#Book still very good though!!!!!!

[chicago-geniza]

Ow oof ouch my feelings (did extensive research and editing on a long-term project for someone with whom I've collaborated closely for years and am not even in the acknowledgements, although I know what academia is like and didn't expect to be in the first place) (it's not a personal slight but still ow oof ouch my feelings and ow oof ouch all my uncredited work lol)

[fictionadventurer]

Maybe the problem with Christian fiction is that it's non-denominational. People are just "Christian", with no effort put into showing what practicing that religion looks like for them specifically. No indication that there are other Christians who could have different beliefs. No wrestling with differing ideas and the struggle of how one should live out their Christian faith. And that makes it unrealistic and unrelatable.

[radiantmists]

reading animorphs sequentially instead of in whatever random order you can get your hands on them is such a trip because you can see these kids getting progressively better at war and worse at being happy, you can see how traumatic events from one book echo into the next ones but never quite get dealt with because these kids have no real way to take care of their mental health, you can see their relationships deepening but simultaneously gaining friction and faultlines as they learn just how far they'd go for each other but also how far they'd go in general...

obviously this series was meant to be episodic in nature, and i actually think that might be the better way to first encounter it, but the arc of the series in publication order is extremely well-crafted

[aroaceleovaldez]

do. you consider the graphic novels to be canon (in some way)? and if so, what do you make of sadie and carter wearing the chb and cj t-shirts respectively at the end of tot i think

I consider the graphic novels to be their own individual canon - they're an adaptation of the source material and follow a different series of events than book canon, so they're in the same category as like the movies, show, or musical to me (and DS game, lmao). They exist completely separate from the canon they're adapting from, so they're their own entities.

The material I consider strictly "canon" is the first series, so Percy Jackson And The Olympians only. Then HoO and TOA as extraneous canon on top of that - sort of a like "recommended but optional." TKC and MCGA also kind of operate as their own canons within themselves but can be linked to main PJO canon, so similar category. Published companion novels and similar material (so like Singer of Apollo) are also optional add-ons.

Stuff like Un Natale Mezzosangue and Nachos After The War where they weren't ever formally published are non-canon official material to me, kind of in the same vein as promotional material released alongside the books (the activity guides and such). The official art exists in the same sphere to me. I also personally consider CHB: Austin's lore to be semi-canon or non-canon official material, because they're actually affiliated with Rick Riordan (he has directly interacted with the camp's activities in the past) and I think it's just kind of cute.

The ReadRiordan articles are just straight up strictly non-canon. They just are. That is just an objective fact about them. I am slightly more lenient towards some of the old official Riordan website's media, like the interactive Argo II map descriptions, just since those descriptions were one-and-done and presumably had to have been approved versus a ton of articles with different anonymous unaffiliated authors. It's at best in the same category as the non-canon official promotional material.

As for Sadie and Carter wearing camp t-shirts - it's a cute cameo! And also kind of interesting in that they're technically one of first official published depictions we have of the camp shirts with any kind of details on them (the old official art doesn't count actually cause that was also bonus material).

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Maid and The Crocodile

standalone YA high fantasy romance, set in the world of Raybearer (10 years later)

a girl ages out of her orphanage and searches for a job as a maid - but before she’s hired, she accidentally gets bound to the Crocodile - a god thought to steal girls through his shrines throughout the cities

she wants nothing to do with him or his curse, and gets herself a job as a Curse Eater at an inn, consuming the spiritual residue of their past mistakes and regrets

but her past and her connection to the Crocodile won’t go away, and she gets caught up in his revolutionary ambitions

disabled MC (vitiligo, cane user)

[markantonys]

the main difference between WOT and ROP fandoms is that if you tell WOT fans you're a show-only and don't know anything about the source material, they will go to extreme lengths to protect you from even the most inconsequential of spoilers such as a joke mat told on page 157 of book 1 which will never be relevant to the show in any capacity, whereas if you tell ROP fans you're a show-only and don't know anything about the source material, they will take the opportunity to give you a full-spoiler education on the history of middle earth whether you asked for it or not.

