#god I love being a tool and not a person it's so fun and great for my mental health specifically | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bonefall · 1 year ago

Note

How do you feel about "character joins bloodclan" aus? Im curious about ur thoughts since youre really in tune with the themes of the series but personally i just hate them bc its ALWAYS aimed at 'unfortunate' characters and always ALWAYS ignores the fact that bloodclan is a horrible place in-canon and that they're just reflavoring the abuse and trauma the characters qent through to be more emo or goth themed.

Ravenpaw is ALWAYS a prime target for this and its like. Great. You took the character being abused by their mentor figure and is being harmed from the violent culture the clan has generated... and giving them an EMO mentor figure who will inevitably abuse them and harm them as a result of the violent culture the emo clan has generated. Sasha is another one I've noticed- you've put the woman who lost her kit and is struggling to survive with the others while being controlled and abused by someone who sees her as an outsider (aka alone and easy to isolate), and are gonna put her in a faction who specifically separates kin from one another to easily control them and who have canonically tried murdering those who stick with their family. What was gained here.

Like i know bloodclan is revamped in ur au (thank god for it) but in canon bloodclan is HORRIBLE. People ignore that in favor of putting their favs into bloodclan bc bloodclan is cool and killed tigerstar that one time bc of revenge. Ravenpaw becomes Scourge AUS are SO SO SO much worse bc of this too- sure you manage to point out how scourge and raven has roughly similar stories in their youth but you could also do something interesting and make an au where raven and scourge are FOILS and do a firestar/scourge thing, while pointing this comparison out!! Instead you just went "Ravenpaw emo now and is sad about beating up Firestar his friend" and basically kept everything the same.

Sorry im basically venting here but i just dont like how people forget that scourge in canon does NOT look out for the 'little guy', he's a murderer and abuser who wants to keep his subjects afraid and separated so that he alone has power over them. Bloodclan is not the cool strong goth group, its the group where two cats slaughter eachother over a piece of twoleg scraps, only for the survivor to die bc the food was poisonous to cats and no one knew bc theres no cohesive group that can pass that knowledge around. its a fucking horrible place to live. Im not saying that you cant do interesting "character in bloodclan" aus (a Rusty who lives in bloodclan who STILL wants to do good but is shaped by the horrid reality of bloodclan would be fun imo) but its so often used with already traumatized characters as a 'solution' or 'fix-it with some emotional issues involved' that i just foam at the mouth and howl like a rabid animal on principle at this point.

Hmm... I think for me, it doesn't tend to read that way for me when the fandom makes AUs for it. I'm coming at BloodClan from a point of really deep critique and frustration.

BloodClan's not a REAL place, and what that means is, every speck of how horrible it was is a choice the writers made to justify its treatment. It was something they actively decided, because, BloodClan was a tool to suddenly invalidate the previous 5 books of TPB so that the series could comfortably conclude there was no need to upset the status quo.

If you haven't read it before, I recommend this post I made on how Darkest Hour Is A Personal Disappointment, but anyway;

We spend a whole series on how Fireheart challenges a broken society, because he is different. Their xenophobia, how isolationism and glory get people killed, the way that Tigerstar's greatest asset is how respected he is... these are bad things. They're things that Fireheart fights for several books.

But then, in the LAST book, in the 11th inning, they introduce BloodClan. They're just evil. They have no nuance. The narrative bends over backwards to stress that this group of evil foreigners LOVES murder, hates friendship, and doesn't believe in our good god.

Suddenly, the Clan cats have to be EXTRA xenophobic and glorious to kill these filthy, murderous foreign hordes. Clan cat belief in their good god makes them stronger than the bloodthirsty barbarians. Firestar kills Scourge and we can feel happy and triumphant about it, when Tigerstar was killed a few chapters ago and given a tragic sendoff.

So, I encourage you to step back from an emotional response to how Filthy and Murderous this group was portrayed, and look at it as a writing choice.

When Tigerstar, known cat-racist and murderer of mixed-race people, is killed by Scourge in self-defense, he is grieved by Firestar and commended for his "good qualities". (and then they retconned in that it was actually secretly revenge all along, not just self defense, so this killing is extra evil)

When Scourge is killed, Firestar just thinks about how it's cool he's not going to heaven, and how all of the previously ferocious BloodClan warriors look so inferior to the forest Clans.

And so, with all that said,

I'm 100% in favor of how the fandom widely looks at this, says, "fuck that" and just makes them the Cool Goth Group. I'd argue pretty strongly that the least nuanced idea of that is still infinitely better than canon.

There was nothing there. It was literally just Xenophobia-Is-JustifiedClan. They literally hated love and friendship and banned families so that Clan cats would look good in comparison. Banned families. You don't get this level of stupid evil from anything else but an 80s cartoon.

Maybe I just don't see the AUs you tend to see (I curate my Tumblr experience very well and generally hang out in more adult-oriented spaces, I can imagine a place like Amino being mostly kids who tend to be immature. Edgelord Angstpiddle is just a normal part of growing up), but every project I see that gives me a glimpse of BloodClan Ravenpaws and Sashas come with such tweaks already assumed.

Like, these are examples I've seen,

They'll have Raven be involved with the formation of BloodClan

Scourge will actually be a character with some pity and mercy, like how he was in Rise of Scourge when his abusive siblings begged him for food, and he fed them before sending them away.

no ban on love and friendship. Lol. Lmao, even.

More of the social structure will be based around acquiring food for people in a 'harsh' environment, leading to that battle, instead of just Evil Foreign Greed (which canon!scourge only had after being almost killed by tigerstar, because he said "actually, in light of new information that you are a murderer, i need to reconsider our deal.")

BloodClan will be overhauled completely. I've seen this a few ways. Connecting them to SkyClan, or the Oakstar raids on Chelford, or even as a positive entity; a surprise ally. (VERY common with BloodClan Ravenpaw AUs I've seen).

Anyways... (Shrug), I dunno dude, it doesn't bother me that much.

#and remember. BloodClan is 1 of 3 actively hostile evil foreigner groups with no nuance.#4 if you also count Slash's rogues as their own entity and not just a continuation of One's.#This is NOT a treatment ever EVER given to Clanborn cat factions.#Berryh's hate crime club is being treated with more kindness than this.#None of Mud's supporters were punished for attempted murder or treason. Or anything.#And there is only ONE DF trainee who was Dark Forested after his death.#So anon I'm so sorry but I am your worst enemy u_u #We will fight at dawn #I think that one barley map is super awesome and it's the only time I ever really liked canon BloodClan #I like to imagine my own version in my head when I watch BloodClan-related art because canon BloodClan bugs me so bad #The xenophobia in this series is so blatant and yet so overlooked

135 notes · View notes

moonlitlex · 1 year ago

Text

i have so much to say abt chalice of the gods so im just gonna copy paste my review from goodreads here. you can also read it on goodreads

ok. i promised i would hate this book. and i do. i hate this book. i also hate rick riordan. in addition, i hate capitalism. i promise that’s relevant.

let’s talk about the book now. i’ll cover the things i love first. i love percy jackson. i love grover. i love annabeth. i love sally. i love paul. i love percy annabeth and grover together. all of these things are very obvious and self-explanatory. percy is hands down THE main character of all time. i have nothing bad to say about him. his literal fatal flaw is loyalty. he’s actually perfect and has no flaws. this is expected from the son of sally jackson, the perfect person. paul is sweet and kind to sally and that’s really all that matters. annabeth is awesome and supportive and so is grover and they’re all besties forever. you get it. you’ve read percy jackson.

the jokes are better than before. there are definitely some legitimately funny jokes in this book, which i was really missing from the last few rick riordan installments. and i don’t think this is because rick suddenly got funnier. i think it’s because this style of joke works for percy. of all of rick’s protagonists, percy seems the most natural fit for these jokes.

sally is great. grover and annabeth are generally on form. so is percy, as much as can be expected from rick riordan at this point. i will elaborate on this later.

now to complain. this is the stupidest premise i’ve ever heard of. percy is a high school senior. he is going to go to new rome university. he needs 3 divine recommendations. this is already a stupid premise but don’t worry, it gets worse. poseidon reveals that the reason percy needs these recommendations is that it’s a special requirement for him specifically made by zeus. and the reason he gets to have this stupid requirement is that he’s a child of the big three and shouldn’t exist.

hello. zeus. yes, lord zeus, it’s me. alexis.

what the absolute FUCK are you saying.

this doesn’t MAKE SENSE. the only reason percy shouldn’t have existed was that the gods had a stupid pact to not have any kids because of a stupid prophecy. two things here. one - that prophecy is OVER. everything turned out fine. thanks to percy jackson. you’re welcome, gods of olympus. two - percy has literally saved olympus TWICE now. two times. this is genuinely such a dumb and made up reason to send percy on a quest that i can’t even turn my brain off and enjoy it. it’s not fun. leave percy alone. LEAVE HIM ALONE.

it’s literally insane how stupid this setup is. rick keeps writing books about how the gods are horrible and take advantage of the demigods and the demigods live terrible lives. in this book, percy has LITERALLY saved olympus TWICE and motherfucking zeus (literally) had to be talked down from making him get 25 letters of recommendation to 3. this is AFTER percy spent 3 years in pjo almost being killed and got his memory wiped for 6-8 months depending on which book you read in hoo and then got sent on a quest to save the entire world AGAIN. this CHILD got like a 2-4 month break (depending on which book you’re reading) and he woke up with no fucking memory and had to spend like 2 more months fighting monsters and the literal primordial earth goddess. and now he has to go on literally pointless quests that someone who didn’t just get back home from saving the actual world could ALSO just do. because he needs to get some fucking letters of recommendation.

look. genuinely. percy jackson should snap at this point in the story. this boy should’ve snapped like at least 5 books ago. at minimum. rick wrote the perfect setup to show us percy’s instant descent into madness. he should LOSE it. all the gods have done for the ENTIRE time he’s known he’s a demigod is treat demigods like disposable tools. this is the point in the story where percy goes. wow. luke was right. you guys are all assholes who don’t care about us even a little bit. i am NOT saying what needs to follow is a fanfic-esque dark!percy story where he successfully destroys olympus or something. what i AM saying. is at bare minimum this is where percy goes you know what fuck you i hate you guys and washes his hands of being a demigod at least temporarily. at the very least he should sit back and think yeah, i don’t really want to go to new rome university. it’s not worth it. i will just go to a different university. look. it’s percy jackson. he can literally one shot all but the most fearsome monsters (typhon, the giants, a drakon, etc). he is literally going to be 100% completely fine going to mortal university AND he wont have to deal with zeus’s annoying ass.

listen. MY percy jackson wanted to kill smelly gabe as a 12 year old because he abused his mother. MY percy jackson doesn’t like bullies. MY percy jackson challenged ares to a fight just on the basis that ares was a fucking asshole.

