#it’s. i. i found a video which led me to this whole video series ab s/a

[wallterthetall]

you should listen to sprawling idiot effegy😁😁😁😁😁

-🛏️

Oh.

[danielslilangel]

Make Love Not War- Daminette (Pt. Three)

Part One

Part Two

Part Three 

(Thanks everyone for all the love! Daminette is my new favorite ship and I’m obsessed with all of the amazing Maribat content out there now!)  

“Begin!”

Neither one moved at first, trying to guess what the other was going to do. Unsure, though the whole thing had been her idea to begin with, Marinette took a slow step to the left. Damian mirrored the movement and they slowly chased each other around the perimeter of the circle.

“Hey!” Jason yelled, drawing the attention of the two heroes even though neither of them turned to look in his direction. “Is this a fight or what? I’ve got good money on the line so let’s get this show on the road!”

Damian rolled his eyes at his brother’s words, but noticed a shift in the energy between him and Marinette as they came to a stop across.

The two of them launched themselves forward, movements blurring with the speed at which they attempted to attack each other. They quickly became a tangled mess as feet, knees, elbows and fists found their marks.

Damian charged forward with a soft growl that grew louder in frustration as Marinette jumped in the air, using his shoulders as a spring board, leaping over him. As soon as her feet sunk into the mat she raised one leg back to donkey kick Damian away as he moved towards her once again.            He grabbed her from behind only to let go when she unexpectedly sunk her teeth into his forearm. He was proud of her for not being afraid of fighting dirty. As soon as he released her, Marinette spun and launched a series of kicks towards his midsection that Damian struggled to block with his arms. One kick caught him in the hip. Instead of moving out of the way, he stepped into the blow and caught her foot in his hand.

Without hesitation Marinette put all her weight on the foot he held and used his hand as a step and lifted herself up into the air over him. She hooked her thighs around his neck and used her momentum to toss him to the ground, pausing for a second to appreciate the shocked look on his face before he rolled to absorb some of the impact.            "Oh shit,“ Jason whispered. “Is it too late to change my bet to Marinette? Cause she looks a lot less like sunshine and rainbows and more like… I don’t even know what… She’s just… different all the sudden.”            "I’m still betting my money on Damian,“ Dick said, having seen what the Demon Spawn was capable of against his enemies.            "At least they’re no longer holding back. It’s pretty interesting to see a competition bring out this side in them.”            "They are actually pretty evenly matched considering neither one of them have managed to land a devastating blow.“ Tim watched as the pair danced around each other inside the circle, perfectly countering the other’s attacks. Marinette was proving to be much more capable than the Ladyblog videos had let on. No matter who won this round he had a feeling that Ladybug was going to be making quite a few more appearances throughout the city.            "I don’t even think they’ve drawn blood.”            The Wayne boys resumed their silence as Marinette and Damian’s groans and panting filled the room, the pair now drenched in sweat from their efforts to prove that they deserved to win.            I underestimated her, Damian thought as he dodged yet another kick that barely missed connecting with his jaw. That one would have broken it. He grabbed her next flying fist after jerking his head out of its path and used her locked arm to flip her over his head, taking her to the ground.            As he moved his hands to better hold her down, Marinette slid out from under him and pushed herself back into a standing position.            I’m not used to drawn out battles, she thought as she feigned left and managed to connect a heel to his calf though he danced out of the way to avoid much of the blow. He gains the advantage the longer this fight lasts. With no lucky charm to help her this time, Marinette had to rely on herself more than ever to try and win. She decided to risk it and stepped closer to him, trying her hand at landing more hit with close combat. He had more formal training than she did, but she was smaller and faster than him. Their similarities and differences just kept balancing out as neither one managed to get a solid punch to the other.            "How long has it been?“ Dick asked, not taking his eyes off the two dark haired blurs going at it in front of him.            Tim glanced at his watch. Eyes wide, he announced, "seventy-three minutes.” Usually the boys’ sparring never lasted more than half an hour at most before someone was injured or pinned.            Damian tried to keep his focus solely on the fight, but he couldn’t help the voice in the back of his mind that would not stop gushing praise for his girlfriend’s level of skill. He claimed it was logic that told him she’d be safer if she avoided getting into any battles while they were out on patrol but with each kick of his she blocked and punch of hers she landed upon his body, Damian knew that he had been blinded by love. He was nearly out of breath, something that hadn’t happened in quite a while, and knew that she was getting tired too, but she still kept going. He was giving their fight everything he had and it was just enough to keep her from overpowering her. Though he acknowledged her ability to hold her own, the need to win was preventing him from stopping.            Suddenly, Marinette tripped, and that small mistake was enough of an opening for Damian to leap at her, sending the pair sprawling onto the ground. She bucked as he tried to pin her and tangled her legs in his, using her thighs to flip him over so that he was now laying with his back on the mat as she straddled his waist. She had the chance to take a shot at him that could have led to her victory, but paused just a second too long to follow through with it. She couldn’t help but stare at her boyfriend who lay beneath her, white t-shirt sticking to his wet body like a second skin from all of the sweating he was doing. His muscles were taut from the fight and she was too easily distracted by a heat overcoming her that was not brought on from the batter. A heat that only intensified as she lifted her gaze to his eyes.            Not wanting to let an easy opening pass him by, Damian used his abs and the counter pressure of her sitting on his lower half to sit up and wrapped his fingers around Marinette’s pale wrists that had, for some reason, been laying at her sides. He brought their arms up above their heads, meaning to use that motion to push her into the mat and claim his victory, but he found himself once again caught in her blue gaze as she looked up and stared at him.            Marinette let out a small whimper as his fingers locked around her wrists and caught her bottom lip between her teeth.            All at once, Damian became very aware of the fact that his opponent, who just so happens to be his girlfriend, was sitting on his lap in just her leggings and a sports bra covered in sweat from rolling around on the floor with him for the past however long it had been since their last match had begun. Marinette. His very brave, very strong, very attractive girlfriend… Was straddling him… biting her lip… As he held her wrists above her head… Looking at him with a look he hadn’t yet seen from her.            Marinette released some of the tension in her legs from holding her position as Damian froze after sitting up. She managed to hold back another whimper as Damian closed his eyes and let out a low moan, his body treacherously responding to the sudden pressure he felt as she shifted, lowering herself more into his body, brushing his…            His eyes snapped open, once more locking eyes with hers as he released her wrists in favor of grabbing her bare waist so he could stand up while still holding her pressed up against his body.            The sudden movement made Marinette gasp and she reflexively wrapped her legs around him, crossing her ankles to hold on tight as her arms fell around his neck once freed from his grasp. That was all it took for Damian to growl and bury his face into her neck, covering it with feverish kisses, enjoying the taste of her salty skin, as he made his way out of the gym.            Forgetting all about his brothers and the match, he made his way down the hallway and enterer his bedroom after fumbling with the doorknob with one hand, not willing to let go of Marinette more than he absolutely had to to get them alone.            Entering the room, he lifted his leg back to kick the door closed but found that Marinette had already nudged it shut with her own feet so he decided to turn the pair of them around to lock the door. He moved a little too fast though and found himself pushing Marinette’s back against the door, causing the girl to open her lips in a breathless gasp that threatened to tear him to pieces. He needed to hear that sound again more than he needed air to breathe. He leaned closer and caught her lips with his own, flicking his tongue to get them to part them again.            "Damian.“ She couldn’t stop his name from sliding past their tongues into his open mouth anymore than she could stop the small moans and gasps from coming. Her voice must have snapped him back to reality though as he pulled his face away to look her in the eyes.            "Tell me if it’s too much for you. I don’t want to make you do anything you’re not comfortable with.” His eyes were addled with lust and she knew that the last thing he wanted was to stop as they hardly ever had anytime to themselves and had yet to be able to move beyond making out, but he would absolutely stop if that’s what she told him to do. “I want you to want this. To be ready.”            "Damian…“ She couldn’t find the right words to say so she decided to lean in for another kiss, but Damian pulled back.

