#I am still really scared his shits gonna get rewritten with his show backstory

[robocops-a-christ-allegory]

Its a shame nobody talked about it like this but I am still convinced there was all kinds of meta shit going on with the Peacemaker show that was really interesting to ME at least. Like the decision to make two guys that hated each other best friends now, and Adrian specifically being Peacemaker's wacky unhinged sidekick whos obsessed with him when Peacemaker made his intro to DC as a wacky unhinged Vigilante villain who was obsessed with Vigilante. Also I still think everyday about how in the show Peacemaker shot his dad with the same kind of gun that his dad killed himself with in the comics. Like.

[roguelibrarian]

books I read in 2023

Threw together a list of books I read this year plus brief thoughts about them Just Because.

The Marsh King's Daughter by Karen Dionne - I was so, so ready to like this book and then like one chapter in suddenly got hit with the reveal that the backstory to it is the racist trope of "big scary Native man kidnaps a pure, virginal white girl to be his wife." So....fuck that shit.

So Many Beginnings by Bethany C. Morrow - Heck yes. Excellent book. It's a retelling of Little Women set in the Roanoke Freedmen's Colony. The author leans into how aro-coded Jo is. Also Beth lives.

Renegades by Marissa Meyer - Yeah, I didn't finish this one. I got so bored.

Common Bonds: A Speculative Aromantic Anthology ed. by Claudie Arseneault, C.T. Callahan, B.R. Sanders, and RoAnna Sylver - I mean it's an anthology, so some of the stories just did not work for me, but I am ecstatic over the concept alone and most of it was amazing.

The Companion by Katie Alender - Creepy as shit in the best possible way. My one complaint is that after 200 pages without a hint of romance, suddenly a character showed up who was so obviously meant to be the main character's love interest and that part was exhausting. Otherwise excellent, amazing, chilling as hell, and you know I love me some abuse narratives.

All These Bodies by Kendare Blake - I wanted to like this one so bad and it's not that I didn't like it, but it was just kinda...mostly okay? I felt like I was supposed to be creeped out and scared and tbh I should have been because there's some pretty disturbing shit in this book but all just fell so flat.

Sounds Fake But Okay: An Asexual and Aromantic Perspective on Love, Relationships, Sex, and Pretty Much Everything Else by Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca - Bad. Just bad. Oh my g-d this book was so bad and irritating and just...if you want to learn more about aspec people or think you might be aspec yourself, please read literally anything else. I won't go into detail because I wrote a whole post about it here, but just...bad.

Ace and Aro Journeys: A Guide to Embracing Your Aromantic or Asexual Identity by The Ace and Aro Advocacy Project - So, this was definitely better than Sounds Fake But Okay overall, but there is a thread of deep discomfort with the existence of sex-repulsed and romance-repulsed aspecs that keeps popping up throughout the book. It is pretty clear that at least one of the authors (and probably more than one since there were several and apparently no one raised a strong enough objection to get any of this shit scrapped or rewritten) really Does Not Like sex-repulsed and romance-repulsed people.

The Wicked Remain by Laura Pohl - Second part of a duology, and the first book was definitely better. I low-key suspect that this book might have just been Once Upon A Time fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off. That said, I am always here for queerplatonic relationship rep and stories where the Cinderella character ends up single.

Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce - Series of four books, but I'm putting all of them together here because a) my thoughts are kinda the same and b) this post is already too long. I'm not gonna say much because I have a whole post about this series in my drafts already so I'll just leave it with yeah my nostalgia for these books has worn off quite a bit.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo - This was another reread and yeah it still holds up just as good as the first time I read it. Literally this is one of my favorite books.

The Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo - Another reread. Excellent. Love a sequel that's just as good as the first one. Also one of my favorite books.

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo - Yeah I was on a rereading spree this year. This one is also so damn good.

Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo - Last Grishaverse book on the list, I promise. So good. Nina went completely off the rails in this one and I love every second of it. Really everyone went off the rails a little bit but Nina most of all.

The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan - I have a post about this one here so I won't say too much in this post but g-d I love how unapologetically Jewish this book is. No stopping to explain things to any goyim who might be reading. No coddling goyishe feelings while portraying antisemitism. This book is for Jews and that's beautiful.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson - Yet another reread. Actually, genuinely accurate portrayal of how PTSD triggers work. First sign of healing not being a romantic relationship but being the main character telling a shitty friend to fuck off. Literally the only thing stopping me from wholeheartedly shouting "I love this book so much" is that there's a random use of the r-word because this book is from the 90s and back then it was basically illegal to publish fiction about teenagers without having your characters use that word.

We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation by Eric Garcia - So I've got mixed feelings about it but ultimately I'd say this book is a net positive. Definitely recommend it for nonautistic people and for autistic people whose only exposure to the autistic community is through spaces like tumblr. Just don't have this be the only book you read about autistic people, you know?