#koa prediction post

[emilystheories]

I think you have some great theories but some require so much explanation to make it work and are buried in references and outside sources, we almost get away from what we know - SJM makes whatever lore she pulls from her own. Some are so complex and very specific to the way you analyze, we can't possibly expect SJM to have been on the same wavelength as you. Considering how often SJM retcons and contradicts herself in interviews, I just don't think she's putting in as much work as some fans do with some theories. Yes, she has plot twists and turns, but they aren't overly layered and she's not the best as creating two demensional villains either. She's also made some questionable writing decisions that so many fans never could've predicted. Like, I remember all the wild theories for KOA & ACOSF and none were remotely close to what she planned in terms of plot development aside from the obvious, Nessian as endgame. I think at best, the theories that do come to fruition are the simple ones even causal readers can pick up. I think you have some creative ideas, but I think we are expecting too much from SJM.I think she's a simple gal, who loves writing romance. Will you be disappointed if none of your theories come to be true? If none come true, I hope it doesn't stop you from expressing your thought and blogging, there's so many other fandoms who would appreciate you in their corner.

This is a valid point, so thank you for bringing it up!

I think first and foremost, it goes without saying that most SJM fan theories will (likely) be wrong in some capacity - my own included. I am definitely aware of this, which is why I am intentional with my wording (ie. I will never say "I figured it out!", or try and present my theories as canon facts). For me personally, theorising isn't about trying to be "right" (as that's pretty much impossible); instead, it's about pondering all the different possibilities that SJM could take in future books, and then sharing these possibilities within a community.

As for expecting too much from SJM - I am undecided. I do see where you are coming from, and I especially agree with KOA; a perfect example of this was Elide's character - SJM hinted several times that Elide had Blackbeak blood (which spurred on the creation of many incredible theories), but then it ultimately lead to nothing...? However, I also know that Merrill's hypothesis in ACOSF (about the 11 different dimensions, or as many as 26) is a direct reference to String Theory - and then the Harp, with the 26 strings, represents this. To me, this does indeed suggest that SJM is thinking about her worlds (and how they interact) beyond the surface level.

This is also why I often reference outside sources in my theories (such as mythology or folklore), because to me it is clear that SJM derives so much inspiration from these same sources. For example, Helion appears to be named after "Helios" (Greek god of the sun), and Thesan appears to be named after "Thesan" (Etruscan goddess of dawn). Knowing that SJM is connecting her characters in this way lends itself to questioning the other remaining characters - for example, why is Hunt named after Orion; a famous hunter in Greek mythology? Why is Mor named after The Morrigan; a famous war goddess/shapeshifter/banshee in Celtic mythology? Does it mean something? (Or, are you right, and SJM is just choosing names at random?)

So, I guess I can admit that I do have high expectations of SJM going forward, and that my theories reflect that. However, if SJM does indeed opt for more "basic" storylines in her future books (ie. much less of a crossover than we are anticipating), then it wouldn't be the first time that my theories have failed to account for that. In the past, I have actually posted theories for two well known TV/book series, and both went "viral" within those respective fandoms (I still remember when Reese Witherspoon posted a news article about my theory to her instagram story lmao). However, both times, the author went for a much more "obvious" ending, and as a result, I was on the receiving end of fandom backlash (that my thoughts were too "outlandish," or that my expectations were too high).

But, that's still part of the fun. Honestly, my one true goal is to write my own fantasy series - that way, I am free to include as many "outlandish" twists, turns, and ideas as I wish !! :)

[reneereadskingdomofash]

The KoA Prediction Post - MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS BELOW CUT - I JUST DONT KNOW. *shrug*

My book is here, I haven’t even opened it for fear that even the map could spoil me - and believe me, that is incredibly hard for me if you have seen my Erilea post. 

So Below the cut I’m going to put some of my predictions for Kingdom of Ash. I don’t want to be too specific, and this isn’t a theory post - the boat has sailed on those due to no time left to write them. (just finished writing it and it got long... whoops)

Please do not read if you don’t want my predictions. 

I have avoided all spoiled content and even excerpts released by bloomsbury/+partners. 

I have only read the acotar/tog series before this... a few times tho ;). 

I have only skimmed koa quotes on those lovely blue backgrounds and tried not to freak out about them - or look too deeply because I viewed those as spoilers of a kind.

so here we go...

KOA PREDICTIONS - IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

Character Predictions:

1. Yrene is a witch

2. Elorcan will be ok

3. Chaol will use his cane in a fight

4. Yrene has royal blood - light of Ellwye was Nehemia’s title, but what if it belonged to another?

5. Elena lied to the gods when she promised the sacrifice of Mala’s heir because Gavin tasted her lies - reveal what she will do instead. Gavin promised something to the Sin eater god - cant remember if thats just theory or confirmed anymore.

6. Elide is revealed to be descendant of Rhiannon and maybe... maybe... Brannon’s line. A hidden child from a relationship that grew after Mala’s sacrifice and once Elena was laid to rest, So Elena would have no knowledge - I remember that hand brushing Brannon’s cheek in that tomb.

7. Evangaline is super important - either as a child for Rowaelin when they cannot have their own or to bring hope to Terrasen. I’m always suspicious of children being given major roles in an otherwise “adult/post18yrold” world (but that means the likelyhood of Lysandra dying is high and that hurts - a lot!! so I don’t want to think of it too much).

8. I’m not predicting deaths - i’m not ready.

9. The Bluebloods side with Manon. 

10. Dorian/The King of Ardarlan has/had witch blood

11. Chaol’s family keep/heritage is about fighting darkness seeping through from the whitefangs and ferrian gap and will be important. 

12. Darrow has to die. He’s too much like the “steward of Gondor” in Lord of the Rings and pisses me off. So he can just die. 

13. Maeve is not going to die. thats my gut telling me that.

Storyline Predictions

1. There will be a volcanic eruption that will seal ancient gateways that used to be used bring things from other worlds into Erliea. - rising up from the core of Erilea and spreading into all the forgotten places in the world.  

2. There will be a lake that acts as a traveling mirror - aka the silver lake. Maybe to another realm as Nesryn saw shadows in the lake on the southern continent, and that just seems way to convenient OR to another continent or place as a means of escape OR for armies to travel through.

3. The Wyrd gate will be in the Ferrian Gap/Omega... though 

“RIFT // HOLD” is so obvious. it could easily be there too. 

4. Aelin will not be able to save the day alone

. - joining of the 12 scions who each have a god guiding them - they will all be needed at some point, sacrifice for the endgame is possible or a special skill. its yet to be seen. 

5. Yrene is taking the place Nehemia thought was hers. The light of Ellwye.

... Traveling Mirror in EOS - 

“Keys and gates and locks—portals and pits and prophecies.” EOS 

She is going to deal with the “pits” of despair within everyone, saving the creatures infected by the Valg. (A discussion between Dorian and Manon in Eos about what will happen to the witches is still at the forefront of my mind - what will happen to All the valg creatures who have been a part of Erilea for millennia? I think Yrene will take away the “parasitic valg” and try to heal those she can, but it will be more about people learning to accept the good with the bad. Looking at ourselves and knowing that we are more than just good are evil. That to find a soul mate they see everything of us, the good the bad the ugly and accept it. That we need to accept it in ourselves to accept it in others. And that we all have the potential to be consumed by this darkness, but only if we let it. (Woah that got philosophical) 

“Yrene said quietly, “The darkness belongs to you. To shape as you will. To give it power or render it harmless.”  TOD

“This pit. The bottom of the descent. The hollow hell beneath the roots of a mountain. Here, where all was locked and buried. Here, where all had come to take root. The empty foundation, mined and hacked apart, crumbled away into nothing but this pit. Nothing.” - TOD

6. Confirmation that ACOTAR and TOG are linked closer than We know. Either Geography will match up after a volcanic eruption or a revel will ocurr eg we see it through the wryd gate. There are just tooooo many similarities. 

- I’m still so torn. Either Aelin pours the light into the Afterworld through the Wryd gate and spreads life and renewal into a dark cold world. aka prythian. And she sends some people/creatures there too.

- Or they die and go there too. which hurts but ok. 

- Or Erliea is Prythian and geography changes over time and magic changes after Aelin makes the cauldron.

- Aelin makes the cauldron as a “lock” to hold the wyrd keys. and uses manon’s iron to do it. Iron can negate the magics effects, hold it, contain it. And manon’s iron is already combining the magic from fae and valg together. so ... yea... I have thoughts.  

7. The lock/eye of elena/three-faced goddess. is the “key” to forging the lock, the circles telling them who they need, whose power to combine and it needs the power of different people to bind together. raw power + 3/4 women.  

8. Maeve will travel as far from the Wyrd Gate as possible. She doesn’t want it used. So Maeve will probably be in Donarelle or the Black Dunes - Coz I still think Maeve traveled around the world a bit and has come cults working for her, so she can do that. (I wrote a poem a long time ago about Maeve=Lani=Vanth=Styrga if you want to see my thought process).

9. Wolves - All wolves are loyal to Aelin. Just like healers who shape shift into owls were loyal to Silba. Its a clue. Anyone who isn't described as wolflike I would be suspicious of. Spider-like = bad guy. aka Maeve.

10. Arthril = stuck next to maeve as an owl. hes in owl form. unable to change. fleed when Maeve got the golden ring from aelin in hof. suspicious. 

11. Erawan is contained again in black stone, because Aelin doesn't want him finding a way back. Contained in Erilea on a mountain or Contained in the Afterworld - yet to be seen.. though that stone monolith on Ramiel in ACOFAS is not giving me the best feeling. 

12. Maeve is Styrga and is contained not destroyed. I dont think maeve is gonna die - She is kept in place, magic depleted. the ancient forest watching over her. Oakwald forest - that alive forest with sentience, keeps her contained. she is near the Sacred mountain in ACOTAR because this is the Sacred mountain that Aelin either pours the cauldron onto or that she erupts from. (depending on if Prythian is in the afterworld or Erilea). 

13. Judging by Maps - Morath seems a likely location for a volcanic eruption. the whole bottom of Erilea has volcanic activity - black sands, volcanic rock in the dead islands, simmering water in Ellwye and a catastrophic event that made the land collapse - aka some geographical phenomenon. though in Tower of Dawn Chaol mentions hot springs near Anneille so I guess there is volcanic activity up there too, so it could equally be an eruption at the Omega or near the Omega. Or both. Y i k e s.   

13. Lorcan and Aelin will need to work together - darkness and light. and lorcan wont be happy about it. there has to be a light and dark link - but these two having such animosity towards eachother makes me think it might be them.

OK I’M GOING TO STOP THERE BECAUSE I JUST WANT TO READ THIS DAMN BOOK. AND ILL NEVER STOP AND IT IS ALREADY TURNING INTO A DAMN THEORY POST.

Honestly I have a whole discord for my theory quotes / thoughts right now. lol non-published ones. and i also bla bla my thoughts all through this. so like. hahaha. lets get into this.  

[loquaciousquark]

return of the last qt reread

Previous posts here, here, here, and here.

Just finished the QT release trivia party and launch party, and as of this very moment in time I have the book on my iPad ready to be read, but Jade says I have to finish this post first. She’s right, of course, as always, but never in my life have I been called a patient person, and the last few days have been rough enough I can’t stand the idea of delaying gratification a moment more.

But that would mean postponing Kamet, one of my favorite characters in the series, and that can’t be done, can it? No, no, it can’t.

I’ve obviously had a lot of thoughts about how a slave gains personhood over the years, and one thing I loved that MWT talked about at the launch party tonight was how she originally tried to write TaT in 3rd person before realizing it had to all go back and be strictly from Kamet’s perspective, because to do otherwise made him an object to which the plot happened, rather than any kind of agent in his own destiny. He has so far to go here, not just in distance but in mental autonomy, and I love getting to see every step of it. We see him thrall to Nahuseresh, nursing his beating and considering how best to navigate his moods; we see him possessive and anxious over his slave chain, despite his belief that Nahuseresh is dead; we see his slow, ponderous growth of respect for the Attolian and the king he serves. Some of it comes in lightning strikes of realization (the slave camp, the fights with the Nasreen & the miller, the last chance to leave after Godekker); most of it is so careful and unconscious, little step by little step, that we hardly realize it’s happened until it’s over.

Of course Kamet will stay with Costis. Of course Kamet will remember the beautiful things of Attolia. Of course Kamet will serve Eugenides by revealing his old master’s secrets to him, willingly and without grudge. But then you go back to the first chapter and watch his dealings with Laela, with Rakra and his accounts, and it is almost a wholly different person. Every step is so hard-earned and hard-won, not just in terms of personhood but in terms of his relationship with Costis, that it’s all the more precious when he finally calls him by his name (in the exact opposite of the successful return Costis’d hoped for, I think).

And of course, any book that lets us spend more time with Costis is a boon to our hearts. I don’t remember the first time I realized it was Costis the first time I read it, but I think it was pretty early (a mark of MWT’s consistency in characterization if nothing else), and this time, unlike the first time I read KoA, I really got to enjoy sitting back and watching the POV character come to grips with a partner who constantly confounded his expectations. I love that Costis is the one Gen truss with the mission and his sea. I love that Costis wins Kamet over not because he means to, but because he can’t help it. I love that Costis tins a pot for a random citizen for food, because why not?? Why not!! Let the man tin pots and sing while he works!!

