#everyone read it right now the prose is so pretty its almost annoying

[bitchthefuck1]

Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell

[sineala]

Captain America: The Great Gold Steal

I wrote this up last week because I did not have access to my usual comics files but I figured I could review something that was just a book. So here is a review of the 1968 Captain America novel Captain America: The Great Gold Steal by Ted White, with an introduction by Stan Lee. I really liked it, actually! It was surprisingly good!

This novel features: Cover art of Captain America holding his shield in one hand and a very large gun in the other! A scene where the villains dramatically unmask Captain America and have absolutely no idea who he is! Captain America being extremely, extremely depressed about being in the future! Captain America dropping acid!

(I'm not kidding about the last part. In this novel there is a lot of LSD use. By Captain America. Talk about something the Comics Code wouldn't ever let you put in a comic book. Thank you, 1968.)

Faithful readers may remember that some time ago I posted reviews of Marvel prose novels from the 1970s. There was a line of prose novels featuring everyone's favorite Marvel superheroes, published by Pocket Books in the late 70s; I have reviews of the Iron Man, Captain America, and Avengers entries in the series; I liked the Iron Man one best, and I also have a Doctor Strange one I have not yet read. They're all short and action-packed paperback reads, of varying quality; the only one by anyone you might have heard of is the Avengers one, which was written by David Michelinie, who was actually writing the Avengers run at the time. That one was, um. An experience. 

(Yes, it's "prose novel" because otherwise the assumption is "graphic novel.")

Marvel still publishes prose novels now, of course, also of varying quality; some are new plots and some are straight-up novelizations of comics arcs, which I guess is useful if you want to, say, read Civil War and not look at pictures at the same time. I also have a bunch of those that I could probably review if anyone wants. But, anyway, I personally am particularly intrigued by the older Marvel prose novels, both because the stories are all original and not retellings, and also because I often prefer the characterization found in older comics. And the older prose novels of course use the then-current characterization. So reading a Marvel prose novel from 1979 is like getting to read a brand-new comic from 1979, and that's a whole lot of fun for a nerd like me. Also do you know what's not subject to the Comics Code? Prose novels. So things can happen in these that definitely could not happen in comics of the same era.

This brings me to my current prose novel, which is something else entirely. I mean, okay, not really, it's still a Marvel prose novel. But it's not part of the same line. It's actually a lot older.

Bantam Books actually published Marvel prose novels in the late 60s. Yep, a full decade earlier. They published exactly two, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they were probably not bestsellers. The first one, which I do not own and now sort of want to track down, was an Avengers novel in 1967, The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker. And then in 1968 they published the novel I am currently holding in my hands, Captain America: The Great Gold Steal by Ted White.

(I am still not sure why no one involved in titling this book thought of the word "theft.")

Judging by the back copy, it appears to be about Captain America foiling the villains' dastardly plan to steal gold from the Federal Reserve. Oh boy. Fun.

So this book is from 1968. The modern Marvel universe had kicked off just a few short years ago! Captain America was just getting his own solo book after the end of Tales of Suspense! And here's a novel about him, back when certain elements of his characterization were perhaps a little more flexible than they are today, by which I mean that the cover art -- which the internet informs me was painted by Mitchell Hooks -- is a striking full-body portrait of Captain America, head held high, shield in one hand... and a very large gun in the other. Hell, yeah. Not gonna see that in today's Cap comics, are you? It's amazing and I love it.

(Okay, you might see that in Ults. I'm pretty sure I have seen that in Ults, actually. But this is still cool.)

So the cover art is a definite plus, and apparently it's one of the few reasons anyone has ever heard of this novel. The other reason -- and the reason this is more expensive than the later novels, I assume -- is that Stan Lee's name is slapped on the cover, because he wrote an introduction. (I think I paid about $30 for this. The others were definitely under $20.)

All right. Here we go.

The first page is actually a brief summary of Steve's origin story, but not a version I was familiar with. Steve was born July 9, 1917 (yes, I was surprised too), was orphaned at a young age, and was a student at Columbia University (!) before Rebirth, which in this version is a gradual process that is also extremely body-horror. Steel tubing was inserted into the marrows of his bones. He was fed "high-protein compounds." Then they gave him a chemical that "gave him complete control over every nerve, muscle, and cell in his now-magnificent body." Sweet. Where can I get some of that?

The blurb also confirms his control over his own metabolism as well as his healing factor ("wounds would heal in half the normal time"), which is nice, because sometimes I wonder if canon even remembers the healing factor.

(I don't know why Marvel has this kink for filling people's bones with metal, though. It's not actually empty in there, guys! You need your bone marrow! How else do you want people to make new blood cells?)

The book is dedicated to "Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, without whom there would be no Captain America." Hey, Marvel, Joe Simon would like a word with you. I'm just saying.

The Stan Lee introduction is three paragraphs written in Stan Lee's, um, inimitable, distinctive and extremely florid narrative style -- if you've read any of his work, you know what I mean -- and making the point that Captain America is incredible and you will like him. If you are just discovering him for the first time, you will definitely like him. Okay. Thanks. I guess.

Oddly, the writing style here is substantially different than any of the other Marvel prose novels I've read; it doesn't immediately front-load you with exposition and a cast of colorful superheroes. It opens with a sort of James Bond spy-novel feel, running through a series of unnamed villains and bystanders, and a man who wants nothing more than to talk to Captain America but is killed before he can. Steve comes in halfway through the chapter, and he seems to be written for a reader who doesn't necessarily know who he is, and he isn't introduced as Captain America with his shield flying ahead of him to smite evildoers, or anything like that. He's just a tall, handsome blond guy who is reading a bunch of novels and is unsatisfied by all of them because all he can think of is the past. It's definitely an attitude I would expect from Steve in this era -- he is very much a Man Out Of Time here -- but it's also not how I expected the book to introduce him. You wouldn't even know he was Captain America by the end of the opening chapter, which then ends with a digression about the history of NYC subway tunnels. It's like it wants to appeal to someone who has watched a bunch of Man from UNCLE and just wants to read a cool thriller. Which is not at all what I was expecting.

By the beginning of the second chapter, of course, we discover that Steve is Captain America, as he changes into his uniform. The narration refers to him as Rogers when it's in his POV, if anyone is curious. He apparently keeps the cowl off in the mansion, because the cowl annoys him.

It was not so much that he needed to conceal his identity these days, because for all intents and purposes he had no other identity. Steve Rogers was officially dead, and had been for almost twenty years. Captain America *was* his identity. It was only when he donned the tight-fitting blue uniform with its shield chest-emblem, the red snug-fitting leather boots, and the heavy, yet pressure-sensitive red-leather gauntlets, that he began to feel real -- a complete human being.

Steve? Buddy, are you okay there? You're really not okay, are you, huh?

You see what I mean? They're really hitting the early-canon angst. Hard.

(Also it sounds like his uniform is a few sizes too small.)

We then get an expanded version of the backstory from the beginning excerpt. In this version of canon, Steve actually has an older brother, Alan, who is handsome and athletic and basically amazing, and when they are orphaned they are raised by their aunt and uncle. Steve gets TB twice as a kid, nearly dies from it, and when the stock market crashes, ends up separated from his brother and in an orphanage after his uncle loses everything.

(Honestly if I were writing this book, his brother would be the secret villain. Chekhov's Gun!)

Steve has glasses, gets bullied, is a nerd and an honor student, and studies law at Columbia because he wants to help stop fraudulent business practices and also fight organized crime. Legally, I mean. In a manner relating to law. I guess he's sort of like Daredevil. The lawyer part of Daredevil.

And then he joins Rebirth, and this is the part where I had to put the book down for several minutes, because Erskine's secret chemical, the key to making super-soldiers... is LSD.

Oh my God. You should see my face right now. My expression is, I am sure, indescribable. I'm trying not to wake the dog up laughing.

I just. Holy shit. This book is from 1968 in a way I definitely was not expecting. What the fuck, Marvel?

This project was headed by the brilliant biochemist, Dr. Erskine. His work with the endocrine system, and chemical body control, was well beyond that of his contemporaries. Only he, of all his colleagues, had fathomed the secrets of the Swiss Dr. Hoffman's 1938 discovery -- the mind-controlling LSD-25.

Let's just pause here for a few minutes and contemplate this.

I will point out that Albert Hofmann (yes, the book spelled his name wrong) didn't actually discover that LSD was a hallucinogen until 1943 when he accidentally tried it, but I am positive that 1968 here was a time when Some People were convinced LSD was a wonder drug. I'm still laughing. As far as I can tell, legal manufacturing of it stopped in 1965 so I am pretty sure that the author did not just decide to name a drug that had an ostensible legal therapeutic use, because it wouldn't have still had one by '68.

Anyway, in this version of events, Rebirth is a month-long process that involves a lot of vitamins, physical conditioning and training, and, yes, putting metal in his bones like he's the next Wolverine. They're filling his bones with stainless steel rods to make him stronger. That doesn't seem like a great idea to me, but I am also not sure about dropping acid to gain superpowers. Clearly I am not a genius scientist. Also Erskine knows what DNA is, apparently, because he's just that great. Anyway. Other than the metal, those all seem like relatively normal interventions. So far.

Now Steve has become fairly big and strong (and I guess he still has metal in his bones? this concerns me!) but they need to make him superhuman, so, yes, really, it's time to drop acid. Several pages of this book are devoted to describing Steve's acid trip. His acid trip is amazing and he discovers that he has conscious control of his entire body down to the cellular level. He can control the adrenaline in his bloodstream! He can tighten his muscle fibers! And when he's done tripping he still remembers how to do this, if not exactly on a conscious level, but he can still access the abilities. And that is how you make a super-soldier. It's LSD. Remember, kids, drugs are awesome! Do drugs!

Let's maybe take a few more minutes to think about this.

I just. I have no words. How did anyone at Marvel agree to print this?

I think for the most part superhero origin stories tend not to involve real drugs because people are generally aware that drugs they've heard of won't make you into a superhero. I guess this is what it looks like when you invoke the names of real drugs. They probably wanted something that sounded more realistic but somehow I don't think this was the best way to go. (Radiation, of course, will definitely make you into a superhero but I feel like most people have accepted that as one of the conventions of the genre.)

Anyway, after that Erskine gets killed by Nazis, of course, and Steve goes to war, and for some reason this book contains footnotes by Stan Lee himself listing the comics you can read all of this in. Just like the actual comics do!

We are introduced to Bucky, who for some reason is also from the LES in this version, although not anyone Steve knew before the war, and there is of course a description of Bucky's tragic death and Steve's subsequent icing.

They are really, really stressing the Man Out Of Time thing here:

No other man could have survived so fantastic a voyage through time. And no other man could feel so displaced by time.

He was a man twenty years in his own future. By rights, he should be nearly fifty years old -- nearly twice the age of his fellow Avengers. Yet his mind and his body were not yet thirty.

When the Avengers had brought him back to New York with them and insisted that, as an honored hero of the past, he join them, he felt a sort of melancholy homesickness for his own time and world.

We then get a few paragraphs with the usual being sad that he let Bucky down and got him killed, and also that he misses his family, and that Steve Rogers doesn't exist anymore, and that nobody is alive who remembers him, and that war is hell.

