meikuree

1. this is not a drill I have tickets to see tori amos live next year, this is not a drill!! just like Wu Qingfeng of sodagreen, also a tori superfan, I know that I will likely be crying my eyes out during the concert. not because of fannish ecstasy but because so many of her songs strike the chord of melancholic catharsis and saying the unsayable. I do tear up every time I listen to Cooling and she sings, in a despondent but hopeful voice, "maybe I didn’t like the year, but I still can’t believe Speed Racer is dead..."

2. a friend sent this to me: a 词汇表 (vocabulary list) from a chinese curriculum for 15 yo IB students in Singapore. it went viral in the Singaporean news, with several parents commenting on how complex and obscure the phrases here were.

for people on my page who are learning or know chinese: what do you think of the list? upon discussion with

firstroad, our take was that in reality few of the words here have complicated meanings; they simply look intimidating at first glance, because there are a few uncommon hanzi, and phrases you rarely hear in everyday conversation. but as long as you familiarise yourself with how to read all of them, you'll be fine; they're approachable for native or semi-native Chinese speakers (it'll understandably be different for CFL learners). in fact, uh, these would likely be pitched at the primary school standard in Mainland China.

it's also quite a strange mix, with no ostensible theme among some groups. you have 熟悉 (shuxi), 谦虚 (qianxu), 编织 (bianzhi), 鉴赏 (jianshang), 阐述 (chanshu), 啰嗦 (luo suo) and 生活开销 (shenghuo kaixiao) -- all common phrases -- appearing next to each other or 循规蹈矩 (xun gui dao ju), 腼腆 (miantian) or 缺憾 (quehan).

( media & fashion musings, kon satoshi, etc. )

this will mostly be me kvetching. props to this: I haven't read something which sparked such a polarised opinion from my own self in a while.

aesthetically this was a 4/5. I admired how experimental and unnovellike this was, the 'take it or leave it' approach to style and its avant-garde structure, and so on. great form, A+. but I hated much else of the book! I did not like the content undergirding that formal innovation, the entire scaffolding of ideas surrounding its (apparently) exploration of nature vs nurture or the place of intelligence in the contemporary world, so emotionally my rating is a 1.5/5.

in short: if there was an Olympics category for pissing me off, this book won it. the worst part is that the book is far from unsalvageable. it’s definitely original, good at points. it could have been pushed further. I could see many times how this book could've been better crafted to get across its (indeed defensible!) message better, but it just felt insular.

secretly, I also find this book to be ignorant and racist. not overtly racist, but racist in the way any book imbibing wider ideas about intelligence while leaving its core untouched will be: because of the fabric of how it conceptualises intelligence, and where the scope of its attention extends to (and also doesn't).

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finished White Teeth (2000). I would give it a 8.5/10. a masterclass in writing about immigration without reducing a story to immigrant cliches. (even if I did not care much for the recurring spiels on history as ball-and-chain -- not because I disagree but because that was the most 'borrowed' part of the book.) part of that is because it's wall-to-wall, 24/7, hardcore satire and political commentary. it doesn't make the quest towards representation and stop there; I felt like I learned something new about London's sociopolitical nuances even reading this in 2025. the other part is also that, thank god, Smith is able to write about a great latitude of lives that are not her own. I liked her awareness of WW2 history, The Great Partition, the Kingston earthquake, Jehovah Witness cultism, English colonialism in the Caribbean, new-gen Islamic fundamentalists, and more. she is very very observant. what was not so great: her impressionistic and at times stereotypical sketches of Bangladesh.

the ending was what-the-hell, but I expected that going in, and it was formally innovative enough that I enjoyed reading just for the experience. I was astonished afterwards to learn that Zadie Smith wrote it when she was 23 - 25! also, the way she described her own writing is hysterical:

When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for The Simpsons who’d briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.

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vanity and haircut chat

I got my hair cut recently again for free; a new hairstylist at a salon needed models to build up her portfolio and get more practice so I happily volunteered. even though I love drawing hair I can never visualise or describe what I want -- drawing's a 2d space, hairstyling is 3d -- but my hair is imo hard to fuck up and I also truly do not mind looking ugly in the worst scenario, so I asked for the usual of shoulder-length layers with face framing. it ended up being the best haircut session I've had in the UK, because the hairstylist and her supervisor were both attentive and tried to tailor the cut to my hair texture. I learned, for instance, that (no surprise) like many Chinese people I have dense but fine hair with a slight wave/curl that benefits from blended or feathered cutting, a la Japanese salon styles. and I have an angular jawline such that softer or rounder layers help balance that out.

modelling for hairstylists is also unintentionally a cool way to get a look at what happens behind the curtain of how hairdressers do what they do, the techniques they use like point cutting, etc.

anyway, essays and other things that have caught my eye lately:

short stories

The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reed: In a corporate-run dystopia, a trans girl plucked out of poverty to give birth to a clone meets her replacement.

this was a bittersweet story, with a trans lesbian and a rather sweet if ominous ending, and I liked it. but: acquaintance and I were both remarking about how, despite the title practically begging for it, there were very few freudian undertones in the story itself. maybe a mind-boggling choice (and this is not a spoiler, this is discussed in the opening paragraphs), given how often the narrative references some variation of 'your mother put [a child] in you' and 'you are carrying your mother's future daughter'. (to clarify, these are adoptive mothers and foster daughters.) otherwise, there are interesting thematic lines wrt trans embodiment, clones as a metaphor for fungibility, surrogacy labour, and the ironic, hypocritical paternalism (or maternalism?) of corporate you-can-be-anything-you-want ideologies.

articles, commentaries

In Italy, Punjabi Farmworkers Are Treated as Expendable. After decades working the fields in Italy, Balvir Kumar “Birra” was still paid barely five euros an hour. Killed in an accident last month, his story shows how little value Italy’s vast food industry puts on its workers’ lives.

