#my favorite book series is getting awesome new covers AND a new installment !?!?!?

[pibiiiii]

Splatoon questions!! (by @weedceI8bit on twt)

Took this from here. Template is here if you wanna do it too! Tag me in pls :)

u know the drill qrt ur answers ok lets go -> feel free to skip any questions or skip around

whats your in game name/splashtag ? Pibi#1929! My Splashtag currently looks like this, soon to be upgraded with the 4★ Nautilus and Big Man badge!

do you play as an inkling or octoling ? Octoling, because of the lore and Surfcurl hairstyle :) Inklings will always have a special place in my heart from the earlier games though.

whats your multiplayer lvl ? + whats your favorite game mode ? Don't bully mee... 34. Favourite game mode has to be Anarchy Battles (Open only with my friends), with Salmon Run being a close second!

whats your anarchy rank ? do you play competitively if so what division are you in ? S+ rn. I tried to play comp, but it wasn't for me. Turns out what I actually wanted wasn't to play competitively, but to have a team!

whats your main/favorite weapon ? The Nautilus 47! I hope we get a new kit, because Point Sensor is NOT it.

what weapon class do you play ? Not actually Splatlings lmao, Naut is special to me because of its charge hold. The other classes I like are Wipers, Dualies and some Shooters!

do you dress for gear abilities or style ? Both!! I worked very hard on grinding viable abilities onto my favourite fit haha

favorite ranked mode ? This is difficult. Clam Blitz has gotten kind of fun, even in soloq which is crazy! Rainmaker is also pretty neat.

favorite hero mode ? Obviously RotM. It might be a little too by-the-book of Octo Expansion (which isn't a hero mode), but it's still the best by quite a bit.

favorite ink color/ink color combos ? Here they are!!

what splatoon game did you start on ? and or when did you start playing ? Splatoon 2, but quite late unfortunately. I picked it up just before the Final Fest!

favorite piece of gear ? Can't say. I just love how there's so many good ones to choose from lmao

what was your most memorable splatfest ? Final Fest, because it was my first (lmao 😅) and because of its awesome stage and dialogue!

any kits you want to come back to splatoon 3 ? Nautilus 79, duh. I have no other strong opinions! xD

what is your favorite weapon/kit in all of splatoon ? I want to say Nautilus 79 but I enjoyed a lot more kits so I really can't say. Gonna skip this question.

how many hours do you have on splatoon 3 or 2 ? Not that much xD. 125 hrs in 2, 155 hrs right now in 3. I don't spend that much time playing the game, but I spend way more obsessing over it haha

any buffs/nerfs you think are needed ? Splash's pinpoint accuracy. It's kinda screwed up the meta 😅. Not sure if it counts as a buff/nerf, but the stages HAVE to be improved. No more corridors! More flanks! More cover! More dynamic terrain! It would solve the issue with chargers without nerfing them and make the game 100x more fun.

have you read coroika aka the splatoon manga ? Yes! I haven't read the latest Splatoon 3 installment, but I'll get to it soon! Coroika fans hmu ;)

rank the splatoon games + oe best to worst Not sure how to compare an entire Splatoon game with just the Octo Expansion, but I went in terms of ✨general experience ✨: 1. Splatoon 3 - Current pinnacle of the franchise. Can't wait for Side Order, if it tops OE then it'll be the true best Splatoon game! 2. Octo Expansion - Best single player experience. Off the Hook are AMAZING. 3. Splatoon 2 - Without OE, this is still a solid game that I enjoyed a lot :) 3 definitely improves on it, though, in small ways and big ways. 4. Splatoon 1 - I haven't played it, so I'm not saying it's the worst, this is just for me. Obviously set up the foundation of an awesome series!

favorite splatoon ship ? Not really a shipper but anyone who DOESN'T ship Pearl and Marina is silly.

favorite idol group ? As above, Off the Hook :) Literally screaming for Side Order I can not stop the inner turmoil I will only be released when it comes out haha.

any splat tubers you watch ? do you have a favorite ? There are some pretty niche ones I like, but my all-time favourite is Jaymoji! Super fun to watch and his content is always interesting.

