#as much as I like the plot so far the comic pacing is. not great. lots of wasted pages

[adobe-outdesign]

For Act II of the Void Within, Tavi realizes she forgot to pick up milk halfway to Neopia Central so the party has to turn around and get some. This will take 16 more pages

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading roundup: june 2024

before I get started on June, I have to issue a correction from May: I forgot to include a book!

last year I backed Iron Circus Comics' erotic anthology My Monster Girlfriend, edited by Andrea Purcell and Amanda Lafrenais, and it finally arrived just ahead of pride. My Monster Girlfriend contains 15 stories by all by different artists, and features protagonists who get it on with everything from the classic ghosts, werewolves, and vampires to a reality-warping angel (?) who contains infinite dimensions, a sleep paralysis demon, and an all-consuming flesh monster hivemind.

while I would have liked to see a little more variety in the freakishness of the actual sex, the anthology is a lot of fun and shows off a great diversity of art styles and scenarios in which one might get down to clown with a monster girlfriend. my personal favorites were Feather by Kanesha C. Bryant, in which an intrepid pervert boldly attempts to locate their girlfriend's genitalia; MonsterHER Under the Bed by Bont and Wes Brooke, which puts a cute, sexy little spin on the monster under the bed; Forest Wedding by Otava Heikkilä, which reads like an old timey fable except it ends in a giant forest woman getting crazy fisted by her new trans husband; and Girl Fiend by InnKeeperWorm, which is infinitely jackoffable even though, frankly, the hellhound should have stayed in her more monstrous canine form to fuck.

okay, now onto the June reading! I found myself reaching the end of the month surprised that I had added so few books to my 2024 spreadsheet, and then I realized: it's fucking PRIDE MONTH and I'm a career queer. I spent most of June either busting ass working various events or in a coma recovering from said events; no wonder I didn't read as much as I thought I would. I also gave up on one novel after sinking close to 200 pages in it, which means the list is even shorter, but trust me: the DNF was the right decision.

so, who made the cut for pride?

The Monsters We Defy (Leslye Penelope, 2022) - this book was a romp! it's fun! it's a hoot, dare I say! this is a historical urban fantasy that takes place in the Black society of 1920s Washington, DC. protagonist Clara and her band of ragtag magical misfits have a heist to pull off against one of the most powerful Black women in DC, with their own curses and powers at stake. it's a fun story with a neat magic system and lots of words that are capitalized so you know they're Magical and Important, and it's a read that goes down real easy. strong recommendation if you find yourself in a slump!

Just for the Cameras (Viano Oniomoh, 2023) - my first foray into independently published romance! and it was... fine. the plot's a little patchy, sure, but it's definitely not the worst romance I've ever read, and at least a throuple made for a nice change of pace. AND nobody's seething with jealousy or insecurity about multiple partners? you love to see it. this book was apparently originally intended to be a novelette and it definitely could have stayed that way, but if bisexual Black hotties sucking and fucking is what you seek then you're going to have a great time. TW: 2/3 main characters are British.

Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs (Ina Park, 2021) - to the surprise of absolutely no one who knows me, this is one of my very favorite nonfiction reads of the year so far. I cannot emphasize this enough: if you like the way that I talk about STIs and sex ed on this blog then I think you'll really like this book, because having read this book I desperately want to be her friend. she brings so much passion and energy to her work that it bursts right off the page and is - pardon this awful pun - absolutely infectious.

Survivor (Octavia E. Butler, 1978) - for those you not in the know, this book is kind of a get. it's the only book of Butler's that was never reprinted, so now you can only read it if you get ahold of a super expensive original edition OR if you, hypothetically, find a PDF online and print off the entire thing on your work printer. and I'm so glad I did the latter, because holy shit this book whips ass. the book was apparently disavowed for its lack of connection to the rest of the Patternist series, which is true but oh my god, the story is SOOOO cool anyway. we've got a human woman named Alanna who grew up feral on Earth only to be adopted by a Christian cult who are GOING INTO SPACE to preserve the human race, but it turns out there are already intelligent people on the new planet and they have Feelings about what the future of these human missionaries is going to be. it's on Alanna to navigate the clashing cultures and tension between the humans and two warring groups of aliens, and it is fucking URGENT. I don't say this lightly but I think this has ascended to be in my top three Butler novels.

No Name in the Street (James Baldwin, 1972) - ooooooh my god you guys!! oh my god!!! I've never read any of Baldwin's long form nonfiction, but within pages I knew that this was going to pretty permanently change my brain. this memoir-ish book delves into, among other things, Baldwin's witnessing of the American civil rights movement, including the deaths of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Medgar Evers. woven around that is the alienating experience of being a Black man with exactly enough cultural cache and social clout to sometimes isolate him from the people he grew up with but not nearly enough to buy acceptance or safety in a white society, emphasized by Baldwin's unfinished struggle to free a friend from prison after a wrongful murder charge. and somehow that's barely doing the book justice! it's so vast and incisive and weary and impassioned and it did, truly, have me jotting down the names of everything Baldwin ever wrote to make sure I can read it all. as much as I bemoan my habit of impulse reserving books from the library, I really am indebted to the Stacks podcast for getting this on my radar.

[melrosing]

shit I liked about the hotd finale. the things I’ve liked about S2 have unfortunately mostly just been certain features and scenes in isolation, and the things I didn’t like were writing issues that seemed to recur throughout so will summarise that in a new post later but anyway:

I really liked the Alyn and Corlys scene!! this was my favourite Corlys scene of the series so far and also was an interesting take on Alyn. they hadn’t really done anything with him so far and I was feeling v underwhelmed but the fact that he was just keeping a lid on it the whole time because of how much he truly resents Corlys…. this even put him shaving away his Valyrian hair in a new perspective, and also Salim’s delivery was so so good.

if there’s one thing this series gets it’s that Lannisters are fucking cringe and I really enjoyed the trials of Tyland. Sharako Lohar was v fun in a show that is generally runs screaming from humour. anyway Lannister comic relief so good and so right…. I know Tywin is killing himself after watching this

Aemond and Helaena conversation was good, I like that their relationship is dynamic in that sometimes Aemond can overpower Helaena and sometimes she him. also I think it’s actually a pretty compelling choice to tell Aemond where he’s going to die….. I felt in S2 they’ve really struggled to articulate Aemond’s motives beyond ‘he’s bitter’, so hope this is set up for a more interesting battle against fate

nihilistic criston….. I like this as a direction. they could’ve built this better because I feel like it’s been all tell and no show with him this season but as a thesis for his character I think it’s effective. just would have liked better execution.

I like Ulf. like that he’s kind of unpleasant in some ways but likeable in others, and that he’s got this childlike excitement in finding himself in all the trappings of wealth after a lifetime stuck at the bottom. there are times when he has felt a bit cartoonish this season, but I don’t mind that so much as a tone change from the rest of the series where it feels like the writers just really struggle to have fun….

Aegon and Larys dynamic has been pretty good. Larys living vicariously through Aegon, plotting his return to power and so his own. TGC and Matthew Needham are also just great. Aegon has been probably the most effectively written Targ for me in HOTD this season, but I do think he’s ultimately been trapped within some very poorly paced writing that has really diminished the effectiveness of his S2 arc

[the-descolada]

Spoiler-Free Advance Review:

Exordia by Seth Dickinson

I could not put this book down, my god. Staying up super late multiple nights because I couldn’t stop reading is such a great problem to have, and Exordia gave me that problem more than any book I’ve read in a few years.

This is a very different book than Baru, but Seth’s evocative prose and dark humor is familiar from page one, and the laser focus on defamiliarizing real world injustices is again the core of the work. Despite being far more immediate (Exordia is set during the Obama administration in our world, with an alternate history beginning from the moment the book starts), the heaviness of the topics never gets overwhelming. There’s some incredible (and extremely fitting) tonal dissonance here, with every perspective character having their own sense of disaffected humor about the apocalyptic situation they’ve been thrown into.

I described this to my friend after just starting as “if the Books of Sorrow were written with Gideon the Ninth’s tone and just straight up in our world,” and I think that remains true throughout. There’s a huge amount of references peppered in, and it helps maintain that lighter tone to balance the despair of what is essentially a doomsday clock ticking down throughout the book - and it helps keep things grounded, honestly. I never felt it took away from the gravity of things, or was unnatural - after all, if I, an early 21st century sci fi nerd, was thrown into some fucked up alien bioweapon mystery, it’s hard to say my first thought wouldn’t be “oh shit, this is just like the Andromeda Strain!”

Having seven (eight?) different protagonist (or deuteragonist, I don’t know which they qualify as) PoVs is pretty wild but works perfectly here. Every character has such a unique outlook that you can instantly figure out whose head you’ve popped into even before any identifying names or things are mentioned - Seth’s mastery of the tonally cohesive PoV shifts was something I had loved in Tyrant, especially, and they’re equally impressive here. The characters are lovable, hatable, and everything in between - and each as mentioned is so distinct and compelling that I can’t say there was a single character who I was unhappy to get into their head. And that’s saying something, given who some of these characters are, but I’ll leave the specifics a surprise. Predictably, my favorites were the dysfunctional autistic butch-femme lesbians, but I really loved all of them in the end.

The base premise is almost comical in how small it starts to how much it escalates - a cynical, disillusioned Kurdish genocide survivor, Anna Sinjari, meets a terrifying (and yes…very hot. I’m a simple woman) alien in Central Park, and this seemingly chance encounter sees her roped into a small group of scientists, soldiers, and her own mother in a desperate countdown to solve an otherworldly mystery and save their world. The twists and turns of the plot are intense, so engaging that I was bouncing up and down at times (there’s plenty of sci-fi insanity that I absolutely eat up), and tightly paced.

Seth seems to really enjoy writing ethical dilemmas to great effect, and Exordia is ruthless in that area, taking the base concept of the trolley problem and the moral justification for what someone would sacrifice for the greater good and carving it apart for narrative weight. What greater good does the sacrifice serve? Is it actually good? Who gets to make the choice, and do they have a choice but to make it? There’s a lot to dig into here, and Exordia is a four course meal.

One aspect of this simply taking place in our world, rather than being an alternate universe like Baru, is that the defamiliarized commentary is even more on the nose. Whereas Baru is a commentary on empire and homophobia as a whole, transparently pulling from primarily American history of genocide and imperialism to shape a culture unlike our own in many ways to defamiliarize this moral exploration, Exordia is just literally about real world American imperialism and enabling of genocide in the MENA region, primarily the ramifications of the military industrial complex’s usage of drone warfare and the extremist regimes armed and encouraged by “counterterrorism.”