MY percy jackson is not going on useless fucking quests to go to new rome university of all places.

which reminds me. why DOES he want to go to new rome university. this is percy jackson. he LOVES new york. why is percy “what did they do to my city” jackson going to university ACROSS THE COUNTRY from the city he loves. why is he doing that. and hey look. sally and paul (and soon estelle) are ALSO going to be in new york. so like WHY is he leaving for real. percy my fatal flaw is loyalty jackson. IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE OK! it’s percy he is seriously not going to have issues with common monsters attacking him. we literally saw him fight off titans and giants a fucking hellhound isn’t gonna get his ass. WHY is he leaving. it does NOT make sense.

there’s this scene ok. where sally tells them she’s pregnant. and percy’s like oh my god…. i’m going to be in california…. and my sister is going to be here…. and i was just sitting there going. yeah bro. why are you going to california. i literally do not understand. you literally are from nyc. you live here. your family is here. your friends from chb are like a short pegasus ride away. there are like 50 universities in new york. just go here. why are you leaving. you are percy jackson. being a new yorker is literally one of your defining traits. stay here. WHY AR EYOU LEAVING I DO NOT UNDERSTAND PERSEUS

and listen. if your argument is that annabeth is going to be in nru. why the FUCK is ANNABETH going to nru!!!!! WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT!!!! EXPLAIN IT!!!! percy LITERALLY says annabeth is such an overachiever she’s already run out of ap classes to take. he literally says that. why the fuck is this girl going to nru where let’s be real her admission is guaranteed. annabeth is 100% someone who would want to go to an ivy. and would you fucking believe it there’s an ivy right here in nyc. like let’s be fucking realistic here. annabeth started her architecture career at SIXTEEN designing the city the fucking GODS live in. so like. don’t you think she’d want to be a bit more challenged. don’t you think she’d want to go to a university that is actually recognizable to mortals. annabeth did NOT love new rome that much like did richard forget what he wrote. this girl was freaking out about new rome until percy said he only likes it because they could live together there. she literally does not care about new rome and she is WAY too ambitious and academically inclined to be happy with going to some small as uni 99% of employers have never heard of.

this isn’t even the worst character assassination in the book. that award goes to the way rick wrote percy. percy. my darling percy. my beloved percy. perseus jackson. light of my life. as i said before, he is MOSTLY on form. the him really wanting to cali thing is definitely ooc for him but it is NOTHING compared to the sheer amount of times rick portrays percy as stupid in this accursed novel. his internal monologue is constantly shit like i’m always so behind annabeth and omg i’m being so dumb right now and annabeth calls me seaweed brain because i’m an idiot and blah blah fucking blah.

dick riordan has forgotten that perseus jackson is, in fact, not stupid at all. he is INCREDIBLY clever. he is just not particularly academically inclined/not very book smart and it would also be perfectly understandable given the fucking books that riordan wrote to interpret that as percy being very discouraged from engaging with his studies. he genuinely enjoys chiron’s class at yancy because chiron is an engaging teacher and encourages him. he spends 90% of his time in pjo deducing what’s going on with extremely limited information because rick decided none of the characters can tell him anything because of plot and exposition reasons. in son of neptune he literally just coasts on having sherlockian (not bbc that’s a whole other angry review) powers of deduction. to the point where the characters around him are amazed at how he’s figuring stuff out. literally in house of hades annabeth’s pov’s are constantly her commenting on how she gives percy shit for being a dumbass but he’s actually really clever.

it genuinely feels like at some point during the writing of mark of athena rick decided to just slowly start making various fanon ideas canon. percy being stupid is very commonly accepted fanon because he doesn’t realize how smart he is (and fans don’t realize he’s an unreliable narrator) and the fans also love to infantilize characters with more in your face adhd (leo is another victim of this phenomenon). we’ve spent 5 books in percy’s head and he doesn’t think he’s particularly clever so it makes sense to ignore the mountains of evidence pointing towards his quick and creative thought process in favour of haha percy is dumb jokes.

the wild thing is, percy isn’t even that hard on himself in pjo. he obviously doesn’t see himself in the same way we later come to find out other people see him (mainly thinking about hazel and frank in son of neptune, which is the only time in hoo he genuinely feels like the same character as pjo percy) but he’s not really dealing with crazy self doubt and self esteem issues. he does have his down on himself moments but they’re all extremely understandable given the context because he literally faces impossible odds in every single pjo book. at one point he’s disappointed he couldn’t tell that ares and luke manipulated him… like yes bestie that’s a very valid thing to feel upset and betrayed about. it doesn’t mean that he’s actually stupid though and genuinely he comes across more as humble and not realizing just how awesome and cool and interesting he is than anything else. percy consistently shows that he is really clever. half of pjo is percy figuring out a new and interesting way of defeating his enemies and the other half is percy figuring out how to bait his enemies into a duel to improve his odds. it’s horrible what rick does to percy in his internal monologue.

it’s to an insane degree. yes i realize i have already written 500 words about percy not being stupid alone but i must stress how egregious this is. it’s literally characters who have previously acknowledged percy’s intelligence who start remarking about how he’s stupid. in house of hades percy and annabeth get out of fucking TARTARUS and reyna makes a jab about how percy wouldn’t be able to find his way out of a paper bag without annabeth. that is an INSANE thing to say for reyna and for rick. rick has not written a stupid character so it’s weird to make that something a character does without really trying to show them being wrong. from reyna’s perspective, this is a guy she was complimenting a few short weeks ago. this is a guy she immediately wanted to make a leader at the camp that she loves and is her home. this is guy she barely knows and she pretty much immediately proposes to him. WHY would she suddenly start making jokes about how dumb he is? it’s not like she actually knows him better now. he came to the battle with reinforcements and basically immediately dipped after the feast. how are we to accept reyna treating our beloved perseus in this horrific manner? we simply cannot. it is unnacceptable. this is inaccurate.

it’s so WRONG to do this to percy. yES I UNDERSTAND I HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THIS FOR TOO LONG. I DON’T CARE. PERCY JACKSON IS MY BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE AND I NEED TO DEFEND HIM FROM THIS SLANDER. I AM ONLY PARTIALLY JOKING. listen. liSTEN. this is the guy whose signature move is manipulate your enemy into dueling with you when you’re outnumbered or outmatched. he very coolly manipulated bob into killing his own brother (btw this was very hot and sexy and clever and attractive perseus is king of gaslight gatekeep girlboss). he is NOT stupid. he is impulsive. he is extremely oblivious about some things. he is NOT stupid. i watched perseus jackson grow up for 5 books and he is not stupid. i always say this. i always say that percy is not stupid and richard riordan refuses to listen to me.

there are such horrendous lines as “i am a guy of limited talents. if i can’t kill it with water, a sword, or sarcasm, i’m basically defenseless.” richard how DARE you say this about my beloved perseus. he is NEVER like this. he literally would never say that. even at absolute worst percy’s internal monologue was “this plan is stupid and will get us killed. but it’s the plan i have.” he’s NOT a being defenseless guy. what hte fuck are you saying. richard did you read your own books. RICHARD. DID YOU. at one point he says that he is constantly several steps behind annabeth’s thought process. he has literally never thought this before and it is also untrue. richard. i hate you. read your own fucking books oh my god.

ok. i think i have sufficiently harped on the fact that percy is not stupid. now i will complain about another thing. and this was just in one part but it bothered me and this is my review so i get to talk about whatever i want. if you don’t like it read someone else’s review. don’t hate read my review. i didn't charge you money to read it

at one point, percy has to wrestle a god who hercules once wrestled. and annabeth says something about hercules brute forcing it. and look. i GET that hercules was freakishly strong. i get that. i understand it. but when annabeth says hercules just brute forced it they’re both like ah shit i can’t do that. perseus. beloved. you ripped the minotaurs horn off its head with your bare hands as a 12 year old with no training. you are literally insanely strong as is. that is an insane thing for a 12 year old to be able to do. hell, that would be an insane thing for a grown adult to do. i don’t think rick realizes how op percy is. he was so caught up in making percy cool (which is, you know, extremely understandable and right and correct percy jackson is the coolest man in fiction for a reason i get it) that he forgot that he made percy extremely unbelievably powerful too. with the curse of achilles he was potentially matching minor gods in power level. he fights while sustaining mini-hurricanes and explodes glaciers and shit.

some more things. the prose is… acceptable. the plot reads like a fever dream. there is a smoothie shop called himbo juice that annabeth percy and grover are evidently regulars at. and there are. himbos. that serve. juice. so you can imagine what this fever dream looks like. like the last couple rick riordan releases, this one reads like published fanfiction too, just with better quality of writing than the sun and the star.

there are some WEIRD continuity errors in here. one of them is fairly minor but i still noticed it - percy says his father compared his mother to a princess. this is not true. poseidon compared sally to a queen. specifically, he called her “a queen among women”. i know this because i am sally jackson’s number 1 fan.

more egregiously, however, is annabeth’s yankees cap heebie jeebies. percy puts on annabeths’s cap and gets the heebie jeebies while using it. and then he goes wow annabeth. you never told me that using the cap is like this. and annabeth is like yeah well. power is like that. richard. riordan. did you fucking FORGET that percy has, in fact, worn annabeth’s cap before. and it was literally completely. once again, richard, did you read your own books.

one more good thing - when percy fights geras/gary, who is the god/personification of old age, the way he does it is by imagining him and his friends getting older and embracing it. this was a genuinely good and sweet moment and it was very touching. the trio’s talks about this after the fact are also absolutely a return to form from riordan. for like, a few paragraphs. but still.

the biggest problem is just how obvious it is that this book is a cash grab. we had pjo. then we had a sequel series. then we had ANOTHER sequel series. and now we’re getting random standalone novels that are extremely unnecessary and don’t add anything. rick riordan has dollar signs in his eyes. these are not stories that make sense. these are not stories rick genuinely wanted to tell. these are stories that are being told because the purpose of publishing books now is to maximize profit. (sidebar - i told you the capitalism thing would be relevant. you should believe me more often. smh) the only reason rick is still writing these books is that they make money. they feel extremely empty and hollow.