I could also spend another several paragraphs on the lyrical Medean mythos revealed in this book, too, but I will settle for marveling into the infinity at what a chameleon MWT can be in this craftsmanship. It’s one thing to talk about Hespira and Meredite and Horreon, pulling on those Grecian-style myths we already know; but to slide so effortlessly into the these song-like Medean tales wholly unlike anything we’ve read so far is absolutely astounding. Ennikar and Immakuk are spectacular, the way they interact with the world is spectacular, and that Immakuk the wise Immakuk greatly wise cloaked in wisdom basically introduces himself to Kamet by going, “Hey Kamet, I’m, uh, I’m, uh, a wine trader, yeah! And you should follow me right now right this way, yep, that’s it that’s the story, come on buddy!!” makes me cackle every single time. Let the gods be real! Let the gods be friends with each other! Give me Ennikar making eyes at Hephestia from across the room and winking at one of the river goddesses and let’s see what happens.

Comparatively speaking, we spend very little time with Gen & Attolia in this book compared to the rest. It’s a footnote, almost, to the grand country-spanning adventure we’ve just had; and yet the Attolia work here is some of my favorite in the series. Now we see Gen come into his own at last, the respect he’s garnered from his people and his country, and even occasionally from those outside it (the Braelings, the hints of interactions with the allied powers). The scene in the garden with Irene (the river knows its time) is one of the softest and gentlest--and most painful--in the series, and it makes my heart tremble to think how easily a lesser author might have nixed it for something more bombastic.

I love this book. I love everything about it, and the new characters and myths and gods it gives us, and the stage it sets for this final chapter. Jade was right; I needed to finish this post before I started it. But there it is on the iPad, its statistics intro taunting me with an average reading time of six hours and four minutes, and I can’t help but see that as a challenge.

I’ll jot down some predictions in another post, and we’ll see how I do. Thanks to everyone who’s read along! <3

[moononastring]

ok so i wanted to do a compilation of the ships i like/will be endgame:

chaol/nesryn (hopefully they get married and have babies.... i know I didn’t rlly like them but now i kinda do 🥺)

Aedion/Lysandra: ok lemme say it, it is totally a gut instinct? Both my disaster bisexuals in a relationship? yes pls? But there’s like..... no textual evidente whatsoever that they are going to be a couple (which ALLEGEDLY is my type of pairing).

Elide/lorcan:there’s no explanation, i just projected myself onto elide and now i want for her what i want for myself: big man that wants to love me take care of me (can we even fit lorcan in this description? Lol i think i’m delusional). So: them.

manon/dorian and rowan/aelin I alread know are endgame, so.... no predictions I already know (duh)

if i think of more i’ll say itt 🧃

Chaol and Nesryn....you will see their journey together in TOD and it’s going to be gREATTTTTTT. I finished TOD the other day and I’m still on a high but will read two books before I get to KOA because...it will hurt so good haha.

Aedion and Lysandra...EOS will give you some more insight into how they are and how they navigate being part of Aelin’s group together hehehehehehehehe.

Elide and Lorcan...just....hit....all my favorite tropes. YOU WILL SEE HAHA.

I look forward to your thoughts as you lose your mind in EOS 😌 I reread the book and all my stress was still there even when I knew what would happen HAHA. It’s so much worse reading when you know. 

Keep me posted! 

[five-wow]

i watched 10.09! you know how this goes, live recorded rambles under the cut

JUNIOR. junior’s fumbly support for steve? it’s THE SWEETEST.

also just. i’m pretty sure steve hasn’t had a thanksgiving that doris was present for in at least six or seven years, potentially more something like twenty-five (was doris present for thanksgiving that one time she stayed on oahu for a bit? i don’t remember), but either way, not having her there is not going to be a new thing. still extremely sweet and thoughtful of junior, though, because having a lot of family over could of course still make the loss feel worse.

sjdfkdjk danny’s entrance is a whole thing (of beauty) BUT ALSO. they’re talking about steve having “an extra room”, as in one, and that confuses me somewhat because how did that work when the mcgarretts were still a happy little family (or pretending to be one) with a mom, a dad and two kids? did steve and mary share a room? and that time when aunt deb and mary (and joan) were all in oahu at the same time, weren’t they all staying with steve? I ALWAYS THOUGHT STEVE HAD TWO SPARE BEDROOMS, is what i’m saying, and my entire worldview (of steve’s house) is being proven wrong.

okay sooooo. they establish that a) steve has one spare bedroom, b) junior is staying in it and c) danny can’t have the couch because it’s eddie’s, and then steve says “of course you’re welcome to stay in my house”. so. the bed (steve’s, steve’s bed) is big enough for the two of them? is that what i’m hearing here? because it sounds like that’s what i’m hearing here.

the thieves stole a tree! i LOVE that little number someone put on the trunk, fjdkfd. “ah, a lack of tree. this is evidence.”

and then junior says “my parents’ house” and another thing i thought i knew is suddenly not true because i always sort of assumed his parents were seperated? idk, maybe that was a misconception on my part, but we’ve seen him with his dad and i thought they kind of discussed his mom like she was living somewhere else? for a while i even thought she was dead, but i had figured out that wasn’t true before just now, at least. (would’ve made for an interesting story too, though, i he had gotten a call from his mother’s ghost.)

JUNIOR’S MOTHER. on screen!!! she is definitely very much not dead, then, omg. let’s put a tiny yellow evidence marker on her, too.

junior and tani are investigating the robbery at junior’s parents’ house, lou and quinn were following leads on the koa wood case, and steve and danny were... having a pleasantly relaxed lunch together? that’s my headcanon now, and nobody can tell me i’m wrong.

this storyline, which leads to tani and junior having super heavy conversations about addiction and the helplessness of people around the addicted person? god, it’s good.

so danny brings steve coffee and steve says that’s “highly suspicious behavior” and then says that danny is still not getting the guest room but also that danny should do him a favor and take it easy on the caffeine because he gets all “jittery and stupid” when he drinks too much coffee and LISTEN, i get that it’s probably not what’s meant here, but i’m taking this as “no, you can’t have the guest room because junior is staying there, so we’ll have to share a bed and i can’t sleep if you keep turning over and over because you can’t sleep, so don’t drink too much coffee, please”.

you know, as much as i love tani and junior working together and the fact that junior is getting this deep storyline, i also can’t stop thinking that it’s a really bad idea to let junior work a case that’s obviously so emotional and complicated for him. tani asking him to hold on and checking if he’s okay is neat, but to be honest, he probably shouldn’t be doing this in the first place, gosh.

i paused on the letter junior finds in the box and i think it’s adressed to junior’s dad and it says “your boy is not only a sterling soldier but more importantly he is an exemplary human being” and !!!!!! yes

junior and his emotionally distant father trying their hardest to have a relationship despite all their issues and painful history!! they made me cry!! and then that hug!!!!

oh. OHO. quinn to danny: “is she your ex? because i keep getting conflicting reports.” THANK YOU, QUINN. THAT’S WHAT I WAS WONDERING and literally just wrote a longish tumblr post about in which i also jokingly predicted that the next episode would probably bring the issue up now that i did that, and apparently that was true, fdjfkd. but GOOD. they SHOULD mention it.

so. sooooooo. rachel is danny’s ex but they’re trying to maybe work things out but they’ve been doing that for months by this point, if the timeline is to be trusted at all, and they haven’t worked it out enough to be having thanksgiving together or for danny to stay at rachel’s place when his house has mold, so that means the answer to quinn’s “how’s that going?” is “badly”. AN ANSWER. FINALLY.

junior taking his parents to the thanksgiving party at steve’s and steve talking junior up to his parents is EXACTLY the kind of content i want in my h50. and then tani shows up with the jewellry that was stolen from junior’s mom! she’s building up a lot of Good Daughter-In-Law credit in advance, oh my gosh.

junior!!! telling tani!!! how important she is to him!!! and how much he appreciates her!!! is ALSO THE EXACT CONTENT I WANT. THIS. IS SO GOOD

also: “but you- have been the constant in my life” is like, god, the height of romance. i love them. i love them so much.

and then junior implies that their tentative dating didn’t go anywhere because he’s been so occupied with the stuff with his dad but that he wants to change that and tani says that sounds good and !!! yes. i love them.

i am YELLING. steve tells lou straight out that he KNOWS that there’s no mold in danny’s house and that danny just turned up and went “i’m staying with you now” despite how full the house is BECAUSE HE’S WORRIED ABOUT STEVE.

and it ends with steve playing some football anyway even though he said he wasn’t going to this year, ahhh. that is so very good.

final verdict: the “also, danny moves in with mcgarrett” from the episode description was kind of very far in the background, but what we did get DID NOT DISAPPOINT. also, the way this ended definitely leaves potential for danny to still be living with steve in the next episode? he probably won’t be, but a viewer can hope. either way, this was a VERY GOOD episode, especially on the tani and junior front, and i love it for that, ahhhhh.

[mariantoina]

thoughts on t*sp

look. at first i told myself that i wasn’t gonna watch this show, and then the very next day it got leaked so i was like “you know what? im gonna watch it anyway!” and thats the worst decision that ive ever made in my life because this show was... bad. could it have been worse? definitely, given the fact that it was an emma frost show based on a philippa gregory book. but this was still terrible enough for me to type this post up, so here we go!

i can guarantee you that you’ll have a more fun time reading this post than you will watching TSP. this is under a read more because.. whew.. theres a lot.

THE CASTING

first and foremost: the actress playing KOA cannot act. she’s really pretty, granted, but her acting was genuinely terrible. like.. i cringed almost every time there was a scene terrible. not only was her spanish accent bad but she felt so.. stiff, i guess would be a good word, whenever she said something. and that didn’t do anything to help the fact that she has a bad case of ScarJo Fever™ (if you don’t know what that is: it’s when an actor/actress only makes the same three facial expressions) people need to stop hiring actresses and actors just because they’re attractive and actually make sure that they can act. at this point, i am Begging!

the actor playing harry was actually good though, at least in my opinion. he did his best with what he was given and i really admire that! you can tell that he was putting a lot of effort into it, even though the way that they wrote him was really out of character for that period of his life (see: this post)

h7′s actor was good in the scenes that he was in, but the way that they treated h7 was so.. weird? they didn’t make him as creepy as i thought that they were going to when i first found out they were making an adaptation of TCP, but there was still this lowkey creepy vibe that he had going on.. i honestly dont know how to explain it, but it was there. also he slapped the shit out of harry in a scene??? that was messy as HELL

the actress for margaret beaufort was good, but there were some scenes that just had me like.. oh? on god? (most notably the death scene, but i’ll get into that hot mess later) you could tell that she was trying hard, even if they made MB’s character arc terrible.

the actors that played lina and her love interest were amazing, though. they worked with what they had and i really liked what they did with them even though the writing was shit. the scene with their wedding was adorable and really well acted!

angus imrie (arthur) was good, too! but the wig that they gave him? atrocious. i’m going to see it in my nightmares. georgie henley was really good in the scenes that we saw her in as meg tudor, but most of the scenes she was in weren’t that good and that’s wack :’)

i don’t know the name of the actress that played juana of castile in the episode she was in, but i liked her acting, too.. even though the writing for her was kind of cringy.

before i end this section i should let it be known that i was more attached to juana, meg and arthur in the few episodes they were in than i was to KOA during the entire show. it’s so tragic like. how are you going to cast a lead actress that cant act?? Hello???

before i get into the issues with the writing and creative direction i have with the show, i just wanna say: the pacing of the show was terrible and really, really difficult to follow. the entirety of the second episode, which followed from their KOA/arthur marriage to arthur’s death, probably had the worst pacing. it felt like only a few weeks had passed in the show’s time, when it was supposed to be what? six months? and there was so indication of a timeskip between episode 6 and episode 7, even though juana was still in england at the end of episode 6 and h7 died about 10 minutes into episode 7? it’s so tragic.

okay, moving on!

THE CREATIVE DIRECTION

look. i get that it’s a show and of course there’s going to be historical license but... GOD this show went above and beyond.

there’s so much i want to say here, but the most important one that i have an issue with is the shit that they did with lina’s character. erasing the fact that she was a slave owned by ferdinand and isabella and then later given to KOA was absolutely terrible. and then not only did they do that AND make her KOA’s most loyal lady-in-waiting, but they erased the fact that she was forced to convert to christianity, forced to stop using her birth name and instead having to use the name of her new owner in the name of #StrongFemaleFriendships. disgusting!