This article is my small testimony to Birra; he will live in the memory of everyone who met him and of his family back home, who now mourns his loss. I will never forget his smiling eyes; his clumsy, swaying walk; his contagious laughter and quick way of speaking, as if he was in a rush to end the sentence; his funny bhangra dance moves; and how he gave a €10 banknote to an eight-year-old girl on her birthday, equivalent to two hours of his hard work. One of his friends — who informed me about his death — remembers him by the few words they used to jokingly tell each other whenever they met: “edda hai” (“it’s like that”). It’s like that, Birra, but it shouldn’t be.

Liam Kofi Bright: Self-Audit a Decade In.

When people ask me why I decided to go into academia I typically reply that it’s an indoor job with no heavy lifting. This, of course, is a simplification. I was also depressed. To be more precise, when I was deciding whether or not to go to grad school I had then-undiagnosed severe recurrent depression [in hindsight I had a lot of sympathy for this lovely piece Railton, 2015]. Both these were probably the most important factors in trying for graduate school.

a 2016 interview with Margo Jefferson by Tobi Haslett. this has many moments of the characteristic sharpness I associate with Tobi Haslett's commentaries, and Jefferson is of course an intellectual heavyweight.

( some interesting (and possibly provocative) excerpts )

music, fragrances, misc

tumblr user amarocit answers: have you ever made your own perfumes? I'm a fragrance pleb so this was a really illuminating look at what happens behind the curtain of fragrances and how perfumers come up with notes. for instance, did you know: "if you're trying to create a specific effect, stuff gets thorny. That's because most fragrances are actually illusions! Note lists are not ingredient lists; a fragrance with a jasmine note might not contain any jasmine products."

Tori Amos’ From The Choirgirl Hotel is progressive rock/pop in its truest sense. see also this Reddit response thread. I don't have a musical background whatsoever and I know nothing about composition, theory, scales, or time signatures. but I always enjoy analysis of the musical elements of Tori's oeuvre and the why of why they're so layered and compelling, which is maybe a little like practical criticism but for music. Among other details: "[Tori] plays around with song structure in ways that aren't usually common in pop"; "If you try to analyze what’s going on you stumble upon a plethora of odd and unusual time signatures and arrangement choices that sound coherent and memorable bc of her immense melodic vision."

and some of her songs where she goes off the fucking walls and switches time signatures multiple times or even with every measure -- brilliant insanity -- are my favourite ones, like Datura. for me, she's the musician equivalent of a writer whose next word is unpredictable and never what you expect, someone who makes full use of a medium's constraints for reinvention.

Current Music: Pretty Girls - Little Dragon

recent reading. I should probably warn that there'll be discussions of cannibalism, sexual violence, and eating disorders:

( Gliff by Ali Smith )
( Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica )
( Metal from Heaven by August Clarke )
( Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body by Susan Bordo )

short stories:

When We Were Nearly Young by Mavis Gallant (a commentary here)

title = bad Mandarin pun, a play on 'fool's spring' and 愚蠢 (yu2 chun3, 'foolish/stupid') + 春 (chun1, 'spring'). see the actual seasons of Britain:

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another week, another media round-up.

BTW: someone's gifted me a paid Dreamwidth account twice by now. I'm not sure if they're two separate people or just the one, but if you see this, thank you! I'm really appreciative about this. I don't know if we have any fannish interests in common, but feel free to hit me up, I wonder if I could put any of my skills to use and write you meta/fic or draw you a small art piece.

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1000xRESIST is another one in the line of canons that have made me feel like I need a drink and a depressing book about grief to process it immediately after finishing it. it actually has an uplifting ending by a few metrics and it's also extremely funny, but it still puts the audience through the wringer and I respect it for that.

quick summary: it's a narrative game about a far-future sisterhood of clones cloned from a HK Chinese-Canadian teenager called Iris Kwan, but I'd alternatively call it a commentary concerned with the violence of parent-child relationships/abuse/memory/heritage/familial legacies. alternative alternative summary: this game is filled to the brim with women with mother issues, and clonecest that's both subtextual and not. and multiple matricides, because why not? party emoji.

I'm going to put my cards on the table and say that I'm usually thoroughly lukewarm about the majority of Chinese(-North American) diaspora stories, for reasons I'll sum up at the end so I don't start this on a hypercritical note. this game, though, has an interesting and un-solipsistic premise and while I don't think its treatments of certain topics resonated (understandable! it's a me problem), in that they hewed close to familiar narrative grooves in that genre, it sticks the landing and I was taken with the clone society by the end.

fun fact: this isn't the first show/media/canon I've watched about a sisterhood of clones. Orphan Black was another one, and it was similarly concerned with genetic/personal autonomy, responsibility, and ethics.

I don't have the brainspace to write any meaty commentary, unfortunately so I'm just going to note some linguistic (foot)notes on the Cantonese lines and hilarious moments that stuck out when I watched Welonz's playthrough on Youtube (minor spoilers):

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and a few reasons I don't gel (broadly) with the genre of Chinese diaspora stories:

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femslash challenge questions by

flo_nelja and brought to my attention by

luckyzukky, thank you!

( questions )

end-of-year writing meme, adapted and cribbed from

vendettadays:

I wrote much less in 2024, which I expected and am fine with -- it was a busy year and fandom wasn't my focus (as much). my writing endeavours this year span -- behold! -- one fic for

bethefirst and one zine piece. but reflecting on just those two would get boring fast, so I'll lump my 2023 fic in too.

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(the title's a bad Strokes reference.)

another round of fic recs, with a little gen sprinkled around and vaguely dirtybadwrong or bad-bildungsroman themed (as usual my preferred escapism can be summed up as "women psychosexually torturing or imprinting on each other"). less comprehensive than usual because I'm just clearing out a backlog, apologies:

gen
rock, river, permeable flesh by elijah_was_a_prophet (The Locked Tomb)
The end of time. Gideon boards a train.

