#Ali sparkes

[weaponizedducks]

thanks to your recommendations I watched X-Men first class and @.@ I 100% get the parallels now

granted it's the first X-Men film I've watched (I'm sorry for being so uncultured 😔/j), but I felt like they handled Erik's character weirdly?? he changed so quickly during that final confrontation, it felt inconsistent with the rest of the film

otherwise though? FANTASTIC cinema. really strong direction, good camera shots, also fantastic casting imo

it's literally just erik that my mind is stuck on. maybe I'm drawing him too closely to Dax?? of all people? not even spook or mia or olu? anyway. just wanted to say thanks for the rec!

OMG YAYYY IM SO GLAD U ENJOYED IT. x men is my roman empire rn im actually never getting over it. my history teacher mentioned the cuban missile crisis today and my mind immediately jumped to xmfc. im so cooked

ur so real for getting fixated on erik. that little gay magnet man rotates in my brain 24/7 like a rotisserie chicken. i've never noticed him changing in the confrontation scene, but a fresh perspective always sees new things so im absolutley gonna go back and rewatch with this in mind

i do see the similarities with dax and erik- perhaps dax is an erik who had let go of his anger? erik if he stayed with charles, or met him younger (who would his charles be in this case do we think?)

[beep1ss]

crispin taylor goes to the black parade or something idk i havent watched my chemical romance yet

[musicoftheheart]

this is going to a very niche audience but if any marauders fan has read the shapeshifter series by ali sparkes, thoughts on an au???

remus as dax obv, sirius as gideon, james as barry (bc invisibility cloak??) and then maybe lily and marlene both taking on a mix of mia and lisa. peter as clive too i reckon. snape as spook (and then tie in his friendship with lily as spook's friendship/romantic interest in mia!!)

book 1 with dumbledore being the villain (as the og headmaster, i dont remember his name but the guy who charms people) then minnie (as the lovely french teacher) stepping in as headmistress (she might also have to take on owen's role too bc i cant think of who else could tbh)

OR poppy being owen because the bond she and remus have is so perfect as owen and dax, then have minnie take on the role that tyrone has in one of the later books

then book 2 bringing in regulus as luke and he and james bond over the fact sirius is too busy with family member 3 (i was thinking maybe bellatrix as catherine even though theyre cousins not siblings, but she gives the vibes yk)

i could 100% write this once i finish my current wips and include all six books plus the spinoff series unleashed. if yall wanna know more please say i could talk about it forever

[thepointingghost]

ok whats ur opinion on dax and alice's father. forgot his name. i have opinions but my opinions of adult figures are generally bad so im biased

oooh okay okay. Robert. Robert Jones.

This is mainly focused on Dax but with Alice it's more a reflection of how he messed up with his son, those dynamics juxtapose one another so we can see specifically how Dax's relationship with him has been destroyed over the years.

It's clear he cares about his family: his work is a sacrifice of his time and body to help them as best he can, he stays in contact regularly, and he's at least aware of COLA protocol (Code 47). It's just that his family is Gina and Alice and the kid from his previous marriage whose eyes remind him a little too much of her, and it hangs between them so much that it's too late to ever address it, and... yeah, it's easier to stay in Aberdeen than reconcile with him. I think he made a mistake out of grief and maybe there's some hope of repairing the relationship, but realistically? He's lost the agency to decide that.

We do see some improvements with Robert in Unleashed, in the most basic form of respect: he lets Dax keep his bodily automony and refuses to consent to the COLA Project's magnetite scheme. It's not nearly enough, but it's something. There's respect.

But my opinion of him starts to sour with this part of Dowsing the Dead:

It had never, never occurred to him to be ashamed. Worried, freaked out, confused—yes—all of those things but never ashamed. Maybe that was what Gina had put into his dad’s head. ... ‘Special’—that was the word. It had too many meanings. Even bad things, like awful disabilities, got called ‘special’ these days. Maybe his dad thought what happened to him was ‘special’ in that way. The letter should have made him feel better. All it made him feel was ‘special’—in no good way.