Hey, Steve, maybe the drugs you should do are antidepressants. Just a thought.

Also, this book is 118 pages and we're not out of the origin story flashback until page 34. I think there are some pacing issues here.

Actually, I lied, the flashback keeps going, but now we're up to the Avengers finding him, and I have to say that the list of things Steve finds strange about the future is kind of charming when the future is 1968. Men have long hair! Women have shorter skirts! Everyone is kind of blasé about rocket launches because there have been so many space missions now. (Oh, come on, you haven't even landed on the moon yet, 1968! You're not that blasé.) Color TV! And, excitingly, LPs! You can now listen to 36 minutes of consecutive music. (I actually don't know what previous standard he's describing that is a ten-inch record that holds six minutes a side because I don't think 45s are that big. Yeah, no, I just checked and 45s are seven inches in diameter. Hmm. Oh, never mind. He means 78 rpm, doesn't he? In my defense, the record player my family had when I was a kid didn't play those.)

The description of Steve coming into New York for the first time is definitely written by someone who knows New York, which is fun. There is generally a lot of local flavor to the setting of this book. That’s one of the best parts.

There is a brief summary of Steve's feelings about all the Avengers -- he is most impressed by Thor, which, I mean, fair, he's an actual god -- and Hank telling him all about how he can live in Tony's mansion. With Jarvis. Who Hank says is actually from Flatbush. Apparently Steve spent a lot of time at the NYPL branch at 5th and 42nd trying to catch up on history. And then of course the Avengers ditched him and gave him the Kooky Quartet, and for some reason they're not here right now either so it's just Steve being sad and alone and dealing with this mysterious dead guy. I think probably the book is also done explaining fiat currency now. This is definitely the weirdest Marvel novel I've read.

Anyway, we have now returned to what is ostensibly the actual plot. Steve shows up at the New York Federal Reserve Bank (I guess the theft is happening here and not, like, at Fort Knox) with the gold bullion that the dead guy from the beginning of the book had on him -- I think I got distracted by the LSD bit and forgot to mention that part, but the dead guy was carrying some US government gold -- because the actual plot is that villains are trying to tunnel into the bank vault and steal gold. Steve discovers this after he gets the bank manager to give him a tour. The bank manager tries to refuse, citing security concerns -- Captain America could be anyone under that mask, after all! Steve just smiles and says, "If I removed my mask, would you have any better idea of who I am?" and I guess that's a flawless argument because he gets his tour.

(I'm sorry, all I can think of is that one gif from the JLA cartoon where Lex Luthor bodyswaps with the Flash, announces that now that he's in the Flash's body he's going to discover the Flash's secret identity, then pulls off his own mask, stares at himself in the mirror, and says, "I have no idea who this is.")

Given that the theme of Steve's interior life in this novel is "Steve Rogers died twenty years ago" it seems even more sad that Steve is just walking around basically saying, yeah, well, I'm nobody. And apparently that is being reaffirmed for him by the narrative.

So Steve goes down the tunnels, takes out some of the bad guys, and gets himself knocked out and buried in a collapsing tunnel. Don't worry, he's gonna be fine.

A lot of this book, by the way, is from the POV of random people, like this bank guard who went with Steve into the tunnels:

He had wondered, briefly, if a man like Captain America ever knew the pinch of too many bills, had ever felt desperate over the arrival of yet another mouth to feed. But, of course, Captain America had no family, and would hardly concern himself with such matters. It didn't occur to Thompson to wonder if this in itself might not be something for which to pity Captain America.

Rude. I mean, come on, do we really need random characters telling us Steve is a sad sack whom nobody loves? Steve's already got that covered!  (Also, how does this guy know Captain America has no family?)

Anyway, thanks to the power of LSD, Steve is going into a trance, amping up his metabolism (he loses "several pounds" in a few minutes), and making himself super-strong so he can dig himself out. Hooray. This is definitely how human bodies work. Also LSD. This is definitely how LSD works. Yes.

Steve then finds out that a couple of the guards who were with him in the tunnels died down there and he goes home and eats dinner while stewing in miserable guilt because he was responsible for their deaths. He's really not okay. I'm not sure the book actually understands how not okay they have made him. Then someone from SHIELD is on the phone for him and he is briefly cheered up by the thought that it might be Sharon although I think we should also note that the narrative makes it clear that at this point in canon Steve still doesn't know her name. Remember when that was a thing?

Alas, it is not Sharon; it's just a random SHIELD agent who happens to have information about the plot and asks to meet. Then, as Steve leaves to go to the meeting, we get two pages of exhaustive description about the mansion layout and how it's built relative to the surrounding buildings. It feels like this book was written by a frustrated city planner. But anyway, the meeting is a setup and the villains capture Steve.

They knock Steve out, drug him, take him to their hideout, and tie him to a chair. Except, once again thanks to the power of LSD, the tranquilizer they're using wears off way sooner than they expected and so Steve feigns unconsciousness and listens to them discuss their evil plans.

And then the villains unmask him and I swear it's exactly like that JLA gif:

Rogers heard footsteps scuffing across a thick carpet, and then Sparrow's voice again, almost directly over him. His ears still buzzed, but he fought to catch the elusive familiarity of the man's tone. He wished he dared open his eyes.

"This is a moment which I, personally, have long awaited," Sparrow said, his voice rising in triumph. "*The unmasking of Captain America!*"

Then, his nails scraping along Rogers' face, Sparrow dug his fingers under his cowl, and ripped it back. Rogers felt air strike his exposed cheeks and forehead. Then fingers clutched his blond hair and pulled his head back. "Behold!" Sparrow said.

Raven was first to speak. "Well, I dunno about you, Sparrow, but it rings no bells with me. I never seen him before."

Starling agreed. "His face means nothing to me."

"He could be anybody," said Robin. "What good does this do?"

Sparrow let Rogers' head fall back to his chest, and his voice when he spoke was defeated. "I don't know. Nothing, I guess. I always wondered. I felt, if these guys -- these costumed heroes -- wore masks, it must mean something."

"Captain America was missing for twenty years," Starling said. "That could mean the first one died, and this one took his place. He looks awfully young."

"Perhaps. It doesn't really matter. Let's get going."

(Yes, the villains all have bird-themed codenames. I have no idea why.)

This scene just makes my day. I love dramatic unmaskings. I bet they'd have been a lot happier unmasking Iron Man.

The villains then leave Steve and go to a power plant, where we switch POVs to one of the plant employees and get two entirely unnecessary paragraphs about his racist and anti-Semitic thoughts about his coworkers before the villains murder him. Great. Thanks.

Anyway, the villains cause a blackout, while meanwhile they've left Steve alone with the girl villain, and Steve is busy trying to persuade her that crime doesn't pay. He's moved from the "do you know what they'll do to you in prison?" theme onto "how exactly are you going to spend a billion dollars in gold bullion when it's illegal for civilians to possess? who are you going to do business with?" and then points out that gold is heavy and hard to transport, which is when she gets out a a knife.

The bad guys are off to steal the gold, and Steve has now successfully turned the girl they left him with, because she frees him. Of course, the first thing he does is put the cowl back on.

"Why do you wear that?" she asked.

"The mask?" He smiled. "It gives people something external to concentrate upon."

"But..."

"Without it, I'm just another ordinary-looking man. With it, I become a symbol. For some people it creates awe; for others, fear. Look at me. I'm different now, aren't I? With the mask on."

"Yes," she nodded. "You look -- bigger, somehow. Stronger. Fierce, implacable. You look a little scary."

"Exactly. You no longer see me as a person, but as a thing -- an Avenger. It can be a potent psychological weapon."

"They were so disappointed, when they took your mask off. As though underneath they'd find a famous person."

"Maybe that goes on TV -- handsome playboys, and all that. But I've been anonymous all my life. Even my real name would be meaningless to you, to them. No, the mask is part of the uniform, a psychological device. That's the whole story.

Now: let's get out of here. You have a good deal more to tell me yet, and we can't waste more time."

Bwahaha. In a few years, Steve's going to be pretty surprised about who superheroes are, I think.

STEVE, now: Superheroes definitely aren't secretly handsome playboys! That would be silly! STEVE, after Molecule Man: fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK I'm such an idiot

I'm definitely looking forward to that.

Also, not that the issue of Steve's psyche actually recurs after this, but he's once again having the narrative vindicate his belief that Steve Rogers is dead and whoever he is under the cowl doesn't matter. Steve, I don't think this is very healthy.

Steve then tracks down the villains stealing the gold, has some geopolitical thoughts about where the gold could be going (he thinks either South Africa or Russia for the best laundering potential) and then hides himself in the villains' trunk while they drive to Staten Island, which is where they're taking the gold out of the country from.

During the final confrontation, Steve finally gets to see the villains, and he discovers that the one in charge is in fact the director of the Federal Reserve Bank who Steve met at the beginning of this book. Gasp. But that's not all! He's also... the Red Skull!

Honestly, I was kind of surprised; I didn't think this was the kind of book where we'd get any known comic villains, but I guess it's always gotta be the Red Skull. I think he's the only one of Steve's big villains who likes to disguise himself; Zemo has obvious disguise issues and I imagine it's also hard to cover up Zola's Teletubby-esque television body.

Steve shoots one of the villains, because I guess that's what he does in this era of canon.

So the plot wraps up in, like, two pages, because for some reason all these early Marvel novels wrap up very fast. Red Skull, of course, attempts to escape and then disappears and his body is never found. The end.

Well.

That was definitely a book. That I read. Believe it or not, I actually think it was the best of these early Marvel prose novels that I've read so far, even if it was also the absolute weirdest; I thought the thriller-style plot was entertaining, I liked Steve and his Extremely Sad characterization, I obviously enjoy all the identity themes, I liked how very detailed the New York setting was, and I do like how they tried to treat it all seriously. I mean, sure, this did lead to LSD in the super-soldier serum in presumably the name of realism, but I felt like the book was trying to present superheroes in a way that didn't feel silly and also didn't really take for granted that the reader would automatically accept superheroes.

It felt like a book that was written hoping that people who weren't superhero fans would read it, if that makes any sense. And I thought that was interesting, because most modern superhero work that I can think of assumes they've got complete audience buy-in and everyone is willing to suspend their disbelief and we all know the genre conventions and are expecting people running around in brightly-colored spandex. Whereas this is more like a James Bond novel if for some reason James Bond were called upon to defend his decision to wear brightly-colored spandex instead of bespoke suits. But I assume no one read it, because Bantam never published a Marvel book after this one.

If you can actually find a copy of this one for a price you're willing to pay. I recommend it. It was delightful and way more solid than I thought it was going to be.

Also, come on, you know you want to read about Captain America's acid trip.

[nagisasstunningpersonality]

TINSITOGS, a retrospective (happy birthday)

(yes I’m like two days too late I know I’m sorry) 

Why hello followers and ass class fandom, nice to see you there. I’m sure MOST people know about this, but in case you don’t, hi. On AO3 I’m better known as livixbobbiex, writer of maybe one of the most infamous Assassination Classroom fics. 

