#mind0vermind

[tbh-entp]

@mind0vermind replied to your post “date: oh wow, i loved laughing with you tonight,...”:

Oh... i think i was in that situation more than often. Haha that was fun oh shit they like me how do i get out of this

​i literally date less for fear of being too charming

[bethanyactually]

Thank you, @mind0vermind for this excellent addition!

Saw you liked Rivers of London. I was out off by the writing being so male ... I'm not even half way through and I think Peter mentions getting an erection three times. I want to like it because I think the concept is very cool

Yeah, the writing is occasionally rather the-narrator-is-a-dude-in-his-early-20s. XD I think it does get better, though. I recently re-read the series and was actually startled by that kind of thing in the first couple of books, which makes me think it lessens as the series goes on. And that would make sense, because time passes and Peter matures and gains new responsibilities.

And honestly, Peter Grant is one of my favorite characters. He's not a badass, he doesn't kick ass in every fight—and in fact, his first impulse is not violence, but mediation, cooperation, reconciliation. Even when he's certain the odds are completely against him, even when he's terrified, he's gonna try to find common ground with someone first.

He's a compulsive networker and is constantly making friends and connecting them to each other if he thinks they might be able to help one another—or just that they might enjoy one another's company.

He's an architecture nerd. He's an amateur scientist and conducts experiements to try to figure out why magic works the way it does. He slowly learns magic (and Latin) by working really, really, really hard at it and practicing a lot. He accidentally adopts a dog.

There are lots of great characters in the Rivers of London series, the worldbuilding is fantastic, the stories are interesting and compelling, and Peter Grant is a smart, good-hearted man who does his best to help as many people as he can with his job and his skills. If you like urban fantasy, I would definitely recommend the Rivers of London series.

(Also, if you like audiobooks at all, the audiobooks are AMAZING, 10/10, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith deserves all the praise for his performance.)

[siarven]

I'm rather curious about your opinions on how to train a dragon 2 and 3. Could you maybe elaborate why you don't like them? Which character was mistreated? If you like to, of course.

Hiii :D So as a preamble, I don’t hate them, really, and they both still made me cry when I watched it so it’s not that they’re bad, it’s just that I was disappointed by some things? And that I think there were things they could’ve handled better, but then again, that’s just my opinion and I’ve watched a lot of video essays about them and also know that a lot of people really love them, so ... yeah :’) Also I haven’t seen httyd2 since it came out in cinemas so :’D It’s been a while, and my thoughts aren’t very well-sorted on the subject, this is probably going to be kinda vague and rambly, I’m sorry

I think they work very well as a trilogy, I guess I’m just mostly annoyed by the way they wrote the sidekick characters in the second and third one, and also the light fury, specifically how everything always in any movie needs a love interest, even if it’s a dragon, so that’s less something against the film and more against hollywood in general, I guess. Even if in this case it was more to save the species and as a plot device to separate Hiccup from toothless... but when the trailers came out, I was still Very Annoyed xD.

So my first complaint is that whole one-sided flirting between Snotlout and Hiccup’s mom stuff in the second movie... idk, I hate it soo much XD I know it’s all done for gags but I guess it’s just not my kind of humor? At all? The secondhand embarrassment type of humor is very much not something I find funny, ever, so maybe that plays into it x’D I’m probably wrong on this but at least when I watched it, I didn’t think it was very in character for snotlout, either. Hm, idk

And in general, maybe I’m wrong but I thiiink Snotloud, Fishlegs, Tuffnut and Ruffnut had (at least some) more character depth In the first film? Like, they were dumb and funny there, too, but not that criminally-just-for-the-gags dumb (that annoyed me big time in the third one, where Tuffnut is just so dumb that she leads the bad guys back home. even if the part before that was funny, ahhh idk). But maybe I’m imagining that, too, it’s been a while since I rewatched the first one x’D

... and to be honest what Most annoys me about httyd 3 is the light fury design, on principle XD In theory I love shiny and glittery things! I have a lot of shiny and glittery things, I love them, they’re fantastic!! I just don’t like her design at all. Why did it have to be so smooth and rounded and aggressively female and also glittery in every way?? Why doesn’t she get cool scale patterns and these horn thingies that toothless has on his head?? It Annoys Me.

