(no subject)

[pengwern]

Remembered about that one space opera webnovel....that had a number of descriptors to made it stand out.
1) The friends to foes to honey trap and honey trappee/simultaneous lord and rebellious general to lovers to satisfy my entire soul. Just incredible. The deadly faceoffs between their wills...I looked up after five chapters to start raving about it. Dubcon all over, but it was scorchingly intense. (ymmv obviously)
2) at which point (chapter 6) it started on its second noteworthy aspect, ON SCREEN LOVE NIKKI LET'S PLAY.  For, I think I counted, at least 6/87 chapters? There was later a showdown that involved competing in Love Nikki as though it were an e-sport??
???????
??????????????????????????????????????????
Fully accurate and memeable pastiche too.
3) which then at the 60% mark vrooshes down the tired trope tracks of the space opera genre and cnovels in general. ...thing is, those tropes include: the Empire and the Federation*; a return to monarchy that makes sense only for historical genres; insect people invasion and mecha to battle them, but also fantasy RPG kitchen sink for whatever reason, and for the generic cnovel elements, your typical race of cannibalized enslaved mermaids. ,,,,,,,,,,,
4) and finally its title, Sweet flavored Alpha, and the cover, a pink confection with molangs and rows of dancing desserts, which is what you'd expect for a pure fluff bakery setting fic. [F R A U D   I N    A D V E R T I S I N G]
I had a GREAT time.

Summary and quotes later - I am off to pluck their current anthology wip, Thanatos x Judge of Hell, the two wuchang psychopomps falling in love after a shot from Cupid, Love god x Ocean god (this makes more sense with a cn web term naming people with lots of admirers sea kings who keep many fish in their fishery), and Lucifer x Morningstar (as the term for selfcest goes, narcissus romance, bless)
*(I think descended in fandom lineage from the anime legend of galactic heroes?)
link two
This author 浮白曲 also did a duology of sweet gods/powers-that-be dating, and also an apparently amazing generic historical foe-xxx novel that I haven't devoured still because I am a cowardly pudding, even though this author is nowhere on the level of stabs as some people (将进酒 author I am staring at u)

Comments

[vass]

This novel sounds like the sort of dream that L.M. Montgomery characters would eat horrifying combinations of foods before bedtime in the hope of inducing.

[pengwern]

fsdklhlfjkkj yes. ok so one of their novels starts out with the big bad boss that's caused the powers-that-be such incredible headaches that when he becomes captured and sent into the world-hopping business (called quick transmigration) his first world is as a fish (magical, can turn into a human) about to be eaten in ten minutes

also this person's historical novel http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=4439761 and another quick transmigration I zoomed through today amply demonstrated how too much happiness and sugar could drain all the tension, along with my interest, from a book......I could just feel my eyes glazing over (admittedly bc it was around 3 in the morning) as they started going on sappy lantern viewing dates after the good first 25% when they were at the enemies as lovers stage :<

[sovay]

Thanatos x Judge of Hell, the two wuchang psychopomps falling in love after a shot from Cupid, Love god x Ocean god (this makes more sense with a cn web term naming people with lots of admirers sea kings who keep many fish in their fishery), and Lucifer x Morningstar (as the term for selfcest goes, narcissus romance, bless)

I can probably take or leave the selfcest, but I'm here for the sea and the underworld.

[pengwern]

I tried it and alas, it was about what you'd expect when the orignal myths (for which read just the names and one word descriptions) are overlaid with...that kind of.....it has points of interest as a datapoint, not as an original work, let's say 0-0 WHY would the author have someone ask if there's a western analogue to mengpo's soup and not provide the incredibly direct analogue of the waters of Lethe

I too would like to see more of the sea and the underworld together (\o/)! But what I can place my hands on from webnovels would be... maybe the beach episode (inaccurate) from the novel Heavenly Official's Blessing, which had 1) katabasis of the main team to the realm of a ghost who, having received only injustice from heaven, now has to take it into his own hands, wherein our main pair are fine and manage their first kiss in a coffin and our brave side characters encounter a revelation of the past that utterly destroys them while the other side character war god jock spends the whole time diligently hewing coffins with his sword only to be notified that the coffins are useless now that person in question is dead, and more importantly 2) BONE FISH BONE FISH

[sovay]

let's say 0-0 WHY would the author have someone ask if there's a western analogue to mengpo's soup and not provide the incredibly direct analogue of the waters of Lethe

Seriously!

