#also something about how in the Iliad I think people in battle went and picked up one another's armor when they died. irl minecraft battle

[daily-xisuma]

[141] Hermitcraft x Odyssey crossover au where for no good reason this interaction happens

[tyrantisterror]

Tales of Kevalry: A Collection of Star Wars Fanfic Ideas

Ok, so, if you’re looking at this you’ve probably seen the posts where I and a bunch of others workshopped what was originally just a joke proposal for an alternative to the Sith and the Jedi in Star Wars into an almost workable proposal for an alternative to the Sith and the Jedi in Star Wars.  @theswiveldiscourse suggested making a sort of campaign/setting pitch out of all the scattered bits we’ve established so far, so... this is that.

Keval Errants

Our alternative force users, for those who think the “you cannot have meaningful relationships with anyone - family, romance, etc.” rules of the Jedi suck but also don’t like the complete devotion to selfishness that defines the Sith.  They’re called the Keval Errants, and they basically play on the “wandering hero” archetype in fantasy fiction - i.e. the knight errant who wanders from place to place slaying monsters and saving villagers, the nameless gunslinger who rolls into town, shoots the bandits, and rides off into the sunset, the ronin who decides to protect villagers from marauders out of the goodness of his heart, the gumshoe who gets in over his head investigating a criminal conspiracy because a dame with a problem came into his office looking for help, etc.

There’s a loose code for the Keval Errants here, but the jist of it can be summed up as:

A keval errant devotes their life to helping others as much as possible

Keval errants believe that you can’t be good at helping others if you don’t understand and care about them

To that end, Keval Errants dedicate themselves to understanding other creatures as much as possible, and are required to have at least one animal that they partner with in combat to reinforce this idea (because training an animal as a mount requires you to practice communicating with and caring for a creature that isn’t capable of communicating the same way as you)

If a Keval Errant’s mount dies, they are expected to raise a new one after a period of mourning.

A squire is usually expected to pick a different mount than the one their Keval Errant mentor uses, as the point of having a mount is to hone the skills of understanding different creatures - relying on the mentor’s pre-established knowledge robs the squire of a valuable learning experience.

Any creature can be a mount so long as 1. it consents to the partnership and 2. its biological and psychological needs are different than the Keval Errant is works with.  Droids and sapient beings, while uncommon, can be found among the Keval Errants’ partners.

Keval Errants believe that freedom is an essential right of all beings, and oppose tyranny in all its forms

No force power is off limits, though draining life force, dominating minds, and looking into the future are viewed as inherently dangerous powers that should be used sparingly if at all.

Unlike the Jedi and the Sith, Keval Errants aren’t big on dogma and strict rules.  Their code is a set of guidelines that is meant to be open to interpretation and, if need be, broken when necessary.  There is no strict dress code, naming convention, weapon selection, etc. - freedom is a big value of the code, and so followers of it are encouraged to do things their own way.  Keval Errants are also free to leave and rejoin the order as often as they need to - no one is shamed for, say, wanting to pause their training to go save their friends from being killed by fascists, or take a brief holiday to rescue their mother from slavery.

If one chooses to be a Keval Errant, one must travel the Galaxy trying to help people in need and have a creature one trains as a mount.  That’s it, those are the only requirements.

Like the Jedi and the Sith, the Keval Errants are not well chronicled in history - in fact, they are even more obscure than the other two, as Keval Errants don’t actively seek out children to indoctrinate like the Jedi, nor do they try to conquer the Galaxy like the Sith.  Most stories of the Keval Errants are folktales of a mysterious and helpful stranger who wandered into a town, solved some problems, and eventually went on their way.

Though they don’t actively recruit new members, Keval Errants will accept any who ask to learn from them.  Most Keval Errants began as an ordinary citizen of the Galaxy who witnessed another member of the order performing a heroic act, and decided to ask the mysterious stranger to teach them how to do the same.  Keval Errants accept squires regardless of their midichlorian count, believing that anyone - even droids, perhaps - can learn to use the force if they open themselves to it.

