#also the fact that (iirc?) this is the first inside cover where a character is actually in nature

[lagtrain]

csm vol17 inside cover being yoshida, looking so miserable and vulnerable, standing in nature next to a tree while he leans over in a pose that looks scarily similar to how he would if he were hanging from that tree... i feel ill

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 15

death awaits!

oh god the cover. I aint ready 

the cover of overlords open mouth w/rodimus floating inside or w/e,,,,the overlord mouth fixation continues i see

and of COURSE its by nick roche. of course

oh god the tension and dread in the first page, as we get overlords sinister promise to murder everyone, starting with rewind, and then seeing chromedome rush over to open the door, and knowing that 30 minutes have passed already...

that full page spread of everyone vs overlord is amazing

also I always thought that ambulon was trying to kick overlord but now that I look closer he’s actually jumping away from overlord, having just crashed one of those hover...thingys....into him...which is honestly cool as hell. also I'm never over the fact that ambulon kinda looks like he’s smiling here, just having a grand ole time as overlord tries his best to murder everyone

and chromedome just seeing this and saying ‘rewind?’ is fucking killing me thanks

PIPES NO DONT DO THIS. YOURE JUST RUBBING SALT IN THE WOUND. PLEASE don't talk about how much fun you're having on your wacky space adventure oh god, that’s just asking to be murdered,

GOD AND THERE HE GOES, DRIVING TO HIS DOOM. PIPES NO

AUGHHHHHHHHHH AND THERES OVERLORD WITH HIS GIANT FOOT. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

PIIIIIPES ;_; 

his messed up goodbye thoughts are brutal...plus the final shot of him laying all busted up....god :( 

that guy seriously had some awful luck this trip. rip lil guy

BUT he sounded the alarm!!! so good for him!! that's a pretty amazing final act right there

oh my god I forgot abt this scene where rewind is like ‘so brainstorm why is my husband saying your name in his sleep :))))’ and brainstorm is like ‘haha idk its certainly not because we’re working on a secret project together, so jot that down!’ lmao brainstorm....

also dw rewind brainstorm is not fucking ur husband, just look at his evidentially extensive collection of perceptor-style microscopes...my man is microscopesexual 

I forgot abt the metabomb omfg

‘some of my favorite words are monosyllabic’ rodimus ily, himbo of my heart,

fort max :( rung :( 

oughhghghg I forgot abt the scene of tailgate making cyclonus a new horn ;_; and then cyclonus materializes menacingly bc tg dared to volunteer their room for movie night hvbfshdjkfbaskj cyclonus anti-social icon

AUGHHHH GOD THE PANEL OF RATCHET TALKING ON THE COMMS AND OVERLORD IS JUST, RIGHT BEHIND HIM, WITH HIS BIG STUPID LIPS, OH MY GOD

what the fuck, is drift a flying car??? hello??? what the hell????

seriously he’s got like, rockets and shit, what the fuck

anyways, the entire exchange b/w ratchet and drift here kills me, for multiple reasons.... ‘my faith and my sword’ lmao love it. and then ratchet refusing to leave drift and calling him his friend ;_; aughhh

rodimus w/the squad like ‘lets go gays!!!’ 

also I guess cosmos WAS on the lost light lol, totally didn't remember that, I'm guessing he left at some point to go be in the other series lmao 

I'm sorry but ‘amazing. you speak entirely in name’ is so fucking funny, but also like stfu overlord you're not allowed to be funny

MAGNUSSSSSSSS

now I'm confusing myself lmao, rodimus DID know abt overlord, didn't he??? wasn't that the whole thing???? I don't remember if he was involved w/the whole mnemosurgery plan but he at least knew that overlord was there...but we haven't been told that in-story yet so now I'm questioning that lmao

oh god I forgot that overlord almost kills magnus, jeeeeesus. good thing he’s a russian nesting doll otherwise he probably would've died fr 

also damn that's gotta be scary for everyone else, bc magnus is The Big Guy, and a renown fighter...plus drift got all fucked up...yall are in for a bad time 

tailgate gettin his panic on I see

swerve w/the meta narration lmao 

cyclonus ily sm.......

rodimus charging at overlord....ohhh my boy not your best idea

cd and rewind both saying ‘I thought you were dead!’ HHHHHHHH I'm destroyed fuck it all

rodimus (inadvertently) saving the day by saying ‘til all are one’...iconic!!

