#goblin cat blurbs about shows

[agoblincat]

I love how much variety the Arcane soundtrack offers.

That being said, I didn’t know Heimerdinger became the new singer for Old Crow Medicine Show

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again no problem 11/26/2024

i don't have a good anecdote this week, i have the flu. look at my cat

listening

ty @shinygoodrock for the rec! billy bragg's the marching song of the covert. i was startled by the british accent but briefly forgot the uk's been colonizing way longer than god's favorite country, the usa

so SO cheery and so catchy! samples When The Ants Go Marching In!

Here we come with our candy and our guns And our corporate muscle marches in behind us For freedom's just another word for nothing left to sell And if you want narcotics we can get you those as well

it reminds me a lot of this poster i have framed but not hung up yet, jesse purcell's "A.G.F.T.P.O.T.U.S.O.A. (A Gift From The People Of The United States Of America)" (getcher own print at the link through justseeds)

-

reading

my favorite tinned fish newsletter is back! i like this newsletter for its dry anecdotal voice, but i coincidentally have a tin of mackerel in tomato sauce in the pantry for mackintosh name reasons. seems like the best way to have it is fairly plain with some light seasonings. the author was a senior editor at vice and has been out of work for a bit since that site's collapse, so it's good to see him back doing silly free nonsense like his tinned fish newsletter

i had Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis on hold for nearly six months so it extra hurt when i didn't particularly care for it.

like, what a premise! a beautifully written blurb that got my attention! i think i got an ad for this one on instagram. either that or it was floating around on this site.

A sharp-witted, high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, evil wizards and a garlic festival - all at once. Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, K. J. Parker and Travis Baldree. It’s bad enough waking up in a half-destroyed evil wizard’s workshop with no eyebrows, no memories, and no idea how long you have before the Dread Lord Whomever shows up to murder you horribly and then turn your skull into a goblet or something. It’s a lot worse when you realize that Dread Lord Whomever is… you. Gav isn’t really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed. But as he realizes that nothing – from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess – is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he’ll have to answer the hardest question of all – who does he want to be? Dread Lord Gavrax has had better weeks.

this is a debut novel based on a friendgroup's DnD campaign, and it does show a bit. maybe you have a friend who’s freshly into improv? it gets a little wrapped up in Doing Bits. at several points i did think “i could be reading terry pratchett right now instead of enduring this bit.”

the writing itself is solid on a technical level-- there's a good balance of dialogue to description, no word choices really slammed me in the face, it flowed pretty nicely and was a fast read. flounders a bit in the middle but does pick up speed, a middling-okay pacing. if this were not a debut novel and felt a little bit more done on purpose i would be interested in talking about how the frantic lunge from plot point to plot point mirrors our protag's internal sense of self.

i do not think this rises to the level of farce, or even pastiche. it is a darkly comedic but fairly straightforward fantasy. very light PG romance elements.

so much of it is concerned with perceptions/expectations/visual tropes and then the big baddie is simply a baddie with no further interrogation. like a lot A LOT of philosophical musings on the nature of evil and the expectations thereof creating self image and morality and has unionized goblins. everything else in this book is questioned. you can’t go halfway with a deconstruction or you’re just writing more of the genre you’re trying to deconstruct. there was a scene that really clicked satisfyingly in my brain with a female sorceress, where she goes basically everyone expects me to be a bitch and a whore so let's just cut to the chase and have fun being a bitch and a whore. this alternate viewpoint of misogyny making you evil does not successfully contrast with our protag's internal calibration and view of evil but damn if that isn't the experience of being a woman in stem.

the protagonist, gav, wakes up with No memories and thereby becomes Good. or at least Better. does rozakis feel that everyone is born good and your reactions to things happening to you shape your morality? there's a reveal that one of the murders amnesiac!gav is most torn up about didn't actually happen bc his staff faked it and smuggled her out. i think this seriously undercuts the moderate amount of thinking and soulsearching and figuring out how to atone for past actions he does previously. and then it doesn’t really address any of the problems it tangled with in favor of a movie ending. it did tread a bit into therapyspeak for me. fewer shades of gray than i would have liked.

this book is also extremely heterosexual for what i expect a modern comedy fantasy to be. it neatly sidesteps the gay=/= evil conundrum but it was startling to find our protagonist with not even a curious homosexual thought.

occasionally irritating, but it was funny, except when it had to unfold some plot and forgot about being funny. this was a perfectly pleasantly written debut novel but wasn’t quite what i wanted or expected. it tries a lot of things and it’s interesting to watch the rube goldberg machine of a plot work and fail in some parts, even if it really did not carry through on its central philosophy.

