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emergencily's reviews
113 reviews
Smut Peddler Presents: Sordid Past by C. Spike Trotman
3.5
it wasn't like ~sexy~ to me personally, but it was a fun, giggly read and a nice collection of different stories and art styles. escandelo!
Raving by McKenzie Wark
3.5
“woefully white” is all i can think of to say right now. this has its merits and i loved the eroticism she identifies in raving as practice, her thoughts on transness and disassociation in ravespace, but it truly is limited by its lack of meaningful engagement with race. the passages about raving in COVID particularly bothered me and felt self absorbed and insensitive. will add more notes later.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
5.0
old favourite i read in middle school and i remember it scaring me so bad i put my back to a corner of the wall and turned all my lights on…hope to re-read this soon
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
5.0
Truthfully, I put off reading this for a long time - since it came out in 2021 - because I was scared of how much the book would devastate me. I've been a fan of her music for a few years and discovered her through "Psychopomp," the album she wrote after her mother's death. So it made me really emotional to realize that the album cover I'd always seen lit up on my phone screen as I listened to the album on the way to school had been a picture of her mother. Back when I was a uni student with a very limited data plan, the only thing I had to occupy my long commutes to school was listening to pre-downloaded music, and looking at the album art. I remember that I used to look at that picture and wonder about the story behind it and who those women were. How strange to think her mother's memory, forever eternalized in her music, had, in a sense, accompanied me on all those long, dreary winter bus rides. I went back and listened to the album again with a new understanding of the emotional layers to this album and really appreciated it in a new light.
This book is so quietly devastating in its grief. She might have been crying in the aisles of H Mart, but I was literally crying in my work's breakroom, on the TTC, on the Go Train, while waiting for an appointment...There's so many small, every day moments in her memories of her mother that she recounts that just hit me like a punch to the gut, because I see echoes of my mother in hers, and echoes of my relationship or my sister's relationship to our mother in hers.
I don't really have the words to analyze this book in any put-together way, but I know that she showed a vulnerability and honest humility in this book that reached into a deep and tender part of me and scooped out my heart. It tapped into my own fears and anxieties about my mother and the future as I watch her age, the knot of my own cultural insecurities and tenuous grasp on my self-identity in relation to vague concepts of "heritage," my own memories of the conflicts and little hurts I've collected over the years with my mother - but it also made me recall so many beautiful memories I have of my own mother, and that I am unfathomably lucky to be able to keep making anew everyday with her. I thought a lot about the role she gravitated towards as an "archivist" keeping and carrying her mother's memory, because I think that's a role I've often played in my family with my mother as well. I'm grateful to have read this book. How beautiful to see anew the ways in which love endures.
This book is so quietly devastating in its grief. She might have been crying in the aisles of H Mart, but I was literally crying in my work's breakroom, on the TTC, on the Go Train, while waiting for an appointment...There's so many small, every day moments in her memories of her mother that she recounts that just hit me like a punch to the gut, because I see echoes of my mother in hers, and echoes of my relationship or my sister's relationship to our mother in hers.
I don't really have the words to analyze this book in any put-together way, but I know that she showed a vulnerability and honest humility in this book that reached into a deep and tender part of me and scooped out my heart. It tapped into my own fears and anxieties about my mother and the future as I watch her age, the knot of my own cultural insecurities and tenuous grasp on my self-identity in relation to vague concepts of "heritage," my own memories of the conflicts and little hurts I've collected over the years with my mother - but it also made me recall so many beautiful memories I have of my own mother, and that I am unfathomably lucky to be able to keep making anew everyday with her. I thought a lot about the role she gravitated towards as an "archivist" keeping and carrying her mother's memory, because I think that's a role I've often played in my family with my mother as well. I'm grateful to have read this book. How beautiful to see anew the ways in which love endures.
