Snowflake Challenge 14 + Ocean's Echo

[got_quiet]

 

In your own space, do the Fandom Wrap Challenge.

This is actually tough because I'm about as far from Fandom as I've ever been.
 

What were your top 5 fandoms for 2022 based on the amount of time you interacted with them?
1. Overwatch League
2. Nu:Carnival
3. Visual Novels? Are they a fandom?
4. Video Games generally?

What were your top 5 fandom spaces (Discord, Twitter, etc.) you experienced fandom in terms of time spent?
1. Twitter (boo)
2. Tumblr
3. Dreamwidth
4. Reddit
5. Twitch

What are the top 5 things you did to contribute to fandom in terms of time? Did you write? Comment? Send positive energy into the universe? Create art?
1. Shitposted on Reddit
2. Posted here on my blog
3. Liked a whole lot of art on twitter

What were your top 5 most appreciated fandom contributions? (i.e. in terms of likes, kudos, reblogs, comments, etc.)
1. Pretty much nothing I do creates engagement or interaction lol. I guess some people upvote my dumb takes on Reddit sometimes.

Have a Top 5 List you'd like to share?? By all means!

Top 5 Games of the year?

1. Valheim
2. Deep Rock Galactic
3. Hades
4. Rhythm Doctor
5. Overwatch I guess.

Ocean's Echo

I just finished reading Ocean's Echo a couple of days ago. It's an m/m space opera with mind powers and political conspiracy.  I enjoyed it a lot for about 3/4ths of the book and then the ending got messy and the momentum and conclusions felt like it just sort of fizzled away. I'm still a big fan of the author's first story, and I say story because it was modified heavily from its first draft, which I read in serial form a long time ago now, and once it was published as Winter's Orbit there had been added a lot of political maneuvering, worldbuilding exposition, and a new layer of galactic bureaucracy (fuck this word btw fucking French) that I felt didn't add anything to the core of the story and the removal of important scenes that made the character arcs not make as much sense.

Ocean's Echo does basically the same sort of story. They are very similar books and the author clearly has a narrative type, with a flippant guy with serious self-esteem issues and talent he doesn't acknowledge + an stoic and hyper competent other guy, forced connections, (Marriage for Winter's Orbit and a Mind Meld for Ocean's Echo) extremely scary and powerful elder women, and shitty militaries that commit war crimes. She's also clearly a big fan of assassination attempts. The second Tennal got called off a shuttle I was like oooh I've seen this before.

The books still read differently despite the similarities, and some of the traits and circumstances of the main characters get scrambled up. In Ocean's Echo Tennal, who is roughly the Kiem of this book, is the guy put in the shit position, and Surit is, at least for the first half of the book, the one who's in something resembling control.

I liked this pairing, both the characters individually and their relationship, a lot. I definitely hit that point somewhere in the middle of the book where I was stupid smiling over them becoming more and more fond of each other and starting to experience character growth. The tail end was weak mostly because I feel like the climax was primed only 2 thirds in and after that passed the back part started hitting repetitious scenes where characters were doing the same shit over and over again. Especially when a major point of the book is that a sync cannot be broken without it being fatal, to have it break twice and not even in a way that to me indicated any extreme circumstances and without major consequences strained my credulousness.

I still think it was a good book and a worthwhile read. My frustration stems mainly from the fact that I thought the new worldbuilding that entered Winter's Orbit was to that story's detriment, and it was continued on in Ocean's Echo, making me wonder if there was a stronger, tighter manuscript out there somewhere similar to what "Arranged marriage space royalty origfic" had at first been. I say this rarely, but perhaps the book could have done without an editor.

 

Comments

[autumndaze]

I wish I had suggestions. It's one of those "I know they're out there but it's not a community I've sought out so I don't know the details". Like I know big VN-based fandoms like Hakuouki, Dramatical Murder, Type Moon, a variety of anime that were VN adaptations... Maybe browsing for visual novel twitter or dreamwidth or discord or reddit or even tumblr would help? tumblr was how I found DMMM, and I know Hakuouki was big on there for a bit. And Type Moon still is.