EF: lina is KOA’s most faithful servant and they have a strong female friendship!! hashtag woke!! hashtag feminism!! my black ass:

honestly it gets even worse because KOA and lina’s “central female friendship” was barely even there. lina had more scenes with rosa, one of KOA’s other ladies-in-waiting, than she did with KOA. not to mention that KOA was manipulative to lina and kept saying stuff like “you owe me service” or stuff along those lines? it was so shitty. lina sweetie im so sorry that this ugly ass bitch would even try you

the next big thing that i had a problem with was the fact that they aged up harry, when in reality he was about 11 years old when KOA first came to england. like, i can’t really go that much into it because even thinking about the fact that they aged him up to make him Arthur’s Hotter, All-Around-Better Brother™ when he was fucking 11 makes me kinda sick but. ughh it was terrible.

not to mention the fact that they villainized margaret beaufort because of course they did. apparently you cant be a middle aged woman without being villainized?? especially not in an emma frost show. but the way that they villainized her was so ugly. and the fact that they attributed shit like edmund dudley’s execution to her when it happened an entire year after she died? Hello????

the way that she just took over and declared herself regent when h7 was in mourning for elizabeth of york and kicked KOA out of the palace + the way she tried to threaten margaret pole & lina into revealing that KOA wasn’t a virgin.. shgkhhgsfhgkshjbjsjb that shit was so fucking messy its like they tried to make her a fusion of mother gothel from tangled and ursula from the little mermaid

the way that they made EoY dislike KOA was so weird? and the way that both her and margaret beaufort assaulted her by kissing and groping her respectively was weird and definitely uncalled for.

this is a minor one in the gist of some of the other things but why did they make EoY’s last daughter a stillborn child? someone correct me if i’m wrong, but didn’t she live for about a week before she died? but then again, i remember that she named their daughter after KOA, so they probably did that to avoid the fact because they made EoY hate her. messy

arthur’s wig counts as a creative decision right? well whoever gave him that wig needs to be fired. PERIOD

arthur’s wig:

me:

whoever did meg tudor’s costumes also needs to be fired tbfh they were so bad. what did she ever do to yall

THE WRITING

i guess that writing can go into the creative direction category as well, but there were so many problems with the writing that it deserves its own category

KOA was so terrible in this. between her manipulating harry and lina, and the fact that she kept defending the fact that isabella abused juana because “our mother was a queen, a warrior” was ugly! “tO bE qUeEn oF eNgLaNd iS mY dEsTiNy” girl if you don’t shut ya mouth catching these hands is gonna be your destiny

they also made KOA put all of her faith in the fact that she was related to queens? like, every time juana said she couldn’t do something because her husband + ferdinand are assholes, or every time isabella was brought up she kept being like “but you’re/she’s a queen!” it was irritating

all of the predictions about the great matter/KOA not being able to give harry a son were weird. i would have been fine if it had only been like.. one time, because sometimes foreshadowing can be good, but it was brought up every 5 seconds and at the most random times. like when EoY was literally dying in childbirth?? Hello????? god are you there??

AND THE FACT THAT EOY STRAIGHT UP WENT TO HELL AND SAW HER BROTHER GETTING EXECUTED THEN CAME BACK. HELLO??

then when margaret beaufort was about to die and she saw ghosts? and jasper tudor showed up to take her to hell i guess? honestly i didnt know what the fuck was going on but that shit was so fucking messy and wild. i have to laugh

also: i mentioned this earlier but all of those scenes where harry was ranting and raging.. EF really saw the name “henry viii” and floored it with that huh

they also dumbed harry down imho.. Wack!

juana seducing harry was a hot ass mess in its own right, but honestly? juana and harry had more chemistry in that one minute scene than KOA and harry had in the entire show

we were not even 10 minutes into the pilot and they were already trying to portray isabella as a #WokeFeministQueen. how, you might ask? why, by showing her leading a group of men to kill black muslims for their faith, of course! didn’t you know that being racist and islamophobic is hip and feminist when you’re a queen?

like i get that its from KOA’s point of view but in the opening monologue of the pilot they mentioned that isabella overthrew the moors like it was a #Feminist thing to do and not a part of her orchestrating massacres and contributing to genocide? @ EF: on GOD??

tbh? shocked that KKKristopher KKKolonizer wasn’t mentioned in a positive light based on how much they tried to glorify isabella. like what catholic monarchs stan was allowed to work on this show with EF and P. Gregory?? hello????

i’m totally fine with the whole plot point about katherine lying about her virginity, since we’ll probably never know the truth about whether or not she and arthur consummated their marriage, but it was poorly executed in both the writing and in CH’s acting. i could tell that she was lying and so did.. almost everyone, really.

the scene where they were about to.. i guess lynch lina’s love interest for “stealing” made me really uncomfortable. i dont even know how to explain it

h7′s death scene.... this is all i have to say about it

margaret beaufort ordering the execution of edmund dudley was shitty for a lot of reasons but honestly him screaming “fuck you all to hell” was hilarious

the ending scene of episode 7 where they were in the chapel and henry asked KOA if she was still a virgin was bad writing and CH’s acting made it even worse. cant even lie convincingly smh

margaret pole’s plotline was so confusing.. i barely knew wtf was going on with her the entire show? it all felt so rushed and forced. it was weird

EoY and h7 had some cute scenes together though. and that was like.. one of the shows only real redeeming qualities

that’s about it for this post about TSP! my overall rating for it is a 0.5/10. it was super shitty, but i liked arthur, juana and meg tudor so it gets a 0.5 instead of a plain 0. and apparently theres one episode left too.. DREADING it. anyways: emma frost absolutely failed in her goal to be like “its not all about anne boleyn!” because if anything this show made me think about how claire foy and natalie dormer were both robbed of awards so.. if reading this post gave you hives? go watch wolf hall or the tudors for their great performances!

thanks for reading! :)

[rhysand-vs-fenrys]

5,19?

Thank you for the ask!

5. Think back to your first read of ToG. Did anything NOT happen in the series that you really wanted to happen?

Nah. See, after I read ACOTAR/MAF I joined the tumblr fandom (WAR hadn’t come out yet), and every now and then I’d see ToG stuff in the tags because of sloppy tag-whores (this is a peeve, can you tell?).

I knew I was going to read ToG, but did my best to ignore the posts until I’d caught up with the series. But as of reading the first book, ToG, here is my understanding of what the series would be (up through EoS):

Celaena dies or something, because the story actually follows Aelin, who is a fae princess that was trapped in Elk form by an evil witch and taken to some far away land. Her lover Lysander was in sea-monster form looking for her when the King of Adarlan stole magic and he was trapped like that for 300 years. He’s prince of some windy kingdom with a lot of hawks.

So... I held onto the belief that was the series until like... the end of CoM? My predictions after reading TOG were so off the mark it’s not even funny.

19. If I could make one major plot change to each series, what would it be?

ACOTAR: I’d make Elain Tamlin’s mate. I *love* Elucien, don’t get me wrong, but this is more about Feyre and Nesta’s reaction to that happening (and also Elain- as we’ve seen so far- is kind of Tamlin’s ideal woman. Her hobbies include doing whatever she’s told and gardening).

Throne of Glass: More Fenrys earlier on, Nehemia doesn’t die, cut Vaughan and Mort from the series entirely, and drastically reduce the page-time of Nox (basically cut him from KoA), Arobynn, all the various Ashryver cousins, all the various Whitethorn cousins, and like erase Aedion’s whole “Northern rebel” QoS sub-plot (oh, and most of the Witch stuff). Just trim the character list down a bit, basically.

[artemismareaelin]

So. Kingdom of Ash.

*screaming and crying* AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

KoA gave me all the feels, and now I am suffering from the worst book hangover ever. So I’m going to scream into the abyss we call Tumblr and maybe someone will be interested. Obviously there are spoilers, and I’ll try to keep it as chronological as possible.

So the first part was just tears. So much crying. Why. WHy aLL ThE sUFfeRINg? Aelin is so strong. I mean, that’s the reason I love her, but Kingdom of Ash just made me love her even more. The scariest part for me was when Cairn almost broke her spine, because she was just so close to that line and I NEED HER TO BE OKAY. The part when Connall died and they made Aelin kneel in the glass was simultaneously awful and awesome. When she flipped Maeve off, I was just AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. There are going to be a lot of ‘AHHH��s in this post. I also panicked a lot when Maeve threatened to get the collars, because from there things would have just spiraled downwards. Obviously I was worried when Cairn melted her hands, as well, because how tragic would it be if she was afraid of her own hands?

Aedion is such a jerk to Lysandra during all this. I mean, I love him, but seriously, man. She was doing the right thing by her queen and her country. Honestly, the feminism in this book was just beautiful.

And then Aelin escaped and it was just FLUFF FLUFF FLUFF. It was so heart-wrenching when she was screaming at them to take the irons off. Partly because I don’t think we’ve ever seen Aelin like that. She was so far gone after that it was just more sadness. But Rowan was so nice and gentle (I mean, Rowan? Nice? Never thought that would happen) and it was so CUUUUUUUUTE. Personally, I love the relationship Fenrys and Aelin built up. I loved having so much of the cadre in this book. Cairn’s death was awesome. I know a lot of people predicted that he would die like that, and honestly I’m so glad he did. I sort of wish Aelin got that kill, but I’m also glad Rowan did. There’s so much to talk about! I’m still at the very beginning!

Manorian. *sighs*. Manon, we all know you have feelings. It’s no secret. Just tell Dorian you care, and this would all be so much easier.

Now Elorcan. SO BEAUTIFUL. Again with the feminism, I’m so glad Elide put her Queen above her significant other, but I’m equally glad she forgave Lorcan in the end.

I loved the rings Aelin got herself and Rowan. It was so symbolic to their relationship and her healing, that she trusts him that much and wants them to keep some human traditions, which is symbolic to her battle with being human versus fae. I also love that Aelin has a green one and Rowan has a red one. :).

Lysaedion again. When Lysandra nearly died, and Aedion realised how wrong he was, I thought I wanted them to get back together and then Lysandra yelled at him and I was like YAS QUEEN. I DIDN’T KNOW I WANTED THIS UNTIL IT HAPPENED. So yeah, I’m glad she held her ground and told him that she couldn’t be treated like that and take him back so easily. Girl power.

OHMYGODS I HAVENT MENTIONED CHAOLRENE AND THEIR BABY YET. OHMYGODS. SO CUUUTE. SHIIIIIP. So many people turned up in this book, and everything just came together. I’m a little disappointed Nox didn’t have a bigger role, but I appreciate that he was in it. And Ren and Darrow and Falkan and all these minor characters where involved.

Not to mention Nesryn and Sartaq. They didn’t get much mention, but I liked the internal battle Nesryn had between her love for Sartaq and the power she doesn’t want.

Evangeline was so cute and so brave. I love her so much. I love that someone so young had such a big role in the war, and that she melted the heart of even Darrow.

I have to write about when Aelin reunited with everyone, starting with Chaol and his crew. I’m sososo glad that Chaol and Aelin had salvaged their relationship, and she was crying when he started walking and AHHHHHHHH. And everyone was so accepting of Yrene!

The death of Elide’s uncle was so epic and evil. I think Sarah tied all the loose ends really well, including this one. Elide got to move on from the trauma her uncle caused, simultaneously showing Aelin’s skill in awesomeness and manipulation.

When Dorian made that bargain with Maeve. *facepalm*. I’m glad it ended up the way it did, but that was scary. And when he almost killed her, my first instinct was ‘YESSSS. END THIS.’ and my second was ‘NO! THAT’S AELIN’S KILL! GET AWAY!’ More on Maeve’s death later, that was one of my favorite parts. 

When Aelin evaporated that dam. And we all thought she was too scared to, but Aelin would never let her fear get in the way of her people. It was so heart-breaking when Fenrys told Rowan what they did to her and why he thought she wasn’t using her magic. Everyone is just suffering. There is no one that went through the entirety of the book with out pain and loss, and Rowan suffered some of the most emotional pain out of everyone and he was still so supportive of Aelin, and never once crossed the over-protective line. Anyway, when they said Aelin was tunneling her power for THREE MONTHS, I thought back to when Rowan was like ‘It takes me a whole day to reach the bottom of my magic,’ and Aelin was all surprised. 

NOW BACK TO ELORCAN. SHE FREAKING RAN IN THE PATH OF A BREAKING DAM FOR LORCAN. AND HE WAS SAYING ‘LEAVE ME!’ AND I WAS THINKING NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO AND SHE DIDN’T AND SHIIIIIIIIIIIIP. Gods, I’m so glad Aelin saved them.

I wonder what Elide’s going to do about that ankle. I think she’ll get Yrene to fix it. 

Now I’m going to write about the Thirteen and Abraxos. I thought Abraxos was going to die, and I had no idea how connected I was to him! And Manon’s emotions (finally) came out. And then Abraxos was fine, but the Thirteen went back. The definition of loyalty. And Asterin. TEARS. WHYYYYYYY.

Okay, the Lock. When Dorian turned up with the keys, I’m pretty sure Rowan summed up my feelings pretty well. I was thinking ‘I have no reason to hate you, Dorian, but I really hate you right now’ and I was both proud and angry at Aelin. I was all panicky again when they all voted to do it straight away. The moment when Chaol, Dorian and Aelin were all standing at the cross roads to Endovier was so beautiful. Back where it all started. And then Rowan convinced Aelin to do it with Dorian and I was so relieved that she might live, and from there it was just a roller coaster of emotions. We finally found out the King’s name (!!!!!!!!), and then Aelin pushed Dorian out and Rowan felt the bond strain and I felt so sorry for Rowan. I was terrified Aelin was going to die, and Rowan was panicking and Dorian was panicking and AHHHHHHHHH. And then Aelin bargained with them and I was just proud again, and they killed Elena and I was so devastated for her mate. And then Aelin sent all the gods to hell, and I was so happy again, and then she was falling through the worlds and FEYRE IS PREGNANT AND RHYS SAVED HER. RHYS SAVED HER LIFE AND I WAS CRYING SO MUCH AND AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. That scene killed me a little. So many emotions.