EX.Mag Vol. 05 by Peow Studio
5.0
Beautifully bound, printed and well designed book -- easily the most gorgeous, stunning book I own. Thanking my lucky stars I caught wind of the Kickstarter because the dust jacket that the KS edition comes with is so breathtakingly beautiful I plan to flatten it out and frame it. There's an incredible list of contributors in this vampire-themed anthology and an amazing range of comics and illustrations ranging in tone from comedic to horrific to homoerotic. Loved the diversity of themes and art styles represented here. The way the book is designed and set brings all these different styles and comics together seamlessly into a really cohesive, fun anthology.
Speaking visually, I was especially blown away by the final comic by Matthew Houston's "The Long Penance." Genuinely jaw-dropping use of the limited palette of rich black and vibrant red inks this book was printed with. I also loved the beginning comic by Theo Shultz, and thought it was an amazing comic to start the anthology with and set the tone at a high note. I enjoyed the break between the more serious comics with comedic ones to switch up the pace as you read. I especially found myself laughing out loud at Luca Oliveri's "Le Blood," "Papercut" by Ryan Plaisance and Morgan Nix, and the brief short story parodying YA vampire works like Twilight and Buffy (and perhaps the infamous fanfiction "My Immortal"?). I do think the comedic works could have been interspersed more evenly between the serious ones, because it felt like they got sandwiched all together in the middle. But that's up to personal preference too.
Also loooved the illustration section with works from the well-known Takato Yamamoto, although I think some of the single full-page prints of their larger works would have benefited with close-up shots on the accompanying page (this was done with one or two works, but not all of them). Because of Yamamoto's incredibly fine linework and intensive detail, it was sometimes a little hard to make out on the smaller canvas of this book's pages. But I also had fun sticking my nose right in the book and slowly tracing every line and detail with my eyes.
Overall, truly an incredible and well put together anthology that is palpably full of passion, genuine love and joy that celebrates the medium of comics. Can’t wait to see more future Ex. Mag volumes (I hope!!!) and more publications in general from the amazing indie publisher Peow! Also will beg on my knees for Peow to do a second print run of previous Ex. Mag volumes...
Speaking visually, I was especially blown away by the final comic by Matthew Houston's "The Long Penance." Genuinely jaw-dropping use of the limited palette of rich black and vibrant red inks this book was printed with. I also loved the beginning comic by Theo Shultz, and thought it was an amazing comic to start the anthology with and set the tone at a high note. I enjoyed the break between the more serious comics with comedic ones to switch up the pace as you read. I especially found myself laughing out loud at Luca Oliveri's "Le Blood," "Papercut" by Ryan Plaisance and Morgan Nix, and the brief short story parodying YA vampire works like Twilight and Buffy (and perhaps the infamous fanfiction "My Immortal"?). I do think the comedic works could have been interspersed more evenly between the serious ones, because it felt like they got sandwiched all together in the middle. But that's up to personal preference too.
Also loooved the illustration section with works from the well-known Takato Yamamoto, although I think some of the single full-page prints of their larger works would have benefited with close-up shots on the accompanying page (this was done with one or two works, but not all of them). Because of Yamamoto's incredibly fine linework and intensive detail, it was sometimes a little hard to make out on the smaller canvas of this book's pages. But I also had fun sticking my nose right in the book and slowly tracing every line and detail with my eyes.
Overall, truly an incredible and well put together anthology that is palpably full of passion, genuine love and joy that celebrates the medium of comics. Can’t wait to see more future Ex. Mag volumes (I hope!!!) and more publications in general from the amazing indie publisher Peow! Also will beg on my knees for Peow to do a second print run of previous Ex. Mag volumes...
