(no subject)
6 Mar 2026 07:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSometimes you read a book at exactly the wrong time, and you're like 'god this stupid big fat fantasy novel. Why are you six hundred pages. Why is everybody Sexy. What's the point of you. I'm tired' and sometimes you read a book at exactly the right time and you're like 'thank god! actual worldbuilding!! somebody had a good time getting weird with this! please tell me more about how weird you're getting!!' and I think I could easily have gone either way on Tessa Gratton's The Mercy Makers depending on the four books I'd read just previous as well as the time of the moon. But as it happened, at the point I read it I was really hungering for something, ANYTHING that felt like it actually cared about depicting a unique and distinctive society with characters that felt like they actually belonged in that society, and The Mercy Makers gave me that in spades, so I ended up really high on it! I had a great time! Please understand that I mean it lovingly when I say that it felt like a visual novel high fantasy dating sim!
-- this is a bit disingenuous for me to say, I haven't actually played more than a bit of any of the long visual novel high fantasy dating sims I'm thinking of, but I have read extensively throughalias_sqbr's write-ups of them and the book profoundly reminded me of something like [alias_sqbr's description of] My Vow To My Liege, where a player character has to play a lot of really dramatic political games to decide the fate of the kingdom, while surrounded by Hot People, and different elements of the plot will play out depending on which Hot Person she's closest to --
Okay, so we are in a fantasy empire that is built around a central religion that values Balance and forbids Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques. Our heroine Iriset, of course, is an atheist who's wildly gifted with Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques, and is also the daughter of a criminal mastermind. Iriset and her father have carefully crafted a secret identity illusion so that everyone thinks that someone else is the Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery Mad Scientist Genius and that the famous criminal mastermind's daughter is just a nice girl who's not really involved, so that when her father eventually gets arrested -- as indeed is the inciting incident of this book -- Iriset can hopefully stay free and rescue him instead of also getting arrested herself as a famous magical heretic.
For some reason, however, after her father's arrest, Iriset -- whom everyone knows is a criminal heiress but, once again, thinks is a nice and sweet criminal heiress who's not really involved, rather than an amoral heretic mad scientist -- is sort of non-consensually invited to become one of the handmaidens of the Emperor's hot sister as part of complex political schemes, so she spends the rest of the book in the palace, where she meets the following hot people:
- the Emperor, an earnest and well-intentioned young man who is really devoutly religiously dedicated to maintaining the Balance of the Status Quo
- the Emperor's sister, Iriset's boss, whose job as per official tradition for the Emperor's sibling is to be a priestess who placates the religion's divine devil-figure by going and being really sexy at a shrine every day, but has political visions and ambitions for the Empire far beyond her Sexy Role
- the Emperor's fiancee, a very sweet princess from neighboring island kingdom, who is a fundamental element of the Emperor's sister's overarching plans for an empire that expands through marriage alliance instead of conquest
- a mysterious, suffering, untrustworthy fairy sort of creature who has been publicly imprisoned behind the Emperor's throne for the past several hundred years and is now just sort of a standard part of the decor
In addition to these obviously romanceable characters, Iriset also has an existing criminal boyfriend on the outside of the palace who she's attempting to get in touch with and coordinate with about Operation Rescue Her Dad, and she also meets a palace maid and a fantasy-nonbinary magical architect (uses one of several archaic gender forms) who in the dating sim version of this would probably be secret or hidden routes.
The first, like, two hundred pages or so of this six hundred page book are mostly just Iriset wandering around the palace, trying not to be too obviously a heretical mad scientist, building various schemes for father-rescue and trying not to get distracted by much she would quite like to bang any or all of these hot people. And, again, at another time I might have gotten bored, but at this point in time I was really just enjoying the slow rich worldbuilding. It's weird! It's interesting! Everyone always wears elaborate masks and facepaint except for the foreign princess who's confused by the whole system, and we've reinvented a different kind of four humors system so everybody's like 'well of course she would act this way, she's got too much ecstatic force in her system', and the political conversation about marriage reform refers to the law that forbids conquered peoples within the Empire from marrying within their own ethnic group for a certain number of generations, and there are several archaic genders that are no longer used and people have chat about how actually we should bring them back because two is an imbalanced number and four would be much more balanced -- what I'm trying to get at is that it feels like the people in this book think in ways that are shaped by their world, and not by ours. The plot in its actual happenings is constantly contriving itself so that Iriset will be pushed into a position where, eventually, she'll have to Rebel Against Empire, but the thought patterns that get us there feel distinctive and grounded in the world and setting that Gratton has built.