A wreath of reeds by laughingpineapple (Disco Elysium)
Steban, touch grass. Grass, touch Steban.

f/f
poma venusta by Anonymous (Hilary Tamar Mysteries - Sarah Caudwell)
Dulcia non semper sunt ori poma venusta. Selena and Julia, leaving a party.

the opening alone is divine. and this moment:

quote

As though it were something that Julia had long known she had on hand, like a book or a bottle, and had but to take up and open. The extraordinary, consuming absence of the tension of the opening gambit, as she had always thought of it – not ungratifying, not wholly unerotic, to observe the effect achieved, but one never lost the sustaining consciousness of what might follow after: a belt to unfasten, or a tab to be paid, or a lecture to attend. A question of judging the diplomatic minimum, of withdrawing while still wanted. A little antechamber spent thinking, mostly, about films and poses: how the leads fitted together, where the actress put her hands.

She had not thought, below the windows, about where to put her hands. She had not known whose hands were whose. There had been no occasion for the surreptitious glance downward to see whether anything had risen, like the strong back of a fish half seen in the water, to what you could not help calling, if that were the model you were using, the lure. There had been no thought of after, or at all. For five minutes, unprecedented in her brief, avid, largely successful amatory career, hers had not been the directing intelligence.

geist, geist, ungeist by foxbones (Tár (2022))
“She’s nothing to go wrecking your life over, you know.”

Krista, Francesca, and Maestro - before the events of the film.

read this fandom-blind based on someone's rec, because life's too short to cheat yourself out of the delicious sociology of terrible mentor-protege relationships or something. this exchange amused me an unreasonable amount (NSFW heads-up):

quote

“You’re a shit lay,” Krista whispered. Fran groaned, pushed her off.

“Shut up.”

“You eat cunt like you hate it.”

“Because I do hate you. I hate you and your cunt.”

the look of it by cordial (Dune - 2021, Jessica/Liet Kynes)

"I am—" She paused to flick through her titles. "Fremen. We survive by noticing the smallest shifts in the desert."
(Jessica and Liet's paths intersect for a while longer at the station.)

I'm always reccing

cordialcount's stuff, whose writing has the 3 Bs (brutal, brilliant, beautiful), and stuns me half into wordlessness and half into enjoyable analysis all the time. this fic in particular is convincing and sold me on these two (headcanoning now that Jessica abandoned her prophet son to go gallivant with another MILF, brb), and it's also one of the hottest fics I've read, all without having any explicit or on-screen sex (that use of porn as worldbuilding, man).

quotes

In the palmaries of future ecological formulae: Jessica reached through the candelilla and verbena toward Liet. The light, luscious in its wet reflection, dappled Jessica's ankles, her thighs, the wave of her hair before it fell into the blooms. A tower from another world, in her height and self-possession. Liet shuddered in the grass as she never would have wasted sweat to do in the harsher sun of undreamt Arrakis. Jessica's Voice scraped out of her like sandpaper as it found Liet's mind and scoured it smooth.

[...]

Liet could still feel the slick of the last evening inside her stillsuit as she undressed. Jessica's moisture, recycling through and through her.

Too soon to find marriage or a lover, Jessica said. You won't be tamed by either. I was a half of something when Leto was here, but Liet, you don't plan to be half of anything.

Liet cupped Jessica's belly with the soft palm of her hand, where the calluses didn't reach. She breathed in. Even the air felt—smelled—damp this close to Jessica's body, underlain by the warm complexity of spice when the muscles jumped in her thigh. Use the Voice, then, Liet whispered. Tell me to fuck you like no one else exists in the world.

the gallows in paradise by klickitats (Dragon Age, Calpernia/Leliana)
The war against Corypheus approaches its natural end. Leliana finds his general, Calpernia, half-dead in a river and attempts to make her a tool for Inquisition use. But knives cut both ways, and Calpernia discovers a mystery to unravel Leliana's entire world.

a gem of a rarepair, and I like the exploration of the horrible and insouciant and horribly insouciant hegemony of the narrative 'heroes' in the Inquisition. plus this line:

There are still gallows in paradise, Leliana. They just hang the anointed ones with silk rope.

architect of a whole world's nightmares by suitablyskippy (Danganronpa, Enoshima Junko/Ikusaba Mukuro, sibling incest)
“The wind’s really loud here,” says Mukuro, and her tone is very flat, almost uncannily extremely exactly as though she’s trying to hide a breaking heart! “I didn’t get all of that.” Junko imagines her: underground, her snowhole, scraped out till it fit as close as a womb, eyes blank – impassive – ice cold! – and she’s wrapped in furs and snug in a sleeping bag – no, she’s naked and snug in a sleeping bag, and Junko runs one soft bare foot up one smooth bare leg and shivers at the thought. “Did you need something?”

“Thinkin bout you!” says Junko. “Thinkin bout the apocalypse.”

(Mukuro spends three years as a soldier and a missing person, and she still can't get away from Junko: but even if she could, she wouldn't.)

The Preservation of the World by StripySock (Ginger Snaps, Brigitte Fitzgerald/Ginger Fitzgerald)

“I went to the woods to live deliberately,” she shouts at Ginger’s back, clad in a red puffer jacket to avoid being mistaken for a target. The irony is not lost on Brigitte.

Ginger turns round, looking completely unimpressed. “You did not,” she says, hair tucked into the back of her coat, too-pale face peeking out.

