#middle sort of slogged

[charlieslowartsies]

i freakin binge read a book all evening and forgot to eat. hey ADHD WHEN I SAID I WANTED TO READ MORE I DIDNT MEAN GIVE UP A LIFE FUNCTION CMON MAN

[faeriekit]

Immediate Roadside Assistance Required

Phic phight fill for sapphireshield (no tumblr listed)

Warnings for: extremely mild depictions of domestic violence

The car that pulls over is a SUV. Beige. Kind of grimy. There’s a mom at the front; inside, Dani bets there’s probably one or two kids.

The mom rolls down the window. She looks nice. Kind of soft. Tough, in a kind of mom sort of way, but soft enough to see a girl with her thumb out at the side of the road and actually pull over. It’s a sweet gesture; Dani has a vague idea that hitchhiking hasn’t been trendy since the eighties, so this��ll have to do.

The mom sticks an elbow out the window and looks Dani up and down. “You alright, sweetheart?” she asks, a different twang on her tongue than the vowels Dani’s been used to all her (short) life. Dani might be out farther than she thought.

Dani grins. For this mom, it’s nice ‘n sweet. “I’m good! I need a ride, though; I’m trying to get to my stepparent’s place. Tryin’ to get as far as the border.”

The woman flattens her lips. She probably thinks Dani’s a runaway, but she’s not. Dani’s something a lot worse.

“You sure?” The mom looks up at the sky, even as her kid squeals about something snack-related in the back. “It’s about to get dark out, honey. Storm’s coming.”

Dani’s grin doesn’t let up. “I’m gonna go meet my brother! I already know where I’m gonna lay up, so don’t worry!”

The mom is for sure worrying; worrying her lip between her teeth, and worrying over a scruffy kid in a torn-up hoodie. “...Well. ‘Long as I get to see him when we get there. Hop in.”

Dani grins, and hops up in the car.

It’s a little warmer in there. Smells like cheerios; there’s a baby, Dani notices, in the back seat. It’s got her middle two fingers in its mouth and big brown eyes.

Dani waves. The baby stares, since babies do that, and Dani occupies herself by making funny faces over the shoulder of the passenger seat, eager to elicit a giggle from a little kid. She loves little kids. She wishes she’d been allowed to be one.

“You might want to turn around and buckle in, young lady,” the mom drawls, wiping stress off her forehead. “Don’t want you to die if we end up in a crash.”

I can’t, Dani doesn’t say, because she’s nice. I’m already dead.

So she turns around and buckles herself in. The mom flicks on the radio, and a woman’s voice starts growling over an electric guitar and a roughed-up drum kit. It sounds fun.

This ride’s going to be good. Dani grins, all teeth and brimstone. There’s a storm rolling in, bad luck hanging in the air like vapor and sparks. Lightning’s on its way.

It’s a long way to the state border. Dani’s going to enjoy every minute she can with the window down, electricity in her fingers, and the quiet humming of the driver singing along.

*

They make it to a rest stop about three quarters of the way there.

Dani’s not against stopping, so she just peeks out the window, watching cars and exhausted drivers slog through the paved flats of the rest stop parking lot. “What’re we doing?” Dani asks, entertained in her own way. Maybe this nice mom is going to try to hand her off to CPS!

It wouldn’t work, but, you know. It would be kind of annoying, if ultimately well-meaning.

“Diaper change for the baby,” the mom offers, and, yeah, that’s practical. “Vending machine break for me. Bathroom break for you, probably.”

Oh, that checks out. “Alright!”

The child lock pops, and Dani hops out of the car; she waits, patiently, for the mom to bring out the baby, who looks even more luminous asleep and spitty than when it's awake.

“It slept through a lot of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Dani admires. The baby gets held to mom’s chest, a blanket wrapped around them both. “That’s cool.”

“He’s heard a lot of Joan Jett since he was born. I’d be shocked if he couldn’t sleep through a hurricane at this point.”

Dani trots after the mom, patient in her wake. They don’t look too much alike, so maybe there are other people wondering if they even know each other at all, or if Dani’s getting kidnapped or traded away for cigarettes. Or probably they just think Dani’s getting babysat, helping watch a baby while the mom ends up driving them over and away from wherever Dani’s landed herself this time.

The diapers the baby uses are a thick, sort of plush material. They look soft. There are little pastel teddy bears on them: one blue, one pink. Dani gets to touch one when the Mom asks her to pull one out of the big blue bag. There are a whole lot crammed in there; they’re packed in so tight that it’s hard to pull one out of the stack without pulling out all the others, but the baby can only wear one diaper at a time!

“Thanks, sweetheart,” the mom says. It’s the nicest anyone’s been to Dani in ages. She’s glad she lived long enough to hear a soft mom call her sweetie and sweetheart for no reason other than being convenient. “You have to go?”

Dani shakes her head. The mom gives her a look. “We’ll be in the state for another hour. You want to try, at least?”

…She hesitates. The baby doesn’t notice, busy playing with its toes as its mom tries to wriggle it back into its butt covering for the sake of covering its butt. She doesn’t usually have bodily functions that actually…function. But the mom lady didn’t know that.

Whatever. She’d play a game of Snake in there. “‘Kay.”

Dani goes into a stall, flicks open her phone, and manages to eat like twenty little pixels before she actually runs into her own little snake body and dies. Ugh. It doesn’t take up too much time— how much time are humans supposed to spend in the bathroom, anyway??— so she fires up a new game and almost gets through it before she hears someone yell. Dani jolts.

The baby starts crying, faint and far away. Dani quickly grabs herself together and puts the phone away. If something’s happening— something happening to the mom and the baby—

Dani dashes out of the bathroom. There’s a guy at the door. There’s a guy holding the baby by the arm so that the baby is dangling and the guy is yelling at the mom who’d driven Dani here, physically pushing her when she tries to get her baby back.

The instinct to hit him is impossible to wrangle. It’s too bad, but Dani has to help the baby and the mom. Hitting him might hurt the baby, if she isn’t careful— doubly true if she uses an ecto-blast.

She goes invisible instead.

Carefully pulling the baby intangibly through the man’s grip is a quiet, tense process. The baby keeps crying and crying and crying, but the more she hides it, the quieter the cries seem.

And then there’s a baby shallowly crying in her arms.

The guy doesn’t even realize, too busy shoving and hitting the mom who’d done nothing wrong. Dani hates this guy. He reminds her of Vlad— too angry that he isn’t getting his way, and never understanding why no one’s obeying him fast enough.

Dani hoists the baby into one arm, mirroring the way the mom had carried it into the rest stop when they first came in. The hold doesn’t feel as secure as Dany thinks it ought to, but it frees up a hand.

Dani grabs the mom’s hand.

The woman disappears into thin air. The guy looks so spooked.

Dani giggles. Either way, it’s super easy and simple to fly the mom and the baby through the bathroom walls, and hiding them in the bathroom cleaner closet seems safer than hiding them in a stall. Dani doesn’t pause when the mom gasps, frightened by the change in scenery; she pops the baby into her arms and disappears back the way she came.

Dani Phantom has a guy to beat up.

There are lots of ways to scare humans, Dani finds; humans are afraid of the dark, and afraid of what they can’t control. They’re afraid of pain, and they’re afraid of loud noises. Humans aren’t afraid of everything all the time, but they can be afraid of more things when they’re combined than when they’re not.

So Dani flexes her aura. The lights flicker in the main room of the rest stop. The man stops, but his hand is still raised.

He looks to see where the baby is, and realizes that he’s empty-handed. The woman is gone.

The lights go out.

Dani loves being seen sometimes. She doesn’t like being bothered, but she loves attention when she knows no one can call the cops on her; so she drips green. She lets herself glow, gloopy and malformed, as she pulls herself through the wall. She turns melty eyes onto the man who took the baby from its mom.

The guy kind of looks like he’s going to piss himself. Good.

Dani starts to fake cry. It starts out as little sniffles— and then moans, and sobs, Dani clawing herself out of the wall until she’s floating, midair, half-formed and wailing. She kind of hopes she looks super spooky, like one of those CGI gross guys from Stranger Things, or that girl who walked down the stairs in a spooky backbend one time.

The guy steps back. Great. Dani inches forwards. The guy steps back again, face pale as a china plate, looking inches from giving up the ghost and bolting off to the parking lot.

Excellent.

Dani takes her hands off of her face to show melting, distorted features. And she screams.

The guy is gone in seconds. He should just be a sprinter instead of bullying moms and their little babies! Dani huffs, hands on her hips. Whatever. As long as he’s gone, he can do whatever he likes.

Dani barely remembers to set her face right before going to get the mom and baby out of the closet. It doesn’t matter how human she looks, though, because when she opens the door back up for them, the mom looks like she’s seen a ghost.