percy is trapped as a teenager forever because rick refuses to let him age up. percy accepting old age would make FAR more sense for a percy who’s in his 20’s and just now realizing that he lived past all the shit he thought was going to kill him and he has a real life that he likes and he could actually grow old now. but percy must be a child for marketing purposes, so he stays a child. the world itself is trapped in a cycle of the gods promising they’ll be better and the gods literally not changing at all. and for the sake of the book series, it can’t change. if we had real change in the world, that would actually mean something, silly. we can’t have consequences. we have to reset every 5 years like a fucking comic book so that we can make infinite money. this is the infinite money glitch irl. just make trash that doesn’t need to be made. the end point of capitalism is making trash no one asked for that has no artistic merit just because you can make money off of it.

by the way, dr emily wilson’s iliad translation, which was also out on the same day, is LESS expensive than this book. this cashgrab nonsense novel is MORE expensive than a book a professor in classics who has a phd spent 4 years on. this is just wrong. the fun and stupid cashgrab book should NOT be more expensive than a book that someone spent 4 years meticulously translating from ancient greek. it’s just so clear and in your face. trials of apollo absolutely felt like a cashgrab but at least there was SOME semblance of effort there. this is literally just the most plain and simple cashgrab novel you can make.

hey. you know the infinite monkey theorem? the infinite monkey theorem is that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text including shakespeare. richard riordan is a monkey with a typewriter. you get it. you’ve read percy jackson.

rick riordan struck gold with pjo. it’s genuinely to this day one of my favourite things i’ve ever read, flaws and all. it’s FUN. it’s COOL. it’s THEMATICALLY COHESIVE. the characters grow and change. they feel like real people with personalities. it literally doesn’t even matter how op percy is because THAT’S how good of a character he is. he is so compelling that you want to read about him anyway even though you can tell right from the minotaur fight that this kid can decimate whatever opponent he has. the books are funny and moving because you can genuinely connect to these characters. the more i read rick riordan’s work, the more certain i am that pjo was a fluke. i don’t think he knows what he’s doing. i think he should retire from writing.

unfortunately for me, richard riordan seems to have no intention of retiring. he has announced another percy jackson book that will be released next year. i assume there will be at least 2 more books based on the setup in this one.

rick. listen. i know you’re listening because what else will you do with your time. rick, why are you doing this. hasn’t percy been through enough. when will it end. give it a rest. stop it. get some help. at the very least, read your own books before writing percy. i am right about him and you are wrong about him. you are the author and i’m killing you right now. i am strangling you and i am hitting you with weapons. all at once. i am very proficient at causing deaths. (this is a metaphor referring to roland barthes’ death of the author. i wish no bodily harm to richard riordan).

this book is… alright. percy is my smart king. sally jackson is queen of my heart. it’s a fun read but you do have to turn your brain off completely and read through some serious percy defamation.

[edit: i am downgrading this book to one star (was at 2). the more i think about it, the more angry i am. there is literally a paragraph tailor made to rub jason's death in our faces. it's about how he looks forward to getting old being married to piper and having grandchildren. it's a very low blow. jason is literally rick riordan's biggest missed opportunity and he's rubbing in how poorly he treated jason even after killing him off for apollo's character development.

annabeth still keeps putting percy down because rick doesn't realize how mean she is i guess. she's still scared of him. canonically. which is a really weird and fucked up thing to write imo. this relationship doesn't seem healthy in canon (they are healthy in my head, however, because i know what women are like) but rick refuses to address it or let them break up. i LOVE annabeth. i love her. but she is an extremely flawed character and rick never treats her as such. and it just makes it exhausting to read about her.

percy IS on form but it genuinely feels like he's tlt percy, not post hoo percy. his inner voice sounds way more immature than it has for most of pjo and in son. riordan also repurposes the "look, i didn't want to be a half-blood" line from tlt to make a dumb little joke about how high school is hard. it was a GOOD opening line. it immediately set the tone and told us so much about percy in literally just a handful of words. now it's a joke about how being a senior in high school sucks. it's this mcu-esque allergy to being sincere that pjo never had.

there is BARELY any grover in this book. i love grover so much that i was cheering any time he was there, but there is very little of him. he's in like 2 or 3 scenes and has his own side plot going on with juniper and being bad at understanding what his girlfriend wants or whatever. extremely unnecessary and not what i want for grover. this book kind of ends up feeling like it's about annabeth but from percy's perspective. she gets good moments at percy's expense. percy spends the book monologuing about how annabeth is way smarter than him and all he has is his sick ass water powers and the best swordfighting skill in 300 years, both of which are very downplayed. percy explodes a river and it's treated like this crazy freaky scary thing but two years ago in universe he made a volcano erupt and everyone was like yeah this makes sense percy is that powerful. in son he explodes a glacier and it's just a normal tuesday for him. he literally doesn't even react to it. and now we're supposed to believe his exploding and purifying a river feat is some unbelievable feat.]

in conclusion, i want a refund. no i did not purchase this book. however, i would like to be reimbursed about $5000 in emotional damages. i will also be suing richard riordan for defamation on percy’s behalf. good night new york city. and my beloved perseus jackson who lives in new york city.

#alexis.exe #pjo #cotg crit #rr crit #cotg spoilers #cotg #i hope yall who dont want negative stuff have the crit tag blacklisted lol dont come at me

136 notes · View notes

madam-o · 4 months ago

Text

The Many Different Lydias in Media

Ngl, I found the Lydia from the BJ movie scripts to be fairly average and boring. She's a stereotypically edgy city teen in the first draft of the original Beetlejuice script, and seriously lacking in personality in "Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian". In the first movie she's got some style and dark interests, but still seems overall to be a normal everygirl. The only reason she works so well on screen is due to great costume/makeup design, plus Winona Ryder's natural charisma and gothy cheekiness. And as I recall from the cartoon, she was much more cheerful but still one-dimensional, a fun-loving and typically moral mc who just enjoys creepy things and hanging out with dead people. She IS more feisty than movie Lydia tends to be, though.

I think this is why I've latched so strongly onto Musical Lydia. She's angry, twisted, mouthy, and not afraid of a little violence. She's passionate and pretty messed up, a good opponent/companion for Musical BJ. She'd think Movie BJ is a typical creepy Boomer asshole and not gel with him at all. And I'll tell you one thing, she would NOT put up with any of the bullshit in "Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian".

God, the amount of shit that Lydia just puts up with silently in that script. For instance, her parents are even worse people than in the first film, but Lydia says absolutely nothing to them about how horrible they're being. She just plots behind their backs with some surf "beatniks" (which is that script's weird descriptive word for the wacky young people of "today"...in the first draft of Beetlejuice 1 it was "deathrockers".) BJ dances the lambada (the Forbidden Dance!) with her and is very handsy and gross about it and she doesn't even try to push him away. Man, did I not like that script.

In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Lydia is again, overall a fairly average, typical everyperson... it's just that she can see dead people and she's being tormented by a trickster demon (her words btw). She's not as entertainingly dramatic and morbid as she was as a teen, and I get it. She's a grown up now, and the allure of death and horror no longer does anything for her, especially since she's seen literally seen it every day for decades. She's been beaten down by life a bit. She's got a teen daughter who hates her for reasons she can't control. She's been through the wars romance-wise and is now in a bad relationship with a manipulative tool, and she's not doing anything about it because it's easier to just let him take care of everything. Many of us have been there.

Burton's Lydia has always represented himself, so she reflects his view of the world. He's just a kind of subdued guy who has a quirky view of people. It's the rest of the world that's truly weird, not him. He's just quietly hanging out and doing his thing while everyone else is running around being a bunch of colorful, self-centered clowns.

I dunno. I think she's going to be misjudged in this movie. We expect a lot of movie Lydia because so many of us grew up identifying with her, but she's never been a terribly dynamic character, we just want her to be. She's clever enough, but she's not a person who generally fights for control of her life. In fact, I think she feels that there are many things she can never control so she just has to roll with it. All she can do is try to be there for others and give her family the support that they need. Personally I definitely identify with that.

#beetlejuice #winona ryder #lydia deetz #beetlejuice 2 #beetlejuice beetlejuice #beetlejuice the musical #beetlejuice the animated series

17 notes · View notes

kindheart525 · 7 days ago

Note

What are your thoughts on Gds Blunders?

Oh man thank you so much for asking, as a disabled person working towards a degree in disability I had a lot of fun analyzing it. I might go back for a second watch later but on my first watch, I was really impressed by the commentary on how real disabled people are treated. Special education has historically been (and still often is) a tool for subjugating those who simply do not fit the norm, or “behave” as the administration wants them to, regardless of their individual strengths and intelligence. Not that I am against “special education” in the sense of accommodations and/or specialized curricula for those who truly would benefit from it, but what happened in this episode wasn’t that. The special ed classroom was just a way to keep Tommy and his classmates in line and away from those who were (subjectively by Moralton ideals) “smarter.” Basically, in an ableist society, there is only one definition of intelligence and that is being an unquestioning Protestant. In our mainstream U.S. that definition is obviously different but it is still very narrow. I know Tommy and his classmates were portrayed as not actually “deserving” of that treatment because they were not disabled, just atheists/agnostics, but I think the metaphors carry over well into how actually disabled people are treated. They/we don’t deserve that treatment either.

There were just so many great details. The mind-numbing nature of the special ed classroom really wasn’t far off from how they are and have been in real life. The idea that disabled people are “blunders” because how could God create something so imperfect? What message does that send to people considered deviant to be told that not even their creator loves and respects them? Yet disabled people are told all the time that they are mistakes, often that they are a product of their parents’ sins or that they themselves have done something to deserve the “impairment” and subsequent exclusion. The “we’re playing missionary” rock-throwing bit was really telling of how Christians take it upon themselves to change the “abnormal” through what is really straight abuse. The real kicker was Orel’s “we should pity them” speech. That is LITERALLY how a lot of Christians think, and they think their pity is kindness. Many disabled people could tell stories of being prayed over or showered with patronizing, pitying comments from “well meaning” people. It goes to show how ableism presents the only choices for disabled people as either being outright harshly abused or patronized and restricted, with no option for real justice.