All this sets the stage for the question of what happens when a bigger fish arrives, one just as hell bent on empire building and justifying its own atrocities. The sci-fi intervention into this banal evil is at the same time a reflection of that evil, and asking if the world has the capacity for resistance to both. Exordia’s answer is profound, and far from easy, but entirely fitting for the ethical dilemma that runs throughout the book, creeping up on you slowly as you start to recognize what shape it takes in this story.

The central material conflict of the book, a locked box mystery of sorts that you piece together with the characters, is fucked up and fun and scary, a reality shifting threat that treads the line between body horror, meta-narrative, and lovecraftian math. It’s extremely cool, and I think it’ll be right up the alley of fans of The Andromeda Strain, The Locked Tomb, The Books of Sorrow and other parts of Destiny lore, and a lot of other SFF stories where ethics, horror, and mystery mix together.

I don’t want to say too much about the climax and the ending - going into this book without knowing too much was an incredible experience that had me on the edge of my proverbial seat - but the ending left me asking myself some very similar questions as I had at the end of Traitor, and I cannot wait for a reread when the physical book is in my hands to see what little foreshadowed things I can pick up on.

I don’t think people are going to be quite as completely emotionally Destroyed at the ending of this one as Traitor, but…it is very much a Seth Dickinson book, and they have quite the talent for making every thread tie together at the end to make the reader feel every emotion at once and realize that this could never have gone any other way. I cried, I laughed, sometimes simultaneously, and a book that can do that to me is entirely worth the experience - and what an experience this was.

Absolutely fucking incredible, I want more of these characters and everything they’re wrapped up in, 10/10.

I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[pluckyredhead]

The Lost Titans in Canon: Jason and Rose

I already talked about Jason and Eddie's canon friendship, so next up, I want to talk about Jason and Rose. They're an interesting duo, actually, because even though they have appeared in far more comics together than Jason and Eddie, a lot of them take place in Elseworlds, or timelines that are in questionable continuity these days. It's only in the past couple of years that this relationship has really picked up the pace - and to a certain extent, only in the past couple of days.

Jason and Rose first interacted in Red Hood and the Outlaws, the New 52 volume. Rose turns up hunting the Outlaws, and it's revealed that she and Jason have a sexual past. Because it's RHATO, she's of course written appallingly out of character:

Awful.

The very next issue, the book is canceled. Jason and Rose walk off together, but when we next see Jason in Red Hood/Arsenal like four seconds later, Rose is nowhere in sight.

Anyway, this history and interaction are...let's say in dubious continuity. Rose's appearance here barely jives with anything else she did in the DCU (most of which was also written incoherently by Lobdell), and everything about New 52 Rose was instantly retconned out of existence by Rebirth. Then again, you could say the same thing about Jason and Roy.

Ever since, DC has treated Jason and Rose like they have romantic history of some kind, or at least there are references to sexual tension between them, but no one is ever specific about exactly what their history is.

Next up is DCeased: The Unkillables, a miniseries set in the DCeased universe. Jason and Rose actually wind up getting married in this universe, but obviously it's not actually in continuity because it's an AU. Still, they're pretty cute:

(This ends tragically, of course, because DCeased.)

Speaking of AUs, we also saw these two together in Future State, a possible dystopian future. They are definitely sleeping together, but while Rose spends most of her time making double entendres, Jason is distant and brooding, until she gets pissed off:

Still, she shows up later to rescue him, and they actually manage to end that AU together and alive (for now):

Okay, so much for AUs and potentially retconned-away interactions. What about the in continuity stuff?

Well, this single panel happened during Dark Nights: Death Metal: The Last Stories of the DC Universe, which was sort of the transitional event between the end of Rebirth and completely rolling back the remnants of the New 52:

Is it still in continuity? Do any of the characters remember it? I HAVE NO IDEA.

Next is Robin, when Rose tells Jason that Damian has entered the assassin tournament on Lazarus Island, and the former Robins show up to try to stop him. Rose and Jason don't interact directly, but we do get this:

Great question, Damian! NO ONE KNOWS.

Rose and Jason FINALLY interact ONE HUNDRED PERCENT IN CURRENT CONTINUITY FOR SURE in The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing, when she rescues him from a police van and they both look ridiculously hot about it:

I'm assuming she's calling him "lover boy" because they've hooked up, but if you've read any of my work you know I'm a Jason Todd Secret Virgin truther, so I'm choosing to read it ambiguously. I'm also choosing to read her last line as her having the hots for Steph. (Rose, like me, prefers Naughty Robins only.) Anyway, she's been roped into the plot of this book, but it's still ongoing so who knows how it'll resolve. (Spoiler: not with Jason successfully killing the Joker!)

That was going to be my whole list when I started this post, but then Batman/Catwoman: Gotham War: Red Hood #2 came out, and who should show up but Rose!

We've seen this dynamic from them before: Rose cracks sex jokes, Jason is stoic and terse and Focused On The Mission. I'm of two minds about this - it's fun to read, and Rose does tend to make bawdy jokes (she did grow up in a brothel, after all), whereas Jason ranges from stoic to equally sassy depending on who's writing him, so I wouldn't necessarily say it's out of character for either of them. It's more that Rose is always depicted as the one pursuing Jason, whereas he has Important Manly Things to think about instead. (See also: Bruce and Selina, Bruce and Talia, Bruce and any woman, any man in comics and any woman.) Just because it's not technically OOC doesn't mean it doesn't overlap into a sexist trope.

(I kind of love the idea that she is literally only doing it because she knows it embarrasses him and he is Focusing On The Mission to hide his blush and they both know they aren't going to fuck, but that's a personal headcanon and not really the Occam's Razor interpretation of these scenes, which are definitely meant to imply that they are banging.)

What I did find interesting about this issue is that it's the first one in continuity to show genuine concern and affection between the characters:

Do I think Rose would ever stand with her toes together like that past the age of 12? No. But this is still very touching.

Anyway, JayRose is one of those pairings that I don't ship but am perfectly fine seeing unfold in canon. I totally get why DC would pair them, I totally get what they would see in each other, I think it will all end in disaster but that can be fun to watch. It'll be interesting to see if DC commits to actually telling an in-continuity story with these two, or if they will forever be restricted to her showing up and making a dick joke that Jason will ignore because of how he's sad inside. Time will tell!

[petricorah]

i wanna start making comics but like. i dont really know how??? are there any tips that you could give me perhaps?

hi!

i've been working on trying to compile a list of resources for people (@aangsfrogs--i didn't forget!) who want to make comics for a long time. It would consist of some of my personal tips and a lot of links to other people's PDFs and youtubes. But that's...a hefty project, so if you had any specific questions for the meantime, my askbox is open!

But, for just beginning, here would be my tips:

Read comics. Read manga and webcomics and cartoons and medical comics. There is so much out there, and reading is such a big way to learn. If you see something you like, take a moment to think about why you like it. Are the expressions or colors appealing? Did it make you feel a certain emotion? Analyze what the artist may have done to get across what they did. (Is it the camera angle? the style they chose to draw in? the paneling? the pacing? the color? etc.) Doing this over time will help you recognize the tools available for telling stories through this medium, and you'll be able to put them in your own work.

Try to think about what you want to make comics about. What moves you? What topics interest you? What ideas or tropes do you love in media or think about often? What do you hate and wish was done better? What characters are you drawn to, or what characters do you want to create? (What about them compels you?) I find it's hard to create an idea out of thin air, but if you start writing down random ideas you have, you'll start thinking about them, and over time, you'll have a bank of things to pull from when you want to create.

Lastly, anatomical skill or knowledge of color does not a comic make! You don't have to know much to begin, and there aren't rules. Just start drawing what is meaningful to you!

This is just cursory and doesn't get into super specifics like paneling or scripts or plotting or colors or thumbnailing or....etc, but I'll try to expand my list of resources and get that out! And, hmu if you have any specific questions on topics!

happy drawing~

Book list under readmore:

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and his Making Comics. These books are taught in like, every comic class ever. While not my complete favorite, they do a good job of showing some history and fundamentals, and how easy it is to make comics even if you don't have a lot of drawing experience.

99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt Madden: Really good if you don't know how to start analyzing comics. (Also it's just a fun visual exercise.) It shows the same short story done in 99 different styles with different emphasis on different moods and points of view.

The PreHistory of The Far Side: A 10th Anniversary Exhibit by Gary Larson and The Calvin and Hobbes: Tenth Anniversary Book by Bill Watterson: Two great books with work from my two favorite cartoonists. They both have writings from the author about getting ideas, developing stories, and being a comic artist.

Uncanny Bodies: Superhero Comics and Disability, edited by Scott T. Smith and José Alaniz and Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation, edited by Sheena C. Howard and Ronald L. Jackson II: These two aren't really about making comics, but they are great collections of analysis about old and new comics alike.

By no means a complete list, but some good ones that I can think of off the top of my head.

There's also the book Webtoon School: Everything you need to know about webtoon creation and story writing. To be honest, I didn't read this completely through because it was a bit more fundamental than I was expecting, but it gives a good cursory look of how to write comics if you're just starting out! It covers some history, how to write stories and arcs, etc.

Also, look to your favorite writers! A lot of webtoon/webcomic artists do tutorials or youtube videos. for instance, velnxi has this great tutorial up I really suggest looking at here.

[chrysalis-the-butterfly]

My Thoughts on the Roger Rabbit Novels

Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

The Plot: It's the 1980s, and human beings and comic strip characters ("toons") live side-by-side, albeit not on an equal social standing. Roger Rabbit approaches private detective Eddie Valiant and asks him to investigate a dispute he has with Rocco and Dominick DeGreasy, the brothers who own his comic strip. Roger claims his life is in danger, but Eddie, who's somewhat racist towards toons, doesn't take him seriously - which comes back to bite him when he finds Roger's dead body. Now Eddie has to work out who killed Roger, as well as who killed Rocco DeGreasy on the same night.

What I Liked: This is a very well-paced story. It sets up the mystery straightaway, it cracks along at a good speed, and you don't have the full truth of whodunnit until the very end. The chapters are short and punchy, and even the time spent on plot points that turned out to be red herrings never felt wasted. I was always eager to pick the book up again and read just one more chapter!

Also, in any other novel, the twist regarding Roger's killer would be a massive "What the heck?" moment, but here, it's set up far enough in advance that it doesn't feel unnatural when it comes.

And as a fun minor detail, Eddie casually mentions being one of four children, and then the next novel, Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit?, gives him two brothers and a sister! It was probably a coincidence, but I was glad to spot it!