Which I mean like, if you haven’t read it yet you totally should it’s fanlore at this point I promise- 

Shameless plug that I don’t need aside, I felt that, on its first birthday since actual completion, I just wanted to share some things about it. Some tit bits about writing it, fun facts, maybe even some author advice TM. I appreciate that it’ll be super annoying if I do that in the tags, though, so that’ll all be under the cut. If you don’t want to read the whole post, then no matter what, thanks for the support in general! 

I also want to take the opportunity to announce that I’ve reopened my discord, so if you want to talk about my fics with me (and others), you’re more than welcome to join! (the link is here) 

The origin story 

I’ve stated this many times, I think, but TINSITOGS was never supposed to be a serious story. Taking you back, quite a long time, it actually started in a facebook DM with a friend. We used to come up with “head canons” with each other, which were basically just very condensed fanfiction plots over a multitude of text messages. I believe I was trying to cheer her up, and I tried to come up with some kind of plot line. 

At the time, I was fairly fresh to the Ass Class fandom, and I was joking about how there were no teen pregnancy melodrama fanfictions. It wasn’t that I wanted one, I just thought it was strange for a school centric anime with a bunch of ships to NOT have one. And, back then, I only really cared about karmagisa. So I just decided ‘right it’s happening’. The reason I decided to make it ABO was due to ‘it making sense’. Fun fact: it was almost written as AFAB trans Nagisa, but I decided against it as I didn’t rate my ability to handle it well back then. Looking back on it, I’m glad I made that decision. 

Over around two months, writing out the plot of this story took over my life a little bit. I had no idea where I was going with it, but I was having so much fun with the drama that I decided that Karma and Nagisa shouldn’t get together soon at all, and I had a lot of fun teasing my friend with the ‘will they won’t they’. It was only when I got bored that I invented this intense drama plotline to finish it all off. 

That period of time was a lot of fun. And whilst that friendship didn’t end well, I still have a lot to thank her for. She chose Daichi’s name because I had no idea, and she wanted to annoy me because I didn’t like Haikyuu. When I couldn’t decide on his hair colour, the purple was her suggestion because ‘why logic?’ Daichi speaking Korean was because of how much she liked Kpop. She even helped me choose the title of the actual fic, so there’s a lot you can thank her for, honestly. 

After I finished that story, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Whenever I daydreamed, I used to think about that damn Daichi Akabane, and how much I wanted to tell his story. I’d even come up with extra stuff to fill in a lot of the gaps, and developed his character in my mind. I decided that I was really desperate to write it down. Usually that worked when I had an idea I wanted to work through. 

I wrote the first chapter in late 2017, and then the next two as well. I just, kept going, and realised that I could go further still. TINSITOGS was never something that was supposed to be shared, but I decided I may as well. After all, that fated ‘teen pregnancy drama’ fic still didn’t exist, and I thought it would be funny to make it happen. 

Yes, as I’ve stated publicly a few times, TINSITOGS was a crack fic. If I wanted attention from it, it was infamy. We even joked about me cursing the fandom if it ever became the most popular fic (whoops?). What I wasn’t expecting was a bunch of people, in a fandom where at the time there were NO ongoing karmagisa fics and it was pretty dead, to really seem to enjoy it. It was enough to have me keep writing it, at least. I still don’t know at what point I actually started taking it seriously, but somehow I did, and the rest is history? 

The reception 

In my wildest dreams, I never thought that I would be the author of one of the most popular fics in the fandom. To this day, the amount of views TINSITOGS has is insanity to me. For the record, across all platforms it’s on today it has 238,000, which is literally a number I can’t even visualise anymore. Almost quarter of a MILLION. To this day on AO3, it’s the most viewed Ass Class fic that’s an ACTUAL ass class fic (the others are multi fandom compilations). So yeah, I achieved the original goal, I guess? 

Now you might be wondering, “omg the karmagisa fandom is fujoshi trash”. And, considering the origins, it is kind of funny. The thing is, though, TINSITOGS was written at incredibly good time. It was written when there were, essentially, very few long form Karma/Nagisa stories. If any other fics did get posted on occasion, they were usually just oneshots. I was also, at that point, writing very fast. A symptom of ADHD is becoming obsessively productive over certain things. Since I was able to get a 3k chapter out every few days/once a week, TINSITOGS was consistently bumped to the top of AO3′s default view. And some of those first few chapters were altered canon, and transcribing the canon dialogue didn’t take very long. The more views it got, the more people would read it out of sheer curiosity. 

I think it also helps that, at least after it started getting some positive feedback (which was honestly after the pre written chapters), I purposely tried to make it ‘not terrible’. I mean, I personally think the first chapter is pretty weak and if it wasn’t somewhat iconic to a lot of people I’d rewrite it. But in general, I purposely tried to make the world of ABO my own, to make it more accessible to those who don’t like that genre, and stay away from the inherently grosser stuff as much as possible. I genuinely do get comments about how I introduced people to the genre as a whole, still not sure if that’s a GOOD thing but hey, it happened. 

TINSITOGS turned into a lot more than just a joke. It turned into my favourite hobby. It turned into a research project (honestly, you would not believe the amount of mummy vlogs and legit scientific articles about child development I consumed). It turned into something that, at least I believe, was widely loved. 

Meaning 

I think it might be wrong to say that I don’t have AN idea of when I started to take the fic super seriously. For me, it was around the time someone commented something along the lines of saying my writing meant a lot to them, that they’d spent all night reading it and had been unable to put it down. 

Not to get too dark here, but I do have a past in writing a very long, somewhat popular fic (it’s still on my fanfic net profile if anyone’s interested, but I don’t recommend it). However, in the latter part of my teenage years, the depression struck. Writing was the love of my life, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it anymore. Maybe I’d be able to muster an idea or even a chapter at the best points of that, but I’d never completely finished any story. Starting to write again was a huge step in my recovery, and one of the reasons I convinced myself that life was worth it was being able to impact someone’s life somehow. Even to this day, I still remember the fics I read when I was, like, thirteen. How much I still remember them, and how much they meant to be at the time. I wanted to be that writer for someone else. To be honest, it was actually Yuri!!! On Ice that got me out of the super bad, but I still never wrote anything of real consequence. TINSITOGS was the first time in a long time I actually committed to something. 

And, to be completely honest, there were a lot of times I was tired of it, and wanted to just quit. But, the thing was, I felt like people depended on me in a way. I got so many comments that were just FILLED with support, telling me how much they looked forward to every update. It wasn’t just empty words, either, a lot of the times these comments would be super engaged with the actual writing. I can’t even describe just how much they meant to me, how much I would look forward to reading everyone’s opinions. And then discord happened, which was a lot of fun. 

TINSITOGS went a lot further than I ever thought it would. There were comments, discussions, fan art, fan FIC (which is honestly incredible to me). Someone even added it to TV Tropes, at one point. Not to mention the Cards Against Humanity deck and quiz It makes me so unbelievably happy that I could inspire that much creativity, but it’s a two way street. It was all of that which inspired me to write, too. 

Writing 

The only real goal I actually had was aiming for around 3000 words per chapter. I had a whole facebook log of plot points as planning, and I was mostly just trying to expand on them into prose. I honestly thought that, at its completion, the entire fic would be around 100k words, if that. Not, at one point, being literally the longest ass class fic on AO3. 

There are a lot of aspects that were directly adapted from the original messages, and I tried to stay faithful to it more so at first, even if I later removed some of the pure crack. But the style was also vaguely similar, with the story being told mostly from Nagisa’s perspective with swaps to Karma when it made sense. All the main plot beats, too, are pretty much identical. The plus to this was I was able to add a lot of really fun foreshadowing, and I feel like it’s a fun reread because of it. 

Honestly though, if there’s a demand to release those OG message logs, I will. Mostly because it’s kind of funny, and interesting to see. Isogai and Nagisa were engaged at one point, even. 

Obviously, it changed somewhat. 3000 was the minimum length, and the time to completion was whenever it felt right. One of my big concerns was about pacing, so it took a lot more fleshing out and maybe ‘filler’ content for some of the main arcs to work. 

There’s parts of TINSITOGS I don’t think aren’t written that well, and some that I’m still super proud of. I think you can definitely tell there’s a gradual shift in style, and I get a lot more comfortable with writing them as characters as it goes along. To be honest, my pride for the fic overall is what it represents. 

It is funny to think about the places it got written in, though. I started it when I worked at McDonalds with no life direction, then it went through my first year of university with me. It’s been written in at least four countries. Aeroplanes, night clubs, long haul buses, a train through the Japanese southern coastline. Even the start of covid. TINSITOGS managed to see a lot. I even turned a scene in (the boat scene during the India chapter with altered names) to my university as a legitimate assignment. 

There were also a few messages I wanted to achieve, once I realised I had the platform to put them across. One of them was, obviously, ‘use protection kids’. It was important to me that I didn’t glamorise it too much, and I think that came across. I also wanted to dispute some of the issues with ABO, and subvert the consent issues as much as I could. An arc I really ‘liked’ writing was how abuse doesn’t always look the same way, and that it can be a drawn out change in behaviour. How the most important part of ‘being a good parent’ isn’t perfection, but genuinely loving and doing the best you can for your kid. How love doesn’t solve everything, and effective communication can take a very long time to learn and build a functional relationship. I mean, there definitely was a lot I tried to put in, and you’re free to interpret it all how you want. But, I like to think some people learnt some of these things, at least. 

Daichi 

Honestly, Daichi developed almost of his own free will. I had a good idea of his appearance, and that he was smart. Writing him from birth until around nine years old (older if you read the sequel fic) pretty much allowed that fluidity. It was really fun to explore a nature vs nurture development, and let his own characteristics speak for themselves. 

He’ll always have a special place in my heart. 

This is the first image I ever made. When I was trying to figure out what Daichi looked like, I honestly just edited Karma’s hair (pretty well, actually? I’m impressed with my past skill). That’s where the ‘he looks just like Karma’ meme kind of came from. 

This was the first image I actually created of Daichi. I THINK it was on rinmaru games mega anime creator or something, but it’s literally not available on the internet anymore as far as I can tell, so I can’t double check. This was in the pre-piccrew days. His eyes are closed because they didn’t have the right tone of goldish/silver.  

His sister, Kaguya, didn’t even exist originally, even though I decided on that ending pretty early on. Actually, she was going to be called ‘Irina’ due to some hijinks. Initially, when Karma found out about Irina’s pregnancy, she was going to get super emotional and mad at him and basically force him to name his first born daughter after her. Karma agreed to shut her up, never intending to have another child, so when the surprise second child later came along they had to live with the pain. However, to be honest I just forgot to write in the actual scene that set it all up, and I decided against adding it anywhere else. The name Kaguya was a very last minute decision, and it was a chance for me to explore some ideas that didn’t fit with Daichi’s character. 

Interestingly too, Daichi and Nao were never intended to be a thing. I only decided that towards the VERY end. Even though the reason I named Nao that was because of a ship I had in a J Drama (Good Morning Call). It just kind of ended up happening because I won myself over with imagining the cute. 

The music 

I used to write with a lot of background music, though not all the time. Particularly towards the start, there was a lot that didn’t really make sense thematically, yet I would write to a lot. 