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watching

breezing through a lot of stuff bc it's easier to sleep propped up on my couch arm than in my actual bed. i usually don’t long DNFs but has to remind myself never to try Quo Vadis again. my god is that a tiresome film. and not even pretty costumes or pretty set design for the first forty minutes. whereupon i bailed. all of these were first time watches, dunno why I haven’t been reaching for comfort movies lately

-

playing

genshin update knocking it out of the park and also really reminding me of link tearsofthekingdom. also introduces a really good bird you can possess and fly around with. lots of vertical sky/coastline exploration which is so so so fun. i have done most of the things in this update inside a week bc i don't think they anticipated unemployed people like mainlining it between applying for jobs.

this girl's village has background music that reminds me of classic american westerns like bernstein or copland? heavy billy the kid ballet vibes. the music in this update is SO good im excited to yell about it in an future week when they drop the next album.

-

making

still fallow baybee. currently incubating the influenza. no longer feverish thank u nyquil

[agathaarts]

Spidersonas forever!!!!!! Though she’s become less of a Spidersona and more her own weird spiderspinoff at this point, complete with a name change.

Some more Itsy stuff outta basically nowhere! Her spider-human hybrid form is where she’s most “comfortable” and ultimately where she winds up resting most of the time, though she’s still a pretty competent were-spider-shapeshifter-sort. She has a number of different and modifiable outfits, perks of living with a seamstress, and....I also wanted to draw a bunch of her, uh, rogue’s gallery together, though admittedly the Black Cats could be considered friends before long. Or at least, associates.

This is far from all of them, but these are the guys I have concrete looks for at least! Maybe I’ll do one of her allies soon. As is, most of her issues stem from the monsterous OZCORP, the company that not only created her, but continues to create it’s own forces, meddling in the nature of reality to do so!

Tiny blurbs below the cut for each of them, and if you’d like to know more about any of ‘em...let me know! I have an unfortunate amount of ideas for this AU!

ITSY-BITSY AKA SPIDER-WOMAN aka Aggie Appleton. While working for the unscrupulous OzCorp, unlucky intern Aggie Appleton is caught in the backlash of an experiment that fuses her with unstable realmatter and the test subject- a hyper-adaptive spider created using the same unstable realmatter! Now, she fights to protect her city from OzCorp’s increasingly dangerous experiments and the beings created by their experiments as ITSY BITSY aka THE INCREDIBLE SPIDER-WOMAN!

THE GREEN GOBLIN aka Norma Osborne. The CEO and leader of OZcorp, Norma Osborne has sacrificed everything for her company and their work, being a gifted and brilliant scientist in her own right. It has cost her family ties, friends, her social life, and now- her sanity and stability of form. Able to transform into the corrosive GREEN GOBLIN, she becomes a destructive force of chemical reactions and decay, with no more limits standing in her way! At least, until that annoying spider shows up...

THE KLYNTAR, represented by units VENOM and CARNAGE ~ Inter-dimensional beings, symbiotes (or, perhaps, parasites) who feed off of living beings, the KLYNTAR are horrors from beyond who’ve made a deal with Norma Osborne: a place to stop and feed in exchange for OzCorp to poke and prod and take samples to use their unstable realmatter forms to create new techniques and horrors! Of course, once mold gets in....it’s almost impossible to get it out, even if said mold is far more than anything native to Earth!

BLACK CAT is a mystery. A force of corporate espionage, a cat thief, a rumor, and mystery, a funny joke to poke fun at unsolved thefts and leaked information- of course, it’s very hard to find Black Cat. They slip in and out of secure warehouses, files, and companies with nary a trace, virtually impossible to spot. Especially unless you know they’re not one person, but three. At least, that Itsy-Bitsy comes to know of...

THE BUGS are a group of ne’er-do-wells who took up an offer to be bonded with biotech armor by OzCorp, all for their own various reasons, and now they’re beholden to OzCorp...and on an impressive payroll, that motivates being guards, bullies, and thieves as necessary.