“No,” Brigitte admits. “I did not. I went to the woods because otherwise you were going to end up in a lab, on your hind legs begging for a biscuit.”

recent poems:

( the poems )

last night I dreamed that I was sitting for one of my secondary school Chinese oral exams again, in a generic indoor basketball court, trying to tell the assessor sitting opposite about politics and the president and existentialist philosophy (not topics which would've come up in any actual exams to test the ability to verbally elaborate on one's 思维观点, [un]fortunately). I was getting frustrated in the dream because I was speaking Chinese just fine aside from all these terms which were just on the tip of my tongue, but I could only say them in English when I opened my mouth... when I woke up I was relieved I hadn't forgotten how to speak Chinese.

other odd and mundane stress dreams:

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Hi there, and thanks for creating for me! Yuletide is always one of my favourite exchanges to browse, and I'm excited to see whatever you'll come up with. I’m omnivorous and easygoing, so please don't worry about the details below, they're just springboards if you're stuck; I love many things on the scale of dark and weird to joyful and mellow. You can go in other directions or dust off an old piece as long as you respect DNWs.

Treats are always welcome. I can be found elsewhere at

meikuree on Tumblr and

meikuree on AO3.

General Likes

gen, f/f, fic of all ratings
nuanced, intense, or unconventional relationships
- enemies/friends to lovers, or scrambled versions
- relationships ambiguous or difficult to define
- relationships which require work; relationships where people need more than each other to be content
- love or loyalty mingled with resentment, etc. complex feelings in general!
- codependency, manipulation, (inverted) power dynamics
pre-canon, post-canon, canon-divergence AUs; canon extensions or explorations, including of marginal places, ideas, details, or character interactions only hinted at
banter, humour, worldbuilding, character explorations, missing scenes, hurt/comfort, slice of life, crack treated seriously
ambiguity, bittersweetness, hopeful/melancholic moods, second and third person POV, experimental prose styles or structures (e.g., non-linear narratives, interactive fiction, metafiction, genre pastiche, etc.)
friendship, courtship, worldview clashes, physical intimacy, reunions, gestures of love (sweet or violent), getting together fic, mentor/protege dynamics
characters grappling with suboptimal or dysfunctional circumstances and settings (whether darkly or constructively)
cultural, sensory, setting details; architecture, scenery porn, indulgent and loving descriptions; theatre, performance, competence, confidence; ‘fish out of water’ scenarios
confrontations, denial, emotional repression, unhealthy coping mechanisms, role reversals
deranged maximalist or megalomaniac characters; emotionally straitjacketed or alienated characters
dreams, liminal places, hauntings, fractured identities, surrealism, magical realism, absurdism, ceremonies (funerals, send-offs, baptisms, etc.)
history, the calm before/after the storm, beauty amidst bleakness and cruelty, ruins and remnants
backstories, matriarchial families, complex mother-daughter relationships, weaponised femininity (literal or metaphorical), dysfunctional families, ambivalent legacies or heritage
psychological/existential horror, atmospheric bleakness, gothic settings; body horror, pain as an axis for transformation or self-knowledge, the weirdness of having a body, being alien to yourself
recovery, uneasy aftermaths; romanticised cannibalism, moral ambiguity, incongruous domesticity, unexpected joy or tenderness, Faustian bargains, ethics, material culture, characters denied catharsis or reaching hard-found satisfaction
road-trips, greenery and NATURE, everyday streets, water bodies, hair-washing, wound care, bathtubs, political economy, politics mixed in with mundane life
tragedy, loss, grief/mourning; stories about being unable to return somewhere; stories about living with loss
unreliable narrators, narratives colluding with characters of uncertain morality, estrangement, falling for the "wrong" person (&/ being happy about it)
narratives about monstrosity; benevolent monsters (interpreted widely), monstrous women

In general, if something appears in canon, I'm fine with it being referenced or appearing in fic aside from DNWs. That said, if your gift needs it, I'm also fine with: F/F dub/noncon, F/F incest, side characters or relationships appearing, infidelity, disordered eating (more on restriction and the psychological side, e.g., extreme or 'irrational' negative perceptions of food, than binging or purging), suicidal ideation, self-harm, major character death, and unhappy/ambiguous endings.

NSFW Likes

I love very emotionally intense or character-driven sex. I love fraughtness as much as characters exploring a kink just 'because', or kink that sheds light on new aspects of relationship dynamics. I also enjoy sex as a way to process trauma or intimate interface for embodiment, complicated histories/dynamics, and more. I'm cool with past sexual assault being referenced or sex needing to stop because of old wounds/trauma, for instance.

Most of all, I'm great with so-called 'vanilla' sex (fingering, oral, penetrative, grinding), but I'm also very into Liminal and Weird Sex, such as dreamsharing, sex you can't be sure is happening, sex where the script changes because you're applying it to a monster/eldritch horror, or symbolic/metaphorical sex (e.g., sex as apotheosis), and so much more. This list is general because I don't always have specific kinks I like to see, so if you want to write a kink because you think it's fitting for the characters or setting, please go for it!

character study via porn
choking or breathplay
clothing kinks, clothed sex
crying during sex
dom/sub undertones, abuse of authority
dubious consent (of any kind, e.g., due to power imbalances, identity issues, "fuck or die" scenarios, sex pollen, altered mental states, etc.)
finger sucking
oral sex and/or fingering
first times, loss of virginity
focus on hands, wrists, necks
friends/enemies with benefits
bad/awkward sex (either funny or depressing), talking during sex
emotional sex, grief-fuelled sex, hair-pulling, under-negotiated kink, characters kneeling
edging, meandering sex, sex that may not revolve around orgasms
gentle/caring or reverent sex
gunplay, knifeplay, (mis)use of magic
painplay, consensual pain/violence (especially if characters get off on it)
psychosexual obsessions or tones, plotty porn, politics with porn, “if I must solve a dozen geopolitical problems just to have sex with you then I will”-esque dynamics
sexual fantasies and masturbation
sex as self-harm, desire asymmetry
sex described in unconventional ways (preferably in line with the tone of canon)
sex that necessitates adjustments or creativity (e.g. for chronic pain)
sex that is actually about something else; sex where characters think about their relationship to god or other highfalutin things; things that are objectively not sex being, in fact, a sex scene (example)
smoking kinks, stubbing cigarettes on someone
someone denying another person sex because they think it’ll fuck them up; people fucking anyway
erotic body horror; sex that's objectively normal but reads subjectively like body horror due to things like disorientation, power imbalances or interpersonal fuckery, dissociation, embodiment issues, or in-universe reasons

