#mbrainspaz replies

[mbrainspaz]

Came across your Harry Potter alternative for adults. Do you you have any recommendations for kids?

The Bartimaeus sequence would be ok for older kids. There isn't much with the same potential for fandom. A lot of YA series are shorter and less well developed because publishers just wanted to blast them onto the market and get some of that sweet JKR money. That's why you get so many crappy cash grabs that devolve into brain melting nonsense after 2-3 books like the Michael Vey series, Gone, Maze Runner, and Lorien Legacies.

Here are some short series that aren't much like Harry Potter but that I liked as a kid around the same time I liked Harry Potter:

Percy Jackson (obviously. If any YA series could take on Harry Potter in terms of scope and fandom it's probably this one. Kid with ADHD discovers he's actually a demi-god and has to go on adventures and battle monsters. The series racks up a hugely diverse cast over time.)

Airborn (alternate history with airships and lots of steampunk adventuring, made me more interested in engineering and zoology, and the series has a satisfying ending.) Airman (just a single book sadly, which I liked even after I'd outgrown the Artemis Fowl books and gotten annoyed by them. Young kids might prefer Artemis Fowl.)

LionBoy (All I remember is t's about a kid who has asthma and can talk to lions, but I liked it a lot in middle school.)

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (similar vibes to Airborn but it's set in an alternate history of WW1, the books also have some truly awesome illustrations)

The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima (high fantasy so it's no Harry Potter, but the main character is an urchin who becomes a wizard, so...) Her urban fantasy series The Warrior Heir is also good but pretty much revolves around human trafficking and an ancient blood feud.

Pendragon (eh... this one is borderline cash grab while still being fun. It's a good series overall but the conclusion is a little eh. Local high school boy discovers he can travel to alternate realities and is destined to fight a very evil villain who I always thought was cooler than Voldemort)

Inkheart (a personal fave I first read at 12 and still like to re-read at 30. Magic system is a little whack but the story does a great job of presenting truly evil villains through a lens of childhood.) Funke also has the new ongoing series, Mirrorworld, about a guy who travels through mirrors into a fairytale world, but that one's a little more mature.

The Knife of Never Letting Go (sci-fi, kind of like a cooler Avatar. Don't watch the movie. Very creatively written book with serious themes of imperialism, fascism, and misogyny—but in a way that kids can enjoy.)

Ranger's Apprentice (another kind of eh one in retrospect. Good for younger kids. Has some great characters but does devolve into a bit of a cash grab in later books. Harshest criticism is that the characters drink an unreasonable amount of coffee.)

I'll end on

City of Masks by Mary Hoffman (this one is a hidden gem. Urban fantasy but it's weirdly obsessed with Italian City-States. Long-ish series with a diverse cast and great recurring characters. It favors political intrigue over the magic system. Book 1 has themes of struggling with terminal illness and loss, but each book in the series introduces a new main character with a new personal struggle to overcome.)

[mbrainspazart]

love your header art ^_^

thank youuuu 🥰

It was the bonus postcard I sent out circa June of 2022. I try to do one every couple of years for my patrons @ patreon.com/parrott

[charle1515]

mbrainspaz replied to your post “majorkimblee: i love how no one messes with avatar the last airbender....”

my college design professor tried to badmouth atla once and the whole class started yelling at him to shut up

G O O D

[geeneelee]

mbrainspaz replied to your post “people who just take pictures of their art”

If I have to take a pic of a canvas I wait until the light is good outside and lay it on the sidewalk, then take a pic with my old SLR. Sometimes I still have to fix the image in Ps a little but mostly they're good.

hmm. I see. What’s a SLR, by the way?

[mbrainspaz]

[mbrainspaz]

Not exciting—I just kept hearing about Farriers cheating last year. The worst of them was a combination farrier/fireman. So idk but be careful out there horse peeps. Didn't mean to derail OP's super serious post. It was an unserious tiny thought bubble.

Should go without saying but never date a cop and christ never marry one. Rule of thumb if he's legally untouchable he's ethically unfuckable. You don't like that cop, you like buff men in tight clothing. I can show you more of those, better ones. Take my hand.

[mbrainspaz]

yo I didn't think those were real. I'm too tired to figure out this level of nonsense GOOD NIGHT

[mbrainspaz]

I saw your tag that your mom has the Garfield phone, does she know about the cargo ship that got lost? does she know about the mysterious Garfield phones that kept washing up on shore?

No and neither did I.

"local officials say they will continue to harvest Garfields from the coastline" is a hell of a way to end an article.

[mbrainspaz]

i think maybe you can make the bad dad post unrebloggable if you want? i think it's an edit you can do to all posts

It's got almost 100,000 reblogs, there's no point. People have been telling me for years that they found it stolen on secondary sites. I don't really care tbh. It doesn't upset me that people like the post. The post is fun. I just think it's silly when people get so enamored with him. Like no, he's actually a mentally ill moron just like me and unlike me he's never been to therapy because he thinks god can cure hereditary depression.

[mbrainspaz]

Ok 👍 it was this one:

My guy’s brow/nose is a different shape but the build and attitude remind me of him 💕

Here he is standing in a dumb way.

Do you sell stickers of your art anywhere? One of your black horses looks a lot like my guy and I'd love to have that as a sticker for my phone. Thanks so much!

Hello! Thank you very much for taking interest in my work! <3 I’m flattered ;-; Sadly, I’m not currently selling any stickers or merch, but it’s been on my mind for ages. I’ll be looking into it! I also wonder which black horse it is :D

[mbrainspaz]

This is Sherlock. He hopes you find comfort, and so do I

Sherlock is precious. Thank you.

[mbrainspaz]

@ladylowkeyed

you're so right. The last words he said to me when I told him he couldn't threaten or bully me in to seeing him again last year were: "so be it." Tell me that's not peak drama queen behavior.

[mbrainspaz]

@picklewednesday

A+ tags

[mbrainspaz]

@free-surface-effect close. He's a black market munitions and drugs dealer from France.

this quiz sorts through characters from like dozens of fandoms and finds the one you’re most like. I’m not even a little bit surprised by my result

[mbrainspaz]

@scarefox

I don't think AI's will match human creativity until they're frighteningly close to sentient, and by then we'll be having a much bigger problem addressing their rights and the ethics of forcing a sentient entity to perform slave labor. Senioritis is a beast but the art industry has done been f*cked for ages so you might as well do whatever brings you joy. Granted I'm saying this as an ex-designer and an (as yet) unsuccessful comic artist who lives in corporate housing behind a barn. My best art work the year after I graduated came about from having a boring office job where I spent my days stuck in a tiny bank vault, supervising a printer.

When I first tried to break into illustration I got instantly K.O.'d in the marketplace by photobashers and guys from island nations selling traced Disney art. AI is just one more hurdle like all the others. Won't be the last.

[mbrainspaz]

@soilrocks nope. Military. Plenty of overlap I'm sure.