Here’s a link to the spotify playlist if you want it it’s basically all the ones I noted I’d listened to a lot. Not including the smut ones, though, I have a whole playlist for that. 

Some of the notable ones: 

Five String Serenade - the first scene I wrote of the entire fic, in Chapter 25 New Year Time where they fell asleep cuddling. 

Cosmic Love - when I wrote Nagisa’s love confession scene in hospital (I also wrote this pretty early on) 

Northern Downpour (though it was actually a cover by Emma Blackery) - The chapter after Daichi’s born (30) 

When The Party’s Over -  Confession Time Third Period, Chapter 69. I literally listened to this song on REPEAT when I planned and wrote the kind of ‘break up’ scene, and it’s one of the few parts that made me cry writing. 

Turning Page - I know I said no smut, but this song actually gave me the idea to have the “I love you” in chapter 108 be less on a whim and actually more built up. In the original plan, Karma really did just say it without thinking. I’m glad I changed that.  

Bury Me Low and Numb - pretty much all I listened to when writing the last few chapters, because Evil Nagisa core. So much so that Bury Me Low was in my top 2020 songs rewind. 

As for the title, there’s actually quite a funny story. I had no idea what to call the fic, and when that happens I usually just try and find some song lyrics. I really wanted to use something from ‘October’ by the Broken Bells. Not only because it’s my favourite song (has been for years), but thematically it really worked. The issue was, it worked as the WHOLE song, there were no individual lyrics that captured everything. And, if they did, they didn’t flow very well. And naming the fic ‘October’ would have been weird for a lot of reasons. There Is No Sweeter Innocence That Our Gentle Sin really was just plucked randomly, in a desperate search to find any snappy lyrics from any song that had some kind of meaning. After a bit of discussion, we settled that it kind of worked... if Daichi is innocent and they committed a sin or something. It also wasn’t the most obvious lyric from the song (Take Me To Church if anyone doesn’t know) so I just went with it. It works out, I think, because TINSITOGS turned out to be a pretty good acronym and pronounceable word in its own right. 

The merch  redbubble drama 

It’s a well known fact that I’m not very good at art. However, I decided to try pixel art because it seemed the easiest to not mess up. I made Karma and Nagisa, before deciding to also give Daichi a try. 

This, to this day, is the only good quality art of Daichi that I actually own. The only one I’m actually happy sharing and thinking it doesn’t look terrible. As much as I love people sending me fanart, it’s not ‘my property’, right. 

So, I was kind of joking about TINSITOGS having merchandise. At first I just made two funny quote things, and uploaded it to redbubble. I was never intending to actually make money from this, and I’d agreed to myself that if I did, I would just donate it to charity. I was joking with the quotes, but since I had this artwork I figured I may as well uploaded. Separately, there was also an image that had pixel Daichi next to pixel Nagisa and Karma (which I also created). 

Aside from showing up in a few people’s adverts across the internet, there was no real harm with this. In fact, I didn’t make money anyway. It was just... more the joke of it existing. I did, however, buy myself a Daichi phone case, which is one of my favourite possessions. 

The funny ‘drama’ comes in when they got taken down due to copywrite. Sure, the one with Nagisa and Karma, I understand. But the other three literally had no mention or anything to do with Assassination Classroom, aside from being from a fanfiction. So basically, someone who owns those rights claimed my OC as theirs. Which makes Daichi canon? Whatever the case, I found this hilarious don’t worry. 

How has TINSITOGS changed my life? 

This is quite a strange thing to think about. Because, in a lot of ways, it really hasn’t. As I’m sure a lot of people know, I don’t really consider myself to have any real ‘fame’, despite the impressive numbers. Whenever I tell people in my personal life, they seem to think I’m some sort of internet celebrity, but that’s never been the case for me. I mean, it’s hardly a cultural phenomenon. 

In a lot of ways, I’d much rather befriend someone than have them admire me. Possibly because being someone’s inspiration is kind of weird... I’m just an awkward duck who likes to write after all. I don’t mind it, though. I genuinely find it an honour, even if I don’t necessarily agree. I also want to take this time to say that if anyone ever wants to talk or message me, you’re more than free to do so. I’m usually super casual with people who do that, I promise. 

TINSITOGS was the first story I ever finished in the way I truly wanted to. Start to end, a full narrative. And it took a LOT. There were so many times I almost felt like quitting, or took super long breaks. For me, ADHD queen, actually finishing something was a huge deal. And I know I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t owe it to everyone who read it, and myself, to see it through. You know like, if I were to die tomorrow, at least I’ve left something behind. 

In a lot of ways, it’s changed me for the better. It’s helped me develop my writing styles, and way of thinking. It encouraged me to become more active in the fandom, and develop some important friendships. I always feel like my Tumblr and Fanfiction ‘known’ factor is separate. I think most of my Tumblr following is more to do with my theories/Japanese context research if anything, for example, but I know I wouldn’t be so interested in that if TINSITOGS hadn’t lead me to deeply examine character and really look into analysing source material for clues. I also think there’s just... a lot of myself in it. 

I was 17 years old, when I first came up with the idea. I finished the story when I was 20. Now, at the time of writing, I’m 21. That time has seen some pretty significant changes - just in general life facts and my own personal human development. For me at least, a lot of that was pretty turbulent, and TINSITOGS stands as a time capsule for that, in a way. 

I know I gained a lot of confidence, and it affirmed to me that writing is what I love. Telling stories and sharing them is what I love. 

Conclusion

Do I think TINSITOGS is an outstanding piece of writing, or the best fic ever? No. I really don’t. It’s strange to say because I definitely spent a lot of time on it, but it’s not like I put my full unbridled efforts into the story. I don’t fully plan, use a beta, or even read through on my own. And that’s okay - that’s not what I write fanfiction for. Fanfiction is my place to have fun with characters and stories I like, without the pressures of having to stand on my own complete originality. Yes, I’m fully confident that I can write at a “higher quality”, if I really wanted to. I’m also aware that some authors put their full effort into their fics, and that’s just as valid! 

It feels odd to say this about my own writing, but I honestly think there’s just something in this story. It might not be written in the best prose ever, and the premise might be kind of dumb for a lot of people. But, I think, there’s some part of this fic that managed to grab people. Somehow, at some point, many readers get captured into the emotions and so drawn in that ‘they just have to finish it now!’ Again, I’m not sure myself how I actually achieved that. Of course, that won’t apply to everyone, but I do feel there’s some truth in it. And it makes me happy, to have caused that. 

If TINSITOGS is your favourite fic, or if you genuinely think it’s the best story you’ve read, then thank you. I really appreciate your support, and I’m happy to have been a part of your life, I guess. I know how much fanfics can mean to a person, and that’s why I’m not going to take it down, or edit it at all. And it’s fine too, if you loved the fic for a while and moved on -i t happens. Whatever the case, I’m very honoured to have been able to occupy a moment of your life. Or if you find this fic in 10 years time, even, I still wholly appreciate you. 

This story was incredibly important to me, and thank you for reading if it was ever important to you too. 

You may ask, what now? Well, this is only intended to be a detailed look back for whoever’s interested, and it’s likely the only one I’ll actually do, a year after completion. Of course, if you ever want to ask me anything or just discuss the story, you’re honestly good to contact me in whatever way I have available. 

I’m still writing my ongoing stories, of course, despite taking a small break due to the university work load. I fully intend to complete the stories I’ve already started to tell, at least. After that... I’m not sure if I’ll still write fanfiction. Don’t panic, this isn’t a ‘I’m quitting writing’ thing. I may, however, have bled the Karmagisa genre a bit too dry at that point. Who knows? I am pretty interested in writing something original for once, so maybe that’ll work out. 

For now, at least, thank you to anyone who read this fic. To anyone who commented, liked, or interacted with me over it. To anyone who created or learnt from it. I’m really glad that I got to share this story with you all, and ultimately left some kind of mark, no matter how big or small. 

Happy birthday, TINSITOGS. I had a lot of fun writing you. 

[angieschiffahoi]

Before I start Harrow, I want to share my thoughts on Gideon.

 Spoilers ahead.

While I don’t believe it was the greatest book ever written, it was perfectly fitting for me.

The genre: It was a mix between sci-fi and fantasy, very simple in its worldbuilding, it didn’t shy from some exposition (I hate new fantasy books that don’t use exposition at all... you’re not that good at the spreading the information thingy, I don’t understand your overly complicated worldbuilding!) and used it in pretty much conventional ways. It didn’t invent every single tiny little thing (which I find very annoying in modern fantasy and sci-fi books - let your MC say fuck), but mixed things familiar with our world with future/innovative elements, almost seamlessly. Thank you, Tamsyn, for using insults we know (I understand why TV shows do it, it’s to keep a PG-13 rating and still use swear words, but I find it insufferable when books try to invent terms for everything... even pens or bread). 

I’ve seen people say it is heavily sci-fi and I disagree. It is not hard sci-fi in the slightest and the magical/necromantic elements are a lot more technical than any of the technology, which was basically non-existent (at times I was stunned whenever they mentioned anything that was “modern” or techy, since it felt like fantasy 80% of the time). The author built a magic system and tried to fit it into a sci-fi setting. It very much resembled Warhammer 40k at times (come on, the Undying Emperor?) and had they mentioned Chaos Gods every now and then, I would have believed this was a WH 40K novelette a-la Blackstone Fortress.

The plot: Gay necromancers in space, with a plot similar to And Then There Were None which at times felt a little bit like Catching Fire as well (Tamsyn, did you read my diary?). It was very simple, straightforward and the fact that we only had one narrating voice made it very easy to read and to follow along. The fact that it was a bit cinematic is probably the reason I managed to finish it (I am tired of 100 subplots and 200 characters in the same book). All of the plot twists felt earned, because looking back I can see where the author left those crumbs. I feel like the red herrings were a bit weak (except Ianthe at the end, which was a bit disappointing as the main villain so I was glad to see she was one), because I started to suspect Dulcinea right away (even though I never would have guessed why). Also, I was too focused on the characters to actually pay attention to the plot, so I didn’t guess much going forward, which made me feel pretty stupid, because some of that shit was very obvious. 

The characters: What I really loved was Gideon’s voice. The first few chapters were a bit flowery and there was a lot of purple prose to set the tone (which failed a bit, because I still imagined it more as a fantasy setting than a sci-fi one), but then it flawed perfectly. The jokes (narrated or spoke aloud) were great and it felt like they always fit. Sometimes the insults were a bit gratuitous but I like the trope of being infuriated with someone all of the time, you can’t help but think “oh fuck this bitch”. Also, the puns. Gideon, I love you. I would’ve liked them to be more mature (maybe 20 somethings), but it’s because I’m old and I want this type of narratives to have older MCs sometimes. 