favorite splatband ? ABXY/Chirpy Chirps, but I absolutely love all the new ones that are being added!

favorite splatoon song ? Blitz It by ABXY :) Also 3MIX, Hide and Sleek, and most of the Salmon Run music!

any 4 or 5 star weapons ? Splatana Wiper, Stamper and Nautilus 47!

favorite stage ? aesthetically or to play on I have no idea, but Inkblot is good on any mode! Brinewater Springs might be my favourite aesthetically.

whats your signature piece of gear or fit ? The fit from before! I also love the Takoroka Nylon Vintage though.

do you own any splatoon amiibos ? Just the Green Squid one officially. I'm gonna get Big Man though!! (And I have bin files for Pearl and the Splatoon 3 Octoling Boy, but shhh.)

favorite splatoon game ? 3, silly!

are you autistic and or adhdtism ? Not diagnosed with either, but I love how accepting the Splatoon 3 community is of neurodivergent peeps :)

favorite agent ? Agent 8!! I hope Side Order is about them :) They have amazing lore that the other agents just don't, unfortunately.

[wantonwinnie]

The Bacta War Review

7/10. About halfway through I was feeling “eh,” and while it got better toward the back half, I think it still warrants a lower score than I have usually given for Star Wars books so far. I have a lot to say on this one because I'll be covering the first three books in the series a bit, as well.

To preface, I generally like canon better than a lot of the older legends stuff, but I still enjoy much what I’ve read so far (I also loved playing the KOTOR games). My main experience, albeit limited, is the first four novels of the X Wing series, and overall they were great! I really like the first three (Rogue Squadron, Wedge’s Gamble, The Krytos Trap). However, I think this one kinda suffers when compared to those.

Since they’re all a part of the same series, I’ll talk about what I liked in the first three. Rogue Squadron had excellent starfighter combat and engaging tactical discussion; Wedge's Gamble had interesting military strategy and related controversy, as well as espionage; The Krytos Trap, perhaps my favorite in the series, had questions about judicial policy, mysteries related to Isard and Corran, and Imperial subterfuge.

This begets a problem for The Bacta War – it has to wrap up whatever was left after The Krytos Trap, which wasn't much, without starting much new stuff. Most of the important mysteries were already resolved, including Corran's past, the main betrayal, and Isard's plans. And it’s totally okay to just want to continue the story with another fun adventure! Not every book will keep the same mysteries going, and the payoffs in Krytos made that a stalwart favorite of mine. People will read for the characters they came to know and love, which is totally cool.

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Spoiler from here on

However, that leaves me in a weird position. I like the characters just fine, but I don't have the same attachments to them as maybe others do, nor do I find them especially compelling. Corran is courageous, cunning, talented, and charming, but is also just an ex-cop who half the time is lamenting Booster Terrik as a hardened criminal or whatever. Booster himself is fun but straight-foward. Mirax is fun but ultimately felt like Corran's love interest more than her own character in this installment. Wedge is Wedge – hardened fighter who always gets the job done. I liked Ooryl and exploring the Gand culture.

That brings me to the main problem – while it didn't need to start anything new, I think it lost a lot of the political dimensions that made Wedge's Gamble and Krytos so awesome. Maybe it wanted to return to Rogue Squadron's focus on space combat or something, I don't know. But I was pretty disappointed in the lack of attention in the 12-hour (audiobook) read to interesting political questions that got asked and were left unanswered by the story (other than to say that they're irrelevant). I mean, they mention the New Republic can't get directly involved because that would be a violation of Thyferra's sovereignty, thus leading to other worlds leaving the NR. This is stated as fact without the perspectives of the Provisional Council or Thyferran people, and even less, barely weighs on any of the characters (and why would they care when they already decided it was a worthwhile venture?). Of course, the in-universe angle justifies itself; Isard is definitely evil, and making sure she doesn't control the Bacta cartel (+ liberating the Vratix from human oppression) is undoubtably good. But Rogue Squadron doesn't have to worry about sovereignty, and they honestly barely care about liberating enslaved workers (it’s more about Isard = evil). And that makes sense. But since we are only given their perspective, we never develop the political issues involved here.