General DNWs

M/F sex/noncon or M/F incest (if canon, references are fine); unaroused victims
explicit underage sex < 18
bestiality
genderswap (unless requested)
kidfic/de-aging (childhood flashbacks and scenes are fine)
pregnancy/abortion, characters expressing the desire for biological children (unless canon)
mundane AUs (e.g. coffeeshop, high school AUs)
extensive descriptions of weight gain/loss; forced feeding, stress-eating (unless it's cannibalism), mentions of calories, explicit fat shaming
graphic descriptions of war crimes (especially by Imperial Japan)
scat, emetophilia, watersports, age/race/petplay, breeding kinks, cervical penetration, weight gain/stuffing kinks, spanking, omegaverse
trypophobic imagery (clusters of holes)

List of Requests

Blue Eye Samurai

Akemi, Mizu

I adore their unexpected commonalities and how clearly they see each other, in a universe where social webs of discrimination and misunderstanding reign supreme; they're both attuned to characteristics in each other that other people ignore such as anger and resourcefulness, while seeing through the ones that are socially valorised like Akemi's talent for sweet words and flattery. I'd be down to hear your take on how they might cleave under some layers with each other to touch and connect with the hidden substrates of anger in each other, even as their inevitable divisions exist and intervene. Scenes that presage more, beginnings of something deeper, alternative pre-canon accidental meetings, looks at both of them slash-and-burning their way through Japan's norms in their own high vs. "low" avenues would all be welcome!

Episode 5 was a highlight for me, what with the metafictional staging of Mizu's backstory and the way we learn about some key components for what makes Mizu tick: the constant proof that the other shoe will drop in others' reception of her because of Mikio and her mother turning her back on her, the incongruity of her talents with the domestic sphere, her sobering acknowledgement--but not total personal belief--that her talent for swordsmanship will always be inherently parsed as threatening by accidents of societal position. With all that in mind Akemi's one of the best-positioned people to explode those assumptions in Mizu's worldview and vice versa too, and I'd be delighted to read your take on what they learn, or take away from each other, or even any dissonant neuroses they make each other devolve towards if you fancy. No need for full-on happy endings or even conventionally requited feelings here -- if you see them parting ways eventually but still indelibly emancipating each other amidst their separation that'd still be a fantastically romantic story to me!

I'll admit I was ambivalent on Akemi's "I want to be great" and shogunate arc, but more because of the how than the what -- I thought her bridge declaration was a moment of character undevelopment for her earlier realisations about the prisonhood of her station, and I wasn't fully convinced of "girlboss her way through" as a coherent answer to all the discontents of her fate. There is more than a single path! That said: you don't have to shun that arc at all, I'm happy to read your take on BES's rich canon tapestry. However if you like me have wrung your hands trying to decide on a more fulfilling arc for Akemi as if you're Akemi personal college counsellor then I am equally down for your most bombastic, out-there, or covert subversion of her canon fate(s). Akemi maintains ties to a underground network of spies and intelligence made up of the women she met in the brothel? She ekes out spaces of escape from the imperial palace(s)? Go for it!

That first encounter on the bridge: what went through Mizu's mind? What things made Akemi stick clearly in Mizu's mind, beyond the fact that she's a lady?
Incongruous domesticity, or: I like the idea that Mizu and Akemi would probably be horrible at domestic chores, Mizu by canonical confirmation and Akemi by inference (see: her highborn station); feel free to give me disasters that would ensue from them living together, and how domesticity might take a backseat to their respective quests and simply form a backdrop for other political/extralegal (i.e. Mizu's revenge quest) developments.
AUs where Mizu and Akemi stay longer at the brothel; scenes exploring the brothel's impact on them.
AUs where Mizu arrives at the bridge earlier, doesn't go to England, and compels Akemi to go on the run with her.
Alternative formats: I'm open to in-universe looks at Mizu/Akemi's relationship through historical documents or artefacts set in the future.

And entirely optional ideas/headcanons:

Akemi possessing knowledge of historical instances of gender non-conformity like onna-musha from all that reading and teasing/taunting Mizu with YOU THINK YOU'RE SPECIAL? all while Mizu is like: 🥹
Akemi and Mizu respecting each other's respective skills in craftsmanship.
I'm quite taken with water as a metaphor for Mizu: to shamelessly quote one of my friends Mizu is a thoroughly relational character whose modes of connection with the world are tragically shut off by that same world, and like water she relies on inputs, ecology, a place in a wider world.

I'm cool with any treatment of Mizu's pronouns though I use she/her personally - write what you're comfortable with!

Some of my DNWs are waived for this fandom; I'm fine with depictions of Mizu/Mikio but would rather not see detailed descriptions of sex for Akemi/Taigen or Akemi/Takayoshi. Given Akemi's position as of the finale, I'm fine with her being conscious of expectations to produce heirs, but would rather not see her written as someone uncomplicatedly embracing parenthood or motherhood without being aware of it as a politically necessary move.

I'm also fine with M/F sex being in the background given the general setting and the fact that the show is set in brothels for part of the time but would prefer as little emphasis on M/F noncon in the worldbuilding/setting as possible.

