#anyway I've read one too many fantasy novels lately where the leads don't actually like each other

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

“Sweetheart, if you knew the things I could do with you, you’d have run away a long time ago,” said the young man standing below the arch of the city gate.  If you looked at him full-on he seemed normal enough, but catch him in your peripheries and he seemed Wrong somehow.  Like he had too many sides to him, or like his limbs were just out of proportion, or like he moved with a grace that wasn’t quite human.  He reached out to run a finger along a stray lock of hair escaped from the pigtails of the young woman he was talking to.     

She groaned loudly.  “Don’t. We’ve known each other far too long for this bullshit.” 

The man grinned.  It was an unexpected grin, usually men like this are expected to smirk, or leer, or smile slyly, or even quirk an eyebrow if it came to it.  But the grin was real, open and glad, briefly washing away the aura of inhumanity and leaving merely a boy who very much liked talking to this girl. 

“But it’s funny.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“But it’s really funny.”

Let’s back up a bit.  Everyone knows that history repeats itself and certain outcomes always arise.  Violence is condoned through complacency.  Tyranny lasts for a while then tends to burn itself out.  Empires always end up toppled in the end.  These are our stories, at least, which crop up again and again.  The principle is true in other lands as well, they just happen to view different things as histories. 

Fulfaran was particularly high in story density as cities went.  It seemed you couldn’t turn a corner without running into a run-away princess, or a charming scoundrel, or a crone (crones were particularly bad – it was a 50/50 chance as to whether they’d try to destroy your life or give you genuinely good advice).  The markets were teeming with exotic goods, the castle at the top of the hill flew its banners brightly in the breeze, and there were established parts of town you went to only if you wanted to a. meet an orphan, b. meet a thief or c. fall down a hole.  Rather a good place for Reynard and Connie, who tended to be plagued by stories. 

Constance was a baker’s daughter who had been taken as a teenager to live in a tower by a witch in exchange for her impoverished family receiving enough gold to live on.  She never fully understood that witch’s motivations but that’s just how it went.  She had immediately proceeded with a number of escape attempts, most of which failed until Reynard had ridden below her window and she had bargained with him until he snuck a rope inside with her food deliveries.  He had claimed to be a prince, but wasn’t.  Connie knew he wasn’t quite human either, but he didn’t seem to want to talk about it and she didn’t want to pry. 

She had wanted to go home, but she knew the witch would try to exact vengeance.  So, she said her goodbyes for a second time and started out in the opposite direction, which happened to be where Rey was headed as well (or so he claimed, in truth he had no direction or purpose.  But he liked Connie, she was sensible and she made him laugh). 

Unfortunately, it seemed the two of them were not fated to have an easy path.  For one, events kept transpiring which forced Rey into situations where he was expected to betray Connie.  Said events seemed rather upset every time he simply told her everything and they worked out a solution together.  Connie, on the other hand, was continuously being offered chances to fight royalty and claim a kingdom.  It wasn’t that she wouldn’t like a kingdom, she commented once as the two of them wandered through the woods, but she didn’t think she had the training to run one.  She was, after all, a baker’s daughter.  She could make excellent bread but she didn’t care for administration. 

They also stubbornly refused to fall in love with each other, which seemed to make the stories very distressed indeed.  This was not helped by how within a few hours of meeting they had become firm friends – Connie rather thought they had been expected to be unlikely allies who hated each other at first.  But it wasn’t in either of their natures to hate very hard and she liked Rey – he was clever and cutting, but never cruel.

Eventually the events all became too much, which is why they had come to where they were, the main gate of Fulfaran.  The storied city.  Surely someone here must know how they could get out of this. 

Connie felt herself smiling back despite herself.  “Fine, it’s a little funny but I honestly don’t know how you can say stuff like that in public without wanting to curl up into a ball and die,” she said starting to walk again, under the gate into the crowds.  Rey fell into step beside her. 

“I have no shame,” he shrugged, “besides, I don’t know any of these people. No one’s paying attention and even if they were, they’d think it’s normal.  I’m pretty sure I saw at least three pairs of ‘people who definitely hate each other’ coming in after us."

Connie was going to reply, but she was cut off by a harsh voice that had snuck into their path. 

“Child! I see greatness in you—”

“Oh not today, thank you!” said Rey, doffing his cap to the aged woman in the dark cloak swaying before them.  Connie summoned up her best customer service smile, the one with just enough of a hint of rage in it that it tended to shut people up without them knowing why, and slipped past the figure. 

“Wait!” the crone cried, “there is a prophecy—”

“Probably not me,” said Connie cheerily over her shoulder.  “Try that girl with midnight-blue eyes over there, that’ll do the trick.”  She rolled her eyes at Rey who grimaced. 

“When we get to the inn we’re taking the most boring room imaginable,” he said emphatically.  “Nothing on the top floor, nothing with secret passages, just four walls and a bed.”  The two of them had long since given up on multiple rooms, or even multiple beds.  No matter how hard they searched every inn was always just a little too full. 