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
3.75
- Collection of short sci-fi stories
- The prose is really plain and matter-of-fact, which is fine - but sometimes it felt a little too bare-bones and plain and almost...ugly? For lack of a kinder word. The style is fr just "She said 'XXX.' Then, she stood up and did this. She thought, 'XXX.' She sat down." But also, I came to this book fresh from finishing a book with very poetic and elaborate descriptive prose so maybe I'm being too harsh
- Sometimes a story will have cut-asides with long passages describing the mechanics and logistics and physics of whatever sci-fi device/tech/concept the story is about (e.g. AI, alternate realities), which could really drag on for me. But I know that I'm a person who's interested in sci fi more for the social and cultural implications than the specific mechanics of how a technology works. So it's up to personal preference
- Each story was unique and while they rested on familiar sci-fi tropes (like exploring parallel realities), they were executed in really interesting and unique ways, so it never felt close to being cliche or tired.
- I probably enjoyed the first story the most, and it was probably also the least scientific one in the bunch, with an "Arabian Nights" inspired storytelling format
He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan
5.0
An incredible follow-up and conclusion to She Who Became the Sun. The book rotates through the POVs of 3 main characters. Zhu, who has passed the moral point of no return in her rise to power as the self-titled Radiant Emperor, leading an army to the capital to take the throne; Ouyang, on a frenzied death march away from the wreckage he wrought on his own life, towards the culmination of his revenge and self-annihilation; and Wang Baoxiang, working in the shadows as he angles to set himself on the Mongol throne to spite the ghosts of his father and brother.
These are characters maligned by the world for the essence of who they are: for their transgressions against traditional morality, and for blurring the lines of gender and sexuality. Zhu is recriminated for her ambitions of power as a woman (disguised) and for her missing limb, considered a shameful mutilation of her body that makes her unfit to lead. Ouyang, as a eunuch, is considered the embodiment of the ultimate shame, daring to stay alive in a dishonorable life. Wang Baoxiang, outcast by his own family, is seen as unforgivably effeminate - a "peach-bitten f*ggot" - by Mongol standards of masculinity.
The addition of Wang Baoxiang's POV is a breath of fresh air - apart from Ouyang and Zhu of course, he was one of the most interesting and complex characters in the first book. In contrast to Ouyang, who, shamed by the manhood that others deny him and that he sees as his stolen entitlement, tries to emulate masculinity in other ways (warmaking & woman-hating, the classics of toxic masculinity!) he delights in spitting on gender norms, and turns that into his weapon. WBX works in the shadows, subtly manipulating Ouyang and Zhu throughout the entire book. By his design, Ouyang and Zhu, inexorably drawn together in the first book but always pitted against each other, find themselves in a tentative alliance when their goals align. The respect and understanding they form of each other, as two people cast out for their difference and forced to claw their way towards survival, is probably some of the only nice stuff in the book. Ouyang is basically a sopping wet feral cat that Zhu is trying to bring in from the cold, with varying degrees of success. Having known powerlessness, they understand each other in ways no one else can. Knowing that they're stronger together, you even let yourself feel hope of seeing a better ending to their stories - which of course makes it all the more painful when it inevitably crumbles (again, by WBX's hand!). This book is emotionally devastating from start to finish - no one in this book, ever, is having a good fucking time!
On that note, no one in this book, except Ma and Zhu (our only semi-healthy relationship), is having the sex they want. We have a stone top lesbian having sex with a man for the sake of securing a military alliance; a straight man having gay sex with a closeted homophobic gay guy for political protection; a closeted subby gay guy pining his dead straight boy crush in a non-sexual BDSM relationship with the stone top lesbian, disguised as a man; a woman so estranged from her own body and emotions that she disassociates through sex with the man she can't admit she loves until he's gone; etc. The characters in this book make weapons of sex and gender for their personal and political gain.
While the first book was dark and somber, this one is downright grim - this is absolutely a tragedy. I went through the whole book gritting my teeth and dreading the tragic endings that each character was knowingly, stubbornly marching themselves towards - not to mention the constant personal losses of self, dignity, morality and love that they endure over the course of the book. It's like watching someone slowly die by a thousand cuts as they keep willingly walking themselves into the knife. This story is about the weight of fate - how the characters re-enact cycles of harm and violence in their respective quests for revenge, power, and recognition. In the end, Zhu and Ma make the choice to break those cycles and to forge a new fate from the ashes of the old empire. It's a beautiful and hopeful ending, but this is where my one complaint about the book lies.