SCORPION aka Mac Gargan. Once a private detective of disrespectful status, Mac Gargan was hardly in a place to turn down OzCorp’s offer after befalling tragedy and desperation. Unlike his fellow bugs, he tends to question a lot of his commands, and is well aware of the quote “hinky crap” going down behind the lab doors of OsCorp- but the pay grade is nice. And the benefits, well, the benefits are killer. Besides, he’s gotten to know the personality of his symbiotic armor well...and wouldn’t abandon him back to OzCorp’s nonexistent mercies by quitting.

BEETLE aka Abby Jenkins. Previously an engineer with white collar criminal aspirations, Abby Jenkins was hardly in a place to turn down OzCorp’s offer after befalling tragedy and desperation. Having bonded well with her symbiotic armor, she’s enjoying the steady work and respect she finds with OzCorp, and gets to spend her spare time tinkering with projects amongst brilliant inventors she’d have never had a chance to rub elbows with before!

FLY aka Richie Deacon. A career small-time criminal, Richie Deacon spent most of his life in and out of prison, halfway houses, and shelters, and was hardly in a place to turn down OzCorp’s offer after befalling a particular tragedy and desperation. Now they don’t care much about the work they do, happy to do whatever OzCorp asks in exchange for living a cushy life, even if it means having to wear the gross symbiotic armor. Still, small price to pay to fly!

SHR- i mean -SHOCKER aka Herman Schultz. Another career criminal, Herman Schultz worked as muscle for a few crime families in various cities, before getting bounced out of almost all of them and directly into OzCorp’s loving arms. No tragedy or desperation needed to convince him to get into a suit of powered armor (even if it’s more or less a giant lobster as far as he’s concerned) and start breaking things at a whim! Besides, everything at OzCorp is so damn weird, he’s never been more entertained anywhere in his life!

ELECTRO aka Max Voltage. Once one of OzCorp’s many test animals, an electric “eel” cobbled together out of various types of electric fish and a hodgepodge of other animals, Max taking on human traits was, well...an accident, but a happy one. Now settled into a form distinctly human, with intelligence to match (though some would argue otherwise) Max is capable of incredible feats of electrical manipulation and sensitivity beyond any creature in it’s creation!

DOCTOR OCTOPUS aka Octavia Otto. Respected young researcher and lead scientist of many OzCorp projects, Octavia Otto was caught in the backlash of an experiment that ultimately fused her with a number of test subjects, hyper-adaptive octopuses...except she’s continued to mutate and change, in ways nobody else can quite pin down (but it’s okay, she’s keeping rigorous, detailed notes on the process! For science!) and has assisted OzCorp’s goals since, happy to have a constant source of supplies and test subjects to work with. Her and Aggie Appleton had...history, before this all went down, too, so that’s not awkward at all!

RHINO aka Aleksei Sytsevich. Arriving in America as Anna Kravenoff’s bodyguard, Aleksei found himself out of work before long as Anna hastily shucked her father’s protections of her and kicked him unceremoniously out of her life. Once OzCorp decided he’d make a fine test subject, well, he’s been a professional mook for most of his life and didn’t have many complaints about the improved size, strength, and toughness. Aleksei may put on a blithe, dopey exterior, but he’s far too controlled to be an actual fool...which makes him quite dangerous, even if he only does as OzCorp asks.

THE SPOT aka Joon-Woo Ohnn. The Spot’s creation is a sort of mystery, even to himself and to OzCorp. An experiment, a failure, and...Dr. Ohnn is still certainly alive and aware, but some sort of bizarre 3D shadow cast by, well, wherever he is. While unable to speak, Ohnn is still fully capable of serving OzCorp, with his ability to function as a series of wormholes and perform strange acts of teleportation.

MYSTER.IO aka Mysterio aka thecrystalball aka The Mystery aka ??? aka aka aka aka aka..... Myster.io is a digital character- either a face for someone distant and anonymous, or many someones, or perhaps some sort of self-aware AI, Mysterio’s story changes every time he tells it and that’s just how it should be! This bizarre digital being pops up on people’s devices and is an information gatherer and peddler, always happy to tweak reality to better suite someone’s needs for a price.

KRAVEN the HUNTRESS aka Ana Kravenoff aka Kraven Jr. aka Lady Anastasia Kravenoff. Kraven the Hunter was a star, a legend- a man who battled beasts and travelled to impossible places and rose to reclaim an ancient family legacy, he was famous and infamous alike, and regardless of if you loved or hated him- he was a household name across the globe. Ana would like that. Ana might have been shipped off to America to live a carefully tailored “normal” life by her father and his estate, but Ana has aspirations that greatly outstrip those of her brothers and a goal to match her father’s infamy someday! But until she can secure a show, she hunts monsters for YouTube and enjoys her modest cult following- especially since she’s found a way to attend college in a sleepy Midwestern City that just happens to have a lot of monster-related issues. Her current target? Spider-Woman!