Exordia - Seth Dickinson

Any Character(s) (Arîn Tawakuli, Blackbird, Rosamaria-Blackbird, Iruvage, Jiyan "Anna" Sinjari, Khaje Sinjari, Ssenenet, Ssrinsahautha-ku-Ssraaa | Ssrin, Worldbuilding)

I mean it. Go buckwild with featuring any of the tagset characters! Exordia is the new shiny fascinating fandom taking up residence in my brain. I don't have a lot of specific ideas, but I'm intrigued to see your take on Exordian empire shenanigans, the characters' fates in the BIG SENTIENT SPACESHIP, the ethics of drone strikes, the ugly human costs of American imperialism and exceptionalism, and I'm fine if you mix upsetting historical events with crylaugh-inducing gallows humour like the canon does. I think this book is begging for worldbuilding excavations too, so feel free to take any of the many events that likely made you go "WTF was that?" and dig into it.

I'm curious about that framework of narrative importance powering genocide and imperialism -- and it could be interesting for this canon to broach events which blur the lines between free will and uhhhh narrative convenience (in the Exordian sense) among characters we've already seen. Especially if you bring in the eightfold passions!

In general however I do appreciate how Seth writes the Tawakuli women as strategists and resourceful people than simply recipients of geopolitical menaces, whose historical pain may be marginal in the narratives of American imperialist projects but are in fact central to the mechanisms of subjugation. I like that nobody in Tawakul really finds it strange for Tawakul to be so central to intergalactic geopolitics -- because there is no split between 'normal' geopolitics and what happens to the everyday lives of remote or marginalised peoples.

A rough grouping of characters and prompts:

The Kurdistan troupe (Arîn, Khaje, Jiyan "Anna" Sinjari)

I wish we'd gotten to see more of life in Tawakul and some of my favourite hysterical moments were the conversations between Arîn and Khaje. Please feel free to give cursed domestic moments with a drunk utterly parenting-indifferent Khaje who has to fend off an Arîn trying enthusiastically to adopt her as a surrogate mother.
Cursed domestic life with Ssrin after the whole New York prelude. How does Ssrin fend in the company of humans of the same breed who are nonetheless so different and armed??
AU or headcanon... thing... that Arîn may be Anna's hesper-mate. If so, gee, isn't it supremely convenient that Tawakul had the conditions to birth someone like Arîn?! This and more free will questions in the local news o'clock in Tawakul.
Does Rosamaria-Blackbird conjure up a Space Uber at some point and return to earth to visit Arîn?
One thing that breaks my heart is how Arîn and Anna's positions are reversed by the end: Arîn's the ""exile"" who has to leave her community behind, and Anna is... part of something again. I'd love explorations of them as foils and parallels!

I'm cool with Khaje/Anna, Arîn/Anna, and any and all relationships.

Love Island in Space! (Blackbird, Rosamaria-Blackbird, everyone on the spaceship at the end)

Self-explanatory title, sorry. Um, but yes, shenanigans?! Weird grief-fuelled loopy adventures? Dark warped Doctor Who-style visits to planets and sinister doppelgangers?
Sex pollen/fuck or die scenarios. Rosabird has the worst idea of how to make humans relax. Along these lines: everyone gets dosed with a truth serum. Nobody has a good time.
More little magical cannibalism.

When a snake loves another snake very much... (Ssrin, Ssenenet)

Haha, I'm sorry (again). The title was my silly segue for lesbian sister-snake incest but in honest terms I'm just down for anything that explores their history and Childhood on Exordia, gen or not or blurring the lines between. I'm also intrigued by all the lingering descriptions of Ssrin's womb at the end of the book?! What's going on there? Did Ssenenet do something to her? How did they end up on opposite sides of a bloodthirsty intergalactic conflict?

THANK YOU, NEXT (Iruvage, Ssrin, Iruvage's ~~favourite~~ most reviled humans)

Iruvage endeared me with his stuck caps-lock button. I love that he is SO campy. You could write an entire first-person villain monologue from me and I'd lap it up.
The hint that Iruvage might have had a lesbian hook-up with human!Rosamaria???
Where does Iruvage go? What was Iruvage like in snake alien school? What insufferable philosophy bro disses or things has Iruvage done in his lifetime?
Iruvage the hopeless romantic for his patron.

舞妓さんちのまかないさん | The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House (TV)

Any Character(s)

I love what this show does with sisterhood and community, and I love Hirokazu Kore-eda's poetic directing style! I'm cool with various tones, including ones more pensive, slightly more dark, and bittersweet than the show's. For any pairings here, feel free to bring in all the cultural, culinary, and historical details you want or may know, and feature other characters seen in the show like Tsurukoma, Kikuno, Kotono, etc. and write about other parts of life in Kyoto, generally.

I've written ideas for some possible configurations of characters below, but if inspiration for a different ensemble of people strikes you please go ahead. I'm also down for bringing in ALL the side character(s) of this show or exploring interactions between unexpected characters, please surprise me!

Mother Azusa & Ryoko

I love bittersweet and complicated mother-daughter relationships so I’d just be thrilled to see any further fic dwelling on or developing their relationship. How does Ryoko feel about Mother Azusa’s bond with her “nominative” daughters? What does Ryoko yearn for from her mother? What sides of Mother Azusa does Ryoko see that the maiko may not? How do things change post-canon, when people are moving on from the maiko house?

Momoko & Yoshino

They’re both “alumni” of the maiko house but they followed such different paths, only to converge again during the show! Their dynamic’s fascinating to me as a result; Yoshino is worldly but less committed to being a maiko, and I sense that beneath their differences they both share the same desire to push back against some geiko traditions. How does Momoko regard Yoshino and do they come to new understandings? Did Yoshino know Momoko’s real, non-geiko name? What scenes might’ve happened in their training days? Or anything else, really! Momoko/Yoshino would be welcome if you’re considering it.