Though a Keval Errant’s travels can take them anywhere, they are most often found in the Outer Rim - where there are plenty of problems to solve, and few good warriors willing to deal with them.

Umbrade Vassals

Star Wars loves dichotomies, so the Keval Errants need an opposing faction.  Enter the Umbrade Vassals (we brainstormed a lot of different names but only the “Vassal” part stuck, so we might play with the name some more here).  Their philosophy focuses in the ideas of necessary evils and greater goods, believing that certain cruelties and inequalities are inherent aspects of the universe, and that the Galaxy would thrive if everyone submitted to the rule of the Dark Side of the Force (and, by proxy, the rule of the Umbrade Vassals themselves, who execute the Dark Side’s will).

Like Keval Errants, Umbrade Vassals embrace anonymity, albeit for very different reasons.  While a Keval Errant drifts from town to town as a mysterious but helpful stranger, an Umbrade Vassal commits acts of cruelty beneath a mask in order to deny responsibility for their actions - it is not THEIR will that others should suffer, but the will of the Force, and as such they should not be held accountable for the suffering their actions cause.  Like the Sith, Umbrade Vassals try to dominate and rule as much as possible, though unlike the Sith they prefer to do so without getting credit for it.  Umbrade Vassals spend most of their lives in positions of power that avoid fame - high level bureaucrats, chancellors to emperors, etc.  They do not seek the throne, but rather to be the whisper in a king’s ear.  When forced to change things in the open, they wear uniform set robes and armor that conceal their true identity as much as possible.  Identity is something the Umbrade Vassals would like to do away with should their conquest of the Galaxy ever fully exist - in their Utopia, all are nameless pawns for the Force to use as it will.

There are few stories of grand battles between Keval Errants and Umbrade Vassals - though the two despise each other on principle, most of their conflicts are less epic struggles of good vs. evil and more akin to a story of a trickster evading an over-reaching tyrant.  The Umbrade Vassals have tried to wipe out the Keval Errants on many occasions, but have failed in part because the Errants are so loose and chaotic in structure that tracking all of them down is nearly impossible, especially for an orderly and rule-oriented group of villains who by their nature hate thinking creatively.

Rough Ideas on How a Keval Errant Story Would be Shaped

The Star Wars stories that focus on Jedi/Sith conflicts tend to be Epic in scope - stories of nations going to war and high political drama ala The Iliad.  A Keval Errant story should be a bit more personal and intimate in structure - less Phantom Menace and more The Mandalorian, if you will.  Keval Errants wander the Galaxy in search of people to save and villains to thwart - they don’t get involved in Republic trade disputes and take orders from Galactic senators unless the problem gets REALLY out of hand.  Which is where the Umbrade Vassals come in - while a Keval Errant story should start as a fun road trip where the Errant(s) helps out people in need across the Galaxy, Umbrade Vassals can escalate the problem to a degree that the Keval Errant has to become involved in a grander conflict - a Star War, if you will.

Thematically, a Keval Errant story should be about the value of kindness and love - any and all forms of love, be they Romantic, Platonic, etc (for clarity’s sake: you don’t have to be romantically/sexually attracted to anyone to be a Keval Errant, but you do have to care about people in some capacity).  Keval Errants are compassionate and want to connect with the world, and their enemies are those who are cruel and selfish.

Also, Keval Errants are space warriors who ride space monsters and stop space villains.  Have fun with that and do some goofy shit.

Ok, that’s all I got - what did I miss/what else can we add, gang?

[onstarsandiron]

Like Stars Colliding: Chapter 1

I wanted more Jax and Ana being besties, so I thought where better to start than when they met? Here’s Chapter 1 of how they became bffls and the biggest pains in Siege’s ass in the entire galaxy

AO3 Link

Chapter: [1]/2/?

