J.S.A. Lowe > Recent Status Updates

last time i read frankl i was living on the oncology unit of a methodist hospital with my dying godmother, and it was one of the random paperbacks thrown in with some coloring books and toys in a forgotten lounge on the eighth floor. i said to my therapist yesterday, ostensibly in jest but actually more than half-serious "is there, like, an Existential Horror CBT Workbook," then decided maybe that is what this is.

now absolutely obsessed with her.

my god i’d forgotten how chang geng suffers and how oblivious the little flower of the northwest is to all of it. kinda wanting some payback here but i know priest will provide

THE POPE HAS ARRIVED

rereading for the sheer joy of it, just to have priest priesting at me all sly and dissembling and duplicitous, lubricious and complicated and wily and sharp and subtle and ruthless, gutpunching paragraph after paragraph

my god this book is weird. kj charles is right, it really disintegrates in the back half. goddard is way too identified with her pov character and every single scene right now is about how modest and brilliant and morally superior he is, dressing down racist royalty and/or being underappreciated by his terrible family.

fun fact my entire personality is now this novel, why did i ever mistrust it? also manny jacinto would be perfect as cliopher, casting directors please like and subscribe for more life-saving advice

okay i had it backwards: kip is michael scott only he’s just proposed universal basic income, and his radiance is jim halpert. but it’s still the office.

also i decided his radiance is chadwick boseman

i’ve decided the imperial court is dunder-mifflin, his radiance is michael scott. and cliopher is jim. this is just an elaborate workplace comedy

I guess? I wish there were some diagnostic explanation for why I find western fantasy so uninteresting, when I am Supposed™ to love it. I can't even say "worldbuilding" without involuntary grimacing, so maybe this genre is just not for me. I'm happy for Cliopher and his Radiance! (who just had a massive strop about his circumscribed imperial life and Kip didn't get it, which seems like a missed opportunity to me idk)

I mean, here's the thing about Lew. He wasn't great, not at all, by anyone's estimation: but he was really good. And that's not nothing; most of us have never been good, not the way he could be. I hope a buzzard ate him like he wanted.

have only had Fu Wanqing for one chapter but if anything happens to her I will unhesitatingly slaughter everyone in this room

this may be my first danmei dnf, i love a tsundere gong as much as/more than the next person but can this fucking robot even talk i swear to god. it's all ~Worldbuilding™ and no actual characters afaict

well this is grim af.

people were all "this danmei will put you through it" and i was like "lol be real it's high schoolers playing sports and taking exams how bad can it get" and I WAS SO WRONG. gu fei is taking me out at the fucking KNEES

finished chapter 87, put my face in my hands, and made a sound like a broken accordion. what am i, a beginner? IT'S A DANMEI, THE KNIVES HAVE ARRIVED

(i'm not waiting for the official translation fuck that noise)

this better hurt my feelings in the worst possible way

i hate how riveting this goddamn basketball game is

"Hu Bugui thought that from the moment he had seen Su Qing, he hadn’t said a single word of truth to him." SOBBING

oh my god the zhang haiyan/zhang haixia comedy/murder duo is already my favorite thing ever

Did not expect to be crylaughing but I always forget how hilarious P大 is: "He had meant to use some fake moves to fool the lunatics, like in a wuxia novel, and look for an opening to kill at one blow. Sadly, he didn’t have a very good understanding of the notion of an opening. He swung the ladle around for ages, and apart from getting rice all over the place, he gained nothing." THIS POOR IDIOT & HIS LADLE, HELP HIM

this novel is not fucking around

okay wow this starts off in a seriously bleak place, love that for me (if not him)

I want this to be more *something* than it is, but I can't figure out what that should be. Like yes he is erudite and well-read, yes his suffering is ghastly, both the family trauma and the life-threatening illness, and isn't that usually my own recipe as a writer? Maybe it's not the recipe I thought it was, because I'm struggling with this the way Wiman struggles with faith.

Victor literally makes me crazy.

I'll just look at the first few pages, I told myself... [IS IMMEDIATELY SUCKED IN]

(this is frothy and ridiculous and such good company, like an episode of the West Wing crossed with a 1990s Hugh Grant romcom)