“I need you to use your words Angel. I want to be sure this isn’t just something that is happening from the adrenaline.”

She tangled her fingers in his dark hair and gently tugged on it. “I want this. I want you Damian. I’ve never wanted anything so much before.” She bit her lip as heat crept up her cheeks from her blatant words but pushed through the mild embarrassment and kept going. “We may have gotten caught up in the moment out there, but that doesn’t change that fact that I’ve wanted to get you alone like this for a while and now that we are here… I don’t want to stop.”

“Angel.” Damian buried his face in her neck once again and smiled as he kissed her over and over and over again. Since he had taken a second and forced himself to pause and take a deep breath, he wanted to do this right.

“But…”

He instantly pulled back to peer at her.

“I don’t… know or really care- well I do care, but not a lot like to the point of…” she trailed off before starting again. “It’s just that… I’ve never… done this, uhm, kind of thing before.”

He didn’t mean to, but he laughed, the sound warm and deep. He removed Marinette’s legs from around his waist and set her down on the ground. He slid a hand up into her hair, removing the tie so that the blue-black strands fell loose around her face. She peered up through her dark lashes at him and he smiled at her confusion. “I don’t know what you’ve been led to believe during our time together Angel, but I’m not exactly a people person. I went on a few dates here and there before I met you, but I’d never been in a relationship until you came into my life. I never expected you to be…” he tried to think of the right word to say. “Experienced. I’m still glad to hear it though because I want to be your first… your only, Marinette.”

In a quiet voice she squeaked out, “Does that mean I’m your first?”

He chuckled again and moved so that their lips were almost touching, relaxing as he breathed in her air. “Yes Angel. You’re my first and I hope you’ll be my last.” Damian stayed where he was, letting her make the choice for herself.

She didn’t hesitate. Marinette threw herself against his body, crashing their lips together.

As they made their way to his king-sized bed the pair, once again, became a tangled mess of limbs as their clothes disappeared like magic and they found a way to heal every aching muscle left over from their fight.

Basking in the warmth of their love, Damian rubbed slow circles on Marinette’s bare back as she lay contentedly draped across his chest wrapped in his covers.

“I wanted to apologize for my behavior earlier.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“I wasn’t talking about just now.”

“I know.” She lifted her head to rest her chin on his chest so she could look him in the eyes. “I get that you were just worried about me and wanted to protect me.”

“It was still wrong of me though. I know you’re capable of holding your own… especially after seeing how you managed to keep up with me.”

“I did more than keep up,” she laughed.

“True. I do have quite a few sore spots on my body.”

He arched an eyebrow as Marinette gave him another one of her wicked little smiles.

“You know how Ladybug has the Miraculous Cure? Well, I have that power too.”

“Oh really?” He liked where this was headed.

“Absolutely.” Her voice was barely a whisper as she disappeared under the blankets.

Damian definitely liked where this headed.

TAG LIST I hope you enjoyed the surprising (hopefully) ending! :)

@zazzlejazzle @jessigurl-design @xxmadamjinxx @imfreakingmagical @constancetruggle @shizukiryuu @segajr @mystery-5-5 @black-streak @heldtogetherbysafetypins @eliza-bich @2sunchild2 @northernbluetongue @dont-touch-my-dinosaur @vgirl-10123 @mochinek0 @unabashedbookworm @queencommonsense @crazylittlemunchkin @queen-of-the-trash-planet-tm @tbehartoo

[cavitymagazine]

Haptic Narratives: The Absurdly R EA L Artifacts of Dale Brett / / / [part 2]

[D]: Lately though, most of my influence has come from other forms of media opposed to writing. I have found the more I write, the less I read – at least long form. Music, animated series/films - both Japanese anime and stuff like Adult Swim and internet culture - all of these things come through in my work.

[W]: Music.

[D]: Definitely music. I often try to write with a type of musical style I enjoy in mind. This is, believe it or not, one of the reasons I decided to re-commence writing fiction. I was sick and tired of googling combinations of "vaporwave + fiction + dream" or "shoegaze + literature + drugs" to try and find works that fit a certain aesthetic that did not exist. So why not create them myself? For instance, ambient and to a lesser extent dreampunk, would be the genres I was trying to build on in Faceless in Nippon. With Ultraviolet Torus it is no secret that it is my shoegaze project. As you know with our mall collaboration [cloud mall and maze/mall], this will be vaporwave-heavy in aesthetic and theme. I think these musical styles also take me right back to the original interests that I have garnered from literature: how to feel and express oneself in light of the consumerist dream, how to find meaning in the face of a constant blurring reality. I want to produce words that create a sensory experience. Words to touch your skin, words to make you see refracted colours, words to make you realise life sucks but it's all okay.

[W]: Aesthetics are important to me as well. The depth of the surface. The synthetic, simulacra. I suspect any "honest" portrayal of our day-to-day life, even a so-called "realist" presentation, would be sci-fi, at least in part. The kitchen-sink realism of today would include game realities and all sorts of "tropes" – or what one used to call tropes – of sci-fi. DeLillo’s White Noise is a big work for me, related to some of the consumerist themes. The three layers you refer to are impressive – you've put a lot of thought into where your work comes from, what it's shaped by. I've never thought in those terms really. Although "Pessoan cyberpunk nihilism" as a blurb would have me buying whatever that book is. Abe's The Box Man - I read that in I think 2015 or so. I see Abe's tone in some of your prose. That is a hard tone to tap. It's soft and dislocated. Requires a gentle hand, and a kind of amorphous thought process. In recent years I've taken influence more from video games and commercials and music than anything textual. I assumed your influences now were primarily visual. Graphic novels, anime, bad TV movies - I cull more from kitsch than I do from literature now. Would you tell me a bit about your time in Japan? And how would you describe Faceless in Nippon to a reader who knows literally nothing about it?

[W]: I relate very hard to your not being able to google, say, "vaporwave + dream + fiction" and get a hit. You had to create your hits. I feel the same way. It's like I want "Borges + USA Up All Night" or something similarly niche and not-quite-available-elsewhere. The established subgenres you mention, like dreampunk, are still these largely unexplored parks of the mind. There aren't a whole lot of titles. Do you view Faceless in Nippon as your first book and Ultraviolet Torus as a sophomore effort?

[W]: One aspect of your work that struck me right away is its sensory nature, and its desire to make complex emotions like melancholy or lostness more tangible or tactile.

[Ed.:  racetams with caffeine are ingested.]

[D]: I really like your description – “the depth of the surface.” This really fits what I’m trying to achieve with writing. I try to attain a certain sensory experience with abstract imagery, but endeavor to maintain a somewhat conventional narrative or “everyday” story underneath. For instance, Faceless in Nippon was always meant to mimic the feeling of floating in/on water, gently bobbing through society’s ambient capitalist waters attempting to find a purpose. This incorporeal imagery juxtaposed with the more straightforward vignette format and story arc of a young western male living abroad. With Ultraviolet Torus, the prose and format are more unconventional – it was designed to mimic gemstone/mineral structure and shoegaze music, with the narrative underpinning the imagery taking the form of the rise and fall of a standard relationship. I agree that even a “realist” presentation is somewhat sci-fi these days – it is unavoidable. Our friend, contemporary, and collaborator James Krendel-Clark and I have often spoken about how the only thing left for sci-fi is this almost meta-sci-fi angle, where all the tropes have become so cliché and ingrained that really any attempt at sincere “world building” is futile. It’s better to experiment in syntax and delve into what another contemporary of ours, Nick Greer, likes to call “hyper-genre”. Use the tropes, but explore them linguistically, see what they do for the reader sensorily, opposed to using them as the building blocks to create another mundane genre narrative. I have certainly done that in shorter form through the Concentric Circuits: CODA stuff on Surfaces. I think my sci-fi influence comes through in both Faceless in Nippon and Ultraviolet Torus, certainly in the way that I frame the setting or landscape as a character almost, similar to how Ballard and Gibson craft their prose. I have had a lot of time to think about the aforementioned literary influences. I am slightly OCD too, so I often create these massive lists and Venn diagrams and shit of artists/works with certain styles and aesthetics that overlap. I do like to think of myself as a modern-day Walter Benjamin in the way I compile notes and lists and memories that form the basis of my artistic and existential exploration. I think Benjamin would have had a hell of a time with the notes app of a smart phone.