The universe was open and Jax could feel the stars around him. The comforting sense of knowing exactly where he was enveloped him as he watched the lights in the darkness twinkle outside the starshield. Sat in the Dossier’s cockpit, Jax couldn’t feel more at home. It had been a couple years since Captain Siege had let him join her crew and he’s finally been trusted to fly completely unsupervised when they weren’t on a job. He’s still trying to convince Siege he can fly them out of any danger – because he can – but she always just chuckles and says, “Some day you will.” It’s honestly very frustrating, but he’ll get his chance to prove his metal yet.

For now, though, he’s happy to just enjoy getting to be exactly where he should be. Stars above him, Cerces in view, and the red SOS light on the dash flashing. Wait. The red SOS light flashing? Jax looked at the blinking light – an alarming red going in and out at a surprisingly languid rate. That meant someone within range had an SOS signal out. Their ship and anyone else within range of that signal should be receiving the distress call, it was a mandatory standard on all vessels.

Quickly, Jax wasted no time in fixing on the signal. He pressed the intercom button as well, “Captain, we’ve got an SOS on radar.” Jax could feel the beginnings of an adrenaline rush entering his veins, but he reeled himself in. He needed to stay calm and cool, exhibit equanimity. He did stupid things when he let himself get too excited, and as the galaxy’s best pilot he didn’t have room for doing stupid things.

It wasn’t a minute before Captain Siege entered the cockpit, hair glowing a sun-yellow that filled the previously dim room with light. She had already dawned her red coat, her already imposing figure looking bullet proof. Wick followed behind her to take his place at the communications console, opening the right program to interpret the message.

SOS’s were a big deal; you never knew what you were getting yourself into. Is it a merchant ship that was raided and left for dead? Is the danger passed or will they find two groups still battling? Maybe someone who found themselves off course and stranded without enough fuel to get them anywhere. In this neck of the Kingdom, on the wrong side of Cerces and too far for comfort from Iliad, there was a possibility that they could be too late for anyone in a stranded craft. There also was always the possibility of the SOS being a lure to an ambush, a trick Jax always thought of as particularly dirty.

“How far away are we?” Siege asked, watching the screens in front of him. She’d stand close to him, but he never felt in danger of her touching him. It was such a relief that she just let him be about that; so many people, when told he didn’t like to be touched, took that as a challenge to try their damnedest to. It was truly exhausting.

“About thirty-minutes,” he replied, “We should have visual in twenty.” Thirty-minutes at the speed they’re going, even if it was just a typical cruise, was a lot of space. It was in an odd direction, too – away from the planets that could hold people who could help. Jax didn’t tend to think too optimistically when situations started looking strange.

“Decode it yet?” The captain asked, looking over to Wick.

Wick nodded, one earmuff of his headset pressed to his ear, “Large escape pod, but only two on board. No other information.”

Well now that was just confusing. Why would only two people be on a large escape pod? Large pods are built to hold around 75-100 souls, so if something went wrong on a ship that required pods like that there should have been more people, and possibly other pods. But if this was a spoof, it was a bad one. Why would bandits planning an ambush make such a strange and vague SOS? They would have said a small pod with a couple passengers to lower their guard and sent more complete information like what vessel they came from, any injuries to the passengers or damage to the pod, time since ejection – normal, standard information that’s typically auto-filled into the SOS signal. It put everyone on-edge, the opposite of what a false-message was made to do.

The captain frowned, no doubt going through the same calculations Jax was – after all, he’d learned it all from her. “And there’s no sign of any other ship? Not even the mother?”

Jax ran another scan of the area, this time finer as he had a clearer idea of where to be looking. He shook his head. “Nothing we can detect, Captain.” Just because the Dossier didn’t see them, didn’t mean they weren’t cloaked, but there at least wasn’t a mother ship anywhere in sight.

Wick shook his head too, “No other communications, no signal interceptions, barely even any base radio waves all the way out here.”

“Send out a response signal, let them know we’re coming,” Siege said at last. Even if they were suspicious, there was no need to tell anyone out there listening that they thought something was wrong.

Wick nodded and sent out the appropriate signal, reporting that it was received, but no further information sent.