Kiyo & Sumire | Momohana

Food as a love language… :,) Their bond drives much of the show and I love how careful and tender they are with each other. The fact that others in the house pick up on it and compare them to a husband-and-wife pair too (!!). How do things change after Sumire’s inauguration as a geiko? How does Kiyo feel about her new name—are there any ambivalences? What things do they carry with them from home, and how do the seasons (interpreted widely) unfold for them? Kiyo/Sumire is fine and welcome if you feel like writing it.

Momoko & Sumire | Momohana

Love their mentor/mentee relationship; what about Momoko teaching Momohana more dances, wisdom about their trade, and showing a different, quirkier side of herself to Momohana? Momohana seeing things through Momoko’s eyes while developing her own style and identity as a geiko? Do they push back against or subvert any geiko history or traditions together?

Shogun (TV 2024)

Toda Mariko, Ochiba No Kata, Usami Fuji

Shogun captivated me with its competently and intricately written political intrigue, and I love the unconventional, fulfilling p/bathos of its ending. I think its runtime was perfect and little was superfluous in its pacing. That said: I'm now craving excavations of its women of all stripes, from their backstories to their philosophies and worldviews, as well as just spending time unpacking all the worldbuilding goldmines in this show. If you wish I wouldn't mind any incorporation, inspiration from, or allusions to real-world Japanese history and would in fact be elated to see the literary/cultural/historical details that enchant you.

I've selected giver's choice for this fandom and would love any stripe of gen or f/f you want to write, but I'd also like to put it out there that I'm fine with any configuration of F/F between Fuji, Mariko, and Ochiba no Kata/Ruri, including multiple pairings in a single fic if you like.

References to Mariko's husband or her relationship with Blackthorne are fine, but I'd be grateful if you avoid on-screen descriptions of M/F sex or endgame Mariko/Blackthorne.

Toda Mariko

Life stories, poetry, her negotiations of the line between Catholicism and Shintoism and Buddhism.
AU where Mariko survives (it was an elaborate ploy all along!) and goes incognito or undercover after.
Post-canon meditations or studies of grief from other characters about Mariko.
All of Mariko's scenes with Ruri/Ochiba no Kata made my heart sing. To... shamelessly cite myself, I'm sorry... I wrote a little about them here. There's lots of history there! I'm taken with how clearly and piercingly they see each other, so agonisingly so that it's difficult for them to make direct eye contact during that interpretation in the garden scene. All this happens while they're dancing across a chessboard of politics, resentment, and wistful pining for what they've each lost over the years!
Mariko and Ochiba are, imho, the perfect candidates for the "If I must solve a dozen geopolitical problems just to have sex with you then I will" trope.
AUs where Mariko... somehow... ends up attached to Ochiba no Kata's entourage instead and works as an interpreter for her with all the blurring of professional and personal boundaries that entails.

Usami Fuji

In a show full of people weathering adverse circumstances and difficult choices, I think Fuji's are some of the ones that have touched me the most. I'd be delighted by any snapshots of her life in a nunnery or canon-divergent scenarios where she crosses paths with Mariko, Ochiba no Kata, or any of the women in Shogun more!

Ochiba no Kata

More loaded confrontations with Mariko.
Ochiba no Kata exuded an insane amount of presence in the show, but I'm curious -- who is she when behind screens and out of visibility? How does she parse her own decisions and/or trajectory to herself?

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin

Ashe Foreth rem ir Osboth, Arek Harth rem ir Estraven, Therem Harth rem ir Estraven

This book is simultaneously close to my heart and something I’m incoherent about, so I apologise for the brief prompts below! TLDR: I’d love to see your take on these relationships. Any configuration of the requested characters is welcome, although I mainly have prompts for Ashe/Therem and Arek/Therem below. Feel very free to bring in worldbuilding (working off myths, folklore, economics, architecture or social customs, politics, kemmer, etc.) or explore and extend implied scenes, pick at that lingering plot detail that stuck out to you, and so forth. I love Le Guin’s anthropological eye, and minutiae of life on Winter is welcome.

I’m fine with any treatment of Gethenian pronouns, though I’m slightly fond of the universal ‘she’ in some of Le Guin’s short stories in this universe. We perceive much of Gethenian gender through Genly's eyes, so I'm intrigued by the idea of seeing a Gethenian's insider perspective on their gender system or the sociality/performativity of gender, beyond what we hear from Therem, as well as any slants of gender that are 'alien' (to humans in Le Guin's universe) but also humanised. Along those lines... I'm down to hear about how different Terran humans may have a big internal heterogeneity of positions relative to the big ~cultural cloud of gender~ themselves, and if notions of gender change for Terrans who are racialised/gendered in different nuances or shades.

I've selected giver's choice and am fine with any configuration of characters or pairings appearing in fic. Some ideas for possible pairings below (but please don't limit yourself):

Ashe Foreth rem ir Osboth/Therem Harth rem ir Estraven
What a tragic relationship; I’m down for first meetings, things unsaid but affecting them from Estraven’s past, or a look at how their relationship might’ve been like before things soured and after the souring began. Feel free to give focus to Ashe’s life; I’m interested in how Ashe’s role as a Foreteller (or aspirations to it) shaped them both, including after their separation. If Estraven survives, do they meet one last (bitter) time, or get closure?

Arek Harth rem ir Estraven/Therem Harth rem ir Estraven

Moments from their early lives together; when or how they fell in love. Did it happen gradually?
Their kemmers; how they felt about the myth they were named after.
Arek as a metaphorical (or literal?) ghost haunting Estraven’s subconscious. (Dead-ended) desires for reunion from Estraven with their sibling.

I like the theory that Arek died by suicide (like in the Gethenian tales about doomed kemmerings), but I’m not beholden to it and I think alternative ones are just as interesting; other takes are welcome!