Overall, this was a thought-provoking episode and I also liked the little jokes in other episodes taking jabs at nondisabled people who use disabled parking spots. Just as they are with many other social issues, it is clear to me that the Moral Orel writing team did a decent amount of critical thinking about disability.

#AskKind #KindsThoughts #moral orel #god’s blunders #disability #actually disabled

8 notes · View notes

omegalomania · 2 years ago

Text

some kind soul uploaded the full q&a that fall out boy did the other night! here is a highlights reel of things that grabbed me while i was watching for those who don't have time to watch:

they have a rapport with the interviewer and have hung out with him a bunch. patrick says they spent like 30 minutes making fun of couches last they hung out lmao

pete describes working with neal avron as being held like an enchanted forest creature with him standing inches from pete's face and saying "what. are. the songs. about." and pete going "oh my god he's looking into my fucking soul rn"

when asked what their favorite meal is, andy says "mom's spaghetti" and doesn't elaborate, patrick says "sushi" and doesn't elaborate. pete says that he's like the joker and he's a simple man and today he had a full english breakfast and he didn't know what to do with half the stuff that showed up.

pete talks about discussing the name of "the beatles" with elliot ingham (their photographer) and says he finally understood that their name was a pun. he says about this "i'm not the sharpest tool in the shed" and doesn't realize he's referencing a meme. the crowd immediately fills him in that it's a lyric by smash mouth. andy clowns on him for this right after: "he's NOT the sharpest tool in the shed"

the host says that pete seems very intellectual. pete says "i PROMISE you that's not true."

when asked about formative musical influences andy and patrick both cite familiar names (andy namedrops drummers for bands like slayer and metallica, patrick says his dad being a folk singer was a huge influence and the 1989 danny elfman batman score). pete says joy division but says he's a visual person and most of his influences are movies.

there's a moment where patrick and pete banter and pete points at the host and says "he just told me i'm smart, i'm trying to live up to it!!" and patrick says in this very small high pitched voice "please be nice to pete!"

anyway pete says his biggest influences are "all the twilight movies except for the one where they introduce [i have no idea what he says here because the crowd promptly goes apeshit]" and also lego batman.

for newer artists patrick says he really likes the new zulu record and the new incendiary song. he says he also likes MSPAINT, alvvays, and another band i couldn't catch the name of

pete says he likes all of patrick's recommendations and says he also likes games we play. andy doesn't give any artists but says patrick gave a "great list" because he's VERY jet-lagged. he's keeping it together as best as he can tho lmao

when asked about if they would ever do a fashion runway show like they did in 2013, patrick says he was embarrassingly short for the whole thing. "i'm at like, bellybutton level." so he says he doubts they would ever be invited back to do something similar "unless they want a bunch of hobbits"

someone asks about producing and patrick gets really in depth with what producing is like and uses "from under the cork tree" as an example - "nobody puts baby in the corner" was barely adjusted from demo form but "sugar we're goin down" had totally different verses at first until they got better direction from the producer.

when asked about what their favorite video to film was, pete says youngblood chronicles WASN'T a lot of fun to make because it was like 9 months with fake blood in your hair and clothes that haven't been washed oNCE. he also didn't love doing the prosthetics for "love from the other side"

the host asks if they've seen the last of us and pete says yes but points at andy and says "he hasn't seen the last episode though so no spoilers!!!" which i thought was very sweet. he then follows that up with "just watch the fuckin episode so we can talk about it!"

patrick and andy said they shot a music video recently that was a "blast" but it's not out yet. pete calls it "very fun, very funny." the crowd starts cheering and patrick hastily says "YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT! you're under NO obligation to like it! but if you do then that's good :)"

patrick says one of the best parts of being in a band is that they all have imposter syndrome but in different ways so they can build up each other's ideas even if they don't believe in their own.....

pete's very nervous about the lyrics to this album cause he's not sure they'll be relatable since he has a lot of "insane fears day to day about not existing." he went to a lot of places that were terrifying to him and he was like "should i talk about this to my therapist" but his therapist said "put this in your lyrics"

"heaven, iowa" was the song that took the longest to come together on this record. this is followed by a rly long anecdote from patrick that im putting in another post cause it honestly made me howl.

when asked about who they'd most like to collaborate with, andy without hesitation says "ourselves" and nothing else. pete says he wanted a kid cudi feature on the album but it didn't work out since he was either busy or ghosted them fldjflkdf

when asked what song are they tired of playing that they can't cut from the setlist and they DON'T want to answer. patrick says some songs have really high notes that are demanding physically for him but that's as specific as he gets lol

pete's like "well we've got this punk song we end all our shows with from one of our earlier albums and it gets very chaotic and sometimes it's a bit of a fancy crowd of people who are like 'i like centuries, i like some of their other songs....i write sins...' and before we start the song i'm like. oh god this is gonna be bad."

when asked about the songwriting process, patrick says: "pete sends me lyrics, i mine them for stuff i like, and....i hate starting answers like this i feel like i've been saying this all MONTH. so i have ADHD - " [crowd fucking goes wild]

when asked about which projects they're proudest of outside of fall out boy, patrick turns to andy and says "andy is very quiet about being in like thirty bands" but andy says he's proud of "all of it"

patrick remarks that he's heard some love for soul punk but is also super grateful he gets to do film and tv scoring now too! he says he likes that when he's talking to people and they ask what he does and if they don't know bands or anything he can say he likes scoring for film and tv and their eyes glaze over and there are no follow-up questions LMAO??

pete is proudest of the bands on his record label!

for favorite songs on the new record, patrick says he likes "what a time to be alive" and says the lyrics are "so tremendously pete"

pete likes "baby annihilation"

when asked about the most difficult song to play live, patrick said headfirst slide wasn't really that difficult even though he expected it to be. he says a lot of songs on mania were very challenging to play live, like young and menace. pete says "what a catch, donnie" was very hard for his "little brain" to play

at the end pete shouts out the host for being fantastic since they've hung out like 3 times now and he thinks he's a great dude to hang out with. andy inexplicably follows this up with "you look like a DAMN fine cup of coffee" and doesn't elaborate but patrick thinks that's his way of saying thank you too

#fall out boy #*making poasts #SORRY THIS IS LONG BUT THERE'S A LOT I HAD TO LEAVE OUT #go watch the whole thing if you can they talk about producers and stuff for a good long while its rly interesting!!

254 notes · View notes

andmaybegayer · 5 days ago

Text

Last Monday of the Week 2025-01-06

Damn that last Monday of the week really barely got in under the wire.

Listening: Among other things kind of going through a bunch of popular songs and albums from the past year to see like. What I missed, which has included me introducing my partner to Guess from Brat by Charli xcx.

youtube

Brat is a good album, despite Brat Summer not actually being a real thing.

Watching: Ended up going to Nosferatu (2024) with the partner and a friend after their other movie companion bailed. Damn they really did file the serial numbers off Dracula with this thing huh. I have never seen Original Nosferatu.

This is a very good looking movie, and it manages to mostly retain some of my favourite bits of Dracula-ness like the protagonists generally getting along remarkably well given the situation. Friedrich is a little antsy for much of it but it's for a good reason and it pays off well with his Mina situation.

The shots in this movie are all... weirdly smooth. Every single shot feels like it's on an ultra-filtered dolly-crane move. It turns out it was shot on film so I guess it probably was, no one wants to handhold a film camera. It lends it a slightly strange air, lots of big long dramatic camera moves but also in situations where you'd really expect a shaky handheld shot it holds rock solid, to the point that I genuinely burst out laughing at a perfectly stable shot of knock-off Jonathan hoofing it down a street.

The steady camera doesn't do the composited backgrounds and effects any favours, some of the backgrounds are really obviously painted in. Weird choice! Some interesting BTS stories about shooting though. And it was shot around Prague, so that's fun.

It's good! You should check it out. Very different opinions on how sexy Nosferatu is from me and my friend. I would fuck that old man (bill skarsgard in so so so much makeup and a huge moustache).

Playing: Nothing really! Been busy unpacking and [REDACTED]

Reading: Finished The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen by @nostalgebraist which is one of those things that gets its hooks into you. I think it makes its case well, which is basically "even if GenAI is going to take over the world, that might actually be great for the abstract moral state of the universe". I love an extremely disconnected look at humanity.

I do adore Miriam's chapters. She's meant to be this everyman narrator with no personality but she's so weird.

I gotta go read The Northern Caves and Almost Nowhere. I read Floornight a while ago and then just. forgot I guess.

the On Raven chapter intro to Herschel really heavily informs how I saw him for the rest of the book. He's kind of someone who thinks anything should be possible because anything else would be too sad to imagine. You can kind of take this two ways I think, one more literal that is explored more heavily in the story, and another as sort of. I guess the feeling of what it must be like to be a noise diffusion algorithm. You start out with this infinite possibility of random noise and it is slowly hacked up into likely meaning.

It's on AO3! Go read it!

Making: Nothing really! See Playing.

Tools and Equipment: Do Not Fucking Use CentOS Stream In Applications Where You Very Clearly Want RedHat Compatiblity, For The Love Of God.

#last monday of the week #Youtube

7 notes · View notes

egg-emperor · 6 months ago

Note

Does Eggman go after big burly men/monsters because he enjoys the thrill of making them submit or is it possible that in very rare instances he's fine with temporarily letting someone else be in control long as his own pleasure comes first?