Jax really didn’t like this, but he couldn’t blame the captain; if there really was someone in trouble all the way out here, there probably wouldn’t be anyone else passing by for a long time. After all, that was the only reason they were traveling in such deserted space themselves to begin with.

Slowly, finally, the pod in question came within range of the Dossier’s external camera. Jax zoomed in and displayed the grainy image up on he main holoscreen, the image slowly getting sharper the closer they inched. It was definitely a large pod, looking to fit 100 souls easily, most likely with food for all of them for at least two weeks. It was so clean and new looking that it was genuinely shiny. The pod rotated slightly as it drifted. It wasn’t deployed from the mother ship particularly fast, it seemed, or else they’d still be going that speed. Either that or someone was controlling the ship and had slowed it on purpose, which wouldn’t make much sense in the middle of nowhere.

Jax searched the area for any other visuals or crafts, but he couldn’t find even the heat trails of anyone who might be around to jump them. Fishy. Fishy, fishy, fishy.

“Oh my,” he heard the captain say, and snapped his head back to the main holoscreen. The glorified tin can had rotated enough to reveal an insignia painted onto its side: a large purple octopus with a ninth tentacle.

“Ironbloods,” Jax said under his breath, knowing that was a symbol he’d seen before but not remembering whose it was.

“Rasovant,” Siege filled in, her green eyes hardening. Ironbloods were always trouble. Even if they helped them, there’d be no guaranteeing the bastards wouldn’t turn around and turn them in. But still, it would be genuinely cruel to leave anyone out here, especially when they’d already responded to the SOS.

There was no way anything good was going to come of this.

“Jaxander, Wick, keep scanning for stray signals and any, I mean any, movement.” Wick and Jax both nodded. Siege then reached over Jax’s shoulder and pressed the intercom button, “We’re approaching a Rasovant escape pod, size large, reportedly only carrying two. Barger, I want you on the guns in case we’re getting tricked. Talle, I want you and Riggs to be our welcoming party, be prepared to lead em off to the med bay if they need it.”

A series of affirmatives voiced themselves over the ship’s speakers and noise was heard elsewhere in the Dossier as everyone moved to their positions. They were a bit light handed, being between jobs and simply cruising to the next where they’d pick up a few temporary hands. Jax hoped they wouldn’t need more than who they had for a company of two. Jax hoped it was really a company of two.

Fifteen minutes from the pod and the seconds ticked by like hours. Jax had every sweeping program he could think of running, but there wasn’t even a ghost to be found.

Ten minutes from the pod and finally Wick’s pinging made a proper connection. “Dossier pinging Escape Pod 02,” Wick said, apparently now getting a signal through to the craft, “Confirm status.”

There was a long moment of Jax and Siege watching Wick, his face making it seem as if it was difficult to make out what the other was saying. At last, he looked to the captain with a report, “They’re on low power, radio’s malfunctioning. It’s two, alright, though; says it’s a Metal with a little girl and the girl needs medical attention.”

That… what? Jax looked at Wick incredulously. Why didn’t any piece of this situation make sense? What kind of day was this? Jax found himself ruffled, but the captain looked as if she’d simply been told water was wet.

Five minutes from the pod and Jax could see via the camera aimed at the airlock Riggs and Talle were geared up in their miss-match space suits. “Jaxander, we’re going to come at them nice and slow and deploy our hooks. They can slide across and Riggs and Talle will take em. Wick, relay all that to them, will you?”

Jax nodded and prepared for the maneuver. It was strange to be rescuing a pod that was, now that they approached in proper, actually a little larger than they were. He didn’t like this, since they’d be extremely vulnerable with their hooks out, but there wasn’t a damn thing in sight to cause them harm. At least it was a formal escape pod, such that it had designated points to implant hooks rather than him having to be careful not to pierce the wrong bit of its side.