[chiricocuvie]

I am, predictably, becoming not normal about Rand Al’ Thor

[cacw]

do you know the movie manchester by the sea? im watching it right now and it reminded me of someone i know. here is a drawing i made for you 💖💞💖💕

1) i dont even have words for the things im feeling right now. youre so good to me. youre too good to me sam i will be going to staples soon to get this printed so i can tape it to my wall. ive spent so much time looking at it already... its the only thing i could think about last night. i fell asleep thinking about it. a few sparse tears may have been shed because 2) i stopped everything i was doing to watch this movie and it bummed me out so bad. all the more because i was thinking about this frostpod picture the entire time... very on point. thank you so much for thinking of my horrible little family IM RUNNING AWAY.... IM RUNNING AWAY TO STAPLES!!!!!!!!!

[artsy-dreamer]

Shoutout to the many Neko Atsume books that never got localized 😔

Some of these are packed with lore you’d never know otherwise… and these aren’t even all the Neko Atsume books in existence!

[fictionadventurer]

Potential January Reads

A Brilliant Night of Ice and Stars by Rebecca Connolly

Rhododendron Pie by Margery Sharp

So Big by Edna Ferber

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Vibrant Paradoxes by Bishop Robert Barron

The Diary of a Country Priest by George Bernanos

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope

Katherine Wentworth by D.E. Stevenson

[aaronstveit]

read in 2025!

it's that time again! i've been doing reading threads here since 2022, and i always enjoy them. as always, you can find me on goodreads and the storygraph.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie* (★★★★★)

Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems by Mary Oliver (★★★★★)

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (★★★★☆)

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice (★★★☆☆)

The Examiner by Janice Hallett (★★★★☆)

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden (★★★★★)

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister (★★★☆☆)

Beartown by Fredrick Backman (★★★★★)

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad (★★★★★)

Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch** (★★★★☆)

Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones (★★★★☆)

The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden (★★★★★)

Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo (★★★★☆)

Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur (★★★★★)

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (★★★★☆)

Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd (★★★★★)

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (★★★★★)

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates (★★★★★)

*An asterisk denotes a reread. **Two asterisks denote an ARC.

[pencilofawesomeness]

What is Twisted Wonderland and how would you sell someone on it?

Ohoho. Ohohohoho. Anon. You have activated my trap card >:D

(I'm about to be soooo annoying/unhinged and I'm sorry. I'm not.)

Alright, so:

Twisted Wonderland is a Disney mobile game made in Japan and co-produced by Aniplex. (Yes, that Aniplex.) I'm not here to sell you on the game, so much as the story, but it is a sort of story-book rpg with turned based fights and rhythm games, where you build character units from a gacha pull. As far as gameplay goes, it's very simple, and most of the emphasis lies on the characters and the story. And it's wonderful.

The on-the-box description of this game doesn't do it justice, per se, but that might be because Disney has a little bit of influence on it and they suck at knowing who their target audience is. It is about a high school based on classic Disney villains—but no, not in the way you're thinking, because I once made that mistake too. It is not a villain school. Rather, the world of Twisted Wonderland is its own entity, with characters built as sort of nods or foils to classic Disney characters. The world itself is somewhat built with these films as its past, and history has become so twisted (ha) that modern society views some of these classic villains as the heroes or supporting characters of their stories, and respect them as The Great Seven. (The seven in question being the Queen of Hearts, Scar, Ursula, Jafar, the Evil/Raven Queen, Hades, and Maleficent. None of them are remembered by name, though.)

The game takes place in the modern era, a society with both technology and magic. Specifically, it takes place in a magic high school called Night Raven College, an all-boys dormitory prep school where the only requirement to get in is a magic mirror that peers into your soul and determines whether or not you can a) do magic and b) kin the Great Seven. And, of course, the player character is a regular-ass human who gets isekai'd in and gets stuck with a talking magic cat direbeast named Grim.

Now. That is the general synopsis. I, on the other hand, affectionately call this the Mental Breakdown game.