Harrow really picked up in the second part of the book and I can’t wait to see how she’s changed in the second one. Loved Dulcinea from the start and I don’t care she was an evil god-like entity. She was a bit over the top in the battle (that thing about the arms and legs, why?!?), but I do love a dramatic bitch (I still lowkey like her & Gideon together). I was sorry for the Fourth & Fifth houses, but while I loved Magnus, I couldn’t stand the teenagers (but I did feel so, so sorry for Gideon). The Third house was obnoxious and I enjoyed Corona the most. I’m pretty sure Ianthe’s coming back, so we’ll see about that. Not gonna talk about the Eight - gave me WH 40K Inquisitor vibes, felt unneccessarily over the top. The Second was forgettable, I didn’t even understand the captain was a necromancer until she killed Teacher. And Sixth, oh, my darlings. If Camilla is dead I’m going to burn my kindle. Writing wise, concentrating on only one POV, kind of underdevelops secondary characters, so while Gideon’s voice was very strong, I feel like everyone else was a bit forgettable unless Gideon spent time on them. It was a book that could’ve easily been written in first person, if it didn’t have that ending. 

The relationship: I am going to be brief - I love rivalry that turns to love (any kind of love). So, I loved every single interaction between Harrow and Gideon (the pool scene broke me). Palamedes and Harrow had chemistry. I loved that Gideon just adopted everyone: I am your cavalier, now I am yours! Oh, screw it! I’m going to protect everyone! Gideon is such a himbo, even though she’s a shembo, but not a bimbo? I hated every single time the Third called their cavalier “Babs”. 

Things that were left open and Tamsyn better solve before the end of the series: “Gideon, you’re a ginger!” and basically everything fake!Dulcinea told Gideon about her past (”You don’t know what you are to me”). Also, why Gideon didn’t die when she was a child (and the obvious, where is she from?). Where are Corona and Camilla? What happened to Gideon’s body? And a few things I forgot about, because I wrote this “review” yesterday in my head and I didn’t write stuff down. 

Overall it was a very pleasant experience. And I may re-read it in the future to catch the foreshadowing and some hints. Now, onto Harrow the Ninth! Which is confusing? ‘Cause the Emperor called her Harrow the First?

Anyways. We love a tiny goth stirring shit with her “dead” girlfriend’s  two-hander. I am a bit scared, though, since what I really loved was Gideon’s narrating voice, but I’m guessing Harrow picked up some of her mannerism since she “ate” her? We’ll see. 

[queenlua]

salty hugo nominee 2020 reviews: short stories

under a cut because long, etc

ranked roughly from “shit that made me the most annoyed” to “shit that made me the least annoyed”:

A Catalog of Storms by Fran Wilde

God did this ever not work for me.  It must’ve worked for someone, I guess?  To be nominated?  But, what?

Look, the story was already on thin fucking ice when I was halfway through and I noticed the narrative wasn’t going much of anywhere.  Then the storms started getting names like A Leaving and A Grieving and A Loss That’s Probably Your Fault and I rolled my eyes so far back into my skull that I had to wait a while for them to re-correct themselves so I could finish reading the damn thing.  AN OVERWROUGHT AND NOT-EVEN-THAT-EVOCATIVE METAPHOR IS NOT A STORY, I want to nail on the office door of A Certain Subset Of Acquisitions Editors.

Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island by Nibedita Sen

Sigh.

Look, I know why everyone wants metafiction to be good.  I’m a sucker for the meta and the contrary and the self-referential and the circuitous.  In college I convinced some poor sucker of a professor to let me submit some horrifying 80-page metafictional thing about Andrew Johnson being a piece of shit, told via (among other things) histograms, MSN Messenger group chats, excerpts from a 2100 reactionary Civil War novel that does not exist, strangely erotically-charged letters between Johnson and various southern governors, excerpts from an anthropology textbook published in 2400 that also does not exist, and so on and so forth.  That shit was delightful to write, so I get it, I do.

But I also don’t ask anyone to read my 80-page metafictional thing (except that poor professor, bless their soul), because when I reread it later, it wasn’t a story.  Parts of it were an excuse to show off my own cleverness.  Parts of it were almost a story—but I either couldn’t be assed to fill the full thing out, or I didn’t quite know how to full the thing out, or I just didn’t have the ballsiness to do so.  Alas.

So, okay.  In waltzes this particular story, a metafictional thingy told via excerpts from various books and websites.

And while this one didn’t enrage me with its mediocrity the way, say, STET did last year (an angry Facebook post that was only barely pretending to be a story), it also just isn’t much of a story.  Weird spooky cannibal shit happens.  Feminists be fightin’ with each other about intersectionality.  Sure.  But I feel like that’s just Tuesday afternoon on my Tumblr feed, not a proper story.

(I would be delighted to read a metafiction-y story that does manage to work for me, by the way.  Hit me up with your best quirky metafiction-y shit.  But this one wasn’t it.)

And Now His Lordship is Laughing by Shiv Ramdas

It’s like, fine.  The prose is good.  The right motions are made, mechanics-wise.  There’s just not that much to the story.

This is actually a problem with most of the stuff I’m reading in SF/F zines these days.  The prose is good, the prose is always reasonably good, and sometimes it’s so good I’d chop off my left pinky to be able to write some of the phrases they do.  But the story part, too often, ends up being a nothingburger with nothingsauce.  It’s obvious from the start that the colonial government is going to be horrid; it’s obvious from the start that Apa’s going to use some trick to get her vengeance; the only question is how.  And the how wasn’t especially evocative or thrilling, to me.

Blood is Another Word for Hunger by Rivers Solomon

Y’know, this one is weird.  You get a lot of points for being weird.  It’s not quite Philip K. Dick levels of weird, and it could’ve benefitted from that level of weird.  Like, if Sully’s gonna give birth to a bunch of previously-dead folks, I’d expect them to do some kinda weird shit, rather than just some amicable homesteading and then some Sully-planned murder, right?

What’s here is reasonably fun but I ache thinking about how much weirder and cooler it could’ve been.

Do Not Look Back, My Lion by Alix. E Harrow

This one was actually pretty solid adventure fantasy.  Actually, it sort of gets me in a mindset of wondering—do I ask too much of SF/F short fiction?  Like, I look at the Hugo nominees each year, and I’m always hoping to have my mind blown, my world rocked, and so on.  But I dunno, the English-speaking SF/F world is only so big, my mind can only be blown so many times, and maybe something can just be a good romp & that’s perfectly deserving of an award on its own.

It does some stuff with gender, sure, and that bit’s pretty fun, but mostly it’s a cool story.  Recommended if you’re into warrior chicks and/or healer chicks and/or those dating each other.

(BCS, as a venue, seems to select for a lot of this sort of thing.  It’s not always revolutionary but it’s also always a story and I appreciate the shit out of that.)

As the Last I May Know by S.L. Huang

So we have a blatant ethics-of-nuclear-war metaphor going on.  Lil’ trite and/or unsexy now that the Cold War’s over, but, well, the horrible threat of nuclear war never really went away, right?  We just decided to ignore it in favor of other looming apocalypses.  So sure, let’s ride.

I liked Tej in this story; I liked Otto Han; I liked how full a sense of their characters was evoked in such a small space.  Something about Nyma didn’t quite land for me, though, and I can’t put a finger on why.  I get why she’s relatively non-agenic, I understand the concerns and fears that drive her, but I just wanted something... more?

I dunno.  Maybe I’m nitpicking.  It was alright; I wanted more than alright.

Also, an ending like this is like when pop songs do that radio-edit lazy-fade-into-silence ending.  C’mon, commit!  The only time you get to do an ~ambiguous~ ending like this is when you’re writing “The Lady or the Tiger” and you want some middle school English class and/or some book club to argue ferociously over it.  But endings are what elevate things from thought experiments to real stories; it’s the moment you gotta say, yeah, this is a thing about the world that I know and believe to be true.

[bitterandsugary]

so recently (and I mean like last year and a half), I was going through the process of recovery from some shit that happened in 2017 and its mental consequences. And apart from the usual recovery methods, like less stress and more sleep and whatnot, I also found peace and support in returning to the things that i LOVED when I was a teen. I was really passionate about ‘nerdy’ stuff back then - and I mean, like, the most obvious things that everyone liked at one or another point of their life, like Harry Potter, and Naruto, and 2000s pop punk groups, god bless them. When I turned 19, I began to think that I’ve grown up, and fangirling over some anime ship or a band leader is not exactly cool anymore. But the 2017 stroke, and guess what helped me through it - fangirling. I returned to my core coping mechanisms, and even, oh my, I wrote a fanfic. Incidentally, it turned out to be the most coherent and good piece of prose that I had written in a long time by then. I started thinking. I started looking into my old passions - with a little help from a shitposting group here and there, feeling very embarrassed. But I rewatched Fullmetal Alchemist and felt such an enormous flush of inspiration and energy from it, that I was like, okay, I need to give this a chance. Maybe I was too quick to obliterate all my nerdy interests from my life. 2019 came with a bit of other complicated stuff. And while I’m not proud of cutting off people and moving out again to live alone, I really really think that my fandoms helped me so much to remain a coherent, confident, and positive version of myself. I rewatched some parts of Naruto. I became super into Marvel stuff again (yes, jumping on a bandwagon, but is it a bad thing, I ask myself? No. You’ve grown up, and it’s suddenly fine). Then I re-watched Supernatural. Okay, this - I’m still a little embarrassed about this, but gosh was it good. I love everything about that show. And now, almost on the brink of 2020, I’ve begun to read Harry Potter. It’s a huge mark for me, because Harry Potter began my path of being what I am now. I first read it as a teen (14 yo), gulping all books in almost one week, reading day and night, amazed. Shaken. My world turned upside down. That’s where an important part of my personality started. And now I’m reading it again - for the first time, in English. And it’s incredible.  Now, the reason that I’m writing about this here is a bit sad, I guess, but I need to share. I haven’t even used tumblr a lot before, and when I did, it was mostly browsing for fan art (a pretty valid reason, I reckon). Now, as I’m kinda returning to my fangirl past-self (or accepting something new about myself), I’ve realised that I surrounded myself with people who are very distant from this world. People who don’t get it. What a teenag-y thing to say! Maybe I’m not seeing things right. Or maybe it’s true, and, suddenly, I feel no understanding - or, rather, a response - from people who are dear to me. And I want to share this revelation of mine, this re-discovery of something important to me, but I don’t want to keep annoying my friends. And my poor mother, who, to be fair, has had quite enough of my shit over the years.   So, here I am. Blabbing. Hello again, tumblr.

