Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I had planned to post about the books I've been reading lately yesterday, of course, but in a good news/bad news sort of way, I ended up writing so much on the new novel that I lost track of time. As I was telling my writing accountablity Zoom group, I don't quite know what happened, but I hit a voice that I'm super comfortable in (not previously a POV character) and I'm running with it.

Enough about that. 

I've recently gotten very into audiobooks. After finishing The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey (which I sort of disliked, though not enough to quit listening to it), I picked up We Have Always Been Here by Leah Nguyen. I also somewhat disliked We Have Always Been Here. I never cottened to the main character/narrator, Park. I found her (at least how she was read to me) to be an unlikely combination of paranoid and clueless. Like, the book opens with Park having been poisoned. Because Park has been bullied all her life, she doesn't put much mind to this, even as weird shit starts happening all around her on the ship, including other people being attacked, she never goes back to "I wonder if any of this connects to what happened to me?" I don't know about you? But I hate when main characters don't seem interested in solving the plot and/or generally forget clues that, to the reader, seem like Big Deals. And being poisoned one day and having your mentor tell you "I have a project that is going to take up all my attention, you're now the main psychologist" feels like the sort of thing that a paranoid person should reallly start deep dive investigating. you know? Don't get me wrong. Park investigates the crap out of everything else going on in this ship, but she never connects any of it back to things that happen to herself. Worse, the big reveal at the end made me realize that had she done so, she would been directly led to one of the main villains.

But, the androids in the story get a good ending. They were who I cared about, so it worked out for me.

I'm now listening to The Sculpted Ship by K. M. O'Brien. I've been describing this book to people as a science fiction version of Legends & Lattes. The stakes are so low in The Sculpted Ship that if I were not already a fan of slice-of-life manga and thus have built-up a huge tolerance for people just wandering around and doing tasks, I probably would have fallen asleep listening to this. This is not a criticism per se, however, because, given the current political situation in the United States, a story that is essentially about THINGS WORKING OUT is exactly what the doctor ordered (for me, anyway.) 

I'm not quite finished with it and there does seem to be a little intrigue a foot here in the last 20% of the book, but I am hopeful that things will just work out as so many things before this have. That would be fine with me.

Speaking of slice-of-life manga, I read two "wandering around in a post-apocaplyptic world" science fiction manga in the past week. I read Usuzumi no Hate / The Color of the End: Mission in the Apocalypse by Iwamune Haruo and Shuumatsu Touring / Touring After the Apocalypse by Saito Sakae. Both of which I would highly recommend, with a few caveats. The Color of the End has a plague in it and there is a lot of death and dying, including suicide. Likewise, Touring After the Apocalypse has its dark/sad moments as well as some suicides. Weidly, despite those warnings, I found both of these manga to be hopeful and "quiet" in a "let's appreciate life while we have it" kind of way. Very appropriate for flower viewing season.

I also read a couple of family dramas:  Otona no Zukan Kaiteiban / Adults’ Picture Book New Edition by Itoi Kei and Kashikokute Yuuki Aru Kodomo / A Smart and Courageous Child by Yamamoto Miki. Both of which I liked, but mileage may vary. If you're at all interested in reading fuller reviews of any of the manga I've mentioned, feel free to check out my manga review site: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/

Speaking of manga, a quick plug for the old podcast. Yesterday we dropped our twenty-first episode, this time discussing the cyberpunk manga classic Blame! (https://open.spotify.com/show/11brxmJZjf3gnzltvwXI7H) I guess, I technically re-read that recently, too. Weirdly, despite the fact that the podcast is a lot of squee, I wouldn't necessarily recommend Blame! Technically, Blame! is also a lot of wandering around in a post-apocalyptic world, but it feels far less hopeful. In fact, the vibe is grim. It is interesting and pretty and action-packed, but it might not be what the soul needs right now, if you catch my meaning.

I think that's it. Otherwise, I've been writing a lot and prepping for Minicon. 

You?

 
Image: manga cover

On Monday, Shawn had a Friends of the Ramsey County Library board meeting, and, so, as resident chauffeur, I tagged along. When she was at her meeting, I browsed the manga shelves, as one might expect.

I ended up picking up and mostly reading all of the above title: Turns Our My Online Friend is My Real-Life Boss by Nmura. The back cover copy pitches it to fans of Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard? (link to my review), which I can understand because it has a similar humorous office romance + fantasy element + slightly clueless hero vibe.  In fact, I think the thing that I'm enjoying about it so far is how our hero, Hashimoto, manages to have not one but two guys hitting on him both in Real Life and the game and... completely misinterprets every pass. To be fair, both of Hashimoto's suitors seem to misunderstand the other's motivations for a lot time as well. I mean, I, too, am a nerd? I also should probably carry a sign that reads: "If you are flirting with me, please just tell me. I have no idea." But, Hashimoto is almost mind-bogglingly clueless--to humorous effect, so it works? I mean, at least so far. I'm not quite finished with volume 1.  

Anyway, I am not sure I would have picked up this book if I were not marooned at the library for two and a half hours, however. Like, it's fine and cute and everything, but I am rarely fond of gaming-related stories. I don't know why. They're a very popular subgenre and I play TTRPGs, but I dunno. Something for me never quite translates--like the game parts don't grab me and hold my attention like they should? At least in this one they don't play the game so much as just hang out in game spaces as their avatars. 