I attended an animation/VFX conference shortly after that film had come out where some of the people behind from dreamworks talked about her design and the animation and such and hhhh 

.. the things they said were really cool, like how they wanted her to look wild and untamed etc, and be more wild-cat where toothless is a cat/dog mix (that’s another thing, I feel like toothless was pretty much mostly cat in the first one and after that got dumber and dumber in every subsequent one and ... I don’t like that). Problem with the things they said was, I don’t think her final design looks wild or untamed at all XD It just looks shiny and rounded. And all the designs they had before the final one were so much cooler!! (But then again, that’s just a personal preference thing? hmm)

And as I said, the film still made me cry and it still works. They’re not bad films, really. They just make a lot of creative choices that I didn’t like very much :’)

I have to say, though, that I love the visuals of the third one, it’s sooo prettyyyyy, and that underground world??? AHHHHHHHHH I’m actively thinking of buying it just for that aspect XD (I didn’t get to see it in cinemas because when it came out I was writing my bachelor’s thesis and had too much to do and forgot, so I ended up watching it on an 11-hour flight, which .. well, airplane film screens are very small and very low quality XD)

this got very long and very rambly and I’m sorry, I’m not even sure if it makes sense, I guess it’s a personal preference thing and I understand all the arguments why the three films are great, I’m just also a bit salty about some aspects and love the first one while some stuff about the others makes me Angy XD

thanks for asking, though :) there are a lot of people who are better at putting these thoughts into words, though, and it’s been too long since I last watched the films to pull together a proper argument x’D

[siarven]

Eight people I’d like to get to know better tag

Thank you @madmoonink​ for tagging me <333

1. Name: Jana

2. Birthday: 13 May

3. Zodiac sign: Taurus

4. Height: 172cm which is 5,6ft according to google

5. Hobbies: writing, drawing, painting, reading (the to-read pile says I only hoard them but shhh), playing the flute and piccolo/orchestra, singing, listening to film/game scores, wildlife/nature photography + hiking (that’s kind of a combined hobby), going places very fast by bike xD

6. Favorite color: the green of new leaves :3 also almost-black blue

7. Favorite books: Let me just drop the screenshot of my faves (from that new nanowrimo website), where I did my best to not let myself be limited by top 5 :P

8. Last song listened to: Ólafur Arnalds, Undir (which has no lyrics but is beautifully wistful and longing)

9. Last movie watched: Uhhhhhhhh excellent question. I rewatch mostly series xD Most recently Over the Garden Wall, (thanks to @asttralhell​ :D) which is excellent :D As for movies, I thinkkkk it might actually have been that Joker movie? Which is excellent in so many of its aspects, especially from a film-making aspect... but I also never want to watch it again :P 

10. Inspiration: A folder named “inspiration and reference” currently containing around 30-40GB of (mainly) image files xD which includes all kinds of art, photography, short stories, comics, a few videos, ... I hoard the things I like :’) 

Also especially travelling (AKA hiking through nature) and all animals, I’m still drawing from June, which I spent hiking in various national parks in the US (with my family). Let’s please save the planet, it’s far too beautiful and I have to see so much more. But yeah. I took ~7,000 photos. XD

11. Dream job: Writing and illustrating/concept-art-ing my own stories 

12. Meaning behind your URL and tags: I once made up the name “Siarven” for a rpg character’s sister, and then liked it more than the name of the actual character. Months later, I needed a new username cause my “normal” one was taken on youtube, remembered it .... and now everything is Siarven (or in the case of instagram, xSiarven). I like the sound, haven’t yet met anyone else using it (not even on instagram, maybe they deleted themselves??), and it also sounds a bit like a tolkien elf >:3 

I’m tagging: (if you want to, of course!)

@necros-writings​ @writingwordsanddrawingpictures​ @ettawritesnstudies​ @albatris​ @mind0vermind​ @lynnafred​ @corishadowfang​ @raywritesblog​