[D]: Regarding Kobo Abe, you are correct, certainly not an easy tone to master, and one that I definitely have not. My writing is not as sound as a master like Abe, which I think is why I subconsciously fall back on the sci-fi landscape syntax/prose mentioned above and the more colloquial twenty-first century alt-lit style to strive forward in my work. I am still developing though, and hopefully, opposed to just replicating Abe’s tone, one day I will be in a position where people are speaking about a tone entirely of my own that others will use as an influence. Abe is also a good segue into other forms of media that influence written work, as he has often been an inspiration to artist’s in the visual field such as filmmakers and video game creators. It is no secret that he is Hideo Kojima’s favorite author.

[D]: Since re-commencing my fiction-writing, which was at the beginning of 2019, you are accurate in your inference that I have primarily relied on other forms of media to influence my work. I have barely read any novels at all in the last couple of years comparative to the previous decade of reading. I garner much more from music, anime, and internet culture these days. I am glad you brought up the influence of commercials – I think we certainly share an avid interest in exploring the consumerist sphere and its effects on art and society. There are a number of important moments in Faceless in Nippon dealing with commercials, products, stores and their underrated aura. Hell, I even created fictional beverages and advertisements for the book.

[D]: My time in Japan was an incredibly formative experience for me. I really only returned to my home country, Australia, when my wife became pregnant. Otherwise I would probably still be there, cruising around upper-class malls, lower-class malls, drinking massive cans of Asahi on the train, staring at LED signs from concrete overpasses at night interminably. I certainly still yearn for my time there. I did go back to visit friends recently and it was a strange experience, like I could not re-create the feelings of my time there in the past no matter how hard I strived. It became apparent that my yearnings were purely for a time in my life while stationed there, opposed to the setting itself.

[D]: I would describe Faceless in Nippon as a meditative, aqueous travelogue on what it means to exist as a middle-class person in the twenty first century, the entirety of which is set in urban Japan.

[D]: I really admire artists that have an unmistakable aesthetic stamp on their work. Auteurship, if you will. For what it’s worth, I think you are one of the few that has a singular, univocal voice in the online “outsider” lit community or whatever you want to call it. I would like to think mine is the same. That people will read it and go, “Oh fuck, that’s Dale alright.” I have been told before that my work reads like MDMA. I am exceedingly happy with that comparison. I would be pleased if that was how I was known as an artist after my “career” or whatever you want to call it is over. Basically, I want to create things that are uniquely my own, things that have not been attempted before. Another reason I think that you and I gel well together as creatives is that despite our many differences in aesthetics, we are enamored by the depth of so-called low culture and continually mash it together with the supposed “high culture” of literature. 

The "Borges + USA Up All Night" example illustrates this perfectly.

[D]: Both Faceless in Nippon and Ultraviolet Torus will be available at similar times. However, there is no doubt that Faceless is my first book. It is the first thing I started working on when I didn’t know it was going to be what it became. Torus was a more experimental foray into the literary field. I compiled Torus, an exploration of gemstone and dream imagery, between drafts of Faceless. I was particularly taken by crystals, shoegaze, and giddiness over my interactions with some beautiful people on the internet at the time. It proved to be a fruitful break from Faceless rewrites, as not only did I let the novel marinate and become better before publishing it, I also gave birth to another creative treasure.

[D]: Making emotive words tactile, rendering the textually intangible tangible. This is something I want to see extended even further as we continue collaborating on our mall project. I want to delicately wrench the phaser knob on these effects and really see where we can go with our adventures in the literary sensorium.

[W]: I remember you saying you wanted Faceless in Nippon to "feel like floating in water." It made me think of a novel as a kind of sensory deprivation tank, the floating and the effects. Did you think of Ultraviolet Torus as a gem, in the abstract, or was the structuring of it more precisely gemlike? James [Krendel-Clark] and I wrote the rough draft of this Blanchot-bodyhorror, broken-videogame-reality novel called Cenotaph, and much of it deals with irrational spaces and Phildickian pulp. As far as sci-fi goes, the more subjective my take, the more "sci-fi" it seems to become. Just last night I drifted between three realities - one in which I was an unemployed writer living under Covid-19, one in which I destroyed an organic ship/braincraft with a cyber-tank, and another where I trained as a druid mage in a treacherous cursed desert. Of course these last two were games and that doesn't even entail any other branching realities that came about as well with regard to books, narratives, televisual influences, lies we tell ourselves, 5G brain-attacking waves, et al. It's late and I'm stoned and tired but yeah. Nick Greer is a fascinating individual. I didn't know you knew him. We spoke about set theory once. Gödel. I read very little, yeah. Or I should say I don't sit and read a physical book as often as I used to. I read rigorously for a good 20 years. If I'm awake enough to read, I usually would want to spend that time writing, or perhaps gaming. Or dreaming. All of these beats - the fictional beverages and ads and playing metafictionally with products and whatnot - I kind of live for that shit. I do that more and more. And it's not even a critique or any kind of satire of it for me - like the low-rez haze of 1-900 commercials was a fuzzy heaven in a box for me as a kid. The K-Mart cafeteria did possess a unique and strange power. I think we're kind of on the same page here as far as we share a kind of reverence for the artificial, the things rendered meaningless through mass production, and other similar slippery intangibles. There is a wonder here that sets it apart from, say, a satirical/scathing view of consumerist life. God, yeah, your experience in Japan. I think I've experienced similar stuff. I remember a time in 2000 when Boca Raton, Florida, was kind of magical for me. I went there a few years back; it's just any place now. Such a strange thing. And sad too. This is the only kind of interview I'd conduct, one with a writer whose work I think truly good. You might've remarked upon the melancholic allure of vending machines coding out at night. Or something similar. It's that sort of sentiment I recognized straightaway as what I consider tuned-in to a cryptic aesthetic I love. I was relieved to discover your wordcraft was honed – that's usually the big problem for me liking someone's work. One of the big draws for me about your work is the stuff you're able to do that I really dig but am not really suited to pull off myself, such as the MDMA vibe, or the ennui mixed with light, hope, etc. There are a dozen or so singular voices around in the online outsider-lit community/whatever, voices I'd consider distinctive: you, Clark, Elytron Frass, Durban Moffer – a few others.

[W]: Your themes I would say demand nuance and control. We've talked about how our mall project is slow-going because it seems very painstaking, almost like etching or surgery or something. Introspective, in any case. Although I just sort of dismissed reading a second ago, I do believe that a unique body of work is made unique by a dizzying variety of blendered influences. I had that 15-year stretch in the suffering cubes to read pretty much constantly, and haphazardly, as far as selection, in a lot of ways, so my influence map is like really fucking bizarre and extensive, which I think makes my stuff appear unique, when all that is unique about it probably is my little perspective or whatever subjectivity is injected into this array of eclectic influences.

[littlecatlost1]

Who Killed Markiplier? Finale

AND THE KILLER IS... THE COLONEL? QUESTION MARK?