Dani grins, and probably her teeth aren’t showing anything too weird or spooky. “That guy left! Can we go now?”

The mom takes a deep, rattling breath. She does that thing where she touches her forehead, her chest, and then the air above her shoulders. No one’s told Dani what that means so far, but she’s seen it a lot.

“...Sure, sweetheart.”

Dani beams.

They make it to the edge of the state just as the rain starts to pour down. The mom is still looking for Danny by the time Dani points them into a gas station, but Danny’s not here; Dani made him up long enough to get a ride as far as she thought she could get tonight. The mom is still peering through the gloom of the driver’s side window as Dani turns herself transparent and flies out and away.

The mom was nice. The baby was nice. Dani liked this ride.

She walks, intangible, through the rain. The highway is dark, and wet, but Dani’s optimistic; sometimes people feel bad for her, so she gets more rides in a thunderstorm than on a sunny day. After an hour, somewhere on a rural road she’s never seen nor heard of before, Dani sticks her thumb out for a low little car going exactly the speed limit.

The car has a little old couple in the front and passenger seat. They look like grandparents. The grandpa rolls down his window, white eyebrows pushed together. “You need a ride, honey?”

Dani grins.

[mrvelocipede]

I had carefully put away all of my knitting stuff before the holidays, partly because it was taking up space that I needed for entertaining, but mainly because The Relatives are incredibly good at making me feel stupid and terrible about whatever projects I've been working on. Nothing destroys my motivation and interest in a thing more effectively than having to make small talk about it with people who have spent my entire life not understanding me.

In the last few days, I've been trying to get back to knitting mode, and finish the cable pattern I was in the middle of, but it's a tough slog to drag myself out of the holiday pit, so I decided to cast on a small, frivolous thing to try to get my brain to engage.

It could be a sort of companion to my existing pineapple bag, and smaller strawberry bag (which I don't think I've even posted pictures of, because I am going to get the pattern written first, dammit!). I had a little bit of leftover sock yarn that was the right colors, and I figured I could mess around with some short rows for the shaping.

And it's working!

Except that when it's not next to actual real-life fruit, it looks exactly as silly and rude as you'd think, and the movement of the needles as it's being knit makes it wave itself around in the most appalling way.

[vintagerpg]

This is I11: Needle (1987), a reworked tournament module by Frank Mentzer. It features pregenerated characters named the Ghost, Blaze, Finder, Blondy, Slim and Smiley. There is at least one stealth Star Wars quote. The players need to go into a jungle to get a weird obelisk, haul the thing back, then explore the moon the obelisk teleports them too. The first part is a pretty typical hex crawl, albeit punctuated with puzzles and high strangeness. The third part is a dungeon crawl. The dungeon crawl sure is odd (it ends with a confrontation with “Tiamat” and no, I am not going to explain that further) but it is the middle part that I think is the most interesting.

The middle part is the hauling of the obelisk back to the king who wanted it found (its not an obelisk, its actually a gigantic piece of tech). This is sort of a nightmare logistical puzzle, involving lots of NPCs sailing to the obelisk, taking it down, packing it up and hauling it back. Things need to be built. Like roads. And a raft (the thing is hollow and will float). That means lumber. Which means upsetting the natives, who are bullywugs and grippli, locked in rivalry with each other. The whole thing plays out across two months of daily events, which feels like a novel sort of slog. I’d definitely enjoy playing this — there are all sorts of opportunities for things to just go entirely off the rails.

Clyde Caldwell cover art. I don’t love it, but I honestly think that is because it was recycled for the 2E Rogues Gallery, a book I loathe. The interiors are by Doug Chaffee, who I don’t know. They feel like run of the mill late-‘80s D&D illustrations.

[lastoneout]

You know what, I just realized something that I can probably add to my list of reasons I'm more ND than I think I am...

So in middle school I found out The Princess Bride was based on a book I immediately decided to read it. But here's the thing, unlike the movie's framing device of a grandfather reading the book to his grandson, the book has one that's basically like an autobiography?? Where the author talks about his grandfather reading him the book as a kid and how it affected him growing up and how, eventually, he decided to "abridge" the original and publish the version you're reading. The author even says Florin and Guilder are real places, and gives "history" on them.

I found(and tbh still find) this part of the book exceptionally boring. It's mean spirted and depressing, and an absolute slog to get through. But I kept trucking through taking everything as complete truth, even though I was pretty sure these countries weren't real places. Europe is big after all and I was in middle school, maybe I just hadn't heard of them before. Thankfully once the "real" book, the story The Princess Bride, actually starts the intersections start to make sense and aren't as boring and I quite liked them more or less, even if they were a little confusing at times. I also read everything after the "real" book ends, an epilog of sorts about the author not being allowed to abridge the sequel bcs Steven King?? Was going to do it?? But there was a bit of this "sequel" included so I read that too.

When my friend, who had leant me the book, asked what I thought, I said I liked it but I didn't understand why the author included all that personal history at the start where he complained about his job and family, it just didn't seem necessary to me and was boring as hell.

My friend informed me that all of that "personal" history wasn't real. The author made it all up. It was as much fiction as the actual story itself. It was satire, you see, and apparently??? very important to read bcs without it you wont "understand" the story. My friend genuinely thought it was super weird that I didn't realize it wasn't true, and also that I didn't like it.

But nah, I thought it was true!! Why would he lie like that?? What was it even satirizing(I still don't really know tbh)?? Why would I need to read all that bs to understand the book?? The story of 'The Princess Bride' made perfect sense on it's own!! I ended up kinda hating the book after that. I felt SUPER betrayed. He said all that stuff like it was true, what on earth was the point of lying?? Didnt he know people would believe him?? Why wouldn't I, after all I almost always tell the truth, lying about all that stuff was dumb and mean and I hated it.

A while later when I brought it up to my godfather he ALSO thought it was silly that I believed all that and didn't get that it was satire, and insisted that it was important for understanding the story.

I still don't get why it's important, and I refuse to read any of it again. When I re-read the book I just skip to where 'The Princess Bride' actually starts and then stop once it's "over". The rest of it is probably important, but to this day I think it's mostly mean spirited and stupid, and idk why he didn't just write the book normally or do what they did in the movie.

Anyway I figure this is like...normal, right? I totally don't have any deeper stuff going on with my brain. When I take assessments I insist I'm great at picking up on sarcasam and satire. Totally great at it. Yeah...

[averseunhinged]

it's wip wednesday again and i've been working on slogging my way through finishing things, one agonizing paragraph at a time. however! i think i finally unpacked the last of my notebooks and found this. idk when i'll get back to it. i have a pretty solid amount of it written, know where it's going and how it ends, but there's a middle bit i'm still not sure how to do.

it's canon divergence from the prom episode on, with klaus and caroline and silas's twisty machinations.

“How are you putting Shane in my head? It's, like, an illusion, right? And I'm the only one who can see it. So, you must be getting it from somewhere, but is that really him, or are you what my brain thinks an evil college professor would look like?” Caroline frowned as she thought back over the past months. “I don't think I met him.”

“No,” Silas said. “You do tend to have your own separate storyline, for better or worse.”

She blinked and reared her head back. “Excuse me?”

“Never mind. The hybrid is very fond of you. You weren't a player in my game until now, but your mind has a fascinating complexity.”

Caroline bared her teeth in a cruel parody of her pageant smile. “Please tell me you're not flirting with me by reading my mind. There is so much wrong with that, I can’t even begin to get into it, and I already have one morally bankrupt megalomaniac to manage. I do not need a second constant disappointment.”

“You're mean,” Silas said pleasantly with a quiet laugh. “In all those legends, they only ever spoke of my love’s sweetness and beauty, but a handmaiden wasn’t a servant. They were friends, companions–close as sisters. Qetsiyah had loved me from childhood, but my darling girl didn't care. She was greedy and wanted me for herself. She wanted me, eternity, and the world as well. I only want her. Stop worrying I'm going to be like Damon.”

“Not super-thrilled about you hanging out in my head.” She crosed her arms over her bodice, the beading digging into her skin and the corset constricting her ribcage.

“Are you super-thrilled about anything to do with me?” he asked with a surprising dry humor. “You don't give a damn about the cure. You never did. Don't deny it.” He held up one hand to quiet her when she tried to protest. “I'm in your head. I know your little, secret shames. The only thing that matters to you about any of this is the number of unnecessary deaths. No, I don't mean your witches.”

Silas moved to her, step by slow, even step. She would not move back, wouldn't show that much weakness, even if he could pluck the fear of the closeness of his body right out of her mind.

“I said secret shames. You wear the witches where everyone can see, because you think you’re supposed to. It's the others you hide. You're glad the hybrids are dead. They hurt you, stole away the boy you thought you loved. Plotted without your knowledge, because they didn’t trust you to agree to your hybrid's permanent incapacitation, and made you confront the envious, jealous, hateful beast he can be long before you were ready. And the council of fanatical imbeciles? You may have known them all your life, but it didn't stop them from hurting you. Do you have any idea what they planned for you? Experiments, Caroline. Supposedly to advance modern medicine, but in truth, humans love having an excuse to hurt something.