“We better do it quick, I want to sleep before dinner.  Who did you say this place was recommended by again?”

“Basically everyone I know who’s been here,” said Rey, scanning the buildings as they passed.  “They say it’s lovely, really quaint and unique. We should be there right around this corner—”

He halted.  Connie almost hit his shoulder but she hardly noticed, too focused on the inn they had found.  It was small and smoky, almost crumbling beneath the weight of the sky.  Hooded figures passed in and out, glimmers of gemstones sometimes flashing out from beneath their clothing.  The sign was covered in enough grime that it couldn’t be read and there was a large board on the front with dozens of papers stuck to it advertising quests, monster-hunts, missing people, missing dogs, various balls, festivals, and competitions, and the best shops to find weapons in the area.  Connie’s heart sank and Rey’s expression told her he was feeling the same thing. 

“I saw a TreacleTavern down the road,” he said under his breath.  TreacleTaverns were in every city and they were all huge and identical.  Connie nodded vigorously.

“Let’s go, let’s go.”  She all but shoved him back down the way they had come. 

As they left she shot one last look over her shoulder.  A young man was staring at them.  He had chestnut brown hair and an intense expression, as though he had seen them before.  He seemed oddly familiar to Connie, though she didn’t know how she might have met him. 

It was probably something very important that she would have lingered on had the circumstances been different.  Unfortunately for the stories, however, she was still extremely invested, come hell or high water, in getting her pre-supper nap.   

[cosmicangst]

weekly reads (12/10)

the bed me books (#1-3) | felicity niven: ★★★☆☆ (duke) | ★★★★★ (baron) | ★★★★☆ (earl)

⤷ series of regency romance books built on the premise of the fmc approaching the mmc for a temporary liaison. felicity niven is quickly rising to the top of my favorite hr authors. one thing i appreciate is the flaws of her characters, especially the mmcs. since many books in this genre appeal to fantasy, sometimes the leads are portrayed as ideals — that while the mmc can be imperfect they can't be too imperfect as to be unattractive or unsexy to the reader. i don't decry this since i actively seek these books out myself. however niven seems largely unafraid to paint her mmcs in unflattering and unattractive lights. and she does all this while maintaining a romance that is still pretty swoonworthy. i also just appreciate that sometimes her leads aren't conventionally physically attractive, which is my catnip in romance novels.

in duke i felt for the fmc and her plight. the chapter where the mmc writes a series of letters while he's convalescent in london and desperate to know if she's found another suitor is my favorite. he kept the lie up a little too long for me to swallow easily since all the while she was literally trying to find a way out of poverty. so that deserved a much longer grovel than it got. but i LOVE that she figured it out much earlier than he or the audience realized. a strength to the writing is how niven withholds information, especially if it's a pov character keeping a secret. and the reveals always catch me by surprise then make me appreciate how much everything they've done or how they act make perfect sense now in retrospect.

earl was just so sweet. i love a short king mmc and the way he just doted on the fmc was so heartfelt i teared up. they're just perfect for each other: he's chatty and sunshine and kind of shameless and uncultured while she's dark, reticent, bookish, and more pragmatic. one amazing small detail is that whenever it was the fmc's pov chapter, her words were written straight out in dialogue because she was ashamed of her lisp but in the mmc's, it was phonetically kept because he loved everything about her, especially the things of which she's most ashamed.

baron though was just the right amount of angst i've been craving. i LIVE for the premise of an mmc who's been too stupid and paternalistic (think knightley but if he was also an idiot) to realize that he's been in love with the fmc all this time until it's too late. and like the actual ramifications of that (the RAMMYS bro). i relished in his despair lmaooo but i was crying basically every other chapter because i could see so much of myself in phoebe and the way she basically molds herself to other people's validation especially the mmc's that a huge part of her journey is shedding that and learning who she really is.

anyway much as i enjoyed these books, my favorite niven is still a convergence of desire. that one is just honest poetry like there's no fighting that

the benevolent society of ill-mannered ladies (#1) | alison goodman: ★★☆☆☆

⤷ i read this thinking it was an hr with mystery elements but turns out it's more historical heist with mystery and romance elements. which i appreciated as a mini palate cleanser but def caught me off guard esp since i felt the romance was not as well paced as i would have liked. but i did appreciate the social justice bent of the "heists" (though any historical fiction that features all the protagonists or "good characters" with modern/anachronistically progressive outlooks on politics or being on the right side all the time kind of turn me off which is why i appreciate anne with an e because characters like anne and marilla who are fundamentally good still initially fall prey to the biases of their time but eventually learn for the better. like if it wasn't for the fmc's sister in this book i would have found the whole thing a little unbelievable to be enjoyable but I DIGRESS.) anyway the machinations in each section were structured a little too same-y that it was slow going on all parts except the "escape" portion of the heists, which i found acceptably suspenseful