[mautadite]

september book round up

17 books this month! almost done with my goal for the year, pretty excited about that. don’t know what i’ll concentrate on after i am... probably more schmoopy romance lol. my job broke my contract for the month so i’ll be home for a while with lots of time to read hopefully. or listen, i should say. all of these (other than kaiju maximus) are audiobooks!

society of gentlemen series - k.j. charles ⭐️⭐️⭐️ victorian m/m series that deals with politics, democrats vs tories, sedition. thought provoking material in a light enough package, and the romance is the main focus. i liked all three books and all three couples, though each book had its issues. in the first, it was that one of the protags was somehow comfortable to settle into the life of luxury that he criticises, and in the third i was a little bewildered by the dynamics. the second was probably my favourite. but still, a good series.

everything between us - harper bliss ⭐️⭐️⭐️ sweet f/f romance. i liked that it dipped into feminism and fat acceptance and other topics that romance books generally just never address. really appreciated that. and i really liked the main character! i just sometimes felt like characters would speak as if they were reading from a textbook, especially when talking about sj issues. it was kinda awkward.

zero visibility - georgia beers ⭐️⭐️⭐️ f/f... not quite enemies to lovers. awkward acquaintances to lovers? and there was a lesbian ice queen who was literally an ice queen, she used to be a skiing champion lol. this was good, well written and had a nice small town romance vibe. moved pretty slowly, which i can appreciate in a romance. there were multiple povs, other than the two main characters, which i didn’t like, and there was one super biphobic character who never got taught a lesson. otherwise: pretty good!

bear, otter and the kid - t.j. klune ⭐️⭐️⭐️ very very cute romance/coming of age. guy falls in love with his best friend’s brother while taking care of his little brother after their mother abandoned them. it got very melodramatic never the end (a la misunderstandings and forced break up, it just made me annoyed) and the story was honestly very predictable. but it was funny and sweet and well written for the most part.

trapped - sally bryan ⭐️⭐️⭐️ now this is lesbian enemies to lovers... but it wasn’t great. seriously, the speed at which they went from hating each other and maligning each other to declaring their ilus was ridiculous. i know the premise is that they were in a life altering situation, but come on. :/ that said, this book was a giant ‘cuddling for warmth’ trope and i was here for it.

orlando - virginia woolf ⭐️⭐️⭐️ one of those classics that i wish i liked better than i do. and i mean i do like it. but it moved so slowly in the beginning, i was so impatient for the gender stuff and the queer stuff to start happening. things picked up when they did, and i adore virginia woolf’s writing, i did soooooo much bookmarking... but idk, just never got immersed in the story. this would benefit from a second read, but idk if i’ll ever drum up the patience to do so.

the horse mistress chronicles - r.a. steffan ⭐️⭐️⭐️ a poly romance series set in a fantasy world against the backdrop of an invasion by a larger empire. the main character is a gender fluid horse tamer who falls in love with a eunuch werewolf priest and the strongest warrior in her tribe, and the story follows the course of their triad relationship and their personal developments and the war. i feel like it had a serious pacing problem, especially near the beginning, wrt how quickly i was asked to believe that they fell in love. the world building, while good, fell flat very often. i left the series satisfied, but also kinda underwhelmed.

too bad about your girl - saranna dewylde ⭐️⭐️⭐️ short story, f/f friends to lovers. cute, and i knew what i was getting into with a short story, but as soon as it ended i wanted more. they were solid characters, and i felt like a bigger story could be told about them! but it was still cute.

the music of what happens - bill konigsberg ⭐️⭐️⭐️ m/m ya romance that made me kinda... eh. bill konigsberg is one of those ya authors who always gets recommended but idk that i’m a fan of his style of writing. this had an unbelievable premise, very little chemistry, an irritating passage against ~~~pc culture~~~ and a scene involving forced exercise that made me very uncomfortable. but it was well meaning and the characters were cute. the narrators saved this for me.

truth will out - k.c. wells ⭐️⭐️ m/m murder mystery romance that was very sweet... but a pretty bad mystery! i figured it out so fast! and as i am NOT particularly clever or any kind of sleuth... :/ yeah. it’s always a bummer when you find out whodunnit miles before it’s revealed. especially annoying in this case because the author made it obvious by having EVERYONE BE A POTENTIAL SUSPECT... except the guy who ended up doing it lol. the romance part was nice tho.

good to know - d.w. marchwell ⭐️ a romance novel about a gay cowboy adopting his nephew and falling in love with his nephew’s new teacher should be really cute, right? alas, this was bad. constant pov switching, meh writing, ridic sex scenes, entire conversations in different languages and characters who were frankly unlikable. skip this.

kaiju maximus(r) - kai ashante wilson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ a short story by one of my faaaaaaavourite writers that i read in an anthology years ago; had an urge to read it again. in a post apocalyptic world, a mighty hero and her family search out a new threat. told from the husband’s POV with kaw’s beautiful beautiful prose. always a treat.

that’s it for september. it’ll be more of the same of october probably; lots of queer romance. currently reading poison kiss by ana mardoll.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY TO NOT NOT START A PROGRAM IN A STARTUP IDEAS

Or the company that would be painless, though annoying, to lose. So here in sum is how determination seems to work. Both customers and investors will be feeling pinched. That's ultimately what drives us to work on anything, and you're going to have to think more about each startup before investing. News. The Valley basically runs on referrals. Because in fact the distinction we began with has a rather brutal converse: just as you can be wise without being very smart. You're never going to produce Google this way.

During the years we worked on Viaweb I read a book of stories about a famous judge in eighteenth century Japan called Ooka Tadasuke. In this case, that means 2 months during which the company is basically treading water. The Economist costs $7 for 86 pages, or 8. Be aware, though, this is not a critique of Java! I didn't tell people. A cluttered room is literally exhausting. And the second reason is that the underlying problem with the US car industry was the workers. There's also a newer way to find startups, which makes it seem like time slows down: I think you've left out just how fun it is to use it. Ditto for houses. Is to imitate sophisticated buyers, and they clearly have existing VCs in their sights. Its graduates didn't expect to do the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age. Higher ranking members of the military got more as higher ranking members of the military got more as higher ranking members of the military got more as higher ranking members of the military got more as higher ranking members of socialist societies always do, but what new forms will appear.

You might have to use the macro ten or twenty times before it yielded a net improvement in readability. At the very least, we can avoid applying rules and standards to intelligence that are really meant for wisdom. In the time of Confucius and Socrates, people seem to have regarded wisdom, learning, and intelligence idiosyncratic. Almost every form of publishing has been organized as if the medium was what they were doing now. That's going to change the rules about how to raise money. But that's not the route to intelligence. As knowledge gets more specialized, there are more questions about the commitment and relationship of the founders than their ability.

Angels would invest $20k to $50k apiece, and VCs usually a million or higher than 4 or 5 million. You should hope that it stays that way. Far from it. If you expressed the same ideas in prose as mathematicians had to do before they evolved succinct notations, they wouldn't be any easier to read, because the harder it is to keep everyone motivated during rough days or weeks, i. This essay is derived from a talk at AngelConf. Like a kid tasting whisky for the first time and pretending to like it or dislike it. And there are pretty strict conventions about what a cheeseburger should look like. The central issue is picking the right companies, is also the hardest. When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Most of them don't try to predict what will win.

[theboykingofhell]

9, 15, 16, 18, 26, 31, 32, 34, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 49, 51 for TSG, 54 :*

ricky found fucking dead in miami after looking at these PROMPTS,

9. Least favorite trope to write.

what a weirdly phrased question because if i hate it, i ain’t gonna write it... UHH. i really don’t like bringing dead characters back to life???? i don’t like writing scenes for shock horror... well, that’s a lie, i DO like to horrify the reader through my writing, but i don’t want to cheapen the emotional ~journey~ they go through by being like ‘JUST KIDDING! everything actually DOES work out in the end!!’

i have a story where narratively its kind of leading to a place where i have to make a ‘dead’ character come back (chaos actually, since i use her in red’s actual story) and it’s making me so mad like wtf thought we had a deal

15. Where does your inspiration come from?

SONGS... and just insp in general but i get a lot through music and nnnh... there’s just so many good aesthetics and quotes on my dash tbh i’m like constantly and consistently inspired, it’s great

16. Where do you take your motivation from?

imma be honest, the thing that motivates me most sometimes is either reading a rly shitty novel or seeing a shitty show and just getting livid and writing out of spite because THAT DRIVEL WAS PUBLISHED????? MY SHIT IS SO MUCH BETTER WTF... or i think to myself ‘what the fuck, what if i die tomorrow????? with my damn novel unfinished?!?!! HELL NO’... pretty much anything that reminds me that my stuff is Great but no one knows how great it is because it’s not DONE and OUT THERE yet makes me get off my ass

18. What’s your revision or rewriting process like?

depends! for books it mostly just consists of rereading after a long period of ignoring my story and just tweaking lines that seem out of place or that ruin the flow i’m imagining. if i’m rewriting, then i have two word documents out (which the program scrivener makes SO easy god BLESS that program) and just... rewrite it word for word while STARING at the old version. that always makes the prose come out slightly different, it smooths out stuff or lets me cut away or add things i really like and, most importantly, it adds length, which i tend to struggle with a lot because i like just being TO THE POINT

with playwriting though it’s mostly about the format.. i write all plays like i write everything online... in lowercase with little regard to actual grammar. so i gotta actually pretend i give a damn about the english language and format it all properly and add stage directions cuz in a first draft for plays, i always just focus on dialogue and that’s it

26. Standalone or series, and why?

standalones are far more fun and way more satisfying and, quite honestly, require way less fluff. i keep FORGETTING how much fluff is needed in a goddamn novel. MULTIPLE BOOKS OF FLUFF no FUCKING THANKS

31. Hardest character to write.

in the rp: tyler (because he dissociates in a way that literally cuts me off from? any parts of his character? which is like the ESSENCE of his character but it’s VERY unenjoyable to write tbh) and nicki (because i put too much pressure on myself to make her seem a certain way instead of letting it happen naturally)... tbh canon characters and/or characters that are based on people are generally just rly hard sometimes cuz there’s SO MUCH IMAGINED PRESSURE TO MAKE THEM GOOD!!!

in original shit: honestly i’m really tempted to say aaron and that’s just because he’s so... unlikeable to me???? but also i think it’s just because i’ve really only written one scene for him (i always write in order unless a scene is just KICKING MY ASS to write, like this particular scene) and... he seems like a Lot... of annoying bullshit to have to write out lmfao that bitch

32. Easiest character to write.

red because i’ve been writing him for like 7-9 years now, i would hope he’d be easy by now... honestly, really explosive and dramatic characters too like bert or nora come SUPER easy for me, they’re so fun to write (especially dialogue-wise) because they’re very emotional and i can get PARAGRAPHS based on one reaction. characters who try and hide shit from everyone, INCLUDING ME, are so annoying,

34. Handwritten notes or typed notes?

typed because they’re legible,,,,, but then again, my handwritten notes make more sense because they’re kind of fully crafted ideas like ‘***make nisha and aaron meet at 42nd street for transformation chap???’ while a typed note will be like... ‘42nd street+aaron’... what did that mean, ricky-at-5am... why did you do this to us

41. How many stories do you work on at one time?

two... kind of as a minimum, sort of as a maximum... like there’s usually the MAIN story and then there’s something i’m kind of doodling in the side, something that’s just sort of cooking in the backburner that i’m not too serious into the process of it, but it’s goin... i’ve never tried to do 3 stories at a time but i feel like my attention would be too divided and it wouldn’t work

42. How do you figure out your characters looks, personality, etc.

UHH........................................... i’m very fond of faceclaims cuz idk i just kind of... feel how they look... i don’t ever really envision a full person though, i get like traits... i’ll be like... oh she has long black hair and she’s not white and her eyebrows look like this... and then i’ll see a pic of pooja mor and be like THAT’S HER THAT’S EXACTLY IT. idk what it is about eyebrows and why that’s literally always the deciding factor of how a character looks, but there it is

personality just kind of... man, characters just poop out of me, i don’t decide any of this shit wtf jhsfjg

45. Worst piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten.

once someone told me to stop making the boys kiss in the first chapter of my story so i made the boys fuck instead

46. What would your story _______ look like as a tv show or movie?

scrolls WAY up... sees you didn’t add a story as a prompt WELL i’m still riding the tsg train here so

a tsg movie better look like the 90′s, goddamnit.. not like... found footage really, but i want something in the quality to be a little fuzzy and sort of tinted that one kind of grayish brown color i always associate with the 90′s for some reason... like, i can’t stop thinking about all these amber lighting and how dull everything looks, and how higher in quality things look the further and further it goes, like, it’s something i would concentrate a lot on visual cues with because i focus so much of the storytelling of tsg on nisha’s narration. sometimes you don’t know how many days have passed because nisha doesn’t know how many days have passed, if she dissociates, i’d want that shown on camera, if she keeps repeating the same number over and over again, i’d want to watch one little piece of a scene getting repeated again and again. it’d be VERY disorienting as a movie tbh but it’d be fun...