What I Disliked: I really wasn't a fan of the way Jessica Rabbit was portrayed. Who Framed Roger Rabbit subverts her femme fatale image, but Who Censored Roger Rabbit? plays it straight, which didn't appeal to me as much. I prefer the "looks like she could kill you, is actually a cinnamon roll" trope over the "looks like she could kill you, could actually kill you" trope.

At one point in the story, Jessica claims she was forced to pose for a racy comic, but when Eddie speaks to the owner of said comic, the man claims Jessica posed for those pictures willingly and was actually eager to make more. At the time the story was published (1981), one might just about have got away with such a portrayal, but in a post-#MeToo world, it's discomforting that Jessica's allegations of coercion and sexual abuse aren't taken seriously. (Also, the man who owns the racy comic is a creepy crossdresser, which ... what? Why was that in there? That didn't need to be in there.)

As a consequence of Jessica's portrayal, her relationship with Roger is nowhere near as sweet as in the film. Their entire marriage is basically a sham. No, thank you. Give me "honey bunny" and "love cup" instead, please.

Verdict: I saw the film first, and I prefer it to the novel. Who Framed Roger Rabbit will always be my favourite piece of Roger Rabbit media. But I can appreciate Who Censored Roger Rabbit? as its own thing - a product of its time, to be sure, but also a well-structured and fast-paced read.

Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit?

The Plot: It's 1947 (more or less), sometime after the events of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Roger Rabbit, Baby Herman, and Kirk Enigma are three toons in line for the lead role in David Selznick's upcoming adaptation of Gone With the Wind. A box belonging to Selznick, a box of great importance, has gone missing, and Eddie Valiant has been hired to find it.

What I Liked: Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit? has my favourite portrayal of Roger (after the film and the comics). We spend a bit more time with him than in the previous book, so we get to hear more about his worldviews and his backstory. We also get to see what a sweetie pie he is. He's an emotional bunny who loves his wife, just like in the film, and I frequently wanted to hug him.

A key highlight for me was the moment when Roger was singing like a Disney Princess and summoning a chorus of birds to wake Eddie one morning, which Eddie did not appreciate. Can someone animate that? I'd love to see it!

The second half of this novel also introduces Jessica's twin sister Joellyn (the six-inch-tall woman on Eddie's shoulder on the cover), and I enjoyed getting to know her. And, without giving away too many spoilers, I greatly preferred this rendition of Jessica over the one in Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

What I Disliked: Unlike the first novel, this one was pretty slow to get going. Eddie isn't actually hired by Selznick until Chapter 7, and most of the time before then is spent establishing Eddie as a down-on-his-luck private eye, using people and locations that show up once and then are barely used again. Some of that fat could have been trimmed, I feel. It made reaching the end of the book a bit more of a slog.

Something else that bothered me was the high volume of old-timey slang, brand names and Americanisms that I, as a twentysomething Brit, did not recognise. I could read an entire paragraph and think, "Well, he's either drinking alcohol, smoking cigar or eating a foodstuff, but I'll be darned if I can tell you which is the right interpretation." I think the noir detective vernacular was slightly overdone, to the point of incomprehension.

Verdict: I thought this would be my favourite of the novels because it seemed the most similar in tone to the film, so I was disappointed by my lukewarm reception to it. Maybe I was disappointed because I'd hyped it up too much in my mind? That's not to say I didn't enjoy it - I greatly preferred the second half to the first, once Eddie found out what was actually in this mysterious box - but I think it could have done with a few more edits before publication.

Who Wacked Roger Rabbit?

The Plot: It's the 1940s or 1950s, sometime after the events of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and director Barney Sands is shooting a movie set in Toontown starring Gary Cooper and Roger Rabbit. He's been receiving threatening letters warning him to stay away from Toontown and stop making this film, but he can't afford to let down his investors. So he hires Eddie Valiant to be Cooper's bodyguard while filming takes place. But Eddie soon finds himself wrapped up in another mystery, involving a porcine crime lord called Willy Prosciutto and the corpse of Clabber Clown.

What I Liked: The majority of this novel takes place in Toontown, so we get some really cool worldbuilding details. We find out how the school system works, which churches are based in Toontown, and how crooked toons launder their money. I was particularly intrigued by the calm and serious toons in the Sanatorium - apparently, if you're not loud and goofy and bouncing off the walls, you're considered insane, which is the opposite of how humans think about mental health.

The blonde humanoid toon on the cover is Caitlyn "Honey" Graham, Willy's girlfriend. I really like Honey. In fact, she might be my favourite of the novel-exclusive characters. Throughout the book, you're trying to work out if she's a good bad girl or a bad good girl, or if she's really just a bad bad girl. If Who Framed Roger Rabbit ever gets a sequel or prequel or spin-off cartoon series, I'd love to see Honey on screen.

What I Disliked: The Roger we meet in this novel is a bit too stupid for my liking. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Roger made seemingly nonsensical choices, but he had his own (cartoon) logic to explain his actions, and he was even proved right in his assumptions a few times. So I much prefer to think of Roger as the kind of toon where you're never quite sure if he's truly dumb or merely playing dumb for the sake of a gag. Here, he's just straight-up dumb, and that's not as fun to read about.

Verdict: This was the book I knew the least about before I read it, so I was more cautious going in - but it ended up being my second favourite of the Roger Rabbit novels. I enjoyed learning more about Toontown and its residents. My favourite parts of the film had been the toony parts - Roger, and Jessica, and Roger and Jessica together - so I guess it makes sense that I'd enjoy the novel that takes place almost entirely in Toontown.

Jessica Rabbit: XERIOUS Business

The Plot: It's the 2020s, sometime post-pandemic, and Jessica Krupnik is a human in a toon-less world. She's working a dead-end job in a crime-ridden part of town, her stepmother bosses her around and belittles her, her stepsisters treat her like a servant, and her stepbrothers sexually harass her. She's basically a modern-day Cinderella. But instead of a fairy godmother, Jessica is rescued from her life of drudgery by an opportunity to apply for a role at XERIOUS, a crime-fighting organisation of secret agents. She gets the job, and is later put on a mission with Robbe, one of XERIOUS's most experienced agents, to catch a criminal mastermind called the Klown.

(And this is somehow a prequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Despite being set decades after that film. And starring a human Jessica instead of a toon Jessica. Cartoon timelines be weird, y'all.)

What I Liked: This was the most fun novel to read! I think that's because it was a spy novel spoof, rather than a gritty noir detective story. The other three novels could be quite dour in tone - yes, cases would get solved, but people would get hurt in the process, and relationships would be irrevocably altered, so there was always this undercurrent of sadness in the seemingly happy endings. After three novels in a row of that, a story spoofing spy novels was always going to feel like a breath of fresh air. Gary K. Wolf has stated that he wrote this book in lockdown and had a lot of fun doing so, and I feel that coming across in his writing.

Robbe was another great novel-exclusive character. I can't say too much about him, because that would massively spoil things, but I can say that I enjoyed witnessing his development over the course of the novel. To give the most spoiler-free explanation I can, Robbe starts out as a suave and competent spy, but also a misogynist - until something happens to him in the line of duty that shakes his confidence. Watching him grow and try to be a better person, especially towards Jessica, while also dealing with the aftermath of his accident, was truly engaging. It even got me thinking about the portrayal of disability in fiction, which I did not expect a Roger Rabbit novel to do.

What I Disliked: For a novel called Jessica Rabbit: XERIOUS Business, Jessica herself was disappointingly under-developed. The first three chapters follow her miserable life and her desire for adventure, for respect, for something more. And then there's a two-year time skip and whoop, she's suddenly a confident and glamorous secret agent! And she's ditched her glasses and dyed her hair, so she's beautiful now! And she achieved her impossible hourglass figure with nothing but diet and exercise, despite being a human and not a toon! Sigh.

There was a real missed opportunity here. Robbe already has a plot where he starts off skilled and arrogant, but then has his worldview challenged and needs to learn to embrace vulnerability. So we could have had Jessica experiencing her own story of growth alongside him, but in reverse! We could have watched as, over the course of the novel, she transforms from the beaten-down self-conscious little girl into the sensational woman she was always meant to be. Robbe would start on top and fall down; Jessica would start at the bottom and claw her way up. The parallels could have been awesome!

Gary K. Wolf has admitted that, as a man, he would struggle to write a novel about women, and it shows. The sexism Jessica experiences doesn't have any nuance; the story just says, "Harassment is bad" over and over again. There's one moment where the Klown is sharing his nefarious plan to change the world, and Jessica responds, "I like the current world." And ... huh? You like the sexual harassment you receive on an almost daily basis? You like the system that trapped you in a dead-end job? You like all the poverty and crime and misery the world has right now? The story could have really benefitted from a feminist and/or intersectional analysis.

Also, in an effort to make Jessica seem smart, the men around her are extremely stupid, unable to see through the Klown's flimsy disguises. That is ... not the best way to make your female characters appear intelligent.

Verdict: My favourite of the Roger Rabbit novels! It's not perfect, but my criticisms are born out of love and a desire to see this concept reach its full potential. But even as it is, I still found this book a lot of fun to read, and I can excuse a few flaws if I'm having fun.

Final Ranking (Compared to Other Roger Rabbit Media)

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Roger Rabbit and Roger Rabbit's Toontown comics

The three shorts

Jessica Rabbit: XERIOUS Business

Who Wacked Roger Rabbit?

Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit?

[reelvibes91]

Batman: Caped Crusader Review

Batman has probably the deepest rogues gallery in all of comics. Oftentimes, when depicted on screen, the focus has been on a core few. With Batman: Caped Crusader, we step away from that and get some focus put on different characters. How does Caped Crusader stack up against other iterations of character?

This version of events is unique in various ways. Taking Batman back to a 40s Mafia setting was a nice touch. One that particularly helped lend to the investigative aspects of the character. It relies on good old-fashioned detective work instead of relying on modern technology.

The Batman/Bruce Wayne dynamic was handled well. Hamish Linklater has the task of living up to prior talent, and he does a great job. This is a Batman who feels more vulnerable and wants to keep in touch with his human side. It has always been his allies that ground him, and this version really allows the relationships Batman has form organically. He has to establish those links over time and knows full well these tasks can't be accomplished on his own.

There can't be a discussion about a Batman series without the villains. Here, we treated to a wide array of villains. Two standouts immediately are Firefly and Harley Quinn. The episode featuring Firefly was the most visually stunning of the entire series. By far, I stand out in that regard. Why Harley worked so well is the changes made to her origin story. This far into the characters' existence, it was a refreshing take and one that kept the fundamentals of the character in tact.