[joecial-distancing]

2019 in review in review:

A few years ago I started tracking yearly goals, books read, movies watched etc in a year, along with overview blurbs, in private posts. End of 2019/beginning of 2020 I was really frazzled/burned out about a lot of stuff and just never finished up making the thing. 8 months later, got the urge to read back what I’d got done, then figured I’d maybe go ahead and see about finishing. 

Media tracking below the break. thoughts/blurbs written in 2020 italicized, 2019 not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_____________________________~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Didn’t do so hot on explicit personal goals, but had a lot of stuff go ok around them this year.

School’s been fine/better than fine.

Job’s probably the biggest failing. Still with same job, haven’t made the firm moves to jump off, dragging my feet too much on exploring stuff w/ Columbia/NASA GISS.

Did not get better with covid, lol

Dating life still non-existent, but I’ve registered on apps, gotten more comfortable with selfies, improved general social life dramatically, been flirted with, updated my wardrobe, and generally started to get comfortable accepting that I’m a hot person.

Somehow got extremely better during covid.

Books

Grant (finished)

We stan a taurus legend

Guy was good at exactly one job, and was fortunate enough to have been in the right place/right time to get to do it.

Mort (discworld)

Definitely best discworld I’ve gotten to so far.

Don Quixote p. II

Really entertaining in a way that part 1 wasn’t; I was shocked how much the meta element landed for me.

Consider the Lobster (DFW collection)

had zero context on who DFW is/was when I read, and still don’t exactly tbh. Wanted to wait for a pause in The Discourse before diving into more of him, but dunno if I’m ever going to get that.

Crime and Punishment (revisited)

Weirdly didn’t get much more out of this than I did the first time I’d read it

Better Than Sex (HST Gonzo papers)

Xerox/widespread fax accessibility opening citizen access to mass media in a manner really reminiscent of what social media would go on to do at a much larger scale. Has a much more deliberate narrative arc than the other gonzo papers collections, also has that excellent HST richard nixon eulogy

The Brothers Karamazov

SPQR

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Didion collection)

Pet Sematary

Not my favorite King, but not bad

Sourcery (discworld)

still funny/charming, but Mort really made clear/reminded me how much the hapless sadsack Rincewind mold of protagonist wears on me after a while.

The Devil's Teeth

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Liked it a lot more once I realized it was doing a Fear and Loathing thing.

Homage to Catalonia

This should be the Orwell that gets taught in schools. Make it a followup to All Quiet on the Western Front or something, jeez.

Lyndon Johnson I

Having now finished all of them, this one’s probably the least-interesting but sets up a bunch of important context that the others still then feel the need to retread.

The Razor's Edge

Recommended to me as a “white guy discovers eastern mysticism” book, but also is more interesting in its treatment of that than I’d expected (helps it was written in the 40s). 

Cat's Cradle

There’s a part in this where Vonnegut’s making fun of people who try to bond with strangers over being Hoosiers, and my dumbass immediate thought was “ooh, Vonnegut’s a hoosier? Me too!”

Lyndon Johnson II

Robert Caro felt compelled to apologize for spending so much words lionizing Coke Stevens, segregationist opponent to Johnson’s senate run. His goal was pretty clearly to show lbj’s lack of campaign charisma by contrast, definitely definitely overcommitted in his own narrativising.

Libra

I want to go back to this after reading some more De Lillo.

Gravity's Rainbow

This book absolutely kicked my ass

Overstuffed and referential in a specific way that really keeps me hooked in instead of put off. When I learn about some piece of cultural context that I retroactively recognize as being referenced in this, I want to go back and reread the entire thing.

From Caligari to Hitler

Kind of fails both as film criticism and cultural analysis, but absolutely made me want to run for the hills when considering current relationship between mainstream movies and demands of pop culture.

I took a class on Weimar cinema in undergrad that I now realize was probably biting pretty heavily from this and never once referenced it.

Movies

Venom

Movie itself is not as fun as the Tom Hardy hype coverage. PG13 was the absolute worst space to aim for, PG- or R- versions of this could have been a blast.