That's pretty much how I sum up the finale to this little adventure. A big ass question mark. When I clicked into the video for the final chapter, I felt like I was somehow teleported out of the Markiplier universe and dropped into the middle of Metal Gear Solid or something. I am so miserably confused. But... deep breath... I will try.

Darkiplier isn't the killer because... Mark is Dark? Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of questions marks because OH MY GOD!

I'm pulled into the spirit realm, presumably by Mark's spirit, where I start to hear multiple voices, all belonging to different characters from the story. I feel like I've been purposely led to the office where the detective has been collecting evidence on everyone, including himself. But the colonel is clearly the main focus here because he is all over the place. And it looks like the detective may have caught a slight case of The Shining because he's written "The colonel did it." over and over again across multiple notes. All work and no booze makes Abe a loopy boy, eh, Dick?

It appears that my theory about Mark and the colonel fighting over the mystery woman in the photo was correct. It's revealed that at some point in the past, the colonel stole his wife and squeezed him for money which he spent on their sordid love affair. It's clear at this point that the colonel has gone completely off the deep end and is very unstable. He shoots the detective when he confronts him with the evidence he found, then he shoots me when I try to stop him. I don't have to stretch my imagination very far to surmise that at some point during the party, he and Mark got into a huge fight over the colonel's betrayal and in the heat of the moment, the colonel killed him. And in the multiple ways that were previously pointed out. But did Mark goad him into doing it, just so he could frame him? That part's a little hazy. I'm not really sure.

This turns Mark into a very angry spirit bent on vengeance. The first sign of his transformation into Darkiplier appears when his eyes are covered in dark shadows. Celine and Damian's spirits appear before me and Celine is red while Damian is blue. More of Darkiplier's trademarks. It seems that Mark has been planning some sort of vengeance for years. And right now, he's running around in Damian's body. When Damian says "Just let me in," I'm like... Oh, no, no, no, no, no! I've heard that line before! Nuh uh! Nope! But it doesn't look like I have a choice. Just like Darkiplier, he pretends to give people a choice when they really don't have any choice at all.

I wake up and the colonel runs off raving like a lunatic, thinking it was all a joke and he never killed anyone. I can't help but wonder who he's trying to convince more, me or himself?

I pick up the cane and the shape of my hand changes. I look up at the mirror and... I've changed into Darkiplier!? What!? That is insanely cool. But at the same time, it raises my biggest point of confusion. Damian already said that Mark's spirit is out there in his body. Meanwhile, Damian and Celine are trapped with me in my body. Does that mean there are two Darkipliers? Um... What!? I'm guessing that my body took on Damian's form because he's the most dominant and this story is all about him setting things right with Mark and the colonel?

I must say that I am crazy in love with that last shot. The shattering of the mirror is so sad and melancholy. It really brings home the tragedy of three friends that were torn apart by betrayal and anger. And the white noise effects peeking in through the cracks displays Darkiplier's ability to break reality.

The last thing heard after the credits is the detective, still alive but sounding badly injured, "Colonel, if you can hear this, you better run."

Another thing that confused me is what happened to Mark's body? Maybe I was right before and Mark was able to rise up Jigsaw-style, just like I did, and hide somewhere before he takes over Celine and Damian. I guess that reoccurring joke about Mark being a zombie actually had a purpose.

Then there's all the newspaper clippings talking about the death of a celebrity movie star. This could have been about Mark, but there's a problem. The newspapers look old and damaged. This would mean that Mark's been dead for a while, and since it was all over the news, everyone knows about it. But then nobody is disturbed that their formerly dead friend pops up again and decides to throw a party? They all just shrug and go, "okay"? I think the stories about the celebrity has more to do with the detective's past, about a case that was never solved and it soiled his career.

There are still a few questions that are left unanswered. What was the significance of the smashed wine bottle? What about the KILL MODE on the chef's little buddy? What was that conversation between Mark and the detective really about? These things are never addressed. At least, not that I've been able to see.

Honestly, I actually hope this story isn't canon to Darkiplier's backstory. The whole thing about having three people in one body as Darkiplier, and possibly another one wandering around making Let's Plays on Youtube, just makes the whole thing overcomplicated. This is why I gave up on the Kingdom Hearts series. They tried to bring in too many plot lines and twists to the point that it turned into a big, tangled mess. It ruined the games for me.

I love complex stories. I know it may sound like I don't, but I do. A good story that's rich and intriguing really pulls me in and gets me invested in it. But a good story also knows when to hold back. And I feel like they went a little too ham near the end.

All in all, I absolutely had a great experience with Who Killed Markiplier? It was very well put together, even if it did get a little convoluted at the end. And the acting was stellar from each and every member of the cast. Bravo! Mark and everybody on Team Iplier deserve a standing ovation. This was a lot of fun and brought enjoyment in my life, where I rarely have any. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication to making people happy. You should all be SO proud of yourselves!

Day 1 / Day 2 / Day 2-2 / Day 3

[hunkiedorieblog]

Last year my new year’s resolution was to read more. My whole life I have been a passionate reader but I am very shy about sharing what I read with others. Many people in my life read memoirs and self-improvement books, I wish I had an interest in those so I could participate in their many conversations about recent reads. But, my interests always lie in the more young adult sci-fi and fantasy types of books. I was always teased growing up about what a weird taste in books I had, which has made me very self-conscious. Despite this, I have decided to try and ignore my reservations and share my reading list from the past year in case someone may share my interests. This year my biggest focus was on reading for pleasure while mixing in some of the classics since my highschool seemed to skip right over those, I also am starting to mix in some self-improvement books here and there although those still struggle to keep my attention. My suggestion for anyone who struggles to find the time to read is to get an Audible subscription. I was so successful with my reading goals this year because I would buy my books at Half Priced Books and buy the audiobooks on Audible. This way I could listen to my books on my way to and from work or at the gym but still read the paper version on lunch breaks or at home in the evenings.

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The Lost World: A Novel (Jurassic Park)

by Michael Crichton

It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end—the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, and the island indefinitely closed to the public.

I read Jurassic Park in 2018 and was shocked at how different the characters in the book were from the ones I fell in love with in Steven Spielberg’s movie. This book is exciting and terrifying. Be careful you don’t read this before a camping trip, this book made me a little jumpy on my morning walks through the woods for a while after reading.

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What’s So Amazing About Grace?

by Philip Yancey

We speak of grace often. But do we understand it? More importantly, do we truly believe in it . . . and do our lives proclaim it as powerfully as our words? In What’s So Amazing About Grace? Award-winning author Philip Yancey explores grace at street level. If grace is God’s love for the undeserving, he asks, then what does it look like in action? And if Christians are its sole dispensers, then how are we doing at lavishing grace on a cruel and pain-filled world?

This was a required reading for my religious studies class at school this year. This wouldn’t normally have been a book I would choose to read on a whim but all in all I did enjoy it. If you belong to some sort of bible study or religious support group this book may be a good option to introduce some material to fuel new discussion topics.

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 Wuthering Heights

by Emily Brontë

Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before. What unfolds is the tale of the intense love between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff’s bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.

I think it is safe to say that this was my least favorite read of the entire year. I can understand why this book is considered a classic as the writing itself was beautifully done but I consistently found myself wanting to bang my head against a wall out of frustration with these characters. Everyone was so miserable, whining and moaning about how terrible their lives were while acting so cruel to one another taking out their frustrations on anyone close to them without ever really attempting to solve their problems or improve their situation. I was relieved when the book was finally finished and although I can say that I am glad to have read this book as I know it has had a significant impact on modern literature, I would never ever want to read this book or revisit these depressing characters again.

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Artemis Fowl: Artemis Fowl, Book 1

by Eoin Colfer

Twelve-year-old Artemis is a millionaire, a genius-and above all, a criminal mastermind. But Artemis doesn’t know what he’s taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. These aren’t the fairies of the bedtime stories-they’re dangerous!