But eventually, of course, we are going to have to get some plot and it is obviously going to have to involve Chekhov's Heretical Plastic Surgery and messy identity porn. ( the rest is spoilers )
-- this is a bit disingenuous for me to say, I haven't actually played more than a bit of any of the long visual novel high fantasy dating sims I'm thinking of, but I have read extensively through
alias_sqbr's write-ups of them and the book profoundly reminded me of something like [alias_sqbr's description of] My Vow To My Liege, where a player character has to play a lot of really dramatic political games to decide the fate of the kingdom, while surrounded by Hot People, and different elements of the plot will play out depending on which Hot Person she's closest to --Okay, so we are in a fantasy empire that is built around a central religion that values Balance and forbids Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques. Our heroine Iriset, of course, is an atheist who's wildly gifted with Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques, and is also the daughter of a criminal mastermind. Iriset and her father have carefully crafted a secret identity illusion so that everyone thinks that someone else is the Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery Mad Scientist Genius and that the famous criminal mastermind's daughter is just a nice girl who's not really involved, so that when her father eventually gets arrested -- as indeed is the inciting incident of this book -- Iriset can hopefully stay free and rescue him instead of also getting arrested herself as a famous magical heretic.
For some reason, however, after her father's arrest, Iriset -- whom everyone knows is a criminal heiress but, once again, thinks is a nice and sweet criminal heiress who's not really involved, rather than an amoral heretic mad scientist -- is sort of non-consensually invited to become one of the handmaidens of the Emperor's hot sister as part of complex political schemes, so she spends the rest of the book in the palace, where she meets the following hot people:
- the Emperor, an earnest and well-intentioned young man who is really devoutly religiously dedicated to maintaining the Balance of the Status Quo
- the Emperor's sister, Iriset's boss, whose job as per official tradition for the Emperor's sibling is to be a priestess who placates the religion's divine devil-figure by going and being really sexy at a shrine every day, but has political visions and ambitions for the Empire far beyond her Sexy Role
- the Emperor's fiancee, a very sweet princess from neighboring island kingdom, who is a fundamental element of the Emperor's sister's overarching plans for an empire that expands through marriage alliance instead of conquest
- a mysterious, suffering, untrustworthy fairy sort of creature who has been publicly imprisoned behind the Emperor's throne for the past several hundred years and is now just sort of a standard part of the decor
In addition to these obviously romanceable characters, Iriset also has an existing criminal boyfriend on the outside of the palace who she's attempting to get in touch with and coordinate with about Operation Rescue Her Dad, and she also meets a palace maid and a fantasy-nonbinary magical architect (uses one of several archaic gender forms) who in the dating sim version of this would probably be secret or hidden routes.
The first, like, two hundred pages or so of this six hundred page book are mostly just Iriset wandering around the palace, trying not to be too obviously a heretical mad scientist, building various schemes for father-rescue and trying not to get distracted by much she would quite like to bang any or all of these hot people. And, again, at another time I might have gotten bored, but at this point in time I was really just enjoying the slow rich worldbuilding. It's weird! It's interesting! Everyone always wears elaborate masks and facepaint except for the foreign princess who's confused by the whole system, and we've reinvented a different kind of four humors system so everybody's like 'well of course she would act this way, she's got too much ecstatic force in her system', and the political conversation about marriage reform refers to the law that forbids conquered peoples within the Empire from marrying within their own ethnic group for a certain number of generations, and there are several archaic genders that are no longer used and people have chat about how actually we should bring them back because two is an imbalanced number and four would be much more balanced -- what I'm trying to get at is that it feels like the people in this book think in ways that are shaped by their world, and not by ours. The plot in its actual happenings is constantly contriving itself so that Iriset will be pushed into a position where, eventually, she'll have to Rebel Against Empire, but the thought patterns that get us there feel distinctive and grounded in the world and setting that Gratton has built.
But eventually, of course, we are going to have to get some plot and it is obviously going to have to involve Chekhov's Heretical Plastic Surgery and messy identity porn. ( the rest is spoilers )
(no subject)
5 Mar 2026 10:35 pmmarinaThings that are making me happy at this current time. I want to talk about them.
Things are still very not OK, I'm still barely keeping it together most days. Everything is Very Bad. But. I want to talk about happy things.
*
( books and tv shows )
Things are still very not OK, I'm still barely keeping it together most days. Everything is Very Bad. But. I want to talk about happy things.