The only real issue of the series is a general lack of pacing. Some episodes hit very hard, and others were just the middle of the road. That is the hard part of trying to tell a complete story within a 25-minute episode. There really is no room for the additional subplots and working out enough growth for everyone. Catwoman and Onomatopoeia were the weakest links in terms of the villains because their presence does not matter to the overall plot development. Catwoman is all stuff we have seen before, and with the Onomatopoeia stuff, it felt completely like a filler episode.

The writing on this show was very well thought and executed with the mafia and overall look and feel. There is so much potential for future seasons of this show to capitalize on villains who need redemption. The potential and ceiling for this series are limitless because we know they are willing to make changes to classic villains. This show did in a way that elevates the character and does not take away why we love them. That is the key to enhancing any long-standing character. Make them your own and find a way to set yourself apart from other versions.

One last thing is that this show really proved why animation is much easier than live action. Live action takes on creating certain aspects of characters, which have translated to some ridiculous looks. Here, they were able to finesse together some new looks and new styles and blend them all together. Some of these scenes and new looks likely would not have created the same atmosphere in live action. That's not to say stop doing live action but more to say use animation to do things that are harder to create in live action. It was stunning to see some of this come to life the way it did. It feels the same way across all animation that has excelled at telling rich and deep stories.

[fistacaffs]

!! LONG RANT ABT EEVEELUTION SQUAD !!

Came back to this comic after years of forgetting abt it and I have a lot on my mind after finishing it so long rant ahead LOL

It genuinely had something good during the first part of the comic (might be the nostalgia talking) but after the unnecessary plot points like with Cc and Solarflare's virus it felt so overwhelming especially the pages during Solarflare's dream stuff it was so full of dialogue only one panel had any illustrations at some point. I feel bad for complaining about this because I know EV was probably stressed out of their mind when making the comic and I understand it was from the pressure of the fandom but I just need to say more stuff regarding it (I don't blame EV for the writing, what's done is done and it was definitely some of the fans influence which made it rused)

The story was better of as a slice of life with a bit of action instead of having so much lore and plot that didn't make sense. The first few main chapters were good for it's time (even though some parts were iffy ex. Gai being a genuine creep) but after chapter 5 it started to go downhill. The Cc plot point was so unnecessary it felt she isekaied out of a fanfic and tried to Frankenstein her way into the story. I liked the idea of her character in a way but I feel like it would have been a whole lot better for her to have her own story instead of being forced into the ES plot. She seems more of a fanfic protagonist than a side character. For the Solarflare virus thing, it was also pretty weird, I wouldn't say unnecessary but it felt so out of place. With the vacation plot happening, the ship shenanigans between Speed, Lazuli, and Silvia, and the Cc plot, it just genuinely felt so tiring to read when it came to that part. The comic panels were filled so much unnecessary lore and plot to the point you can only see text bubbles, I wish it could have been saved for another time to develop Flare's character but instead it was plopped into an already complicated plot. I loved Fluffy but I feel like they were introduced far too early into the plot.

I wish they had the time to develop more of the characters, especially Leafy, I think the only reason why she's one of the more well liked characters from the comic is because she felt like a breath of fresh air from the other characters (ex. lore-heavy-Speed and angsty-Black, etc.), I wish we got to see more of her like the time she was sad because of her father or when she took the blame off from her friends, it made her feel like a character you could relate with. (But I'm glad we got what we got because I feel like she would have been badly written otherwise)

It might seem like I'm angry but I genuinely love this comic (even though it's badly paced and written lol) it's very sentimental to me, it was a great creative outlet for me to cling on to during my younger years and I'm very thankful for that 💞

[genericpuff]

I always enjoyed reading LO, though as of late I've gotten more critical of it and aware of the flaws in storytelling, art, pacing, etc (one can still like trash while recognizing it's trash, I guess), and it's been super weird being the only one in my friend group who's not seeing it as this perfect flawless comic anymore. Your retelling so far has been super refreshing and a joy to read, the art and character design is recognizable yet distinct and great on its own (I LOVE YOUR DIONYSUS SO MUCH HOLY CRAP HE'S SO GOOD), and like... I'm interested in where things are going! It's fun reading this! I still do enjoy LO (maybe it's the sunk cost fallacy, idk), but I'm invested in your version so much more now. So thank you for your work, it's really great :)

I know the story is focused more on H&P than the mostly cast of side characters, but are there any other myths that might get revisited as well? Eros/Psyche, maybe Ariadne since Dio is here...?

Absolutely, I say it a lot when the topic of "LO stans vs. LO critics" comes up but none of the criticism is meant to be persuasive debating, while it can be frustrating to voice our criticisms and be met with "yeah well that's just your opinion", we're also not criticizing the comic purely to convince you that it's trash, we're legit just engaging with the comic in our own way. The best way any LO fan can react to it is either to acknowledge the criticisms and move on, or not go out actively seeking the criticism in the first place if it's something that bugs them. But in the end, no one is talking about the comic in this way as a means to strong arm people into riffing on LO, we'll still be talking about it way past everyone's bedtimes regardless of whether or not you chime in and/or agree. I think a lot of people who enjoy LO have a hard time separating those two things because they love the comic so much that any criticism is automatically flagged as "they're trying to make a hater out of me". And yeah, maybe we are a little bit (because it's fun to riff on this comic and the crit community has genuinely some of the nicest and funniest and most creative people I've ever met) but for the most part it's not our goal to make you hate the comic, we can't take your enjoyment of it away from you, even if you do recognize its flaws yourself. By all means, enjoy LO if you want to, we won't try and tell you not to! Just don't think that gives you permission to tell the critics to stop criticizing because that's a double standard we just ain't gonna stand for LMAO

All that aside, I'm glad you're enjoying Rekindled! As for the other stories, I'm trying to reel in Rekindled's plot to focus solely on H x P because I feel like that's what it should have stayed as. One of Rachel's biggest mistakes IMO was when she stated she "wanted to include as many myths as possible" because it's clear it's resulted in her prioritizing low effort Google-level lip service and Marvel-esque nostalgia referencing over telling an actual cohesive story. I'm taking a lot of the additional myths that Rachel tried to do in LO and leaving them on the cutting room floor, but when Rekindled is done, I'm hoping to pick up what was discarded and do them as little side stories after the fact. I feel like that's the best way to do it especially considering so many of the myths Rachel included didn't happen until after Hades and Persephone were married (including Eros and Psyche). I'd especially love to tackle Orpheus and Eurydice, it's one of my favorite myths :) Dio x Ariadne is also one I'm hoping to tackle, though that one I'll probably work more into Rekindled itself as Dio plays a huge role in Persephone's character arc, we'll see !

[miloscat]

[Review] Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (Wii U)

A mess but still underrated.

It's no secret that the development of Rise of Lyric was kind of a mess. The first game released by Big Red Button, an American studio founded by ex-Naughty Dog devs, it went through a few iterations before Sega required it to be released on the Wii U as part of an exclusivity deal. This caused problems for the engine which was not designed for the less powerful hardware, and it shows in persistent performance problems. This combined with an infamously large post-release patch led to the game acquiring an odious reputation in general and particularly among 3D Sonic games, which already have a spotty track record.

Knowing all this, I actually had a good time with this game. It has its strengths and you don't have to dig too hard to find them. The textures may be low-res but it has strong art direction. The slower-paced gameplay with exploration, combat, and puzzle-platforming sections is something I prefer over the usual 3D Sonic style. It's a forgiving co-op adventure set in a sub-universe that I've quickly come to love (mostly thanks to the silly and easy-going TV show). In short, its poor reception is a bit overblown.

The Sonic Boom subseries launched with this game, a 3DS game, a toyline, and a TV show. Archie Comics ran a short spinoff set in this world and another 3DS game followed, as well as a throwaway Hardlight mobile runner game. So far, I think the show is the strongest work: it's a short-form comedy adventure episodic series with emphasis on the funny, and it consistently hits the mark as far as I've seen. (It also struck me as oddly similar to the Donkey Kong Country animated series with its tropical island setting, flamboyant and ineffective villain, and being a French coproduction.) The comic didn't quite nail the tone—aside from the issues written by the show’s writers—and was interrupted by financially-disastrous crossover event shenanigans, and as for this game, well I'll get to that.

Along with refreshing the setting, Sonic Boom reframes its main characters in ways that I appreciate: they work well as comedy characters, with redesigns that better get across their personalities. Sonic has blue arms as he should and a nifty scarf, Amy has a practical tunic and a personality beyond “loves Sonic”, Tails is given goggles and pouches, and Knuckles is now actually big and brawny. New to the main cast is Sticks, an oddball wild child-type character with a raspy voice. She has a great design and works well as an agent of chaos, although some of her "paranoid" humour falls flat for me.

Now that Boom has been cut off as a failed spinoff, Sticks is the biggest loss. She showed up in Runners and the Rio Olympics game and that's it. Also, she's barely in this game! Her role is simply as an NPC who sends you to find collectibles, and she has only a couple of voice lines. It's a real shame, and another symptom of the game's troubled development. As for the rest of the cast, Boom has a lot of fun new side characters, some of whom appear briefly in this, but RoL also includes Metal Sonic and Shadow, who are only in a couple of episodes of the show. Their roles in this game are pretty underwhelming, only showing up for boss fights and then getting forgotten about.

The main new face here is Lyric, a snake cyborg guy who has been imprisoned for a thousand years. The game starts with a few gags to make you think it's still a comedy but when this guy shows up they pretty much drop all that, and in tone the game becomes a pretty bland action story (although I did like the very brief time travel arc). Naturally he teams up with Eggman for a bit before they betray each other, and his army of very shiny robots forms the goon squad that you spend the whole game smashing to bits. The story seems to have been another casualty during development, with none of the show's writers involved and meddling by Sega combined with content cuts leading to a bland and rushed plot despite some clear ambitions.

The four playable characters can be swapped between at any time, as long as they're present in the story (the game frequently separates them into pairs). They largely play the same but also have unique abilities, and get tasked with specific segments tailored to their skills (often in 2D). For example, Knuckles can climb walls while Amy can swing and walk on balance beams. When given the choice I often favoured Amy for her mid-air triple-jump or Tails for his ranged combat utility. Another central mechanic is the Enerbeam, a laser grapple that can throw robots around or let you swing or ride rails. When playing in 2P co-op, one player uses the TV while the other has their own screen on the Gamepad, which I'm always a fan of. Up to four players can compete or collaborate in the specific multiplayer modes which seem kinda fun if you have willing participants.

