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Chit Chat and Recommendation Post: August 2023! (Patreon)

Published:
2023-09-01 12:49:07
Imported:
2023-09

Content

Hello, Patrons! It's time for our monthly chit-chat and rec post, a nice little corner to update each other on what we've been doing lately and all the things we’ve enjoyed during the month!

August was a bit nuts for me IRL, but I'm in the home stretch before things slow down around here. Not a moment too soon, either! Who fell asleep on the couch last night pretty much immediately after getting off work? Me. ("I will read a bit before I go update Patreon," I said to myself, flopping on the couch sideways, and suddenly it was morning.)

But at least I got eight full hours for once? ^^; I've actually managed to snag a few real nights sleep this month, so I definitely feel more human than I have in awhile.

As you can imagine, I haven't had much time to do fun stuff this month, but here are the things I've enjoyed during August! 

Articles!

The Cowboy Folklorist - I'm a big proponent of media and cultural preservation, even when it's the kind of stuff I don't generally consume. I unironically think collecting and preserving folklore and ephemera that may otherwise be lost to the passage of time is one of mankind's noblest pursuits. So I loved reading about this singer and storyteller who is compiling old cowboy songs and poetry, and performing with older musicians, all to keep the traditions of classic western folk music alive.

20 Delightful Slang Terms From the 1930s - brb, finding ways to add "ackamarackus" to my everyday speech ASAP.

The New Old Dating Trend - Why is matchmaking having a renaissance? - Relevant to my interests! Not just as someone who makes a lot of arranged marriage content, either. I recently picked up a book called Matrimony Inc: From Personal Ads to Swiping Right, a Story of America Looking for Love which is about the history of dating, and how looking for romance has evolved over time. (Interesting, would recommend!)

One of the things I've always loved about romantic fiction--no matter if it's fairy tales, trashy romance novels, or an RPG with romance options--is the very modern emphasis on partnerships based on love. Even though it feels like that's how it's always been, on the long arc of history, it's a pretty new phenomenon! We're very lucky to expect affection in our partnerships, and have the option to hold out for real love. A couple centuries ago, you were just trying to find someone to share the farm chores; someone who also happened to be suitable to pop babies out with to make more farmhands. Matrimony was more about not starving than romance! Your options were so limited, if there wasn't an eligible mate within a ten mile radius you were pretty much out of luck.

And while modern dating can be extremely tough--as evidenced by the resurgence of matchmaking--I think it's nice to have that kind of historical perspective. We have so many options! Sure, it can be frustrating, choice fatigue is a thing, long distance relationships are hard, rejection sucks, but it's also pretty incredible that humans have reached a point that we're so interconnected to each other. 

The Great Fiction of AI: The strange world of high-speed semi-automated genre fiction - A hilarious (and of course thought provoking!) look at how working writers are currently incorporating AI into their workflows.

Aaaand...that's all I've really had time for. Sadness! I did start reading a few books, but I don't think I can recc them based on the fact I'm basically ten pages into both. ^^ Oh well. Hopefully next month I can feed my brain a bit more. 

How about you? How was your August? Watch/play/read anything great?

Comments

Dragon Princess

I hope September goes more smoothly for you, but I’m glad you ask about us too , been playing Blashemous and listening to the Yandere one unlocked my Gomez in me my Vanilla Mortica 🖤🖤🖤