I dunno.

That's what I've been reading at any rate. Nothing, as they say, to write home about. 

In other news, Shawn continues to do well post-knee surgery. She rarely uses her cane and can do much of what she used to. However, apparently one of her co-workers, who has also been through knee replacement, asked her if she had gotten to the point where she feels like the surgery was worth doing, and she does NOT. She's still got a fair amount of lingering nerve pain, which is not typical, but also, obviously, not fun. 

For myself, I went to cat cafe today with naomikritzer which was a great deal of fun. If I get my act together, I will post some pictures of it tomorrow. 

 Egads, I've been terrible about keeping up here.

To be fair to me, I've been deep in RPG game planning as an antidote for the continual storm of terrible news from the Worst Timeline. As many of you know, I've recently taken the plunge, moving from player to game master. I still play in plenty of games! However, much like my move from reader to writer, I have discovered that if I want a certain type of game, I might just have to run it myself.  This keeps me occupied to the point of distraction, honestly.  I do have to watch my obsessive tendencies, a bit. Given my druthers I'd almost always rather play or plan an RPG than almost anything else.

Otherwise, I had a birthday on Monday.

Shawn typically takes the day off work for my birthday, so we were able to go together to enjoy some daytime shopping, which was nice. Specifically, I wanted to go to Barnes & Noble to windowshop the manga section there and then head off for what is becoming an annual birthday event, shopping for fabric at S. R. Harris.  It doesn't make sense to catalogue the fabrics I got. Just imagine a nice pile of things that appealed to me--bright and cheery solids and interesting and unusual patterns. To be fair, the big excitment of going to S. R. Harris the dizzying array of choices and the fact that they removed biggest barrier to enjoying fabric shopping for me: waiting in line for your fabric to be cut.  You are allowed to cut your own up to four yards. This always makes me feel like a rogue, a ciminal... like I'm getting AWAY with something.

But, since today is "What Are You Reading Wednesday?" I will go ahead and bore you with the details of that shopping trip to B&N.

I only bought a couple of manga from artists that I really want to make sure to support. First, I bought the official fourth volume four of The Summer Hikaru Died.   The way I introduced this series to the readers of my manga review site was, "The Summer Hikaru Died is a poignant, deeply sublimated, barely acknowledged (but definitely queer) love story between a boy and… the monster that returned in the body of his dead friend. A new genre, perhaps? Horror Romance or Romance Horror?" It's not Chuck Tingle and company's "monster f*ckers." This is love mixed with horror--kind of a perfect coming out queer metaphor, perhaps. It's so, so good. If you want to read my spoiler-heavy review of the first volume, you can find it here: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/2024/03/06/hikaru-ga-shinda-natsu-the-summer-hikaru-died-by-mokumoku-rei/

I also picked up I Think Our Son is Gay, volume 5. I described this one to a friend as "I Think Our Son is Gay is, as you might imagine from the title, a manga about a mother coming to terms (sort of side-by-side with the son who is coming out to himself) that her kid is gay. What I love about this manga is that it reads very true to life. There are moments when the son is clearly experiencing his own homophobia and backing away from his own truth and mom is sometimes ahead of him in this area, and visa versa. Though unlike the kid, mom has a part time job in a bakery and has a friendly adult gay man as a colleague who she sometimes works up the nerve to ask questions.  Dad is sort of set up as the antagonist, but he's also literally only around every so often as he has a job that keeps him away from home for months at a time. Dad doesn't mean to not get it, but he's there to represent the usual attitudes towards gay stuff, if you know what I mean?"  Again, if you're interested in my review of the first volume, it's here: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/tag/uchi-no-musuko-wa-tabun-gay/

Otherwise, Shawn got me a couple of blank notebooks (technically "dot-lined") from one of my favorite notebook makers, Congative Surplus. IF I HAD ANY BIRTHDAY MONEY LEFT, I would totally pick-up one or two of their new "Dark Analysis" notebooks that have black paper and these insanely cool covers: https://cognitive-surplus.com/collections/dark-analysis.  Holy crap, these are cool!

Anyway. I also always request that Shawn make my absolutely favorite cake, which is a cranberry upside down cake. The only trauma with this particular recipe is that for some reason Shawn's success rate with it is 50/50. I am happy to reort that this year it was a complete success. In fact, after I finish writing this to you all, I'm going to go have one of the last pieces left for an afternoon snack!

Speaking of 50/50, it seems as though there is a possiblity this weekend's Star Trek game (where I am a player) might be cancelled. The GM, tallgeese is having cataract surgery (I think today!) and so isn't sure if he'll be fully recovered. First of all, I need to say that I hope his surgery goes off without a hitch and that he does feel up to it, and of course I am not so much of a monster that I won't understand if he's not feeling fully recovered. But I will admit that I'll be deeply bummed out if we end up having to cancel again. It's been awhile since we've played. So long, in fact, that I'm not entirely sure we have a December date picked out yet. I should be sure to offer to run my alternate game-- which is basically, "what if all our same characters were somehow all at Starfleet Academy the same year?" I would offer it is as an alternate relaty version of the same group of people (Think Chris Pine vs. Shatner 'verses), so no one has to roll a new character unless they really wanted to. 