The structure of the story mode has you returning to two hub zones between levels, where you can explore and do a scarce few NPC quests. The characters' slow movement speed works well for the levels but less so for these open zones. Here you can also spend scrap found in levels to rebuild landmarks, a nice but underused mechanic. In levels there's robot fights which feel a bit clumsy and there's sure a lot of them, and the occasional mediocre vehicle section. But this is a 3D Sonic game so there's also a lot of autorunning sections: the pace in these is so fast that you can barely react and the framerate absolutely tanks, but there's little penalty for mistakes and they're decent as flashy little setpieces with changing camera angles and such.

I have to talk about the collectibles and currencies in this game. There's scrap from beating robots and opening chests, which you use for buildings but also passive upgrades to your characters. Accumulating crowns unlocks new tiers of these upgrades. But there's also rings because this is a Sonic game. These act as a health system but you get tons of them so you rarely go beneath your cap. Why is there a cap? Well you only lose a few when you get hit. You can extend your cap by making progress in Shattered Crystal on 3DS and connecting your systems, which is very dumb and funny. But even at your cap you want to collect them because your cumulative total unlocks concept art and stuff. Also, doing sidequests unlocks selectable passive buffs which are mostly useless. The whole customisation and upgrading thing frankly needed some work, but it's a neat idea.

That's Rise of Lyric in a nutshell really. Sonic Boom is a breath of fresh air for the Sonic franchise, and the idea of this game as a change of pace for Sonic gameplay has potential. But as so often has been the case, Sega shoots themselves in the foot, development goes through hell, the games suffer as a result, and then no one is happy. I want to get across that I find the game inoffensive and a decent example of its genre, not totally deserving of the scorn it gets, but it could easily have been so much better and that is obvious for anyone to see. Oh well, maybe next time Sega launches a Western-focused multimedia Sonic spinoff it can get a tie-in game that gets the time and attention it deserves... you know, the next one after Prime which didn't even get a game at all!

[deaddee-anime-brownfanlady]

LACKADAISY Pilot Short Review & Thoughts: INDIE Animation Greatness.

Okay, so I've just recently gotten finished watching the latest new indie animated pilot short: Lackadaisy. Honestly, I truly and seriously loved this 27-minute long film of bootlegging kitties' adventure! Now for those who are super new to this short and overall story of the Lackadaisy world, the short takes place in 1920s America specifically in St Louis Missouri during the prohibition era when all things alcoholic were OutLaw and where most of the characters consist of anthropomorphic cat people in this story.

The title comes from the name of the café also covered as an underground speakeasy "The little Daisy Café " or for very special Partons and guests that want to get their illegal drink on known as the Lackadaisy speakeasy. All in all, the business hasn't been like it used to be for the little once glamorous speakeasy, leaving our main cat trio of trouble of the short to dig up some much-needed booze. We got the highly chaotic also artistic wild spirit, wacky, smart but slightly dimwitted sweet grinning nut Rocky Rickaby. His baby-faced sweet and super adorable well mannered but deeply repressed rage Trigger happy cousin Calvin "Freckle" McMurray ,and last but not least little miss firecracker and sweetie full of spunk Ivy Peppers.

On the revival competitor side that is Marigold. We got our Cajuns sensations siblings danger duo the Savoy: Serafine and Nicodeme, And last Mr. Tuxedo always serious catman and professional "cleaner" extraordinaire Mordecai Heller who has some past history with the Lackadaisy staff & it past owner. Now a little details on what and why I enjoyed this film.

The Animation: Lackadaisy overall animation is fantastical amazing, like UGH from the impressive shading and lighting within the backgrounds from the way the characters eyes are super luminescence in the dark and really gives that feline aspect. To the intricate little details such as the characters very realistic cat ear twitching and other behavioral cat traits like the tail movements and fizzing of the fur when scared or startle, some criticism I've seen in the Live Chat in regards to the left in sketch/guidelines within the characters is that it's distracting. But personal for me I liked the added in sketch linework, it deeply reminded me of super old school classic Disney animation or seeing old traditional animationing videos on how they did things back in the day.

The Voice acting: I swear the voice casting in this was excellent and very on point. Each of the voice actors really fit so well into each of their characters, from Michael Kovach great voice work as Rocky who you can tell was really enjoying himself, to Channel Awesome Malcolm Ray as Nico and Benni Latham as Serafine and ProZD also known as SungWon Cho very nice and fantastic voice work as Mordecai and Belsheber Rusape as Freckle and Ashe Wagner as Mitzi, Lisa Reimold as Ivy. Just overall real good sounding Voice work.

The Story: Now when it comes to overall story, I liked how it was basically more of a standalone type of storytelling in its own kind of separate reality then what's currently going on in the comic thus far into it. I can maybe see others who've been following the webcomic for far longer might dislike certain changes in the pilot that differ a bit from the comic, but I can get why they went with it this way so it probably would be easier for newcomers to jump into it. While certain parts did felt a bit underwhelming & might not be super perfect, I still enjoyed the energy and pacing of this short. I felt they did a really good job as a pilot showcasing the premise /concept and some of the characteristics of the main cast, although not all of them...but I felt it did a nice enough job of giving you a taste of these characters and making you want more of them & find out what's their story is. Either way love how the pilot plot was this mini but disastrous bootlegging adventure of Rocky, Ivy and Freckle getting into trouble barely escaping with their lives all for some nasty tasting booze.

Final Thoughts: While I might not have been following this project or webcomic since early DeviantArt or back during the mid-2000s to 2010s ( even though I wished I got into it much earlier) as long as others have. But even as a somewhat new fan of this indie piece of work and incredible artsy, I truly really come to love Lackadaisy so much and I deeply hope that this pilot short will paved the way for even more crime-fulled animated kitties adventures in the future.

Please Check Out LACKADAISY and give it all the love and support it can get because I want more Booze stealing lawbreaking Cats to see!

[felassan]

its that time again! 🍵 Thoughts/wonderings on Dragon Age: The Missing #3, under a cut due to spoilers for The Missing (not just #3):

Thoughts on Issue 1

Thoughts on Issue 2 (note: this post also contains spoilers from DA:D leaks)

Thoughts on the first 4 pages of issue 3 (which came out via preview)

Overall I enjoyed the issue a lot and it's my favorite of the 3 so far! Issue 2 was more fun and punchy/had more oomph (as Teia and Viago are amazing and simply showstealers tbh⭐), but this issue has been my fav so far because i] I'm hyped that after three (3) years we got to see Strife's design, and more importantly ii] the issue advanced the DA:D [pre-]plot a bit and dropped inchrestingggg new lore stuff. (The pacing wasn't great, it was kind of rushed in places and it was a lot to try to fit in to just a few pages. I also would have liked it if the the Veil Jumpers could have been given a bit more depth/been fleshed out a bit more, but again there's limited pages in these comics)

I like what they're doing with a different color palette version of the picture on page 2 in every issue :>

On page one, are those icebergs floating in the sea? would there be icebergs in the Nocen Sea or Ventus Straits? it seems like the climate around there is warm.

On the map, I like the little representation of the Imperial Highway.

^ one example of the triangle motifs incorporated into the Veil Jumpers' outfits.

^ the face on Tist's shoulderpad reminded me of Sentinel armor.

Tist looks like a Greek statue of a youth hh

I liked the designs and hairstyles of all 4 Veil Jumpers. Irelin's fur collar is a nice touch to have remembered, in TN she was described as wearing supple leather trimmed with fur.

Strife is tall and stacked. this didnt surprise me, after reading the first story in TN I came away with that impression of him. in TN he was specifically described as being tall and strong, square-shouldered and straight-backed with calloused hands, lean with long ropey muscle. also I'm simply biased and a tall buff elf enthusiast hh. (in terms of build and stuff he reminds me of my Lavellan)

^ I wonder if the book at Strife's belt here is the leatherbound journal from Ruins of Reality, the relic of the Morlyn clan?

I wasn't sure about some of Strife's dialogue, he seemed to be missing the sort of snarky or lighter-hearted manner he had at times in TN? dialogue in general was a bit stilted in this issue tho, not bad so much as just quite info-dump-y.

Veil Jumpers faction details: they are an alliance between the best Dalish mages and hunters (not an all-elf and/or all-mage group) and other non-elves who were wiling and able to help contain the threat of timespace warping hijinks and chaos that's reigning in Arlathan Forest. presumably a fair few of the Dalish elves in the group are from Clan Morlyn. the mixed nature of the faction and Binde's presence in Strife's group feels like a natural progression of Strife at the end of his story in TN: [said to Myrion] "You're right, shem. This [Arlathan forest] isn't your place. But then, once upon a time, it wasn't mine, either."

also their base or HQ is a "sanctum". about that.. remember this? from this concept art? maybe that piece of concept art was showing the Veil Jumper sanctum? some of the concept art of Veil Jumpers shows them in a similar location with floating rocks and orange vegetation/foliage. [one, two]

in a previous posted I wondered,

last time we got a look in [Arlathan forest], Strife had noticed something had gone wrong in the forest. time and space was stretching and folding weirdly, reality warping, and he and Irelin saw echoes or mirages of themselves running around. mysterious entries had begun appearing in the relic journal of the Morlyn clan describing sacred ruins in there guarding a powerful fabled artifact, a halla figurine that Irelin grabs during that story. when Varric&Harding arrive, will they also be facing this sort of thing (mad sylvans, reality& time/space warping)? is the crucious stone similarly guarded by sacred ruins? could it have something to do with what’s gone wrong in the Forest? even when Irelin succeeds in grabbing the figurine, Strife still feels that something has gone wrong in there.

fun to see that this speculation was also correct ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝ as in this issue Arlathan is still timespace warping, Varric&Harding have to run a gauntlet facing these dangers, the crucious stone was contained in the ruins of an ancient temple, and Irelin posits that someone walking around using the crucious stone could explain the timespace warping in Arlathan.

Harding continues to eyeroll at Varric's bad jokes. he's basically an old man with dad/grandpa jokes at this point.