See, here's the kicker. The magic system is pretty nifty; while it's functions as a standard magic-is-magic sort of soft system, it has ✨consequences✨

Magic has this byproduct called blot. It's this icky stuff that builds up when you a) use too much magic and/or b) are emotionally distressed. But less so in a "I'm panicked right now" sort of way and more so in a "I have chronic depression and/or anxiety" sort of way. And, when a mage is powerful enough, and sad boi enough, and then goes and uses way too much magic and sad boi juice in one sitting, this amazing phenomenon occurs called "overblot"—which is pretty much a super-powered evil form that turns the mage into the darkest form of themselves and then uses magic until they die.

Naturally, this happens in the game. A lot. The formula is pretty much that each "book" of the story, there is an overblot. One for each of the seven dorms, which are based off of the seven villains/the movies they come from. (And "based on" is pretty loose. Yes you can see the similarities, but these are dumb teenage boys with their own hopes and aspirations, and, sometimes, the game completely lies to you about what character they emulate the most. The guy who's Jafar? Well yes but he's actually just a really stressed out Genie stand in. The Hades guy? Whoops that's Meg. Is that a card soldier or the White Rabbit? Doesn't matter, he's got problems.)

The characters are so well written. I could gush about them forever, and they are the driving points of this plot and it means everything to me. They are some of the most traumatized and messed up individuals, but also, they are dumb teenage boys who do dumb teenage boys things. It is all incredibly well balanced and startlingly realistic for a game that amounts to beating the emotional constipation around people. Mostly because it cannot be beat out of them. The blot can, but they have to deal with their emotions with their own two hands, with varying levels of success.

And the shenanigans!!!! Oh, the shenanigans. I call this the Emotional Trauma game but I have once laughed so hard someone heard me through the floor. It's not all doom and gloom for sure. Sometimes you're watching your friend fall apart because his toxic mother instilled debilitating perfectionism and slowly start making enemies of everyone and sometimes you're sending three of the most gremlin students plus one cinnamon roll to infiltrate a gala that a bunch of weather fairies are throwing in the greenhouse because they stole your temperature regulating magestone to be shiny jewelry and you want it to stop snowing inside your dorm room. And sometimes you can have the exact same character who experienced losing his little brother right in front of him gush about a magical girl sledding anime and all of his gacha games. It is the best of both worlds.

And, that's not all! No, no. We get amazing character interactions. Not just pre-determined friend group interactions, but also random interactions. Yana Toboso (the writer/artist) really likes to stick names in a jar sometimes and make them interact and it is the best thing ever. Every single one of these characters I hold in my hands. Every single one of them gets to have their moment to shine. You can emotionally invest in all of them and be rewarded for it.

The game itself is free and pretty easy to get into. There's not really a bad power creep so you can get through it with what you got. Of course the fun part of collecting cards is that there are stories attached to them that you can watch, and those are also sources of joy. (And it's well documented, so you can find things online pretty easily to catch up and see more.)

I just think it's neat. (Read: I accidentally became wholly obsessed with this game and its characters and they are all blorbos to me.)

You should definitely fall into this rabbit hole with me :))) It's so worth it :)))

[tea-cat-arts]

I'm willing to at least hear out most of the "xyz plot point is heavily tied to abc cultural context" brands of posts but the "wwx isn't meant to be read as morally gray" and "the western fandom made up Sizhui being wangxian's son" brands of post make me feel like my cultural ignorance is being used to gaslight me

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: LEECH by Hiron Ennes.

This is a reread for me! I first read it when it came out in 2022, and it absolutely rewired my brain. It does so many fascinating POV things that I adore, and I'm excited to revisit it with ~Vague Recollections~ of plot reveals to see how many of them I spot ahead of time this go-round.

[lovers-instead]

Sapphic YA Book Rec: Good Moon Rising by Nancy Garden

1996 follow-up to Annie on My Mind, this time featuring 2 girls who compete for the lead role in their high school theater department.

Links to download:

Internet Archive (to borrow)

Anna's Archive

Z-Library

[wonder-worker]

"[Alice Perrers] requested that she be buried in the parish church of Upminster, St Laurence, before the altar of the Virgin Mary. Alice seems to have had an affinity with Mary through her life; a seal of hers from c. 1374 shows an image of the Virgin Mary and child, her tabernacle seized in 1377 had an image of the Virgin Mary on it, and now she wished to be buried before Mary’s altar."

— Gemma Hollman, The Queen and the Mistress: The Women of Edward III