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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2529 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026

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I read that plot point on the wiki and had to stop and marvel at the level of loathing the author shows for himself and his audience. Knowing this, the entire purpose of Valencia’s character was to soft cuck Joon so he would internalize a lesson about women’s agency. I read Wales’ postmortem on the story a few months back (page seems to be dead now or I would link it here) where he talks about how a certain type of reader probably wanted Valencia to, if not get with Joon, at least eternally pine chastly for him. I guess he got to show them.

There’s a bizarre level of misandry in the story too. I can’t think of any men in Aerb who aren’t villains that die immediately / aren’t shown to be corrupt or evil besides Joon, the guy who exists to cuck him, and Grak (who doesn’t really count). Even Joon has to constantly examine his desires, criticize and demonize them, and learn the important lesson that he is wrong to have them. It reminded me of Scott Aaronson talking about internalizing lessons against misogyny to the point that he wanted to chemically castrate himself.

More than anything, Wales' writing reminds me of the aphorism: "Explaining a joke is like vivisecting a frog; you might learn something but the frog is dead". Wales is constitutionally incapable of choosing to let a trope stand, and constantly chooses to interrogate the conceits of his plot instead of keeping up all the little contrivances that would make that plot satisfying. It's like being on a car journey with an engineer who can't resist disassembling the engine every few minutes: you might get somewhere eventually but you're not going to enjoy the process.

I read Wales’ postmortem on the story a few months back (page seems to be dead now or I would link it here) where he talks about how a certain type of reader probably wanted Valencia to, if not get with Joon, at least eternally pine chastely for him. I guess he got to show them.

Here's a copy. (The Wayback Machine is failing to respond at the moment, so I can't tell whether the page has been archived there. It's on archive.today here.)

The biggest thing she adds to the story is probably an interrogation of rescuing a weak person to have them fall for you, and naïve broken birds in general, and showing what maturity means. I think there’s a kind of reader that doesn’t necessarily want Juniper to sleep with Valencia, but does want Valencia to remain virginal and lusting after him in perpetuity.

Thanks, I had been wanting to give this another read. Nice backup, I’m bookmarking that.

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