"Deep inside the Veil"? I found this to be kind of odd phrasing. we've long known that the Veil is thin in Arlathan forest, indeed thinner in such a way as to be different than how it is in other places where it is also known to be thin, somehow. inside the Fade is a place one can go. is that what's meant by this line? or is it meant to mean more like "deep in the forest, where the Veil is very thin" / "inside a place where reality and the Fade are mushing together" sorta thing? or is inside the Veil itself a place in which one can go? 🤔

that aside, these "Ruins of Reality", this "world turned upside down", this "place where chaos reigns", this "threat".. it reminds me bigtime of when Solas says in Trespasser "as the world burns in the raw chaos".. and indeed, Harding infers as much at the end of this issue, saying "[this] is going to be happening everywhere unless we find [Solas]", and Solas refers to the damage himself in his letter, "I will limit the damage as best I can". and I wonder.. in TN Solas talks about a few years of peace before his ritual is complete. it made it sound like the ritual would take a few years to prepare for or a few years to carry out (in ancient Elvhenan some spells and stuff would take years to cast). if his ritual/plans along these lines have already begun, it would make sense that places in the waking world which are "weakest" (i.e. places where the Veil is thin) would be the ones which are affected first.

the trials and gauntlet gave me nostalgia for the Urn of Sacred Ashes questline in DA:O

the map from page one of Varric and Harding's voyage contrasted with the map of the forest.. hhh

Spirits trading places with the living, literally ripping you out your own body and stealing it.. (by this point Strife, Irelin and the other Veil Jumpers are old hats at the Arlathan forest timespace shenanigans hh.) this is neat and interesting new lore, and it reminded me of the Nevarran belief that when a dead soul crosses to the Fade it displaces a Fade spirit. I wonder if it's related to that. also I thought it was represented in a cool way, with the reflection world and the muted grayscaleish color palette swap when their souls had been displaced and they were in the 'spirit world'.

the panels when Varric and Irelin are conversing from random upside down angles reminded me a lot of when the party enters the Fade physically with Hawke and goes "wtf" in Inquisition :)

Varric is having such a terrible time. again

Does Harding have the Inquisition hairy eyeball on her kneeguard?

Varric's reaction to the sky being the wrong way around reminded me of how it must feel to be a dwarf from Orzammar going to the surface and seeing sky above for the first time, dizzying, weird, disorienting

I like that while a mage, Irelin still has an alternative weapon (knife/dagger) just in case ^^

Varric seeming to sort've push Harding ahead of him while they fled the animals was a nice touch

is this the first time leopards were confirmed in Thedas? :D tho they look more like cougars or maybe lionesses or sabretooth tigers or something, and leopards are typically solitary. also lmao first the deepstalkers attack and now this. Varric's like "bloodthirsty wildlife omg" like they didnt already have that problem in issue 1 hh.

RIP Gilf Varric fans

hh, does Varric not know that he's been graying lately anyway, time shenanigans aside?

the time warping reminds me of In Hushed Whispers 👁️ very interesting in terms of implications. you can see why creating the Veil (which is connected to timespaceywarpy happenings) caused the ancient elves to begin aging.

^ check this out, the glowing green light on Strife's shoulder in his golden armor. seems like the green-glowing aspect of some Veil Jumper gear is still a thing [one, two, three]. it got more open, triangley and brighter in the second panel, like he was powering it up and gearing up for the fight. if they hadn't decided to run, would he have started to use it like the Veil Jumpers in those pictures? curious to find out more about the Veil Jumper gear - how it works and where they got it from.

^ what's happening in this panel? they seem to be straight-up disintegrating? not aging, disintegrating.

^ the presence of and focus on this satchel on the 'assassin', with its bright red fastener (draws the eye), seems sus. Varric says later in the issue that the 'assassin' saved him. it's hard to tell whether "I don't think this was the Venatori. I think it was Solas" means he thinks it was Solas who already entered the vault and took the stone OR if he means that and that the 'assassin' who saved him was Solas in disguise and that he's the one that's been tailing them this entire time. if the 'assassin' was Solas in disguise, I sus that the stone - which he had clearly already gotten at that point - is inside the lil pouch and that's what this panel is trying to convey. also it wouldnt be Solas' first time dressing up in disguise (Bard in TN).

the twisting pathway reminds me of the yellow brick road in Wizard of Oz

The Varterral. it looks nothing like the ones we've seen in-game or like the one described in Masked Empire (or depicted in the illustration in the Deluxe edition). is this an art/design oversight, or new lore showing that varterrals come in multiple forms? in fairness, in Dalish lore the first varterral was created by Dirthamen, fashioned of the "fallen trees of the forest" into a deadly guardian. this ent-like varterral looks like that. maybe "varterral" is actually just a name for any created creature that's been magically created and is guarding an ancient elven site, golem-like?

Irelin's staff-less magic and the spell distraction she did was cool. was she doing Stinging Swarm? ^^

And ofc the final pages are the motherlode, especially the new painting! Look here. I think the green figure (the one with the crescent moon headpiece) is the monster figure with the crescent moon head from that mural and from that concept art piece. and I think that's Ghilan'nain (Horror of Hormak and all that). BUT I don't think the red figure is the other monster figure from that mural (the one with pointy, crab-like shoulders, who I think is Elgar'nan). the headpieces don't match, the red figure's headpiece better matches with one of the other sigils from the hemispheres. I think the red figure is someone else. the question is who, and my guess is they're Andruil. the two figures could be read as feminine, and the feel of the painting could be read as romantic - definitely close. Ghil was Andruil's chosen, and her beloved. Andruil was the one who offered Ghil ascendance.

the painting also bears a resemblance to the red lyrium idol, which has been variously and interestingly described - a couple hugging, two lovers, one comforting the other, or a god mourning her sacrifice. does the painting depict the same moment from the idol, or not long before it at least? the main figure on the idol's headpiece is different, but coincidentally Andruil was also known as the Goddess of Sacrifice. wouldn't it be interesting and ironic if there was a time in the distant past when Ghil had to sacrifice the goddess of sacrifice? if this painting is depicting a moment before such a thing, that would help explain why the other monster figure from the mural has a different headpiece. if "the Evil Gods" are returning, Andruil couldn't be one of them, if she was killed. Ruins of Reality and Three Trees to Midnight are also full of references to both Ghil and Andruil..

Strife was looking at it now. On the other side, so was his double. Both transfixed by a statue of elven goddess Ghilan'nain holding a crystal halla figurine, exactly as the journal described.   - As the Strifes drew the attention of the merciless trees, Irelin swooped in and snagged the figurine with her talons, tearing it from Ghilan'nain's grip. The statue didn't let go easily, but neither did Irelin. With an angry squawk, she yanked the prize free and disappeared into the sky.

-- Ruins of Reality

in TN, the story title "Three Trees to Midnight" refers to the Way of Three Trees/Vir Tanadhal, which Dalish lore holds were teachings of Andruil given to the People. Strife thinks of the Ways during his escape, using them to escape, and invoke's Andruil's name multiple times. Strife also refers to Arlathan Forest as belonging to the Lady of the Hunt/Andruil. He also calls on Ghilan'nain, and Irelin shapeshifts into a halla (Ghil's sacred animal, being Mother of the Halla and the first halla), as well as a falcon and an owl (hawks are sacred to Andruil and the Dalish believe owls are Andruil's messengers). meanwhile Strife has turned up in this comic with Andruil vallaslin, after not having them in TN. very inch... resting... indeed.

why Ghil and Andruil in the painting? presumably this ancient temple, deep in Arlathan Forest, was a temple either to Andruil (whose forest it is) or Ghil (her beloved). why next to a painting of the Dread Wolf doing something to the Veil? in the story of Ghil's ascension, there is a reference to Pride -

On the second day she drowned the giants of the sea, except those in deep waters, for they were too well-wrought, and Pride stopped her hand.

On the third day she killed the beasts of the land, except the halla, whose grace she loved above all else.

This is how Ghilan'nain was made youngest of the gods.

there is also a story in which Andruil wanted to punish Fen'Harel. it could also simply be (or both could be true) that Solas painted the Dread Wolf mural when he stopped by earlier before Varric and Harding to obtain the crucious stone. what if in this comic panel we're looking at the same location as here, just with the comic version of the mural compacted down due to limited panel space:

and what's the relevance to Solas' plans, what happened the past, and the idol? I am guessing it is something to do with how Andruil went mad and hunted in the Abyss, putting on armor made of the Void and making weapons of darkness, to the extent that she brought "plague" to her lands and howled things meant to be forgotten. it's often theorized that Andruil accidentally brought the Blight/Taint back from the Void, and of course that links to red lyrium (Blighted blue lyrium, the red lyrium idol) and is reminiscent of the Evanuris digging deep, mining the bodies of Titans for "something else" and unleashing something terrible by doing so by mistake (we read of elves frantically collapsing tunnels, "let this place be forgotten, let no one wake its anger"). also I'm obsessed with the Balrog Theory so

Solas being kinda extra with his dramatic fursona red seal

he is always one step ahead of them isn't he

"You're joking. You've got to be" Strife +50 Headache

"Interfering in matters you do not understand can only make things worse" explain them then pls Solas. if you're cryptic and don't explain things in full all the time, then ofc people are going to be Concerned

the Orb of Fen'Harel, the red lyrium idol and the crucious stone.. Solas' list of Maguffins I Need For My Plans keeps getting longer.

As for the crucious stone itself.. whatever it does, it sounds like it weakens the Veil. makes sense why Solas would want it, then. there was this line in Ruins of Reality: "Mysterious entries appeared of their own accord, describing sacred ruins in Arlathan Forest that guarded an artifact of fabled power." In Ruins of Reality it referred to a crystal halla figurine. maybe the journal has since produced more entries of its own accord, telling of other ruins and artifacts - Strife and Irelin in this comic had heard of the crucious stone and had a map to where it was located after all.

Also the final question is who is the person on the final page, which is the cover for issue 4? Presumably the trusted informant from the issue 4 synopsis, "Varric connects with a trusted informant who might help them." I've seen speculation that they are the person from this concept art and I like that idea and could see it :] I love their outfit and the design of it makes me think of snakes, so again I'm wondering about the Viper. their oufits are similar, and so far we've had Wardens-Crows-Veil Jumpers in 1-3. perhaps issue 4 will introduce (in advance of DA:D) the Viper's faction. in the 2020 trailer you have the pair of boots (speculated to be a Warden) character, a character on the roof (speculated to be a Crow) and a Veil Jumper stalking through the woods. there's also the character in an alley of Minrathous with the knife. the pattern on their hood -

is like reptile scales, like the pattern on the Viper here and the pattern on the character on the final page's shoulders (as well as the scaley reptile on the person in that concept art's staff).

[canmom]

Animation Night 162: Nimona

I'm back~

Hey everyone. Last week Animation Night had its second week off in just over three years. A shameful lapse; the perpetrators have been... dealt with, and you can trust it won't happen again.

So tonight! I figured we'd watch Nimona, since it just came out and all. This is actually sorta related to Annecy ('Annecy related stuff' will be a theme for a good few weeks), insofar as it premiered there. But I didn't see that premiere, so instead I gotta talk about some other stuff...

(please forgive the big ugly stickers, this is the only high-res version of the cover I could find)

So. We're in the era where the people who were big in webcomics back in the 2010s are now making animated films. A few months ago we talked Lackadaisy; now it's Nimona's turn.

