic idea i'm sitting on, I have this ~image of them meeting on a scorched battlefield... but how did they get there? who knows? not me!

I cannot subsist solely on those, in much the same way I cannot solely subsist on romance novels.

this is a cool convo to me too, because I'll admit I've been puzzled by the other end of the spectrum of enjoying fluff and light-hearted media as escapism. I think our reading tastes actually come from similar roots, which is looking to literature as a resting place to think through/ventilate things, or just find resonant things. I don't think I could live on a single style of story too -- I enjoy ambivalence and ambiguity in stories. "cheerful" or ideologically straightforward stories don't resonate for me, but that's as much due to my biases and personal histories as it would be for anyone else with opposite tastes.

and thank you, it was a 10/10 experience!

[chocochipbiscuit]

Trying now to think about that ~engine~ because even though I do sometimes start with a vivid image in my mind (ex: mermaids with bloody teeth, or very graphic images of particular kinks or sex acts I want two characters to do!) it's less about the visual for me and more about the emotional resonance, if that makes sense? Like I try to think about *why* that idea resonates so strongly for me and chase it down to its emotional core. Which admittedly sounds very pretentious, but it's not just about having a striking image as trying to figure out why it feels so striking and how to replicate that into a written format.

So here I'm going to be a little presumptuous: if I had the same image of Leliana and Morrigan across a scorched battlefield, I'd be thinking a lot about that in terms of emotional vibe. Like...were they on opposite sides? Are they allies? What was the emotional toll of the battle? Is is bitter resignation or fierce exultation? And then once I have that in mind, it informs the details, the sort of 'backward steps' of how they got there, and what my choice of description might mean. (ymmv but that's the way I work at least! I've heard this described as a variation on the 'snowflake method,' but stumbled into this process for myself before I ever heard of it.)

Relatedly, a lot of my story outlines tend to be listed bulletpoints: vibes, images, ideas, and then slowly adding or rearranging them over time as I build a loose framework for the story, sometimes with occasional paragraphs of dialogue or description. One of my friends has described these as 'half-drafts,' since they tend to be more 'complete'/detailed than her outlines.

this is a cool convo to me too, because I'll admit I've been puzzled by the other end of the spectrum of enjoying fluff and light-hearted media as escapism. I think our reading tastes actually come from similar roots, which is looking to literature as a resting place to think through/ventilate things, or just find resonant things.

I think it helps that we have a fair amount of overlap in our interests, even if it's not 100%! I also think it's pretty cool since...yeah, I admit I'm also puzzled by people who find solace in works that (IMO) are extremely grim, but to each their own! Sometimes I'll read a story where I can appreciate the craftsmanship of the writer and the darker/deeper themes, but appreciation isn't the same as enjoyment. Which is applicable to a lot more than fiction!

[meikuree]

it's less about the visual for me and more about the emotional resonance, if that makes sense? Like I try to think about *why* that idea resonates so strongly for me and chase it down to its emotional core.

not pretentious at all! I follow a similar process myself. plus that Leliana/Morrigan exploration was helpful. <3 with the Blue Eye Samurai example I had in my post (cracked lineaments in teapot covers like nitamago) I've connected it to the titular character's affinity for meditation and relationality to inanimate objects in the world, and also certain other characters' fascinations with food, and also disabilities, as a characterising element. it's like creating a cartography of symbols. writing feels very much like... energy-bending, if I can use that phrase, so I'm delighted by this comparison.

Sometimes I'll read a story where I can appreciate the craftsmanship of the writer and the darker/deeper themes, but appreciation isn't the same as enjoyment.

definitely same!

if I had to explain why I feel an almost obscene thrill at reading books with, say, women committing or being implicated in socially/spiritually/politically/metaphorically gruesome things, I might rationalise it with how it feels resonant with the "truths" and histories I "feel" are true of the world: I like things that subvert mundane social infrastructures, and wrestle seriously with darker sides to things people take for granted (eg. because they're rooted in hierarchies of injustice).

I also like philosophically or anthropologically meaty books -- feels pretentious saying this because I'm sure everyone does, and nobody would ever say "I like vacuous books", whatever, but I like things I can approach like an ethical puzzle and which touch on Big Serious Topics, as I am alas a tool.