Sidled up to it, Jax watched anxiously through his feed as the air locks of the Dossier and of the escape pod opened. The angle was poor, but Jax could make out a Metal, looking just as any other Metal did, holding a white cocoon. The cocoon wasn’t exactly a space suit so much as a space bag, common stock on an escape pod so that they could hook each bag to tethers and slide it across without worrying about the price or fit of a space suit for everyone on board. The Metal followed the standard procedure to a t. The bag was adult sized, for some reason, and if it hadn’t been for the lack of gravity Jax suspected the lump of person – the aforementioned girl, he guesses – would fall to the bottom rather comically. Talle caught the bag, and the Metal followed, simply grabbing onto the tether with his iron hand and gliding along it. Riggs almost caught it before the metal stopped itself by holding onto the tether tighter and letting friction do its work. Probably for the best; they may not be experiencing gravity out there, but that Metal still had mass and an acceleration.

Once the airlock was secured again and Talle, Riggs, the bag, and the Metal disappeared from the camera’s view, Jax disconnected their hooks and reeled them back in nice and easy. In reaction to being released, the floating pod drifted backwards away from them, airlock door still open to space as it returned to slowly rotating. It’d probably end up in Haven’s Grave one day or something.

Just like that, they now had two of the strangest passengers in the galaxy on their ship.

“All right, let’s get us back on our way to that waystation now,” Siege said to him, and Jax was more than happy to turn the ship around and toward an actual destination. This couldn’t be bandits because they never would have even had anything in the pod to begin with, but he still felt paranoid here. He could feel that space was full of stars and light, felt it every day, but this little corner seemed to be nothing emptiness.

“We’ll see to the girl and I’ll let you know if you need to step on it depending on how bad off she is, but for now let’s take it just like we were. If these folks are running from something, there’s no reason to give nobody something to chase.”

Jax had been so caught up in thinking this was all a trap he hadn’t even thought of the possibility of someone running from something. Really, he hadn’t even thought of who they might have just picked up. He recalled how small the body in the bag had looked, a bit smaller than him, he’d say. Now he was filled with questions over who they were and what had happened. Why were they in such a big pod? Why was it on low power? Why were they in this weird part of space? There was a slice of guilt built in that he hadn’t been very concerned until just now.

“Barger, you can go ahead and stand down,” the captain said into the intercom. She was returned with a, “Make me bloody get all the way into this damn-fangled piece of shit just for me not to be allowed to shoot anything?” which was as close as Barger tended to get towards, “Yes, of course, Captain.”

“Wick, with me. Cockpit’s all yours, Kiddo,” Siege said turning to leave the cockpit. Wick nodded, shut down his station and followed. Jax suddenly deflated, realizing the one drawback to being the pilot: his place was this chair. He wanted desperately to leap out and run down to the cargo bay where the Metal surely was and watch how the captain might grill him, or to lay eyes on the girl in the bag. His stomach suddenly formed a knot as he remembered that the girl was injured. How badly, he wondered, and could they help her? Was she on death’s door? Or was she some Ironblood kid who considered a day without breakfast or a splinter to be proper suffering?

Either way, he wasn’t going to find out any time soon. Not unless someone was going to swap with him at the helm or come up and tell him what was up, and it seemed like these two were a real all-hands-on-deck issue at the moment. The guilt from before bit at him again, reminding him he shouldn’t treat an injured person as a spectacle. Then again, if this strange rescue wasn’t a spectacle, then what was?

Jax sighed to himself, the adrenaline he had squashed down earlier leaving him with an empty feeling as it dissipated. Guess now was as good a time as ever to work on his patience.

[sawthefaeriequeen]

Top Ten Books Read In 2018

1) The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork

I picked this up at a book fair, read the summary, and figured I'd surprise myself with this author I'd never heard of before. It's about the friendship between DQ, a guy with terminal cancer dealing with his complicated feelings for his estranged-but-conciliatory family, and Pancho, a guy who's biding his time until he can get revenge on the person who's killed one of his family members. I like that both boys are raw and real and people—Pancho obviously has messed up emotions, but DQ can be plenty bitter and angry too: he's not an Inspirational Cancer Patient stereotype.