If you're old by Tumblr standards, you might well remember that time ten years ago when Nate Stevenson was one of us poor sods drawing pictures on Tumblr as gingerhaze (he just came back in fact!), and Nimona was a popular webcomic. But not one you can find online anymore; Nimona came out on paper, and this in turn launched Stevenson's gradual rise through comics and into animation. Perhaps you are more likely to know of his work from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. More on that shortly...

Nimona follows a shapeshifting girl in a fantasy world and her friendship with one Ballister Blackheart, a 'villain' in the roles of this setting but very much one with a heart of gold, at odds with the 'Institute' and his counterpart/rival/secret boyfriend Ambrosious Goldenloin. In contrast with the uptight Blackheart, Nimona is a kind of prickly traumagirl chaos agent, an archetype that we would meet again in She-Ra's Catra; the story involves many sciencefictional turns but her tumultous relationship with Blackheart is at its heart - along with the question of what sort of person Nimona is when you get down to it, which even she struggles to decide...

It's tricky to know how to characterise Nimona, 10 years on. At the time I was certainly into it; looking back I feel like it's definitely a first longform work sort of thing, where sometimes the plotting feels a bit haphazard - but regardless, it's absolutely a solid read. And for a Tumblr craving that #representation it was exactly what the doctor ordered. The great success of this comic led to more comics, primarily the Lumberjanes series about a group of girl scouts having various wacky supernatural escapades; all this comic work in turn got Stevenson an in at Disney, working on Craig McCracken's series Wander over Yonder as a writer, before finally getting a chance to run his own show...

That show was the 2018 Netflix reboot of the 80s cartoon She-Ra: Princess of Power, animated at Dreamworks. (At about the same time, Stevenson married Molly Ostertag, author of Strong Female Protagonist and writer for The Owl House). This one was very popular with the lesbians on here, odds are pretty good that you've seen it, I actually ended up watching it as it came out with housemates... but let's talk a little about it, why not.

So. Princesses is the original She-Ra by way of Avatar: The Last Airbender, taking a lot of AtlA's general approach to pacing, humour and drama alike - the first season finds it hard to step out of Avatar's shadow, but gradually it figured out a bit more of its own identity.

She-Ra is ostensibly the story of Adora, who has defected from the evil empire and gained the power to transform into magical girl supersoldier 'She-Ra', along with her two friends Glimmer and Bo from the good two shoes kingdom. These protagonists have their conflicts - Adora trying to fill the big shoes of She-Ra, Glimmer's tense relationship with her royal mother - but it is absolutely far more interested in antagonist Catra, who is the Nimona/Zuko figure of this story, as well as Adora's long-term will they or won't they love interest. Catra consistently steals the show, and most of its big drama comes from the question of whether Catra will follow Adora in defecting from the 'Horde' - or rather, why she does not, and continues to make all the worst choices possible. The intermediate season finales with their time travel and fantasy worlds are honestly pretty solid sci-fi melodrama - the final season, which really rushes to tie everything up neatly, sadly drops that ball.

Besides AtlA, it's a show that will wear its anime influences on its sleeve (with some really overt Utena nods). The animation is in an odd place where it is clearly leaning on anime drawing styles but with an American Toonboom-era inflection, where everything is pushed into simple shapes just a little too much; it has its moments (the 'Fright Zone' backgrounds are rather good, and there are some charming moments of character interaction) but struggles with space and perspective in a way that's not great for an action-driven show.

But whatever I might have to say about its flaws, She-Ra was a hit, successful enough for Netflix to fund it for four seasons - making a much larger splash than Powerhouse's concurrent He-Man series which took a much more traditional approach. And I suppose that led them to look at what other ND Stevenson related properties they might be able to sell...

As all this was happening, the Nimona film was brewing. It had a rather troubled production; in 2015 Fox bought the rights, planning to make it at Blue Sky (best known for Ice Age). The project got cancelled when Disney digested Fox, with Disney feeling a little nervy about all the gay/trans shit in this movie. (Not that that stopped them having a float at London Pride yesterday lmao. Cunts.)

But that wasn't the end of the story, and Netflix and Annapurna swooped in, pulling in directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane who had been at Blue Sky before its demise and worked on the previous version of the film. The animation ended up being finished at the visual effects company DNEG and premiered at Annecy a couple of weeks ago - I could have met Stevenson and got a signed copy of the comic lol. Now at last it's here for streaming.

So after that messy story what sort of film is it? The story takes a similar premise to the comic, and keeps the core character relationships pretty much as they were: Blackheart is a good man unjustly framed as a villain, Nimona is a shapeshifter who pushes him to escalate, Goldenloin as the official pursuing Blackheart, and his boyfriend before the shit went down. But the plot looks like it will end up diverging quite a bit. Visually, it's CG with a 2D celshading inflection - most likely unrelated to Spiderverse given the timeline, but it's definitely belonging within that new flavour of CG film. It's a style that really pushes and exaggerates the expressions, and I can't really say how well it will work - but let's find out! The critics seem pretty excited.

I think I said that Animation Night would start at a reasonable time today. Well, my best laid plans ganged aglee, but there is time I think to check out Nimona - so if you'd like to join me, I'll be live shortly at twitch.tv/canmom and I hope to see you there ^^

[grelleswife]

Ooh so you're watching 98 Trigun. What do you think?

I’m really liking it so far! Though I should probably hold off on extensive comparisons with TriStamp until I’ve finished 98, I think these anime adaptations are a prime example of the “two cakes” philosophy: Distinctive versions that each bring something good and unique to the table. It might a bit hypocritical of me to call 98 Trigun’s style “nostalgic” since I didn’t enter weebdom until around 2017, but the animation has this feel of belonging to a bygone era that gels nicely with the western elements. The cast for the English dub give an entertaining performance, especially the voice actors for Vash and Milly.

And, speaking of Milly…Milly Thompson, woman that you are! 😍 A himbo lesbian with keen powers of perception, big guns (of both the metallic and muscular variety), and a heart of gold. If she snapped me in half, I’d thank her, but she’s likely the type to give out warm bear hugs instead. 🥰 I definitely understand why fans of the original were so irate over her absence in Trigun Stampede (barring the offscreen mention in the last episode), because she’s a treasure! 💕 Milly also makes a great foil to her girlfriend Meryl. While I’m fond of TriStamp Meryl, I love how the 98 version gives us assertive, spitfire (complimentary) Derringer Meryl right off the bat. She’s serving fashion and putting outlaws in their place with her coat of many guns, and her complete lack of patience with Vash’s tomfoolery (to the point where she stubbornly denies the possibility of this chucklehead being the Humanoid Typhoon for several episodes) cracks me up every time. 😂 I also like the running gag of Milly and her being insurance agents. Although TriStamp’s decision to make Meryl a journalist worked fine—giving her a plausible motive for chronicling Vash’s misadventures—her original position as an insurance worker places a greater emphasis on the violence and destruction which plague the story (as she and Milly scramble to document the havoc wreaked in Vash’s wake), albeit with a comical twist.

Vash remains my darling babygirl, whether caught up in madcap hijinks or betraying the deep sadness hidden behind that smile. Johnny Bosch does a wonderful job bringing him to life (I mostly watched the sub when TriStamp was airing, so getting to hear his interpretation of the character is a treat!). However, I’m not a huge fan of the stereotypical “sleazy womanizer” bit inexplicably tacked on to Trigun 98—my plant boi drinks his respecting ladies juice, thank you very much! 😤 But perhaps it’s just part of his silly goofy guy act, albeit a distasteful one, so I’m hoping it’ll be phased out as the show progresses.

(Haven’t reached Wolfwood’s intro yet, but I’m looking forward!)

The 98 anime’s more relaxed pace is another point in its favor. As much as I enjoyed TriStamp, that 12-episode limit plaguing so many contemporary anime often left the plot with little room to breathe, which I think might be one reason why the melancholy undertones came through with such unremitting force from the very beginning. In contrast, 98 Trigun can afford to be stealthier, keeping things light in the early episodes, but with occasional somber moments betraying the brutal angst to come. Both approaches have merit, though! Like I mentioned earlier, the two Triguns are a pair of cakes: Different frosting and flavors, but both delicious.

The OP is, as the younglings say, a banger. I’m normally not a huge fan of instrumental OPs, but I inevitably find myself rocking out to this one! 🎶 Meanwhile, the languorous ED evokes lazy Sunday afternoons dozing in the shade; it makes me want to take a nap in a hammock like Vash is in one of the stills.

TL; DR: The ride’s a blast, and I am fully prepared to get hurt again. 😎

[readingrobin]

Since I was caught up in the Magical Readathon this month, it gave me the opportunity to pick up my pace a bit reading-wise. Managed to get into those sweet double digits when it came to how much I read and the majority of them were great. It started off on a high note, but I think by the end I was getting into some very lukewarm reads. Nothing too terrible, since I didn't manage to DNF anything this month, but it's always disappointing to end a month with a whimper rather than a bang.

Total Books Reads: 11

Total Pages Read: 3,520

Books Read:

Murder for the Modern Girl by Kendall Kulper (3.5/5) (Review)

All the Stars and Teeth by Adalyn Grace (3/5) - A sea faring journey is just what I needed to get in the mood for a summer that feels not too far off. I will say, this book definitely lives up to its promise of adventure, due to its tense, bloody action and introduction to a world with a interesting magic system, though I did find myself constantly confused and unable to really visualize soul magic. I think the book's greatest strength is its setting, where each island holds its own kind of magic and traits. Though we didn't see every island, I'm sure the rest will be left for the sequel to explore, there was enough to sate me for this particular journey.

When it comes to our main crew, I think I have to echo some other reviews by saying Amora comes off as the least interesting. Bastian has his charm and inner turmoil that he tries to keep behind a mischievous facade, Ferrick, his foil, a bit more straight laced and focused, while also having the neat featuring of regrowing limbs, and Vataea, a mermaid with a sultry, yet scary strength. And Amora is…just there. She's the princess, our main character, the one who believes she alone can save the kingdom, which somewhat makes me feel like she views her crew as nothing more than lackeys and sidekicks who are but tools to help her get to each destination while she does the most self-sacrifical work. I know she's meant to be a stubborn royal who was most likely raised to believe so, but it still doesn't exactly put her in the best light to the reader.

The writing itself kept my attention, but the plot had the standard twists and formula one finds in most YA fantasy. Nothing wrong with a formulaic plot, but there should be some sort of window dressing or aesthetic that keeps it from fading into the background with all the rest like it. My mind was starting to expect certain plot beats, only to go "ah, there it is" when the shoe inevitably dropped.