This was one of my favorite books growing up. The combination of science, technology, and magic instantly had me hooked.  When I found out that these books were being turned into a movie I took the opportunity to revisit one of my childhood favorites.

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The Arctic Incident: Artemis Fowl, Book 2

by Eoin Colfer

Artemis Fowl is at boarding school in Iceland when he receives an urgent video email from Russia. It’s a plea from his father, who has been kidnapped by the Russian mafia. As Artemis rushes to his rescue, he is stopped by Captain Holly Short. This time, instead of battling the fairies, he’s going to have to join forces with them if he wants to save one of the few people he loves.

After revisiting Artemis Fowl, Book 1 I discovered that this memorable book from my childhood was actually part of a series. I spent the next couple of months reading a number of books from the series and still have a few more to go. Artemis’s sassy intellect, Butler’s fierce devotion, Holly’s ambition, and Mulch’s cleverness make for a killer cast that will lead you on exciting adventures.

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The Eternity Code: Artemis Fowl, Book 3

by Eoin Colfer

Artemis Fowl has created the most powerful new supercomputer known to man–using stolen technology from an elite race of underground fairies. When the computer falls into the hands of an IT billionaire with a mob connection, Artemis is in deep trouble. Only one fairy can help now. If only he wasn’t the fairies’ public enemy number one. . .

These books are such fun quick reads they are a great book to recommend to a young reader and still enjoy yourself. One of my friends reads the same book as her husband’s daughter and keeps up even when they aren’t together to provide a fun shared experience. I keep meaning to mention this series to her for them to read once they are through the Harry Potter Books.

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The Opal Deception: Artemis Fowl, Book 4

by Eoin Colfer

Artemis Fowl’s memories of the fairy race have been wiped, and his one fairy ally, Captain Holly Short, is on the run. He needs his memory back–and fast–because a power-crazed pixie is out for revenge, scheming to overthrow the Lower Elements Police. With Holly gone, Artemis is depending on a flatulent dwarf. Things are about to explode. . .

The introduction of Opal Koboi as a recurring antagonist in the Artemis Fowl series has created an exciting challenge that pushes Artemis’s wits to new limits and sparks new life into the series.

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The Lost Colony: Artemis Fowl, Book 5

by Eoin Colfer

Until recently, Artemis Fowl was the only human to have discovered that magical beings do indeed exist. But now a second juvenile genius wants to capture a demon for scientific study. Only an ancient time spell separates the demons from humankind–and Artemis must prevent it from unraveling. If he fails, the bloodthirsty tribe will relaunch their quest to wipe humans from the planet.

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The Time Paradox: Artemis Fowl, Book 6

by Eoin Colfer

Just when Artemis Fowl decided to forego the criminal activity of the magical kind, his mother became gravely ill.

The only way he can save her is by traveling back in time to steal the cure from the clutches of the devious mastermind . . . Artemis Fowl.

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The Atlantis Complex: Artemis Fowl, Book 7

by Eoin Colfer

Dabbling in fairy magic has led Artemis Fowl to develop the Atlantis Complex (aka multiple-personality disorder). And now, with the subterranean city of Atlantis under attack from vicious robots, he is too nice to be of use to anyone.

Can Holly get devious Artemis back before they strike?

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A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, Book 4)

by Ranson Riggs

Having defeated the monstrous threat that nearly destroyed the peculiar world, Jacob Portman is back where his story began, in Florida. Except now Miss Peregrine, Emma, and their peculiar friends are with him and doing their best to blend in. But carefree days of beach visits and normalling lessons are soon interrupted by a discovery—a subterranean bunker that belonged to Jacob’s grandfather, Abe.

Clues to Abe’s double-life as a peculiar operative start to emerge, secrets long hidden in plain sight. And Jacob begins to learn about the dangerous legacy he has inherited—truths that were part of him long before he walked into Miss Peregrine’s time loop.

Now, the stakes are higher than ever as Jacob and his friends are thrust into the untamed landscape of American peculiardom—a world with few ymbrynes, or rules—that none of them understand. New wonders, and dangers, await in this brilliant next chapter for Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children. Their story is again illustrated by haunting vintage photographs, now with the striking addition of full-color images interspersed throughout for this all-new, multi-era American adventure.

This is the fourth book in a series I have been reading for the past few years. I love the use of old photographs scattered throughout the book that serve as Ransom Riggs’s inspiration for his characters. If you have seen Tim Burton’s film version of book 1, please forget everything you saw and pick up the book, these stories are a million times better than the film adaptation.

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Something Wicked This Way Comes

by Ray Bradbury

For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.

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Mother Knows Best: A Tale of the Old Witch (Villains Book 5)

by Serena Valentino

The tale of the legendary golden flower is widely known. The story has been told many times and in many ways. But always the flower is coveted by an old witch to keep herself young and beautiful. And always the flower is used to save a dying queen, who then gives birth to a princess with magical hair. Not willing to lose the flower, the old witch steals the princess and locks her away in a high tower, raising her as her own. But the princess always finds out who she truly is and manages to defeat the old witch.

And yet this is only half the story. So what of the old witch, Mother Gothel? Where does she come from? And how does she come across the magical golden flower? Here is one account that recounts a version of the story that has remained untold for centuries . . . until now. It is a tale of mothers and daughters, of youth and dark magic. It is a tale of the old witch.

I discovered Serena Valentino’s books a few years ago and have had tons of fun reading her depictions of our favorite Disney villain’s backstories. In this book, Mother Gothel joins the ranks of Ursala, The Beast and The Evil Queen to help us realize that our villans once had the same hope and kindness we find in many of their famous counterparts. A fun detail to all of Serena’s books in this series is the cover art. You will find one version of the villain’s face on the book jacket, remove it and you will find a different version of their face underneath.

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Mortal Engines: Mortal Engines, Book 1

by Philip Reeve

London is hunting again. Emerging from its hiding place in the hills, the great Traction City is chasing a terrified little town across the wastelands. Soon London will feed.

In the attack, Tom Natsworthy is flung from the speeding city with a murderous scar-faced girl. They must run for their lives through the wreckage — and face a terrifying new weapon that threatens the future of the world.

Ever since I heard Peter Jackson was doing a movie based on this book my curiosity was piqued and this book has sat on my wish list for a while. This year I finally decided to tackle this title. I have to be honest and say I was a little bored with the book. It did have several shining moments and I would be willing to read other books in the series but I felt as though some scenes and characters lacked the development and attention they deserved.

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

by Douglas Adams

Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.

I’m not sure why but the 2005 film version starring Martin Freeman is one of my favorite movies. This was another book that had been sitting on my wishlist for a while. Although it was a fun read I think a prefer the movie’s storyline a little bit more. I was excited to learn that this book is part of a series, I am eager to read on in 2020.

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A Study in Scarlet Women: The Lady Sherlock, Book 1

by Sherry Thomas

With her inquisitive mind, Charlotte Holmes has never felt comfortable with the demureness expected of the fairer sex in upper-class society. But even she never thought that she would become a social pariah, an outcast fending for herself on the mean streets of London.

When the city is struck by a trio of unexpected deaths and suspicion falls on her sister and her father, Charlotte is desperate to find the true culprits and clear the family name. She’ll have help from friends new and old—a kind-hearted widow, a police inspector, and a man who has long loved her.

But in the end, it will be up to Charlotte, under the assumed name Sherlock Holmes, to challenge society’s expectations and match wits against an unseen mastermind.

This book was recommended to me by my roommate Emiley (Mighty Miley). This was a fun new spin on a classic character. This series has turned the traditionally male characters Sherlock and Watson into strong females working on the fringes of society in secret.