2) The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope

Girl moves into her uncle's old ancestral house sometime during the 18th century and gets immersed into the past lives and loves of the ghosts that thrived there during the days of the Revolutionary War, their paths often crossing each other's. I swear I have never seen more delightful ghost characters in my entire life.

3) The Unbound by V.E. Schwab

So by the time I'd picked this up, I was having mixed feelings about V.E. Schwab – on one hand, she'd always written worlds that engage me almost instantly with their creativity. On the other hand, I'd just recently been horribly disappointed by the ending to what's been her most popular series so far: I thought her final Shades of Magic book did a most spectacular job on dropping the balls on everything good about it. Up to reading it, I'd thought the author's hype was deserved. But after, well…

So when I picked this up, it was with much trepidation. I'd loved the previous book, The Archived: the big old house setting, the grim closed-off girl/sweet sunny boy dynamic the lonesome warrior setup, all were like catnip to my id. I didn't want it ruined by a bad sequel. Fortunately, this book took everything I loved about the book and turned it up to eleven. It upped the stakes, it intensified the relationships, and it also added a mental illness angle that I personally found very meaningful.

The author is still kiiinda on notice so I'm not sure I want a third book. If there is one, dear God, please be good. *crosses fingers*

4) Turtles All The Way Down by John Green

I remember thinking, as I was reading this: this is really, really working for me but will it work for someone neurotypical? 2018 was hell and I was just so desperate for the people in my life to get it, and so I kept hopping on trains of thought like this.

Anyway, this book was spot on in what goes on in the wirings of my anxious brain. Green's usual turns of phrase took an incredibly frenetic turn at times, which, I know, is exactly what it's like to have a mental illness. This is not a book about "this is what to do" it's about how it IS or how it can GET.

I'm still really grateful for that quote about the spiral – how it tightens, but also how it eternally widens. When I first saw the cover, I thought it was kind of blah; now I look at that spiral and see something different. I see the hope of creating a new 'normal'.

5) The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

This was so readable it surprised me. I thought I'd go slow on it because: war story where it's a foregone conclusion that it ends tragically for the leads? Yeah, I'm not in a rush to reach the end of that. But I blazed right through this book. There's something really addictive about Madeline Miller's storytelling and how she brings her characters together and follows their blossomings and downfalls through the years. And then, the course of the Iliad and the inevitable sadness for Achilles, Patroclus, and Briseis was more like the slow turning of the tide rather than getting hit with a tidal wave. Anyway, not only was it readable but I'm finding myself eager to re-read it.

6 ) The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

Part of my Read Everything Robin McKinley Writes mission that began last year. I'd liked the sheer escapism and the desert setting in The Blue Sword, but that whole white savior thing kinda put me off from enjoying Harry and the book more fully than I would've liked.

It was not so for this book, thankfully! Who knew that reading about the nitty-gritty of slaying big scaly beasts could be so satisfying? That's classic Robin McKinley, as I'm learning – you love what the protag loves. And then I really dug how the dead dragon's ghost haunting Aerin acts as a metaphor for mental illness.

(As I continue to wrestle with my diagnosis, I continually appreciate all the depression/anxiety metaphors I encounter in media. Maybe one day I'll make a post about it) AND ALSO: a love triangle that's actually well done and that serves our heroine's identity and character rather than taking away from it? Yes. Yes, thank you.

7) A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

Yeah so, this book killed me. It's about two twenty-something ghosts with unfinished business who find themselves in the bodies of two teenagers whose souls appear to have completely vacated theirs. They find themselves falling for each other and trying to find out what happened to their 'hosts' and what went on in their past lives. They also find themselves battling to survive the hostile home lives that their 'hosts' left behind. It's all very beautiful and kind of twisted and also a love letter to words and probably my most unexpected book of the year. And I have NO idea to rec it to people. "Read this, it's kind of fucked up but gorgeous but also can get triggery so step warily?" Uh.