Moreover, after defeating Isard, the establishment of a new government is an afterthought in the story and pretty fucking simple somehow. It’s literally turn the page and now Thyferra has a provisional government joining the New Republic. Blink and you'll miss it.

I think the most dimension The Bacta War gets is from the economic disruption of Isard's bacta supply, which is interesting, and definitely necessary to make the book a more worthwhile read.

I don't feel like the major characters had much development in their story arcs here. Corran is slightly more aware of his force abilities, though highly limited. He and Mirax grow closer. Corran gets over Booster a bit. Wedge gets more tired. Tycho tries to let go of his past trauma for a bit. That said, I don't think the characters are the strong-suit.

Speaking of, diversity is a big issue in this book (as with the first three, where most of the characters started). It’s human-centric, which isn't a big deal (Andor was probably the best show Star Wars has made yet, and that had an extreme lack of non-humans). However, this installment was even more human-centric than the others in terms of the characters given sufficient time, though non-humans were still relevant (Vratix, Ooryl). But more important – I was BEGGING for some non-white humans. I mean, holy shit. Corran? White. Wedge? White. Mirax? Booster? White. Isard? White. Tycho? White. Iella Wessiri? White. Gavin Darklighter? White. Pash Cracken? White. Elscol Loro? White. I just named almost all the major characters in this novel (and many are major to the first three).

There are exceptions (Wookiepedia doesn't say the skin tones of humans Erisi Dlarit or Fliry Vorru, who are both major characters, and Winter is described as "tan," though she's a minor character). I don't want to belabor this point, but I think it’s an important one. The author could have stood to make a few more non-white characters in the first place, especially considering how many non-legacy character options there were. And I've always thought it was so weird that, with Luke Skywalker being a white man, and Wedge Antilles being a white man, the author decided to make the titular character of the series (Corran Horn)... another white man? Not to mention the second new and important character, Tycho, another white man? I think we have enough of those in Rogue Squadron alone to cover our bases here lol. I can only speak for myself (another white man), but I have to imagine it’s difficult for non-white readers to see themselves in this series and especially this installment.

Of course, any relationship or potential relationship in this series is depicted as heterosexual, and all the characters have binary pronouns, though I never had any expectations in that regard. I'm really spoiled by The High Republic and other modern canon books, because those do a much better job than 1990s legends, which is both hopeful and unsurprising.

So, ultimately, how did I feel about this novel? I think the most important question for any novel is: did I have fun while reading it? Yes, I did. The space combat was exhilarating, tense, and surprising; the tactical questions were interesting; and the story had its moments. I don't feel like I wasted my time reading it. However, at the end of the day, I think it’s pretty, erm, skippable. It’s another story with the same characters, and I totally jive with that, but I think the missing elements made it a bit of a letdown compared to the first three books, which got better with each successive one.

I think next on my list is either the Doctor Aphra audiobook or Shatterpoint.

[popculturebuffet]

Life And Times of Scrooge McDuck Retrospective: The New Laird of Castle McDuck! “And I’ll Remember It Poppa! There’s Always Another Rainbow!”

Hello all you happy people! And welcome back to my look at the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck! And to make up for lost time im’ doing two instalments this month, and with luck and my schedule holding out I plan to finish the main series in September, doubling up again for the last two months to finish this up. 

Background wise there’s honestly not a lot this go round, as it’s less rooted in history and more Don Rosa’s need to settle an annoying flaw with continuity. Man oh man do I relate to that and having read comics for at least half my life, i’ve seen writers do this by the bucketload to fix decisions from other writers. Sometimes for the write reasons and sometimes because EVERYTHING WAS BETTER ON MY EARTH. Don Rosa, like most writers.. has done both. 

Here though it’s for the good and for understandable reasons: Barks had Scrooge’s origin as a poor shoeshine boy from Glasgow.. but also had a rather famous and awesome story, the Old Castle’s Secret, that also gave them a giant ancestral castle. Rosa fixed this by having the McDuck’s having lost it due to a combination of being driven off the land by a fake ghost dog and poor turns of fourtune meaning they coudln’t pay the taxes to live there and were behind on taxes on it, hence the Whiskervilles having taken it over in part one. 