“It's certainly not the hunter boy I ate, because deep down inside, you know he got what was coming to him. Face it: it's your hybrid's brother and every last one of his line you mourn, because you might not be sweet, and you might not be kind, but you have a just heart. You know it was wrong. An entire line. Do you want a number? Do you want to know how many that boy and his sister murdered? No?”

Caroline tried to back away from him, his rapid-fire recitation chipping away at her bravery. He cupped his hands around her bare shoulders and held her in place in a gentle, but unyielding grip.

“Over seventeen thousand. That is the sort of atrocity a doppelganger is capable of, addled by a sire bond or not. Kol was prolific and his children followed suit. You wouldn't know the sort of vampires he created, but I have to admit, I think they were my favorites. He turned libertines. Actors and singers. Cyprians and courtesans. The makers of his favorite spirits. Particularly creative chefs. Like calls to like, of course, and when the time came, they sired more of their own. A line of hedonists who lived for a good time. For joy. For fun. All dead in the search for my prison. No wonder you contain so little sympathy for the Gilberts. You should have killed the girl when you had the chance."

She struggled against his hold in earnest. He gave her shoulders a fatherly pat and let her go, but her dress was heavy and awkward, and her heels weren't made for the uneven terrain of the woods.

"Whoops!" He steadied her when she tripped and nearly fell backwards, one hand around her upper arm, the other on her shoulder. "Sorry about the inappropriate apparel, but there's a time and place for everything."

"You couldn't have kidnapped me earlier, when I was wearing flats?" she complained.

"Afraid not. Like I said, it’s all about timing. I’ve had eons to plan. Don’t worry so much. Your disappearance has already been noticed.”

She didn’t want to admit how much of a relief it was to know she hadn’t been forgotten. Fury rising at her own pathetic, needy anxiety, she demanded, "Why are you being so nice to me? You've been terrorizing everyone for weeks! You made Klaus maul himself. I had to dig around in his back with pliers! And I know you were torturing him while you looked like me."

"Do you think you'd be happier if you were uglier, Caroline?" Silas asked conversationally, ignoring her question. "I know you wonder why people always want you, but they never, ever love you. You're clever, though. You've turned being underestimated into an art form."

Her mouth fell open in shock. "I have not! I'm not--it's not--"

"Manipulative? On purpose? I'm in your head," he reminded her. "You can be honest with me. It was so easy to get to him while I looked like you. Of course, that's not entirely your doing. The curse, killing his father, his mother pretending to love him, family no longer willing to endure his abuse. He's been turned around and tied in knots until he'd do nearly anything for a kind word from you. I cupped his face in your hands, and he nearly broke apart into pieces. So desperate for your gentle touch. Asleep and awake, he dreams of you. The fantasies that torment him the most aren't the ones of your body that make him take himself in hand." Silas leaned closer to her, nearly nose to nose. His borrowed brown eyes were dark and terrifying in their gentle, knowing sincerity. "He doesn't want to long for a life with you, of travel and family, home and love, but he does, Caroline. You can't fathom the atrocities he would commit in your name. The degradation he'd endure for your approval, for the blessing of the only god he knows."

"Let me go," she insisted, panicked and shrill. "Let me go!"

When he did, she pushed him back and bent over to unbuckle her shoes. It was a relief to drop them carelessly, even though her stockings would be ruined. She hadn't had any illusions about this being the perfect night she'd constructed for years, but it was destroyed beyond anything she could have planned for.

"I could help you with your hair," Silas offered. "You've barely noticed, but the pins are digging into your scalp."

She dropped her second shoe and stood up, clenching her hands into fists to stop their trembling. "Does that mean I'm not going to prom at all?"

"I can't be sure." He shrugged and admitted, "I don't think so, but I've been wrong before."

[theworldoffostering]

You guys, I feel like I’m drowning. These past three weeks have felt unmanageable to me. Like, I don’t know how to keep going.

I’m walking alongside (trying the best I know how) the older girls as one navigates this break up and the other tries to transition to college. We got DD a car, but it still needs a few repairs. She was here all afternoon today working on it with DH.

I am waiting for the updated version of Ms. 6’s IEP to hit my inbox to send it off to the school. I am also working on her housing contract. Then I think I can step back for a few weeks. Still trying to figure out what’s going on with graduation. Her mom is back to letting her go to it and maybe allow her to stay for dinner, but it’s Memorial Day weekend and I don’t want to put a deposit down for a dinner somewhere only to have her not be allowed to attend at the last minute. I also don’t want to disappoint her. I’m unsure of how to proceed, so I’m just sort of frozen.

DS takes his civics test next week. You have to pass in order to graduate high school. He has prepared and seems like he will do well. He’s also pole vaulting and doing well at that for being a novice and having very little practice time due to the crummy weather we’ve been having.

Work is a lot right now. It’s to be expected due to the time of year. I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s a lot to slog through.

DH was verbally offered a job this week as a special education teacher. He is supposed to return to school to get his teaching certification in about a week, and is waiting for a letter of intent via email from the potential employer. It’s a lot. We are trying to manage the financial aid piece and we are up against a super tight deadline right now. His interview for the job was virtual, so he’s heading to the school next week to actually tour it and meet his potential coworkers. In the spirit of living in a small town, one of the women he used to live who was in live with him (for real)—the housing situation was work related—works at the school. She has legit not spoken to myself or DH since he and I got engaged so that seems like it will be super awkward (although she is also married now and has kids).

DH is finally seeing a decent therapist and between the therapist and neuropsych eval he had done during fall, it is apparent he is super depressed. Depressed is apparently his baseline and super depressed happens quite a bit. It is helpful to have it identified, but wow, it is a lot to live with. I am really struggling as his wife because he cannot do much and is not really emotionally available 90% of the time. He’s so inwardly focused, that he cannot focus on me, the kids, relationships, stuff that needs to be done, etc. I’m drowning and he cannot take on any of the workload. It sucks.

My endocrin had me take b12 supplements the last three months and my level actually decreased. I’m starting up with b12 injections next week. My TSH is also super, super low which means I’m hyperhyroid and should be losing weight, but I’m gaining which also sucks.

My endocrin is out of network for me which means my injections will be out of network. I have ZERO out of network benefits. The whole healthcare system is atrocious. I refuse to go back to the three endocrins I saw before I connected with my current one. They were all terrible, but in network. I need a super expensive full body scan but I for sure cannot pay for that out of pocket, so I’m waiting to see if my GP will prescribe it when I see him in June.

My crown also broke this week and when the dentist looked at it, I had worn a hole clear through the middle. He said it was due to grinding/stress. I wear a mouth guard religiously at night, so it’s happening during the day. :-/ Cue more medical bills. They glued my current one back on and can’t get me in to work on repair until June. I almost cried when trying to schedule with them because I just cannot even do all of this any more. (It also hurt wicked bad last time they fixed it so I’m somewhat terrified to return.)

That’s my list of complaints/brain dump. There’s more, but I need to wrap up some grading and get dinner going. I miss a life that was easier and less complicated.

[haliespages]

🏛~ mini reviews

fallen thorns by harvey oliver baxter - 3.5✨️

loved the atmosphere and the beginning and end were entertaining. middle slogged a bit and i found myself a bit uninterested. i do think clarification was needed on the sun moon and star part as well as just more refinement in the world building as it was missing any sort of context or reasoning. i do plan to continue the series at this moment

dragonfruit by makiia lucier - 4.5✨️

this was an easy read, the world was drenched in folklore and myth, and it was decently straightforward in plot but still able to keep my interest. the story was simplistic but still held water with nuanced conversations of culture, greed and conservation. to some i could see it reading a bit young, but i personally loved it.

untethered sky by fonda lee - 5✨️

i was blown away by this novella and how much power was packed into its pages. the prose and storytelling was enchanting, as well as the rocs of course. i felt true emotion for the characters and their troubles and flipped through this with hardly a breath in-between. while i would never complain about a full series in this world, this is a book that was truly made for the novella format.

the voyage of the basilisk by marie brennan - 4.5✨️

starting out slower, this installment quickly got faster and full of action. we see so much more on dragon biology and taxonomy, and even a piece of dragon embryos. i was also shocked to see conversations about gender and sexuality woven into one of the storylines. this light academia series is one for the books (hah.) and this is currently my fav in the saga.

the sins on their bones by laura r. samotin - 3✨️

i really wanted to adore this but i found it to be jumbled. the story starts in the wrong place, firstly. to me, this would have been much better if this was a sequel to another book explaining the coup and past war. we are mostly told not shown the effects of this war on our characters, sprinkling in some small flashbacks but it truly didn't show the actual emotional turmoil we were expected to feel. it felt like reading the end of a book before the beginning. the last 100 or so pages were great and held my interest, i just wished the rest did as well.

the wings upon her back by samantha mills - 3.5✨️

i really loved the dual timelines in this and the character work was exceptional. my only vice was worldbuilding. it was very hard to picture this world and what it looked like, i personally think it would benefit greatly from a map and some more refining in the world section of things. certain parts are very well defined, but overall the image was quite hazy.