my best friend's exorcism | grady hendrix: ★★★★☆

⤷ have no connection to this time period so i unfortunately couldn't fully appreciate the references but idc. this shit wasn't scary (except for a lil bit in the beginning when that normal ass voice said her name which was just unnerving in how deceptively mundane it was) but it did make me sob. you can't give me lifelong devotion (whether you construe it as purely platonic or queerly romantic) and not make me froth at the mouth. these characters prickled me like they always do in horror but i've never rooted for horror protags more than these two best friends. i do get thematically and functionally why the exorcist did what he did but i didn't really feel the impact of it because we don't spend nearly enough time to understand much less be invested in him. the ending otherwise was pretty much perfect.

[alfvaen]

Novel Spark

It's the beginning of a new year, but it's also the beginning of a new month. In which I read a number of books. Guess what? I'm going to tell you about them.

Possible spoilers for Jack L. Chalker's Dancing Gods novels, and Glenda Larke's Stormlord series.

John Scalzi: Agent To The Stars, completed December 2

John Scalzi seems like a nice guy online (though we've seen that one before), but I've been back and forth on his books. I've read the first two Old Man's War books and was kind of meh on the second one so I'm setting that series aside for now. Redshirts was great, though, and I read The Kaiju Preservation Society from the library and liked it too. I've been interested in Starter Villain, and when my wife picked it up I was going to put it on my shelf (well, virtual shelf since it was an ebook) when I remembered that I had put Agent To The Stars on after The Ghost Brigades. I'd read his story about how he came to write this book in the first place, etc., and I was willing to give it a try. And after a somewhat grim fantasy like The Briar King, some kind of lighter SF work might be nice. So here I am, giving it a try.

The basic premise is that aliens come to Earth and want to make contact with humans, but they're kind of amorphous gelatinous things (I'm picturing Yaphit from The Orville or Bob from "Monsters Vs. Aliens" here, mostly) and they've consumed enough of our media to know that humans are not going to react well to them. So their first contact is with an L.A. talent agency, where the job is passed off to our first-person protagonist, Tom Stein, who is introduced to specially-created envoy Joshua.

What follows is not actually madcap, but mostly light-hearted, as Tom has to deal with his star client, rising blonde star Michelle Beck who is fighting for a serious role in a Holocaust movie, reporters trying to figure why he's suddenly behaving so oddly, and his neighbours' decrepit dog, while he tries to figure out how to introduce these aliens to humanity. We also get some examination of that nature of life, consciousness, and identity, though not too deep.

All in all, I liked it better than The Ghost Brigades. After some internal debate about whether I should still go on to Starter Villain next (as opposed to The Collapsing Empire or Lock In), I decided to stick with it for now.

Jack L. Chalker: Songs of The Dancing Gods, completed December 6

Continuing with the Dancing Gods reread; this one is from six years after the original trilogy. It includes an introduction which recaps the original trilogy, but also provides some insight into why he wrote it in the first place. Apparently he had the hankering to write some epic fantasy, so he read some recent books (in what would presumably have been the late 70s) and was struck by how everything was either Tolkien or Conan. Which led him to thinking of an actual fantasy world that could exist that everyone was drawing from, where the rules were set down so the stories were all the same.

Now I was trying to think of what he might have been reading to lead him to these conclusions. So what can I find for 1970s fantasy? Katherine Kurtz's original Deryni series. They don't seem particularly generic to me, neither Tolkienesque or Conanesque. Pern is often mentioned, but it was really science fiction on many levels, as was (spit) Darkover, or C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine books. Lin Carter was literally writing Conan, as well as homages to the genre, so maybe he counts. Shannara didn't get going until 1977, but it did instigate a flood of Tolkienesques, which theoretically could include the Thomas Covenant series, though those were a lot less generic. And most of the other ones I think of (like Dennis McKiernan and Tom Deitz) came out later. So, in sum, I don't know what the hell Chalker was reading. But whatever.

Anyway, the book once again starts slowly, mostly focusing on the one character who got body-swapped last book into a slave body, and the Rules are imposing slave behaviour and thinking. In many ways she's the central character of the book as a result. They wander around for a bit near the beginning, then go on a mission up north to infiltrate enemy territory. (One character has gotten obsessed with "Gilligan's Island" since their sojourn on Earth in the last book. I think it's fair to say that Chalker was not a fan.) One interesting bit of worldbuilding is the ice field they have to cross which is actually an ancient frozen battlefield, with powerful magics that leak out if any of the ice ever melts. So they have to cross it without melting anything. Nice obstacle. (An ice obstacle, heh.) Once again manages to pull it together well enough for the end, but it still doesn't really transcend. One more book to go and then I imagine I will be weeding the entire series from my shelves.