FORT MAX IS HEREEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

drift just casually chillin w/no legs

chromedome going into extreme detail about all the mnemosurgery he’s been doing on overlord for WEEKS while rewind is Right There....my dude.

this issue has a LOT of completely white backgrounds but I cant even rlly blame milne bc this seems like more drawing work than usual

oh god cd don't say ‘we’ll finish this conversation later’ at a time like this, that’s never a good idea,

rewind no don't do it :( :( :( 

that panel of cd’s arm getting cut off...AUGHHH

GODDDDDDD IM FUCKING CRYING. AUGHHHHHHHHHHH I.....

so incredibly fucked that cd does what’s best for rewind by blowing the pod up....hhhhh god 

and then that last panel of cd laying on the ground....fucking destroy me!!!!!!!!

also I love that at the beginning of the issue we see whirl with the missile launcher thing, and that’s what cd uses at the end here....good bookends. jro is really great about putting stuff in the story that just seems like innocuous filler/fun character building but turns out to ALSO be plot relevant later

HOLY SHIT I forgot about the cast page with the big red X’s thru the dead people’s profiles....jesus christ 

AUGH this issue was a rollercoaster, phew...and the emotionally devastating conclusion to this arc is still yet to come! 

I will say that it’s super interesting looking back on this, in the sense that rewind & chromedome are introduced as the first ever gay tf couple, and a few issues after we get told this explicitly, rewind is killed. this doesn't really end up being an issue representation-wise bc literally everyone is gay and there are a bunch of other significant gay characters/relationships later on, AND rewind comes back later 

but still! it’s interesting to think about how, at the time this came out, the phrase/concept ‘bury your gays’ wasn't really something that was talked about a lot (or like, it was, but not as often as nowadays, and not really under the term ‘bury your gays’ iirc), but at the time of publication this would have fallen under that trope (though rewind coming back later negates it imo). I think it would've been tough for this story to come out nowadays due to the backlash that would've occurred from rewind’s initial death (it also makes me wonder if there was any backlash when this DID come out) 

to be clear, this isn't a writing criticism - in fact, the reason this is able to work at all is because of the crazy amount of representation mtmte has. it’s like, youre able to kill off gay characters without it being ‘bury your gays’ if literally all your characters are gay by default, and there are a bunch of significant gay relationships happening - technically speaking, any death in mtmte is bury your gays lmao 

this is a completely disjointed rant but my point is like, if this issue came out in 2020 people would probably be pretty put off by rewind dying (understandably), but in the context of the series as a whole I don't consider this to be bad writing/bad representation/bury your gays 

and like, WERE people really mad about this in 2013? I am curious now, bc I would definitely feel kinda betrayed if I didn't know all the stuff that happens later 

but its pretty nice, because now I'm free to enjoy the writing and be emotionally devastated by rewinds death in a normal way, and not a ‘I'm angry at the writers for killing off one of the only gay characters’ kinda way

anyways I'm tired as hell so I'm going to bed, ill continue the emotional devastation later, phew

[a-shrieking-cloud-of-bats]