I too would like to see more of the sea and the underworld together

I do not know if I write them the way you like them, but: "The Boatman's Cure."

and more importantly 2) BONE FISH BONE FISH

SWEET.

[pengwern]

YES OF COURSE that was a lovely (possibly too shallow a word?) for that story, and I also greatly enjoyed the other tales in forget the sleepless shores, which I refound after downloading another reading app - the Depth Oracle especially.

I know I must have missed a great number of references in it, but the ones I caught (that code poem, Lili Marleen) were beautiful - are the ghosts all silvered because in the greek underworld they go grayscale?

(And this is a note more appropriate for All our salt bottled hearts, but because I'd only seen the sea in your works fleetingly, once on a sunny summer roadtrip down looping through the eastern canadian seaboard and back into Maine and the rest of new england, and the others in the dead-of-winter roadtrips to the east when no way would we go near the sea (qwq) so the way you built the land bordering the sea in a way that makes it as compellingly detailed as what's under the waves - how there's nowhere that the characters really feel solidly a part of and which makes their presence through each second they spend there all the more -- not uneasy as somebody else might make it, not so much precious bc that isn't the term they would use but still -- can't think of the right word at the moment, but meaningful/worth it. That they might have somewhere else they would like to be, but where they are is not wrong, and the changefulness itself is also not something dread-filled.)

I want to reread them all again soon \o/ and hopefully get through Moby dick at some point, on my....fourth attempt.....TwT

[sovay]

YES OF COURSE that was a lovely (possibly too shallow a word?) for that story, and I also greatly enjoyed the other tales in forget the sleepless shores, which I refound after downloading another reading app - the Depth Oracle especially.

I am so very glad! I had forgotten you had read the collection, I'm sorry, and it is very gratifying to hear that it holds up. I hope it won't require a new reading app the next time!

are the ghosts all silvered because in the greek underworld they go grayscale?

It's not attested in classical mythology; it's my own invention as far as I know—it goes back as far as my first published short story, actually—but it comes from the classical idea of ghosts as shadows or shades. It's an unearthly kind of color and in some contexts it isn't a color at all.

so the way you built the land bordering the sea in a way that makes it as compellingly detailed as what's under the waves - how there's nowhere that the characters really feel solidly a part of and which makes their presence through each second they spend there all the more -- not uneasy as somebody else might make it, not so much precious bc that isn't the term they would use but still -- can't think of the right word at the moment, but meaningful/worth it. That they might have somewhere else they would like to be, but where they are is not wrong, and the changefulness itself is also not something dread-filled.

Thank you for writing so beautifully about liminal spaces. I am glad the story caught them.

I want to reread them all again soon \o/ and hopefully get through Moby dick at some point, on my....fourth attempt.....TwT

Look, just being classed as reading material with Melville is an honor. (For what it's worth, though, I really liked Moby-Dick.)

[pengwern]

any opportunity to reread these tales is a good one! *\o/* all that they pick out from the seafoam and history rushing past as the tide, and the reader having the happiness of witnessing that gorgeous craft (☆▽☆) I hadn't looked up oppenheimer the first time I read the Trinitite Golem, and oof, all those details...
(I WILL try moby dick again! my third attempt went awry somewhere after I went to find out about clam chowder, and I'm sure it's not possible that anything else in Melville's focused treatise will serve to send me down another wild goose chase.)