But obviously the Whiskervilles coudln’t KEEP the castle as Scrooge owned it in present day, thus this chapter explains how he got it. It was a stroke of genius plot wise too as it allowed him to open each act in Scotland and using the castle to measure where Scrooge is in life: As a boy dreaming of getting it back, as a young man who while not a success succeeds at this, and as an older hardned man who realizes he simply doesn’t belong here anymore who has to leave his family’s legacy here behind to start a better one in America. 

The only other real story is that a sequence here was based on the film A Matter of Life and Death, and Rosa detailed in his notes his quest to get a copy as the distribution rights here were a nightmare at the time. Thankfully that’s clearly changed as a quick look on Amazon shows both a standard DVD release, mentioned by rosa in the book and a snazzier release by the Criteron Collection are both easily available. He ended up getting a copy from Canada, and while he didn’t get any insight at least got a neat addition to his collection. Admittedly this dosen’t add much to the story, I just thought it was neat. So with all of that settled, join me after the cut as Scrooge tries to buy back his family’s legacy.

And Scrooge has already arrived in Scotland, having reunited with Downy and Matilda, who as a refresher is more responsible and straightlaced here versus the 2017 incarnation.  Part of me DOES wish they hadn’t glossed over the reunion especially since this chapter is the last time we’ll see Scrooge and his Mom together before her utterly heartbreaking passing a few chapters down the road. But I get why we opened here instead: it’s a captivating open, with Scrooge speeding to the castle, his mother and sister trying to stave the rain off and time clearly of the essence. It sucks you in as we don’t know WHY Scrooge was summoned last time, only that it was bad enough he needed to come home, and thus ratchet’s up the tension until we find out shortly. 

It turns out the back taxes on Castle McDuck are up and the castle is being sold., doing so with some glasses, foreshadowing his iconic specs wearing as the snow and brightness of the praries in various seasons mean his eyes are all done fucked up like mine.  The Whiskervilles are naturally not only the prospective buyer but already trying to take the property prematurely, with Fergus and Jake holding the line, because love isn’t always on time. But Hortense is and when the Whiskervilles mock her daddy and uncle, planning to tear down the castle out of spite, her response reminds us why donald is a ball of rage and badassery...

Have I mentioned she’s my favorite part of this story? Because she is. Her response to scrooge being back is also just pure adorable. 

Scrooge does get a big reunion with his dad and uncle, getting a big hug from Fergus, if squshing his cream cheese sandwitch... and yes that’s apparently a real thing. I mean I do love me some cream cheese don’t get me wrong, but it just feels weird to put it on bread as the only thing, but I guess i’m a bit spoiled with crackers and bagels in my day and age or putting it on tosat with salmon and.. saying all of this both makes me very hungry for cream cheese. So I guess i’ts not all bad it’s just weird to me, especially since I don’t think it’d keep all that well unregrigrated but I also don’t know the times that well. Or maybe when your that poor and hungry, it dosen’t matter how good it is and maybe i’m just spoiled by my upper middle class existance. I dunno. The point is i’m going to go get me some cream cheese be back in a minute. Here have some music. 

For all two of you that didn’t clear out, Fergus naturally for the time, turns out to be sexist, insisting Jake get “The Women” home.

Though Rosa gets a great joke out of it by having Jake wonder if he can even reign Hortense in. And I do love Hortense’s character. Whlie i’ts simple, she’s simply an angrier version of her son without the penchant for half-assed schemes, it works and makes her stand out against the more subdued rest of the McDuck family outside of Scrooge. 

Fergus explains HOW it got so bad to Scrooge: While the McDuck ancestors pooled resources to automatically pay the taxes, eventually only having two poor old men who could barely keep their family fed and a slightly less poor pulp fiction writer somewhere in America meant the taxes piled up and the Whiskervilles are within a whisker’s reach of gettng the castle, something mentioned in part 1. 

