Jesse > Recent Status Updates

Well okay Nezha’s miraculous recovery changes things up. Who is going to betray who? Is Nezha the dragon shaman and Altan is just a phoenix shaman who is too deep in? And Nezha is jockeying as an avatar of the actual dragon god? That might explain why the thing with Tyr.

Moving from the Hogwarts-ish like-minded military students to the oh-so-quirky secret squadron of this universe’s magic users. Also, the dude Rin was totally crushing on is her new commander!! I’m so ready for Altan to inexplicably betray everyone. I’m guessing that he isn’t actually channeling the phoenix goddess. The dragon seems to be a more likely patron given his appetite for destruction.

A brutal and beautiful chapter. Laurie’s personal revelations and what Dr. Manhattan has to say afterward makes for one of the series’s most tragic and wonderful moments.

It’s time for the obligatory school massacre~

The pacing of this book is just about ideal for what has been happening and has a lot of sneaky symbolic stuff. I like the relationship between Rin and Jiang, who I’m 80% sure is going to turn out to be the Gatekeeper of legend. I am desperately waiting for the first sequence where Rin enters an altered state.

“Are we getting high?” Rin said. “Oh, wow. We’re getting high, aren’t we?”
“/I’m/ getting high,” said Jiang. “You’re watching.”

Rooting for Rin in this fight! The sheer adoration she has for the enigmatic Altan is pure YA tho

This must be a relatively common story because the plot to get Rin to build her upper strength is the same exact one that is used in the past-past embedded story in Holes

Rin has her first period and then promptly takes an herbal concoction that makes her sterile, preventing periods for the rest of her life. That’s character development I’ve never read before! She is also self-harming again, candle wax on her arms while she studies. I have nothing intelligent to say about this; I feel like I’d be blundering into it.

lol, just lol if rin turns out to be the only other speer as a war orphan and the reason the federation wiped speer out is because of some prophecy that rin ends up fulfilling

The centerpiece of this chapter in my mind is the ridiculous attempt to murder Rorschach in the jail, which goes poorly for the aggressors.

Altan is a Special Boy

So this is pretty good so far. I am getting all of the depth that I was missing about Ravka during the Shadow and Bone trilogy and Rin is not bogged down by a romance (let alone one with someone like Mal). Again, I’m thankful for having the opportunity to read the Chinese Folk Tales omnibus. This is thus far not nearly as fanciful but I feel like it helped to set the tone.

Yeah you punch that smarmy dude in the face!!

I’m glad that I read the big book of Chinese Myths and Folk Tales because this book already reads of that particular never-was. The fact that a scholarly exam is what the protagonist’s future hinges on is like 25% of those stories. The only thing that anchors this outside of the folk tale real universe isn’t the female protagonist but the fact that women are allowed to test not just scholarly but into military.

Oh god only 30 pages left and stuff is still up in the air 😬😬😬

Nightmares or no I’m finishing it tonight

The Rorschach issue is just as darkly beautiful as the Manhattan issue is a sort of bittersweet beauty.

Okay. I’m not reading the Rorcshach chapter before I go to bed, same as I’m not reading any more Tender is the Flesh tonight.

The Dr. Manhattan chapter is hauntingly beautiful in its breakdown of linear time.

I can’t blame him but Marcos this is not going to end well.

just take however emotionally gross I felt reading Market of Monsters and multiply it by like 100 and, like, Tejo’s own story as a bereaved father with his wife who just can’t anymore after the difficulties conceiving and his own father with dementia and I am engaged but I am crushed by every single chapter. this is a story about what could be and also a parable of how capitalism already is

It was already super bad… and then the MC gets a “gift”. Worseworseworseworseworseworse