47. Do you start with characters or plot when working on a new story?

characters!!!! plot is such a backburner thing for me, if you have rly great characters, you already have a great plot right there. the plot is just set so i can see how characters react to things, man... 

49. What do you find the hardest to write in a story, the beginning, the middle or the end?

THE MIDDLE, FUCK THE MIDDLE.... endings are literally the easiest thing for me, beginnings similarly so, it’s just getting from that BEAUTIFUL starting scene to that GORGEOUS ending that fucking kills my poor undeserving asshole

51. Describe the aesthetic of your story _______ in 5 sentences or words.

low-res pictures of old cemetaries... that’s five words right there, i’m sorry but the END IS IN SIGHT, I’M ALMOST FREE AND CANT BE BOTHERED

54. Any writing advice you want to share?

can’t stress how useful having an insp blog is... creating a story through the unconscious collection of pictures and quotes that just feel relavant is just SO useful not just when it comes to really constructing a character an an atmosphere to your story, but making a fucking plot????? my tsg blog is like my most perfect insp blog because i got the idea to seperate it by chapters, and i’ve found that i can literally just... go into the chapter tags... and make connections and build on plotlines that i had NO IDEA ABOUT when i made or filled those tags, IT’S REALLY FUN and it keeps me inspired to write

[sobdasha]

library book haul

these are all many months out of date

Conservation of Shadows, Yoon Ha Lee This sci-fi and fantasy short story collection is Good Shit. Plus it includes my favorite short-story-collection thing, aka Author's Notes on the stories, which enhances the experience even more. So: I tried to read this in the previous batch with Lee's other work, but Lee's work requires your full attention and is not suitable for reading in the breakroom at work, where people come up, see you with a book, turn on the TV, and then proceed to ignore the TV the entire fucking time while they talk excessively loudly with the other people in the breakroom. I've been enjoying the fact that they put a real chair in the department so if I don't work the morning shift I can take my break in the department where the din from the customers is, in fact, quieter. And I don't have to walk to the literal opposite corner of the store, wasting time and chronic pain! Anyway. So I waited until I was on vacation, and had large stretches of quite time, to read this, and it was amazing. I did not do the write-up then because I am lazy. However, I am in the middle of rereading now, and I can tell you that these stories only get better the second time around. I was a little worried it'd be like Shakespeare--you have to read several Shakespeares before you finally get into the Shakespeare zone and can actually, like, read the Shakespeare. These stories, on the other hand, remained accessible and are enhanced by having half a clue where the story will go. I like them all, but some of my top favorites: Ghostweight--Lee says this was the second-hardest story to write because it took months to nail the intro/outro of the story. Well, it pays off. The Bones of Giants--Lee says the fantasy equivalent of mecha is to dig up some giant skeletons and apply necromancy. I'm bad at recognizing "zombie" when you don't use the word "zombie", so like the Abhorsen series I don't really consider this "zombie lit which I would hate." Mostly it's just a little soft and when I'm reading I picture big sweeping landscapes, like a Studio Ghibli film or Breath of the Wild. The Unstrung Zither--Lee just talks about the music stuff, but this one feels to me like Gundam Wing if I'd actually finished watching Gundam Wing because Gundam Wing had turned out to actually be anywhere near as interesting as the quantum versions of it I'd imagined. (Thanks to Lee's other stories, I'm now using "quantum" instead of "noodle incident".) Well, now I no longer feel any need to actually go back and watch Gundam Wing. Cool! It's occurring to me that Lee's works mostly fall into the category of: soft; this is the literal cost of genocide and occupation; and both at once. It's a hell of a lot better than ~the glory of war~. Anyway as I said it's all good.

Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin I actually quit reading this one pretty early on. Not exactly a quit, though. I wasn't in the right mindset; I just couldn't get through it and realized what I was in fact craving was Adventure. So I went on to reread The Prydain Chronicles instead and I'll pick this up again sometime later when I am in the mood for something quiet, reflective, domestic, and not big on plot.

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interviews, ed. David Streitfeld This was interesting! Although I always have mixed feelings when I'm reading about authors talking about the craft. IDK I think it's a me-thing. Like, I pick up this essay expecting the author to tell me what works for them, and then I get annoyed because I decided the author was telling me "this is the only way" when that's bs and now I want to rebel??? Or maybe because Le Guin talked about how even a novel ought to be poetry and as someone who understands the theory of meter but has been flunking everything related to meter or stress since grade school in the practical sense, I find that idea Highly Overrated. I honestly don't remember what else was in here, because I waited for many months to do this write-up. I didn't actually hate reading this though so.

The Prydain Chronicles, Lloyd Alexander These are Peak comfort food to me. All I want to say this time around is, I should write some fics as Alexander's penance for making Eilonwy Very Cool but mistakenly doing so by making her Not Like Other Girls. (Crying and having feelings is gender-neutral in these books; what's portrayed negatively about Eilonwy through Taran's view, despite the fact that she's objectively better than him lol, is her ~chattering~. Which is annoying because not only does Eilonwy internalize that into putting down non-sword-women for "clucking like hens", Fflewddur chatters at least as much as Eilonwy, if not more, and because he's a guy it's never phrased that way even though we're all aware he's super flighty. I really wish this had been done with more nuance, because Eilonwy also has internalized misogyny about things like dresses and washing your hair and sleeping in a comfortable bed, and Fflewddur again is always the first person to be like "um but I would like to be comfy tonight though.") Anyway I just think that after Taran is king, if he wants to go someplace and keep his hands busy to think, presumably the gardens and fields are enough out of the way that this would make your king difficult to find. So instead, I propose that he goes to the spinning and weaving rooms, because that's literally in the castle, easy to find, he knows how to do that shit, Dwyvach schooled his ass good about how work doesn't have a gender in book 4, and he did enjoy weaving, and as a bonus he can realize that "chattering" is not bad and gossip is a good way to learn things you, as a king, probably need to know about the working of your castle, and Eilonwy can join him for bonding and realize this is not so terrible after all, and we will all value these women who spend a lot of fucking time and effort making sure you can have some goddamn clothes to wear. THE END.

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle Everybody really loves The Last Unicorn, by which I think they mean the movie? And I thought that I did as well, even though I remembered exactly nothing from it save for the title when we watched it once in either kindergarten or first grade in place of recess for a week because it was, idk, cold?? raining nonstop??? Anyway I always thought that I loved it and then I finally rewatched it as an adult and it was. Not. Great. And then I forgot and watched it again a few years later and was like Nope, still Not For Me. And now, finally, I decided to get off my bum because for me books are almost always better than the movie, and lo and behold, it is. From what I can recall, the movie is the general plot structure of the book portrayed as an Adventure, stripped of the thoughtful, reflective narration and the deeper narrative themes. Which is 100% why that movie appears to me to be some kind of acid trip. I wish I had read this as an early teen, so that I could have absorbed some of Beagle's writing style, his turns of phrase in simile and metaphor. "His scimitar smile laid its cold edge along their throats," etc. He never really makes it seem like Too Much. (Side note, that's something I notice about Yoon Ha Lee too. Very lush and descriptive similes and metaphors, very much get the job done and are not things you have ever heard before. Although Lee's tend to make me stop and go "wait what???", and catch me off guard. I suspect it's a mix of innovation and cultural difference, whereas for Beagle everything sounds so exactly right and smooth and perfect probably because everyone else has been copying off him for years and I'm familiar with diluted versions. Anyway what I'm trying to say is, I got a bit away from that in my writing, but dang I am gonna have to up my game and purple my prose a little bit more because I really love what these guys are doing!)

Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse Okay so Ann Leckie recommended this book to me, both in a general sense and also in person. And I looked at the description and thought, "Well, it's not my genre but it probs can't hurt me to pick it up and try." And so I finally did. Reading this was an interesting progression (probably most especially for my roommate who gets my live-reading reactions while she's trying to DnD) of watching me go from: "It's not my genre but it's not like the writing sucks so it's not bad" to "Well it is engaging and I do like garbage loner protagonist is a woman instead; I'm not compelled to buy this but I will read the rest of the series as it comes out from the library" to "Oh snap I love it when the critical reviews of a book were actually recommendations for me to read it" to "*weeping* Kai is a soft good boy and I support Maggie and her Emotional Support Shotgun, I will buy ALL THE BOOKS" At one point there was a perfect place, in the midst of a discussion about how you can like flamethrowers and makeup at the same time, Maggie, just because you don't like makeup, etc, to insert a joke about "it's called flaming gay for a reason". BUT in Rebecca's defense the entire scene was great anyway. The whole book was great. It's great. Read it. Oh speaking of the critical reviews, one of them was like "the protagonist claims to be unable to cook and then a few paragraphs later makes a 5 star meal, so this book is garbage." Lol was the reviewer confused because the word "bread" was used, and believes that bread is an art form unable to be accomplished by mere mortals (which, I mean, is how I feel about the idea of babying a loaf of bread all day)? Because bread only has to be "I made a paste of flour and water" which this. Basically was. Fried in a pan. And then the side dish was a can of beans with a can of chiles thrown in for fancy. This is literally the definition of can't cook, because you can't exactly order takeout on the reservation after the apocalypse when you prefer to live in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. I'm just saying, this scene was perfect. Also this was the point in time where I started summarizing all apocalyptic books as "After the events of the year 2020" to my roommate. It. It continues to hold true. Every year for like the past five years we've been saying maybe next year will be better, but I'm gonna be honest, I'm terrified of what 2021 will bring. One final visual: me, unable to pronounce Navajo words to my roommate when reading select passages, and also not being able to spell them on account of not knowing the names of accents in English: "so it's c-h-apostrophe-i accent aigu cedilla-i cedilla-polish l with a line through it…" (not an actual word, I don't remember the actual words, I returned the book to the library long ago, this is for illustrative purposes of my ignorance only)

To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf I tried to read this because Le Guin praised it a lot in The Last Interviews, and it was on the Wizard's Library shelves and I thought maybe I should broaden my horizons. But I quit early on because I, a disaster of run-on sentences, could not parse half of these and I was not invested and if I don't have to read ~classics~ for literature class it probably won't ever happen. Honestly a lot of the contemporary literature I'm reading is better for me anyway.

