#I'm supposed to be reviewing

[justyoursicanon]

Wade would speak louder than usual when rambling cuz the voices in his head get too much

Like "Oh yeah and Mary PUPPINS ALMOST TRIED to-"

Just a sudden increase in volume when he's talking

Despite how unusual-but-looks-normal-because-its-wade Logan would definitely catch on at some point because it gets annoying once he notices

When he asks Wade and he explains it to Logan, Logan tries to take the lead in the conversation to help Wade focus on his voice

Or they try to stay constant in their conversation so there isn't any room for Wade to really pay attention to the voices

[finnlongman]

Love to write a book with an aroace protagonist and get reviews complaining that it didn't have a love interest :| 99.9%* of YA books have a romance plotline, can we not have 0.1% focused on other kinds of relationship?

Not every book is for everyone, sure, if you're looking for romantic YA then mine isn't for you. But there's a difference between "this book wasn't for me because I prefer romance" and "this book was flawed because it didn't contain romance" and boy, the latter hurts when your life doesn't either.

*Statistics absolutely pulled out of my arse here.

[frogayyyy]

Sneeze Counting 2024

one of my new year's resolutions for 2024 was to count how many times i sneezed. and because i can't be normal about anything, here we are:

time for some ✨analysis✨

(note that week 10 is the beginning of the pollen season, and week 22 is the start of the highest peak of grass pollen 👀)

i kept track of the sneezes using a tally counter and then updated a spreadsheet every week. there's some more data and graphs here:

the pollen data is just an average taken from a 'pollen calendar' i found, so it's not completely accurate for this year, but it's still interesting to see the correlation (especially with grass pollen). if i do it again i'd definitely keep track of the pollen count too.

to sum up, in the words of mark watson, taskmaster s5e5:

if you read this far,, bless you.

[suddencolds]

.(personal)

[liesmyth]

I know you didn't like babel or rf kuang but did you read yellowface?

no and I don't really plan to. life's too short to read stuff I know I won't like

[wellnoe]

reading a book that is very interesting in its quantitative analysis but is so weird in its tone!! the place the author chooses to insert emotionality is bizarre and his treatment of mortality of the be all end all of suffering is equally so.

[gingermintpepper]

Man, Vengeance Saga certainly, uh, was huh?

[kyouka-supremacy]

(╥﹏╥)

[kitchensinkchronicles]

dads may not be uploading today but if you need something to watch, my extensive tit tour predictions video/analysis is waiting right there!

i think this'll be especially interesting to watch after having gone to the tour so you can see how accurate it was lmao

✨✨this blog is spoiler free✨✨please do not leave tit spoilers in the comments or tags✨✨

[mumblingsage]

Meanwhile a fantasy author I've enjoyed: yeah, Isabel Cooper's The Nightborn, finished last night, was fantastic both as fantasy and as romance. Honestly, if your complaint about romantic fantasy is "the romance keeps derailing the fantasy stuff I'm interested in," I'd say give this a shot? The fantasy plotline doesn't feel compromised, the worldbuilding is interesting, the monsters and magic are very vivid.

-And this makes me enjoy the romance plotline more, even. Nightborn seems to have done something that I'm glad to see someone do and at the same time kinda envious I didn't do first (I need to write more book-length work, obviously). Avert yer gaze for spoilers to the end of this paragraph, but: I don't think the hero and heroine actually say "I love you" in this one? And now I'm not even sure the couple in the prior book said it either (though the hero and his late/ex partner talk about loving each other with the message "there are all different kinds of love", now I need a hankie). Instead they demonstrate they care about each other in a whole bunch of other ways and say other things, including a swoony romantic "I have to die someday and you're a great person to die beside" (not an exact quote because my ereader isn't loaded at the moment, but close).

-Worldbuilding-wise, this is a 'queernorm' setting that I liked and believed in! Notable things: use of singular 'they' pronouns both for nonbinary characters and, at least on the heroine's side, for children whose gender she doesn't know. The heroine doesn't seem to pursue women romantically (she does have a nonbinary lover in her backstory) but at a ball she dances with another woman. Not as a romantic pairing but because it's a ball, you dance with your fellow attendees! (Also the other woman is a general and somewhat plot-relevant, but it's not some sort of manipulative attempt to get close to her--they're dancing to be friendly and because it's a ball.) I feel like I've seen a lot of ballroom dancing scenes by authors with feminist and queernorm cred, but this might be one of the first times I've seen one with true gender-neutral dance pairings?