Also, I should say that if you are someone who regularly gets postcards from me, I have not stopped doing those... I just got way off schedule due to All The Things. Also, I'll be honest? After the election I considered just sending everyone a black postcard with just "Help!" written on it, and then I said to myself, "Lyda. These postcards were started to cheer people up during the pandemic. No one wants a story where your time/space traveling heroine has been thrown into an abyss, never to return."  But so, when I was at the coffee shop yesterday, I spotted a local artist selling cute little greeting cards of their work and, though it is not a postcard, I will be sending those out this week just to let my postcard recievers know that I am alive and still planning to continue this project.  

I think that's everything? I hope you all are still keeping on keeping on.

 Just two minutes ago, I finished reading a powerful webcomic recommended by bcholmes called O Human Star. I cried all the tears, the ugly ones and the happy ones. I can not recommend it enough. 

In a sort of similar vein (at least in terms of a world where androids and humans co-exist), I finished listening to the audiobook of  Klara and the Sun by Kazou Ishiguro. I can't say that I enjoyed Klara and the Sun because it's ultimately--in my opinion, anyway--a tragedy, I did find it very compelling all the way through. I'd read Ishiguro's previous novel, The Buried Giant, when it was up for the Mythopoeic Award (2016). Looking back at my review of that book, I can see that I had similar feelings about it. Ishiguro's narrative style is very dream-like in both of these books, though I was impressed in Klara and the Sun how he was able to tell the readers more than Klara herself always fully understood or grasped. That can be extremely tricky to pull off, and he does it masterfully here. As I told a friend, I liked this book right up to the very last line--and the last line didn't make me HATE the book, just feel deeply, DEEPLY sad.  

Otherwise, I crammed in a couple of food-related manga ahead of tomorrow's OH-F*CK-O'CLOCK WorldCON panel "Let Them Eat! Food in Anime."  Of them, I really loved all 70+ chapters of Wakako-Zake by Shinkyu Chie. (The link is to my review, but from there, if you like, you can find a copy of the manga.) It is impossible not to spoil this one because the entire manga is about a 28-year old woman who goes out to eat and enjoys her food (and whatever alcohol she pairs it with.) That's it. That's the entire manga. And, I would read 70 more chapter of it, if it were available. As part of all this prep, I also skimmed through the manga Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi / Campfire Cooking in Another World with my Absurd Skill by Eguchi Ren / Akagishi K, reminding myself as to why I loved the anime so much.  I also ended up watching a few episodes of Food Wars! so I could reasonably understand what people were talking about, should it come up. I should probably re-read my review of Dungeon Meshi before tomorrow AM, too. 

Unrelated, I also read the Japanese re-imagining of Batman manga called Batman: Justice Buster by by Shimizu Eiichi and Shimoguchi Tomohiro, (Again, all the links to the manga will take you to my review, but from there you can usually get to an online version of the manga.) I really loved what they did with the Joker in this series, honestly. If you are a Batman fan... well, it might drive you crazy? Or you might love it. 

Over the weekend, I read a couple of cyberpunk short stories that were collected in The Big Book of Cyberpunk that I'm borrowing from a friend. I re-read James Tiptree, Jr.'s "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," and Pat Cadigan's "Pretty Boy Crossover." 

Oh, and I listened to the first couple of episodes of the Call of Cthulhu Mystery Theater podcast and The-Channel-Show, since both of the producers of those shows will be part of the panel that I'll be moderating on Saturday.  The first is a slightly scripted TTRPG podcast of a cast of characters playing Call of Cthulhu, the only TTRPG that I ever rage quit. It is one of those that is designed to end in a total party kill/deep insanity and I had spent way too much time building my character... and so I was deeply upset to be agoraphobic (and thus basically useless) after the first session. Unlike me, these actors are aware of what they're getting into, so it's more fun to listen to. The-Channel-Show is... deeply weird. The first few episodes, at any rate, are basically two people (AIs?) "channeling" the future of... some world? Possibly ours? Possibly not? But, it's very surreal and... yeah, not for me. But, weirdly, when I was on the how-to workshop for Glasgow WorldCON online stuff, the writer/producer person Dana Little was on the same call. She didn't put her camera on, but seeing her name come up was just sort of "Oh. There you are. I was just listening to you be VERY STRANGE. Hello," you know? 

I think that's everything!  

I should probably go organize myself for tomorrow, but what about you? Have you been reading anything good lately? Anything not so good?

Even though it's been two weeks since I reported on my reading, I don't actually have a WHOLE lot new in that regard. Because my podcast is doing a Ghost in the Shell episode next time, I watched the 1995 anime film of the same name and read the 1989 manga, also known as Koukaku Kidoutai by Shirow Masamune. The later was a trip and a half. But, I don't want to talk too much about either of those here, since hopefully y'all will tune into my show when it drops next week.

I did finish listening to the audio book of Rule 34 by Charlie Stross. I ended up liking it, but I'm not entirely sure if that would remain true if I'd READ the thing, rather than having it read to me. As I noted in earlier posts, it's written in second person, which means all the action is told as "you" rather and he/she or I. So, you walk in to the room. I wonder if this would have ever smoothed out for me if I'd been reading it inside my own head. It worked out fine when someone read it to me, because it felt slightly more natural? The story itself was fine. I guess it's part of a series which I might eventually read all of, but I'm currently not in a special hurry to do so.