Sarah Kuhn: Heroine Complex, completed December 11

Time for another female diversity book. I have a number of choices among authors that I've read before--Michelle West/Sagara, Premee Mohamed, N.K. Jemisin, S.G. Wong, and Fonda Lee, among others--I felt like it was time to try a new one. I was going back and forth between Tasha Suri and Sherry Thomas, when my wife reminded me of this one, which seemed like it had more of a fun vibe, so I decided to go for it.

Kuhn is half-Japanese, like her main character, Evie Tanaka. Evie is the lifelong friend and put-upon personal assistant of Aveda Jupiter, a.k.a. Annie Chang. After a demonic incursion event in San Francisco, Annie got low-level superpowers, but took the opportunity to rebrand herself as an ass-kicking superheroine/social media star. Evie also got some powers, but given that they're flame powers that tend to get out of control when her emotions get strong, she wishes they'd go away, and has been suppressing them and regimenting her existence ever since, not to mention looking after her little sister after their mother died and their father wandered off. But circumstances force her to stand in for Aveda temporarily, and it throws her carefully balanced life out of whack.

It's a pretty fun read, with characters who are not always rational, but you can understand why they aren't. Drops a lot of clues, some of which I picked up, about future plot twists. Oh, and there's a decent romance subplot too. I enjoyed it and will likely continue in the series; my wife has given me to understand that future books are from different POVs, the next one being Aveda and the one after that Evie's sister Bea.

Glenda Larke: The Last Stormlord, completed December 18

I was expecting to deliberate more on what to read after the Sarah Kuhn. I often file superhero books under "urban fantasy", given their modern settings and the fact that magic is often part of the milieu, and in the Sarah Kuhn book they explicitly have demons, as well as having a romance plot which is very similar to many I've seen in urban fantasy books. So that would tend to preclude reading an urban fantasy book next, leaving "epic fantasy", "science fiction", and, um, all the other genres, which are generally not as well represented.

But apparently as soon as I thought of the Glenda Larke book, my brain was like, "Sure, that'll be fine." I mean, it is an epic fantasy, and it's also the final book in a trilogy, so I can close off another series, which is usually a good thing. Unfortunately, in this case, it's been a while since I read the last one. I think it's possible that after I read Stormlord's Exile I forgot to put this book on my shelves, physical and virtual, so it wasn't on my radar for a while. But also there are certain unmistakeable similarities with the Karen Miller series I was reading. It's possible that those similarities are due to them both being Australian writers, which would explain them both writing series where, firstly, all the civilization is near the south coast and there's a bunch of desert to the north, and second, where the magic is mostly concerned with trying to control weather and bring water to dry lands. It's also kinda long, almost 700 pages, which may put me behind on my Goodreads challenge again (even reduced as it is), but I've decided not to care about that anymore, right? Anyway, it's taken me a while to get back to it, and my memory of what happened previously is spotty. I guess I'll get to see how good Larke's recap game is.

Immediately I am thrown off by the that we start with "Lord Jasper Bloodstone", the only extant Stormlord, who's secretly working with a "waterpainter" named Terelle to help shore up his inadequate weather magic…and before the chapter's over I realize that Terelle is calling him Shale, and I don't remember why he has two different names… But Shale is the main character I remember from the other two books, and I vaguely remember waterpainting, and the desert-dwelling tribesmen they mention, who travel using "pedes", or myriapedes, giant many-legged arthropods, to traverse the dunes.

A large chunk of the action in this book seems to take place in the land of Khromatis, which turns out to be a non-arid land across the desert which turns out to have even more people with water magic. This results in the action being a little fragmented, because just when we have established some of the conflicts going on back in the desert regions (the Quartern) we have a lengthy section set in Khromatis. It feels like a weird choice for the last book in the series to be introducing this new land and new characters. (Though I guess Karen Miller did something similar in her last "Fisherman's Children" book, and it refreshed the plot mightily.)

It all more or less comes together in the end, with bonus next-generation characters for potential sequels. Gets some bonus points for having actual trans (transitioned using magic, no less) and gay characters. Still, I don't know if I will be hunting down more Glenda Larke right away or anything.

Cory Doctorow: Walkaway, completed December 24

I've been reading Cory Doctorow from at least the time his first novel came out--at least his novels, if not his short stories or blog posts back then. I read Makers by installments on Tor.com, which was a weird experience. I met him once in Toronto when he and my wife were both nominated for "Forest of Reading" awards. And these days I'm mostly reading his essays on Pluralistic and feeling pretty left-wing as a result. But I'm a bit behind on the novels. The last one I read was Pirate Cinema, which was decent, and I decided to go onto this one next. Now I'm kinda interested in his Martin Hench novels, so clearly I gotta read this one to get it out of the way. (Like my motivation for reading the Scalzi one a few weeks earlier.)

I initially thought that, as less than 400 pages, I might read it in four days. Instead I ended up taking six…partly because it was Christmas season and we were busy, but also because it was just a dense book, possibly small font size and more words per page, I didn't actually check. But also I didn't find it a particularly compelling read.