Respect can buy you courtesy, but it can't buy you understanding. There will forever be a distance between them because what Robert Jones cannot understand is the power and pride of being different.

Looking a bit deeper, here's how I read him. Robert represents a very steroetypical, nuclear family–style of parenting: the stoic father, bringing in the money and leaving the turmoil of parenting to his wife (tm). The honour of the family rests on him, but the work in bringing them up and actually providing for them is delegated. The latter should have been to Gina, but... well, that's another question.

While Gina is disgusted by Dax, Robert is wary, unsettled. While Gina is frustrated and stressed over the burden of raising children without any emotional support from her husband, Robert runs away to provide for them without ever needing to think about his first wife's sacrifice and what it left behind. Robert wants a normal life, one where his firstborn is just a bit different, not 'special' and strange and COLA.

Of course, this is a harsh reading of him. Off the top of my head I'm pretty sure Dax was born in 97 or 95? And so in DtD he's, what, 13? In any case post-financial crash and look around at job security over the past couple years. Robert has a lot to juggle with work, Alice and Gina, and the COLA father admin stuff, but the fact is he's let himself neglect Dax to a point where it may be irreperable. He's worked hard for a normal life after the death of his first wife, and Dax is the scar that cannot fade. An outlier. Someone to appease and promise change.

Despite all of this, I don't hate him. I know enough members of my own family who reflect that not-quite-understanding mindset that I can't go and have fictional daddy issues too! (there'd be too many in the cola verse anyway let's be honest) To put this all together, the political context and grief made way for incompabitility between Dax and his father, and there is no way to fix that - only manage, with copious amounts of therapy.

I wish we had gotten to see a more emotional scene where Dax gets to shapeshift in front of Robert: would he have the same fascination as Owen in FtF? Would he recoil in fear? It doesn't matter. We never got that - StS subverted it, and far bigger problems prevented it. Dax had no honour, no pride he could display, and that's that.

[thebloggingfox]

I wish The Shapeshifter book series came out now, it did great in it's time sure but I bet if it came out now it would have a huge following, we'd get like a movie or TV series.

Everyone would be pretending they're cola and what powers they would have.

People would be thirsting over Owen.

Dax would be cast as a black person and people would be outraged even though he's obviously not white in the books.

Ah it'd be such a good time...

[super-shapeshifter-showdown]

[ttshapeshifter]

as a kid i always liked how the footprints showed what animal/s our titular shapeshifter was going to be in that chapter

[gremlinwithakeyboard]

Been reading the tags for a bunch of kids books I used to read and was reminded of how I thought a CHERUB x The Shapeshifter/Unleashed crossover would be.

I remember the premise was basically Dax is flying around in falcon form and sees a weird looking building so he goes to investigate. It's CHERUB campus of course. He gets caught and while everyone's trying to work out how the hell a random teenager snuck onto CHERUB campus they discover he can shapeshift. Turns out both secret government organisations had no idea the other existed. Shenanigans ensue.

[hiddenbookcasepodcast]

This month, we're reading childhood favourites, continuing with Finding the Fox by Ali Sparkes. 🦊🎆🍫 Let's talk repression, reading past bedtime, and railway tracks. This episode also features an interview with the author!

Listen on Spotify via Anchor or find us wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcripts available on our website. Closed captions available on our YouTube.

[weaponizedducks]

side by side comparison: them before and after the Horrors

[beep1ss]

on matteus wheeler (cw - domestic abuse)

meowth just said this:

"what if one of the reasons that matt resents spin so much is because he reminds him of his brother. IKR matt has a brother?? who went to the navy or something but. matt doesn’t blame him for leaving but cant help resenting him + we dont hear that matts brother ever contacts him either?"

and its got our brains churning. matt is a character that really deserved to be explored more.