It also provides a great payoff to the first part of Scrooge’s journey: while the boy bemoans only having gotten the 10,000 dollar check from the mine sale, and that will only just about cover the castle’s taxes, he feels disheratned as it’s ALL he’s accomplished.. but in a nice moment from Fergus he points it WASN’T all for nothing: Thanks to his work they get their home back. His family can move from the cramped confines of Dismal Downs back to their ancestral homeland like they always deserved. While he may of not achieved his goal of being rich yet.. he still achieved his goal of buying the castle back, the very thing that set him on this path in the first place. It’s telling though that it takes a reminder of that, that Scrooge is loosing sight of the very human, for lack of a better term, reasons he set out: while he’s finally built a better life for his family, if just so.. all he can see is that he’s not RICH. The money is starting to cloud his judgement.. and i’tll roll over him entirely before the series is over. 

The Head of the Whiskervilles shows up with the Sheirff.. whose also a Whiskerville lest you thought unfair and crooked policing was a strictly american thing. But Fergus points out their too early.. and Scrooge flashes his check. And when the Head Whiskerville scoffs at a mcduck having money... Scrooge points out he didn’t believe in ghosts either and brags about his awesomeness in the first chapter, revealing what he did and leaving The SHierff pissed and the older whiskerville ready with a plan: he decide......

Sadly not with children’s trading cards but with swords, and gets past the legality issue by simply challenging Scrooge’s pride and angering him into accepting. Argus, the head whiskerville whose name I just got from the comic, reveals his plan to the Shierff: While he’s dueling Scrooge Sheirff can snatch the bank statment.. though why Scrooge didn’t you know, cash it before coming and how an american banks tatment is valid in early 1900′s Scotland...

So the Duel is on.. and like the money he’s made, the Duel is another Marker of how far Scrooge has come and how despite still not having made his fortune yet he’s rich with EXPERINCE. His experince fighting cattle rustlers and pirates means he has the reflexes to easily outfight his opponent.. though him saying he learned how to fight “Injun Style from Buffallo Bill”, i.e. learned how to fight like a native american from a white guy and beat Sitting Bull with it just makes me feel like i’m watching that episode of Saved by the Bell where Zach has to learn not to be racist but then thinks this outfit is acceptable. 

Scrooge also tracks the guy using the tracking skills he learned from the blackfeet which again feel like the picture above , but send Argus running.. only to lure Scrooge into a fight on the castle battlemnt in the pooring rain and disarming him. Luckily the spirit of Sir Quackly gives the lad his sword back and Scrooge wins the fight.. but promptly gets hit by lighting while celebrating Caddyshack style. 

No really Scrooge is.. or close as he got knocked into the water and is now in heaven. Sir Quackly naturally doesn’t want to see the last hope of the Clan McDuck dies and goes to talk to the tribunal of McDucks to sort it out hence the Matter of Life And Death connection. 

The Tribunal is made up of former McDucks.. it turns out Scrooge is here because of Quackly: the lighting was SUPPOSED to hit the tower, distracting Argus, and they prepare to write Scrooge off because their more concerned with golf than the fact that their whole clan’s future is on the line.. which I do not get because unless you are Tiger Woods or the Film Caddyshack, golf usually is the boring garbage water of sports and this is from someone who dosen’t like sports to begin with. I do like the Missing Links of Moorshire though so there’s that. And golf episodes of shows are usually good.. the sport itself is just incredibly boring. And I sat through Mank. I know boring. I know wanting hours of my life back. Golf is the Mank of Sports. 

What we get is a pretty tiresome sequence honestly: Quackly points out the tribuanls faults while their just dicks who only care about golf. Which again, Mank of sports. Or if you prefer the Cloud Atlas of sports but with SLIGHTLY less untetionall racisim and sadly much less Tom Hanks and Hugh Grant. The point is golf sucks and while I ilke the REST of this chapter this bit just dosen’t work for me and was clearly funnier in Rosa’s head, with the assholes not thinking much of Scrooge’s achievements and only liking him when they find out he’ll be a tight wad, the only funny joke in these draggy as hell three pages, not counting the start and finish of the sequence which arnet bad, as they send him back to earth with Quackly mentioning the dime, but not giving out WHY it’s important. That he has to figure out on his own and all that good stuff. 

So Scrooge uses his dime to unscrew the bolts and back at the castle while Argus TRIES to pawn it off as Scrooge being a coward and depart with the bank draft.... 