[bomberqueen17]

progress etc

god it's less than a week to christmas. ok cool. yeah. great. all right.

i am. what have i been doing??? i don't know. I've sewn several things-- most notably a pair of leggings-- and the house renovations have progressed to the point that we're getting final measurements for counters tomorrow. I'll put pictures behind the cut. We painted the ceiling ourselves, as paint isn't included in the remodel.

I don't remember what I last posted pictures of. IDK there's a floor now, I didn't take pictures of that yet.

ok i was wrong i do have one photo of the floor but it's in-progress, max is in the background wedging it in between the cabinets.

[image description: an awkward angle looking down standing in the side door entryway, with the blue-washed gray side of a new cabinet facing me, some of the plywood subfloor exposed coated in glue, mottled gray fake stone tiles laid out and the hunched form of a man in a gray sweatshirt kneeling on the floor in the background with his head hidden behind the cabinet. Listen I wasn't trying to be creepy.]

it's fake stone vinyl tiles. i know, not normally my aesthetic, and it's probably the thing that'll look most dated in a little bit, but there was no point trying to do anything wooden or wood-look because the rest of the house has original hardwood from 1950 and anything new wouldn't match. (the hardwood badly needs refinishing, let's not contemplate that right at this juncture...)

Max is from Elmira, btw, and only moved to Buffalo a year ago-- just in time for the blizzard to absolutely destroy his first apartment here and wreck most of his stuff. It was a bit of a harsh welcome to the city. He's soft-spoken and extremely polite and doesn't really know how to talk to me, not the way Jim the installer (fiftysomething and very experienced) does. He did gently laugh at me when I left yesterday and then immediately had to come back to get my keys, which I had locked inside the house (but of course as he was still there the other door was still unlocked). "I grew up in the kind of place where you don't bother locking doors," I said, and he was like "lol same".

(I know Elmira because Middle-Little went to college there. It's a sort of dire little place in the Southern Tier-ish region of NY, a couple hours away. The region is fairly economically devastated, alternating crushing rural poverty with Tourism Dollars; Elmira itself boasts a college, a prison, and precious little else.)

Anyway-- painting the ceiling over the weekend, I discovered that the real life hack for painting a ceiling is for at least one member of your party to be six feet three inches.

[image description: my dude, a tall thin white man in an uncharacteristic ball cap he's only wearing to avoid paint splatter (it is embroidered with the HTML tags <head> on the front and </head> on the back, and was a gift to him in like 2002) is standing on the cardboard-and-sheet-draped floor of the kitchen using a paint roller on the ceiling, which he can reach easily; in front of him the cabinets are all draped in old sheets as well and there's a random light bulb sticking out because the installer wired that in for us to use as a work light since the electricians haven't installed the ceiling lights yet which was why it was an ideal time for us to paint said ceiling.]

Anyway it's going great. The counters won't go in until January sometime, but early January. The electricians plan to come the day after Christmas and I won't be there until the afternoon so I'm going to check in with Jim today about what they'll need.

Meanwhile, I remembered that I hadn't set myself the goal of crafting anything for Christmas except I bought a bunch of scarf blanks from Dharma Trading to dye as gift wraps and gift components and my basement is all torn apart and I don't dare make that kind of mess in my mother-out-law's basement so I need to work out how to get that done so I'm really kind of slogging through that, a bit.

OH i just went to look at what the last pictures I posted of the kitchen were and the answer is LIKE NONE so omg sorry here's before we painted the ceiling, where you can see what it's gonna look like!

[image description: This is View A, from the side door toward the front of the house. Along the left of the photo is a line of cabinets, a set on the ground and then another mounted up on the wall; in the middle of that will be the sink, and then farther down a dishwasher (!!!) and beyond that the stove, all along that north wall of the house. The middle of the photo is the big bay window we had installed, and there are cabinets along the front of it: the countertop will extend out from those, and will form a seating area. To the right of the window, the front door is now visible, that little wall having been removed and now being a wide-open space into the entryway. The right of the photo is the interior wall of the kitchen, now transformed into a built-in pantry space with a fridge hole in the middle, where the extra flooring tiles are currently stacked.]

[image description: this is View B, from the front door into the kitchen. The foreground is the big open space where the wall was removed; the bay window is just out of frame to the right, and the far wall shows the empty space (now containing buckets of floor glue and a roll of cardboard) where the stove will be, and above it will be an extractor hood (no more Everything Smells Like Salmon!!), and the empty space (now filled with a rolling garbage can the contractors are using) for the dishwasher, and then the little window right above the sink-- this is a detail we've kept from the old kitchen, that's where the sink was and that's where the window, but the window seems bigger because the cabinets aren't packed so tightly around it now-- and you can see the side door there, and then the left of the photo shows the edge of the pantry unit where the fridge will go.]

It's a much more open space, both of us can be in there, someone doing dishes while you cook is no longer the world-ending inconvenience it historically has been, and also now you can talk to someone in the living room while you're in the kitchen without needing to holler.

Yeah the gray cabinets are-- well they're pale wood washed with dilute blue, is what they are, and all the hard fixtures are in neutral shades like that, grays and gray-blues, and the countertops will be white with tiny sparkles, and the idea is that the big wall to the west and the little bits of wall around the windows will be painted some bold color we'll match with like throw rugs and hot mats and other changeable fixtures, so the kitchen can get "redecorated" with a new coat of paint and not clash with the hard fixtures. This job cost five figures, we're not re-redoing it during our lifetimes.

[therealeagal]

Hades

You know, I've mentioned before that I don't care for certain genres of video games. It's because I'm a scrub who hates losing and a fake gamer who likes games that are easy, and in neither case have I the patience to Git Gud.

On the other hand, I've also mentioned that I am endlessly fascinated by Greek mythology because I'm a nerd. It's always interesting, if a bit over-exposed. How about a game about mythology other than the bloody Greeks and the Norse? I'm lookin' at you, Kratos.

I guess there was that one Hinduism game some years ago. What was it again? The dude with the multiple arms and the giant planet sized dude who tries to crush the hero with his finger. I think it started with an N...ok I found it. Asura's Wrath. I was way off.

Didn't get enough credit if you ask me.

If one were to make a game based on mythology, perhaps there's something from Africa that would make for an interesting concept. I don't know, I'm just spitballing. Preferably one that doesn't involve freaking Anansi, because he's overexposed too.

ANYWAY.

So I picked up Hades on the strength of being a nerd, not because I had a sudden change of heart viz a viz rogue-likes.

Cast in the role of protagonist, one Zagreus, son of Hades and (so he formerly believed) Nyx, respectively the god of the Underworld and the goddess of the night.

But some how that I forget, young Zaggy discovered that Nyx is not truly his mother. His true mother is actually named Persephone and that's a whole thing, but suffice it to say, she left the underworld at some point because reasons and hasn't been seen since.

Anyway, so then young Zaggy must fight his way out of the underworld in search of his mother. Along the way, he receives help from several of the gods who reside upon Mount Olympus, who are his uncles and assorted cousins as well as his grandmother (who doesn't know she's his grandmother. It's a very top secret hush hush sort of thing), Demeter.

Then middle middle middle, everyone lives happily ever after. Except not really because they're doing a sequel, but I'm sure that game will have everyone living happily ever after. Except for the Titans, I guess, but fuck them anyway.

====

So anyway, as to the gameplay, I was prepared for a slog, and mightily did I toil until - while searching the settings for the volume controls (it's a very loud game) I discovered a nifty little option in the settings menu called God Mode. Fake gamer that I am, I naturally took the opportunity to activate it, providing 20% damage reduction, which reduction would grow incrementally 'pon my inevitable death, capped at 80% and rarely did I turn it back off.

It really does make a world of difference. What once promised to be an unbearable slog was now instead an enjoyable game.

The deaths I still suffer on occasion (on account of being a fake gamer) still manage to advance the story 9 times out of 10, and always manage to entertain and at no point do I feel overwhelmed or frustrated by needless difficulty that the devs refuse to accomodate. Well, except when using the bow. I know it's supposed to be the strongest weapon, but I'm more of a button mash kinda gamer. Perils of being a filthy casual, I guess. Gimme Excalibur any day of the week.

The only thing missing is a sword beam and a Japanese highschooler who wants to be a hero.

