Yes, but I still feel lazy, because it is relatively easy to make progress in German, but I haven’t resumed studying Japanese.
Language Study: 1850 Days
Life: The Perils of “Return to Office”
My employer’s mandatory return-to-site policy has been in effect for several months. A pattern has emerged: every few weeks, the safety team’s email arrives, letting me know that I have been exposed during a likely contagious period to an unnamed work colleague who subsequently tested positive for COVID.
Again. And again.
Masks are freely available at work, which is nice. Test kits aren’t: now, you must fill out a form JUSTIFYING why you want one from a menu of specific types of exposure. This seems… counterproductive.
I actively monitor myself, I keep fresh at-home tests stocked (at my own expense!), I pay attention to changes in how I feel. I maintain a supply of fresh Korean KF-94 masks (I like the fit), prettier Hong Kong masks (rated EN149 & FFP2; I like the designs and colors), and some even prettier Japanese fabric masks (because not every situation requires a highly rated mask, and Japanese fabric patterns are so hip). There are fresh masks sealed in containers in nearly every type of purse, bag, or backpack I carry.
But this is effort. And money.
As another COVID wave rolls through the office, and we must navigate our obligations to keep others safe while not necessarily being safe ourselves, I marvel that this most recent office exposure (day zero) resulted in an authentic COVID headache (TM) and fatigue on day 4 – without a fever and without testing positive. My relief at the mildness of my condition arm-wrestles with the frustration that I must be exposed this way at all, and don’t know what to expect next.
My interpretation of current official guidance is: if/when I feel fine, it doesn’t really matter if I have COVID anyway (!?!), which seems like something written by COVID itself.
I have jokey flashbacks to that scene from the Devil Wears Prada about being ‘one stomach flu away from [my] goal weight,’ and joke that I feel ripped off: rather than returning to the office slimmer, or with fewer wrinkles, or with firmer abs as the result of my exposure, I’ll only return to the office with a higher risk of stroke and other unwanted conditions. (Zero stars: I do not recommend COVID at all.)
I write this as someone who likes going into the office three (or even four) days a week. There’s something about the flexibility that hybrid work policies gave people to stay home when they felt a little off without needing to justify it that was broadly beneficial. Those are just GOOD policies.
Book: Lore Olympus: Volume One by Rachel Smythe
Lore Olympus: Volume One
by Rachel Smythe
published by Del Ray / Penguin Random House
2021
I’m big into Webtoon (my credit card company can confirm this!), and was curious about this first book in a series when I spotted it at Silver Sprocket. There is something about the use of color in the art that I found novel, so I picked it up. And I enjoyed it!
This is a retelling of the story of Persephone and Hades, with cell phones, parties, credit cards, shopping gossip, and saturated color.
My taste in Webtoon comics leans toward overly rendered buildings drawn in perspective with excessive arched arcades, plus costumes with entirely too many fasteners (many of which cannot fasten things based on their position). But this softer approach of running-mascara facial expressions and six-line faces in glowing rooms charmed me.
I have mixed feelings that the gods of Olympus have cell phones, cars, and modernist houses to bring the story into our age, but those details do nothing to diminish the drama of jealous gods, personal insecurity, crushes, sibling rivalries, love, beauty, endless night, and apology donuts.
I fear I may fall for the next six massive volumes of this series, but I’m trying to get to the bottom of this particular reading pile before I consider the temptation.
Reading: A Note About Digital Manhwa
I know I write often of comics, manga, and manhwa, but I wanted to make a fuss about how digital illustration has really changed how comics look now, and has made manhwa (comics from South Korea) in particular so attractive to me as a person who used to work in architecture.
I previously wrote about A Not So Fairy Tale by Hyobin on Webtoon. Look at this scene:
Look at the details. The textures. The shadows that the evening sun makes on the floor (which has a sort of wood parquet treatment). This level of effort in webtoons is VERY appealing to me. And is spoiling me a bit.
Even if/when the characters are highly stylized in unnatural ways, the rendering of the world they live in – backgrounds, the interior design, the furniture, the foliage – these have some remarkable details. Some appear to be produced by specialists who just create castles, modern cities, European rococo ballrooms, etc. Others appear to be photo-to-illustration conversions of some sort (but that works only for places based on real settings).
Drawings produced at this level when I was still in architecture would have been award-winning marvels of the profession: now they are the routine product of manhwa studio artists!
I admire the effort (and artifice) that goes into producing these scenes.
I have other favorite scenes to express my admiration for, but I haven’t reviewed those particular manga yet, so they’ll likely turn up in a few weeks.
Book (Manhwa): Monster Duke’s Daughter by Han Ocean, Chal Lan
Monster Duke’s Daughter
by Han Ocean, Chal Lan
published by Webtoon (151 chapters, ongoing)
2022 – present
Tiny Lotilucia is transported away from her beloved mother, who was still trapped in their eternally snowy forest home/prison, to the estate of her unknown father, Duke Frodium. She knows her mother said a forever goodbye, and she knows that her father factually accepts her existence, but isn’t entirely sure how to relate to her.