PsionicsKnight

Hello everyone! Hope you’ve all been well this last August! For me, August was touch and go. The first, and perhaps biggest thing, is that I finally attended my first Renaissance Faire! I even got dressed up in costume for the occasion. So, how did it go? Well… the bad news is that I was a bit too uncomfortable and stressed from both social interaction and from my schoolwork to want to stick around for longer than an hour and a half or so (and that half hour might have been wandering around, looking for my car in the parking lot). Admittedly, I did have some other things going on, since my term’s finals were up that day and, outside of getting to sleep at midnight the previous night and having had to wait to get into my motel room after a three-and-a-half hour drive due to issues the motel was having, maybe I just wasn’t in the right mindset. Having the weather outside be in the high 80s and I was wearing a wizard robe didn’t help matters. Plus… I think that, in spite of me being almost sure I was going to be too nervous to approach/chat with them, a part of me was almost certainly hoping that the professional cosplayer BukkitBrown was going to be around at this Ren Faire, and since it appears we actually are pretty close to one another*, I fantasized about simping—I mean *meeting* them in person! The good news is that even with my issues there, I still felt very, very good about going there overall! And, admittedly, I did become more comfortable the longer I stayed there. So, since I do want to try and go to Ren Faires in the future—though perhaps not this one, since it’s so far away, and there seems to be a Ren Faire that I missed this year that is *much* closer—perhaps this can just be a way to get a “feeling” for what it’s like. Besides that, I saw a lot of people who not only clearly were inspired by certain pop culture things—like a guy who was cosplaying Geralt of Rivia, a girl who did a Fem!Shrek cosplay, and a trio of guys who had some of the *best* orc cosplays I’ve ever seen (honestly, they looked like extras from the Lord of the Rings movies—it does make me think that the more I go to events like these, the more I’ll find some good connections. Not to mention there were a few… fair maidens around… 😏 Which is pretty nice for a fellow like me who has been both single all his life and might be touch-starved. Plus, I have to be honest: while I was eager to check this place out… I only was going for one day, and I honestly was keeping expectations low. In real life, and even online, I have some crippling social anxiety that has made going to meet people, taking risks, and finding connections much harder. So, going to my first Ren Faire was going to be a difficult challenge for *many* reasons, and the fact I went at all as opposed to paying the ticket and then chickening out, was a huge step for me. And besides, I’ve got a ComicCon this month, in where I’ll be attending for three days! And one of my stepbrothers might attend with me for a day, which’ll make things easier (I went to the Ren Faire solo, more because I couldn’t find anyone than anything else). Giving me plenty of opportunities to meet new people/ruin peoples’ days, and push myself out of my comfort zone! Though this time, I’m not doing any costumes. It’s just too much work and I didn’t feel too (emotionally) comfortable in it… perhaps next year I’ll do it! Regarding school—it was a bit difficult, but I did finish with a B and an A, which was nice to see. Plus, in my digital imaging class, I was able to make a more personalized portfolio website—while I made one in my Webflow course, it was part of a pre-existing template while what I have here has been made from scratch—and while I don’t plan on going into web design at the corporate level, I think it could be useful for a freelance web design portfolio. And with those two classes done, I now have three classes left until I finally finish my course and get the degree! Paying for them was a huge issue, unfortunately, and I eventually had to dip into some mutual funds (and later had to use even more money to make sure I could pay off some credit debt I gained over the summer and get some money for this month), but at least I got the classes paid off! And I only had to pay for one textbook, so that was a nice feeling! Now, all I need to do is just work hard on the last two terms, and I can complete college for the second time… please pray for me/wish me luck/whatever spiritual/superstitious things you’d do to help a random stranger in need. In terms of books, I actually have finished reading Sanderson’s Secret Project #3: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. For those who don’t know about it: it’s about these two people in a more East Asian inspired Cosmere world—Yumi, a yoki-hijo (“Girl of Commanding Spirits”) whose duty is to influence spirits to help people by creating art for them, and Nikaro/Painter, a “Nightmare Painter” (basically, someone who hunts down the magical embodiment of mankind’s fear)—find themselves somehow connected to one another spiritually. As in… one of them takes control of the other’s body, and the other basically hangs around all ghostly and apparition-like. Altogether, the two must now work together to figure out what is going on and how to get back to normal—becoming closer and closer as a result! Overall, as just a story, this is my favorite of the Secret Projects thus far. It was fun, gripping, had a lot of great characterization from our main duo, and had a very big romantic undertones that I feel some of Sanderson’s works (even ones like Mistborn Era 1) were lacking! My only two criticisms are that a) Painter’s friends/peers are a bit shallow and one-dimensional (perhaps, if they appear in a future story, they’ll get a chance to shine) and b) as much as I am happy for the