I like to imagine it's both. For just big burly men in general, I imagine he was "fascinated" like all his life but didn't want to outright admit it to himself for a while besides his statues on the Egg Carrier but he could create various, still very gay, excuses for having them lol. But he'd finally get experience with big strong guys for real like Zavok (or Bowser but non canon) and he wouldn't be able to deny it any longer when he just has to jump on that 👀

As for the monsters, it started as just loving the thrill of making them submit for sure, since he primarily gets involved with them for his plans, feeling they'll be useful. Then through it he realizes he's really into the process of making them submit and serve and not just in his typical desire for control and domination way, he realizes it's a full on kink and it goes to very interesting places

The best example is Eggman with the Deadly Six in Lost World, ESPECIALLY Zavok. He had way too much fun bringing them to their knees in submission and was clearly really getting his kicks out of the sadistic aspect of the pain too. He's so playing up the master and slave dynamic here and Zavok doesn't understand that even if he only sarcastically calls him master, he's setting up the perfect opportunity for him to put him in his place and enjoy it

Making him bow at his feet, wagging his finger at him. Yeahhh 🥴

And the way he finds even the smallest reasons to punish them (though it's due to his very high standards too of course) and takes every opportunity to force them to obey with the conch

And the prequel comic made it even more blatantly kinky it was gold

Like hello he literally steps on him and tilts his chin with the conch shajgsnjgksng god me next pls

It's literally canon that he's into it in some form, I don't even have to exaggerate, I mean look at that sadistic smile on his face the two times he does it

The second smirk being quick and sneaky because he wants to appear serious and threatening yet smiles for a split second like he just can't contain himself hehe I love it

All I'm doing is speculating that he gets another kind of excitement from it too lol

And Zavok being a muscle monster dude and how he repeatedly goes after monsters and his hall of muscular guy statues in Hot Shelter, it all checks out. Zavok was the jackpot and best of both in one for him

While the rest doesn't have such confirmation lol, I like to think he discovered he also very secretly likes to be on the receiving end. Typically he'll stay dominant through it first, being the one to order and control them. I can see him always starting with a more dominant power bottom position, where he's still in control and likes to use it in a way to demean them some more, by treating them as not just a tool for his plans but also his personal pleasure

But there'll be temptation to be a little more submissive and when he finally is, he looks at it as being the one being serviced, it's for his own pleasure that comes first rather than what they get. It makes a lot of sense for him to want to just take, in fact it makes a lot of sense for him to not give at all. He has a great case for being a total pillow princess with his entire personality so viewing it through that lense, there is kinda official stuff to support it and it's just *gestures to his entire character* XD

When he is practically just giving himself to them, he constantly has this inner conflict of "why am I letting this happen, if this got out it'd ruin my image" but he likes it too much. It feels nice to just give up control for a little while, relax and have fun. And to feel like the one that's the full center of attention and priority as he lets them work on pleasing him, as it's still always in pursuit of his own pleasure and always his only priority, of course! He'll make sure they still know he's the real dominant one in control after and just enjoy it for now ;)

#dr eggman #eggman #dr robotnik #dr. eggman #my post #asks #suggestive #monsterfucker #buff #eggman x zavok #eggavok #headcanons

14 notes · View notes

annah-kitathryne · 6 months ago

Note

Helena Bertenelli for the charecter ask game?

Helena Bertinelli

Three facts about them from my personal headcanons

1. Helps with a summer reading program at the closest library where she helps younger kids break down books and look at narrative tools.

2. Visits the graves of the children she was unable to save. Late at night when she can afford a moment or two.

3. She still keeps snacks in her pantry that she doesn't like but knows other people like. Whether it's for when Dinah, or Babs comes over, or when other vigilantes need a close place to crash.

A reason they suck

She doesn't go to therapy, but will recommend it to others.

A reason they are great

Despite everyone trying to change and control her, she continues to be herself and only changes when she wants to change. Also, the slow healing she goes through but still backslide.

A reason I relate to them

Her anger and rage at what she has been through and the treatment she faces. Her grudges and the way that even when she has been wronged, she will still help because she is still a good person.

(What I consider to be) the top tier otp/ot3 for the character

I don't really ship her endgame with anyone? I like her ships in context. The BoP polycule is super fun, but I only see it in the context of the comic and can't see it in any other AUverse. I like Helena and Dick in the context of this is the best divorceable ship ever. I haven't read enough of either Question to have a big opinion.

Five things that have never happened to this character that I believe should have happened

1. Even if briefly, experience the dynamic of having a sidekick.

2. Save her class of students while as a civilian.

3. Bonding experience with Cass. Could go good or bad but they will bond in some way.

4. A team-up or team with no strings attached. Where she doesn't end up being in the role of being controlled.

5. A spin-off series with her and Artemis. They had such a fun dynamic in the gods of Gotham story and I would have loved to see more of it.

Five people that character has never fallen in love with and why?

1. Dick. She could never fall in love with someone who keeps so many secrets and never fully trusts her. She never saw it as being long-term and already knew that a relationship between the two of them would never last long.

2. Babs. She could never fall in love with someone who seeks to control her. She never wants to end up in the position where she is unable to leave, unable to make her own choices without feeling that string of control.

3. Dinah. She could never fall in love with someone while knowing that the person's heart belongs to another. That the love she could hold would always be second to another. Knowing that the other would go back to another.

4. The people she has to flirt with while on the job. She could never fall in love with someone who would know only one part of herself and someone whose first connection is to the mask.

5. Herself. She can never truly love herself because she sees so many flaws and passes too much judgment onto herself. She knows her own past and knows the toll it has taken on her to live with it but also the toll that being Huntress can take on her. She knows what she is doing to herself, and for that, she can't fully love herself.

#harmony tag #helena my love #helena bertinelli #ask game #ask game response

10 notes · View notes

luminousstardust · 2 years ago

Text

Constellations for each member of Bells Hells!

As I started making my level 10 Imogen dress, I wanted to have the constellations I painted on there to have meaning. While looking up some constellations and the mythos behind them, I realized that a lot of them actually related to a lot of the members of Bells Hells, and wanted to have them all represented on her dress!! Along with a couple key NPCs.

So, here’s the list:

Imogen - Andromeda

This was the first constellation I added to the dress!! According to my friend who is very into astronomy, Andromeda’s mother bragged about her beauty, angering the greek gods and causing Andromeda herself to nearly be sacrificed for her mother’s mistakes. I feel like this ties into Imogen’s life very neatly, as Liliana’s involvement with Ruidus and the Ruby Vangaurd have definitely had a more negative impact on her life so far. And, speaking of Liliana…

Liliana Temult - Cassiopeia

Liliana is the only true NPC to be featured on Imogen’s dress, because the comparison of Andromeda and Cassiopeia to Imogen and Liliana was too good to pass up on! I also have Liliana’s constellation on one side of the dress and Imogen’s on the other for optimum heartbreak…💔

Laudna - Ophiuchus

Speaking of placement… Ophiuchus as Laudna is right next to the Andromeda constellation on the dress 💜🖤. Ophiuchus is a greek healer often associated with bringing people back from the dead, which Laudna has done twice now. He’s also associated with snakes, which is a fun little nod to Laudna’s snake ring.

Fearne - Capricornus

Fearne being placed next to Imogen and Laudna is also intentional - I could not separate the witchy bitches!!! Capricornus represents, just like Fearne, a horned half-goat. I chose this one not only because it matches Fearne’s physical satyr presentation, but because her Fae nature is so key to her character and her relationship with the world around her.

Orym - Scutum

And right next to Fearne is her bestie, Orym!! While Scutum doesn’t have much mythos attached to it like the other constellations, it’s name means shield in Latin, which is just SO Orym. Not only is his own sheild very important to him, but Orym often utilizes his battle maneuvers in fights to protect other members of the party, so he is kind of like a sheild himself.

Dorian - Lyra

OF COURSE I had to include Dorian!! And put him right next to his sending stone buddy. Lyra was an obvious choice for Bells Hells’ bard, since the constellation represents Orpheus’ lyre. But I also chose this with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in mind, because Dorian’s separation and inability to “see” the rest of Bells Hells at the moment hurts me sooooo much. Hoping for a reunion eventually!!!!

Chetney - Caelum

Seeing the Caelum constellation, which translates to “the chisel,” is actually what inspired me to pair constellations to characters in the first place. A chisel constellation was MADE for Chetney!! Not only do I love love love the idea of a carver using their tools as weapons, but I absolutely ADORE that Chetney uses those same tools to make little personalized wooden crafts for his friends. He cares more than his grumpy old persona lets on!!!!

Ashton - Hercules

This one feels as though it may be a bit on the nose, but as the tank of the party I chose Hercules for Ashton. I feel like Hercules as a very strong mythical character represents all of Ashton’s strength - the physical, the internal, and the mental. Not only are they an incredible fighter, but having to deal with their chronic pain and emotional anguish requires a great deal of strength. Not to mention what team Issylra have been going through recently, and how he’s done his best to be, for lack of a better term, a rock for his friends.

F.C.G. - Libra

The Libra constellation represents a scale, a form of balance, which is why I chose it for F.C.G. With his healing abilities and love of emotional counseling, F.C.G. brings a unique balance to a party of heavy hitters who don’t necessarily love talking about their emotions. Also, their newfound religion promises to bring a new perspective to the party amidst their moral conundrum with the gods, which I’m excited to watch play out.

Bertrand Bell - Corvus

Last but certainly not least, the man who inspired the name of the Bells Hells himself! Corvus, the constellation representing crows and ravens, was an obvious choice for Bretrand. Not only was taken by the Raven Queen himself, but his girlfriend, Lieve'tel, was a cleric of the Raven Queen, so he feels intrinsically tied to the Matron. And as morbid as it was, Bertrand's death really set the Bells Hells off on the chain of events that has spiraled into the story we know today.

…And that’s it! I may add more constellations in the future (I have a few in mind for some of the guests, but I don’t want it to get too cluttered), but we’ll see! I’ll definitely post more when I finish Imogen’s whole level 10 outfit as well. Thanks for reading!

#reblogs appreciated since i spent a lot of time on this post / dress :))#imogen temult #imogen temult cosplay #critical role #critical role cosplay #critical role fanart #kinda!#bells hells #bells hells cosplay #painting #cosplay #sewing #tays cosplays

86 notes · View notes

docholligay · 1 month ago

Text

Shamash Day Points: Misc Nominations

The question was to pick any line of mine from a fic post whatever that was your favorite this year! Only five answers, which, on the one hand, OUCH, on the other hand, well, I gave each of you five points just for playing so suck it everyone else.

responses below! There is one person I can't tag so make sure you check.

Euri! (I don't know your tumblr name so you'll have to watch close in case you win, since I can't tag you.

"Ah see, so your little game of condescension was unnecessary after all . When you put it all your effort, still, you could not prevail. So perhaps we shall find ourselves learning something about our own arrogance, hm?"

Ah Michiru, how much fun you are to write. With no other character do I get the chance to really flex my actual knowledge of insane vocab and grammar bullshit because everyone else is a human person ahaha.

@seolh

You know I love your writing. Your descriptions and imagery are fantastic. I mean. "The flat darkness was turning to one she could feel, plush, soft, like one of Michiru’s winter dresses, or the pillows on the couch at the country club. Something so thick it could suffocate you in its luxury." Come ON who describes darkness that way? (More people should because it is evocative and legitimately sensory.)