okay so long breakdown of my experience with Morrowind as a starter I first tried to play the game last year, fumbled it, repeated that a few times, before dropping it for a while and eventually coming back to it the past few days and running through it! Ran a Nord, Heavy Armor, Warrior, used almost no non scroll magic, notably used them to deal with locks, used divine intervention once during that one Baar Dau bit in the main story, probably a handful of other scroll usages for random junk. I also didn’t do the expacs and I haven’t played Oblivion in a while so I’m trying to avoid in depth comparisons to it. I’ll start off by saying I did enjoy it overall, and while I don’t think it stole my Favorite TES Award,  it definitely left a mark, and I think my favorite bit of it was the main quest, the tone was just something I liked more then the other two TES games and all in all the whole mysterious diseases angle felt a bit more urgent then more nebulous threats like demons and dragons. Additionally, the plot conceptually I think is just a lot more fun to think about rather then “x is attacking!”, and I think the things like ash creature ambushes and ominous dreams helped that feeling a lot. All in all I feel it was a bit better handled to boot, and I particularly liked the whole “your cover story for being in the blades is that you’re an adventurer because they’re all over the place, you’d blend in, and you’re gonna need to be fighting anyway so you might as well develop that skillset”, since it allowed for explicit breaks in the main quest line where he’d tell you to go do other stuff for a while and “keep your cover story up to date” while he did research or whatever. Added to the settling, added to the plot, added a reason to go faff around in a dungeon and maybe find something cool. Maybe. We’ll get to that.