Now the war. When Ren’s mate died, it was so so sad because we’re all so desperate for Rowaelin to be together but it doesn’t always happen, and this highlighted that. The cadre was awesome. I LOVED ALL THE FATHER SON RELATIONSHIPS IN THIS BOOK. When Aelin met Chaol’s dad and everyone just kept burning him (metaphorically) it was so awesome. And Gavriel.

Gavriel.

Right when Aedion forgave him. Aedion is such an idiot sometimes. I love him to bits, but man, does he have a temper. It was sososososososo cute when Evangeline wanted Aedion to be her dad or her brother, and that she looks up to him so much. CUUUUUUUUUUUUTE.

Then Aelin was fighting Maeve and Erawan with nothing left, because she would do anything for her people. Maeve was all ‘there are no gods to help you now’ and then Aelin, witty as always-

‘I am a god.’

The most beautiful line. *sighs*.

So Erawan goes off and fights Yrene and everyone and SO PROUD. YRENE IS SO AMAZING.

Back to Maeve. Again, I was scared when she got in Aelin’s head and Rowan, Fenrys and Lorcan were being tortured which we all know is the best way to get Aelin to do what you want. Then, the next awesome quote. Fenrys stabs Maeve and she’s begging (yes! Beg!) Aelin to banish her, just take the sword out. And Aelin says-

‘Then go to hell.’

AHIOHGOSEGNOSGNENO. And kills her.

The coronation, when Aedion swears the blood oath and Rowan and Aelin dance and its all fluffy, and then it keeps getting fluffier and the court is back together and then they have to say goodbye to everyone and then everything is good.

*screaming*.

I haven’t covered the half of it, but I got some of the feels out, so that’s good. I’m so devastated it’s over but so happy there was a happy ending. If you read this far, wow. If not, sorry to make you scroll so far!

[rayonfrozenwings]

Theory post - Chaol and KoA.

DO NOT READ IF YOU DONT WANT MY PREDICTION.DO NOT READ IF YOU DONT WANT ME TO PREDICT DEATH. 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Ok so @Nesta-illyrian mentioned in a theory post that she thought that Chaol might die and that the brotp ties between Chaol and Dorian would be the ones that were severed forever. So I'm going to expand on that. Don't read if you don't want my prediction for Chaol and KoA

Awfully, I think it's possible (I'm sorry Chaol fans - I feel like it will be a good saviour type of death though, we are all gonna cry).

So I'm trying to hold off on Koa predictions to closer to the time and so I have done my re-reading because that always reminds me of stuff. But I'll just throw out some Chaol thoughts (I feel like I've said this before). Written on mobile so forgive me.

So Chaol in nature is a typical lawful good type character, he's going to save the world if that's what needs to be done. He will self sacrifice for his friends and do the best thing for everyone. Yea he had some dark patches where he got moody in qos but he still was doing it all for "the greater good". He will also do anything for Dorian, he already sacrificed himself for the chance to save Dorian so this isn't a stretch.

So Chaol's background and his nature are two contributing factors to his possible death.

The background is a little more interesting, he grew up in Anneille next to the silver lake which I still think is supernatural. Like the witch mirror type supernatural. Like a portal supernatural. Anyway digressing. His family protect Ardarlan from the mountain men of the white fang mountains. His families estate and land holdings are next to the ferrian gap. A gap in the world where the wyvrens came through. A gap in the world that acts as an entrance to a valg world. It would be the perfect location to take a stand if Anneile hasn't already sided with Erawan. And it's totally possible they did side with Erawan because Chaol's dad is a bit of a douche.

So these two points combined would make me think Chaol would be acting as the defender of his homeland and the rest of Ardarlan, commanding an army into the Ferrian gap to defeat the hoards there. Yrene with him bringing her light into the darkness. And when Yrene uses her power to exhaustion then he will fall. And we will all cry.

I'm sorry. Just ignore this theory. He's going to be fine. Totally fine. I can talk myself into believing it right?

[your-dietician]

A deep learning model to predict knee osteoarthritis

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/a-deep-learning-model-to-predict-knee-osteoarthritis/

A deep learning model to predict knee osteoarthritis

Introduction

Knee osteoarthritis (KOA), is a degenerative disorder which is characterized by pathologic alterations in the osteochondral unit, composed of cartilage (hyaline and calcified), meniscus (fibrocartilage), and subchondral bone.1 It is responsible for around 85% of the burden of osteoarthritis.2 In the Taiwanese population, the prevalence of KOA among the elderly population is approximately 37% in individuals over 50 years old.3 Whereas in the US, KOA has been manifested in 12% of adults 65 years old, and in 13% of females and 10% of males 60 years old or older.4–6

Among etiologies, age is one of the prominent risk factors for KOA,7 which may be associated with cumulative exposure to many other risk factors leading to structural deteriorations in the joints. The other indicative pathological factors of KOA include female gender, obesity, and injury.8 Previous studies reported that activities involving frequent kneeling, heavy lifting, and high-impact sports are associated with KOA.9,10 In addition, genetic factors may also contribute the risk of KOA for about 40–80%, which is higher than hand and hip osteoarthritis. Even long-term use of administration of the drug oral N-acetylcysteine (NAC) is associated with a higher risk of KOA.11 However, predicting the risk of KOA is still a challenge, which might be achieved through employing artificial intelligence (AI).

In recent years, machine/deep learning and big medical data have been shown to possess immense potential to offer personalized healthcare by risk prediction to increase prevention efficacy and cost effectiveness.12–16 Machine/deep learning is an extension of classic statistical methodology that manages high-dimensional data such as images and large-scale electronic medical records (EMRs). The convolutional neural network (CNN), a type of deep learning method, can analyze general and highly variable tasks represented in imaging data. A very commonly employed deep learning architecture, ie CNN can conduct key computational tasks, like object recognition, image segmentation, and image classification.17 CNN is comprised of building blocks like filters, which can extract the relevant characteristics from the sequential input data via convolution operation. Furthermore, CNN could capture spatial characteristics of an image and accurately identify the object and its location with respect to other objects in the image. The other artificial neural network (ANN) deep learning method is composed on three layers including input, hidden, and output. ANNs are highly interconnected computer processors (neurons), which can perform parallel computations during data processing and knowledge representation.18 ANNs enable learning of modeling of complex nonlinear relationships between input and output.

Notably, most of the previous related studies have used only image-based, not the cohort of EMR, time series, or temporal approach data to predict the risk of KOA.19 Instead of using images to train deep learning for KOA risk prediction, deep learning has been used on chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease and cancer based on nonimage EMRs.12,13,15,20,21 In this study, we attempted to capture the EMR such as time points of clinical visits, diagnoses, and specific medications of all genders and ages. Eventually, based on our previously employed synergistic CNN and ANN deep learning approaches,22 with increasing accuracy, we established a KOA prediction model by using nonimage and multidimensional electronic medical records, ie deep learning model for KOA prediction (Deep-KOA). This model is useful for physicians to classify the patients who need costly KOA image and biomechanical screening. To our knowledge, our novel deep learning model (Deep-KOA) using EMR of three years would help in predicting the risk of KOA in the forthcoming year.

Patients and Methods

Dataset

We collected data from one of the largest administrative health care databases in the world, Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research and Development (NHIRD), which stores all claims of diagnoses, medications, and procedures from around 99.9% of Taiwan inhabitants.23 The NHIRD contains claims data for insurance reimbursement, demographic characteristics, International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) for diagnoses and procedure codes, and medication prescriptions using the World Health Organization Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (WHO-ATC) codes. We analyzed two million data samples from January 1, 1999 to December 31, 2013. This study was approved by the Taipei Medical University Institutional Review Board, in which the patient’s informed consent was not required because all information was anonymized and deidentified.

Study Population and Definitions

We identified the Taiwan population dataset, aged 25 years or more who had information of age, sex, and at least three years of records, had one or more admission claim during 1999–2013, and excluded patients with code of bed confinement status (ICD-9-CM code: V49.84) or accepted treatment for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) (ICD-9-CM code: 844.2) or total knee replacement/total knee arthroplasty (TKA) (ICD-9-CM: V43.65) before the index date. For the KOA group, index date is the first date of diagnosed KOA. The KOA group was validated by ICD-9-CM codes, KOA localized (715.16, 715.26, or 715.36), or KOA unspecified (715.96). For the control group, index date is the last day available in database. We used patients’ EMR for the past three years to predict the risk of KOA incident one year later.

Prediction Model Construction

For each patient, we used the maximum age, gender, ICD-9-CM as diagnostic code, WHO-ATC code as medication code, and the total number of clinical visits found during the three-year observation window to create the feature. We also used 1098 ICD-9-CM codes consisting of 17 organ systems (001–999) and additional V-code (supplementary classification of factors influencing health status and contact with health services). In this study, the first three digits of the ICD-9-CM code were used. There were 1029 diagnostic categories found in the cohort data. For the WHO-ATC code, we used the first five characters (eg, A01AA) to cover most medications in the same category, there were 830 medication categories included and 695 medication categories were prescribed in the cohort data.

A model architecture that encompasses CNN and ANN is proposed. This architecture is made up of the first steps, which are data preprocessing. After that, the information is fed into the neural network. In order to make the optimal judgement, the distinct classification algorithms of CNN and ANN are merged (Figure 1). CNN is a type of deep learning approach that has grown popular in computer vision and health care, which is made up of many layers, such as convolution layers, pooling layers, and fully connected layers. It uses a backpropagation algorithm to learn spatial hierarchies of information automatically and adaptively.24 ANN is used as an extension of linear regression to capture complicated nonlinear connections between input variables and outcomes. Multiple hidden layers with combination of prespecified functionals are used to show the relationships between output and input variables. The objective is to minimize the error between outcome and expectations.25

Figure 1 Electronic Medical Record (EMR) matrix and network architecture of Deep-KOA. The vertical axis of the input matrix consists of diagnostic and medication codes. The diagnostic features occupy 1029 blocks out of all 1098 International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) codes, and the medication features occupy 695 blocks out of all 830 World Health Organization-Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (WHO-ATC) codes. The horizontal axis consists of 157 weeks (three years), and each cell is filled with visiting history of the patient. For each diagnosis code per week, the value is divided by seven (one week consist of seven days), and for each medication per week, the value is divided by 28 (assuming: one medication maximum prescribed as 4×7 days in a week). The EMR matrix data are fed to the convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture with leaky rectified linear unit (ReLU), and the static data (maximum age and sex of the patient) are fed to the artificial neural network (ANN) architecture.

We considered the prediction of the KOA risk label as a binary classification problem and built a supervised CNN and ANN learning model to finish it. Each patients’ EMR input was changed to an image-like matrix. We also included the time dimension information.20 The vertical axis of input matrix consists of codes of diagnoses and medications. The horizontal axis consists of 157 weeks (three years), each cell consists of visiting history of the patient, each visit consists of a diagnosis code per week divided by seven (one week consists of seven days), and each visit consists of a medication code per week divided by 28 (assuming one medication maximum prescribed as 4×7 days in a week). The EMR matrix data input to network architecture using CNN consists of steps from convolution, average pooling, max pooling, leaky rectified linear unit (ReLU), and flatten. The maximum age and sex data of the patient input are fed to the ANN architecture, and finally combined to get the final score of classification. All patients’ data were split into 85% for training and 15% for testing, and later in the training set were split into 70% for training and 30% for internal validation.

Evaluation

We used the area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC), sensitivity, specificity, and precision to evaluate performance of the model. Optimal cutoff risk score threshold is the best threshold identified by both maximum sensitivity and specificity. Besides, losing AUROC with gradual selection is also carried out to investigate the importance and to determine the model factor using stepwise feature selection. The method mentioned above is implemented in the TensorFlow application program using Python programming language version 2.4.0 and 3.8.6 respectively.

Results

The mean ±standard deviation (SD) age in the KOA group was 64.20±12.49 years, with 83,111 females (62.68%) and 49,483 males (37.32%) (Table 1). For the nonKOA control group, the mean ±SD age was 51.00±15.79 years, with 545,902 females (51.09%) and 522,562 males (48.91%). The average numbers of annual clinical visits were 38.50 and 21.90 visits in KOA group and nonKOA control group per patient per year. The average numbers of annual diagnoses (ICD-9-CM code) were 34.60 and 21.90 diagnoses in KOA group and nonKOA control group, respectively per patient per year. The observed average numbers of annual medications (WHO-ATC code) were 62.11 and 30.54 medications per patient per year in the KOA and control groups, respectively. We found 694.81 and 298 medications per patient per year in the KOA group and control group, respectively if the numbers of medications were multiplied by prescription days per patient per year. Similarly, there were 1.90 and 0.82 medications per patient per day in the KOA group and control group, respectively.

Table 1 Demographics of Sampled Dataset

Based on the learning curve of the Deep-KOA model using diagnoses and medication features (Figure 2), the loss and accuracy curve of training and validation vs epoch, the validation and training loss curve shows that the Deep-KOA model has been found less prone to overfitting. Both the plot of training loss (green line) and validation loss (red line) diminished to a point of stability with a small gap between them. The training and validation dataset were representative, shown by the small gap between the plot of training loss and plot of validation loss along with the plot of training accuracy (blue line) and plot of validation accuracy (orange line) that increase to a point of stability and have small gaps between them.