I also started reading 36 Streets by T. R. Napper because it had made someone's list of queer cyberpunk and my library had it. I was really enjoying it until the most recent scene... which got a little dark and gruesome for me. I will probably push on, but that's the real trouble with cyberpunk, isn't it? Sometimes the gritty streets get a little too hardcore. I will say that I'm enjoying the Hanoi setting and all the Vietnamese mafia culture. I've been waiting for the gay to kick in, but, turns out, the heroine has a girlfriend. 

I ended up returning a couple of books unread this week because I just wasn't getting into them this time. I don't know about the rest of you, but there are books that have narrative styles that I just have to be in the mood for? (Or, sometimes, in extreme cases, I never get into?) That was the case with Aubrey Wood's Bang Bang Bodhisattva. I may try it again, if only because I met her once at WisCON and really liked her as a human being. I also had out an audiobook of Broken Angels by Richard Morgan that felt more milSF than I was in the mood for, so that also got returned unfinished.

I just checked out a bunch more cyberpunk-ish audio books, which include:

• Warcross by Marie Lu
• Feed by M. T. Anderson
• The Electric Church by Jeff Somers

Hopefully one of these will fit the bill. What about y'all? Reading anything fun or noteworthy or... terrible?

 And, I have some reading to report!

For the next while, a lot of what I suspect I'll be reading will be what is essentially show prep for the cyberpunk podcast, but a lot of that is pretty interesting (at least to me!) 

I will break this down by category.

BOOKS:
SHORT STORIES:


So, that's what I've been consuming lately. What about you? Have you read anything interesting lately?

 I am still sitting on a book that I should have gotten back to the library AGES ago. I should just give up on it, I think, and admit that I am not in the mood for horror manga right now: PTSD Radio. I think I'm just mad because I got halfway into it and then stopped. It's a book of pictures, I should just be able to push through.

Anyway.

What I did read (and also, as it happens, watch the anime for) was Kyuujitsu no Warumono-san / Mr. Villain’s Day Off by Morikawa Yuu. As I read this manga, I thought a lot about that torpedoed panel at Minicon: "Shipping Light and Dark." The main character of this manga is known only as Shogun or The General and it's clear that being The Villain is just his day job. He's good at it and high-ranking and does seem to sincerely want to end humanity reign on Earth (he's an alien), but when he has time off all The General really just wants to go to the Ueno Zoo to watch the pandas. 

The inherent ridiculousness of the situation fuels this gag manga. For those of you familiar with The Way of The House Husband, this manga runs of the same concept as that one: putting a scary guy (a villain, a yakuza gangster) into light and fluffy domestic situations is just so difficult for the brain to parse that it automatically seems silly. This is a guy who'd kill a man for looking at him funny, but he can't handle a roomba, right? It's just ridiculous!

And this is part of the appeal (for me, at least) of shipping dark characters with light ones. Taking the villain off the battlefield and asking the question, "What does Dr. Doom do on his day off?" forces us to attempt to humanize someone who is maybe, normally, only seen in black and white and as larger-than-life. And, I think this works especially well for those villains who are mostly just foils for the hero. Those villains whose motives are somewhat vague, or like Crowley in Good Omens, just sort of works for the Other Side--and who doesn't necessarily buy into the full agenda. 

This isn't to say there isn't value in exploring those that are more committed to the "evil" cause, however. 

One of the things I really didn't get to talk about on that panel (because it was so thoroughly shamed out of us) was the fact that, in my fan writing, I am actually interested in sociopathy. Like, there was a really fascinating recent article in the New York Times interviewing a woman who is a psychotherapist and a (diagnosed) sociopath. She apparently has a new book out that I should probably find and order all about her life, etc. But, she points out in the interview that not every sociopath is a serial killer, despite the popular imagination. It's a mental illness like any other for many people. It's difficult to medicate, so people have to learn to just live with it.  But, yet in the interview with her you can TOTALLY see her struggling with empathy and consequences... like she is COLD and you totally get the sense that she would cut you and have zero remorse, you know? Just in a half-page interview! And, I just find this utterly captivating. Like, she talks in the interview about what happens when she tells people that she is a honest-to-god sociopath at cocktail parties and the like because inevitably, apparently, people will just start telling her about their fantasies of murdering co-workers, spouses, etc. 

Anyway, in fiction, I've explored the idea that a sociopath, who among other problems severely lacks empathy, could be loved, particularly by a hero who has ALL the empathy. 

Like in the manga I just read, trying to write a sociopath just living their lives is a kind of fictional puzzle that I particularly like to play with. Can you write a sympathetic sociopath? Can you do that without "weakening" the sociopathy--what fan readers call OCC, being out of character? Like for me, the challenge is "Can I write a believable love story between two people who should be (or have been) enemies, in part because one of them LITERALLY has no conscience?"

And I don't know that I've done it, but it was a fun exercise to try, you know? And, I think one of the appeals of shipping these sorts.