But the cover story thing is super appreciated because it’s an issue I frequently ran into in other games where it just never really felt like you had a stopping point in the main quest line, if you were playing as if you were legitimately concerned with the status of the main quest. Like, with Skyrim you start out. . . -escape from Helgen -go down to Riverwood with whoever -they tell you Riverwood’s in potential danger so you go up and talk to the jarl -he tells you to help with his investigations of the dragons (if you’re playing a bit more apathetic of a character this could potentially be a time to step out but let’s assume a sort’ve “lawful good” here) - you go down to bleak falls barrow, come back - a dragon attacks the tower, you go investigate and fight it - End Scene; and even then I think it wouldn’t be a stretch to feel like you had to answer the summons, and that goes through a very long road trip, a dungeon, and a dragon fight before you get to a solid “I need to do things, go outside and play” style stopping point. and after all that you’re like.... an hour or two into the game? It’s not absurd but it’s quite a bit compared to silt stridering over to Balmora and getting told to go have fun, and it’s not a game breaking thing, obviously the player doesn’t absolutely have to be told to stop doing main quest stuff, but it was a nice touch that I liked. At any rate I liked the main quest, but I think the thing I was most impressed with was the travel. I went into Morrowind thinking I was going to hate wandering around 24/7 and paying fees and so on and so forth but actually it felt pretty great after a while! I came out of Morrowind preferring the “carriage” system rather then the fast travel system, just because getting more mobility options and strength in that category was interesting to me. Given that I was playing the least mobile “class” in the game; heavy armor weighs a lot which slows your ground speed (I think) and weakens your jumping, with no magic and no knowledge of how to get propylon indices working, I think that’s pretty glowing praise. I also liked the way enchanted gear worked in Morrowind, where there are usable artifacts and passive artifacts, passive artifacts just give you the boost, and usable artifacts are purposely triggered to get an effect and slowly recharge over time, which is a game changer. I know I don’t really use enchanted weapons in Skyrim because it’s not that big a boost and juggling soul gems and soul traps is a pain in the butt, but if they recharged over time I might be more inclined. Again, a nice little thing the game does differently. The graphics were wildly better then I expected, and I think the game is an excellent example of restrictions creating a unique and good looking style in some cases. The polygonal models really add a lot to the fairly eerie main quest backdrop and pretty hostile game world overall, and ultimately the game just sort’ve creates its’ own aesthetic and it’s super good despite being very obviously dated. The entire inside the ghost fence part of the end game was spooky as hell and felt very climactic despite the landscape looking like something that came out of 3D Studio Max circa 1990. And on a side note, Diyavath Fir’s tower and the Corprusarium were a really cool dungeon concept and I’m very surprised the whole “sequential treasure chests with keys in them that eventually lead to a prize” thing hasn’t been done again since IIRC. With all the praise out of the way, let’s get to stuff I was more neutral on or outright disliked (there’s surprisingly little of the latter, by the way). To start off, I felt gear progression felt super weird. I started out by buying a full set of steel armor and an iron long sword and I didn’t get an upgrade until like, halfway through my playtime, so like, two days total, and my long sword went un-upgraded even longer. After a while I found a silver long sword and about an hour after that I found a daedric katana and suddenly the game was basically over past that point because I was 2 shotting everything that wasn’t a higher end ash creature or daedra. It felt very spotty, it wasn’t a game changer or anything, and to be fair once the armor upgrades started going, that progression didn’t feel too bad either (though my shield did get upgraded from steel to daedric). Not a huge deal, but it was a thing. The end game quest line where you’re re-uniting the tribes and houses is a huge chore and also holds the only two escort missions in the game which I don’t think is a co-incidence. I liked the house quests more initially since they were more tightly packed in and had fast travel options around. . . buuuut they quickly became a gold count check. Having to get confirmation from councilors that, by their own mention, wouldn’t be necessary, was also obnoxious, though I didn’t mind that as much, as the whole declaring a war leader thing is a big deal and I can believe that from a plot standpoint. Still didn’t like it. I am aware I could’ve skipped all this with reputation, and that’s fair, but I still think as a quest line it’s a bit much; though I dunno how I’d fix it without banging up the plot significantly, to be fair. All the side quests I did were pretty bland. Lotta “go here, clear this dungeon, come back get x gold”, some “go here, fetch y guy, bring him back, get z gold”. Sometimes you didn’t even get rewarded, though the reputation system makes up for that. I ended up stopping about halfway into House Redoran because the quests were, by and large, just dungeon clear quests and I was vastly more interested in the main quest. It’s something I might take more interest in on a second play through. You can end up trivializing combat very quickly, which was probably a part of why I didn’t end up liking the end game so much. Part of that’s my fault; athletics and acrobatics were minor skills, it basically put me on a timer, and some people like the “I’m level 20 and I can crush anything in the game like a walnut” thing, which is fair. I did end up finishing it at about level 23, and I’ve heard scaling stops at 20, so that’s about right to be fair. Though I’ve also heard Dagoth Ur scales up to 35? It sure didn’t feel like it, and overall it kind’ve made the whole lead up into Dagoth’s big moment a bit of an anticlimax, I hit him like six times for the fight and I got most of the heart fiddling done before he brought me to half. A big part of why I even almost died was because I didn’t realize I had to run back over the bridge. Though that all might be a side effect of running a heavy armor warrior, IIRC they’re pretty easy, but I also did surprisingly little side stuff. It just sorta feels like if you do anything other then the main quest you’ll trivialize the final stages of it, and if you do the main quest you trivialize the extra stuff? It’s a bit of an odd problem to solve and it seems like they’ve still not gotten it quite right, to be fair. I’m trying to think of stuff I outright hated and really all I can think of is the fact that NPCs stand in “one NPC wide” hallways and doorways like it’s their job. A not insignificant part of why I gave up on Redoran is because getting through under-skar was hell because of all the guards just shuffling around on rope bridges and staring at me anytime I got anywhere near them while they clogged up the road. But yeah, overall had a good time and I probably played the least complex character type, so that’s definitely a good sign. I look forward to playing it again and playing with magic more; already thinking on an acrobat like, athletics/acrobatics/whatever magic school does jump/move speed boosts character and getting a bit more into the setting with it, eventually. I definitely get why people love the game so much and while I don’t think I hooked into it quite as hard I admit I haven’t played something quite like it before, between the aesthetics and mechanics either, and admittedly most of my complaints were half complaints, so that’s definitely not a bad track record. Will definitely play again at some point.

[deathgatesideblog]

The DGC Anime, Part 1

So let’s figure out what DGC would be like as an anime.

(Cut because it’s PRETTY LONG)

Basics:

The theme/opener would be a narration (think Avatar: The Last Airbender) explaining how the Sundering happened and the Patryns and Sartan hate each other. As each world is mentioned, you see  images associated with them.

       Arianus: a dragon-ship, the Kicksey-winsey, and maybe the High Realms?

     Pryan: lots of greenery (with a dragon or two blending into the background), the citadels, a tytan

     Abarrach: a corpse that doesn’t look like a corpse (so it’s fresh) but has a creepy phantasm behind it (also you can’t see the Sartan hair, so I guess it’s bald?), the Fire Sea, Kairn Necros

     Chelestra: an iceberg with… something… inside it… and the iceberg gets a little smaller each episode until all you see are red red eyes…. Surunan, maybe just a shot of the ocean?