Figure 2 Learning curve of Deep-KOA model using diagnosis and medication features. Based on loss and accuracy curve of training and validation vs epoch (iteration), the validation and training loss curve shown that the Deep-KOA model has less overfitting, plot of training loss (green line) decreases to point of stability and plot of validation loss (red line) decreases to point of stability and has small gap with the training loss. The training and validation dataset were representative, it is shown by small gap between plot of training loss and plot of validation loss along with plot of training accuracy (blue line) and plot of validation accuracy (orange line) also increase to point of stability and has small gap between them.

The Deep-KOA model with only diagnoses (ICD-9-CM code) input features reached an AUROC 0.94 at best threshold of 0.34 (Table 2). Whereas the Deep-KOA with only medication (WHO-ATC code) input features revealed an AUROC 0.79 at best threshold of 0.05. While applying both ICD-9-CM diagnostic and WHO-ATC medications as input features, the Deep-KOA showed an AUROC, sensitivity (recall), specificity, and precision (positive predictive value) of 0.97, 0.89, 0.93, and 0.80, respectively at best threshold of 0.15 (Figure 3A). The best balance we got between true positive rate and false positive rate, based on the final risk probability score was between zero (nonKOA) and one (KOA). We optimized the Deep-KOA model (Figure 3B) through the TensorFlow optimization toolkit by removing some connections between nodes inside layers. After optimization, the model size was significantly decreased by up to 33% (147 MB) when compared to its original size (442 MB). AUROC between original and optimized models was found to be nearly the same (AUROC=0.97).

Table 2 Performance of Deep-KOA with Different Input Features

Figure 3 Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of the Deep-KOA model using diagnosis and medication features, before the optimization (A) and after the optimization (B). The best threshold (dot) is 0.15, the best balance between true positive rate and false positive rate. Optimized model obtained from the TensorFlow optimization toolkit by removing some connections between nodes inside layers. After optimization, the model size decreased significantly by up to 33% from its original size (from 442 MB to 147 MB). In this case, AUROC between original and optimized model are almost the same (AUROC=0.97).

The features presented in Table 3 were identified through eliminating each feature from diagnoses and medications at a group or individual level. The features were chosen based on the highest feature frequency in both the KOA and nonKOA control groups. As shown in Table 3, age and sex were not the most important features in the Deep-KOA prediction model, with AUROC of 0.9593 (−0.76% loss) and 0.9644 (−0.25% loss) respectively. High prevalence of diseases associated with eye and adnexa, acute respiratory infection, esophagus, stomach, duodenum, musculoskeletal, connective tissue, and chronic comorbidities (eg, other metabolic disorders, immunity, circulatory system, and hypertension-associated disorders) served as discriminative features for KOA prediction. Whereas medications such as antacid, cough suppressant, and expectorants were top-ranked discriminative features.

Table 3 Important Features in Deep-KOA Model for Prediction of Knee Osteoarthritis (KOA)

To compare the model performance, three patients from each of the KOA and nonKOA control groups were randomly chosen based on feature similarity, especially the number of features during three-years visiting (Table 4), which revealed the best threshold calculated at 0.152 in the Deep-KOA model, with the highest nonKOA score of 0.137 and the lowest KOA score of 0.172. These patients had the same number of features including diagnoses and medications in the nonKOA patients, showing a noticeable score difference.

Table 4 Patient Data Sample for Deep-KOA Model Evaluationa

Discussion

Despite the fact that the KOA field is relatively slow to adopt use of AI compared to other fields,19 there are currently many studies focused on developing KOA prediction models using AI-based on medical image (magnetic resonance imaging, MRI),26–29 clinical information,30 self-reported,31 and biomechanical data.29,31 EMRs are a common data source used increasingly for clinical risk prediction. However, studies did not fully leverage the breadth of EMR data, as they uncommonly used longitudinal information and employed relatively few predictor variables.14 Most previous studies focused on KOA progression prediction,19 and our study focused on KOA disease risk prediction. This Deep-KOA model can show strong discrimination without using image-based information (MRI or X-ray), biomechanical data, or self-reported questionnaire. This Deep-KOA model using nonimage, nonbiomechanical, and longitudinal medical record data achieved AUROC of 0.97, sensitivity of 0.89, and specificity of 0.93. The AUROC of previous studies using longitudinal images and biomarker data was 0.92.28 The Deep-KOA model only uses diagnostic data and medication data generally available in the EMR system. Optimized Deep-KOA decreased significantly by up to 33% from its original size (442 to 147 MB) while maintaining the high AUROC of 0.97. This optimized model can be deployed in a web-based or even on device mobile application.

Some of the discriminative factors identified in Deep-KOA could be consistent with the previous literature. In a previous study, age is one of the prominent risk factors for KOA.7 But in Deep-KOA, age is one of the discriminative factors, but not the prominent one. Similarly, female gender has higher risk.8 But in Deep-KOA, gender is one of the discriminative factors and female percentage was higher in the KOA dataset. Obesity as one of the metabolic disorders and metabolic syndrome is found to be one of the important discriminative factors that strengthens the findings of previous study.32 Long-term use of NAC is associated with a higher risk of KOA.11 In Deep-KOA, mucolytics (R05CB) and NAC (R05CB01) are found as significant factors. Other predictive parameters include high prevalence disease, comorbidities, chronic disease, and medications can also be potentially explored as new risk factors of KOA or as confounding factors in further research.

Based on Table 4, with the best threshold calculated at 0.152 in the Deep-KOA model, the highest nonKOA score is 0.137 and the lowest KOA score is 0.172. If the threshold is at 0.5, it would have one false negative, which is still good considering this patient has the same number of features (diagnosis and medication) as the nonKOA patient, and a noticeable score difference. This indicates that the model is able to determine the features’ pattern, which will decide if the corresponding patient is KOA or nonKOA. All of those KOA patients have much more medication prescription days compared to nonKOA, though they have the same number of features. Interestingly, the Deep-KOA with medication-only model has AUROC of 0.79 while the Deep-KOA with diagnosis-only model has AUROC of 0.94. But in these cases, the number of prescription days or long-term medications used has more impact on the final prediction score.

This study has several limitations. The NHIRD did not include MRI or other image results, laboratory results, body mass index, exposure (eg, occupation), genetic parameters, and information on the types, pathologic characteristics, and grading of KOA. Therefore, separate predictions of KOA could not be performed. However, by using nonimage variables, this model still holds the potential to be used in a generali worldwide population. Further investigation by adding image variables under the same concept will be necessary to enhance the performance and detail labelling output (stage of the KOA risk).

Conclusion

Deep-KOA was developed to predict the risk of KOA within one year earlier, achieved high sensitivity and specificity, and provided clues for clinical decision support systems to target patients with high risk of KOA to get a precision prevention program. Deep-KOA can assist physicians to classify patients who are at high risk of getting KOA in the future based on longitudinal medical records before screening using image or biomechanical retrieval.

Acknowledgments

The first author thanks the Directorate General of Resources for Science, Technology and Higher Education, at the Ministry of Education and Culture, Republic Indonesia for the sponsorship of her doctoral study. The authors are also grateful to Md. Mohaimenul Islam, PhD (International Center for Health Information Technology, Taipei Medical University) who provided advices and assisted on the process of drafting the manuscript. They were not compensated for their contributions. Jack Yu-Chuan Li and Yao-Chin Wang contributed equally as co-corresponding authors for this study.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

References

1. Goldring SR, Goldring MB. Changes in the osteochondral unit during osteoarthritis: structure, function and cartilage–bone crosstalk. Nat Publ Gr. 2016;12(11):632–644. doi:10.1038/nrrheum.2016.148

2. Vos T, Allen C, Arora M, et al. Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 310 diseases and injuries, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015. Lancet. 2016;388:1545–1602. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(16)31678-6

3. Lin FH, Chen HC, Lin C, et al. The increase in total knee replacement surgery in Taiwan A 15-year retrospective study. Medicine. 2018;97:31. doi:10.1097/MD.0000000000011749

4. Zhang Y, Jordan JM. Epidemiology of osteoarthritis. Clin Geriatr Med. 2010;26(3):355–369. doi:10.1016/j.cger.2010.03.001

5. Felson DT, Zhang Y. An Update on the Epidemiology of Knee and Hip Osteoarthritis with a View to Prevention. Vol. 41. American College of Rheumatology; 1998.

6. Kim H-A, Kim S, Seo YI, et al. The epidemiology of total knee replacement in South Korea: national registry data. Rheumatology. 2008;47(1):88–91. doi:10.1093/rheumatology/kem308

7. Zhang Y, Jordan JM. Epidemiology of osteoarthritis. Rheum Dis Clin North Am. 2008;34(3):515–529. doi:10.1016/j.rdc.2008.05.007

8. Silverwood V, Blagojevic-Bucknall M, Jinks C, Jordan JL, Protheroe J, Jordan KP. Current evidence on risk factors for knee osteoarthritis in older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Osteoarthr Cartil. 2015;23(4):507–515. doi:10.1016/j.joca.2014.11.019

9. Driban JB, Hootman JM, Sitler MR, Harris KP, Cattano NM. Is participation in certain sports associated with knee osteoarthritis? A systematic review. J Athl Train. 2017;52(6):497–506. doi:10.4085/1062-6050-50.2.08

10. Ezzat AM, Li LC. Occupational physical loading tasks and knee osteoarthritis: a review of the evidence. Physiother Canada. 2014;66(1):91–107. doi:10.3138/ptc.2012-45BC

11. Yeh Y-T, Liang -C-C, Chang C-L, Hsu C-Y, Li P-C. Increased risk of knee osteoarthritis in patients using oral N-acetylcysteine: a nationwide cohort study. BMC Musculoskelet Disord. 2020;21(1):1–8. doi:10.1186/s12891-020-03562-1

12. Hippisley-Cox J, Coupland C. Development and validation of risk prediction algorithms to estimate future risk of common cancers in men and women: prospective cohort study. BMJ Open. 2015;5(3):e007825. doi:10.1136/BMJOPEN-2015-007825

13. Cheng Y, Wang F, Zhang P, Hu J. Risk prediction with electronic health records: a deep learning approach. In: Venkatasubramanian SC, Meira W, Eds. 16th SIAM International Conference on Data Mining 2016, SDM 2016. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Publications; 2016:432–440. doi:10.1137/1.9781611974348.49

14. Goldstein BA, Navar AM, Pencina MJ, Ioannidis JPA, Goldstein B. Opportunities and challenges in developing risk prediction models with electronic health records data: a systematic review. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2017;24(1):198–208. doi:10.1093/jamia/ocw042

15. Weng SF, Reps J, Kai J, Garibaldi JM, Qureshi N, Liu B. Can machine-learning improve cardiovascular risk prediction using routine clinical data? PLoS One. 2017;12(4):e0174944. doi:10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0174944

16. Hill NR, Sandler B, Mokgokong R, et al. Cost-effectiveness of targeted screening for the identification of patients with atrial fibrillation: evaluation of a machine learning risk prediction algorithm. J Med Econ. 2020;23(4):386–393. doi:10.1080/13696998.2019.1706543

17. Jiang Y, Li C. Review article convolutional neural networks for image-based high-throughput plant phenotyping: a review. Plant Phenomics. 2020;2020:1–22. doi:10.34133/2020/4152816

18. Ramesh AN, Kambhampati C, Monson J, Drew PJ. Artificial intelligence in medicine. Ann R Coll Surg Engl. 2004;86(5):334–338. doi:10.1308/147870804290

19. Kokkotis C, Moustakidis S, Papageorgiou E, Giakas G, Tsaopoulos DE. Machine learning in knee osteoarthritis: a review. Osteoarthr Cartil Open. 2020;2(3):100069. doi:10.1016/j.ocarto.2020.100069

20. Wang -H-H, Wang Y-H, Liang C-W, Li Y-C. Assessment of deep learning using nonimaging information and sequential medical records to develop a prediction model for nonmelanoma skin cancer. JAMA Dermatol. 2019;155(11):1277. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2019.2335

21. Wang Y-H, Nguyen P-A, Islam MM, Li Y-C, Yang H-C. Development of deep learning algorithm for detection of colorectal cancer in EHR data. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2019;264:438–441. doi:10.3233/SHTI190259

22. Nur Anggraini Ningrum D, S-p Y, Kung W-M, et al. Deep learning classifier with patient’s metadata of dermoscopic images in malignant melanoma detection. J Multidiscip Healthc. 2021;14:877. doi:10.2147/JMDH.S306284

23. Syed-Abdul S, Moldovan M, Nguyen P-A, et al. Profiling phenome-wide associations: a population-based observational study: table 1. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2015;22(4):896–899. doi:10.1093/jamia/ocu019

24. Yamashita R, Nishio M, Do RKG, Togashi K. Convolutional neural networks: an overview and application in radiology. Insights Imaging. 2018;9(4):611–629. doi:10.1007/S13244-018-0639-9

25. Jiang F, Jiang Y, Zhi H, et al. Artificial intelligence in healthcare: past, present and future. Stroke Vasc Neurol. 2017;2(4):230. doi:10.1136/SVN-2017-000101

26. Donoghue C, Rao A, Bull AMJ, Rueckert D. Manifold learning for automatically predicting articular cartilage morphology in the knee with data from the osteoarthritis initiative (OAI). In: Medical Imaging 2011: Image Processing. Vol 7962. SPIE; 2011:79620E. doi:10.1117/12.878266

27. Du Y, Shan J, Zhang M. Knee osteoarthritis prediction on MR images using cartilage damage index and machine learning methods. In: Proceedings – 2017 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2017. Vol 2017-January; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.; 2017:671–677. doi:10.1109/BIBM.2017.8217734

28. Marques J, Genant HK, Lillholm M, Dam EB. Diagnosis of osteoarthritis and prognosis of tibial cartilage loss by quantification of tibia trabecular bone from MRI. Magn Reson Med. 2013;70(2):568–575. doi:10.1002/mrm.24477

29. Pedoia V, Haefeli J, Morioka K, et al. MRI and biomechanics multidimensional data analysis reveals R2-R1ρ as an early predictor of cartilage lesion progression in knee osteoarthritis. J Magn Reson Imaging. 2018;47(1):78–90. doi:10.1002/jmri.25750

30. Tiulpin A, Klein S, Bierma-Zeinstra SMA, et al. Multimodal machine learning-based knee osteoarthritis progression prediction from plain radiographs and clinical data. Sci Rep. 2019;9(1):1. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-56527-3

31. Lazzarini YZN, Runhaar ZXJ, Bay-Jensen ZKAC, et al. A machine learning approach for the identification of new biomarkers for knee osteoarthritis development in overweight and obese women. Osteoarthr Cartil. 2017;25:2014–2021. doi:10.1016/j.joca.2017.09.001

32. Wang H, Cheng Y, Shao D, et al. Metabolic syndrome increases the risk for knee osteoarthritis: a meta-analysis. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2016;2016:7242478. doi:10.1155/2016/7242478

Source link

[mydarlingfilm]

TIME DOESN’T HEAL

This is going to be a very long post and I would love to read it over and over again. It was painful and timeless at the same time. This conversation is hold between an Rolling stone and Pk.