we like to headcanon that spin and matt have a hesitant brotherly relationship, and that whole sentence just added more fuel to that. matt definitely projects a LOT, so with spin being similar to his brother (yknow, the one who was able to escape the violence their father inflicted on them), he lashes out and says things that he probably had buried deep down inside him

other things of note:

what if he hates to be called nicknames by spin because his brother did that

the fact that matt is so quick to violence (especially towards spin) is definitely some sort of unhealthy coping mechanism

also i feel like matt is so open to violence is because of his home life situation, he doesn't know how else to regulate emotions - he copies what he sees, and what he sees is his father hurting him. im not sure, but i think it's implied that matt knows that how he goes about things is wrong but he believes that he's just that kind of person so he doesn't try to change?

like in his mind he is the rough, gets-in-fights-all-the-time boy and if he's going to get through his situation he has to keep that up.

also 2 more diabolical ideas from meowth:

"i imagine every time hes angry he gets scared he’ll be like his dad"

ouch. my heart. of course this boy doesn't want to be like his father, but he knows that he could very easily become like him.

and

"maybe the reason matt is so emotionless is because he knows his father would take advantage of anything he saw"

right in the feels!

all this stuff could have been added to the books to give matt more depth, but it wasn't (to be fair though, night speakers is kind of a children's book series haha like 11-12 yrs probably) (but i mean who said children's books couldn't explore these aspects?) (ali sparkes literally wrote about matt being abused so... er... yeah.)

also matt deserved more interesting dialogue sometimes he had a banger line but idk he felt quite bland in that aspect (could just be me misremembering the books though)

anyway what do you guys think!!!

[kinsey3furry300]

Okay, the long Promised second Bracket:

Which episodic YA series fucked you up?

as In, what's the first one you can remember genuinely frightening or upsetting you?

There will be a second bracket for series I could not fit in this poll (Percy Jackson, Noughts and Crosses, Maximum Ride, Cherub, Mortal Engines, Artimis Fowl, Shapeshifter, Deptford Mice, Mistborn ect.)

[thepointingghost]

Writing a card game scene for my fic atm. So, how would the COLA gang behave playing (board/card) games? Enjoy a sleepy list by yours truly

Gideon is the host. 1000%. Lisa knows all the rules but Gideon has the whimsy - the charisma - to actually play it off. You need to rope people into a game and this man literally floats chocolate to you are you going to say no? Exactly. He'll play anything but his favourite is probably something with strong interaction — he probably loved Taboo/explain without saying games but since Luke came back he's switched to pictionary as a main game.

Lisa is secretly a rules lawyer, no, rules judge. I think she can save face enough to look marginally uncompetitive but the second she's actually losing? Sylv's getting involved and no actually you have to auction the property if you're not buying it, it was in the original ruleset, don't you know? Very conflicted relationship with Cluedo too: on one hand, competitive, on the other it's just more spirit work ffs

Mia and Dax are very similar imo. Both are happy with just the socialising, the game is a good enough excuse to do that. They'll both try to repair the vibes after Lisa and Gid fight, between them they'll manage. I can see Mia more into board games—perhaps Cluedo with Lisa?—and Dax more into cards, maybe top trumps with Clive?

Barry. Hm. Much more into video games but he'll join in on game night. Will not understand the rules at all but he's funny enough that you let him cheat (if you're not Lisa). He'd love a good TCG though, maybe Pokémon?

Clive is... he's often too busy to join in (a level mechanics in a school with literal telekinetics??????? did we gloss over the mindfuck there?????) but he loves the classics. Trivial Pursuit is what you'd expect from him but he's got a soft spot for Ticket to Ride style games.

Luke knew a couple card games from scouts, and the odd time he's joined in he found himself teaching the group one or two of them. It's not his favourite thing - books are for quiet relaxation, isn't that the point? - but it makes Gideon so so happy that he'll indulge the request.

Spook. Okay. First of all, card games? When there's magic tricks? Ruins the brand. Since becoming a glamourist it's just far too inconvenient to be seen using the damn things... that being said, he's developed a soft spot for snap...

Darren enjoys games, but nobody's really willing to play. Spook's started joining him and they're playing regularly, but it's hard to find new interesting games when there's no resources. He considered asking Gideon but it's just a little awkward these days and there's bound to be a competition if he did. He's okay with snap. Spook likes the odd blackjack too.

