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So my wife and a handful of internet friends are planning a Songs for the Dusk game (a very cool post-post apocalypse game which features such touchstones as Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, N.D. Stevenson's She-Ra, and On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. Someday later I will talk more about it). In the course of brainstorming we ended up on the topic of dragons, which inadvertently reminded me of this very very good short story by Zen Cho, first published back in 2018.
It's about a creature from Korean mythology called an imugi, a serpentine proto-dragon that can ascend into a dragon after 1000 years and careful study. My only point of reference for them is Wikipedia and this short story, so you will need to look elsewhere for a better explanation. But essentially, Byam is an imugi who has tried and failed to attain dragonhood after 3 different attempts, and after the 3rd and final failure, swears to kill the human who thwarted its last attempt (Leslie, a depressed Korean PhD student who was hiking in the mountains during the ascension, and spotted Byam mid-flight). By the time it finds her again, she's an astrophysics professor. When it goes to her office in the guise of a heavenly fairy, however, Byam spies the textbooks on her shelves, which it recognizes as akin to the study it did when trying to become a dragon. Its interest in the topic stymies its revenge for long enough that they start to get to know each other, and the story proceeds from there.
It's a very good story about failure, how to cope with failure, and what it takes to eventually try again. While the free version on the B&N blog isn't available anymore, wayback machine still has it available. It's a very short and affecting read, so I highly recommend that you go check it out if you can. In the meantime, I have my big ol' Review of Feelings to follow.
( May the feelings commence )
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( Wifefeels )
It's about a creature from Korean mythology called an imugi, a serpentine proto-dragon that can ascend into a dragon after 1000 years and careful study. My only point of reference for them is Wikipedia and this short story, so you will need to look elsewhere for a better explanation. But essentially, Byam is an imugi who has tried and failed to attain dragonhood after 3 different attempts, and after the 3rd and final failure, swears to kill the human who thwarted its last attempt (Leslie, a depressed Korean PhD student who was hiking in the mountains during the ascension, and spotted Byam mid-flight). By the time it finds her again, she's an astrophysics professor. When it goes to her office in the guise of a heavenly fairy, however, Byam spies the textbooks on her shelves, which it recognizes as akin to the study it did when trying to become a dragon. Its interest in the topic stymies its revenge for long enough that they start to get to know each other, and the story proceeds from there.
It's a very good story about failure, how to cope with failure, and what it takes to eventually try again. While the free version on the B&N blog isn't available anymore, wayback machine still has it available. It's a very short and affecting read, so I highly recommend that you go check it out if you can. In the meantime, I have my big ol' Review of Feelings to follow.
( May the feelings commence )
---
( Wifefeels )