It's probably unsurprising to find it similar to a number of earlier Doctorow books, like Makers, Little Brother, and Pirate Cinema. I was a little surprised to find myself reminded of Octavia Butler's Parable of The Sower at times. It's done with multiple third-person POV, which I found kind of distancing, unlike the immediacy of some of Doctorow's other books.

It's set about fifty years in the future, where "zottas", the ultra-rich, are dominating "default" society, so your only options are to be a wage slave forever, or to walk away. The technology, replete with "printers" that can produce such things as entire buildings and complicated pharmaceuticals, makes it fairly easy to survive and thrive outside of "default". So at first it seems like it's mostly going to be comparing strategies for walkaway survival. But the zottas and their mercenaries aren't particularly happy with the success of walkaways, particularly when Walkaway U. develops some groundbreaking technology in brain-scanning-and-uploading.

In the end I was kind of meh on the whole thing, which, perhaps inevitably, ended up revolving around the one walkaway who was a zotta's daughter, and quite frankly that plotline was the most interesting. I didn't really care about the handwavy technology which made it all possible.

Also is the second book in a row with a trans, or possibly intersex, character, who seemed to me to be handled well.

From here I guess I have to decide whether I want to try Martin Hench books like Red Team Blues, or The Lost Cause; I'm leaning more towards the latter, now that I've finished the "Science In The Capital" trilogy, but I guess we'll see.

Jack L. Chalker: Horrors of The Dancing Gods, completed December 29

Bringing the reread of the Dancing Gods series to an end, and at this point I'm wishing I could send a message to my past self and say, "Don't bother, toss them out with the Changewinds books." This one came out in 1995 and as far as I can tell did not need to be. According to the author notes it was inspired by a "horror boom" the happened around that time, which I am not familiar with, but then I was never into horror all that much. I have come to like Stephen King, who is a genre unto himself, and I rarely bother to look past that.

It seems like this time he is leaning harder into actual parody, though I'm only guessing because I keep seeing things that look like references that I don't get, though I was mildly amused by their voyage on the H.P. Hovecraft (to the continent of Yuggoth). We've disposed of the "were" curse, which was the most interesting thing about the earlier books, and Joe only gets POV near the beginning of the book, and then we're with Marge and Joe's son Irving.

There's a lot of talking about good vs. evil whose main conclusion seems to be "they're not all that different", and it's possible that once I used to think that way, but now it doesn't have a lot of appeal for me. Far too much dialogue consist of one character saying something provocative, another one saying "Huh?", and the the first character explaining their profound insights. It gets kind of wearing.

This book also had a trans/intersex character, but given that this is Jack Chalker, they were handled with as much shock and drama as possible. ("Oh no, I've fallen in love with this girl, but she's got male genitalia! This may be an insuperable obstacle to our relationship!") Weird to have a three-book streak, though.

It'll probably be a while before I read any more Chalker. I remember last time I reread the Well World books that I noticed a definite decline in quality, so I'm almost afraid to revisit them again; probably the Flux & Anchor books won't hold up either. Four Lords of the Diamond might, or maybe The Wonderland Gambit. But not for a while.

As for nonfiction, I made a little more progress in Sugar, but not much. We've moved from talking about African slaves to South Asian indentured servants, which is actually not much of an improvement. Those plantation folk certainly did suck, though not enough for MAGA Republicans to throw them out or anything. Mostly I'm trying to work through another month of comics on Marvel Unlimited.

And that's it for December, and for 2024! Because I'm not finishing another book in the year, despite getting a good head start in the doctor's waiting room. I will also be doing a separate year-end post, so stay tuned for that.

[punderfulowl]

Top 10 Anime (That I've Seen) in 2020

Well now, it has certainly been awhile. I'm currently sitting at eight months too late for posting this, but, y'know, something something life happens. More accurately, I already made this list, but wanted to try out what response I'd get from Reddit. Turns out, they're not as cool as you guys!

Anyways, as the title states, this is not a list of my favorite anime that came out during 2020, but instead my favorite anime that I just so happen to see during that year. While it's fun to have an end of the year retrospective, I find that having a list in this format not only adds variety, but also helps bring attention to anime that might have been lost in the shuffle in previous years (I also don't have enough time to stay caught up in seasonal releases).

Honorable mentions:

Aggretsuko S3, My Hero Academia S4, Today's Menu For the Emiya Family, Interspecies Reviewers (yes, really), and I Couldn't Become a Hero So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job

10. Maid-Sama (2010)

In hindsight, I find it a bit funny that I wanted to watch something wholesome to kick off 2020. Anyway, Maid-Sama is about a high school girl that is also a no nonsense Class President and she kind of has to be at a school where, until recently, was an all boys school. While she kills it in academics and is good at shutting down any shenanigans from the male student body, her financial situation isn't the greatest and has to balance a job at a maid cafe along with her school-related responsibilities. She does her best to hide her employment there to keep up appearances, but is one day found out by one of the boys who happens to be a big flirt and, yeah, hijinks ensue. While this anime doesn't have too many surprises, our main leads bounce off each other well enough to keep me entertained. Nothing I haven't seen already in other anime Rom-Coms, but I think it has more than earned its place at the start of this list.