That's a reference by the way. It shows that I am very clever. But it's an anime reference, which cancels out the cleverness and instead shows that I'm a jackass.

P.S. If you are offended by my use of God Mode, which invalidates everything that you - as a REAL gamer - went through to Git Gud, then please remember that I warned you several times throughout this post that I am both a filthy casual and a fake gamer, so... well, I won't tell you to eat all of the shit and then die, because I am a nice person, but I will think it. Really hard.

P.P.S. This is totally unrelated, but WHY DID THEY CHANGE THE WAY THAT POSTS ARE MADE? I HATE THIS FORMAT (is that the right word?). WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE OLD WAY!? NEW IS BAD! CHANGE IS SCARY! ARGNOEHAOAFEHJKHSGDGSHGJKDHGJKDGHDK!

[novelmonger]

I just finished The Silver Chair and thought I’d pop over to let you know I enjoyed it this time through (you said it’s your favorite, recently), and also that I figured out why it was one of my least favorites as a kid. It’s a sort of middle-aged book. I am, of course, referencing Screwtape’s advice to Wormwood that “The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere.” Of all the Narnia books, it’s the one that requires the greatest perseverance from the characters (and thus from me, the reader), with the least “reward” along the way. There are no respites at the Beavers’ house or bright days of sailing in fair weather or rides on a winged horse to break up the slog through marsh and moor and underground maze. Every apparent respite is just more danger and discomfort in disguise. Even the season is the grimmest, hardest part of the year as the tail end of autumn slides into the bleakness of early winter.

And then there are the adventures. I am petrified of snakes, and a serpent plays a prominent role in this story. I am terrified of heights and can’t even watch characters in a movie stand on the edge of a cliff without nausea clawing up my throat, so Eustace falling over the edge of that cliff and Jill flying through the air on Aslan’s breath provoke a deeply uncomfortable physical reaction for me. And I, like Jill, also cannot bear being shut up underground. I identify a little too strongly with her POV to enjoy their trip to the Underland—especially since Lewis keeps emphasizing her discomfort!

But! This time through, I found Puddleglum a hoot. The parliament of owls too, with their odd, backwards view of humans. Jill is incredibly relatable to me, not only because of her fears, but also because she is so ordinary and she bickers with Eustace and she wants a warm bath and a hot meal so badly. That’s exactly how I would feel in a like situation. Her negligence in reviewing the Signs is also more relatable than I like to admit. The enchantment scene with the witch is a brilliant presentation of how secular culture tries to reduce faith to something ridiculous and imitative through denial and mockery. And it’s presented in a way that children can see the flaws in the witch’s words.

As for the “middle-aged” atmosphere—well, I’m old enough now to have hiked my own Ettinsmoor and Underland. I can appreciate the virtues endurance and patience in a way I didn’t as a teen. So all that is to say that I guess I’ve finally grown up enough to appreciate this book. It’s still not the volume I’m most likely to pull off the shelf, what with the physical and emotional discomfort, but I definitely see more in it now.

To clarify: The Silver Chair is my favorite of the BBC miniseries. Of the books, my favorite is The Horse and His Boy.

I think a big part of why I love Silver Chair so much is because it was the first of the BBC adaptations we owned, so I watched it over and over (as well as the animated LWW, which I love aspects of but also recognize that the animation is...special).

But I also identify with Jill most out of all the children, I think. She just seems so normal. She doesn't become a queen. She almost feels like a hero by accident, because she was showing off and ended up being the only one to hear the Signs. I mean, it's all part of Aslan's plan, and none of the children were chosen because they were particularly special (other than that Aslan chose them!). But Jill just feels a bit more relatable to me. Also, everything about forgetting the Signs was really convicting to me as a kid who often thought of Scripture memorization as boring and pointless.

Then there's the climax, with the Queen of Underland almost convincing them there's no Narnia, no sun, no Aslan! But Puddleglum comes to the rescue! His dourness and pessimism, which seemed like little more than a funny sort of character quirk before, turns out to be exactly what they needed at that moment to save the day. And what he says about how he'd rather believe in Aslan, even if he's not real, than the Queen's depressing "reality," has always struck such a deep chord in me.

And then there's Prince Rillian! That whole part where they're all suspicious but then he says Aslan's name sends chills down my spine to this day.

And then, specifically from the BBC version...I honestly can't imagine anyone better than Tom Baker for Puddleglum, and Barbara Kellerman is a fantastic Green Lady/Queen of Underland (and White Witch, but that's a whole other post).

Anyway, I never thought of Silver Chair as being "middle-aged," though I see what you mean. Maybe I've just always been an old soul or something XD Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[blood-mocha-latte]

gashey + 75!