Harryhauser Argonauts

Was tripping when I put this on, and it was all kinds of fun.

2001: a Space Oddyssey

First time seeing this, all-time classic for a reason!

A Good American (the NSA doc)

Dr. Strangelove

Mel Brooks History of the World p. I

Not my favorite Brooks, best joke was at the beginning.

In Bruges

Had been a while since I saw a proper dark comedy.

Spiderverse

Fukkin awesome!

Visually great, and extremely better than usual superhero stuff for being aimed at PG instead of PG-13.

You Only Live Twice

Highlander (Revisited)

I watched The Old Guard on netflix recently and it mostly just made me wish I was watching Highlander instead, because at least Highlander knows exactly how goofy it is

Moonraker

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Much like The Shining, I though this would have been 100% spoiled for me by cultural osmosis, but turns out it wasn’t, and even the scenes I had seen *totally landed* in-context still.

Kung Fu Hustle

Ichi the Killer

Really gross, really fun

Matrix Reloaded (watched thru highway scene) (Revisited)

The highway scene was not nearly as cool as I remembered it being.

John Wick 3*

Probably dumbest plot of all of them, best choreography. I like how every single fight had its own distinct flavor. “Knife museum fight” “horse fight” “halle berry dogs fight” 

Akira

A classic

Pet Sematary * (ugh, bad)

Why can’t john lithgow be in good movies anymore

The Revenant

MCU Spiderman

Fuck this was awful.

MCU Spiderman 2*

Really weird, complete Rorschach Test of a movie: it’d be totally valid to read into this that global warming is Fake News, for instance.

Lmao this was completely awful

Rites

Dredd (non-stallone)

oh hey Lena Headey’s in this

For All Mankind!

Watched in honor of moon landing anniversary

Lion King *

Watched it way too stoned, was like dark side of the moon + wizard of oz except instead it’s a lion king script reading + nature footage edited for lip syncing.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood *

Many scenes of very long setups for really stupid shaggy dog jokes, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. I do kinda want to rewatch now knowing more about manson, which I knew pretty much nothing about beforehand

Blowout

A good john lithgow movie

also I think I like travolta in things.

Lord of War

A Good cage movie

I like when Eamon Walker shows up in stuff.

Taxi Driver

A classic

Snowpiercer

Watched in a bar with only one speaker working, which is the correct way to watch. Weirder and funnier than I thought it was going to be, which still doesn’t make it good, but,

dbz big green dub

Exorcist III

Brad Dourif just tearing it apart

Deep Red (argento)

Suspiria (1977)

Watched the remake in 2020, which was ok, but nothing tops the Goblin score.

Elf Bowling

Thanks, Gnome

Parasite *

Interesting to me that this one seems poised to hang around people’s good esteem for a while

TV

FMA: B

Rick & Morty

Saw some episodes, generally pretty funny, some misanthropy that’s probably appealing to a certain type of teen al a something like House, but ultimately I don’t totally Get the intensity of discourse about it.

Leterkenny

Mob Psycho 100

One Punch Man

Deadwood

Watchmen

Only watched like half of it. Was playing around with a lot of hefty imagery/thematics, but didn’t really seem ready to rise above playing (tho also I feel like it’s weird on some level to *expect* them to rise above that in the first place)

Music

New Avantasia

HEALTH/ show

lol remember concerts

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard/ show

Just learned about King Gizz in 2019 and got completely obsessed with them. I don’t tend to expand my music selection very readily, and a lot of what I currently *do* know is old/inactive stuff, so it was/is incredibly exciting to have an active group with good momentum just immediately win me over like that.

Mistimed the edibles and ended up with a really good finale and a really long subway ride home.

New Yeasayer

Sad they split up

Steve Wilson Tull remixes

Aqualung’s a good album and the sound mixing’s kinda bad, so I liked this project.

Stonefield

Opened for Gizzard. Really good as studying music

Video Games

Civ VI: Gathering Storm

Hades

Turns out Supergiant’s design proclivities all work *extremely well* on a roguelike

Baba is You

Untitled Goose Game

Cute, if maybe a bit overhyped

finally fucking finished Pillars of Eternity

Had fun with it, but too long, and really dour for how long it is.

Pillars II

Kinda drifted off it eventually, but I do genuinely like that the flavor of the fantasy is colonial era rather than medieval.