As she tries to maintain a low profile (out of sight, out of danger?) and learns to read, she finds a book in the library. A book about a little girl named Lotilucia, whose father is also Duke Frodium, and who… dies very young, without every being fully accepted by her father. In the story, she is replaced in her father’s improved affections by a new adopted daughter, who appears to be the true heroine of the book, and who resembles Lotilucia’s lost mother. Despite being a tiny-but-literate girl, she decides that she won’t allow the book to determine her fate, and strikes out to really live – this includes forging a bond with her surprised father, preventing her untimely death, and perhaps becoming the lead character of her own story.
As she grows, she realizes she can do more than just survive – she may be able to protect her father’s secret (he’s a demon protecting the human world from the demon world), use rare powers she inherited from her mother to protect her loved ones – including her friends, one of who is growing up into a handsome boy, and is secretly a dragon – and become a protector of the human world and ally to the emperor as her father’s successor.
There are sci-fi technologies in this fantasy story, questions about whether Lotilucia is living in a real world or if the book was the real world, and scenes that were supposed to be flashbacks, but where the participants (or at least one important participant) can see Lotilucia and interact with her in what should just be a memory…
Our child heroine really has too much on her shoulders, and has to exceed the abilities and expectations of other so much, it’s unfair! Despite her young start, she is SO DETERMINED and so unnaturally skilled, that she is pulling off improbable rescues and stirring up trouble much larger than herself. The giant-eyed child does grow up over the course of the story, so her body catches up (mostly) with her enormous eyes.
I’m 151 chapters in, and the fact that I’m 151 chapters in tells you that I’m committed! This is a cute fantasy story about being true to yourself, thinking you are old enough to make independent decisions when you are four years old (you are not), making your own future, caring about your parents, worrying your father, and having everyone say you make a good-looking couple with your dragon guy pal.
Book: Heat by Jean Wei
Heat
by Jean Wei
published by Peow Books (Jean Wei)
2023
This is a COMPLETELY ADORABLE comic about a fire demon who wakes up on a farm and is adopted by the farm family as seasonal help and a friend.
Auntie Ann and Katy don’t think twice about taking Red in, taking Red to a friend to make some soft clothes suitable for an eight foot tall fire demon. They just… accept Red as they are: a nice, helpful, large, warm being.
Have I mentioned this is completely adorable?
I can often resist things that are cute, but this is so…. not just cute, but soothing. Sweet. Homey. Gentle.
We could all use some sweetness.
Life: Sleep? What do you mean?
I have the nerve to wonder why I am so tired.
The wonderful thing about weekends, though, is that naps are possible if I don’t overschedule myself. Yes, I was up at five something, but by eleven (AM!) I went down so hard for a nap that I considered checking my neck for drugged darts.
I needed that.
Unlike this bottle of Pocari Sweat, which I don’t need, but which I am truly enjoying…
Book: Painting The Void: How Art Transformed the San Francisco Bay Area During a Global Pandemic by Paint The Void
Painting The Void: How Art Transformed the San Francisco Bay Area During a Global Pandemic
by Paint The Void & Broke But Grand LLC dba BUILDING 180
published by Paint the Void
2024
Once the safety precautions were loosened and we could wander around outside, we were faced with countless boarded up buildings, a sense of emptiness, and finally – art and color.
This is a lovely photo book depicting the art organization that stepped in to brighten SF’s closed businesses with large scale art, and the many local artists who stepped up to the challenge and created bright, hopeful murals throughout the City.
Delighted by the murals as I reoriented myself to the City on foot, I ordered this book ages ago, and am delighted that it was finally released and shipped to me this year! It includes essays on the effort, discussions of how it was received, experiences the artists had as people interacted with them as they worked, adjustments the organizers made to include artists who hadn’t previously worked on murals, and more.
If you’d like a sense of the murals it includes, you can enjoy the Paint The Void mural gallery below:
Great book, great project, highly recommended especially for local public art and mural fans.
Life: The Opposite of Reassurance
I told my mother I felt really bloated.
She helpfully (?) told me that bloating was an early symptom of ovarian cancer for her.
If I’d wanted to be told that any possible symptom is cancer, I would have used a run-of-the-mill search engine to obtain my dread more efficiently.
Book: Creepy Cat Volume 1 by Cotton Valent
Creepy Cat volume 1
by Cotton Valent
published by Star Seas Company and Kodansha
2019
This is an adorable, gothic visual comic collection about a lovely goth girl named Flora who inherits a mansion inhabited by a “cat.”
This”cat” defies the laws of physics, consumes people, levitates, stretches endlessly into room-filling forms, periodically swallows Flora…
Creepy Cat is both adorable and… a monster of some undetermined kind. But it is so… fluffy! (Life lesson: you can get away with a lot if you are fluffy.)
The stories are brief, a few panels or pages long, and are stylishly adorable. The tone is great; Flora is charming; Creepy Cat lives up to its name. Flora is sometimes in danger, and it appears Creepy Cat may periodically eat or harm Flora, but doesn’t necessarily like when anyone else does that. (Yay for possessiveness?)
There is an adorable brief comic at the end in which Valent tells the story of how this comic came to be.
This is a lovely, consistent, stylish, attractive work. And there are more volumes out there, which is good news.