Melissa > Recent Status Updates

I like the style so far.

Pretty sure the freshman fiasco and the award-winning short story is a reference to the Bad Art Friend incident from 2021...

"...the oppressor would never sit down at the negotiating table when they still thought they had nothing to lose."

Maybe I'm just naive and easily swayed

"It was all such frippery, fluff, trivial distractions built over a foundation of ongoing, unimaginable cruelty."

'How strange,’ said Ramy. ‘To love the stuff and the language, but to hate the country.’

‘Not as odd as you’d think,’ said Victoire. ‘There are people, after all, and then there are things.’

I'll just leave this here... Context: they're in Mr Lovell's house, who is a raging racist against Chinese people in particular, even though he studies the language and collects cultural artefacts.

Ah yes, the best programs written on the backs of unpaid intern labor...

Sign of the times... Read through the lens of current events, this book is quite potent (so far)

Ok, I appreciate the growth though it's a bit too much repetition of the same message.

I suddenly realized that this also reminds me of AOT very strongly.

Handmaid's Tale is really overstating things... it's giving Disney's live action remake of Mulan

Handmaid's tale might be overstating it a bit, it's giving more like... Hunger Games Katniss, but if Katniss had been more genre savvy.

hrm, first impression is... it's very heavy-handed on the whole strong woman is "not like the other girls", just from her inner monologue.

At least Aunt March (tsundere), Jo (in her own words "saucy") (and maybe Beth) are more interesting characters.

Their interactions are so weirdly demonstrative and wholesome? Can't relate.

Actual start date 22 Jan

I like the parts about being more intentional rather than reactionary, but I don't get all the hype about being more productive, not really something I agree is the goal of BuJo as described in the intro.

So far quite similar to KonMari

The TV series is better even though it frustrated me a lot. This is much more rushed and draggy at the same time.

A lot of awful things have happened so far but this has to be the worst. Scrreeeaaamm!!!

Above and underneath everything else about this book is the very interesting insight into how a writer thinks of writers.

Gripping. So suspensful...

The onomatopoeia it begins with!! Aaahhh, I can hear it! I'm scared.

Ooohh... I've been uneducated hahah! Tantalus! I understand now.

"...who gives better offerings, a happy man or a miserable one?"

At least the Greek pantheon is upfront about their tactics for winning worshipers and they don't even pretend to be benevolent.

The brutality feels acceptable maybe because these are Greek gods and it's expected, like cartoon violence; it doesn't hurt them the way it would mortals.

Siren: This (and Maria Hertogh), I would read a novel about.

Laundromat: Interesting premise, but the part about the lost piece of laundry is jarring and unnecessary.

Chick: What an anti-climax after Maria Hertogh. Is it mean to say... trying too hard to be edgy?

Fourteen Entries from the Diary of Maria Hertogh: I don't know how much is historical, but this is the most inspired and valuable story in this collection so far.

Alice, you must be the fulcrum of your own universe: Not bad, a little cliché but it has its own flair.