*
( books and tv shows )
(no subject)
1 Mar 2026 08:32 amelectrumqueen160 little girls at that school in iran. how can you look at the us and israel - at this glee in the destruction of everything else in the world - and not wish for every american and israeli base in the region to be utterly destroyed.
(no subject)
28 Feb 2026 06:46 pmmarinaSo, I am not well.
I've had some really intense days, between work being extremely busy and other responsibilities, and today, a Saturday, was supposed to be my day off. Properly off, off. Sleep in late, zero plans except to wash my hair and tidy up around the apartment. Watch TV, maybe write a little, cuddle in bed. Rest.
Instead I was woken up at 8:26am by a missile siren.
Those sirens haven't stopped so far, it's currently about 7pm. At some point I stopped counting how many there were. On average there have been about one every 20-30 minutes for me, since the first one. Which means in the morning there were about 1.5 hours of quiet, and then there were hours in the afternoon with a siren every 10 minutes.
I say siren, but of course what I mean is I hear massive explosions happening in the air above my building. I can't go downstairs, nevermind for a walk, because of how frequent it's been, and how genuinely scary.
For the past ~six months I've been walking past destroyed city blocks several times a week, on my way to catch a tram to work. Entire streets with houses wiped out completely, apartment complexes reduced to rubble. And then a radius of many more streets with "only" shattered windows, knocked out doors, cracked walls from the shockwaves. Building after building after building. Turn after turn after turn. Until I get to the tram station, and then ride for 30 minutes to the skyscraper where I work, that stands next to the ruins of another skyscraper, that was destroyed by a missile.
I'm not good in the mornings, I don't eat dinner most days, my meals are breakfast and lunch. So I wake up hungry and need to eat something as soon as possible to start functioning.
Because today was planned as slow and lazy, I didn't think I'd need to function quickly at all. I thought I'd lazy about in bed, and then slowly assemble food depending on my level of energy.
Instead I had to hop out of bed and run to a bomb shelter. The bomb shelter that's in my house, that will not actually protect me in any way in case of a direct hit (see destroyed buildings above) but will help in case of a shockwave.
I was so exhausted afterwards I collapsed in bed. And then another siren. After that one I knew I had no choice, I HAD to eat or I was going to start collapsing. But I wasn't capable of cooking. Of course, there's no food delivery, because bombs falling from the sky.
I managed to at least change out of my PJs and make tea, and then the third siren happened.
The tea - green, fresh leaves, the very finest kind I have, from a small company that imports directly from farmers in China, because I knew this was the small effort that would make all the difference today, rather than some emergency teabag - did help me focus a bit, at least. Feel a bit more human.
After the fourth siren I knew cooking was out of the question, and rifled through the mishloakh manot I got from work yesterday (how fortunate we had our work event before the holiday itself) for any sort of candy with substance. There was a chocolate wafer snack, so that's what I ate, and then tried to move on with my day.
Which is to say with trying to do something other than just cuddle in bed and run to the shelter every time there was a siren (as there were a lot).
I felt... bad. Generally nauseous, unfocused, slightly out of breath. Exhausted, even when I was watching stuff on TV from the couch.
I tried to cling to some kind of productivity. I emptied and refilled the dishwasher. I put on laundry. I thanked all the gods above and below that I happened to already have food in the fridge for lunch, even though just heating it up turned out to be a challenge. It took 3 tries, with different sirens.
I only ate lunch when I started to feel like I was about to faint. Before that it was hard to make myself heat up food, or think about eating. Everything is just so scattered in my head.
It's time for dinner now, since I didn't really have breakfast.
Even though I know I should just try to go to sleep. I'm sure there will be endless sirens in the night. If an hour goes by without one, I'll be surprised.
I'm feeling faint and weak again but there's no energy to cook and no food delivery, of course. It took 2 sirens for me to boil a few eggs. Once they cool down I'll do that. I need to think about tomorrow's breakfast as well.
Tomorrow is work. The schools and so on are closed, but I work in tech and the company is global and our survival - my paycheck, my ability to stay afloat - depends on everyone believing our productivity is unaffected by these events.
So, work from home as usual. Half my local coworkers were 100% working from home anyway because Ramadan, so in a way it's all business as usual.
I know I need to take care of myself. Food. Cooking. Seeing people, even though travel anywhere including to a neighboring building is impossible right now. Creating a more or less correct estimation of how functional I can be at work so I can make decisions based on that.