There’s a Balancing Bastard Factions element where it’s like the writers are just being smartasses after a while. Having to go extremely out of their way to make siding with colonizers seem like a competitive option.

Pokemon shield

Cuphead

pisses me off, which was a nice outlet when I was stranded by flight cancellations during thanksgiving

Celeste

Also very difficult, but really easy to stay patient with, which is nice.

Disco Elysium

None of the discourse made me want to play this, but people talking about the mechanical stuff it did got me extremely interested. Mostly Delivered IMO.

Breath of the Wild

You can approach the nodes of the main quest in the order you choose, and the second one I chose made ninjas start fucking spawning everywhere when I’m just trying to explore, and there’s no way to make it stop. May go back to it one day.

Podcasts

Relentless Picnic Patreon feed

The treats really helped me start distinguishing individual personalities, compared to the regular eps.

Picnic Discord!

<3

FatT Counterweight

Fun, but also I think Mechs are not my shit.

FatT Spring in Hieron/ end of that particular world

8 months since I’ve last tuned into FatT. ah well.

Law School

He’s in everythiiiing!

You Must Remember This: Manson family

*There’s* the context

Misc.

Kindle train guy

Times Square sleeping guy + kids taking selfies w/ him

toddler singing along after Psycho killer (a, ya, ya ya, ya)

drunk and dragged to a drag show

Central park football family

Soft Steel Drum Subway Busker

Weird old lady going to grand central for oysters

2018 in review (cards):

MySelf (CC)

Self: Tower

Blocked: 10 Cups

Ethereal/subconscious: 8 Swords

Material: 3 Swords

Past: Justice

Future: Page Wands

Attitude: Sun

External: King Swords

Hopes/Fears: 5 Coins

Trajectory: High Priestess

Also Self:

Hierophant

7 Cups

7 Coins

Blind Spot:

(self & others): 5 cups    ||    (others not self): High Priestess

(self not others): Moon   ||    (nobody): 3 Cups

[jq37]

i wrote a book, y’all

So, once upon a time, three years ago, I went abroad to London. And, once a upon a time, a year after that, I wrote a fictionalized version of that story for Nanowrimo called The Queen’s Beasts. Once upon a time, earlier this year, I started cleaning it up for public consumption and once upon a time, yesterday, I put it up as a Kindle ebook!

das it

It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while and this is my last summer before I have an intense job to worry about so I decided to just go for it.

The short version of the plot is: American teenagers studying abroad in London get sucked into magical, Shakespearean fairy BS.

The slightly longer version of the plot is: Diamond never guessed fairies were real. She also never guessed that they were so annoying. First, they crash her study abroad trip and accidentally wipe a week of her memories. Then, they rope her and her friends into a magical scavenger hunt that keeps pulling them away from class at the most inconvenient moments. And now, to top it all off, a rogue fairy ex-monarch hell bent on retaking the throne has set Diamond in her sights. London may be an exciting town, but between the fairy tricks and deadly magical politics, she’s starting to think she should have just stayed home.

Anyway, it’s probably the most fun I’ve had writing a book and I’m excited to put it out there. If you want to check it out (which I would super appreciate), there’s a link right here.

FFAQ (Fake Frequently Asked Questions): 

1. How much does the book cost?

2.99. But it’ll be free for a couple of days at the top of next week if you want to wait a hot sec. (Dw, I’ll remind y’all when it happens.) Also, it’s in KDP Select so if you have one of those uber Amazon accounts with Amazon library privileges, you can check it out that way.      

2. You’ve used your name on this blog before. That’s not your name on the cover.

And that’s not a question. But, yeah, you’re right. That’s a pen name.

3. How much of the book is fictional and how much of it actually happened.

Tbh, like 70% of the stuff that doesn’t involve actual, literal magic actually happened in some form. Except I never actually went to the top of The Shard and I saw like three more shows on West End. Also, a lot of stuff is cleaned up. For example, irl, Cat and Elizabeth (their irl counterparts I mean) didn’t go to Paris. They went to Amsterdam. For...reasons.  

3. Why should I read this book?

Well, if the blurb didn’t convince you, it also includes goblins, Zombie Darwin, magical sightseeing, a dragon, a link to a bonus story that takes place entirely in Disney World, AND, you can pick it up next week for zero dollars and zero cents. So all that for starters.  

4. Is this a standalone book?

For now. I have a followup kind of midquel of three short stories planned (one of which is the Disney story I mentioned) which will be novel length when finished. But it’s more of a side story. And I have an idea for a sequel set in DC, but that’s for the future.