send me a pairing and a number and i’ll write you a drabble

75 - “I’m going for a swim. Do you wanna join me?”

~~~

They’d swam all the time in Austria, but this feels different, somehow.

“Be careful,” Les says for the thousandth time, slipping precariously down the rocks before finding some semblance of refuge in the springy, wet ground. The grass seems to stick to the soles of his bare feet, and he pads across the short space from him to Tony grudgingly.

Tony just hums. It sounds like half of a laugh, and he wades further out into the lake without further preamble. “I think we’ve done more dangerous things.” He says over his shoulder, otherwise distracted as the water laps at his calves, trousers rolled up to above his knees. 

“It’s nighttime.” Les tells him, rather appalled, and goes in after him anyways.

“It’s warm.” Tony shoots back, and when he looks back a second time, the moon catches the glint of his skin, outlining him in silver. Les’s breath catches thickly in his chest. It takes him a moment to find it again.

“Other things are as fun as swimming.” He tells Tony after a moment, voice slightly hoarse. Tony just hums, the thin border of a laugh. 

“Aren’t you from Maine?”

“Yes, Tony, and other things are as fun as swimming.” 

The lake isn’t that big. There’s a dock in the center of it, abandoned, the post for securing boats empty. Tony makes a beeline after it, and Les splashes louder than he means to as he follows after him.

Tony’s never been to Maine; Les moved to him. Always, always have and probably always will, too. Lakes in Wyoming aren’t like the Atlantic ocean, but they aren’t like Austria, either. Les has the sudden vision of Tony suddenly disappearing, caught up in some sort of mudhole that they can’t see because of the night and dark, murky water. He speeds up slightly, just enough to catch Tony’s elbow and hang on to it, suddenly paranoid.

Tony just leans back into him subconsciously, knocking his shoulder against Les’s and sending a spark of warmth through Les’ ribs. “We do other things every day.” He says, but turns his hand over to lace his fingers with Les’s, anyways. “It can get boring, after a while.”

Les frowns. He feels, rather keenly, that he should be insulted, but doesn’t say so. “Everything we do gets boring?”

Tightening his fingers around Les’s own, Tony looks back at him and seems to soften, expression already sparkling with something close to laughter. “Okay, not everything.” He concedes, and the water splashes between them in quiet waves as he leans forward to quickly press his mouth to the corner of Les’s. 

He starts moving forward again. Les, of course and always, trails after him, keeping their hands wound together. “I still think that we could have done something else.” He says after a moment, almost just to feel the quiet silence of the night and waves. Tony just hums. It sounds a bit like laughter.

“You didn’t have to come.” He says. “I just asked if you’d like to join me.” 

It’s a silly argument. Of course Les was gonna come, in the same way that Tony would’ve come if it was something Les wanted to do. Les just grumbles something to the extent of this under his breath and keeps slogging forward.

The silt at the bottom of the lake seems to swirl around his ankles as they go, kicked up with every step, and Les ignores the feeling. He’s unsure what to make of it, and is a bit worried that he’ll lose focus and step on something sharp. 

“You know where you’re going, right?” He asks, almost worried. He doesn’t have a suspicion that Tony would drag him out into the middle of a lake in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Wyoming, but, well. 

Tony just squeezes his hand. “I used to come out here all the time when I was a kid.” He says. “I want to show you something.”

“You’d come out here at night?” 

Les has trouble wrapping his head around it. In Maine, the closest body of water was the ocean, and it was entirely too easy to be caught in a riptide and never be seen again. The water laps gently at his legs, like a conversation. Tony keeps pulling him forward. 

“Not this late.” He said. “But when the sun started to set. Not a lot of time in the day.” 

They’re almost to the dock, now. The water isn’t deep enough to fully swim in, but the soft fabric of Les’s undershirt sticks to his sternum and chest, soaked through with water, as he follows Tony deeper. 

“I don’t think this counts as swimming, anyways.” Tony says. 

“I think I’m gonna get giardia.” Les tells him. 

“I’ll get it with you.” Tony comforts him. Les snorts a laugh. 

Water pushes back against him in protesting waves as Tony hauls himself onto the dock, now close enough to do so, and Les watches him do so absently, watching the way that his thighs flex before he turns around to offer his hand again. 

Les takes it without thinking, lets himself be hauled upwards.

Les’s back hits the cool boards of the docks and he sighs, grimaces when Tony drops down next to him and slings a wet arm around the trunk of his waist, leaning into his side. “We should’ve taken a boat.” He says. Tony laughs.

“Where would we have gotten one?” He asks, which is the whole reason that Les hadn’t brought it up earlier. He turns his head enough to press his mouth to the bridge of Tony’s nose.

“What’d you want to show me?” He asks, rather worn out. He kind of wishes they’d just stayed in, another lazy night where nothing happens but Les gets to read and Tony’s warm and happy and kisses him sweetly. 

Laying soaking wet on top of a dock in the middle of a lake is alright too, he supposes. Next to him, Tony shifts enough to cross his legs underneath him, sitting upright.

“Not a lot.” He says, near thoughtful. “You remember Zell Am See?”

It’s a hypothetical, of course. Even if nothing had happened in Zell Am See, it would still be the first place where Les had gotten up enough goddamn courage to tell Tony some semblance of the truth. “Sure.” He says, aloud. Tony makes a soft sound, like he’s gathering his thoughts.

“There was that lake out there.” He tells Les, then stops again, clearly deep in thought. Les lets him think, tracing shapes absently into his back with a fingertip. Tony makes a sound and bats him away. “Quit it.” He says. “I was just thinking that it would’ve been nice to be out there alone. And we never got the chance, and it’s always busy here during the day, so…”

Les blinks, then huffs. “We couldn’t have just done this on the shore?” He asks, but isn’t that aggrieved. Especially when Tony clicks his tongue like he knows what Les means and rolls over on top of him, warm and heavy. 

“In my head this was easier.” He says, and his nose brushes against Les’s. Les runs a hand up his side absently, affectionately. “I think we’re out of shape.”

Les is okay with that. They’re both softer now, but they’ve settled into something more comfortable. He turns his head enough to coax Tony into a chaste kiss before pulling back again. It seems to him that they’re doing the same thing that they always do, just on a dock.

He gets Tony’s idea, though. In the day, they’d never be able to do this. Sort of like changing an idea enough to still hold onto it. Tony kisses him again.

“We can leave whenever you want.” He mumbles against Les’s mouth, warm and plying, and Les can’t really hold back his smile, knocking his nose against Tony’s. “Thought I got boring?”

“You don’t get boring. Staying in all the time does.”

“Mm.” Les kisses him for the thousandth time.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

I'm looking at the forecast for JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX, and I also saw how low the attendance was at my cinema job yesterday, and... It got me thinking again about where big comic book/superhero movies are at in the post-COVID outbreak world...

And how JOKER 2 - along with films like QUANTUMANIA, SHAZAM 2, THE MARVELS, and THE FLASH - sorta fit a weird group of pictures that probably would've made boffo bucks in 2019 but not now. Backwash, you could say, from a bygone era that's only like five years ago...

Meanwhile, we saw the recent successes of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 and ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE, superhero movies that were more than just your usual garden variety superhero movie. They had some kind of vision or passion or spunk behind them. DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is, I feel, the anomaly to this, as I felt it to be a fairly vision-less movie. Just a big budget parade of your favorite characters and action bits and lots of cameos, but done well enough with a sense of fun that kept audiences coming back after it made over $211m on its domestic opening weekend. I certainly had a fun time with it, but I wouldn't say it's anything other than "here's some fan favorites and some bloody action."

And then smack-dab in the middle of all this is MADAME WEB, which by all accounts was hacked to pieces in post-production much like how MORBIUS was. A film that could've stood out amongst the superhero pack as a period piece (2003 as a period piece, that's frightening to me lol), but ended up being molded into your usual schlop with lots of noticeable ADR.

Then you have two other Sony Spider-Man-adjacent movies this year, out within two months of one another. VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, out in a few weeks from now, should do good business because of the campy buddy comedy appeal of these particular movies. KRAVEN THE HUNTER, which was delayed multiple times, I have no idea. That might get a little lost in the Christmas season feeding frenzy. I have no idea how much further these Sony movies will go, outside of the VENOM movies. Remember how they wanted to do an EL MUERTO movie and then it got canned?

It seems like it's all a slow, prolonged sea change in comic book movies. I think they'll still get made, but something will have to change... as even a sequel to JOKER - which prided itself on resembling a '70s/'80s New Hollywood Scorsese-esque project - isn't cutting it. The idea of the new one being like a classic musical and a courtroom drama sounds really cool on paper, but in 2024, it's just not enough. The first one seems to be of a specific time, and belongs only to that time, it could be argued. A Trump-era slog about a "misunderstood" lonely guy who eventually ends up killing people, that devolves into a cacophony of violence... Its most controversial aspects were outside of the movie itself. I remember all the pre-release worry about the film possibly being a rallying cry to shooters... It came out and nothing happened, but it got tons of people to flock to the movie. It just hit at the right time, the noise around it created an appeal of sorts. It being this R-rated gritty street level movie and not your usual comic book movie.

But in 2024, now it's just "Eh, a new JOKER movie?" Add in the extreme genre shift, and a chunk of the audience was alienated.

Next year... CAPTAIN AMERICA 4... Looks - to me - like the most anticipated movie of 2015, honestly. THUNDERBOLTS* also looks too little, too late and also kinda just... There... James Gunn's SUPERMAN could really go either way, it could pull a MAN OF STEEL, or it could really break out. Maybe a BATMAN BEGINS-esque performance is in the cards here, where it opens kinda okayish because of a general fatigue w/ constant superhero movies (not to mention Henry Cavill's Kal-El not being that far behind) but has great legs. FANTASTIC FOUR Again, maybe this new take does the same? Maybe it's just more MCU fluff that gets a handful of fans on opening weekend and just fades away afterwards. There's an untitled Sony Spider-Man adjacent movie set for summer 2025 as well, but I wouldn't be surprised if that gets nerfed from the schedule. By now I think we'd know what it is, unless it's some kind of surprise project. Still, you'd know about it because it'd be filming or wrapped up by now. Speaking of which, BLADE is definitely not out next year, I'm surprised Disney and Marvel haven't changed its release or removed it from the calendar. We'll have to see where it all goes...