We Are Lady Parts

Saira, Ayesha, Bisma, Momtaz

This show is equal parts moving and hilarious and I love everything from the band's witty songs to Saira's unbeatable romantic tension with every woman she talks with to their dynamic together. I've watched Season 2 as well, so feel to bring in events from it. I've selected giver's choice and mean it: write any configuration of the requested characters that compels you!

I have a soft spot for Saira/Ayesha, in contrast to prevailing fandom preferences, but I'm fine with any permutation between Saira, Ayesha, Bisma, and Momtaz. You don't have to explain anything to me about current canon girlfriends or boyfriends or whatever either -- you can just handwave them if you prefer!

Totally optional prompts:

I'd love to see that in-universe Saira/Ayesha RPF fanfiction people were writing. Feel free to write the band reading or reacting -- or even work in more serious things about celebrity and public/private personas and the lived complexity of that split for Muslim musicians nested within London Islamic communities if you like!
I have an amateur pet interest in fashion, so if you want to dress the band members up in more androgynous outfits or taking up more modelling gigs and exploring/exploding the twisty absurdist world of photography and acting I'm down for it! How about more of Saira sticking to her guns or trying to find some way to do an endorsement that doesn't have to rely on capitalist logics... unless?!
Behind-the-scenes songwriting, explorations of each member's unique voices or songwriting processes. This genre-bending show is ripe for it, so: please feel free to add a magical realist twist.
I love that many main characters we see have 'typically' working-class jobs like food delivery/Uber drivers, butchers, and posties -- it's rare to see 'rise of a band' or storylines with similar cachet given to people in cosmopolitan London boroughs. Do the band members get any inspiration for songs from their jobs and the absolutely wrecked work landscape of London? Or more vignettes of their mundane competences outside of band moments.

prelude 0.1.2.1a to a highly self-indulgent Thoughts on Writing and Style post, perpetually deferred to the land of post-graduation life:

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been slow on replies due to thesis-writing struggles, but a quick post:

I've been meaning to write about the concept of inverse specificity. it's really a concept I've poached from Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor by Rob Nixon, specifically from his chapter about fossil fuels and the puzzling lack of a literary riposte to something that has dictated and underpinned the sociopolitical life of a major half of the century:
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very 'overdue' reading round-up of interesting articles/books/marginalia I've come across. in the spirit of "good is better than perfect":

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Current Music: Pretty Good Year - Tori Amos

today's "buy 1 get 1 free" deal on fannish commentary: elsewhere, have some tumblr meta I've written about Zen Cho's Black Water Sister.

while writing fic for BWS for

bethefirst, I juggled three goals:

staying faithful to the spirit (ha) of the book, if not Zen Cho's prose
expanding on jess's relationship with her girlfriend
post-canon expansion on what happens after jess's decision to come out

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a quirky incident: my partner ordered a democratic theory book online recently. the package came alright, but when we opened it it had a pack of walnut biscuits inside instead of the Oakeshott tome we were expecting. turns out the sender had mixed orders up, but if it hadn't happened irl it would've sounded like the start to a surrealist story. the sender said we could keep the biscuits; we enjoyed them. I felt sorry for the other recipient, who probably wouldn't find the same use or enjoyment from Oakeshott's writing.

recent happenings:

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doing some indulgent fashion blogging as a palate cleanser for my brain, because I've survived A Month. I've been getting into the ridiculous rabbit hole of fabrics, r/BuyItForLife (a sub where people discuss brands and products made to last), and lots of window browsing on Vinted.

vinted's like a european ebay, except with a much better and sanity-preserving UI. the user demographic also tends towards older married women with children, who all have the amazing habit of selling clothes from premium brands for outrageously cheap prices, like £5-10 for a dress that cost £120 at retail. i've seen it described as a place for online car boot sales.

a thing about me: I try to buy clothes secondhand where possible, mostly for environmental reasons but also because scoring a good deal is satisfying. so Vinted's been like catnip for me. I used to think I was decent at spotting stuff that’s worth it but lately I’ve also been learning how to discern between high street brands actually "worth" the price and brands that aren’t (maje, sandro, some of aritzia) from videos by jenniferwang et al. I don't agree with everything the so-called "de-influencers" say especially the knee-jerk reasons for their objections to microplastics and synthetic fabrics, but some of them have been helpful resources.

that said, I don’t often buy things from said high street brands. I don’t have the wallet to do that guilt-free, tbh. I just like to ponder them and window shop while balking at them. I also prefer to keep a quantitatively minimalist wardrobe. lately I’ve gotten most of my recent pieces for free from my sister when she passes her clothes to me because she can’t fit or doesn’t want them any more. I still value stuff that's value for money or has a good 'cost-pa', to borrow a Japanese slang phrase, which means 60% of my wardrobe at any time can be Uniqlo and Muji.

but I did also help a fashionable friend move apartments a while back, and in return she gave me some of her unworn clothes for free, including stuff from brands like Reformation (!!!) and COS. so I’ve had a light-touch look at some brands & their quality. quick rundown of my reviews:

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penned a ~~tribute~~ fic about Arîn and the characters from Tawakul in Exordia for

bethefirst:

the vanguards of the dispossessed

Fandom: Exordia - Seth Dickinson
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Arîn Tawakuli & Jiyan "Anna" Sinjari
Characters: Jiyan “Anna” Sinjari, Khaje Sinjari, Haydar Tawakuli, Soheila Tawakuli, Ssrinsahautha-ku-Ssraaa | Ssrin, Arîn Tawakuli
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Post-Canon, Character Study, Iraqi Kurdistan

But that was how she grew up: Arîn, daughter of everyone, favourite of nobody, a communal product. The first patriot of democratic confederalism. She hadn’t been taught to abandon Tawakul in times of trouble.

Or: Arîn, Anna, and an unspoken convergence.

medallions to the bone, sleeve-worn stone

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a 400 page book about rousseau, disparaging colonialism, is still a 400 page book about rousseau

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