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A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

by Mark Twain

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. In the book, a Yankee engineer from Connecticut named Hank Morgan receives a severe blow to the head and is somehow transported in time and space to England during the reign of King Arthur. After some initial confusion and his capture by one of Arthur’s knights, Hank realizes that he is actually in the past, and he uses his knowledge to make people believe that he is a powerful magician. He attempts to modernize the past in order to make people’s lives better, but in the end, he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur and an interdict against him by the Catholic Church of the time, which grows fearful of his power. Twain wrote the book as a burlesque of Romantic notions of chivalry after being inspired by a dream in which he was a knight himself, severely inconvenienced by the weight and cumbersome nature of his armor. It is a satire of feudalism and monarchy that also celebrates homespun ingenuity and democratic values while questioning the ideals of capitalism and outcomes of the Industrial Revolution. It is among several works by Twain and his contemporaries that mark the transition from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era of socioeconomic discourse.

When I mentioned to my grandmother that I wanted to read more classic titles she was thrilled with the idea and gave me quite an extensive list. This book was among the titles she gave me. Unfortunately, I really struggled to get into the story. I expected a lot more excitement and adventure but I was left feeling like I was reading more of a guidebook to modernizing medieval  Europe. It was nice to have my hand at a work of Mark Twain, but to be honest, I could take or leave this book.

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The Graveyard Book

by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, known as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised by ghosts, with a guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the dead. There are adventures in the graveyard for a boy—an ancient Indigo Man, a gateway to the abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, he will be in danger from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod’s family.

Neil Gaiman has long been one of my favorite authors. He is responsible for books like American Gods, Stardust, and Coraline. This book is easily my favorite title belonging to this author and is probably tied with the Gretta Helsing books as my favorite read this year. Graveyard book is a retelling of a classic. Gaiman’s retelling of the Jungle Book swaps jungle animals for graveyard ghosts and ghouls twisted with secret societies and a smattering of other supernatural forces.

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The Witches of New York

by Ami McKay

New York in the spring of 1880 is a place alive with wonder and curiosity. Determined to learn the truth about the world, its residents enthusiastically engage in both scientific experimentation and spiritualist pursuits. Séances are the entertainment of choice in exclusive social circles, and many enterprising women—some possessed of true intuitive powers, and some gifted with the art of performance—find work as mediums.

Enter Adelaide Thom and Eleanor St. Clair. At their humble teashop, Tea and Sympathy, they provide a place for whispered confessions, secret cures, and spiritual assignations for a select society of ladies, who speak the right words and ask the right questions. But the profile of Tea and Sympathy is about to change with the fortuitous arrival of Beatrice Dunn.

When seventeen-year-old Beatrice leaves the safety of her village to answer an ad that reads “Respectable Lady Seeks Dependable Shop Girl. Those averse to magic need not apply,” she has little inclination of what the job will demand of her. Beatrice doesn’t know it yet, but she is no ordinary small-town girl; she has great spiritual gifts—ones that will serve as her greatest asset and also place her in grave danger. Under the tutelage of Adelaide and Eleanor, Beatrice comes to harness many of her powers, but not even they can prepare her for the evils lurking in the darkest corners of the city or the courage it will take to face them.

This title popped up on my Audible recommended reading list. An easy read that left me wanting more. I felt as though this book touched on some very exciting opportunities for plot development but didn’t quite follow through. However, as I was putting together this list I discovered that this book is actually part of a series, which I have no doubt will dive into the storylines I felt was breezed through in book one.

Buy The Witches of New York on Amazon

Interview with the Vampire

by Anne Rice

Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force—a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.

Another book turned into a movie. I vaguely remember the movie starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise that follows the same basic vampire m.o. Brooding vampire struggling with the march of time and dismayed by all the death and pain he has caused. Enter a vampire who has taken to the life of death and desire like a fish to water who tries to convince their depressed counterpart that they need to find joy in their situation. This book follows that same basic concept but went on way way too long. I felt that the same story could have been told in half the time and we all could have moved on to something more exciting. Again, this was a book I thought I should read because it had set the tone for many vampire stories to follow, but in the end, the book had about as much life to it as one of Lestat’s drained corpses.

Buy Interview with the Vampire on Amazon

Strange Practice (A Dr. Greta Helsing Novel, Book 1)

by Vivan Shaw

Greta Helsing inherited her family’s highly specialized and highly peculiar medical practice. In her consulting rooms, Dr. Helsing treats the undead for a host of ills – vocal strain in banshees, arthritis in barrow-wights, and entropy in mummies. Although she barely makes ends meet, this is just the quiet, supernatural-adjacent life Greta’s been groomed for since childhood.

Until a sect of murderous monks emerges, killing human and undead Londoners alike. As terror takes hold of the city, Greta must use her unusual skills to stop the cult if she hopes to save her practice and her life.

This is another title that has been sitting on my wish list for a while and I could kick myself for not reading it sooner. I could not put this book down and was thrilled to learn that there were two more published books in the series. The Dr. Greta Helsing series was easily my favorite reads this year.

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Dreadful Company (A Dr. Greta Helsing Novel, Book 2)

by Vivian Shaw

When Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, is unexpectedly called to Paris to present at a medical conference, she expects nothing more exciting than professional discourse on zombie reconstructive surgery and skin disease in bogeymen — and hopefully at least one uneventful night at the Opera.

Unfortunately for Greta, Paris happens to be infested with a coven of vampires — and not the civilized kind. If she hopes to survive, Greta must navigate the darkest corners of the City of Lights, the maze of ancient catacombs and mine-tunnels underneath the streets, where there is more to find than simply dead men’s bones.

This was the second book in the Greta Helsing series and I was just as thrilled with book two as I was with book one. This page-turner had me launching myself into book three.

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Grave Importance (A Dr. Greta Helsing Novel, Book 3)

by Vivian Shaw

Oasis Natrun: a private, exclusive, highly secret luxury health spa for mummies, high in the hills above Marseille, equipped with the very latest in therapeutic innovations both magical and medical. To Dr. Greta Helsing, London’s de facto mummy specialist, it sounds like paradise. But when Greta is invited to spend four months there as the interim clinical director, it isn’t long before she finds herself faced with a medical mystery that will take all her diagnostic skill to solve.

A peculiar complaint is spreading among her mummy patients, one she’s never seen before. With help from her friends and colleagues — including Dr. Faust (yes, that Dr. Faust), a sleepy scribe-god, witches, demons, a British Museum curator, and the inimitable vampyre Sir Francis Varney — Greta must put a stop to this mysterious illness before anybody else crumbles to irreparable dust…

…and before the fabric of reality itself can undergo any more structural damage.

Book three in the Greta Helsing series did not dissapoint. This story was exciting and wrapped many of these characters in a perfect way where I could say a satisfied goodbye while picturing their futures without the need for more from the author, although I would happily welcome another addition to the series.

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Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel

by Disney Press, A. W. Jantha

Hocus Pocus is beloved by Halloween enthusiasts all over the world. Diving once more into the world of witches, this New York Times bestselling two-part young adult novel, released on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1993 film, marks a new era of Hocus Pocus. Fans will be spellbound by a fresh retelling of the original film, followed by the all-new sequel that continues the story with the next generation of Salem teens.

Shortly after moving from California to Salem, Massachusetts, Max Dennison finds himself in hot water when he accidentally releases a coven of witches, the Sanderson sisters, from the afterlife. Max, his sister, and his new friends (human and otherwise) must find a way to stop the witches from carrying out their evil plan and remaining on earth to torment Salem for all eternity.

Twenty-five years later, Max and Allison’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Poppy, finds herself face-to-face with the Sanderson sisters in all their sinister glory. When Halloween celebrations don’t quite go as planned, it’s a race against time as Poppy and her friends fight to save her family and all of Salem from the witches’ latest vile scheme.