Sunlight and Shadow, Cameron Dokey This was also on the Wizard's Library shelves and I like fairytale things in theory and despite reading the wiki summary on various occasions I really don't know anything about the plot of The Magic Flute, which is this a retelling of. This book queerbaited me. It's unfair of romances to always put more chemistry between the people who aren't getting together than who are. In this case, both girls and both boys, who were to pair off into het couples. There's literally an entire chapter of Gayna going from "You've ruined everything!" to "I wish I could hate you!" to "Oh no you're hot!" to "And that doesn't actually make me jealous oh shit!" to "Okay I'll help you" to "Oh no she smiled and my heart skipped a beat huhhh!" about Mina. The word gay is even in her name!!! What is the author doing with her choices??? Seriously what is the author doing with her choices, in the author's note at the end of the book I learned Statos (Monostatos) was originally "evil character just because he's a Moor" so Dokey Fixed It by making him just a guy who wanted Things like the rest of the characters want Things and he just happens to come off as bad because he's not aligned with them and also he's very, very white. Noooooo that's not how you do it, that's not how you fix racism, you redeem him while keeping him black. I also, as a rule, dislike first-person-narration-that-changes-each-chapter, especially when you're not skilled enough/don't care to write in such a way that the narrator can easily be identified, so basically for a long chapter and a half I assumed Lapin was a girl and when the Queen of the Night was like "fuck you, boy!" I assumed it was a sick burn and Lapin just ~wasn't pretty~ but it turns out he was, in fact, a boy. Also for a book that points out that you can be perfectly happy settling with a decent person and marrying your not-soul-mate (Lapin's parents and grandparents), it's awfully insistent that the main characters all be properly paired with soul mates. HM. Basically this is marketed as feminist but I think it fell pretty damn short on that mark.

[gokinjeespot]

off the rack #1202

Monday, February 26, 2018

 Way to go all the Canadian athletes that competed in the 2018 Winter Olympics. You made us proud. Now we get ready for some March Madness. It might seem like I'm a big sports fan but I'm not. It's just that it's less annoying than a lot of the stuff happening around the world these days. Sure I was sad when the Canadian Women's curling team skipped by Ottawa's Rachel Homan didn't make it to the medal rounds and the Canadian Women's hockey team lost the gold medal game in a shoot-out but I didn't get angry and upset. No one was killed by some idiot.

 Archie #28 - Mark Waid & Ian Flynn (writers) Audrey Mok (art) Kelly Fitzpatrick (colours) Jack Morelli (letters). I only keep reading this book because Betty is in it. I don't like the walking disaster area that is Archie. Nor the smug Jughead. I really hate that big fat jerk Reggie who should be someone's plaything in prison. The fact that I feel so strongly about these characters means that the creators are putting out a very good comic book but I would stop reading if there weren't any likable characters. Classic Catch 22.

 Doctor Strange: Damnation #1 - Nick Spencer & Donny Cates (writers) Rod Reis (art & colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters). Stephen may not be Sorcerer Supreme anymore but he's still pretty powerful. Remember how Las Vegas was destroyed during a recent mega crossover? Well now the whole city plus its citizens is back on terra firma. Guess where it's been before being resurrected? Hey, they don't call it Sun City for donuts. There's a glitch in Doc Strange restoring all those lives and landmarks and that's where this 4-issue mini takes off. This is a high stakes game between the Doc and Mephisto and the players will be familiar to Marvel Zombies far and wide. Doc's team is on the cover but you'll have to read this first issue to see who's playing for Mephisto.

 The Brave and the Bold #1 - Liam Sharp (writer & art) Romulo Fajardo Jr. (colours) A Larger World's Troy Peteri (letters). DC's old team-up title is back on the racks with a murder mystery featuring Batman and Wonder Woman. There's a strong fantasy element since the murder takes place in Tir Na Nog, the mystical land of faerie. Liam Sharp drew me back into reading Wonder Woman when he did the Cheetah story and here he gets to go all Irish myths for us with runes and rugged faeriescapes. I like a murder mystery as well as the next Batfan but the profuse flowery prose turned me off. It's a tough decision whether I read the rest of this 6-issue story because I really love the art.

 Mata Hari #1 - Emma Beeby (writer) Ariela Kristantina (art) Pat Masioni (colours) Sal Cipriano (letters). This 5-issue mini comes from Dark Horse's Berger Books imprint. I'm glad Karen is still editing comic books. I met her at a DC Retailer's conference over twenty years ago. I was lucky enough to share a group dinner table with her at a steak house in Fort Worth, Texas. I can still remember how happy I was when I asked if I could order a second steak dinner after the first one failed to fill me up and she gave me the go ahead. She thought I had a hollow leg. This book is beautifully drawn but I found the storytelling a little confusing with it's jumping back and forth in time to show us how the lady spy ended up in her current situation. Mata Hari is a very compelling historical figure so I will keep reading this to learn more about her life and death.

 Infinity Countdown Prime #1 - Gerry Duggan (writer) Mike Deodato Jr. (art) Frank Martin (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Flip the cover and you get an info page quickly telling you about the 6 Infinity Stones and what powers they bestow to whoever possesses them. The story starts promisingly enough with the guy who is the best at what he does fighting off some bad guys and then the new Sorcerer Supreme, for the Infinity Stone that he has. Unfortunately the story deteriorated for me when it came to introducing the other stones. It got way too convoluted what with other dimensions involved and what looks like every dang super hero and super villain to ever exist thrown in. I think I have mega event fatigue. Keeping up with the weekly Avengers: No Surrender story with all those heroes and villains to keep straight makes trying to follow this massive story harder to do. I hope nobody dies.

 Batman: Sins of the Father #1 - Christos Gage (writer) Raffaele Ienco (art) Guy Major (colours) Josh Reed (letters). This 6-issue mini is based on the Batman: The Telltale Series video game with a different back-story than the Batman that we are all familiar with. This Batman's father, Thomas Wayne, was a villain who experimented on people. Bruce is trying to right that wrong and save Wayne Enterprises. You can expect lots of action and the first protagonist is easily recognised. I was super impressed with the art here. Kind of reminded me of Frank Quitely. If the rest of this story looks this good it will be a joy to read.

 Hit-Girl #1 - Mark Millar (writer) Ricardo Lopez Ortiz (art) Sunny Gho (colours) Melina Mikulic (letters). Hot on the heels of the new Kick-Ass book is this 4-issue mini featuring Dave's old partner Mindy. She's looking for a new partner and who she picks is a real winner. This story goes international as the purple-haired perp pulveriser goes to Colombia to deal with the gangs there. I want to see if her new sidekick survives.

 Avengers #681 - Al Ewing, Jim Zub & Mark Waid (writers) Kim Jacinto with Mike Perkins (art) David Curiel (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). No Surrender part 7. It's Kree Captain Glah-Ree's turn to narrate an issue as his Lethal Legion team fights the Falcon's Avengers team for the prize. Some surprise characters pop up right at the end that will make fans clamour for the next issue. Mike Perkins's pages were only subtly different from the rest of the art and that surprised me too.

 Batman #41 - Tom King (writer) Mikel Janin (art) June Chung (colours) Clayton Cowles (letters). Everyone Loves Ivy part 1. I was naïve to think that Joelle Jones was the best artist for this book because there are lots of artists that I love out there. Mikel Janin made me gasp after I flipped open the cover and saw the first page. Page 10 made me sigh. His Poison Ivy will haunt your dreams. The Cat and the Bat face a daunting challenge in this new story. This is a great issue to start to find out why I've been raving about this title every issue.

 Moonshine #7 - Brian Azzarello (writer) Eduardo Risso (art & colours) Cristian Rossi (colour assistant) Jared K. Fletcher (letters). Boy was I surprised when this issue hit the racks. I thought #6 finished the story of Lou Pirlo, mob enforcer. Plus, it's been almost a year since #6 came out. This supernatural tale continues with the location changing from the hillbilly hills to New Orleans. I'm thinking some voodoo be due.

 Superman #41 - James Robinson (writer) Ed Benes (art) Dinei Ribeiro (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). The Last Days part 2. I was tolerating this story about Superman and a native scientist trying to save a planet from a Jonestown massacre until the science guy explains how he's going to save his species. He sure didn't take any genetics classes. I do not suffer foolish science gladly. The good news is that this story is over and Jon learns a lesson in tolerance.

 Defenders #10 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) David Marquez (art) Justin Ponsor (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Ah Jessica, Luke, Danny and Matt, we hardly got to know you. I don't know if this team book will continue after this but it won't be the same. This sure looks like Brian Michael Bendis's last issue. David Marquez  made me sigh on page 11 panel 5. I'm glad Felicia is okay.

 Incredible Hulk #713 - Greg Pak (writer) Greg Land (pencils) Jay Leisten (inks) Frank D'Armata (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Return to Planet Hulk part 5. Hulk faces off with the Warlord in the fifth and final gauntlet. The final page had me singing Chuck Berry's Maybellene in my head. Now that we've gone back to Sakaar it's time to revisit another old Hulk story. Get ready for World War Hulk II.

 Damage #2 - Tony S. Daniel & Robert Venditti (storytellers) Danny Miki (inks) Tomeu Morey (colours) Tom Napolitano (letters). I can't say that I am enamoured of the title character since he's just a one hour Hulk but the guest stars are worth the read. Here we have the Suicide Squad and next up is a real hero that I am certainly interested in.

 Amazing Spider-Man #796 - Dan Slott & Christos Gage (writers) Mike Hawthorne (pencils) Terry Pallot & Cam Smith (inks) Erick Arciniega (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). Threat Level: Red part 3. The art and writing this issue was very wooden to me. Kind of stiff and predictable. I don't like Peter and Mary Jane getting cozy again either. If it wasn't for what's happening to Norman Osborn I would consider benching this book.

 Super Sons #13 - Peter J. Tomasi (writer) Carlo Barberi (pencils) Art Thibert (inks) Gabriel Eltaeb (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). The Parent Trap part 1. Damian's mom, Talia al Ghul, needs his help for a hit and she's not going to take no for an answer. The boys find themselves in even more trouble when one of the targets is revealed. Robin and Superboy's friendship may not survive. As much as I love Carlo's art I wasn't happy that Talia looks more like Damian's slightly older sister than his mother.

 Astonishing X-Men #8 - Charles Soule (writer) Paulo Siqueira (pencils) Walden Wong & Roberto Poggi (inks) Edgar Delgado (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). A Man Called X part 2. Y'know, I don't think that the guy in Fantomex's body is Charles Xavier. He keeps saying trust me, I can fix this and then he screws things up royally. So, another comic book with amazing art. Psylocke made me sigh on page 3.

 Mighty Thor #704 - Jason Aaron (writer) Russell Dauterman (art) Matthew Wilson (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). The Death of the Mighty Thor continues. Wow, I snagged a larger than usual pile of comic books off the rack to read last week and inadvertently saved the best 'til last. The writing and art was as powerful as can be. The build up to the last page made it a spine tingling experience. This story is going to be another highly recommended collection when it comes out in trade paperback.