Nexus: spires and pretty forests and stuff

Labyrinth: the River of Anger, the Final Gate, lots and lots of bones (possibly being gnawed on by horrifying monsters)

Vortex: idk, a big room, I guess?

*****

Someone would have to figure out Sartan and Patryn runes so that the spells make sense. I do not envy this person.

*****

Character designs are important. Each world and race has a slightly different style. I like to think that Patryns in the Labyrinth wear things like furs, leathers, and low-quality cloth in colors that help them blend into the background. Geg fashion is inspired by the 1800s and early 1900s, aka the Age of the Factory. The Kenkari need to look like butterflies. Humans on Chelestra can be kind of Polynesian-inspired.

Haplo: It’s apparently traditional to garb the hero/protagonist in red and blue, so let’s start him out in a very dark navy shirt and the most blend-in-everywhere brown pants imaginable. And bandages, of course. As the series progresses, he gets to wear lighter blues and maybe a bit of red. If he stays in an elemental world a long time, he keeps his basic color scheme but starts dressing like a human of that place to better blend in… until he gives up pretending he’s not a Patryn, that is. (It would be kind of funny to give him a trace of jailbird orange because he ends up in so many prisons, but I somehow can’t really imagine him in something like that.)

Alfred: He canonically has a pretty dumb, fancy outfit, but I can work with that. It’s purple, but the shirt beneath his coat is off-white. White is the color most associated with the Sartan, but Alfred is a bit, well, off for a Sartan (Zifnab might have a different shade of off-white in his design too). As the series progresses, he loses his frills and stuff so that he looks a bit more influenced by Sartan and/or Patryn styles. Also, it is very important to me that his eyes are the exact same shade of blue as rune-magic/Patryn tattoos to symbolize that 1) he has rune-magic, 2) is in fact obscenely powerful, and 3) has an affinity with the Patryns.

Hugh: Does not wear black because that’s the Kir color. He could also potentially wear dark blue at first because he’s the decoy protagonist. After his resurrection, maybe he could wear very dark purple to symbolize how Alfred has negatively affected him.

Bane: He needs to look nothing at all like the king and queen. 

Marit: In flashbacks, she and Haplo wear typical Patryn garb. In the present, she’s kept the colors and general style, but the quality of her clothes is nicer. Less fur, more fabric. Practical hairstyle. I know it’s long on the one canon picture we have of her (though you could argue that cover art isn’t particularly canon), but maybe short or just shoulder-length? Also weapons.

*****

There are only six seasons. We skip over Elven Star almost entirely. On Abarrach, when Alfred asks Haplo if he found any Sartan on Pryan, Haplo gives like a three-sentence summary of important things we need to know, adds that it was awful and Alfred should be glad he didn’t have to suffer through it, and then we move onto the good stuff. There can be a few more flashbacks when Xar visits the citadel to explain anything more.

*****

Footnotes can be those little pause-things where chibi versions of the characters explain stuff. I don’t know what they’re called. However, we shouldn’t need footnotes about timekeeping because let’s just pretend that everyone uses days and years to avoid confusion, okay? Because the canonical timekeeping systems just confused me.

*****

That’s it for now. Next time I’ll ramble on about my thoughts for the musical score (I do not know much music theory).

Oh wow, what an excellent surprise! These are some really cool thoughts, allow me to add some of my own!

Theme/opener: I like the idea of the first opener being a narration/backstory kinda thing, but I have to also hold out for that classic Anime OP packed with symbolism and showcasing the characters fighting and junk. So gotta have some of those types of openings after the first hypothetical season.

Character designs: I really really did the Geg’s fashion/society being based off Industrial Revolution kinda stuff. Another route you could go is more steampunkish (and you’d have precedent, considering how the video game portrays Drevlin– not that you really want to use the video game for anything, but you feel me, lol) but that’s already kinda based on that time period anyway, so *shrug*

Haplo: iirc Haplo’s usually wearing a white shirt with brown pants and a vest, but heck, man, this is an anime, and more complicated costumes are kind of par for the course. Red-and-blue is a fitting color scheme, certainly.