==
Again, the article "What It's Like to Be a Sociopath?" is probably behind a paywall for most of you.  Apparently, the author is Patric Gagne and the book is Sociopath: A Memoir. Interestingly, there's some talk in various Reddit forums that in psychology the term "sociopath" isn't typically used as a diagnosis, instead folks who suffer from this mental illness are referred to as having anti-social personality disorder, which I knew from my previous research into this stuff for my fan fic. But, in this case since it appeared in a NYT article, it raised some flags for people working in the profession as to whether or not Gagne was merely sensationalizing for the publicity or actually lying about her credentials as a psychologist. And you know... fair point.

There is another article about her, here, in The Guardian that is free: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/08/patric-gagne-sociopath-fighting-urges

And the Daily Mail... mmmm, seeming more an more disreputable... as this is a deeply sensational article about her, some of which seems a bit perposterous: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-13248861/sociopath-patric-gagne-new-memoir.html

Still, I should see if the library has this book.

But, I went to the Roseville library the day before yesterday and got totally judged by the circ staff who helped me check out.

My Ramsey County library card has been lost for ages, but I always had the keychain bit that had the barcode, etc. Recently, however, the keychain dealio started peeling and finally, the hole that attaches to the key ring had worn through it and it fell off. I forgot about that, however, when I returned a pile of manga to the library on Wednesday afternoon. Shawn was working late-ish, so I decided to do a quick dash through the library, after returning my books, to see what I might pick up to read next. I go to check out and realize, "Oh shit, that's right, the damn keychain thingie is sitting on my dresser in my bedroom." Thanks to years of working at that library, however, I knew that the people at the front desk can check you out if you have a driver's license on you. So, I take my pile of manga to the front desk. I recognize the person helping me, an older woman that I used to work with. I remember liking her a lot, actually. She's a science fiction fan and nerdy in what I'd normally say are "all the right ways," BUT....

First off, she has no idea who I am.  I mean, if this were all that had happened, I wouldn't even find it all that strange.  Yes, sure, I worked right beside her for actual years, but lots of time has passed and I was always an irregular sub. Some people are bad with faces, too. I am wearing a mask, my hair is always different, etc. She does, at least, recognize my name as "that author." Something about this realization--maybe she senses that I sort of thought she should remember me?--makes her suddenly compelled to make chit-chat.

This is where everything goes off the rails.

Just as a spoiler? I want you to know that I totally kept my cool and sat on the fact that I was DEEPLY offended. And, more importantly, I SAVED my rant for y'all. (I know, you're SO LUCKY. :-)

It starts fine? I make some joke about the laser loon card (which I've posted about here--and just to explain quickly for our out of towners, due to some malarky which is too complex and BORING to really get into here, St. Paul, which is in Ramsey County, is actually a SEPARATE library system. Unlike Minneapolis and Hennepin, which are the same system, albeit different from both St. Paul and Ramsey County. The point is, my loon card does not work here.) At any rate, there is some discussion of the new Minnesota state flag, the Weather, etc. It's all going pretty normally, but then maybe the circ staff lady has run out of things to say? To be fair to her, I have made things more complicated by asking her hook my St. Paul card up to my old Ramsey County card and so the awkwardness is made extra long by this slightly more onerous set of things she needs to do for me before I can check-out.

My guess is that while casting around for a topic, she lands on my books, possibly hoping to discover similar taste or something. Instead, she says: "Oh, manga." Which, you know. Good Start with the immediate awkward pause. She then looks up at me, frowns, and adds, "I normally don't see a lot of these going out from the YA section." Clearly, she means, being checked out by ADULTS, because she continues, "Just the stuff upstairs." Which is where the adult manga are shelved. And, of course, she can't mean ever, because teens take out manga by the fists full at this library. Manga is a MASSIVE part of the teen room, it's like eight or nine shelves at LEAST!

After this observation, she gives me the "And your response is..???" stare.

All the things that raced through my head, but I said none of it. I'm weirdly proud of my restraint? Instead, I just said, "Well, these are good stories, too. Adults can appreciate them."

This seemed to end things, with her little laugh and "Oh, of course they can, haha," but HOLY SHIT what I wanted to say (and what I ended up saying to myself on the drive to pick up Shawn) was Legion.

The biggest one was the fact that, not two minutes ago, I was in the teen section (obviously, where apparently I don't belong) and I saw that some (overworked to the point that they couldn't flip through the first three pages) librarian in their infinite WISDOM (not) had marked Lupin III as YA. Now, I don't expect you to know who Lupin the Third is or that the manga about this "gentleman thief" is FULL OF NUDITY, DRUGS, graphic violence, RAPE, and probably a half dozen other things that most mothers (fathers and parents) of young teens probably would NOT like them to see by accident while looking for shounen manga. It was written in the swinging-60s for ADULT MEN. Like, drinking and smoking is just taken for granted, that's just a boring every panel sort of activity for Lupin and his colleagues. (I mean, it's also funny, but it was written for ADULTS.)

Because, AS YOU KNOW, BOB, in Japan, just because something is illustrated does not automatically mean it is for children or teens--which I feel is Manga 101.