Ya know what comic book movie sticks out among all these 2025 entries?

DOG MAN!

Which I expect to be a respectable success for DreamWorks, come this winter. Its animation and visuals were outsourced to Jellyfish, much in the same way CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS was to Mikros. Jellyfish got SPIRIT UNTAMED out for $30m, I'd imagine this didn't cost anything more than that. Plus it's well after SPIRIT's timeframe, which was when vaccines were still rolling out, and this new movie is based on the Dav Pilkey CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS universe so it should do pretty okay. But to me, this is probably the most distinct CBM of next year, in a sea of big budget spectacle. A little cartoon movie about half man/half dog from a comic book written by fictional children that plays out in the way a comic drawn up by a kid would.

Leave it to animation to save the day here, lol. We need something to hold us over in comic book movies until BEYOND THE SPIDER-VERSE, whenever they decide to release that.

2026 is home to what looks like the usual array of late 2010s CBM backwash... AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY with Robert Downey Jr. returning to the MCU, possibly a fourth Tom Holland Spider-Man movie, two other untitled MCU movies (BLADE will likely take one of those slots)

There's also Gunn/Safran-verse DC's SUPERGIRL, but we gotta see what SUPERMAN looks like, first, before I can say whether their new DC shared universe feels like it belongs in the past decade or not...

You also have another animated entry with the MUTANT MAYHEM sequel, the first one - from last year - being a great and fresh new spin on the TMNT property. And THE BATMAN - PART II, the first one got a very strong response back in 2022. I would say THE BATMAN and MUTANT MAYHEM are of this new post-ENDGAME superhero movie era, the first SPIDER-VERSE arguably kicked that off in late 2018 before ENDGAME was released.

Again, it's a real "we'll have to see". Tracking this stuff can be fascinating for me.

[fernsnailz]

how would you suggest someone gets into reading archie sonic? i tried but the first few issues are such a slog

ok as someone who understands how difficult a lot of the early archie comics are to read… i HIGHLY suggest you read from the very beginning, or as close to the beginning as you can.

a lot of the early comics suck, straight up. but there’s also so much hidden gold in the early stuff that’s easily missed if you start somewhere in the middle. not to mention, storylines last for a WHILE in archie sonic. the ramifications of an early issue can randomly show up again 50 issues later - if you skip the beginning, you’re going to be lost somewhere down the road because you missed an early plot beat.

a lot of people suggest you start at issue 160 because that’s where the writing and art gets consistently good. and they’re right! but the writing is only good because it builds off of plot, characters, and lore that was set up in the previous 159 issues. if you start at 160, you’re going to miss the story and emotional context of what makes it so good. it will feel hollow. plus, you'll also miss crazy shit like this:

if you REALLY want to skip some of the early issues (which is fair), i’d suggest you start at issue 57. this issue serves as a recap for a lot of the larger story beats that happened previously, and gives you a very, very basic understanding of where the story is at this point.

there is one place where you can start archie sonic without knowing any of the extensive lore or previous issues: the reboot. you can start at issue 252 and not have to worry about anything prior because the story from this point forward basically takes place in a completely new universe.

regardless of where you start, you will need a reading order. archie sonic isn’t just the main series - it’s also the multiple spin-off series, mini-series, and specials that continuously build the story. i suggest the reading order found on the thanks, ken penders blog.

archie sonic is insane, but enjoyment comes from when you can find some sort of understanding within the chaos. and unfortunately, you can't really get that unless you start with the early stuff. best of luck to anyone out there trying to get into archie sonic, because you're probably going to need it

oh wait one last thing: BEWARE THE KNUCKLES SERIES. it's really bad

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 67 – Saint Death’s Daughter by C. S. E. Cooney

This is a book I’ve been vaguely aware of for a while, without really knowing anything about it beyond that it was getting a lot of positive buzz, but it got a WFA best novel nomination and that provided the impetus I needed to finally give reading it a try. And, well, I’ll be honest – this was a slog for me. If it had been half the size it would very likely be one of my favourite works of the year; as is the best way I can describe the reading experience is ‘slowly drowning in cotton candy’.

The book stars Miscellaneous ‘Lannie’ Stones, younger daughter of a declining noble house which has provided executioners and assassins to the royal family of Lariat since its founding, and generally but not lately provided necromancers as well. Lannie is the hope of the family, a necromantic prodigy (if one with a profoundly inconvenient allergy to violence that requires her isolation from the rest of the family and her raising by a bound revanent nanny and the dubiously trustworthy ghost of an ancestor). As the story opens, her parents have both died, and she’s been forced to write to her terror of an elder sister to come home as their debts are called due. She comes home with an enscrolled and deeply unwilling fiancee abducted during her studies. This, surprisingly, only takes up the first small chunk of the book, followed by a timeskip, the introduction of Lannie’s niece born in the interim, the elder sister dealing with the consequences of her seven-year campaign of bloody vengeance against the foreign court which murdered their parents, and the beginning of the actual plot.

I really did want to enjoy this book, and on the page-to-page level it was often somewhere between charming and delightful. But there were just so many pages, and so very little happening on most of them. After the timeskip the book spends something like 500 pages just leisurely meandering, stopping whenever anything catches its interest to spend half a page or three enthusiastically describing it. At a certain point the exuberant narration and playful vocabulary stop feeling delightful and start feeling like the author is somehow being paid by the word.

This is made all the odder by the fact that around the 80% mark the book suddenly realizes its got a bunch of problems to resolve and switches into an entirely different gear, rushing through revelations and resolutions like it’s on a deadline. Which apparently it was? The book ends with what feels like less of a sequel hook and more like a final hundred pages were chopped off the finished product by a longsuffering editor pushed past the brink.

So, the lion’s share of the book is interested less in plot than character dynamics and cute slice of moments. It’s very much a found family sort of narrative, delivered in an incredibly blunt fashion. Which definitely works for a lot of people, I’m sure, but everyone was so obviously written to be endearing and charming and fell into love of various sorts with each other so instantly it just left me cold, and more a bit bored.

This is a book with footnotes, and among those it feels pretty middle of the pack? Not doing anything particularly impressive with them, and they don’t have a real character or voice different from the rest of the book, but they’re a fun enough way to infodump a bunch of Stones family history (particularly all the ways different members have died).

Thematically...look, I’m aware this is entirely a personal pet peeve not shared by any particular audience, but the fact that Lannie’s whole life from infancy is being chosen as the beloved priestess of a goddess of death for one specific purpose, and that this is portrayed as an entirely benevolent, positive, and uplifting thing to have done at basically all points that it’s discussed just sets me on edge. There’s nothing really badly done about it, I’m just a contrary maltheist by nature and the book did basically nothing to allay that.

Generally – I don’t know, I’m not opposed to 700 page books (I’d be an utter hypocrite if I was. Almost certainly still am regardless), but I feel like being that long is a failing the book then has to justify? It should be obliged to do something with the length, if it’s going to demand so much of my time to wade through it. This didn’t really feel like it did.

[evilwriter37]

Vigcup Week 2023 Day 2

Freedom Comes on Violet Wings

Prompt: Dragons

Rated: teen

Warnings: none

Pairings: Viggo/Hiccup, Hiccup & Toothless

Word count: 2,702

Summary: Continuation of Day 1. Hiccup helps Viggo train the Skrill.

The air was crisp, but bitterly cold. Parts of the calm sea were covered in ice floes. The wind whipped this way and that, almost rising to a shriek in some places, like a Night Fury in distress.

Luckily, Toothless was in no distress. He, Hiccup, and Viggo were flying towards the last place they'd found the Skrill, and Toothless didn't seem to mind the extra weight of another rider and that rider's wheelchair. They'd strapped it on tightly so as not to lose it. It was an invention of Hiccup's that had taken him long to make, and it was valuable to Viggo and his mobility. Losing it would be horrible.

Viggo rode behind Hiccup, his immobile legs strapped to Toothless as a form of holding on, and his arms were wrapped around Hiccup's waist. It had taken some help from the other Dragon Riders to get him in the saddle, and Fishlegs had been the one to give him the final boost up.

Viggo liked flying with Hiccup, even though he couldn't hang on with his legs himself, even though it was a process to get him in the saddle.

It made him feel free again.

Because, with his injury, he felt anything but free. He couldn't move his body from the waist down, and he had chronic back pain from the arrows. One had struck directly into a nerve, and now, all that nerve knew how to do was scream.

But Hiccup helped him. He had helped him and was continuing to do so. It wasn't out of a sense of duty or loyalty.

It was out of love.

"Are we almost there?" Viggo asked. He was having a good day pain-wise, but it felt like he had fog in his brain. Thinking was like slogging through mud, so he wasn't quite sure how far away from the Skrill's island they were. He recognized some of their path, but not all of it. It was hard to concentrate.

"Yeah," Hiccup responded. He twisted around to look at him. "You feeling okay?"

"Chipper," Viggo responded. And he was. Today was an exciting day.

Hiccup was going to try to help Viggo officially train the Skrill. They'd bonded closely during the mission that had rendered Viggo paralyzed, and Hiccup wanted him to have a dragon of his own.

Viggo didn't want to admit it, but he wanted a dragon of his own as well. He felt a slight twinge of jealousy over the bond Hiccup had with Toothless, and the Riders with their dragons. He hadn't realized just how close they were until he was living among them. The bond was amazing. It was like they were married to each other's souls.

Viggo didn't know if he had that in him. It was only recent that he'd gotten true feelings for others. It was like Hiccup had flipped some sort of switch in him. He'd gone from uncaring, unable to connect with anyone, just seeing them as pieces to be used rather than human beings with their own lives--to caring deeply about someone, and learning to care about others. He didn't feel cold or asocial anymore. He felt real human connection for the first time in his life, and it was incredible.