I dare you not to visualize Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, or Kathy Najimy storming through the story as you revisit one of your favorite Halloween stories. I heard each of their voices perfectly as I tore my way through this book and made my way through an all-new Sanderson adventure.

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Doctor Sleep

by Stephen King

Years ago, the haunting of the Overlook Hotel nearly broke young Dan Torrance’s sanity, as his paranormal gift known as “the shining” opened a door straight into hell. And even though Dan is all grown up, the ghosts of the Overlook—and his father’s legacy of alcoholism and violence—kept him drifting aimlessly for most of his life. Now, Dan has finally found some order in the chaos by working in a local hospice, earning the nickname “Doctor Sleep” by secretly using his special abilities to comfort the dying and prepare them for the afterlife. But when he unexpectedly meets twelve-year-old Abra Stone—who possesses an even more powerful manifestation of the shining—the two find their lives in sudden jeopardy at the hands of the ageless and murderous nomadic tribe known as the True Knot, reigniting Dan’s own demons and summoning him to battle for this young girl’s soul and survival…

The sequel to The Shining is just as chilling as you would expect from a Stephen King novel. The book was turned into a movie in 2019 starring Ewan McGregor, I have yet to see it but I hope the screen version can do the book justice.

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The House with a Clock in its Walls

by John Bellairs

When Lewis Barnavelt, an orphan. comes to stay with his uncle Jonathan, he expects to meet an ordinary person. But he is wrong. Uncle Jonathan and his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Zimmermann, are both magicians! Lewis is thrilled. At first, watching magic is enough. Then Lewis experiments with magic himself and unknowingly resurrects the former owner of the house: a woman named Selenna Izard. It seems that Selenna and her husband built a timepiece into the walls–a clock that could obliterate humankind. And only the Barnavelts can stop it!

A very cute story but another case where I felt the film create much more magic than the book. A fun Halloween read with characters you would hope to visit again and again.

Buy The House with a Clock in Its Walls on Amazon

A Discovery of Witches: A Novel (All Souls Trilogy, Book 1)

by Deborah Harkness

Deborah Harkness’s sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches, has brought her into the spotlight and galvanized fans around the world. In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.

Harkness has created a universe to rival those of Anne Rice, Diana Gabaldon, and Elizabeth Kostova, and she adds a scholar’s depth to this riveting tale of magic and suspense. The story continues in book two, Shadow of Night, and concludes with The Book of Life.

I remember my mom reading this book years ago and being intrigued by a story that brought vampires and witches together in a forbidden romance. This was long before the Twilight Saga sparked the vampire craze in the media. This first book in the All Souls Trilogy is a grown-up version of Twilight that incorporates time travel and witchcraft into the overprotective vampire boyfriend story we have all become familiar with. In 2018 this story was brought to life on screen in the television series Discover of Witches. In this case although the show was great and inspired me to read the books, the books were so much better. The imagery in the books was wonderfully done and I missed little but beloved details like the ghosts at Dianna’s house.

Buy A Discovery of Witches on Amazon

Shadow of Night: A Novel (All Souls Trilogy, Book 2)

by Deborah Harkness

J. K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, Anne Rice—only a few writers capture the imagination the way that Deborah Harkness has with her New York Times–bestselling All Souls trilogy. A Discovery of Witches introduces reluctant witch Diana Bishop, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and the battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782.

Picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night takes Diana and Matthew on a trip through time to Elizabethan London, where they are plunged into a world of spies, magic, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the School of Night. As the search for Ashmole 782 deepens and Diana seeks out a witch to tutor her in magic, the net of Matthew’s past tightens around them, and they embark on a very different—and vastly more dangerous—journey.

The follow up to Discovery of Witches this second book in the All Souls Trilogy picks up right where the story left off and takes you on an exciting journey through Elizabethan England to continue Dianna’s development as a witch and her mission to find the book of life.

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The Book of Life: A Novel (All Souls Trilogy, Book 3)

by Deborah Harkness

After traveling through time in Shadow of Night, the second book in Deborah Harkness’s enchanting series, historian and witch Diana Bishop and vampire scientist Matthew Clairmont return to the present to face new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home at Sept-Tours, they reunite with the cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches—with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency. In the trilogy’s final volume, Harkness deepens her themes of power and passion, family and caring, past deeds and their present consequences. In ancestral homes and university laboratories, using ancient knowledge and modern science, from the hills of the Auvergne to the palaces of Venice and beyond, the couple, at last, learn what the witches discovered so many centuries ago.

With more than one million copies sold in the United States and appearing in thirty-eight foreign editions, A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night have landed on all of the major bestseller lists and garnered rave reviews from countless publications. Eagerly awaited by Harkness’s legion of fans, The Book of Life brings this superbly written series to a deeply satisfying close.

The final book in the All Souls Trilogy brought a wonderful close to the story but still left me wanting more. I am curious to see what the future has in store for fans of the world Harkness has created.

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Time’s Convert

by Deborah Harkness

On the battlefields of the American Revolution, Matthew de Clermont meets Marcus MacNeil, a young surgeon from Massachusetts, during a moment of political awakening when it seems that the world is on the brink of a brighter future. When Matthew offers him a chance at immortality and a new life free from the restraints of his puritanical upbringing, Marcus seizes the opportunity to become a vampire. But his transformation is not an easy one and the ancient traditions and responsibilities of the de Clermont family clash with Marcus’s deeply held beliefs in liberty, equality, and brotherhood.

Fast-forward to contemporary Paris, where Phoebe Taylor–the young employee at Sotheby’s whom Marcus has fallen for–is about to embark on her own journey to immortality. Though the modernized version of the process at first seems uncomplicated, the couple discovers that the challenges facing a human who wishes to be a vampire are no less formidable than they were in the eighteenth century. The shadows that Marcus believed he’d escaped centuries ago may return to haunt them both–forever.

A passionate love story and a fascinating exploration of the power of tradition and the possibilities not just for change but for revolution, Time’s Convert channels the supernatural world-building and slow-burning romance that made the All Souls Trilogy instant bestsellers to illuminate a new and vital moment in history, and a love affair that will bridge centuries.

This book was a fun way to revisit the All Souls Trilogy characters. In this book, readers are given the opportunity to dive into the backstory of a supporting character, Marcus, and experience what life would be like for someone who was made a vampire in the not too distant past.

Buy Time’s Convert on Amazon

Who: The Method for Hiring

by Geoff Smart & Randy Street

In this instant New York Times Bestseller, Geoff Smart and Randy Street provide a simple, practical, and effective solution to what The Economist calls “the single biggest problem in business today”: unsuccessful hiring. The average hiring mistake costs a company $1.5 million or more a year and countless wasted hours. This statistic becomes even more startling when you consider that the typical hiring success rate of managers is only 50 percent.

The silver lining is that “who” problems are easily preventable. Based on more than 1,300 hours of interviews with more than 20 billionaires and 300 CEOs, Who presents Smart and Street’s A Method for Hiring. Refined through the largest research study of its kind ever undertaken, the A Method stresses fundamental elements that anyone can implement–and it has a 90 percent success rate.

Whether you’re a member of a board of directors looking for a new CEO, the owner of a small business searching for the right people to make your company grow, or a parent in need of a new babysitter, it’s all about Who. 

As someone new to the world of HR one of my biggest challenges over the past year was learning how to hire new talent effectively for the company I work for. This book was recommended to me by the company I work for’s Director of Operations. This book was a big help to me as I began to revise our current hiring process.

Buy Who: The Method for Hiring on Amazon

Little Women

by Louisa May Alcott

Grown-up Meg, tomboyish Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. The four March sisters couldn’t be more different. But with their father away at war, and their mother working to support the family, they have to rely on one another. Whether they’re putting on a play, forming a secret society, or celebrating Christmas, there’s one thing they can’t help wondering: Will Father return home safely?