Also, in the teen section, they had Act-Age, which, frankly, I'd've pulled from the shelf when the mangaka was arrested and found guilty for child molestation--like you know, they did in Japan. In the actual CHILDREN'S area they have Polar Bear in Love, which sounds cute, but is actually a Boys' Love manga (so, written for adults with gay content)... which relies heavily on the idea that readers find constant harassment and threatened interspecies rape (and violence) funny. Which, hey, for adults, whatever, but it's DEFINITELY NOT something I want to read to my TODDLER??? Meanwhile, upstairs in the adult section, they have Cat + Gamer, which has nothing sexy or adult in it at all, but is an absolutely adorable, WHOLESOME story of a girl who accidentally gets a cat and is such a nerd that she treats learning about it like leveling up in a video game. But, I guess that it's an adult book because maybe some idiot librarian saw the "+" and thought maybe the woman was having sex with the cat??? WHO KNOWS. It would take 5 SECONDS of flipping through the book to see that it is completely g-rated.

So, what's with the "Ah, an adult creeping around in YA, I see" attitude? Or was the circ staff lady going for, "I see you like picture books; do you have the mind of a child?" or WHAT??

AND HOW WAS ANY OF IT APPROPRIATE TO SAY TO A PATRON?

Because the second thing I really would have liked to have said--which I sort of did--is, "So what?" If I want to read actual picture books about ducks walking in the rain in human boots or books with Alphabet stories, I actually can. I am allowed to take out any book I fancy from the library. It is not for anyone to judge. In fact, when I worked at the library, I would occasionally stop and read a picture book or two. They can be lovely. And adults can get the same happy feelings reading them. Who doesn't love a nice little book about baby owls? I should NOT have to justify my reading tastes to anyone.

Also, there is nothing creepy about an adult reading YA literature, illustrated or not. What. The. Actual. Fuck.

But, as to their haphazard shelving, I have long considered writing a sternly worded letter to the Ramsey County library, but 1) I don't want to be that person because it smacks of censorship, which is not my point, (my point is that it would be nice if someone at the library actually knew ANYTHING about manga) and 2) I care/don't care, you know what I mean? Shelve it in a pile on the floor for all I care, I'm just happy that someone in the Ramsey County system is BUYING manga, particularly the re-issues of the old classics like Lupin III, which you used to not be able to find ANYWHERE. I picked up my copy of the first few volumes at Uncle Hugo's back in the day. Uncle Hugo's doesn't sell a lot of manga, but the used stuff they get is often really old? I also found a full run of Kubo's (Bleach's author/artist) previous work ZombiePowder! there.

But, my point is, I don't want to cool Ramsey County's manga purchaser because I actually think they're doing a great job. It's the cataloguer or whoever is making the shelving decisions who needs some better guidelines (or time to actually do a bit a research.)

And, of course, as a former circ staff person, my advice is maybe not shame anyone for what they chose to read.

How do I keep missing posting earlier in the week???

Sorry about that, everyone! I will try to be better going forward. Well, since it's What Are You Reading Wednesday again I might as well catch you all up on that. Let's see, I did, finally, out of guilt (and the library harassing me to return their books) make a decent dent in my TBR pile. I still have more books out and unread than I probably should and I returned several without finishing them... but the pile is smaller, and I did actually find a couple of gems.

The surprise gem for me in the bunch is a manga called My Love Mix-Up by Hinekure Wataru (writer) / Aruko (artist), which I assumed was shoujo, but which turned out to be stealth Boys' Love.

The basic story is a classic romcom, only with a REAL love triangle (instead of a love-Y,) and thus at least 1/3 gay.

Our hero, Aoki, has a crush in class--the girl who sits across from him Hashimoto. Hashimoto is, honestly, a delight. Often in these stories where there's a chance for two guys to get together the women are non-entities or worse. Hashimoto is perky and charming and Aoki is in love with her because she's just really, honestly very kind. So, it's no surprise that when the pop quiz is announced and Aoki realizes he's forgotten his eraser, Hashimoto loans him hers. Erasers in Japanese high schools have their own huge culture, including as "love charms" where girls (and sometimes boys) will write the name of their un requited crush on it and carry it around, sort of a homemade version of what you might get at a shrine. So...  Hashimoto's eraser has another dude's name it! It reads: Ida <3. Our poor hero is immediately heartbroken. Worse, the guy that his love interest likes is the very one who sits in front of him! In his distraction, Aoki drops the eraser and who should pick it up like the gentleman he is?? IDA.

So, now Ida is staring at this love token with his name on it and assumes it comes from Aoki.

Wacky hijinks ensue.

When I was reading this, I thought a lot about the general problem with the miscommunication trope, because in many ways this story depends on people holding on to the wrong idea. However, for me, at least, this issue was mitigated by an author who seemed aware that readers lose patience and start yelling "Just talk to him, damn it!" if you push things too far. So, the first complication to "just tell him it's not your eraser" is extraordinarily Japanese, which is that Aoki doesn't want to embarrass Hashimoto in front of her crush RIGHT BEFORE A POP QUIZ. So, he grabs the eraser back from Ida and says, "Can we talk after school? I need to explain this to you." (Which, hilariously, is often code for "I'd like to give you my love confession"--love confessions are their own huge thing in Japanese high school culture, and savvy readers immediately understand how Ida gets the wrong idea.)