At the end of the last book, Zhu commits an act that is, no matter how you slice it, unforgivably morally reprehensible. In this book, she continues on to do more of the same. The message of the ending is of course, that there is no such thing as a point of no return - you always have the choice and agency to change your fate. That lesson is driven home by Ouyang sacrificing everything he loves and walking towards his own miserable self-destruction (despite Zhu and others giving him a chance to stop), for a "fated" revenge quest that proves to be completely meaningless (SPC, you are cruel as hell for that last twist). But Zhu spends two long books stopping at literally no cost to gain power - even the loss of her closest friend, Xu Da, the only truly good, kindhearted person in this book (along with Ma), isn't enough to stop her. This makes her change of heart near the end of the book feel too sudden. I wish Ma, who is Zhu's (hell, everyone's) moral compass and North star, wasn't so underutilized for most of the book. If she had been more present throughout the narrative to engage with Zhu and make the changes in her heart more gradual, her decision at the end would have felt a lot more believable. Because it doesn't, it somewhat cheapens the impact of what could have been, if executed a little more neatly, an incredibly moving ending about agency, love, forgiveness, and compassion.
Regardless, this is still a 5 star book to me. This is one that's going to stay with me for a long time. I almost want this book to go viral so there's an active fandom and I have fix-it fanfic to nurse my deep emotional wounds, but I also don't trust people to not flatten the nuanced morality and genderfuckery in this book.
These are characters maligned by the world for the essence of who they are: for their transgressions against traditional morality, and for blurring the lines of gender and sexuality. Zhu is recriminated for her ambitions of power as a woman (disguised) and for her missing limb, considered a shameful mutilation of her body that makes her unfit to lead. Ouyang, as a eunuch, is considered the embodiment of the ultimate shame, daring to stay alive in a dishonorable life. Wang Baoxiang, outcast by his own family, is seen as unforgivably effeminate - a "peach-bitten f*ggot" - by Mongol standards of masculinity.
The addition of Wang Baoxiang's POV is a breath of fresh air - apart from Ouyang and Zhu of course, he was one of the most interesting and complex characters in the first book. In contrast to Ouyang, who, shamed by the manhood that others deny him and that he sees as his stolen entitlement, tries to emulate masculinity in other ways (warmaking & woman-hating, the classics of toxic masculinity!) he delights in spitting on gender norms, and turns that into his weapon. WBX works in the shadows, subtly manipulating Ouyang and Zhu throughout the entire book. By his design, Ouyang and Zhu, inexorably drawn together in the first book but always pitted against each other, find themselves in a tentative alliance when their goals align. The respect and understanding they form of each other, as two people cast out for their difference and forced to claw their way towards survival, is probably some of the only nice stuff in the book. Ouyang is basically a sopping wet feral cat that Zhu is trying to bring in from the cold, with varying degrees of success. Having known powerlessness, they understand each other in ways no one else can. Knowing that they're stronger together, you even let yourself feel hope of seeing a better ending to their stories - which of course makes it all the more painful when it inevitably crumbles (again, by WBX's hand!). This book is emotionally devastating from start to finish - no one in this book, ever, is having a good fucking time!
On that note, no one in this book, except Ma and Zhu (our only semi-healthy relationship), is having the sex they want. We have a stone top lesbian having sex with a man for the sake of securing a military alliance; a straight man having gay sex with a closeted homophobic gay guy for political protection; a closeted subby gay guy pining his dead straight boy crush in a non-sexual BDSM relationship with the stone top lesbian, disguised as a man; a woman so estranged from her own body and emotions that she disassociates through sex with the man she can't admit she loves until he's gone; etc. The characters in this book make weapons of sex and gender for their personal and political gain.