-My "Cooper's characters might actually be too decent and calm and correct all the time; a dash more interpersonal drama could be realistic and interesting" qualm is somewhat present but not hampering my enjoyment. Because I don't want every book I read to be about smart, competent, kind people who I'd like to hang out with in real life--but I do want to read books like that occasionally, and this one met that need! The hero does do one consent-check before a sex scene that I think was actually inappropriate (frankly, it seemed to raise concerns the reader didn't have and the story doesn't follow up on)--even as it's a consent check I've had said almost word-for-word to me in real life and appreciated (my circumstances were different!). But it's not a bad flaw to have, and there might well have been a characterization point being made that I didn't quite grasp (that is, the point possibly was intentional that the hero was being a bit too conscientious when the heroine is actively jumping his bones). There was another point I really liked when this poor, darling, much-cockblocked man was like "Wait, you're stopping mid-sex. Is something wrong? If you need to stop I completely understand--oh we're being attacked by monsters." I like to think my thought process in the situation would be similar.

-Cooper is great at giving characters realistic thought processes. I had a small giggle around the second chapter where the hero and heroine take a few steps arm in arm, then have to stop and untwine their arms at the cloak check. Not awkward enough to induce embarrassment, but plenty relatable.

-There IS a leavening amount of snark, sarcasm, and wry humor (none of it smarmy) that keeps things from being saccharine. What sweetness there is feels earned and is often either there to up the stakes so you feel worse when characters are in peril (not a specific spoiler but an indication of the series' tone: not all make it!), or is there as a soothing balm after someone's gone through the wringer. And here's also where I feel the fantasy is as prominent as the romance: certain strands of romance would pull punches in a way fantasy writers wouldn't, and Cooper doesn't pull the punches. There's some gore in here and the fantasy demons are genuinely horrific. Which also avoids my *other* concern when genre writers use humor: the humor feels realistic, sometimes used as a coping mechanism for stress; it doesn't undermine the stakes of the story or break the mood or verisimilitude.

-In my earlier post, I praised how the hero of Nightborn rarely wears sleeves and Cooper frequently comments on this fact for the better delectation of the reader. There's a scene toward the end where he's ripping his sleeves off to use as bandages and the text pauses to comment on this fact in a way I can only take as a wink in my direction. I have rarely felt so loved and nourished as a reader.

All this said, neither my library system nor Hoopla have the last book in the trilogy so I'm probably going to buy it (happy to support her, but books I buy tend to drop down under my library-based reading lists). Most of all because I want to know how the ominous apocalyptic fantasy plotline is resolved! The central romance in that one features a Paladin-type, and frankly I'm interested to see how "author I like who writes characters who are on the borderline of too decent" writes "character archetype known for being boringly decent." I think she's going to pull it off!

[ferronickel]

I am famously bad at replying to messages and often leave things for days before responding.

That said, I think that if you are a company that works with time sensitive projects and have to engage in back and forth communication to get anything done, I ought to be able to get in touch with you faster than I would be able to send a message to the voyager spacecraft and back.

[batsplat]

i also think that marc’s single minded focus leads him to ignore people who are significantly less talented than him (no offense). it seems like there are some people who would LIKE to beef with marc, but he simply catalogues their crimes against him (or however he sees it) and uses that as motivation to very tidily beat them. and maybe vale was more ready to “stoop to their level” so to speak — although, like you said, MOST of his feuds were with quite talented riders

(follow up to this) all of them were quite talented riders! but again, what you're talking about can really be explained through competitive necessity. marc's career has quite a few seasons where he's well clear of the field and quite a few seasons where he's not competitive at all, whereas valentino has far more seasons where he's top three of the championship without being completely dominant. that's the thing right, marc's spats aren't with riders he's currently engaged with title fights in. and valentino wasn't doing all that much stooping either - he too has various minor spats of the marc variety... but they've been forgotten about because it just wasn't that serious. all of valentino's major feuds are with riders he got into title fights with