Mage and the Endless Unknown by SJ Miller (4/5) - Not gonna lie, this graphic novel gets rough. If you're up for seeing a little mage constantly facing some sort of traumatizing event from the terrifying creatures he meets on his travels, well, this'll certainly do it for you. The artist really has a knack for drawing unnerving, rigidly detailed creatures that give off a Junji Ito vibe. The contrast of the amount of gore, violence, and disturbing visuals offset the more friendly and cartoonish looking mage, giving the idea that one of these things doesn't belong in this setting. Though upsetting at points, there is a glimmer of hope to this comic, one that offers a sense of peace and rest. The comic does have a physical release coming out, but you can read it now on the magecomic website.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger (4/5) - It's odd how I went into this book having both some expectations, mostly due my friends and everyone else lauding it extensively, and no expectations at all. This pretty much happens whenever I'm 3-5 years behind reading the latest hot titles. But Elatsoe really does live up to its clout. The world has a somewhat normalized take on the paranormal, where vampires, or "cursed" individuals, magic users, and faeries are a known part of the world, interacting with society with life pretty much going on as normal. Well, aside from the string of mysterious deaths that seem to linger around a small town in the middle of Texas. It presents a setting that is both familiar and yet holds a bit of intrigue in a sort of alternate Earth containing all the history of our world with just some extra bits.

I loved the incorporation of Lipan Apache culture in the story, giving it an identity all its own and more weight to its events. The theme of oppressors actively displacing and sacrificing the oppressed to survive and further their own needs will always be haunting, especially when tied to the history between colonizers and indigenous peoples. Little Badger gives an equal amount of lamentation for the crimes of the past and present, while also celebrating the endurance of culture and its teachings that are passed down throughout the ages. 

A big plus for making Ellie's asexuality just a casual feature of her character rather than making it an entire plot point. As an asexual person, I'm glad to have any normalizing representation that's more than an entire story where the protagonist has to repeatedly defend and validate their sexuality to other people. Here, it's just a part of her being, no big thing, and that's the way it should be. 

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher (4/5) - I've been hearing a lot of good things about T. Kingfisher and how I would really jive with her work. Well, diving into a story with a main character that has trouble really understanding the world around her while also bringing together a group that may qualify as one of the odder found families definitely wins me over.

I think what really endears me to this book is how much I appreciate Marra as a character. I love how, despite how constantly and profoundly out of her depth she is, she is still determined to do anything to protect her family. That, while she is surrounded by people who, on the surface, are more exemplary and powerful, she is capable of working marvels. What makes her stand out among other royal heroines is that her abilities are not tied to skills she earned through her title or some kind of destiny, but a certain domesticity she finds comfort in and developed all by herself. Marra is a self made woman, wanting to make herself of use to others instead of sitting around, waiting to be used as a chess piece. I think there's something amiable in depicting a sort of power in the mundane, that, with enough determination and love, could be as strong as any weapon or magic.

The writing style makes it so immersive as a dark fairy tale. Kingfisher always nails the tone of a scene, whether it be unnerving, reflective, mysterious, or tinged with a hint of humor. There were some elements I think could have been expanded upon. I wish we got a little bit more characterization from Prince Vorling other than what we got as second hand accounts. Most of the time, he never really felt like a threat, just something far away and not really tangible, despite his lingering marks on Kania. I really wanted to see more of that Goblin Market as well. So very ripe with fantastical possibilities.

The Moth Keeper by K. O'Neill (3/5) - O'Neill, throughout all of their work, knows what it takes to make each of their worlds atmospheric, engaging, and magical. It's mainly through their artwork, which is just totally immaculate here. The night scenes, will covered in a dark, expansive sky, still have a certain glow about them, coming from Anya's lantern and the ethereal presence of the moths. The adding of animal characteristics to the characters also bring about a certain kind of charm, though I wonder if there was a purpose behind these designs beyond aesthetic. The art itself make it worth checking out, but I don't think it ultimately saves a story that seems somewhat empty.

I think, as I was reading, I never felt totally ingrained in the world. It seemed almost aloof in nature, not really explaining certain things or leaving other elements up to interpretation. I mentioned the story seeming somewhat empty, which kind of makes sense for one that has a desert setting and deals with feelings of loneliness in a community and isolating yourself. But there's not really much else that compensates for that space, not in depth worldbuilding or interesting character dynamics. The message is a reassuring one, that your responsibilities in your community shouldn't be a source of isolation, but rather a way to get closer to them. It's a simple, reflective story, which is fine, but I think I was expecting more out of the premise.

The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells (3/5) - Wells certainly has a penchant for emotionally aloof and antisocially prone main characters, but I'm all for it. In a world devoid of humans and populated by a slew of humanoid creatures, the story offers a setting completely alien to the reader, which leaves a lot up to the imagination. At first, it was somewhat difficult for me to properly visualize all the differences between the species. The book already has an appendix for how to differentiate between the Raksura and the Fell, so it would have been helpful to have another that focused on the other races in the world.

I don't know if this is just me, but I thought that it was somewhat odd that, despite possibly coming from a similar ancestor, the Raksura are an all sentient, rational thinking race among all their classes, but the Fell are a mostly animalistic hivemind species aside from their rulers. It kind of made for a messy parallel and I think was to make the reader empathize more with the Raksura and showcase the Fell as entirely evil with no capability for civility. I suppose it certainly helps side with the heroes as the two constantly slaughter each other, but it makes for a pretty boring antagonist that is simply evil scary monsters just because. The story seemed like it had a few opportunities to go deeper than that, as Cloud has a history with them and Wells has shown that she is capable of more nuanced storytelling, but fell off about halfway through.

I wish there had been more time set aside for Cloud to truly learn about his people and reflect on his place in their society before they thrust him into the hierarchical issues and the disputes with the Fell. Cloud has only just found his people for the first time after losing his mother and siblings as a child, wandering alone and hiding what he is from others, and I don't think we get a lot of him reflecting on what that truly means. Also, imagine going through all that, and discovering that your main purpose in that society was basically to breed. Again, may just be a personal thing, but I know that would certainly lead to an existential dilemma for me. Personally, I'm not a fan of society structures as, "you're born as this class, so obviously you must serve that role forever" seems too dystopic for my tastes. Wells subverts this with Chime in a way, but again, doesn't really tap the full ramifications or intrigue behind it.

The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country Vol 1. by James Tynion IV and Lisandro Estherran (5/5) - It's very rare that I find a Sandman-affiliated comic that I don't like really. I love this world and all the terrifying sorts of beings that live within it. I know Tynion more for his young adult Wynd series, but know that he's very capable at writing horror and Nightmare Country certainly proves it. This comic takes Sandman back to its horror roots, following the Corinthian as a being with teeth for eyes other than him has been stalking a woman in her waking life for some time now. This volume serves as a good setup to the story, getting all our main players in, bringing back some familiar faces and introducing some new ones. With how the story ended, I'm really interested to see where exactly it's going to go.

Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson (4/5) (Review)

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova (3/5) - I feel very lukewarm about Labyrinth Lost. It wasn't a particularly bad book, I think it's just one where I've read similar stories before and they were told in a way that was more gripping to me. I didn't really connect with the simpler writing style, or connect with any of the characters. I think the only elements that I was really interested in was the magic system and the environments of Los Lagos. I'm always a fan of the trope of the tempting feast, the one meant to lure you in with delicious food and fascinating company, only to trick you into eating dirt and keep you there forever. It's a portal fantasy staple, really. 

It may be just a me thing since I was breezing through this book so quickly, but the pacing felt a bit off at times, with the action starting and stopping so often, especially towards the end. I think what really threw me off about the group is that we don't really have a strong trio of characters between Alex, Nova, and Rishi. Usually in fantasies that usually follow a group of three characters off on a typical quest, there's some cohesion to them. They may get off to a rocky start, but eventually they really start to work well as a unit and become stronger for it. Here, the group doesn't really feel like a stable triangle, as they usually range from being incredibly snarky and antagonistic towards each other (Alex and Nova at the start, then Rishi taking over that job from Alex as the two start to get on better) or being completely devoted to each other (Nova warming up to Alex, as well as Rishi being a constant supportive force and that's it). I wish Rishi got some kind of quality that made her more of an asset to the team other than Alex's best friend and love interest. She literally just fell into the portal to Los Lagos after Alex on accident and really doesn't serve a function other than backing Alex up. It doesn't make her that memorable as a character and it's a little disappointing.

I know there's plot reasons as to why they don't really feel like a great team but the twist towards the end probably would have hit a lot harder if they were. 

Other than that, the family dynamic was a great element of the story, which makes it a bummer that we don't really see more of them. I know the sequel follows Alex's sister, which would probably focus a bit more on that aspect, but I don't think I gel enough with this writer or the overall story to continue.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson (2/5) - Though I may not have liked this book very much, I will say that I appreciate that it introduced me to an interesting aspect of history that I had not known before, such as the Pack Horse project and the Blue Fugates family. I'm a real big fan of pieces of history that slips through the cracks and lead the way for improvement in societies that were disadvantaged, which was one of the aims of the Pack Horse project. To know the dedication of librarians in this context, to be introduced how they would travel in dangerous conditions to bring people books and magazines that would either give them a relief for their hard lives, or help them learn new skills that would help them contribute in new ways to their families or communities was a much welcome lesson.

That's probably the only praise I can really give this book. I wasn't a fan of how this book centered on the constant sense of tragedy that lingers around Cussy May. It seems that, no matter how little good she experiences, she can't hold onto it for long or it's overshadows by the many, many horrible things that happen to her. Numerous sexual assaults, medical assault, losing so many people. At some point, it almost feels manipulative that we're constantly supposed to feel bad for Cussy, but at some point it gets to be too much to take seriously. Did I feel anger at all the injustice she faced? Sure, as any rational minded person would. But when the only thing your character experiences is constant hardship without any slack, it gets to be real repetitive and boring. And that ending was just the cherry out a cake made out of frustration and emotional exhaustion.

When it came to the author's treatment of race in the book, I'm just gonna say that it's a bit messy in certain scenarios. Framing Cussy, a person with blue skin, as someone who is somehow treated more poorly than the few black people in the community, was, I don't know, probably not a great choice. The scene with the doctor's Jamaican servant (you can tell she's Jamaican because the author makes sure to lean hard into the accent), who doesn't even let Cussy into his house or provide her a drink when he asks her to, just felt a little tone deaf. 

While I'm glad this books highlights the importance of literature within a community, as well as how wealth and information disparity leads people to become more disadvantaged, misinformed, and generally have harder ways of living, its tone and content just felt a little overbearing.

Average Rating: 3.5/5