While the first book was dark and somber, this one is downright grim - this is absolutely a tragedy. I went through the whole book gritting my teeth and dreading the tragic endings that each character was knowingly, stubbornly marching themselves towards - not to mention the constant personal losses of self, dignity, morality and love that they endure over the course of the book. It's like watching someone slowly die by a thousand cuts as they keep willingly walking themselves into the knife. This story is about the weight of fate - how the characters re-enact cycles of harm and violence in their respective quests for revenge, power, and recognition. In the end, Zhu and Ma make the choice to break those cycles and to forge a new fate from the ashes of the old empire. It's a beautiful and hopeful ending, but this is where my one complaint about the book lies.
At the end of the last book, Zhu commits an act that is, no matter how you slice it, unforgivably morally reprehensible. In this book, she continues on to do more of the same. The message of the ending is of course, that there is no such thing as a point of no return - you always have the choice and agency to change your fate. That lesson is driven home by Ouyang sacrificing everything he loves and walking towards his own miserable self-destruction (despite Zhu and others giving him a chance to stop), for a "fated" revenge quest that proves to be completely meaningless (SPC, you are cruel as hell for that last twist). But Zhu spends two long books stopping at literally no cost to gain power - even the loss of her closest friend, Xu Da, the only truly good, kindhearted person in this book (along with Ma), isn't enough to stop her. This makes her change of heart near the end of the book feel too sudden. I wish Ma, who is Zhu's (hell, everyone's) moral compass and North star, wasn't so underutilized for most of the book. If she had been more present throughout the narrative to engage with Zhu and make the changes in her heart more gradual, her decision at the end would have felt a lot more believable. Because it doesn't, it somewhat cheapens the impact of what could have been, if executed a little more neatly, an incredibly moving ending about agency, love, forgiveness, and compassion.
Regardless, this is still a 5 star book to me. This is one that's going to stay with me for a long time. I almost want this book to go viral so there's an active fandom and I have fix-it fanfic to nurse my deep emotional wounds, but I also don't trust people to not flatten the nuanced morality and genderfuckery in this book.
My Solo Exchange Diary Vol. 2 by Nagata Kabi
3.75
i don't think the solo exchange diary format/concept and subject matter should have been stretched out over 2 volumes, especially cause the content in volume 2 doesn't feel as strongly written as in volume 1. i do think she could have edited down the included comics a bit more into one volume to create something a little tighter and more cohesive in its vision.
My Solo Exchange Diary Vol. 1 by Nagata Kabi
4.25
i think this is a great continuation to "my lesbian experience with loneliness." the art style is cutesy but expressive and effective - but i do think she has a tendency to rely on visual diagrams a little too much to convey her meaning.
this volume focuses more on her struggle to find independence and self-identity as an adult, to find self-confidence in her work as an artist, and to separate herself from internalizing her family's expectations and values. the new format of the "solo exchange diary" where she writes letters to herself is cute, and i loved that each chapter she concludes with a well wish for herself or a reflection on her future hopes. i found myself relating a lot to some of her struggles with her mother and her family as well. she walks a tightrope balance between wanting her approval and pride, resenting her for the burden of her expectations and irreconcilably different values, wanting to break out and live for herself, and also feeling guilty and worried to leave her alone. typical mid 20's anxieties LOL
this volume focuses more on her struggle to find independence and self-identity as an adult, to find self-confidence in her work as an artist, and to separate herself from internalizing her family's expectations and values. the new format of the "solo exchange diary" where she writes letters to herself is cute, and i loved that each chapter she concludes with a well wish for herself or a reflection on her future hopes. i found myself relating a lot to some of her struggles with her mother and her family as well. she walks a tightrope balance between wanting her approval and pride, resenting her for the burden of her expectations and irreconcilably different values, wanting to break out and live for herself, and also feeling guilty and worried to leave her alone. typical mid 20's anxieties LOL