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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26876 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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I appreciated the tags.

There are two English translations. I read this one, which was completely a volunteer effort. The other one was commissioned by fans; I’m not sure how the two differ.

It’s brilliantly written. If you enjoyed the prose stylings, the setting, the grotesque cast of DE, you will find more of that. Naturally, it’s also hilarious in that understated way.

There’s also excellent thematic cohesion. I hesitate to call it “commentary,” but…there’s a setting, and a plot, and these characters, and they all come together in service of a very specific feeling, sensation, zeitgeist.

It was a popular vacation area just outside of Vaasa that swallowed the four Lund girls. Along with their little bones and tan-lined skin, an entire era vanished. Six kilometres of winding coastline, a swimming spot popular in the fifties; rows of changing cabins, reeds rustling in the wind. Go there and find the age that conservatives long for. When parents could send children to the beach unsupervised, two reál for ice cream and bus fare in the pockets of their summer pants. Mum and dad would shake their heads in worry, keeping their children hidden from the news from Messina, from Graad, from Gottwald, where every week—it seemed to them—someone’s wee skeleton was found buried inside a stove wall. There, every week, someone’s daughter escaped onto the street after thirty years of captivity in a cellar and cried for help.
But not here.
Here we have a social democracy. And the soft peach blossoms of social democracy, innocuous social programs; these progressive things make a broken human soul feel better. The uncanny technical urge to construct a subterranean secret room—with a ventilation system where the air ducts on the front lawn are disguised as clay miniature windmills—will never reach these outskirts. Those dark, raging fevers of the mind simmer down in the cool mist here; the breath of distant blue glaciers freezes the sick thoughts that reside in a man’s head. Vaasa. A better place to live.

Perhaps you can see what kind of Mottizen I meant. The people who catch a glimpse of this feeling, but don’t just latch on to it unexamined. The ones who want to really interrogate their longing. I can’t stress enough how rare it is, the way SaTA engages with this.

There’s so much more I want to say, though I need to finish DE before I risk further commentary. Suffice to say I found the book very, very technically impressive.

But there’s a catch.

My understanding is that one or two sequels were intended. With the collapse of ZAUM, it’s hard to imagine that we’ll ever get them. And SaTA cries out for just a bit more. It comes to a halt at a bizarre point in both plot and setting. Not rushed, but abrupt. I would describe it as two-thirds of an amazing book.

Depending on which parts of this review line up with your experience of DE, you may find SaTA fascinating or disappointing. Either way, there will probably be some frustration. I feel that, but I don’t regret reading it at all.

With the collapse of ZAUM

I'm still not entirely clear what went on there, but wow. Talk about getting what you wished for and the need to be careful when wishing. One taste of success, and suddenly all the comradeship goes out the window. A shame, I would love a sequel. Hard to know what the story would be, but there's enough of the world and its history that you could set it in a different part of the world, new characters, and still have a fascinating game.

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