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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   917 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 10, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

Still on Red Dynamite: Creationism, Culture Wars, and Anticommunism in America.

There are about a hundred chapters of Reverend Insanity left. A man could weep.

Once it's done, I have a copy of Mid World sitting in my epub reader. A gentleman on /r/scifi told me that there was a non-zero chance that some of the theories I'd floated about how Pandora (from Avatar) was artificial might have even been intended. He claimed that Cameron had mentioned taking inspiration from that novel. The obvious similarities are that a group of humans visit an alien world covered in jungles, but this planet makes Pandora look like an actual theme park, no PG-13 deaths if you piss off the local wildlife I'm afraid.

It seems interesting enough, and I feel like I've exhausted the well of science fiction I'm inclined to read, so there's no harm in giving it a go.

Just finished Spring Snow. I'd seen it recommended a few different places (maybe here, maybe HN). I've never been a weeb, but I've visited Japan -- it's a beautiful and very interesting country -- and I can appreciate why Mishima is seen as such a prominent Japanese writer of the 20th century. Some of the vibe was to be expected, like the very Japanese aesthetics, and the tension between Japanese traditions and incoming Western norms during the Meiji era.

That said, I was intrigued at the following author blurb at the back of the book:

In 1970, at the age of forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) -- a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.

I felt I had to read a bit more to understand this. Wikipedia tells the story slightly differently:

[Mishima] was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, ultranationalist, and the leader of an attempted coup d'état that culminated in his seppuku (ritual suicide).

Well, that escalated quickly. Having read that article, it's interesting to see how story beats from the author's life: "After briefly considering marriage with Michiko Shōda, who later married Crown Prince Akihito and became Empress Michiko" sounds a lot like the story of the novel.

Looking for something shorter and more sci-fi, I've picked up Asimov's The End of Eternity, which I think someone recommended a while back. I might consider continuing the Fertility series at some point, though.

The Reverse of the Medal. I will do a badly written synopsis later once I get into it.

Battlefield Reclaimer (Guardians of Aster Fall book 1) by David North.

For anyone that's also reading the Hollows series, by Kim Harrison, I want to freely confess that in an abnormal twist, my brain has subbed in not one but two real-life actors for certain folks in the series, due to their particular mannerisms of speech: Algaliarept (Al) is Matt Berry through and through while Giordan Pierce has the voice of Richard Ayoade whilst looking more like Dave Chappelle's Silky Johnston. Said brain doesn't care that the looks are all different, it just sees the speech, pattern matches it to actors, and, well, it's certainly adding to the entertainment value of the series for me.

Working my way through Bret Easton Ellis works (have already read American Psycho and Imperial Bedrooms in the past). Finished The Informers, started and put aside Glamorama (insufferable main characters for the first few chapters and I can't imagine spending 400+ pages with them), and now about halfway through Lunar Park.

Good luck with Less Than Zero, I felt dead inside for a week afterwards.

I've been reading His Broken Body, a book about the ongoing schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, based on someone here recommending it. It's been good, though seeing the differences of opinion laid out I certainly get the impression that the churches will never be united again. Not terribly surprising, but given that part of the pitch of the book is how to heal the divide, it does seem like that part might be underwhelming.

I've also recently picked up a copy of Stranger In A Strange Land, since I've enjoyed the other Heinlein works I've read. Hopefully this one is as good as his other books, but I'm only a few pages in.

To round out His Broken Body I would recommend the works of James Likoudis, a convert from EO to Catholicism. Eastern Orthodoxy and the See of Peter: A Journey Towards Full Communion is the most like His Broken Body in scope.

His Broken Body is also old. At least, a lot of developments in the dialogue have happened since then. There's this moment where Cleenewerck says something like, "No Catholic apologetics ever addresses eccelestiology before talking about the Petrine Doctrine," and I had to check the publication date, because Joe Heshmeyer's book on Peter did exactly that. I also find it fascinating that he explicitly states that he's not going to engage with scholarship on the Petrine Doctrine, only popular apologetic work.

He also exhibits the common misconceptions surrounding Papal Bulls and what is considered infallible. For example, he considers Exsurge Domine to be infallible (which I won't argue) and then takes that to mean that all the things it condemns are considered infallible heresy. But that is not what Exsurge Domine says. The text is they are "either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds." There is a huge difference between capital-H Heretical and "seductive of simple minds." This point goes over Cleenewerck's head. He makes the same mistake with Unigenitus.

There are many parts where he confidently states that "Catholics believe X" and I'm like, "What?" For example, he takes as authoritative something that was actually a well-known swindle. It was common in the 19th century for publishers to claim that certain prayers carried indulgences or promises from apparitions with no actual authority.

His Broken Body is certainty an ambitious project but Cleenewerck doesn't do a great job of expressing actual Catholic thought. I think he did his best and tried to be charitable, but I would consider it as really good arguments for the Orthodox side and mediocre arguments for the Catholic side.

Thanks! I'll have to look into those other books once I finish the current one.

Ave Xia Rem Y (A Very Cliche Xianxia Harem Story!)

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/15193/ave-xia-rem-y

The title doesn't do it justice. It is very cliche in many ways, but it does the tropes honestly. And it can also subvert the tropes in fun ways. Angry young masters have been converted to friends and allies. The powerful masters that rule over everyone can be all too human in their flaws and prejudices. Characters in the story grow and have motivations separate from the main character.

Its a great rationalist story in the sense of having rational characters. Idiot ball plot points are rare. The main character is absolutely not a murder hobo, but instead a doctor and one of the kinder cultivators around. It's easy to like him and want him to succeed.

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