Aoki is ON HIS WAY to tell Ito the truth when Hashimoto corners Aoki and makes him PINKY SWEAR (also its own huge thing, but pinky swears in Japan are meant to be unbreakable bonds. You do NOT go back on a pinky swear) never to tell anyone what it said on the eraser because she's not ready to confess to her love.

So now Aoki is headed up to the roof with no idea what to say this guy who thinks he's about to give him a love confession. Meanwhile, Ida is like, WTF, what do I do? No one ever confessed to me, and my first is another guy?? How do I feel? I need to treat this with respect, but I really don't think I can date a boy, can I??? All the while, Ida is thinking about all the times he remembers how Aoki shared an umbrella with him (<--another trope that romance readers in Japan see as a sign that someone LIKES you,) etc. So, Ida is working up to saying "Thanks, but I can't," but then Aoki comes up, looking distraught because he's upset that the can't just tell the goddamn truth now and he knows how high school is and he does NOT want it getting out that he's gay, especially since he's not... and so he basically just shouts "FORGET YOU EVER SAW THAT. THERE'S NO CHANCE  FOR US ANYWAY, SO WE'RE DONE HERE, K??" and kind of starts to cry, which Ida immediately thinks is Aoki backing away from his true feelings.

Thus, Ida, being the consummate gentleman, says, "Let me consider my answer carefully" despite the fact there's been no real love confession.

Of course, as the story progresses, Ida slowly starts to fall in love with Aoki (and visa versa). Meanwhile, Aoki tries to be a good wingman to Hashimoto, continuously and humorously screws that up so that he and Ida end up together instead The whole time Aoki's bestie, a guy named Aida is hanging around in the background.

And you see that name, right? You can probably guess the twist coming.

This is where Volume 1 ends, basically.

I didn't want to hunt down all 9 volumes from the library, so when I discovered that there was a live-action tv series somewhere I could watch it (Viki), I decided to go for it. The acting is not bad? As you know, I normally prefer 2-D, but I think my used-to-be-anime-night-but-has-morphed-into-C-Dramas friend has worn me down? Plus, the series kept surprising me. Like, it is so clear that part of why this story works for me is because I have finally read enough of these kinds of romance manga to understand the tropes that they are playing with. The eraser, the expectations of a love confession, the umbrella sharing, the crossdressing for the school play, (and, later in the series, the school trip... the first date....) all of these end up getting subverted and twisted, and yet the author actually treated the boys' romance as sincere, without short changing the female love interest--her story remains central and once Aiko and Hashimoto realize they are NOT rivals (another trope), the two of them become confidants, etc. in a really loving way.

The series is complete in nine volumes, which seems to translate perfectly for about 10 episodes of a TV series. I finished the TV series yesterday and am happy to report that the whole thing is charming from beginning to end. 10/10 would recommend. 

Then, I realized that I'd accidentally ordered an e-book from St. Paul which showed up in my in-box and since reading a manga this way (on loan AND on line) was novel, I gave it a go, despite the fact that the manga was a baseball light yaoi... and I am a really tough sell on sports manga. This one was called RePlay and it was by Tsukahara Saki. I don't have a lot to say about this one, other than the fact that there are occasionally romances (and, I feel like particularly yaoi,) where I look at the behavior of the couple and my brain starts screaming that if this were real life I'd be yelling: "RED FLAG! RED FLAG!" in the protagonist's face. Our hero, Yuta, spends his summer busting his chops to get into the same college as his love interest, which would be fine--but it's clearly the other guy's pick because there are programs there for him and Yuta TURNS DOWN A POSSIBLE BASEBALL SCHOLARSHIP to do it.

Don't do this in Real Life(tm), kids, he's never worth it.

The other one I got through last week was Volume 1 of Lord Hades’s Ruthless Marriage by Yuho Ueji which was a silly retelling of the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone, without the kidnapping (and instead, the interference of Cupid, aka the embodiment of Evil Twink Energy.) See my official review to see what I mean about Cupid (this one needs picture evidence): https://mangakast.wordpress.com/2024/03/07/hades-sama-no-mujihi-na-konin-lord-hadess-ruthless-marriage-by-yuho-ueji/ .

One of the manga (actually, in this case manhwa,) I ended up returning without doing more than a light skim was called 7Fates: Chakho by HYBE. It was very pretty, being in full-color, but I tapped out on the idea of "beom," which were just sort of otherworldly monsters that this group of extremely hot dudes are hunting. I mean, normally this is exactly my jam? I can not point fingers at hot monster hunters, given that I'm a Bleach fan. I guess I just wasn't in the mood for it. Plus, sometimes when you get the overdue notice you just think, "eh, to hell with it, then," you know? 

I think that's everything. I don't think I added anything new to my TBR pile, though I did randomly read a couple short things online, which I'll be writing reviews for later today on my other site:  Akuma no Kare / My Devil Boyfriend by Anything (naop) and After Staring at the Starry Sky by Bisco Kida. 