But I am a slut for my blorbos and so: "but it was another thing to know that Angela had known Fareeha was the one when she, with military precision, had cupped a moth flying inside, and simply released it out an open window." MY HEART

I was SO HOPING you would read that. You know how I'm forever saying there are things you need to know about your characters, that your audience does not need to know, necessarily? I have known that Angela knew about Fareeha at this moment for PROBABLY FIVE YEARS AT LEAST. But there was never a reason to bring it up, because it's not material. But! When I'm me, in the story, I can just say that shit! That in this moment, Angela knew she was not only dedicated and detailed and reliable and all that shit, but under all of it, she was merciful to creatures she did not have to be. That she was not, exactly, tender or soft, but she was kind. Strong like a steel bridge, built to bear in the service of others. Not unlike Angela in some ways. Perfect for her.

@katrani

I'm still catching up on being away from the blogs I like so I don't have much! So nothing poignant but I love the idea you swung of Mustang and Hawkeye getting a call to confirm Ed's identity and denying it for the lulz. Absolutely, amazingly in-character for all you've seen them for maybe 30 minutes.

Roy and Hawkeye are my absolute favorite part of FMA so far and I probably never will given everything in my life including my real struggle with writing, but if I were going to write fanfiction ever it would be about them.

@automatuck9

From the May Choose Your Own Adventure: “ People didn’t take the power of belief seriously enough. If you could get people to believe something, anything could happen. You marched armies based on the power of belief, people died and killed for it. People love to believe, all you need to know is what they need to believe in.” I think it’s very nicely phrased, it’s great character stuff for Mina, and it’s a good opener for the connecting idea between the POV switches in the chapter.

On a less serious side I keep coming back and laughing to the FMA post when they first meet Tucker and hear his chimera died: "It turned out God could not suffer such a thing to live! Anyway, I've got some analogy study guides you'll want to work on for the exam"

I love Mina because she's in competition for Worst Person, and part of that is because she is so smart when it comes to people. People are her gift, and her tool, and she knows how to wield them. I think she's probably the most naturally manipulative character I write. Love that for her, love that for me.

And humor is totally allowed! The tonal break of that moment is so funny to me.

@madegeeky

"She was a red pen made flesh, and it was an unstoppable flaw, that she could not simply be kind. There always had to be a post-script to any kind word." I love this line for so many reasons. The imagery is great and it does such a good job describing a character. But the more I've thought about it, I also like it for how much it also describes Minako, but in a completely opposite way.

Both can't stop themselves from adding extra into the thing being said. But Fareeha adds to it at the end of her thought, a "but" disguised as a post-script, that changes the entire feel of what she's just stated. Minako, meanwhile, scatters her extra thoughts throughout the things she said, footnotes to her words, asides that are kept secret between her and her audience.

The meaning, the extra, the technically not needed, is there whether they want it to be or not.

And I keep thinking about how Fareeha's current situation, where she's trying to keep herself from writing that post-script, is a direct result of Minako losing her ability to keep her true thoughts in the footnotes, the asides suddenly heard by the entire rest of the cast.

Yes! The saving grace of Fareeha, if we're going to call it that, is that she is only as critical of other people as she is of herself. That being said, she is insane. And she KNOWS this, she KNOWS she is a hyper critical person, and she still cannot stop herself from pointing out where someone could stop fucking something up. She's the queen of saying, "I appreciate this/you did well/I care about you BUT, which, as you say, has a tendency to erase every word before it.

Fareeha is correcting, Minako is annotating.

6 notes · View notes

visionsofmagic · 2 years ago

Text

impossible to reach • heimdall, chapter one.

previous • [masterlist] • next

― pairing: heimdall x greek goddess!reader

― summary: being both daughter of zeus and sister of kratos bring unbelievable events with them, but even them wasn't as astonishing as falling for heimdall, the son of odin who saw you as his second wife. ragnarok is at the door, odin is ready to manipulate you, kratos is there to fight for you and atreus is being a normal teenager who gets trouble. and you – you just see only him, god of foresight. what could be worse? – for the chapter: heimdall is annoying but you enjoy it.

― wc: 2.7k

― warnings & tags [for the chapter]: fluff, no mind reading, classic heimdall actions and manners, y/n being self-confident, flashbacks (little), monologue, touching, & more in the chap! enjoy. [also, so sorry for the wait but I really had to create a way about how I will use events in the story in right way and time, so, I hope this chap will make you forgive me about the days I didn’t publish this. ^^ *kisses every one of you*]

traveling around the asgard made you realize one thing at highest point than others; aesir people were living the most comfortable life they could get thanks to all-father who they have worshipped with all their living beings. contrary to them, all people outside this realm were having difficult times that too hard to survive fully. it made you sad and angrier than before because coming from a world under the judgment of zeus, your father, who looked a lot like odin in terms of being the worst dad of all times; they could make a disaster duo if they would come across to each other. both zeus and odin only were fighting for their own advantages by doing all dirty things such as using their own sons to conquer like they hadn’t their own choices.

looking at heimdall who was currently having an annoying time thanks to your dumb questions selected by you in pure purpose – it was fun to tease him since you two nearly were similar at age and mind, you realized how he was control of his father but you didn’t know whether it was a choice of his own or odin’s manipulation – maybe both because you knew how someone who needed love could give all of their royalty to the person who gave them a little affection only to use them. the path heimdall was walking on once belonged to you.

zeus, cruel and egoistic god who was your and kratos’ father, did same to you; giving you a fake love in order to make you believe he was – home, he was all you got as a family. he even tried to make you see kratos as your biggest enemy. the power you hold referred to a great weapon for zeus and seeing heimdall from this close, you could say how tables turned same for him. even if he was cocky and annoying, you pitied him, in a good way, having sympathy towards him which you could not show not to him, not to anyone. you only had one job; bring chaos to the asgard before the ragnarok begin to help your brother and nephew who were new targets of odin after kratos killed baldur; his best tracker.

however, whether you would kill all of the gods who cross your path was unanswered in your mind since you have seen them closely. some of them looked like they didn’t want war either but still, they had connections with odin and respect his choices of ruling realms. they needed to see the truth; odin only was a god who wanted power, peace and wisdom for him, not anyone else. others meant only weapons and tools which he could sacrifice without thinking twice.

turning to a statue of odin, you asked to heimdall who put a certain distance between you and him but not turning any other side than your posture. “do you love him that much?” sudden question took heimdall surprised and confused at the same time.

“what do you mean?” he asked, crossing arms together, “he is all-father. of course I love him that much.”

“so, the love you have for him is making your foresight go blind, hm.” it was rather a statement than a question. you knew it was all early to make him see his father’s doings but somehow, maybe feeling such emotions about his life that was similar to yours, you wanted to at least try. in the end, he could understand everything like mimir did.

when confused and angry expressions stayed on his face, like he was so concentrated about something, you shrugged, walking to the an area in which some aesir people were training along with valkyries who were watching them. when some of eyes turned to you and heimdall, the lord of the asgard and the enemy of it walking side by side, you felt awkwardness, so, you turned to heimdall who was looking at his surroundings now.

“you can’t read my mind, right?” you asked once again and now, he was angrier than before, especially when you left a chuckle.

“what’s funny?” he asked in pure annoyed tone, studying your body language from head to toe and making you a little nervous because it was long ago since a man was this close to you. you couldn’t count odin since it was all a play.

“you.” you said, honest. you weren’t trying to be rude or savage, no, you just liked to his company even if you had to keep this as a secret. he was the first god from asgard that gave you some joy. “because you shouldn’t be angry, heimdall.” when his name came out of your mouth so gently, he stopped for a second with confused face, making you stop in your trail too. now, you were standing in the middle of an open area, probably for fighting and training. people of aesir and valkyries stayed on your behind, not so visible from this distance but you knew how some of them kept looking at you, wondering what business you had with odin and his precious son, heimdall.

mimir said they didn’t like heimdall that much in the asgard because of his arrogant and egoistic behavior and you should give credit to them because knowing someone there to read your mind, see your intentions maybe more than you do is a hard to endure. from the perspective of heimdall, it was worse than ever. you couldn’t imagine how it was terrifying to hear all of that voices from others just for odin. knowing that odin never helped his son in this situation rather than using it for his own benefit, you smiled friendly and that made heimdall furrow his eyebrows.

“you shouldn’t be angry because now, you have a distraction.”

“a distraction? what made you think that you have such influence on me? no one can distract me, sunshine.”

you rolled your eyes. little time you spent with him but you already acknowledged his defensive mechanism; trying to see himself at the top of everything, greater than others, to actually feel powerful and known among others. he needed to know that the first person who should see him as an individual with emotions and thoughts rather than odin’s loyal son was all him, not anyone else. he should see himself, understand himself and love himself.

“I didn’t tell it was me, did I? but oh,” you intentionally bowed a little to his chest and pat his shoulder with yours like you were the best friend for a long time, “I forgot you could not read my mind. sorry.”

he looked so annoyed but for some reason, he didn’t move from your touch which was close regarding you two met just 3 hours ago. “oh, how funny.” then, he faked a laugh and you chuckled, feeling so natural around him even though you only knew him so little.

“if you found it funny I can make one of my famous jokes!”

he looked irritated by your high pitched sound, rolling his eyes, he said, “I am glad I do not see that brain of yours. I guess it is all the same in there like outside; all dummy and empty.”

you pat his shoulder, making him flinch for a moment before acting like it didn’t mean anything for him, “what you wanna believe pretty boy.”

you started to walk but when he didn’t move one bit, you turned to him, seeing an unreadable expression on his face as he kept looking at you with shinier moving eyes of his. indeed, it was a curse to be able to read minds all the time but now, you realized how you wanted to have this gift of his only to have a slight knowledge about what he was thinking in the moment because for the first time, he looked – unreadable. that was surprising and yet, impressive because in the end, he really had an individual unlike he choose to show to outside like a mask he put on his face to hide his identity – the real one, not the one odin put in him with his manipulation.

“what?” you asked, sounding curios and concern.

“don’t call me that.” he said, venom coming within his voice tone – sharp and mad. “never again.”

“what? pretty b –“

he was fast. he was really good at speed and you realized it when he suddenly appeared in front of you, close – so close, and holding your arms with a strong grip, making you look up to see his face. he was taller and from this closeness, there was only a centimeter between your nose and his lips. it was dangerously close and you could feel raising venom inside you from head to toe because the way he didn’t fear you like any other did and took a very close stance towards your body after such a long time were enough to make your stomach crumble with both anger and excitement.