9. Haganai NEXT (2013)

It's a personal rule of mine when making these lists that I don't include sequels of shows that were in previous lists. While I DID see the first season of Haganai a couple of years ago, it didn't quite make it into the top ten at that time. Because of that, it meets the criteria for this year's list. While I found the characters were just as charming here as I did during the first season, the development of their relationships really took off. It's a shame that it will most likely not get a third season, but I'm happy with what ride this show gave me. But hey! At least I can read the light novels/manga to continue the story! Wait, nevermind, the Haganai fans on Reddit are saying that's a bad idea.

8. Engaged to the Unidentified (2014)

Based off of a Four Panel joke manga, Engaged to the Unidentified tells the story of a girl in high school suddenly getting some life changing news. As it turns out, her grandfather made an arranged engagement with her and the son of a family he knew. Next thing she knows, the boy in question, as well as his little sister, moves into her family's house! While the boy is unassuming at first, there may be more to him and his family than he lets on. Plain and simple, this anime has charmed me. There's a decent amount of drama and mystery despite the source material and I applaud it! Even though this also doesn't have much new to offer, even to the point where I would compare this to Maid-Sama, what made me pick this at the 8th spot were the color choices and animation quality. Give this a shot if you can!

7. Grimoire of Zero (2017)

It's a fantasy/adventure story starring a loli sorcerer and a huge, anthropomorphic white tiger man. I honestly can't say anything else. I won't be able to do it justice. That first sentence should intrigue you a lease a little bit. Read it, again. Please check it out. It's an underrated gem that no one is talking about.

6. ID: Invaded (2020)

Hey, here's something recent! Unfortunately, this is also not something I can say much about. There may not be too many deep characters and the secret bad guy isn't hard to figure out, but BOY is this anime cool! The best way to describe this series is that it's like the movie Inception, but instead of brain heists, it's brain murder mysteries.

5. Carole and Tuesday (2019)

A runaway rich girl has a fated meeting with an orphan and they decide to make music together...oh, this also takes place Mars. Joking aside, this show was something special with its music (a new song almost every episode no less), interesting setting (freaking Mars, dude), and endearing main cast. Shoot, the music itself would be top 3, maybe number 1, but what bogs it down is the show's second half. I can easily see myself watching this again someday, and maybe my opinion will lighten up, but for now, 5 is a dang good spot.

4. Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front - Babylonia (2019)

Part of me hesitates placing this high up on list due to this show being animated, fan service spectacle for Fate fans. However, that hesitation is overshadowed by the fact that I am a Fate fan myself and I can do whatever I want with this list. Even if you're not a Fate fan or play FGO, if you enjoy some solid fight animation, this is worth a look.

3. K-On S1 (2009)

I'll admit it, I might regret not watching the second season then putting the series on the list as a whole, but this how I've been doing these lists and I'm such a creature of habit. There's not much I can say about K-On that hasn't already been said. By itself it's an anime classic and one of Kyo-ani's biggest properties. It's a sweet and wholesome watch, but be sure to have some insulin within reach.

2. Princess Principal (2017)

Imagine you're working with a team of programmers trying to make a mobile game then all of a sudden someone asks to make a show out of it. You know, a show with different character motivations, plot, twist and turns and all that? Most might say that's just a shameless, shallow cash grab, but it turns out okay for Princess Principal. Sure, most might summarize this anime as, "cute girls doing espionage things," but with its cast, visuals, and interesting alternative timeline, it works! Apparently there's a new season or movie in the works and I am all for it!

1. Beastars (2019)

I was not expecting this to be number one, but with much deliberation (with myself obviously) this feels right. It tells a pretty unique story while showing itself to be the exception to the rule when it comes to 3D anime.....it being that it's actually good. While I acknowledge that shows like K-On are classics and deserves to be number one on many different lists, it didn't line up with my personal criteria like Beastars did. My biggest deciding factor is: Now that I've watched this, do I want more? It's true that while I'm excited to start K-On S2, Beastars intrigues me more and ever since season two was announced, I'm looking forward to that more.

Sorry again for this list being so late, but at least the silver lining is that the next end of the year list is about four months away (in theory)!

[darapnerd]

G33k HQ Presents: MC Front-A-Lot Interview

Interview Questions From G33K-HQ & Darealwordsound (Wordy): Nerdcore Interview Collaboration Questions

MC Front: Thank you for bearing with me! So sorry to continually drop the ball on this. Here you go.