In her first-ever in-depth interview, Michael Jackson's daughter discusses her father's pain and finding peace after addiction and heartache

Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson is staring at a famous corpse. "That's Marilyn Monroe," she whispers, facing a wall covered with gruesome autopsy photos. "And that's JFK. You can't even find these online." On a Thursday afternoon in late November, Paris is making her way through the Museum of Death, a cramped maze of formaldehyde-scented horrors on Hollywood Boulevard. It's not uncommon for visitors, confronted with decapitation photos, snuff films and serial-killer memorabilia, to faint, vomit or both. But Paris, not far removed from the emo and goth phases of her earlier teens, seems to find it all somehow soothing. This is her ninth visit. "It's awesome," she had said on the way over. "They have a real electric chair and a real head!"

Paris Jackson turned 18 last April, and moment by moment, can come across as much older or much younger, having lived a life that's veered between sheltered and agonizingly exposed. She is a pure child of the 21st century, with her mashed-up hippie-punk fashion sense (today she's wearing a tie-dye button-down, jeggings and Converse high-tops) and boundary-free musical tastes (she's decorated her sneakers with lyrics by Mötley Crüe and Arctic Monkeys; is obsessed with Alice Cooper – she calls him "bae" – and the singer-songwriter Butch Walker; loves Nirvana and Justin Bieber too). But she is, even more so, her father's child. "Basically, as a person, she is who my dad is," says her older brother, Prince Michael Jackson. "The only thing that's different would be her age and her gender." Paris is similar to Michael, he adds, "in all of her strengths, and almost all of her weaknesses as well. She's very passionate. She is very emotional to the point where she can let emotion cloud her judgment." 

Paris has, with impressive speed, acquired more than 50 tattoos, sneaking in the first few while underage. Nine of them are devoted to Michael Jackson, who died when she was 11 years old, sending her, Prince and their youngest brother, Blanket, spiraling out of what had been – as they perceived it – a cloistered, near-idyllic little world. "They always say, 'Time heals,'" she says. "But it really doesn't. You just get used to it. I live life with the mentality of 'OK, I lost the only thing that has ever been important to me.' So going forward, anything bad that happens can't be nearly as bad as what happened before. So I can handle it." Michael still visits her in her dreams, she says: "I feel him with me all the time."

Michael, who saw himself as Peter Pan, liked to call his only daughter Tinker Bell. She has FAITH, TRUST AND PIXIE DUST inked near her clavicle. She has an image from the cover of Dangerous on her forearm, the Bad logo on her hand, and the words QUEEN OF MY HEART – in her dad's handwriting, from a letter he wrote her – on her inner left wrist. "He's brought me nothing but joy," she says. "So why not have constant reminders of joy?" 

She fixes her huge blue-green eyes on each of the museum's attractions without flinching, until she comes to a section of taxidermied pets. "I don't really like this room," she says, wrinkling her nose. "I draw the line with animals. I can't do it. This breaks my heart." She recently rescued a hyperactive pit-bull-mix puppy, Koa, who has an uneasy coexistence with Kenya, a snuggly Labrador her dad brought home a decade ago.

Paris describes herself as "desensitized" to even the most graphic reminders of human mortality. In June 2013, drowning in depression and a drug addiction, she tried to kill herself at age 15, slashing her wrist and downing 20 Motrin pills. "It was just self-hatred," she says, "low self-esteem, thinking that I couldn't do anything right, not thinking I was worthy of living anymore." She had been self-harming, cutting herself, managing to conceal it from her family. Some of her tattoos now cover the scars, as well as what she says are track marks from drug use. Before that, she had already attempted suicide "multiple times," she says, with an incongruous laugh. "It was just once that it became public." The hospital had a "three-strike rule," she recalls, and, after that last attempt, insisted she attend a residential therapy program.

Home-schooled before her father's death, Paris had agreed to attend a private school starting in seventh grade. She didn't fit in – at all – and started hanging out with the only kids who accepted her, "a lot of older people doing a lot of crazy things," she says. "I was doing a lot of things that 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds shouldn't do. I tried to grow up too fast, and I wasn't really that nice of a person." She also faced cyberbullying, and still struggles with cruel online comments. "The whole freedom-of-speech thing is great," she says. "But I don't think that our Founding Fathers predicted social media when they created all of these amendments and stuff." 

There was another trauma that she's never mentioned in public. When she was 14, a much older "complete stranger" sexually assaulted her, she says. "I don't wanna give too many details. But it was not a good experience at all, and it was really hard for me, and, at the time, I didn't tell anybody."

After her last suicide attempt, she spent sophomore year and half of junior year at a therapeutic school in Utah. "It was great for me," she says. "I'm a completely different person." Before, she says with a small smile, "I was crazy. I was actually crazy. I was going through a lot of, like, teen angst. And I was also dealing with my depression and my anxiety without any help." Her father, she says, also struggled with depression, and she was prescribed the same antidepressants he once took, though she's no longer on any psych meds.

Now sober and happier than she's ever been, with menthol cigarettes her main remaining vice, Paris moved out of her grandma Katherine's house shortly after her 18th birthday, heading to the old Jackson family estate. She spends nearly every minute of each day with her boyfriend, Michael Snoddy, a 26-year-old drummer – he plays with the percussion ensemble Street Drum Corps – and Virginia native whose dyed mohawk, tattoos and perpetually sagging pants don't obscure boy-band looks and a puppy-dog sweetness. "I never met anyone before who made me feel the way music makes me feel," says Paris. When they met, he had an ill-considered, now-covered Confederate flag tattoo that raised understandable doubts among the Jacksons. "But the more I actually got to know him," says Prince, "he's a really cool guy."

Paris took a quick stab at community college after graduating high school – a year early – in 2015, but wasn't feeling it. She is an heir to a mammoth fortune – the Michael Jackson Family Trust is likely worth more than $1 billion, with disbursements to the kids in stages. But she wants to earn her own money, and now that she's a legal adult, to embrace her other inheritance: celebrity.

And in the end, as the charismatic, beautiful daughter of one of the most famous men who ever lived, what choice did she have? She is, for now, a model, an actress, a work in progress. She can, when she feels like it, exhibit a regal poise that's almost intimidating, while remaining chill enough to become pals with her giant-goateed tattoo artist. She has impeccable manners – you might guess that she was raised well. She so charmed producer-director Lee Daniels in a recent meeting that he's begun talking to her manager about a role for her on his Fox show, Star . She plays a few instruments, writes and sings songs (she performs a couple for me on acoustic guitar, and they show promise, though they're more Laura Marling than MJ), but isn't sure if she'll ever pursue a recording contract.

Modeling, in particular, comes naturally, and she finds it therapeutic. "I've had self-esteem issues for a really, really long time," says Paris, who understands her dad's plastic-surgery choices after watching online trolls dissect her appearance since she was 12. "Plenty of people think I'm ugly, and plenty of people don't. But there's a moment when I'm modeling where I forget about my self-esteem issues and focus on what the photographer's telling me – and I feel pretty. And in that sense, it's selfish."

But mostly, she shares her father's heal-the-world impulses ("I'm really scared for the Great Barrier Reef," she says. "It's, like, dying. This whole planet is. Poor Earth, man"), and sees fame as a means to draw attention to favored causes. "I was born with this platform," she says. "Am I gonna waste it and hide away? Or am I going to make it bigger and use it for more important things?"

Her dad wouldn't have minded. "If you wanna be bigger than me, you can," he'd tell her. "If you don't want to be at all, you can. But I just want you to be happy."

At the moment, Paris lives in the private studio where her dad demoed "Beat It." The Tudor-style main house in the now-empty Jackson family compound in the LA neighborhood of Encino – purchased by Joe Jackson in 1971 with some of the Jackson 5's first Motown royalties, and rebuilt by Michael in the Eighties – is under renovation. But the studio, built by Michael in a brick building across the courtyard, happens to be roughly the size of a decent Manhattan apartment, with its own kitchen and bathroom. Paris has turned it into a vibe-y, cozy dorm room. 

Traces of her father are everywhere, most unmistakably in the artwork he commissioned. Outside the studio is a framed picture, done in a Disney-like style, of a cartoon castle on a hilltop with a caricatured Michael in the foreground, a small blond boy embracing him.It's captioned "Of Children, Castles & Kings." Inside is a mural taking up an entire wall, with another cartoon Michael in the corner, holding a green book titled The Secret of Life and looking down from a window at blooming flowers – at the center of each bloom is a cartoon face of a red-cheeked little girl.

Above an adjacent garage is a mini-museum Michael created as a surprise gift for his family, with the walls and even ceilings covered with photos from their history. Michael used to rehearse dance moves in that room; now Paris' boyfriend has his drum kit set up there.

We head out to a nearby sushi restaurant, and Paris starts to describe life in Neverland. She spent her first seven years in her dad's 2,700-acre fantasy world, with its own amusement park, zoo and movie theater. ("Everything I never got to do as a kid," Michael called it.) During that time, she didn't know that her father's name was Michael, let alone have any grasp of his fame. "I just thought his name was Dad, Daddy," she says. "We didn't really know who he was. But he was our world. And we were his world." (Paris declared last year's Captain Fantastic , where Viggo Mortensen plays an eccentric dad who tries to create a utopian hideaway for his kids, her "favorite movie ever.")

We couldn't just go on the rides whenever we wanted to," she recalls, walking on a dark roadside near the Encino compound. She likes to stride along the lane divider, too close to the cars – it drives her boyfriend crazy, and I don't much like it either. "We actually had a pretty normal life. Like, we had school every single day, and we had to be good. And if we were good, every other weekend or so, we could choose whether we were gonna go to the movie theater or see the animals or whatever. But if you were on bad behavior, then you wouldn't get to go do all those things." 

In his 2011 memoir, Michael's brother Jermaine called him "an example of what fatherhood should be. He instilled in them the love Mother gave us, and he provided the kind of emotional fathering that our father, through no fault of his own, could not. Michael was father and mother rolled into one."

Michael gave the kids the option of going to regular school. They declined. "When you're at home," says Paris, "your dad, who you love more than anything, will occasionally come in, in the middle of class, and it's like, 'Cool, no more class for the day. We're gonna go hang out with Dad.' We were like, 'We don't need friends. We've got you and Disney Channel!'" She was, she acknowledges, "a really weird kid."

Her dad taught her how to cook, soul food, mostly. "He was a kick-ass cook," she says. "His fried chicken is the best in the world. He taught me how to make sweet potato pie." Paris is baking four pies, plus gumbo, for grandma Katherine's Thanksgiving – which actually takes place the day before the holiday, in deference to Katherine's Jehovah's Witness beliefs.

Michael schooled Paris on every conceivable genre of music. "My dad worked with Van Halen, so I got into Van Halen," she says."He worked with Slash, so I got into Guns N' Roses. He introduced me to Tchaikovsky and Debussy, Earth, Wind and Fire, the Temptations, Tupac, Run-DMC."

"His number-one focus for us," says Paris, "besides loving us, was education. And he wasn't like, 'Oh, yeah, mighty Columbus came to this land!' He was like, 'No. He fucking slaughtered the natives.'" Would he really phrase it that way? "He did have kind of a potty mouth. He cussed like a sailor." But he was also "very shy."