Alfred: Here’s where anime’s proud tradition of ridiculous outfits can truly shine. Make me proud. Canon-wise he literally spends the whole series in that outfit, and I think it would be kinda funny to reflect that by having him wear the exact same coat all the time but in different colors, to suggest that he’s using the exact same pattern every single time. I think no matter what happens with the rest of his outfit, the coat’s probably staying. He just likes it a lot, okay??

Hugh: I like the idea of dressing Hugh up as a decoy protagonist, very appropriate. To me, his outfit is less important than what his hair’s doing, honestly, lol. He’s got a beard with a braid in it!! That’s cool!! And in the fifth book/season, when he’s depressed, he would look really sloppy and not taking care of himself.

Marit: LOOKS NOTHING LIKE THE ONE IMAGE WE HAVE OF HER, FIGHT ME, IN WHAT WORLD IS CHESTNUT HAIR BLONDE ANYWAY???? But yeah, pretty much what you said :P

Skipping Elven Star: Interesting idea. I mean, sucks if you happen to like that book, but I’M not going to argue with that, certainly, and it definitely seems like it’d be possible to do… You’d miss out on a lot of the setup, and you’d have to rearrange some things, especially concerning Zifnab, which could get messy, but I definitely think you could do it effectively. 

(Relevant addition to this conversation: Hand of Chaos feels like the kind of season you get when the animators are waiting for the manga to get ahead so they make a filler arc. Except it’s not quite a pure filler arc. But it’s disjointed enough from the rest of the series to kind of feel that way. You get me?)

Little chibi characters explaining stuff in lieu of footnotes: OH MY GOODNESS CUTE (would also fit great for bonus episodes, or those little end-of-episode previews that are sometimes a thing)

[eirenical]

15, 20, and 25?

Thanks for asking, @takethewatch!  (If anyone else wants to send me some, here they are.)

15. five most influential books over your lifetime.

Oh, boy.  That’s not an easy one, is it?  I’ve read way too many books.  XD

OK, this list has to start with the Last Herald-Mage trilogy by Mercedes Lackey.  IIRC, LHM had been recommended to me by an English teacher in 8th grade, along with Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series and another series that I don’t think I ever actually read?  Looking back--and considering that this was in 1991/1992--those were really bold recommendation choices.  LHM’s protagonist is gay, and gay couples are present in the Pern series, too (though I’m not certain I recognized them as such back then).  Anyway, the point is that LHM entered my life at a time when I was totally open to whatever I was reading and would accept world-building choices without question.  Vanyel loved boys?  OK.  *shrug*  I just accepted it, lock, stock, and barrel.  Sure the characters in the story gave him a hard time for it, but the author clearly thought it was OK, so clearly it was OK, and I just ran with that.  And I didn’t realize until much later what a HUGE life-altering thing that was.  And it happened so quietly, I didn’t even realize it had happened.  Non-straight people existed, they were valid, and their stories were worth telling.  I don’t even have the words to describe how utterly huge that was for 13 year old me, but IT WAS. 

(Side note: There is another thing that I accepted lock, stock, and barrel from ML’s books, as well as a few others I loved with similar characters that were NOT so healthy, too: a) overworking yourself to the point of exhaustion and collapse is the sign of a hero, and b) being willing to sacrifice the things you want for the greater good/so the people around you can be happy is definitely the Way To Be.  And since vet school reinforced those mindsets LIKE NOBODY’S BUSINESS, I ended up with a really significant martyr complex that I’ve only recently begun to realize within the last 5 years or so is SUPER UNHEALTHY.  So... YIKES.  -.-;;;)