characters… I have to agree with Daniel Greene that the ending was a bit *too* happy. Like, it’s not that I think it should have been bittersweet—more that the happy part kind of came across as a *deus ex machina* which doesn’t usually happen for Sanderson. With the barest spoilers possibly: one of the characters dies at the end, but another is able to bring them back with magic that… we didn’t see beforehand and got a little amount of hinting at. I hope this doesn’t become a trend; while I wouldn’t mind Sanderson doing things like bringing back characters who died in the Cosmere, and he has had characters in that universe chest death, I also think that this example was… a little cheap. And since in one of his series, he *did* kill off one (perhaps two) of his most beloved/iconic characters, and as of writing this it seems the possibility of them coming back at all is up in the air at best, outright never going to happen at worst, I do fear that if he *does* something like bring a dead character people loved back to life, it will feel cheap. And as much as I *hate* the argument/view that *all* resurrections in SFF, regardless of how it happens or to what extent, automatically cheapen the deaths of characters (and thus resurrection should always be extremely limited at least, completely avoided at most), I do agree with those people that poor resurrections can harm a story, and I hope this isn’t a sign that Sanderson is losing his touch. But… I might just worrying about nothing there. I also finally got, and have started reading, two other books I’ve been looking into. One is Multispecies Cities, which is an anthology of Solarpunk short stories that emphasize both places set in the Asia-Pacific and creatures other than humans working together. The introduction actually has some good info about real life environmentalist concerns, such as how the late Val Plumwood was critical of both factory farming and “ontological veganism” (the belief that eating any and all animals or animal products, under any way or circumstance, was inherently evil), seeing them as two extremes that further distance humanity away from nature. I’ve only started the actual short stories, but I’m very excited to see where this goes! The other book is Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. If you haven’t heard of it: it takes place in the far future, where humanity has to eventually flee a dying Earth. Prior to that, though, a scientist is able to establish control over a planet and plans to create a radical experiment—she will send down a bunch of monkeys onto the planet and infect them with a special “nanovirus” that will influence their evolutionary path, making it so that they can not only become sapient, but will evolve to sapience at a *much* faster rate than humanity did. However… said scientist wants to do this because she believes the act of doing so will mean she is basically a god, and thus will deserved to be worshipped as such by her new experiments. However, during the process where the monkeys are sent down with the virus, something goes wrong and the monkeys either die (or at least don’t get infected) and another set of creature get infected with the spiders. And they are, drum roll please… *drum roll* spiders! Yes, Children of Time is about a race of sapient spiders evolving, building their own civilization and technology, and, eventually, coming into conflict with humans after the latter land on their planet to get a new home. I heard about this book first on Quinn’s Ideas, and not only loved the concept, but was intrigued by the idea that we get into the spiders’ psychology. And the thing is… the spiders aren’t portrayed as evil. Yes, they are different from humans, but they are ultimately still people and some conflicts I’ve heard that happen in the book comes from how difficult it is for the humans and spiders to communicate with one another at first. In any case, I’m so excited to read this, especially since one of my science fantasy series was even going to have a class of sapient insects/arachnids/arthropods—collectively called the “vy’shun”—be one of the co-dominant species in that setting (alongside humans, traditional fantasy races, fish people, dinosaur/reptile/avian people, fairies, and more), and I think this book will provide some excellent inspiration. Plus, I got the sequel, Children of Ruin, and I heard that it features the same treatment with spiders happening to other creatures, like octopi and mantis shrimp. I honestly can’t wait to see that! As for non-fiction: outside of my textbooks, I have found a veritable goldmine of easy-to-read non-fiction books. They are called “Wooden Books” and basically give brief information on certain subjects. I found them at a bookstore I was visiting, and decided to check them out since they seemed so informative, and I think they’d be a good introduction to a lot of these concepts. Moreover, you know what you are getting into since the main subjects are on their titles. Some of the ones I have so far are: Altered States: Mind, Drugs, and Culture Acoustics: The Art of Sound Charms, Amulets, Talismans, and Spells Celtic Patterns: Visual Rhythms of the Ancient Mind The Diagram: Harmonic Geometry Q. E. D. Beauty in Mathematical Proof I definitely think these will be good both for general education/information, as well as getting ideas for some magic systems I’ll want to write later. 