soggymulder | Reading

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I've found a lady who has the same sort of shape as me, who dances the same kind of dance that I would love to dance. She has such precision and confidence-verging-on-arrogance and strength and lyricism and sweetness. I don't know that I can get my creaky old, arthritic person to do some of the things she does (that back bend!) but I love her sense of theatre. I love how she has combined bellydance with inspiration from sci-fi and theatre to make something that is very unique.

Watch on YouTube

Much though I like dancing, I haven't been able to find any genuine love in my heart for the whole 'scantily clad get in touch with your inner goddess who is also a sexy flirt' malarky, chiefly because I don't think I have an inner goddess of any kind, let alone a sexy one. But as a writer I 100% have an inner Evil Galactic Emperor, or an inner hero or villain character of a sort that I can lean into.

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So I the new dance I am now wrestling with is inspired by the plot in Stargate Universe in which Chloe - experimented on by aquatic aliens - fears she is losing her humanity, even while she grows stronger and more intelligent.

My question was, why the heck wouldn't you embrace that? Super strength? The ability to do maths? Sign me up.

I've just got to find a way of expressing this in dance.

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Okay didn’t expect to be typing up some random Lan Xichen meta type stuff this evening on my phone, but here I am writing about lxc trying to stay calm and do the right thing when everything around him is falling apart.

Sort of prompted by screencap showing where when things were going wrong - such as in Guanyin temple, LXC just sits down and meditates, like he is just so chill about it all. And a few people were saying that it was odd or silly or useless.
( Basically he's going ‘things are awful, but I can’t panic about it, I’m not allowed to panic about it, because if I do that will make it worse and I need to make this better somehow’ )

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Nie Mingjue thoughts, previously posted on Tumblr Feb 2024

It feels like so many people forget how young Nie Mingjue was. He was only old 6 years older than Nie Huaisang.

Which makes Nie Mingjue, Chifeng-Zun, who’s a well established leader in combat, all of 23/24 years old at the start of the Sunshot Campaign, and barely/maybe not even 30 at his death.

It’s so easy to see him as being of an equal age to the other sect leaders of the time - Wen Rouhan, Jin Guangshan, Jiang Fengmian, Lan Qiren (standing in for Qingheng-Jun) when he’s basically the same age their kids.

He probably around the same age as Wen Xu. He’s only 3 or so years older than Lan Xichen, about 2 or 3 older than Jiang Yanli.

In his early 20’s he had also been a sect leader for nearly a decade.
( NMJ has such a rigid view of things and of right and wrong. Childishly simple seems an unfair way of putting it, but he was a child when he had to lead. )

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I Just Got a Kitten. What Do I Do?: How to Buy, Train, Understand, and Enjoy Your Kitten, by Mordecai Siegal:

Why do all these books with titles like What The Heck Do I Do With This Kitten??? insist on starting with a lengthy explanation of what cats are, how they work, and where to find them? I already have a kitten or I wouldn't have picked up this book which seemed to understand that I Just Got A Kitten.

It's a good resource if you're going to get a kitten and want advice on how to pick one and what to do once you've brought the guy home, but if you already have a kitten in hand, the last two chapters are the most relevant.

Fun Fact: The kitten on the cover of this book looks almost exactly like my kitten, though this kitten is fuzzier, and mine started out that small but has since tripled in size.

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Going to attept to post here more regularly. So here is some fic for Some Sentences Sunday - and it is still actually Sunday here for a whole five more minutes.

So more from Before the Dawn. This is from right at the start of the next part. I'm hoping to have it posted around mid week

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In the end Fang Duobing is gone for less than an hour before returning. He looks a little too pale and his eyes are red from the hurt and angry tears he's shed, but there is a quiet determination in them. Even if he has to hear all those hurtful things again he will.

Sitting at the table, Li Lianhua hasn't moved, his shoulder still leaning against Di Feisheng who hasn't found the need to move away either. His breathing has returned to normal now, but Li Lianhua can still see a lingering tension about him. Whatever fears or feelings he has are being suppressed by sheer force of will.

There is clear relief in his eyes as he turns to see Fang Duobing letting himself back in. All the same he isn't in any mood for further discussions or maybe he fears Li Lianhua denying what he considers already agreed. Before anyone else has a chance to say anything, Di Feisheng says, "He going to try."

Something like panic wells up, and Li Lianhua wants to tell them that it wasn't like that. It was a misunderstanding. He hasn't decided yet. He should say something. He should-

Fang Duobing closes the remaining distance between them in an instant. Wrapping his arms around them both, he hugs them tight, like he's never wants to let go.

( Read more... )

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So what do we think of the Murderbot trailer over here?

Watch on YouTube

I'm absolutely pumped. I can feel myself going into hyperfixation mode as we speak. I've always liked the books, but I seem to need visual media in order to really engage, and I'm engagaged.

Alexander Skarsgard is not what I'd expected MB to look like (or sound like) but as someone pointed out, he is very much what an evil megacorporation would think a 'standard' but threatening human would look like, so I can get behind it.

People have said that he is 'too gender' or 'too masculine' for the agender MB, but being agender has nothing to do with what you look like. I am agender and I look feminine. It's an inside thing not an outside thing.

If you see the short of MB being repaired, you will see that it has no nipples. I think that's a great detail. It also has no bulge - and really props to Skarsgard for not letting that worry him. I really appreciate both of these things.

Ratthi is just delightful (and very handsome, as is only right.)

Sanctuary Moon is just delightful too. I think I'll like it as much as Wormhole Xtreme.

Argh. I'm so excited rn. I can't wait!

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A global catastrophe, a people who can control rock and lava and must hide who they are or be enslaved—or killed—and a story that starts out like fantasy, turns into the kind of science fiction where advanced technology left behind by earlier civilizations might as well be magic, and then circles back around to magic. Just as this is both science fiction and fantasy at once, the tenor of the second person POV similarly slides back and forth over the course of the series, telling two stories with a single voice.

It's brutal and incredibly engrossing, with detailed worldbuilding, interesting voices, and complex characters. The ways these people love each other is bananas.

Don't read the blurbs because they have spoilers, but do read these books one after another for maximum effect, and know that there's a glossary in the back that I only found once I was finished with the first book. It would have been helpful while I was still reading, but thanks to the excellent and immersive writing, I sussed out all the meanings on my own.

Highly recommended, though the content will be a dealbreaker for some. A child dies violently at the hands of his father on the first page, and it haunts the rest of the book, though that's only the beginning of the tragedy.

Contains: climate apocalypse; violence; child harm—including sexual abuse—and death; a literal caste system with institutionalized slavery, forced breeding, eugenics; a world where brown skin is the default; generational trauma; polyamory; transgender supporting characters; second person POV; animal harm; amputation; references to cannibalism.

( Status Updates from Goodreads )

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soggymulder (mina)

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April 2025

About this blog

Belly dance hero

Meta: Lan Xichen (originally posted to Tumblr in 2020

Meta: Nie Mingjue

I Just Got a Kitten. What Do I Do?, by Mordecai Siegal

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The Murderbot Show - trailer

The Broken Earth Trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin

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