This isn’t a book, so it might be cheating, but as far as life-altering stories go, fair game by @myrmidryad has to go on the list.  First of all, it’s just flat out AMAZING (the whole series is, for that matter), and I highly recommend it.  Second of all, my journey didn’t exactly parallel Courfeyrac’s in this story, but the realizations he had throughout the story struck enough chords in me that reading them helped me figure out that I was asexual, too.  And that had been a realization I’d been dancing around for months, at that point, but still never seriously thought I’d land on.  But after reading this fic, not only did I finally managed to land, but I managed to ground and stabilize there, as well as, start coming to terms with it.  And that was just as huge as the realization I had over LHM in 8th grade--it was just that this one happened with a bang instead of a whimper.  ;D

Every horse book ever written by Marguerite Henry.  ^_^  I was horse-crazy as a kid and horse-crazy as a young adult and though I really can’t ride anymore because of my back, I’m still horse-crazy, now.  But thanks to these books, I ended up at horseback riding camp where I met two of the best friends I’ve ever had.  ^_^

Snow Dog (and many of his other dog books, but especially that one) by Jim Kjelgaard.  Same basic story, here as with Marguerite Henry.  I loved this book SO MUCH when I was young.  I completely wore out the spine I re-read it so often.  If you had told me as a child that I could only keep one book out of my (even at the time) extensive collection, it would have been this one, hands down.  I don’t honestly even know why it affected me so profoundly, but it did.  And it and Marguerite Henry’s books were definitely two of the influences that set me on the path to veterinary medicine, so that definitely can’t be discounted.  ^_^

And... now I’m in the same position you were in @takethewatch.  WHAT DO WITH 5TH SPOT.  O_o;;;  THERE IS TOO MUCH.  But I think ultimately, it has to be Tamora Pierce’s Wild Magic and the Lioness Quartet that go here.  For, ironically, wildly opposing reasons.  I read Wild Magic when I was in early high school and still very deep in my horsiest horse-crazy mode.  Girl who communes so deeply with horses that she practically becomes one and talk to all animals?  SIGN ME THE FUCK UP.  But what hit me so hard about Daine’s story and Alanna’s both was this: that scene where Daine was told that it was OK to give up her skirts, to give up the things that are considered traditionally feminine, and that Alanna flat out gave up being a girl entirely for the right to pursue her dream, because at the time, I was still very much a tomboy.  I loved to dance, but that that about the only feminine thing I did.  In fact, I felt SO strongly against all things feminine, that if I’d grown up now, instead of then, I might have identified as agender or nonbinary.  Looking back on it, it’s also possible that that was a bit of internalized misogyny at work, maybe a little bit of bb!aro/ace me peeking up from under the covers, but I’d never really felt comfortable or interested in most things that were coded as feminine, so I don’t know.  Anyway, that was thing number one: that there were heroines out there who rejected the feminine and weren’t punished for it by the story.  Here’s the second: that Alanna decides in the third book that she DOES like some feminine things and even more than that, it’s OK that she likes some feminine things.  She isn’t any less a warrior.  She isn’t any less respected.  She isn’t any less a badass.  She’s still her... she just occasionally likes to wear dresses.  And that was HUGE for me.  That I could be a tomboy and still prefer all the scrub around in the dirt things that I did and still not be genteel and fragile and feminine... but if I wanted to wear a dress or a skirt because I liked the feel of it swirling around me... THAT WAS OK and it didn’t commit me to being a girly-girl.  And that was something I desperately needed to hear at the time--that there is no wrong way to be female.  You can prefer pants and still occasionally want to wear dresses and really it’s just about what makes you comfortable; it doesn’t change who you are inside, whoever that is.

20. would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else?

Between the three, I’d have to say Hogwarts, for the sole reason that I’d get to have magic and yet would still get to keep my technology, the Internet, and Broadway, too.  ;D

25. could you live as a hermit? 

For short periods of time, yeah, I think I could, and quite happily.  I’d love to have a little cottage out somewhere in a forest clearing with lots of growing things around me, enjoying a much simpler, grounded kind of life.  But ultimately, I need people, too.  And all those modern conveniences I mentioned above.  ^_~  So, while that life sounds HIGHLY appealing as a sabbatical from reality, I wouldn’t want it to be my everyday life.  ^_^