This easily made my top five reads of the year. I was so moved by the family’s love for one another and for their friends and neighbors. The kindness and strength shown by the characters in this book made for a perfect Christmas season read that I can foresee me revisiting year after year.

Buy Little Women on Amazon

  I have so enjoyed getting back into a reading routine, and I really look forward to continuing on in 2020.

  My Top 5 Reads of 2019

The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman)

Strange Practice (Vivian Shaw)

Dreadful Company (Vivian Shaw)

Grave Importance (Vivian Shaw)

Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

  My Top 5 Reads of 2018

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O (Neil Stephenson & Nicole Galland)

Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton)

Circe (Madeline Miller)

Good Omens (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman)

What I Read in 2019 Last year my new year's resolution was to read more. My whole life I have been a passionate reader but I am very shy about sharing what I read with others.

[kuma-style]

FansHobby quite possibly just threw a hail-mary pass for my 3rd-Party Transformer figure of the year with MB-06 Power Baser!

Producer: FansHobby

Price: Approx. $210 USD

Release Date: Dec. 2017

Item Height: Approx. 9.25″ for the standard robot and 12.25″ for the Powered, combined mode.

Item Weight: N/A

WHERE TO BUY: The Chosen Prime, TFSource, and AgesThreeAndUp for $200

FansHobby seems to have really hit their stride with their latest release, MB-06 Power Baser. This addition to thair “Master Builder” series is an homage to the “Power Master” version of Optimus Prime (or Ginrai/Super Ginrai in the “Transformers: Masterforce” cartoon.) The videos above share my thoughts and a run through of the transformations but in this article my goal is to break it down piece-by-piece as well as share some additional thoughts on it all and of course a full gallery of it. Check it all out, enjoy, and please share some love (or hate) in the comment section below.

Presentation: Power Baser comes packaged in its alt (truck) mode in a box laden with artwork done by my friend 928 Toys Laboratory (he also did the packed-in bio card as well!) It’s well-fit in the plastic clamshell and there’s no reason at all to feel like anyone is going to get anything broken-in-box due to anything packaging-related. The colors are well-selected and separated, and I personally found the “tampos” (colored logos, writing, and shapes throughout the piece) very attractive because it’s a nod to other Japanese mecha which you’ll see in a glance-over of this site that I primarily collect. The two large blasters as well as the gray “side” blasters are a perfect throwback to PMOP (Power Master Optimus Prime) in its original toy form.

Build: This is a completely plastic piece and genuinely well-made. The plastics used are thick and the different finishes on them really compliment the colors to offset individual pieces. Outside of accents and tampos, Power Baser’s color separation is largely controlled by different colored plastics which I prefer. I didn’t have any q.c. (“quality control” which encompasses things like breaks due to contruction and/or aeshetic defects.)

Just like the original PMOP toy, Power baser has a variety of modes which I’ll give some thoughts on below.

Power Pilot: This is their homage to “Ginrai” of the cartoon which acts as a “Power Master” in both the cartoon as a toy. What a power Master does is transform into something (in this case, a “grill cover”) and attach to a non-sentient (doesn’t think on its own) robot in order to command control of it. It looks great, and at 2″ the articulation is minimal as to be expected (basic, ball-jointed shoulders and hip articulation with elbow and knee bend at 90 degrees each as well as neck swivel.) Aeshtetically, I like that they went with a completely white face rather than a “flesh-toned” mouth because it has a more mecha (robotic) look. The chrome on the grill-cover was a good choice as it looks great when attached to Power Baser.

Truck Mode: I really enjoy Power Baser’s truck mode in that it’s got a very large, “chunky” look that sets it apart from the more “standard” truck cab look of the original design and thus lets it set apart (in a good way) next to other Optimus Prime toys in the same mode. It’s a very simple transformation from robot to (and vice-versa) with six rubber wheels that all set and roll evenly. I think what may turn some people off to it is the very visible robot-mode kibble throughout it; particularly the folded-up arms on the backside of the cab.

Robot Mode: This mode is an homage to the “regular” robot mode for PMOP in the cartoon. Although it mostly resembles the original Optimus Prime from the “G1″ cartoon, PMOP has a number of aesthetic differences from design to proportions which the Robot Mode of Power Baser captures perfectly, and at the same 9.25” height as MP-10 Masterpiece Optimus, it’s a great fit scale-wise to your existing Masterpiece-scaled collection. Where it’s going to blow a lot of your other pieces away though is the articulation. From an insanely wide range of appendage motion to even above-and-beyond stuff like ab-crunch (the ability to actually bend the upper portion of his torso inwards towards the bottom,) this is a piece that I implore you to watch the video above to see in motion as I think the visual does much more than me simply writing “it’s awesome!” I also really like that the large blasters packed in disassemble and transform into smaller blasters for this particular mode.

Combined Mode: Even though Power Baser’s Robot Mode is my favorite, this is where the money’s at. Using the robot and the trailer to transform into the “Super” version of the character, I was floored the second I got it together. At 12.25″ tall, this thing is perfectly sized for a Masterpiece-scaled collection and really stands out as a centerpiece when displayed amongster them. The leg kibble on being so high on its back was the topic of a lot of discussion but personally it looks like a ruck sack to me which boosts the aesthetic and the general, imposing aura of it ten-fold. The option of either having colored or clear eyes (which light up using the LED mechanism within the head activated by a switch on the backside of the head) is a great touch and the ability to swap out within seconds without any unscrewing needed is genius.

What’s especially awesmoe about the Combined mode is that the articulation actually mirrors that of the Robot mode and is especiallt impressive being so large. I think that people who buy this are going to have as much fun putting it into neat poses as anything else in this mode.

Base Mode: Honestly, I found this mode to be very convoluted on the original PMOP toy and that feeling hasn’t changed with Power Baser. With the Robot standing so much higher than the base itself, it’s hard to really take it legitamately as a “fortress” which would actually shield him from anything in in terms of play, I find that the female pegs on the opposite sides of the “combined” hands which hold the black blasters in place on the arms aren’t deep enough to hold them very securely. It’s hard to really hold this mode against the sum of the whole as to me it’s always come off as more of a fan-mode than anything truly attached to the character.

Overall Score: 9.5/10 – FansHobby’s Power Baser definitely isn’t perfect. There are some minor niggles like wishing the hip ratchets on both the robot and powered robot modes were a stronger plastic (they work and hold just fine, but there’s something really satisfying and assuring about that strong “click” that the shoulder ratchets give that I wish were present on the hips as well) and more articulated hands (again an instance where they’re “fine” in terms of general look and functionality, but on the powered robot with the hands being so much larger that lack of individual finger articulation comes off equivalent to a Masterpiece-scaled toy having Classics-scaled articulation; I just naturally expect a bit more.) Even with those nitpicks, this piece is about the most fun I’ve had with a 3rd-Party Transformers figure in some time. FansHobby has really managed to give us a great-looking, solidly-built, and extra-cirricularly articulated (get your obari on) piece that manages to be not only a lot of fun to play with in every mode (even the base-mode is fun albeit convuluted,) but actually fun to take between each mode. I’ve “liked” most of FansHobby’s stuff to this point, but I LOVE Power Baser and even though it may not be for everyone, it’s the Masterpiece-scaled “Power Master” Optimus Prime for me. If it’s not obvious, this gets a helluva’ recommendation from me.

Check out the gallery below and if you fancy one of your own, check out The Chosen Prime, TFSource, or AgesThreeAndUp for $200 and order yours.

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser

Toy Review: FansHobby MB-06 Power Baser FansHobby quite possibly just threw a hail-mary pass for my 3rd-Party Transformer figure of the year with MB-06 Power Baser!