Wordy: What was your first creative outlet? MC Front: I seem to remember kindergarten involving a lot of drawing. First and second grade had poetry exercises sometimes. But the way we played D&D between 2nd and 6th grades was how my imagination really got fired up. We didn\'t like dice and maps that much. We\'d take turns DMing and just sort of freestyle the stories to each other at recess. Wordy:  What was the first rap album you ever purchased? MC Front: It was also my first CD. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, He\'s the DJ, I\'m the Rapper. Wordy: Who are your biggest music inspirations?

  MC Front: Tom Waits, Public Enemy, Bjork

Wordy: Describe your studio to us.

  MC Front: I have an Ikea desk that\'s been out of print for 10 years so I get fussy when anyone leans on it. Creaky, cheap old thing. It\'s the only one where you can bolt the rotating side shelves at any height. Perfect for the near-field monitors and re-aiming them for any version of the stereo field. I mix there in my bedroom which isn\'t treated, but I\'ve been in there so long that I can work around most of the room effects. I have a coat closet fully treated, very dead and dry, for vocals. I keep some buttons in there to engineer myself, but everything\'s still happening on the studio computer. My pre-amp and mics and monitors are satisfactory. I could use a better ADC/DAC.

  I will record occasional hand percussion, etc, in that closet booth, but very little fits in there. For other acoustic capture, I\'ll rent time at a real studio (any time I\'m tracking my drummers) or I\'ll go field-record strings at someone\'s apartment.

  A solid two thirds of the non-vocal sound on the albums is electronic, and I can get keyboard performances or work on drum machine material in the project studio without worrying about the ambient noises of Brooklyn.

  Wordy: Describe your ideal home studio if money wasn\'t a problem.

  MC Front: A proper treatment of the mixing room would be great. I guess I\'d have twenty of these Avalon pre-amps and a little drum room, as well as a booth big enough for upright bass or cello. There is almost unlimited fanciness available in the hardware market... I guess I\'d have to make a hobby out of shopping. I\'d still use Reaper as my DAW, though -- the least expensive version of that kind of software, and also the best. I could probably spend sixty grand on plugins.

Wordy: What is your creative process for writing and or producing a song?

MC Front: Baddd Spellah, my Canadian beatsmithing partner, has been kind enough to work on grooves with me for the last fifteen years. Usually I will start with something he\'s been kicking around, or he\'ll take a pass at some live drum that I\'ve been chopping up, and we\'ll add keyboard material from Gm7 (Gaby Alter), my longtime music co-writer. When there is a verse-appropriate groove that is in pretty good shape, I\'ll leave it on loop and write. Once in a while, I\'ll write a hook over a groove that feels like a chorus, and start from there. After I\'ve got most of a lyric, I\'ll put down a scratch vocal so that Spellah and I can build a full song arrangement. Then I\'ll record too many takes of the final vocal, and spend too many months dicking around with the comp, the mix, and all the instrumental details. Finally I\'ll listen to it on as many different devices as I can, fine-tune the mix, and stay up for a week and a half making increasingly bad decisions about everything on the album, leading up to the mastering appointment I foolishly committed to several months prior.

  Wordy: What is your happiest On-Stage Moment?

  MC Front: I think a PAX crowd demanded a second encore once. That makes you feel like a superstar.

Wordy: What was your favorite song to write or record?

  MC Front: Maybe Stoop Sale? But that might be because the video came out so well. For the most part, my happiness with the process relies entirely on the result: it makes me happy to listen to a track if I don\'t just hear a barrage of fuckups that it\'s too late to go back and fix. But there aren\'t very many of those. Of all my lyrics, I\'m probably proudest of Two Dreamers from the Question Bedtime album. I feel like I worked out every bit of the story and then obscured it just enough that the listener\'s careful attention is rewarded.

Wordy: What advice do you have for aspiring artists?

  MC Front: Practice a lot, develop your talent. Get the skills you need to properly communicate with whoever your creative partners are. Take the craft seriously but give yourself a break for not having mastered it -- that is a lifelong process with no actual end goal.

Wordy: What project do you feel best describes you as an artist?

  MC Front: The Nerdcore Rising documentary probably says more about me and the band than I\'d ever be able to, and in kinder words. Of my own projects, I like the Zero Day and Solved albums as a window into whatever it is I\'m trying to say about nerdcore.

Wordy: How do you feel about the disconnect between \"Nerdcore\" and \"HipHop\"?

  MC Front: Well, hip-hop is a cultural movement with very specific origins and elements. Rap is a formal music style that emerged from hip-hop. Any \'variation\' or \'new perspective\' that someone brings to rap is fine -- if meaningless. It might matter that you came up with a new thing to say, but the fact that you chose an unusual form for your expression should be the least interesting thing about it. You can write a march for your peace movement, even if marches come from military music, because the march itself is just a formal style of composition. You\'d be smart to note the ironic relationship there, or you\'d be dumb to suggest that there isn\'t one, or that your choice to use a march as an expression of pacifism somehow reaches backward and affects the origin of the form. Anyone who thinks they\'re \'expanding\' or \'liberating\' hip-hop from its roots by rapping about things that haven\'t been rapped about traditionally is probably an idiot. 