Paris and Prince are quite aware of public doubts about their parentage (the youngest brother, Blanket, with his darker skin, is the subject of less speculation). Paris' mom is Debbie Rowe, a nurse Michael met while she was working for his dermatologist, the late Arnold Klein. They had what sounds like an unconventional three-year marriage, during which, Rowe once testified, they never shared a home. Michael said that Rowe wanted to have his children "as a present" to him. (Rowe said that Paris got her name from the location of her conception.) Klein, her employer, was one of several men – including the actor Mark Lester, who played the title role in the 1968 movie Oliver! – who suggested that they could be Paris' actual biological father.

Over popcorn shrimp and a Clean Mean Salmon Roll, Paris agrees to address this issue for what she says will be the only time. She could opt for an easy, logical answer, could point out that it doesn't matter, that either way, Michael Jackson was her father. That's what her brother – who describes himself as "more objective" than Paris – seems to suggest. "Every time someone asks me that," Prince says, "I ask, 'What's the point? What difference does it make?' Specifically to someone who's not involved in my life. How does that affect your life? It doesn't change mine."

But Paris is certain that Michael Jackson was her biological dad. She believes it with a fervency that is both touching and, in the moment, utterly convincing. "He is my father," she says, making fierce eye contact. "He will always be my father. He never wasn't, and he never will not be. People that knew him really well say they see him in me, that it's almost scary.

"I consider myself black," she says, adding later that her dad "would look me in the eyes and he'd point his finger at me and he'd be like, 'You're black. Be proud of your roots.' And I'd be like, 'OK, he's my dad, why would he lie to me?' So I just believe what he told me. 'Cause, to my knowledge, he's never lied to me.

"Most people that don't know me call me white," Paris concedes. "I've got light skin and, especially since I've had my hair blond, I look like I was born in Finland or something." She points out that it's far from unheard of for mixed-race kids to look like her – accurately noting that her complexion and eye color are similar to the TV actor Wentworth Miller's, who has a black dad and a white mom.

At first, she had no relationship with Rowe. "When I was really, really young, my mom didn't exist," Paris recalls. Eventually, she realized "a man can't birth a child" – and when she was 10 or so, she asked Prince, "We gotta have a mom, right?" So she asked her dad. "And he's like, 'Yeah.' And I was like, 'What's her name?' And he's just like, 'Debbie.' And I was like, 'OK, well, I know the name.'" After her father's death, she started researching her mom online, and they got together when Paris was 13.

In the wake of her treatment in Utah, Paris decided to reach out again to Rowe. "She needed a mother figure," says Prince, who declines to comment on his own relationship, or lack thereof, with Rowe. (Paris' manager declined to make Rowe available for an interview, and Rowe did not respond to our request for comment.) "I've had a lot of mother figures," Paris counters, citing her grandmother and nannies, among others, "but by the time my mom came into my life, it wasn't a 'mommy' thing. It's more of an adult relationship." Paris sees herself in Rowe, who just completed a course of chemo in a fight against breast cancer: "We're both very stubborn."

Paris Jackson was around nine years old when she realized that much of the world didn't see her father the way she did. "My dad would cry to me at night," she says, sitting at the counter of a New York coffee shop in mid-December, cradling a tiny spoon in her hand. She starts to cry too. "Picture your parent crying to you about the world hating him for something he didn't do. And for me, he was the only thing that mattered. To see my entire world in pain, I started to hate the world because of what they were doing to him. I'm like, 'How can people be so mean?'" She pauses. "Sorry, I'm getting emotional." 

Paris and Prince have no doubts that their father was innocent of the multiple child-molestation allegations against him, that the man they knew was the real Michael. Again, they are persuasive – if they could go door-to-door talking about it, they could sway the world."Nobody but my brothers and I experienced him reading A Light in the Attic to us at night before we went to bed," says Paris."Nobody experienced him being a father to them. And if they did, the entire perception of him would be completely and forever changed." I gently suggest that what Michael said to her on those nights was a lot to put on a nine-year-old. "He did not bullshit us," she replies. "You try to give kids the best childhood possible. But you also have to prepare them for the shitty world."

Michael's 2005 molestation trial ended in an acquittal, but it shattered his reputation and altered the course of his family's lives. He decided to leave Neverland for good. They spent the next four years traveling the world, spending long stretches of time in the Irish countryside, in Bahrain, in Las Vegas. Paris didn't mind – it was exciting, and home was where her dad was.

By 2009, Michael was preparing for an ambitious slate of comeback performances at London's O2 Arena. "He kind of hyped it up to us," recalls Paris. "He was like, 'Yeah, we're gonna live in London for a year.' We were super-excited – we already had a house out there we were gonna live in." But Paris remembers his "exhaustion" as rehearsals began. "I'd tell him, 'Let's take a nap,'" she says."Because he looked tired. We'd be in school, meaning downstairs in the living room, and we'd see dust falling from the ceiling and hear stomping sounds because he was rehearsing upstairs."

Paris has a lingering distaste for AEG Live, the promoters behind the planned This Is It tour – her family lost a wrongful-death suit against them, with the jury accepting AEG's argument that Michael was responsible for his own death. "AEG Live does not treat their performers right," she alleges. "They drain them dry and work them to death." (A rep for AEG declined comment.) She describes seeing Justin Bieber on a recent tour and being "scared" for him. "He was tired, going through the motions. I looked at my ticket, saw AEG Live, and I thought back to how my dad was exhausted all the time but couldn't sleep."

[reneereadskingdomofash]

Hey 8 followers *waves*, I managed to get KoA early. So I might start my read before Tuesday. I’m still trying to finish off Tower of Dawn and Empire of Storms tho - so although i’m getting my read on - no promises as to when anything will be out in the world. 

Reactions etc - everything will be tagged “Koa Spoilers” / “koa spoiler”.  I’m thinking I will queue my posts so that they don’t get out into the world before release date - because that’s not fair to others. 

However I am going to make predictions for my own perusal later on and to see what I got right. I’ve had so many theories over the years, and just trying to make a few guesses is something fun.for myself - I will call this “koa prediction” and it wont have a spoiler tag - but I will put info under the cut so you can avoid it.  I cant tell you how excited I am to have KoA in my grasp. This never happens to me. So #excited. 

[thesonnystoner]

We arrived at the Abuquerque/Bernalillo KOA by 12:30, got set up and checked the place out. It’s a nice one, sweet pool and patio, clean and quiet.  Our first stop was to follow the signs for Kaktus Brewery at the other side of the campground and try some of their beer.  It’s just a quick walk to a really cool place and we went back several times.

Unfortunately, Sonnystone, too had a leaky tire.  The next morning we visited a Big O Tire to get it fixed — we had a good spare that we put on.  While waiting, we headed for the nearest grocery store and picked up some steaks to grill that evening.  After dinner a big wind blew through and I headed out to bring in some stuff.  Wearing my Nike slides, I slid off the bottom step and gave my left foot a really good twist, bruised my right foot, and skinned up my shin.  Whaaa???  Since we had planned to hike the next day at Petroglyphs, our plans had to change…

We just readjusted and visited the Pueblo Indian Cultural Center.

I want to say more in another post about what I learned from this place and how it affected me.  We also ate at their restaurant and it was delicious.

I had so looked forward to seeing the Petroglyphs, but the next day my foot was still sore.  We went down to the Visitor Center which is not adjacent to the hiking trails.  There we watched a 20-minute movie that explained how the volcanic escarpment was formed, why they were able to carve on them, how they carved on them and some ideas about what they mean.  We picked up some trail maps for the next day’s hiking.

Then we came back toward our campground and about 3 miles beyond to Coronado Historic Site.  This site has a large underground Kiva that used to be covered with murals before the archaeologists came in and carried it away to the University of New Mexico.  To their credit, they went through a big process to preserve them and 7 are on display at this facility.  You can also climb down into the Kiva to see one that a Native painted for them, but we missed the tour.  Not sure my foot was up to it, anyway.

Sitting outside were some Natives selling jewelry and carved cottonwood kachinas.  I talked with the carver for quite a while.  That, too, is something for another post.

Finally, yesterday we got up early and went out to see the Petroglyphs.  The foot was only tender, so I was ready for the main attraction…

I hate to admit it, but I was terrified the entire first hike, and that was the shorter one!!  It is like a rock climb.  I mean, I fall on 3 steps…we were a mile up in the air standing on ledges…!  The only thing scarier than climbing up was the thought of climbing down.  But I made it!  The second trail had more flat and more handrails, so I was only scared…

Old Town was just what I expected.  In fact, I had a feeling that I had been there before as we browsed through shops of junk-made-in-mexico.  We didn’t buy, but these were food for thought…

There was definitely more of a Spanish flair to the place with its tiny plaza.  The church is some famous very old church…  We ate at Church Street Cafe and appreciated the Mexican influence on our food, though!

They’re predicting storms all day today, so it’s time to start the drive back.  We’re packing it in and plan on leaving about 10am rocky mountain time heading toward Amarillo, probably arrive about 5 or 6p central time.  Then we’ll plow on through the next two days, stopping at the same KOA that we visited on the way here.

That’s the outline, but the story is so much richer, deeper, and enlightening for me. You can bet I have tons more pictures of big skies and Sandia Mountains and I’m looking forward to returning home and writing about what I’ve learned.

Peace

Travelogue Days 7-11 We arrived at the Abuquerque/Bernalillo KOA by 12:30, got set up and checked the place out. It's a nice one, sweet pool and patio, clean and quiet. 

[lauramclark]

2017 Solar Eclipse

Back when Thomas was still in middle school he informed me there was going to be an eclipse in 2017.  He asked me at that time if he could go. 

That was a pretty turbulent time for our family, but I told him if he kept his grades up and stayed out of trouble I’d let him go, even though he’d be missing part of the first week school his senior year (side note:  my kids don’t miss school.  They’ve never once missed a day for being sick, and the only day Thomas has missed was when he broke his jaw and was recovering from surgery back in the 5th grade). 

5 years went by really fast, and a few months ago Thomas reminded me I’d told him he could go.  However, he now wanted to go with a group of friends (read: not with mom). 

This was something I had to really think about.  This whole situation had pros and cons. 

Con: All the hotels were already sold out (however, since Thomas is still under 18, so he couldn’t reserve a place to stay overnight anyway).  I’d be letting him drive friends across state lines.  I wouldn’t get to see the total eclipse for myself.  He’d need to miss a day of school.  The traffic would be insane.  It would most likely make his father upset. 

Pro: I wouldn’t have to take time off work to bring him to see the eclipse.  It’s a great early step for Thomas into responsibility/adulthood seeing as how it was only 4 hours (265 miles) away from our house.  He’d be able to see the eclipse in its totality (instead of Colorado Springs’ 89%).  This is a once in a lifetime event (in theory) he’d never forget.  It would be a great memory for him his senior year of high school.

These are just a few of the things that went through my head.  There were way more cons than pros, but the pros outweighed the cons.  I told him to get everyone together who was interested in going and we’d have a planning meeting at our house.  About 10 guys showed up.  They discussed everything from getting hotel rooms to paying for gas.  I didn’t know most of these guys (they were from ROTC and school) but they seemed interested, if not enthusiastic about the opportunity. 

The biggest hurdle I saw was finding a place to watch the eclipse that wasn’t sold out: all hotel rooms, campsites, etc. in the path of totality had been reserved years in advance.  Oh, and the boys’ parents actually letting them go.  I didn’t think most of their parents would allow a bunch of high school aged boys to take this type of adventure on their own. 

After the meeting I told Thomas as much, but he still seemed to think they were all on board with the trip.  We’d have another meeting in August just before the eclipse to finalize plans. 

As predicted, none of the boys came to the meeting.  1 guy was going up with his family.  None of the other boys were allowed to travel with the group.  I totally understood and predicted this from the other parents, and thought it unfortunate they’d be missing out.  

Alex was allowed to go however, so Thomas an Alex planned the trip themselves. 

Side note:  on Friday I got an e-mail from the school indicating the kids weren’t going to be doing anything special at school for the eclipse that occurred DURING school.  In fact, they’d all be inside unless it was lunch.  At this point I was really glad I’d decided to let Thomas go:  While we only had 89% totality here, he’d have missed seeing it entirely if I hadn’t said yes to his trip.  As you can see, driving to Wyoming was the way to go to see totality.

The night before the eclipse Thomas picked up Alex and they were going to leave at midnight to drive up to Wyoming and (hopefully) avoid the eclipse traffic.  We’d been seeing these signs all week:

Eclipse glasses have been totally sold out in Colorado Springs for over a week.  People have been joking about the sell out, posting memes like this, indicating they have “Eclipse glasses in mint condition for sale” for a while.

Or this one…

When I walked in that evening I saw about 5 pairs of sunglasses taped together to make a viewing device, and the boys were using candles to put carbon on glass panes. 

I had a long talk with the boys about safety during the eclipse.  Especially their eyes.  They both understood the issue, but Thomas, being the scientist and experimenter he is, had done research and assured me what they were doing was safe.  I told him to buy the cheap viewing glasses and gave him information on certification. 

Emily seemed really interested in what they were doing and I had a thought:  “Emily, would you like to go see the eclipse tomorrow with your brother?”

I figured since none of the other boys could go and since Alex is a pretty close friend (he probably sleeps over once a week) he wouldn’t mind Emily tagging along.  And they had room in their car.

Yes, but she’d be in charge of the playlist (this was totally up her alley, and when finished included songs like “Blinded by the Light”, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, “Bad Moon Rising” and “Here Comes the Moon”).

