After my fifth re-read of Goblin Emperor*

[conuly]

I have finally managed to pull myself away to read some of my years-long backlog. Next up, Memory of Empire. "But Connie! Surely that book only came out a few days ago?" Yup, that's right, but it was on pre-order, so it counts. (Note to self: Stop putting so many books on pre-order.)

* Yeah, this is a thing that happens. I get stuck on one book (or other interesting thing) until I'm not. Specifically, this is an autistic thing that happens.

**************

The word 'welp' is over 70 years old

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High School Girls Say Hell No to Boys Ranking Their Looks

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Comments

[spikethemuffin]

It's also an ADHD thing. Sometimes I pity the poor neurotypicals who don't get to enjoy that.

[conuly]

They don't know what they're missing, so I guess they don't miss it?

[spikethemuffin]

This only makes me sadder for them.

[mama_kestrel]

I'm on my 3rd reading of Goblin Emperor, and every time I've read it I've found something new and interesting that I hadn't noticed before. So it's partly a spectrum thing (I "blitz" really good books on the first reading, then reread for what I missed), but it's also the mark of a really well written book.

[spikethemuffin]

Goblin Emperor is a joy; when I re-read it, I resent work and showers and things because I want to get back to reading about Maia, dash it all!

[conuly]

Oh, god, I just want to go and give a stern lecture to Setheris and hug little woobie!Maia.

[spikethemuffin]

Right? I kind of wanted there to be a slashfic community for it, then I realized it wasn't for sexytimes, it was that she had written Maia as so touch-starved. And she never got near the topic! Didn't tell us, didn't let him feel relieved at embraces, nothing. But he is, with flashing red lights and sirens. That's some amazing writing.

[conuly]

It's the apologizing that gets me. No, the issue isn't that "Emperors don't apologize" (nor even that everybody in that book needs to start distinguishing between the platonic emperor and Maia's ancestors patrilineal) - it's that Maia has a problem with overapologizing. Giving too much apology is worse than not giving enough apology (even before you compound this for hierarchal difficulties) because the receiver has no idea how to respond, and when the correct apology is "I'm sorry I snapped at you, it's all this stress" then three sentences of excruciatingly detailed apology is... it is too much. (And who's the asshole who taught Maia to do that, and punished him enough - and, my guess, made up enough excuses to punish him - that it stuck? I wouldn't be half as forgiving as Maia either.)

It makes a very unpleasant picture of his childhood, more than all the other leaked details.

[spikethemuffin]

THIS. Also: apologizing for not knowing things he cannot possibly know. It literally makes me shudder with rage to think of it, even if he does happen to be fictional.

[conuly]

And only a few pages after that one apology incident, being so overcome with gratitude that he can hardly say thank you... because one of his servants took a few minutes to put a trinket on a chain for him. Like, not only is this not actually a big deal, but this is literally what you are paying these people to do! (Well, I mean, he's not personally paying them, but still.) It's kind, but it's not that kind, and also, nobody expects you to dig the coal out of the ground yourself so stop beating yourself up. Every time one of those things happens, I want to go and hit Setheris or at least misspell his name in a sarcastic way.

Those are the scars that won't go away. I just want to hug him and hug him.

[conuly]

Fictional child abuse does things to me.

[spikethemuffin]

My ex stepfather once squeezed my shoes about re-reading the same book a few times, which he regarded as a character flaw, despite the fact that he would go to the same restaurant and order the same meal. I did not have much to say then, but I cannot help but wonder about the quality of the books he read, and how he was the same person every time he read them...

[conuly]

What a strange attitude.

[spikethemuffin]

It's apparently an entire lit snob movement, adjacent to "fiction is childish." I try to avoid these sorts.

[conuly]

*Somebody* is childish, but it's not us who like to reread our fiction.

[conuly]

Yes, but with me it often hits with books that are really not that well-written. This is the exception!

[greghousesgf]

re: the High school girls say hell no article.
I was rated the third worst looking girl in my high school and I hope everybody who did that to me and the other girls burns in hell.

[notasupervillain]

I understood myself so much better when I found out that this was a thing that happened to some people and not others. Like, to me.

[maju]

I could almost have written the piece about passing. I am not trans, I am a woman born woman, but I like my hair short, I have quite small breasts, and I mostly wear men's clothes because they are more comfortable and fit me better than women's clothes. This has resulted in me getting addressed as "sir" fairly regularly, which I hate. However, I don't hate it enough to try to present as more feminine.

[loligo]

I thought that square-cut pizza was also a St Louis abomination, because I'd never seen it before moving here ("here" being a small Illinois town two hours from STL). But it turns out that we can actually blame Chicago for that one.

[conuly]

Square cut... like Sicilian?

[mount_oregano]

Here in Chicago it's known as "tavern cut" and has deep historic roots. Taverns would cut a pizza in squares to provide free snacks to patrons.

Because of bad teeth, I eat my pizza with a knife and fork, so I really don't care how my pizza is cut since I'm going to have to cut it more anyway.

Deep dish, obviously, has to be in wedges, though. Because physics.

[conuly]

But you're starting with a quadrilateral shaped pizza?

[mount_oregano]

Quadrilateral or circular. We're not fussy.

[loligo]

Obviously cutting a square or rectangular pizza into squares makes sense, and is totally fine. But what I'm talking about is when round, thin-crust pizzas are cut into small squares. There are a bunch of pieces in the middle with no crust whatsoever, and some with a small arc of crust on the edge, and then there are the four little "corners" that are almost all crust.

And, look, I am someone who used to have to re-arrange my pizza toppings before eating so that all the olives were evenly distributed across the slice. The idea of cutting a pizza into three heterogenous types of slices when it could so easily be cut into beautiful uniform slices just wounds my soul. I concede that it can be practical when you are trying to stretch your pizzas to feed a large party, but still, soul-wounding.

[conuly]

It's such an interesting concept.

[dark_phoenix54]

Ah, Idaho. You never fail to appall me. When the vote came up on that bill raising the age of marriage and it got shot down, I wasn't surprised it failed but it still made me want to throw up. And, of course, the fact that Scott and Dixon voted for "Freedom!!!" makes me want to crawl under a rock. This area is in the stone age.

[conuly]

I think it's possible women had more rights in the stone age.

[greghousesgf]

yeah, if some guy messed with a Neanderthal woman she's probably throw a rock at him.

[imhilien]

I like re-reading books, but I've met people who think that's strange. *sigh*

I've read Goblin Emperor twice from the library, and thinking of buying myself a copy. :)