“are you really that brave to not obey something I ordered?” he said, sounding calmer than before but still holding heavy breaths which were hitting your face and giving your core chill without your control.

he was – he was looking good. with that eyes of his, golden hair that braided beautifully, and –

he furrowed his eyes, and you realized that you should give him an answer right away before he tries too hard to enter your head which he could at any moment but he shouldn’t know that there was a spell on you to keep his mind away from yours – not ‘till you accomplish your main focus on here.

“and are you really dumb to hold me like this?” you shook your arms and by the force of it, his hands loosened his power on the grip, leaving you free. you took a step forward, dangerously and determined. he took a step backward, confused and lost. “don’t think that I am a goddess who will take orders from anyone. do that again and you will face consequences.” you smirked, holding him from his chin, gently.

his purple eyes turned to your fingers on his body and then, to your face again. “and I call you whatever I like, pretty boy.”

with a mischievous wink which was a way to show him that you were the one who held superiority, you turned to other side, leaving him standing there for a while before he rejoined you, a dead silence between you.

“don’t worry.” you said, “we will not see each other that much from now on.”

both you and him knew it was impossible since you were with odin now but neither you nor him questioned him because there was a fact that you wanted to see him again – and he did too even though you didn’t know.

•

“oh, looks who are here!” odin said, happiness all over his voice. he was in his own personal room in which he was working on some papers that were placed on the table he was standing behind along side a god who had a massive body – even bigger than kratos, red hair and beard, blue eyes reflections of the sky, and a hammer on his belt. his body was covered with tattoos. from the way he looked and the weapon he was carrying on, you guessed he was thor – the god of thunder who liked to kill people – a lot. “y/n,” odin took your attention back to him when you stood still, watching heimdall took the furthest place in the room from you. “good to see you once again. I hope my boy didn’t create any trouble out there. right, heimdall?”

you nodded, “the trip was fun. asgard is more beatiful than they said.” you were being honest. Not wanting to make him mad at heimdall for anything, you added, “heimdall was a good company.” it wasn’t a lie either but heimdall looked like he couldn’t tell if it was the truth or not.

smiling more, odin nodded, pointing thor whose eyes were on you, looking uninterested about your presence but endure it for the sake of odin who probably had him in here ‘till you two arrived.

“my other son, thor.” odin introduced him to you and you nodded, giving thor a hand for him to greet you.

“y/n,” you said, “the sister of kratos.” in your previous life in the greek world, you always had introduced yourself as the daughter of zeus, like heimdall was doing now. you felt such power and proud manner while saying it because you were not the clever self you were now; blind to crimes zeus were committing while using his sons and daughters including you – mostly you even. however, it all changed when kratos came into your life and from that day, you began to introduce yourself as his sister and while saying that, it came out of your mouth so naturally and as it's supposed to be.

but when you saw the way thor’s expression changed from uninterested to angry one in a second, you remembered one thing you had not to forget in the first place; magni and modi. you cursed yourself – how could you forget about them!

thor’s hand found yours in instant but with the most hostile way ever. his grip were stronger than heimdall’s and he sure wanted to kill you in the moment.

not showing any fearless – just an empathy about his boys, you added, “glad to meet you.”

“yeah?” he asked, in a deep voice, sounding alarming. his hold on your smaller hand ended when odin faked a cough, making him obey his dad. thor nodded, saying, “yeah, yeah, all the same.” lowly.

odin left his table, coming to your side and holding you from where heimdall held you; hands on the arms. the gesture gave you realization that how heimdall’s touch didn’t bothered you or gave you any annoyed manner but when odin touched you, you only felt – disgusted. was it because the difference of the meaning of their holds or was it the owners of touches? it was odd and you had no answer.

“they can get a little weird when they meet strangers. but, oh,” odin smiled, “you are no stranger anymore, are you?”

you tried to look nice, so, you gave him a smile, “they even don’t know me in here, odin. the aesir people, valkyries and even your sons –“

“honey, don’t worry about it.” odin said, caressing your arms before leaving you alone. the nickname he started to give you were making your stomach ache on its own. you wondered how you would continue to endure this whole thing when it turned out to something you don’t want. odin pointed to outside, “there is a preparation now for your arrival – a feast. sif is already at work to complete it and after some hours, it will begin. everyone in here will get to know you.”

a feast? well, that was unexpected and since you didn’t like being the main focus of lots of people, you began to feel anxious about it. how could you face a bunch of people who would give you looks that would make your blood boil, wanting to finish all of them in there. but you remembered how you promised to kratos – your own brother. so, you kept calm, looking at odin who was pointing to heimdall now.

“heimdall.” he said, turning to you, “he will be your companion in the feast since I have a certain job to do after the introducing part. would you mind that, dear?”

heimdall crossed his arms and was ready to say ‘but’ to his father but you smiled happily, “of course not. heimdall would be happy to join me, right?”

odin turned to heimdall with a look in his face that alerting him to say the right words; the words you wanted to hear.

heimdall took the defeat, nodding to his father and giving you a look like he was trying to say he was going the night worse than you could imagine. however, it wasn’t bad because rather than thinking how odin would introduce you to the asgardian people, you began to dream how you would have fun with heimdall’s company, giving him all annoyance he deserved.

also, for some reasons which you couldn’t tell yet, you liked the idea being beside him in a room which both you and he would hate.

odin smiled proudly, “then, go and get changed, dear. this is your day after all, right?”

oh, it exactly going to be your day.

to be continued.

taglist: @iinterdimensionals , @Konigdi1ks0ck , @onlydeas , @hayleethefrog , @tartagliasrighthand , @whywouldiknowsstuff , @lillanirobertson , @itsnat , @Armanibxtch , @dott-up , @chiyausu , @lokigirlszendaya , @potentplant , @milf-to-be-anny , @elizabeth-hatake , @kuinnoa , @lmorg149 , @zoleea-exultant ^^

♡

101 notes · View notes

brynnterpretations · 8 months ago

Note

I've been thinking about zombie apocalypse AUs... How do you think the Bowers gang would react to a zombie apocalypse? I think we can all agree that Patrick would be an absolute menace, and so would Henry. Henry's farm has potential to be a great base, but they would have to put in work. Would love to hear your thoughts :)

BOWERS GANG IN THE APOCALYPSE ☻

Belch Huggins

Belch would be terrified and would immediately seek comfort in the gang. I'd imagine he would stay holed up in his home, only for his parents to get progressively sicker over the course of a couple days, and Belch to finally "give in" and return to the gang — which, of course, would come from berating from Henry. He'd likely be tasked with brute-force work due to his size, which would progressively drive Belch a little more crazy, and manual labor, like keeping the keeping the barricades reinforced and hauling supplies into the base. As Belch would compartmentalize and compartmentalize, Henry would take advantage of his deteriorating mental state and push it further, with few moments of empathy offered to Belch outside of times alone with Victor, who would try to convince him to start their own base together. Despite the constant nightmares and debilitating guilt, Belch would be too afraid of disloyalty (and the consequences that would come with it) to do so, and would stay to his own detriment.

Henry Bowers

Naturally, Henry would remain the leader. As you mentioned, his farm would provide a base for the Bowers Gang, made more helpful with the amount of tools, supplies, food, and weapons that his father left behind — when the outbreak began, he was taken out. Truthfully, he would have a very good start; he'd raid his home, the police station, and the nearby market with the help of the game, enlist Victor's help in securing traps and Belch's aid in manual labor, and was, at first, able to keep Patrick in line. However, with each zombie looking a little more like his father — who, more likely than not, was in the sewers, becoming more and more deranged — Henry would begin succumbing to paranoia, something that would lead him to take it out on his group and other survivors and eventually lead to Patrick beginning to wreak havoc throughout the group.

Patrick Hockstetter

Yeah, this is not the man you want in the zombie apocalypse. Patrick, essentially, takes it as a joke at first; walking the empty streets would make him feel like a god, and he'd take every opportunity to mess up things in Derry (pulling fire alarms, setting things ablaze, trespassing into people's homes, etc.). However, at the first zombie sighting, Patrick would have a fleeting moment of doubt in himself (how could this happen without me manifesting it, or thinking about it, ever?) before he'd see it as a blessing he somehow bestowed upon himself. He gets to slash pre-bloody humans! The world has no consequences! It would be a dream come true for Patrick, which would be what made it so dangerous. While at first used as Henry's more-than-unpredictable guard dog, wiping out other survivors for supplies, Patrick's behavior would turn more erratic: he'd instill paranoia in everyone in the gang, take out other survivors with no goods just for the hell of it, and routinely put the group in danger just for the fun of it. Henry would come very, very close to kicking him out, but would realize it would do more harm than good. That only enables Patrick further.

Victor Criss

Victor would be the "brains" of the group, and would be the second to align with Henry after being there with him when the outbreak occurred. He'd be the most nonphysical person in the gang, tasked with (and routinely choosing to himself) gathering food, creating traps around the base, and attending to wounds, whether for himself or others. Victor, however, would be the first to feel uneasy — he'd lived so long following Henry and Patrick and harming others, and now, he felt like he actually might have an option to do better. As Patrick's behavior continues to escalate, he'd begin talking with Belch about leaving to start their own base (he still had the key to the Derry Public Library from volunteering there over the summers) and surviving ethically. However, Belch would be too afraid of crossing Henry and Patrick, and Victor would refuse to leave him behind — something balls-to-the-walls extreme would have to happen for Victor to do so, and he can't see things getting crazier than this. In the meantime, he'd try to advocate for less... morally unsound methods of survival, and try to get out of the base often (though that wouldn't go so well most of the time).

#this was really fun ty for the request!#headcanon request #bowers gang headcanons #bowers gang #belch huggins #henry bowers #patrick hockstetter #victor criss

15 notes · View notes

moistvonlipwig · 7 days ago

Text

Books I Read in 2024

In addition to the books listed below, I also reread As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, both of which are as amazing as I remember (Cash Bundren and Behemoth the cat, my beloveds!). So that brings me to a total of 14 books for the year -- less than I'd hoped, but still more than last year. I'm slowly but surely reading a little more each year. These books are listed in the order in which I finished them:

Into the Light by Mark Oshiro. Firstly I must extend my gratitude to Mark -- I had pre-ordered a personalized signed copy but didn't see the part of the order form that let you put in personalization details, so when my book arrived, it was signed but not personalized, and Mark very kindly sent me an extra personalized copy when I reached out to them. As for the book itself, I thought it had a bold and interesting premise for a YA novel, and I enjoyed the experimental writing style and the twists and turns of the plot. The atmosphere in particular was built up very well to be nicely creepy, and I hope Mark does more horror and horror-adjacent stuff in the future.