🙂 I also did read on the Morning Brew that green energies—like Solar and Wind—are becoming cheaper and outcompeting fossil fuels, which is a good sign for us environmentally, but… I can’t find the original article, so I’ll just link a similar one: an article on how some cargo ships are being outfitted with wind sales: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2023/08/22/a-futuristic-wind-powered-cargo-ship-has-set-sail It’s very interesting to see, especially since I love the idea (as a concept, an aesthetic, and (when possible) an actual solution to current issues) of taking old technology we have “abandoned” and updating it to the modern day, making it more practical and effective. For movies: I finally got around to watch David Lynch’s 1984 adaption of Dune. Gotta be honest: while I don’t think it was my favorite movie of all time, and I don’t see Dune as a series/franchise I’ll engage in religiously (no pun intended), I did enjoy the movie! Especially since I love the idea of a science fiction/science fantasy series with not only heavy religious/spiritual elements—at least, ones that aren’t Star Wars, since as great as SW is, it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) have a monopoly on that concept—and of messianic beings who appear and how people see them. It definitely has convinced me to check out the new Dune movies when I get the chance. I also recently got back into interest of something else: Ridley Scott’s 1985 fantasy movie *Legend*. If anyone is unfamiliar with it: it’s about a boy named Jack, his friend/love interest Princess Lili, and their struggles after Lili accidentally causes the unicorns (basically, the earthly embodiment of good and light in that film’s universe) to become vulnerable and later be killed by goblins sent by the Lord of Darkness. I watched it once with my father in my teenage years, but… putting aside I found it strange and hard to follow, I also think I was terrified of the possibility he wasn’t liking the movie and was going to get angry at me for suggesting it. Recently, though, I got more interested in it and am thinking of giving it another look-see soon. Especially since I was surprised to learn that not only was there (apparently) no planned sequel, but there hasn’t even been a novelization, or a continuation of the story, in any format despite being considered a cult classic these days. My interest did lead me to checking out some potential Legend continuation fics and, while there are surprisingly little stories, I did find one that might tickle peoples’ fancy: The Gate. It’s a sort of sequel where after the events of the movie, Lili has married Jack and is living in the woods with him, caring for their daughter Daisy. However, Lili can’t shake off her time with Darkness—especially after he claimed that, at some point, she’d return to him in the future. And sadly… it seems that her own dark side isn’t as gone as she once thought. Definitely a very engaging, if a little heartbreaking, and it’s a shame it’s a one-shot. I really feels like the start of something bigger! But, another fic by the same author seems to have similar themes and ideas, so maybe (in my head canon at least), the two stories will end up being in the same universe. If you want to read to read the fanfic, here’s a link: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/3808569/1/The-Gate Honestly, it was so good that not only did it inspire me to make some Legend fanfics of my own… but even helped inspire an *original book* I want to work on after I get some others done! Now that we’ve come to the end (finally) I do want to point out that when it comes to personal matters, things have… been mixed. I was really busy and so didn’t get a chance to work a lot on either writings or on my freelance web design business. It got to the point where I had to use both the rest of my retirement fund and a good portion of my mutual funds to help pay for school and life. That being said, since I have set up payments for some pressing issues (rent for this month and credit card payments), I am hoping to use the rest of the month to get work on not only getting some jobs on Upwork and improving my portfolio, but also on doing some more writing. I even want to get some ASMR scripts done soon, including those for Velvet (assuming she’s cool with me sending her any), and, if I can, I want to try and publish at least some short stories on Kindle sooner rather than later. Anyway, that’s all for me! I hope things have been going well for you all, and that September is a great month! Good luck out there! *Note: I just want to point out for those who might be worried anoint what I said regarding Bukkit living close to me: the reason why I mention that is because I sent them some gifts on their Amazon Wish List, and I noticed that the PO Box was in a city about five hours away from where I live. I did not stalk or dox Bukkit, and I have not gone down to their city to see if they are still there or to try and meet them in person (though, admittedly… Bukkit’s city does look pretty nice, so maybe I’ll go visit just to check it out and if I happen to see/meet Bukkit by chance, all the better!) I might love yanderes, but I have no intention of being one in real life.

Jake C (that1otherJake)

I'm glad things are starting to cool off for you. Hopefully, this month gives you enough time to more or less recover. Lol, it's funny that you mentioned romance and modern dating. I wasn't sure if I should mention this or not, but wth, I recently decided to start being more proactive on the dating scene again. It's been more years than I care to mention, but I have a lot of wonderful friends who are more than happy to bombard me with advice, so as much as I know parts of it are going to suck, at least I'll hopefully have a few virtual wingmen(women) to help get through the more turbulent parts. My month otherwise has been a lot of routine, working mostly, gaming some, and sleeping less than I'd like (I really need to be more consistent with my schedule). But in probably some of my favorite good news, Baldur's Gate finally dropped for PS5 so I'm sure I'll be losing a lot of my life to that. Hope the rest of you have a lovely September,cand let's hope for an end to these unrelenting heat waves.