Akuma no Kare is a one-shot that is almost entirely a Plot-What-Plot, so I'm not sure there's enough THERE to review it, except I may end up talking about how on Baka-Updates someone seems to have gone through EVERYTHING that this author has written in order to give it a one star review, even things that have not been fan translated. This makes me think that's just someone targeting  Bara. Bara manga almost never get scanlated in part because it's written by gay men for gay men, and thus is male-gaze at men and NOT women's fantasies about what queer relationships are like. The art is not slender, hairless, androgynous, pretty bishi men f*cking each other in heteronormative and highly gender-coded ways, but big, burly, manly men being into each other (and the romance tends to be absent in favor of "wham, bam, thank you, man.")

I suspect this "look" offends the main readership of yaoi/ male/male romance, which is to say: women. 

Which just pisses me off. Especially since this means that I don't get to read good bara! 

Otherwise, I have spent the week trying to hunt down fellow authors who might be willing to blurb my newest book. I was telling a friend that this is part of the job that I've grown to hate. I never used to mind it, because I've always been part of an ask culture, so I never get embarrassed asking someone who is perfectly capable of telling me "No thank you." But, that was before, when I had a LOT of writer friends. In the intervening years as Tate Hallaway, I have largely lost touch with the SF "it kids." So I'm now in the position of having to cold call people I don't know at all (and, more importantly don't know ME) and ask them for a favor. I can not say that I like it much. 

I do have some other RPG gaming news, but I'll put that in a separate post (and probably a locked one, since it involves local folks.) The short of it, though, is that I had a really good time playing Old Gods of Appalachia -- an RPG based on the fiction podcast -- with some friends. 

I think that's it. How about y'all? Reading anything good this find Wednesday?

If you recall, last Wednesday I had a HUGE list of manga titles that I'd taken out of the library. I really had expected that, by now, I'd have read more than.... four of them.

I guess four isn't all that bad, really.

But, okay, so last week, I read two gender and sexuality related manga (one fictionalized the other autobiographical): Last Gender: When We Are Nameless by Take Rei and At 30, I Realized I Had No Gender by Arai Shou. Last Gender takes place in a fictional sex bar in California where sexual and gender minorities meet, mingle, and (occasionally have sex.) I reviewed this on my manga review site and got off on a couple tangents, one of which was about how I am often amused when Japanese mangaka attempt to write about America or Britain. It is clear that California is known throughout the world as some kind free love, sex paradise, because, while I know things like swinger clubs exist, the idea that there is a bar that a person could just walk into off the street like this anywhere in the US seems... well, fantastical. But, this is a fantasy, so I will let them have it. And who am I to say? Perhaps I am being unfair to the great state of California. Perhaps it is just my small-minded Minnesota self that can't imagine this would be even vaguely legal. Anyway! The manga is fun? It does this sort of serial thing where a character introduced in the background of one chapter, will get to be the star of the next.... and each of these characters comes from a unique gender or sexual background. I got introduced to lithosexuality which was a new one for me, and because each story is dramatized, everyone is sympathetic, There are several volumes, but it's a quick read.

The second one, At 30, I Realized I Had No Gender is obviously the autobiographical one. However, the story is not as "on the tin." I mean, wouldn't you assume, with a title like that, that the story you'd get would be Arai-sensei journey of self-discovery? The manga is clearly presented long after the fact. The whole thing reads like, "As you know, Bob... " (where I have no idea) "... and, that's been my life since! And now I'm growing old! Oh no!" 

I felt very left out of the story? In fact, it seems pretty clear that we are supposed to already be very, very. VERY well aware of Arai-sensei's entire life story as there is a reference to the documentary about his life.

 

 

Not having seen the documentary, I read the whole manga with a lot of questions rolling around in my head. For instance,  Arai-sensei used the term intersex and non-binary sort of interchangeably, to the point that I started to wonder if intersex was how the Japanese referred to non-binary folx--but, no, it turns out, I found out from Baka-Updates (of all places), that he* has Turner Syndrome. (He is the pronoun that was used in the manga and which Arai-sensei was using at the time, just to add to my confusion. It seems, in the documentary that Arai uses no pronouns, which is possible in Japanese, but not so much in English.)

I feel like I would not recommend this, like, at all, unless a person was already familiar with Arai-sensei's life story. I haven't yet reviewed it for my manga site because I fear that I'm going to be the only manga reviewer in existence that hit this book expecting something else and has something other than heaps of praise for it. Because, the other thing that ended up bothering me about is that a seriously large portion of it focuses heavily on Arai-sensei's obsession with his looks. He's very focused on growing old and what that's doing to his body and then, another giant section of the book is about how having lost weight makes him feel about his body... and then there are weird snippets where he gives advice to other people who have issues with their looks. I fully accept that this is a big issue for the trans and intersex communities, but, as someone who has her own body issues, I really had a hard time when Arai-sensei was very explicitly like, "if you're fat and masc, you look like this and that looks AWFUL! Don't do this!!" and then draws a picture of my exact body and haircut in the clothes I tend to wear in order to ridicule it.

And I was like, okay, wow,

So, yeah, this book did not work for me on a lot of levels.

On the other hand, I'll be watching the documentary as soon as I pick Shawn up from her Friends of the Library Board meeting.

After that, I needed a palette cleanser and so read two fluff pieces, Volume 20 of What Did You Eat Yesterday? by Yoshinaga Fumi and The Secret, Evil Society of Cats by Pandania. I have nothing to say about either of these because they were fun and delightful and exactly what I needed. 

What about you? Read anything interesting?