Holes by Louis Sachar. I'd never actually read this book as a kid, even though I loved Sachar's Wayside School series. It's a fun book! I like that, aside from just being a fun and satisfying story, it also has things to say about racism and the juvenile prison system. I'm glad I finally read it.

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez. This was an incredible read. The frame story is so well-done and interesting, the story inside the story is gripping and beautiful, and the prose is a delight to read. One small detail I really found fascinating about the book is how, when characters would be mentioned to be eating certain foods or drinking certain beverages or wearing certain clothes, the book would go into detail -- without feeling like it was going off-topic -- about how those foods/beverages/fabrics/etc. were produced and transported (often involving the exploitation of others) so that the character in question had access to them. There's a trend in fantasy and sci-fi works, I think, where characters just Have Access to things like coffee or silk or corn without any reflection on the narrative's as to how that happened, which mirrors how Americans take these things for granted in real life with often very little reflection on the historical & current exploitation and oppression that manufactures these things and transports them to us.

Anyway, I just think details like that really made the society of the book feel visible and tangible and weighty. The tortoises, too, were another utterly fascinating bit of worldbuilding -- how they both served the interests of empire but were also regarded as completely disposable tools, whose god was ultimately seen as no more than something to be consumed. And the characters were also great -- Keema, Jun, the Defect, Araya, the First Terror, the Third Terror (and none for the Second Terror BYE)...just a fantastic line-up of personalities. Plus, it's a Story About Stories, which is always a plus for me. This is a very ambitious book -- I fear I'm underselling it, to tell you the truth -- and IMO it completely delivers. A really great read. (And it's a fun coincidence that both this book and Holes have a cathartic scene towards the end where it finally starts raining after years of drought as a metaphorical representation of healing.)

(I will say, I've seen a lot of people really praise the romance in this book, and while I have nothing bad to say about it at all, I also think that it was by far the least interesting thing going on? Like, I have no critiques of the romantic arc, but I do kind of wonder what I'm missing that has everyone else gushing about it so much.)

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka. When I was reading The Spear Cuts Through Water, I was thinking to myself that that surely had to be the best book I would read all year. Then I read The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida and was like. Well. Actually. I don't know anymore. This book is equal parts fun and moving and politically biting. Maali is such an incredible main character who I loved through all his flaws, and the book's structure, which is anchored in conversations he has with other ghosts, makes for such an interesting read. The prose was gorgeous, witty, and full of personality, and I loved the twists and turns of the story and the novel's commitment to its themes. Just an utterly lovable book. I'm going to read more Karunatilaka for sure.

Where You Come From by Saša Stanišić. This book is maybe Stanišić's best. I'm not sure; it has stiff competition. But God. This book. Okay. So it's autobiographical and about his family's history in Yugoslavia and how he emigrated to Germany during the Bosnian War, except that also sometimes he just makes things up, and blends things together, and remembers things wrong, and all this is juxtaposed against his grandmother suffering from dementia in the present day and slowly losing her memory and grip on reality more and more. And then at the end it turns into a choose-your-own-adventure book about how the story of his grandmother ends, and some of the options feature dragons. This, like The Spear Cuts Through Water, is very much a Story About Stories, and here the stories are both a way of keeping the memory of a family and culture alive and also a way of trying to interact with someone who no longer has a working memory. Reading this in the same year that my own grandfather's dementia worsened so significantly -- my grandfather who, by the way, is my only real living tie to the part of my family from Yugoslavia, who he hasn't heard from since before the war -- was uh. Rough! But in a way it was healing as well. I really can't recommend this book enough, it's such a unique experience and definitely one of my favorite books ever.

Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Barbara J. Fields and Karen E. Fields. Yeah, so, this book is required reading as far as I'm concerned. If you want to understand or talk about racism in the U.S., or frankly racism anywhere, you NEED to read this book. It will challenge you and deepen your understanding of why racism was invented, how racism functions, and what racism is and isn't. It maddens me that people waste their time reading pop anti-racism self-help books when books like this exist. Read this book!!!

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott. Baba Yaga time!!!!! It's funny because when I was reading this book I was thinking to myself, "You know, the best way to describe this book would be as a Rollicking Good Time," and then I looked at the back of the book and Lemony Snicket had endorsed the book specifically as "rollicking." So yes, it's safe to say this book Rollicks. But it's also deeply affecting and parts of it are hard to read (in a good way); towards the end I almost cried reading it on the bus. I really appreciate how playful and beautiful the prose is in this book; I love when I get to have fun with not just the story of a book but the writing itself. Great stuff.

Moira's Pen by Megan Whalen Turner. This was such a fun collection of stories, a couple of which I'd read before but most of which I hadn't, and it was also really interesting to see MWT talk about some of the real-life historical inspiration for various worldbuilding aspects of the Queen's Thief books. My favorite story was probably "The Cook and the King of Attolia"; it was exactly the kind of story I wanted ever since finding out the cooks had been putting sand in Gen's food. I knew the head cook HAD to be an old friend of his, lol. No one can ever be fed up with Gen quite like the people who actually like him. Annoying king <3 (literally) (he is literally a king) (and also annoying. God[s] bless <3)

Noor by Nnedi Okorafor. I really loved the worldbuilding in this book -- Okorafor is always so creative with the sci-fi futures she builds, and I loved getting to read a sci-fi book centered on the use of wind energy. I loved the central characters as well and really enjoyed their journey together. That said, the edition I read seriously needed another editing pass -- it had a distracting amount of typos and there were a couple of places where information was repeated as if we were learning it for the first time in a way that did not feel like an intentional choice. That's not Okorafor's fault, to be clear, it's the editorial team's for not fully doing their job. But it's too bad because the story itself is really great.

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. For a long time I wasn't planning to read this book because I heard it was a Popular New Release and I'd been burned before by certain Popular New Releases (*cough*Babel*cough*). Then I realized it was written by Adjei-Brenyah, author of the incredible Friday Black, and then I read the actual summary (it's about a near-future U.S. where prisoners fight to the death for their freedom for mass entertainment), and I was like, oh okay I need to read this book actually. And I'm so glad I did, because Adjei-Brenyah's still got it. This was a tough and hard-hitting and heartbreaking book, with a biting satirical edge that comes out at just the right times.

The characters were fantastic. My favorite was, of course, thee Hurricane Staxxx, who else, but Hendrix Singer, Loretta Thurwar, and Rico Muerte hold special places in my heart as well. And part of what I appreciated so deeply about this novel was how incredibly full of humanity every single character felt, even the despicable ones. The novel has two main characters and some major supporting ones, but it also shows us perspectives from all over society, and I appreciated the way the narrative offered up these perspectives for our own consideration and judgment and painted all these people with humanity -- both the best and worst parts of it. Adjei-Brenyah does not shy away from the reality that some people are in prison for committing serial murder, hate crimes, domestic violence, and rape; yet those characters are imbued with the same humanity as everyone else by his pen. Nor does he shy away from the reality that a lot of very mundane and normal people would probably come to accept a program like this and enjoy watching enslaved prisoners murder and torture each other; and yet those characters, too, are granted full humanity by the narrative.

That does not mean the narrative does not take a side -- it very much does, and there's a particularly incisive bit towards the very end that I loved, which implicates not just the characters but the reader as well. But it does so without asking you to hate any of the characters, even though you almost certainly will, and I admire that. I appreciated also that the book did not shy away from how awful and ugly violence is. The book acknowledges that violence can be necessary in self-defense or against oppression, but it does not try to pretend that violence is cool or beautiful or empowering. Instead, it makes you sit with violence of all kinds, and forces you to reckon with how repulsive it really is. There's a boldness in that, and a maturity too, that I greatly admire and think we could use a little more of in our fiction.

I'm of two minds about the footnotes that sometimes pop up helpfully telling the reader facts about the real American prison system and how it relates to what's happening in the novel. As someone who is not ignorant about the subject, I found them to be sometimes intrusive and stating the obvious. But I acknowledge that there are many people who would not know a lot of these things about policing & prisons in the U.S. and who would think the book was exaggerating more than it actually was without these footnotes. And unlike in certain other books I've read -- okay, I'm vagueblogging Babel again, it's a habit -- the footnotes did not come across like the author thought I was stupid and needed everything explained to me like a little baby. So that's good, at least.

Honestly, my biggest critique of the book is that I think it could've been longer and included more perspectives and more of the broader world Adjei-Brenyah created. As I mentioned, I appreciated that Adjei-Brenyah did not shy away from the difficult reality that there are many people in prison who have done legitimately very bad things and have committed violence against women, while also being sure to show how women, especially women of color, who are victimized by sexual and domestic violence are often re-victimized by the carceral system. That said, I do think the book would've benefited from exploring the point of view of the victims of some of these characters, or their families' victims -- for instance, one of the characters, Sunset Harkless, is a rapist and murderer but is very popular on the show and is viewed as a martyr when he's killed. How would his rape victim feel about his gaining popularity through a show he is only on because of what he did to her -- or, if his rape victim and murder victim are one and the same, how would her family feel? I feel like this is an angle that kind of begged to be explored and, while I appreciated that Adjei-Brenyah did not demonize victims' families or their feelings, I think more inclusion of them would've only strengthened the book.

The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt. I read this novella on the recommendation of physics YouTuber Angela Collier, and I really liked it! The writing style is so simple yet effective, and the protagonist has such an interesting perspective that brings a lot to the story and its themes. Definitely worth a read.

King Lear by William Shakespeare. I've seen King Lear -- I've seen most of Shakespeare's plays -- but until recently I'd never actually sat down and read it. I really do think it's one of Shakespeare's best and I want to chew on it more this year. Also Edmund my beloved ❤️❤️❤️ I literally forgot about him...what an iconic bitchy king. When he made fun of everyone else in the play for believing in astrology...lmao. His haterism is unparalleled. Love you Edmund.

#picking a favorite out of these would be very difficult #but it would probably go to one of spear cuts through water; seven moons of maali almeida; or where you come from #most crucial reading tho is racecraft for sure. i'm not gonna shut up about that one til all of you have read it.#the thing with feathers #i can steal anything

6 notes · View notes