5. How many times did you type “The Queen’s Beats” instead of “The Queen’s Beasts”?

So many freaking times, buddy.

[coredesignixandnekonee]

The series under Seanan McGuire are

Velveteen VS: superheroes! I don’t know much about it because it’s on my mom’s ebook account, but I’ve been assured I would like it, often while complaining that Boko no/My Hero academia doesn’t focus on the societial/single corporation controlling heroes aspect enough.

October Daye: Seanan’s first series, but clear evidence as to how she became as popular as she is now, and you can see some changes in her writing as you go along, particularly in how the characters begin to become really diverse, in all the best ways. I’ve read the fifth book literally to pieces because I love a character so much

InCryptid: drama, dance, the supernatural and romance! —The life and times of the latest generation of a family of cryptozoologists, each with their own personalities and and skill set. Seanan clearly loves them, and there are lots of free short stories about the family history on her website if you want to test the waters or delve into what made them all so paranoid, beyond the global murder organization. Lots of people die.

Wayward children: the first book has an explicitly on the page ace character who gets a crush on transmasc character (the word trans isn’t used and but he is undeniably a young man whose family almost entirely wants and expects him to be a girl), and if that doesn’t get you hooked, the first book is a murder mystery at a boarding schools for the kids who have been to their own wonderlands and want to return to them. The second book makes you love the characters in the first book even more, by showing you how the twins seem to have been to different worlds, despite only having gone to one. The third book brings back several of the first’s best characters for a quest with the time traveling daughter of one, and the fourth book shows us how “fair” doesn’t mean “kind” when the goblin market is involved. It’s my favorite series.

God I hope my blurb summery you should read isn’t spoilery, I’m bad at judging spoilers. Really really bad.

Anyways, feed Seanan’s cats, read and rec her delightful books! Many have audiobooks!

Mira Grant (aka @seananmcguire)  is my favorite author and I finally started Into the Drowning Deep and it’s phenomenal!  Basically it’s “what if mermaids were real in the most terrifying way possible”.  The two things I love about her writing is that 

a) theres a LOT of science, and as you all know I have a hard-on for science.  Everything is scarily realistic, and I definitely have a new fear of the ocean now. There’s a lot of simplified science, as well as lots of mouth-watering jargon, not to mention her writing style is fantastic, especially the horror elements.  She always keeps me at the edge of my seat. And

b) there’s always such a diverse, lovable cast of characters.  Sci-fi has a really terrible problem with cis, straight, white men being the protags of everything but Grant writes a lot of characters of color, lgbt characters, disabled characters, fat characters, etc.  She also supports a lot of diverse headcanons for characters as well, that don’t have a confirmed sexuality or race.  

Anyways if you love science fiction, or horror, or just good writing in general, do yourself a favor and check out her books!  She has a few different universes - the Newsflesh universe (followers news reporters in the post-zombie apocalyptic world; has a main trilogy, multiple novellas, and book that occurs parallel to main events), the Parasitology trilogy (Medicinal tapeworms go horribly, horribly wrong), and the stand alone novel Into the Drowning Deep.  She also writes under Seanan Mcguire, for a few other series!

(also check out Chuck Wendig… my other favorite author! He’s written a lot of sci-fi fantasy books, and he’s also written books in the Star Wars universe!)

[littlewalken]

Sep 12

Blrhgdhga;gir 

Two of my longer stories are discussing between themselves which wants to have a rewrite- the roadie story which hasn’t even gotten to much of a plot yet alone any form of a draft, or the boy band story which has been through several drafts and has reached a resting point, gone further beyond it, but still has a way to go. 

Then there’s the fan fiction going STAAAARRR TRUUUUCK and the character making machine wants to process Curt the Goblin and Rauland with an idea that can be crafted in to an original enough thing, a fan fiction thing where I’d feel better having someone else say the idea is okay, (maybe its in the book and I haven’t got there yet) and an idea that will never ever ever see the light of day because it has to stay in the shadows where it knows it belongs. 

In Tales From the Big Chair Curt Smith admits to accumulating hats, and cats, but I’ve never seen him wear a hat. 

Today has to be a bit of a physically resting day, want to or not, because the last few days I’ve had to go out and real life and tomorrow I get to watch the pets while other people go out and real life. Would rather spend the day watching the babies than doing the real life thing.