  My idea about hip-hop was only to observe that it was cool. Like, it was the coolest thing happening in American culture when I was a kid, and it probably still is. Breakdancers were the coolest kids on the playground. Graffiti kids were the coolest outlaws in fourth grade. And rappers were the coolest possible composers of verse.

  To want to compose and perform verse in that formal style without having any direct connection to hip-hop, and without being cool, is the sort of desire nerd kids might express by themselves, away from arbiters of hipness, and share only with other uncool kids. The idea of nerdcore went no deeper than that, originally. I\'m glad that a lot of other DIY rappers have found that resonant enough to expand upon.

  Wordy: Do you feel more \"Nerdcore\" rappers should know about its roots in \"HipHop\"?

  MC Front: Definitely. I remember trying to write a Villanelle in a college poetry class. First, we had to read and dissect a sheaf of them. The professor was of the opinion that we would all flounder in the assignment, because there had been only a handful of good Villanelles ever written. I\'m sure none of us wrote one of lasting value. The point was to learn how formal composition connects works, and to appreciate the complications. You can always just do it anyway. But knowing where it comes from and how it\'s been attempted before teaches you how to try to do it well. I think anyone who wants to compose lyrics within the rap genre should know all they can about how raps have been composed so far.

  That doesn\'t even begin to address the cultural issue. Some artists misidentify nerdcore as comedy music, and worse yet, think the joke is \"it\'s rap, but white kids are doing it.\" I think that outlook leads to the weakest possible songs, and is generally disrespectful of hip-hop in a way that concerns me and offends anyone who cares about American culture. Of course, not all of the nerdcore rappers are white, but all of the schticky ones are. I wonder if a delve into hip-hop\'s history would cure them of that impulse, or at least afford them the humility to hush it up.

Wordy: Are you involved in any philanthropy in your local communities or abroad?

  MC Front: I try to do something in support of Child\'s Play every year. I\'m going to contribute to the upcoming Worldbuilders album project.

Wordy: Can you freestyle? Meaning rap off the top of the head? If so, can we see you drop a few bars next time live?

  MC Front: I never do this! I think I\'ve conditioned myself into a certain kind of vanity. Almost everything on the albums is rapped in complete sentences, with rhymes that I\'ve never used previously. Freestyling doesn\'t work that way. I\'m too ashamed to let anyone see me freestyling about the frog, on a log, in a bog, who got sog-gy.

Wordy: Do you consider yourself a “GEEK”?

  MC Front: Of course.

Wordy: In your own words, describe what the word “GEEK” means to you?

MC Front: I decided at some point a long time ago that geeks are all direct descendants of the side-show geek, whose job was biting heads off of chickens. They weren\'t special in any way, except that they were willing and able to do that thing, and it was a fairly extreme thing to do. But because nobody else at the carnival was willing to go to that extreme, the geekery came to seem like a highly specialized skill.

  That\'s why you can be a geek about anything. You just need a topic where your knowledge or expertise is so specialized that it seems distastefully extreme to non-geeks. You can geek out about fantasy novels or about robot AIs. But you can also geek out about car engines or cooking. You don\'t have to be a nerd to geek out.

  Nerds are almost always geeks, and their subjects of geekery are often recognizably nerdy. But a nerd is something else, a person who was already too weird or too smart, and felt alienated, and embraced geekery as an alternative to whatever broader pursuits the cool kids enjoyed.

  Wordy: What is your earliest geek memory?

  MC Front: I was a Star Wars geek starting at age three and a half when the first one came out. It was the only thing I wanted to do. I made adults take me to see it 11 times before Empire came out (I kept careful count). I collected the Kenner figures obsessively until they stopped making new ones a year or two after Jedi.

  Wordy: What is your \"Geek\" hobby? Do you collect comic books? Anime? Video games?

  MC Front: I do still love comics, but I own too many. Video games take up less space. I spend more time gaming than I do working on music, occasionally 70 or 80 hours in a week. It\'s as much an emotional self-medication as it is a hobby.

Wordy: Who are your Top 5 emcees dead or alive?

  MC Front: In no order: Busdriver, MF Doom, Del, Q-Tip, Chuck D

Wordy: When is your next show or tour?

  MC Front: When I get the dang old album done! Maybe spring 2017 for tour. PAX South is the soonest lone show.

Wordy: Do you have a new album coming out?

  MC Front: It\'s called INTERNET SUCKS, and it is going to have a heavy \'get off my lawn\' vibe. Everyone will be mad at me, yet secretly agree with every word on the record. Watch for it to take your feeds by storm.

  http://frontalot.com

more at darealwordsound