But could he gain that sort of deep connection with a dragon?

He hoped so.

"This is the one!" Hiccup let him know as he directed Toothless to angle downward for a landing. The island looked quite different when not in the middle of a blizzard.

But still, it was cold, and Viggo adjusted his thick leather gloves on his hands. Getting frostbite was the last thing he wanted.

Toothless landed rather lightly on the frozen ground, not wanting to hurt either of his disabled riders. Hiccup got off, and then he stood there for a moment, hands on his hips.

"What are you thinking?" Viggo asked.

"That you should probably stay on Toothless till we find the Skrill. The terrain wouldn't be good for your chair."

Viggo nodded. That made sense. He also didn't want to tire himself out rolling the chair along himself, or tire Hiccup out by having him do it. Luckily, Viggo still had a great amount of strength in his arms, and pushing himself in the wheelchair wasn't hard at all.

Physically, at least.

Mentally, he wished he could still be walking, that he could use his legs like anyone else. He was grieving what he'd lost, just like how he'd grieved the loss of sight in his left eye.

Life had not gone easy on him, had it?

They headed into the forest of pine trees, the wind rustling them from side to side, making the pungent odor of the trees drift around them like a fog. It was a nice smell. Viggo liked the scent of pine quite a lot.

"How are we going to find the Skrill?" Viggo asked as they traveled.

"Well, I found footprints," Hiccup said. He pointed to the ground, and Viggo realized they were following a trail. "Maybe once we get closer, he'll recognize you're smell." Hiccup paused, put a hand to his chin. "Or... she. I didn't get a good look at anything, if I'm being honest."

Viggo chuckled. "I'm sure they will find us then, if we're already tracking them."

Hiccup nodded, and they continued on through the trees.

After some time, a very familiar screech reached their ears, and the beat of wings came from above. They looked up to see the Skrill descending.

"She," Viggo said. After years of dragon hunting, he was good at telling the sex of the beasts.

Hiccup nodded in agreement. "She."

The Skrill landed in front of them, folding her wings and sniffing the air. She appeared rather calm and curious.

"Let's get you off Toothless," Hiccup decided. "That okay?"

Viggo nodded. He wanted to be as close to this dragon as possible.

So, Hiccup came over and began undoing the straps that held the wheelchair to Toothless' back. Once that was down on the ground, he went to undo Viggo's. The Skrill was circling around them a little, but not in a threatening manner. She was merely curious to be seeing them again.

Viggo felt better once he was in his chair. He rolled himself over to the Skrill.

"She remembers us," Viggo said, seeing the intelligence and recognition in her eyes. He smiled, but then it dropped. He realized that this territory was all new for him. He was completely lost on what to do next. "Now what?"

"Well, she'll need a name," Hiccup said. "And you have to show her that you trust her."

"Elding," Viggo said with no hesitation. He turned from Hiccup to look at the dragon. "Yes, I think that shall do nicely." He'd been thinking about her name since Hiccup had brought up the idea of bonding with her. "How do I show her that I trust her?" Because he did. This Skrill had helped him: she was the reason he was alive as much as Hiccup was.

Hiccup came close, took Viggo's hand in his, and pulled off his glove. The air nipped at his fingers like teething Terrible Terrors. 

Once his hand was uncovered, Hiccup had him hold it out to Elding, palm open towards her.

"Wait, I need to touch her already?"

"It'll work," Hiccup said. "I promise." He let go of Viggo's hand, leaving the next movements up to him and Elding. He met her gaze, and then her eyes drew towards his hand. She came close, sniffed him; he felt her hot breath glide over his fingers.

Viggo waited with baited breath. He wondered if he would have to make the first move, but how would that show trust? No. He had to wait for Elding.

Viggo breathed out a huge breath as she stepped forward and pressed her snout against his hand. He was familiar with the feeling of scales, but not necessarily on a living dragon. This whole experience was new to him.

He found himself smiling, mouth open, teeth showing. His and Elding's breath fogged in the air together, intertwining.

This would work.

Viggo would have his own dragon.

---

It was two weeks later that Elding let Viggo onto her back. It had been difficult getting her back to Dragon's Edge, and she lived more secluded from the other dragons. At first, she hadn't slept near Viggo even, only present for meal times and bits and pieces of training.

That had changed, however, as she and Viggo grew closer. The night before, she'd dared to come into Hiccup and Viggo's shared hut and sleep near the bed. She was confused by their kissing, and Viggo and Hiccup had laughed at her watching them.

They'd figured that that morning would be perfect to get Viggo onto her back.

It was the same process that they used with Toothless, and Fishlegs had to help again. Elding was a little wary around the other Dragon Riders, but was growing used to them and their dragons as well.

Elding let them saddle her with the custom saddle Hiccup had made, let them strap Viggo's legs onto her. She seemed nervous and twitchy though.

"It's alright, Elding," Viggo said in his best soothing voice. He rubbed a hand along her neck, and she made an odd humming sound that Viggo had learned was her way of showing pleasure.

"You guys make a good match," Astrid admitted, arms crossed.

The Riders had come to help out and watch. They had begun to drop their animosity towards Viggo, though Astrid still clung to hers rather tightly. Viggo didn't blame any of them for their feelings towards him; he'd done absolutely terrible things to all of them.

"Hiccup, you sure you shouldn't have given him a Gronckle like Dagur?" Snotlout asked. There was a bit of disdain in his tone.

"I think Elding is right for him," Hiccup said, tone firm. He patted her neck confidently. "Viggo, you ready to fly?"

Viggo gripped the handholds on the saddle. "I think so."

Hiccup smiled. "Good." He went and mounted Toothless, who was literally wiggling with excitement. "Let's go."

Toothless took off, and Viggo didn't have to do anything to make Elding do so as well. She took the cue and was in the air.

Viggo bent over Elding, holding on tightly. He was having a bad pain day with his he back, but he couldn't miss this opportunity of Elding putting her trust in him.

Once they were high up, the trees on the Edge specks beneath them, Hiccup spoke.

"I'm sorry about Snotlout. He can be kinda mean sometimes."

"Nothing I can't shake off," Viggo said. He looked down below. He was used to being this high up now, after flights with Hiccup, but it was exhilarating to be the one in control.

It was frightening too.

"Don't look down," Hiccup directed. "Watch me and Toothless. You can't direct Elding with your legs, so you'll have to use your arms."

Viggo nodded. Hiccup turned and began flying, pulling Toothless in an arc to the right. Viggo was grateful for Hiccup taking his partial blindness into account. Flying to the left would be difficult for him.

The flight was silent as Hiccup flew along ahead of Viggo, looking back every once in a while to make sure he was copying his maneuvers. Viggo was a little shaky at them, not performing them as smoothly as Hiccup, but who could blame him? This was his first time riding a dragon of his own!

And it was incredible. The wind whipped around him like he was dashing through shards of ice, but the cold didn't matter. He felt free, like he wasn't tethered to his body or the earth, trapped like he had been since the mission. 

That was how Viggo had felt: trapped. He couldn't do things on his own, not the way he had before. He needed help with some of the smallest things, and some of the most intimate things. Luckily, Hiccup didn't seem to mind any of it. It had been awkward at first, of course, when Viggo had needed help relieving himself, but now, it was just part of their daily routine.

He felt trapped in a scarred body that wanted nothing more than for him to suffer. His back hurt, his face hurt, he couldn't walk, he could only half see...

But none of that mattered right now. Right now he was flying. Right now he was free.

Viggo did something he hadn't done since he was probably twelve... He whooped with joy! He urged Elding to go faster, and pulled up beside Hiccup. The longer he was out here with Hiccup and Toothless, the more confident he felt on Elding's back. It was like she could anticipate his movements. It was incredible having a living being beneath him that could fly and free him.

"It's awesome, right?" Hiccup asked, a huge smile adorning his beautiful face. His cheeks and nose were red from the cold. Viggo wanted so badly to kiss him.

"Incredible," Viggo breathed. He pet Elding on the neck, and she looked back at him. If dragons could smile, or at least give the idea of a smile, she did. She was happy with him, and that made Viggo's heart soar.

"Well, we can't stay out here forever," Hiccup said sadly. He looked back at Dragon's Edge. They'd gone rather far over open ocean. "I can't feel my nose."

Viggo laughed, lifted a hand to check if he could feel his. Nope. Nothing. Heading back inside and resting near a warm fire would be a grand idea.

"Your nose is cute," Viggo told Hiccup, and then he pulled Elding around in a turn to the right, and headed back for Dragon's Edge.

---

Viggo sat in front of the fire in the clubhouse, his back resting against Elding. He was on the floor rather than a chair, as Elding had wanted to come in with him, clearly wanting to be close to him.

For now, it was just Hiccup, Toothless, Elding, and Viggo in the clubhouse. The rest of the Riders were out doing other things. Unless they'd patrolled today, they hadn't felt the bite of the winter air so high up.

Viggo held out his hands to warm them. It felt good to gain feeling back in his nose and fingers. For a brief moment, he thought that the feeling would come back in his legs as well, that they were just numb from cold and not from a horrible injury that he'd never truly recover from.

But still, he couldn't feel them, couldn't move them. At least Hiccup had helped him arrange them comfortably so that his back wasn't hurting as much. He'd also made him some willow bark tea for the pain.

"Hiccup."

"Yes?" Hiccup looked up from the book he was reading. Viggo beckoned him over with a hand, and he sat beside him, snuggling close and resting his head on his shoulder.

"That's better," Viggo breathed. He rested his head against Hiccup's, wrapping his arm around him.

For a few moments they were silent, just breathing together, enjoying each other's company.

"What did you think of flying?" Hiccup asked.

"It was amazing," Viggo said. He smiled. "I adored it."

"Good." Hiccup snuggled closer, wrapping both his arms around Viggo's waist. He was nice and warm against him. Elding grunted, then wrapped her tail around the both of them.

Toothless rumbled from across the room, while Viggo was still looking at Elding in awe.

"Of course you can join us, bud!" Hiccup exclaimed. "Wouldn't be a proper cuddle pile without you, now would it?"

Making a chortling sound that was close to laughter, Toothless padded over, and laid down in front of them, curling himself around them, his tail almost wrapped around Elding's. The two had grown close just as Viggo and Elding had.

"Thank you, Hiccup," Viggo said after some time, squeezing him tight. This was probably the most relaxed and happy he'd felt in his entire life.

"For what?"

Viggo kissed him on the top of the head. "For everything."