Emily was THRILLED with the opportunity, and the boys didn’t mind, so I allowed her to go as well.  That’s when the excitement really began.  I gave them a few last minute suggestions/tips for their road trip and was off to bed.

Their instructions included texting me with their location at various points in their trip and taking lots of pictures.  When I woke up at 4am to go to work I had 2 texts with where they’d been.  They’d made it to Wyoming and were looking for a good place to park. 

I was told not to worry: they’d picked up some NASA approved viewing glasses for $2 at a gas station.  This made me feel much better about their viewing opportunity.

I called the school to report the kids as being absent.  I had to try 6 times because the system was overloaded.  When I finally reached someone she said “Are they eclipsing?”  Apparently they’d had many calls excusing students for the eclipse. 

The kids changed places where they parked several times because there were too many people.  

They finally settled on a place just off the road that had several people, but they were all spaced out several hundred feet apart. 

Emily wrote an entry about her experience:

“Thomas, Alex, and I drove to Wyoming to see the eclipse today!  It was about a 5 hour drive there, but totally worth it! 

There is no way to describe what we saw!!! 

It got dark, like at sunset, but all around.  There was orange 360 degrees on the horizon!!  The sun was a black dot in the sky surrounded by a white light and it felt like nighttime.

We were shook afterwards, literally shaking from how amazing it was!!!

I would 100% drive, fly, even take a boat to be able to see that again!!!  It was the most beautiful and amazing thing I’ve ever seen.  Professional photos don’t come anywhere close to the real thing!!!!  I’m still in awe that I was able to see that, experience this once in a life time thing.  A partial eclipse is not anywhere near as awesome as a total eclipse” – Emily Clark

When she showed me this I felt confirmed in my choice to let the kids make this trip on their own.  It really was worth the experience for them; even though it came at a cost to me (I was the nervous mom letting her kids go on a road trip without her, etc.).

As for my eclipse experience, it was a bit underwhelming.  First off, I didn’t have glasses.  I knew I needed them but they were really hard to find in Colorado Springs (they sold out fast) and I wasn’t creative/motivated enough to make a viewer. 

Secondly, much to my surprise, no one at my office was interested in watching the eclipse.  Seriously!  I heard phrases like “well, the productivity across the country just dropped to zero” and “I saw the one in 1979 so I’m good.” 

Well, I wasn’t alive in 1979 so I felt I had a valid excuse to see this one.  I decided around 11:45am I needed to take the trash from my desk out to the dumpster outside and was able to view the eclipse on my short walk. 

There were people from other offices outside watching, but it wasn’t overwhelming.  They all had glasses.  I didn’t, but it still didn’t FEEL like an eclipse.  Sure there were shadows, but we didn’t get the amount of darkness I’d expected, even at around 91% totality.  It was still really bright outside.  I could tell the moon was directly inside the image of the sun and tried to get a few pictures.  They didn’t come out too well, but I did get cool reflections in the images. (No, I didn’t look directly at the sun). 

This meme sums it up:

All in all, my view of the eclipse was a bit underwhelming, especially after hearing my kids’ accounts of the event. 

Other people in the city posted pictures of crescent shaped shadows, which I thought were really cool.

Oh, and it took the kids another day to make it home.  They drove and made it 13 miles in 4 hours and called and asked me if they could just pull over and wait the traffic out.  Initially they asked if they could stay at a KOA or something, but I reminded them none of them were over 18 and wouldn’t be allowed to check in, not to mention they were all reserved. So I advised them to find the nearest Walmart and park in a corner of their parking lot and try to get some sleep. 

They did, and got back on the road at 4am.  There was still traffic and they made it home around 9:30am.  No, I didn’t let them skip school again so they went in a bit tired, but grateful for the experience. 

Now we’re planning on attending the next one in 2024, but we want to plan it better (years in advance with a trip lasting a few days including a hotel/camping spot).  Road Trip to Texas anyone?

Oh, and if we stay in Colorado Springs we’ll be well placed for the eclipse in 2045…

For your enjoyment, here are a few more memes from this historical event:

And some amazing pictures!

[stringbeanreads-blog]

stringbeanreads august wrap up!

Hello everyone! I can’t believe the end of August is actually here- it honestly feels like this month has gone on forever! That being said, since it felt so long I was able to do a TON of reading this month- 15 books in fact! WAY more than I was expecting to achieve! Since I’m starting my first year of university in the coming week, I’m not sure how much time I’ll have for reading next month, so I’m excited that I did as much as I did in August! So, without any further ado, let us get into my August 2017 wrap up!

Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan - 4/5 stars

I listened to the audiobook for Brain on Fire in the first few days of August while I worked some early morning shifts at work, and enjoyed it! I haven’t read a piece of nonfiction in a while, and found Brain on Fire incredibly interesting. Following Susannah’s story as she and her family attempt to unravel the mystery that is her medical condition was intriguing, and heartbreaking. I’m usually not a fan of things that have medical themes in them, but this wasn’t the case for Brain on Fire! However, as I listened to the audiobook, I found myself extremely put off by the narrator, and very much disliked her. I didn’t find the use of badly imitated accents for every person who didn’t have an American accent necessary, and took me out of the story.

False Hearts by Laura Lam- 2/5 stars

(Taken from my Goodreads review) I really wish that I had liked this book more. I'd been hearing really great things across multiple platforms, and when it came available at my library I was super excited to pick it up. Unfortunately, I found that this book was incredibly slow and incredibly predictable. It honestly felt like nothing happened until the last 60 pages. While the plot was a neat idea, and the world was very interesting, overall it wasn't executed well. I didn't enjoy the writing style of Taema, but I did really like the chapters from Tila's perspective- in fact, that is the one reason I stuck it out until the end. While I can see why so many people loved this book, it just wasn't for me.

Wildman by J.C. Geiger - 4/5 stars

This book seriously surprised me- that is, I liked it way more than I expected to! I was completely enraptured by the writing style, and while I didn’t necessarily enjoy the main character, Lance, I found his story compelling and loved following him through his journey of discovery. I enjoyed the cast of characters SO much- they were all so interesting and flawed and real. However, I hated the whole “manic-pixie-dream-girl” thing we had goin on. I hate that trope, which is why I’m still shocked that I liked this book as much as I did. Nonetheless, Wildman is certainly on my list of 2017 favourites.

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher - 4/5 stars

This was a super quick and fun read! I absolutely adore Carrie Fisher, and miss her with every ounce of my being, so I really thought that Wishful Drinking was going to make me cry and fill me with nostalgia, but instead it filled me with joy and made me laugh! A very nice, light read with heavy subject matter that I would recommend to any Carrie Fisher fan.

The Princess DIarist by Carrie Fisher - 4/5 stars

Yes, I did read two of Carrie Fisher’s books back to back this month, except I listened to The Princess Diarist on audiobook while at work. Again, I really expected to cry while listening to Carrie speak about Star Wars, but instead it opened my eyes to a whole different side to the franchise. Listening to her daughter read Carrie’s diary entries was very interesting and left me wanting more.

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan - 4/5 stars

What a fun start to a series! After rereading The Lightning Thief in July, I decided to pick up Magnus Chase after seeing that it is part of the Young Reader’s Choice Awards for 2018! It was a fun book that I read fairly quickly, and it left me wanting more after I finished it. Although some of the story felt a tad predictable (which I will forgive due to the series being middle grade, and because of how much I love Rick Riordan,) it was FUNNY. I laughed out loud so many times while reading this book! I can’t wait to continue on with the rest of the series, and the rest of Rick Riordan’s books!

Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero - 4/5 stars

(Taken from my Goodreads review) I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would! It was a fun read, with an interesting writing style and format that kept me engaged. I adored watching Gabi find her passion for writing and poetry throughout her story and watching her fall in love with the people around her. My only issue came in the very beginning, where Gabi and another character use the R slur to describe two disabled people, and in a very derogatory manor. While this doesn't show up any other point in the book, I was very close to putting it down because of this one instance. I understand that Gabi is in high school, and some teenagers speak like that, but overall I felt like it was completely unnecessary. Other than that, I enjoyed this book!

Dreadnought by April Daniels - 4/5 stars

(Taken from my Goodreads review) What a wonderful story!! We need more books like this- an unapologetic trans lesbian?? Yes PLEASE!! The plot was really cool, the characters were interesting and had me continually guessing about who they would turn out to be, but sometimes the teen angst got to be a bit much. Obviously I can forgive the angst cuz like, Danny has an extremely difficult situation on her hands, so it's understandable. I found myself skimming the action scenes near the end, but I think that's just because action isn't my favourite genre. All in all, a fun and important read, and I am excited to read the next one!

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt - 5/5 stars

I cannot believe that I almost didn’t pick this book up. Truthfully? This is now tied for my favourite book of all time- that is how much I adored this novel. God, it was so hard hitting. This was another story that surprised me with how much I enjoyed it. I was expecting to like it, but certainly was not ready for the intensity with which I fell head over heels for it. The writing is absolutely gorgeous, and the characters were just so real and tangible. The complexity of the relationships in this novel blew me out of the water. Such an honest and beautiful novel that has left me in a bit of a slump since I finished it! (I haven’t cried this hard after finishing a book since I finished TFiOS 5 years ago…)

Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis - 3/5 stars

This just simply wasn’t the book for me. I listened to the audiobook, which may have hindered my reading experience due to multitasking while listening, but I just found myself uninterested and disengaged from the story. An interesting plot for sure, but just not the type of book I find myself drawn to.

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Hammer of Thor by Rick Riordan - 4/5 stars

Again, another fun, light, and fast paced Rick Riordan book that I enjoyed! I found this book more predictable than the first one, but liked it nonetheless. I am very excited to see where the 3rd book goes and can’t wait to see more development from this cast of characters, Alex specifically!

Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke - 3/5 stars

I listened to the audiobook for Wink Poppy Midnight and enjoyed the fact that it was a cast of narrators rather than just one. Poppy’s narrator bothered me just a tad but not enough for it to disrupt my reading experience. The writing in this novel is very interesting- at times I was astonished by the language and the flow, and sometimes I was sitting there thinking “really? Was that really the best way to construct that idea?” I was certainly intrigued from the beginning but found myself constantly annoyed with the characters. The relationships felt forced, and the ending seemed rushed and tied the story up oddly and left me unsatisfied. I was really hoping that the story would turn into a spooky, paranormal, thriller type but instead was tied up with a lazy “teens playing pranks” bow. Also not a fan of the lowkey queerbaiting between Wink and Poppy- could’ve done without the two girls kissing for “shock value.”

The Smell of Other People’s Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock - 4/5 stars

Check out my review that I posted earlier this week here to see my thoughts!

Kids of Appetite by David Arnold - 3/5 stars

I read Arnold’s other book, Mosquitoland, in 2016 and really enjoyed it, and was really hoping that I would feel the same way about Kids of Appetite, but unfortunately this one fell a bit short for me. It’s your classic YA contemporary- main character loses parent due to illness and is sent on a wild goose chase in order to find peace and to fulfill said parent’s wishes, meets a band of misfits along the way and befriends them, and falls in love with the manic-pixie-dream-girl who sees him for who he really is. In all honesty, I was bored while reading this, but it did make me laugh. I liked most of the characters, and that was the main reason I pushed through until the end. I, for one, am a complete sucker for the “found family” trope, and for that reason I loved the relationships between the KOA. Overall, a fine book, but I certainly enjoyed Mosquitoland better.

Summerlost by Ally Condie - 3/5 stars

I couldn’t place where I had heard Ally Condie’s name before, and then I remembered: Matched, a book I seriously disliked when I read it in junior high despite the praise of what felt like everyone around me. Luckily, I made that connection after I finished listening to Summerlost, because honestly that would’ve stopped me from picking it up if I had realized sooner. That being said, I enjoyed Summerlost, but found it way too simplistic for my liking- writing style, plot, everything. I thought this was going to be a YA novel, but it is very clearly middle grade. I wanted to see more from both our main character’s families- Cedar’s before the novel begins, and Leo’s while the novel progressed. I wanted to know more about Ben and his relationship to not only Cedar, but Miles and their parents as well. I felt like this book could’ve easily been a 4 or 4.5 star if certain aspects had been expanded on.

I’m also currently reading The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, and about 80% through the audiobook for Little & Lion by Brandy Colbert!

Well, that’s all for this month! I’m honestly exhausted thinking about how much I read this month. Thanks for reading! 

Q: What was your favourite book that you read this month? What’s on your TBR for September? Let me know!

[rhysand-vs-fenrys]

For your podcast: Discuss what you believe will go down in Koa ALSO Koa thoughts (once it releases) please tag me!

I’m not going to do this one (Save for the KoA thoughts) because in the next several weeks each week is going to be specifically about a different book in the series.  There will not be a spot for KoA predictions. I don’t want to focus on the future of the series, I want to exclusively focus on each book to kind of savor and appreciate the series, and as a nod to everyone doing re-reads right now.

If people want to add their KoA predictions to a podcast, feel free. People have been posting them for 2 years now, since EoS came out, and ToD didn’t change really anything beyond our understanding of what Maeve is. 

The KoA one itself will be Week 10 (if my mental count is right) and reactions is going to be Question 1 :)

And what exactly is it you want to be tagged in? Theme announcements? My podcasts? Just the KoA podcast?