Not doing well, and didn't actually want to write this post. Instead, want to write about the things that make me happy. Media, mostly, but also fic.
But I can't because just writing this, which has seemingly spilled out of me unbidden, has been to much effort and energy, and I need to go rest now.
I've had some really intense days, between work being extremely busy and other responsibilities, and today, a Saturday, was supposed to be my day off. Properly off, off. Sleep in late, zero plans except to wash my hair and tidy up around the apartment. Watch TV, maybe write a little, cuddle in bed. Rest.
Instead I was woken up at 8:26am by a missile siren.
Those sirens haven't stopped so far, it's currently about 7pm. At some point I stopped counting how many there were. On average there have been about one every 20-30 minutes for me, since the first one. Which means in the morning there were about 1.5 hours of quiet, and then there were hours in the afternoon with a siren every 10 minutes.
I say siren, but of course what I mean is I hear massive explosions happening in the air above my building. I can't go downstairs, nevermind for a walk, because of how frequent it's been, and how genuinely scary.
For the past ~six months I've been walking past destroyed city blocks several times a week, on my way to catch a tram to work. Entire streets with houses wiped out completely, apartment complexes reduced to rubble. And then a radius of many more streets with "only" shattered windows, knocked out doors, cracked walls from the shockwaves. Building after building after building. Turn after turn after turn. Until I get to the tram station, and then ride for 30 minutes to the skyscraper where I work, that stands next to the ruins of another skyscraper, that was destroyed by a missile.
I'm not good in the mornings, I don't eat dinner most days, my meals are breakfast and lunch. So I wake up hungry and need to eat something as soon as possible to start functioning.
Because today was planned as slow and lazy, I didn't think I'd need to function quickly at all. I thought I'd lazy about in bed, and then slowly assemble food depending on my level of energy.
Instead I had to hop out of bed and run to a bomb shelter. The bomb shelter that's in my house, that will not actually protect me in any way in case of a direct hit (see destroyed buildings above) but will help in case of a shockwave.
I was so exhausted afterwards I collapsed in bed. And then another siren. After that one I knew I had no choice, I HAD to eat or I was going to start collapsing. But I wasn't capable of cooking. Of course, there's no food delivery, because bombs falling from the sky.
I managed to at least change out of my PJs and make tea, and then the third siren happened.
The tea - green, fresh leaves, the very finest kind I have, from a small company that imports directly from farmers in China, because I knew this was the small effort that would make all the difference today, rather than some emergency teabag - did help me focus a bit, at least. Feel a bit more human.
After the fourth siren I knew cooking was out of the question, and rifled through the mishloakh manot I got from work yesterday (how fortunate we had our work event before the holiday itself) for any sort of candy with substance. There was a chocolate wafer snack, so that's what I ate, and then tried to move on with my day.
Which is to say with trying to do something other than just cuddle in bed and run to the shelter every time there was a siren (as there were a lot).
I felt... bad. Generally nauseous, unfocused, slightly out of breath. Exhausted, even when I was watching stuff on TV from the couch.
I tried to cling to some kind of productivity. I emptied and refilled the dishwasher. I put on laundry. I thanked all the gods above and below that I happened to already have food in the fridge for lunch, even though just heating it up turned out to be a challenge. It took 3 tries, with different sirens.
I only ate lunch when I started to feel like I was about to faint. Before that it was hard to make myself heat up food, or think about eating. Everything is just so scattered in my head.
It's time for dinner now, since I didn't really have breakfast.
Even though I know I should just try to go to sleep. I'm sure there will be endless sirens in the night. If an hour goes by without one, I'll be surprised.
I'm feeling faint and weak again but there's no energy to cook and no food delivery, of course. It took 2 sirens for me to boil a few eggs. Once they cool down I'll do that. I need to think about tomorrow's breakfast as well.
Tomorrow is work. The schools and so on are closed, but I work in tech and the company is global and our survival - my paycheck, my ability to stay afloat - depends on everyone believing our productivity is unaffected by these events.
So, work from home as usual. Half my local coworkers were 100% working from home anyway because Ramadan, so in a way it's all business as usual.
I know I need to take care of myself. Food. Cooking. Seeing people, even though travel anywhere including to a neighboring building is impossible right now. Creating a more or less correct estimation of how functional I can be at work so I can make decisions based on that.
Not doing well, and didn't actually want to write this post. Instead, want to write about the things that make me happy. Media, mostly, but also fic.
But I can't because just writing this, which has seemingly spilled out of me unbidden, has been to much effort and energy, and I need to go rest now.