I'm not saying that marc isn't single minded or that he isn't arrogant, because obviously he's both of those things. and yes, he does tend to adopt quite an isolationist approach in that he mostly keeps the grid at a distance. and yes, sometimes riders criticise him and he mostly does not engage. but at the same time, all the spats you're thinking about here just aren't the kind of things that escalated into feuds for valentino either, so you're comparing apples and oranges really. the closest point of comparison we have is valentino's rivalries with biaggi/sete escalating and marc's with dovi not doing so... but like. marc isn't ignoring a string of provocations in that rivalry. there's just more compelling reasons you can point to for that not escalating, like the competitive stakes in the marc/dovi rivalry or indeed dovi's personality. you can also point to valentino being more proactive in the biaggi rivalry - but valentino wasn't stopping at that point. he didn't have some divine insight to know his talent levels were greater than biaggi several years before they began competing on-track. when he triggers that feud, he is for all intents and purposes the underdog in that dynamic

the closest you get to a marco bezzecchi-type situation for valentino is... I mean, honestly even melandri is pushing it because that guy was at least runner up to valentino and theoretically might have come to pose a competitive threat - but notably, that's actually a dynamic where you can say valentino was going by the marc playbook in brushing off questions about the conflict, kinda just ignoring it was happening while going about his business. valentino also wouldn't beef with an alex rins equivalent, not at the 2019!marc stage of his career, unless there were a compelling competitive justification... likewise, valentino isn't notably more proactive in roughing up dani and casey in 2006 than marc is with fabio in 2019 - they go about it a little differently, yes, but broadly it's on the same reasonably muted level of shenanigans. marc has more low level beef with various riders on the grid than valentino did, partly just because he's less well-liked in general, but he's not been put into situations where that was ever going to escalate into a full-blown feud. now, if you put jorge in these scenarios then, yes, I imagine that absolutely could get... unpleasant, and he's got more of an inclination to punch down anyway. but valentino? nope. remember, he generally had a reputation for being an affable rider and getting along with most of his competitors. obviously we focus more on the feuds now because they're so flashy and memorable, but that's a very very long career - and one that's reasonably light on any major beef with anyone who wasn't one of his main career rivals

anyway, look, again I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily in that marc is more inclined to withdraw than valentino is. and he DOES have some alien-based tunnel vision, hence dovi not getting any attention in his self-produced documentary. or that thing he's been doing in pressers this year where he starts reminiscing about fighting the aliens at any conceivable opening while a deeply unaffected pedro acosta sits next to him. like, I do agree with you about what marc's working process typically looks like, I just don't think it's really the reason why he's been slumming it on the feud count. valentino himself tended to brush off most instances of his competitors being critical towards him because he could afford to, and only got into feuds against rivals who were broadly speaking on his level. in valentino's feud with casey, valentino didn't have the option of dismissing casey. there was no stooping involved - because casey was not a less talented rider than valentino. casey's the extreme example, but it's true in general of valentino's rivals. yes, the working process might look different, but broadly speaking marc and valentino were exactly as likely to start feuds with riders they have never been in a title fight with - aka not at all. marc might be more inclined to cut himself off from the rest of the grid than valentino was, but unfortunately he's also had rather an easy task on his hands in that regard. he's not had anyone both willing to beef with him and capable of posing a significant enough competitive threat (when he himself has been competitive). shame, really

[ubeng-ubas]

I wish I could be the perfect daughter, but I come back to the water(tumblr) no matter how hard I try 😔

[hilacopter]

guys sonic 3 was kinda bad

[gay-ppl-real]

Been working on a little something for months now

I didn't wanna give anything away because I was worried about not finishing it/getting people hyped and then the final product being a disappointment, but it involves a lot of listening to the Eddie's Big Lift audio on repeat and I really gotta say

At like line 61 (04:09 of my audio, but I've edited out the long pause at the start for Reasons) Sally says she can lift Barnaby up BETTER than Eddie. She says she can lift him "right over her head" as if this would be upstaging Eddster. And like.

Sally.

Sally.

What the fuck do you call this if not "over his head"

Girl???

You're just dismissing him for the sake of it at this point ToT sister I love you but come on.

[keeps-ache]

HEY