8) Deerskin by Robin McKinley

See warnings above. Oh God. But really, I totally respect Robin McKinley for going full-out faithful to how utterly fucked up fairy tales can be while still creating a survival story. I'm not just talking about Lissar surviving spoilers incestual rape and miscarriage (indeed, I'm not qualified to talk about it) but how hers is a story of healing: by surviving the elements, by nursing living things back into life, by building herself up into a legend without even knowing it.

9) Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor

Just an incredibly satisfying ending to a duology that at the same time echoes that quote from Michael Ende's The Neverending Story: "but that is another story and shall be told another time." I love when something ends with that sense of: "there are even more stories and adventures for our beloved characters out there than you can possibly fathom, and you are now free to make up them yourself."

10) Autoboyography by Christina Lauren

I was intrigued by the premise: a half-Jewish guy and a Mormon guy fall for each other over the course of a writing class. And upon starting it, I could tell straight (heh, straight) away that it was going to be a favorite. It's an unabashedly kilig romance about falling for the wonderfulness in each other,and both mains are fucking adorable, and made me want to give them both a ton of hugs. Oh, and this book further reinforced my belief that the key to first-person writing is having a good voice.

Another thing is, I basically never see YA books that deal with growing up in a religion and actually-loving it and having it be an inextricable part of your identity… and then having to deal with the darker, prejudiced sides that you really wish would be excised from it altogether especially if they are opposed to who you are. To deal with it sensitively and touchingly, not only in a YA book but in an m/m romance? Well done.

honorable mention!

-The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I was reading this on the bus on the way home to the province for Christmas and I could not stop laughing and I had no idea to explain to my very curious sister that it was because half the protagonists were high as a kite at the funeral of the friend that they all killed and one of them had just very noisily killed a bee in the church vestibule and it made the loudest sound on the planet and they're all gonna have to ~aesthetically grieve and pallbear now even though THEY killed their friend and w o w it's like Nuwanda from Dead Poets Society was cloned five times.

Sometimes "pretentious people murder someone and somehow it is hilarious" is just exactly my cup of tea.

and a couple of series binges!

Almost 10 years ago (god, what the hell), I had a "YA Paranormal Romances I Might Actually Like" list, and the two trilogies below were on it. There's something gratifying about finally crossing off books on your TBR that have been there for ages:

-The Shade Trilogy by Jeri Smith-Ready (Shade, Shift, Shine) This series came out on the tail of the Great YA Paranormal Romance boom and I really wish I'd picked it up then (I also really wish some of the covers it got weren't so damn off-putting. It's like Animorphs all over again) because it's such cut above so many of the books that were being churned out in those days.

The premise is: what if there was a global paranormal event that left the portion of the population born after a certain year with the ability to see ghosts? I really like that the author thought this out thoroughly – it's not just a oooh spooky ghosties gimmick. Everything is affected: the educational system, the police force, politics, technology, travel, you name it.

The heroine was smart and truth-seeking and had nuancedrelationships with lots of female characters (bff, mentor, aunt who raised her, mom who died… ), the Betty love interest was a total sweetheart who also didn't seem too good to be true and who was capable of making major teenage fuck-ups, and the Veronica love interest was a rock-and-roll ghost who had the post-life character arc that I sadly wish Maggie Stiefvater had given Noah Czerny. I kind of loved them all a lot and one of the reasons I wish I'd read these books as they came out was so I could've been un-jaded just a little bit about Those Pesky Love Triangles.

(Someday I…really ought to make an analysis about why I dislike love triangles in general and what exactly was up with the ones that DID work for me.)

-Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater

I read the whole series toward the year's end. It was precisely the cold-weather binge I was craving. I may have my quarrels with some of her writing decision, but really few people can do atmospheric, poetic writing the way Maggie Stiefvater does. The romances were a bit too YA for me in this one, but I ended up really sympathizing with every single POV character anyway. And I mean, cold and poetry and family and books and wolves-as-family*.

(*One day, I'll have the emotional armor to watch Wolf's Rain again. )