More books have found their way here. Elizabeth Barrett Browning among the more interesting. How do I love thee? Aside from that poem I‘ve never heard of her but for $1 the blurb on the cover makes her and her world fit right in with other areas of study I have. 

When I do have energy and time a major rearranging of the book shelves is in order. Wish I had a friend to come over and help me play rearrange the book shelves. Even if they just watched me do it, conversed, and worked as a soundboard for ideas. 

To throw an idea out in to the universe let us put positivity in to the thought some day I will be posting a post where folks like the riders of the Jeff and Gashirs can send spec scripts and stories to. All because I’m part of a team working on making my Hollywood story in to something to be released and we need pieces for the sci fi TV show and homage to Jeff’s good acting in bad movies and why not go strait to the fans. 

By the 4th movie the marathon had grown stale... So why the action is happening in the foreground there’s going to need to be something on the movie screen. While the characters are charactering there’s a TV show being filmed behind them. I ain’t got time to come up with all that. 

Like being able to protect and save baby Crawford. I scream some times with some of the things I read about how fans feel about Crawford and I want to... 

I might be thinking ahead of myself but that’s a good and positive thing to let swirl around. 

And if it don’t go one way it can still be published and I can turn those characters loose on y’all. Because if the canon ain’t on the stage the fanon will have plenty of room on the page. 

And I promise not to JK Rowling or Anne Rice. Tumblr has given me plenty of good examples on how to kick back and enjoy. 

[agoblincat]

One more rant about Arcane before I go to bed: the music is so good, like wtf?! They have every genre possible for the soundtrack and it all sounds so amazing… they even have a metal track, the guitarist from Periphery plays a sequence in ep 4…the talent they have on board is crazy!

[agoblincat]

Arcane season two act 2… just a stream of consciousness and random thoughts as I go thru watching and rewatching the show because its now my hyperfixation so don’t mind my rant here, pointed to no one in particular as I shout into the void (also spoilers, beware)

Okayyy starting with ep 4… caitlyn!! You dawg you, I can’t believe you! I still love you and I get it, but girlll ya moved on quick (tho i dont blame you) Im gonna feel so sad for vi knowing that vi hasn’t moved on as easily…

I also love the dynamic between sevika and jinx, especially in ep 4… jinx is so just fucking funny, like unbelievably quick witted and snarky. Funny little shit she is. Sevika is RIPPED and i love how she basically rallies the undercity and cares so much for the cause

Also circling back to caitlyn moving on and vi—speaking of oh ohh my gooddd viii VI you badass hot bitch! I feel for her so hard, she reminds me so much of me when I was younger….A fighter drowning her angst and sorrows in spirits… the anger and depression and substance abuse is heavy man, I relate to Vi the most in this series in a lot of ways. i loved the pit fighter sequence in ep 5 and the sibling reunion!

Oh my god the sibling reunion, the tunnel scene was so funny and cute when they were bickering they really are siblings!

Vander is alive holy shit I felt so happy for the girls

Also Vi and Cait reunion!!! I was SOOO worried it was gonna go bad but i had faith in them and gOD it was so good.

Then the last ep 6, holy shit… the family is reunited then torn apart! Why cant we have nice things GOD this can’t end well… in conclusion….

Every single character is beautifully crafted and flawed. The fact that you can witness every single one of their perspectives to a point that there is no black and white, true hero nor villain, just all shades of grey, people living their lived experiences and being justified by their actions separately…but together, inevitably, as Viktor says, “which inspires us to our greatest good, is also the cause of our greatest evil.” Like holy FUCK this shit is deep. This show goes real deep, everything about it… the music, animation, jesus its so good. THIS SHOW IS UNREAL

Ok rant over 👌 sorry I don’t normally go unhinged like this, but this piece of media makes me Feel things and I need an outlet with likeminded who stumble upon this and feel the same

[agoblincat]

My thoughts about Arcane in a nutshell of 300 words or less

Post act 1 thoughts: my heart hurts for Vi so much that poor baby 😭 she has gone thru so much & I feel sooo bad for her. Also loving the Sevika-Jinx alliance. Also the Viktor Jayce break up hooo. Ekko, my boy he’s so cool!! And Caitlyn’s arc turning so dark so quickly this is gonna be interesting

I’m gonna start act 2 tonight and I am NOT ready

[agoblincat]

Alright… starting first episode of season 2 of Arcane started….