Olu doesn't get the appeal. Never played them much, not a gambler, no big reason to try them.

Wolf Boy played once or twice. Cards got lost easily but the old classics were good. He'd probably like Bullshit but it wouldn't be his favourite. Alas.

Jacob and Alex Teller LOVE games. Fantastic. Hard with the telepathy but they'd buy 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel and dominate the scene, bet

Okay I'm tired leaving it here JUST KIDDING BONUS NIGHT SPEAKER ROUND

Matt loves cards. Easiest to carry and he'll bring a pack if he's heading round someone's place. Tried to introduce poker to the night speaker crew and Elena told him off for encouraging child gambling.

Elena is big into this one Murder on the Orient Express game. It's not exactly Cluedo - it has preset answers and they're long since faded - but Matt and Tima weren't there, and she can't remember. New life from a family possession.

Tima hasn't got much time to play, but she loves how passionate the other two can get in the middle of a good game that it's worth making the effort to bust out the board.

Spin is banned when Matt's there. They love the exact same games except one minor variation - can't agree on the shuffling. It's soooo close to the start of a board game bromance except it's not at all

Ok now I'm done fr fr. I forgot a load of people inevitably but enjoy the highlights. Yell at me if you have any other list ideas these are fun :D

[high-voltage-rat]

I often wonder what the actual state of medicine as a field is in dragonfable. We see that Magus Neron has a microscope, petri dishes, and hypodermic syringes. We know that the existence of cells is a known thing. Clearly we're not living in a pre-germ theory equivalent. But we also don't really see doctors around- alchemists like Alina seem to be the pick. Sir Junn is the only example I can really think of, and he also seems to be oriented towards alchemical solutions like the royal honey and corruption-cleansing potions, though we do have mentions of him using IVs in an ICU in his field hospital.

Healing potions would certainly be good for physical injuries, but I wonder at how well they treat illnesses and diseases. Are they a cure-all that's become so heavily relied on that, in the rare cases they don't work, nobody knows what else to do? Riadne's arachnomancy healing, delivering potions directly into the bloodstream, is treated as revolutionary, so I assume that pills or IV drips and infusions have not been popularized enough to be commonly used. Is that because potions as they currently exist are good enough for most applications, or because most people don't know how to use them, or because they're difficult to create or get ahold of? There are incredible technologies out there, as evidenced by the magisterium's drones and the gnomes'... everything. But whether or not these advances have ever been applied to medical applications has also never really been shown.

We've seen many examples of healing magic in lore, but the capabilities and limitations of it, as well as the actual process, are never really explored. Is it an actual active process of changing the body, or is it just empowering the natural healing process? We know that fleshweaving is a thing, but forbidden as an art due to its potential for abuse (and the fact that it apparently requires consuming elemental spirits), and Jaania's soulweaving-based healing of Brittany was a method she apparently invented through experimentation. So we can conclude that soul/fleshweaving are not being employed as a tool for medicine, and any commonly used healing magic probably doesn't modify the body in such a way.

There's lots of potential for medical technology and practice to improve, so one has to wonder what factors are at play to ensure they don't. Is it just reliance on the magic that already exists, leaving the people with rare cases to be untreated? I wonder if, to a degree, there's a perception of standard alchemy being "good enough" that medicine doesn't need to be improved. Perhaps that's compounded with some cultural taboos around "messing with" or manipulating the body, which may extend beyond magical practice into the scientific sphere. It could even be an acceptance of a flawed paradigm surrounding healing magic, just like how most mages accepted the leyline model of mana as absolute, when soulthreads demonstrate that it's flawed?

Or maybe the devs intended it all to remain in the mcguffin realm, where healing magic does everything you want when it's convenient and is limited only when necessary. But that's less fun to think about.

[thehatishere]

I don't care if 2006 is too late, I'm adding it

Pov: you grew up reading weird fantasy in the early 2000s

[would-rather-get-lost-in-books]