Damnnnn that’s badass, he gets the bank note back (only knowing because one of his ancestors mentioned it, though with his memory of the dying dream gone he dosen’t know WHY), and has Fergus run into town to pay the taxes tonight before any other shenanigans happen while he keeps the two scheming dogmen captive long enough for Fergus to get too far for them to catch up.  Argus plans to go with plan “Do a murder on Scrooge”.. but fines Scrooge is far from unprotected and not the only badass in his family.. I mean Hortense exists but I mean that ther’es more than two... you know what jut look at the ghost heads. 

So the two run for their lives..... also they forgot you know Hortense exists.. she’d revenge murder all of them and they both know it. 

So with the land safe and the taxes paid so the Family can implicitly move in, we end on a beautiful sunrise as Scrooge prepares to leave soon. Despite all the setbacks and hardship Scrooge is deterimend to still make it and knows he won’t fail forever. When Fergus mentions Gold at the end of a rainbow, Scrooge takes that, and the golden dawn as a sign. WHen Fergus understandably asks if he’s sure he’ll make it this time.. we get a nice nod to Bark’s best and most notable painting “always another rainbow to close us out”

It’s a beauitful and inspiring statment.. no matter what you face.. there’s always a light at the end of it. Always another opportunity, another goal to reach, another hill to climb.. and life to live... and it’s one i’ve taken to heart and always will.. and one that will land Scrooge his fortune yet. 

Final Thoughts: This chapter is alright but like I said the two page sequence in heaven dosen’t really work for me. It’s just not funny enough and really shoudl’ve been trimmed down a page so we could get more character stuff with Scrooge and his family> Otherwise it’s a tightly paced thrilling chapter in Scrooge’s life, showing just how far he’s come and how far he has left to go. The DIsmal Downs chapter serve as a good marker of where Scrooge is and where he’s heading as I mentioned earlier, with this one showing that while he’s not hit his goal yet, he still got his family their true home back, beat his enmeis and is a legend to be. Ther’es always another rainbow.. and he just needs to find it. All in all a decent chapter outside those two pages, and a good setup for the next three glorious chapters. 

Next Month on LIfe and Times: One is Scroogey and the other is FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD, as Scrooge meets his arch enemy and rides a motherfucking lion. And if “rides a motherfucking lion” doesn’t make you come back I do not know why you read this.  Next Time On This BLog: What is that, that Freaky Thing? It’s A naked Mole rat as we return to Kauai this time with Kim Possible and Co as Drakken tries to capture stitch and Jumba wonders if Rufus is one of his or not. 

See you at the next rainbow

[breadoffoxy]

Appreciation Post

I know things are pretty rough right now and someone told me making a list of what your thankful for can help look at the positive things. This morning I got to sleep in on a day off (I still have to go into my office during the week ack) and I woke up feeling super productive and wrote two pages which hasn’t happened in a while. I really like the creative brain I got going on today. So, I wanted to take the time to thank the writers on here that have helped inspire me to start writing through their works and spread some love at the same time to help brighten some days. Writers need more appreciation too. This isn’t a complete conclusive list, there’s so many great writers that I follow and read and I thank everyone for the time and effort and bravery of posting their work online. I’m not a great writer, but I got to start somewhere. I hope one day I can get to yalls level.

@mintedmango​ – You have definitely been the biggest help in getting me to take the step into writing. Thanks friend! You’re so inviting and friendly, and I really appreciate the help you gave me on my first story I posted, it means a lot. I also love how you are so multifandom, its hard to find things not BTS I feel like sometimes so thank you for writing so many things. Your hybrid stories are some of my favorites with how unique they are and I like all your supernatural themes, plus the yandere society has great stuff too. I love seeing how your writing grows overtime and I can’t see what new things you do. Thanks for dealing with me and my rants in messages haha.

 @54daysormore​ – Your one of the first kop fanfiction writers I started reading. Sorry it takes me a long time to read your stories, they really hit me in the emotions. They really hit a lot of personal things and it helped me figure out a few things about myself. Thank you for writing these stories and I can’t wait till I can make it through the rest of your work.

 @gingerpeachtae​ – Concentric has been such a journey and I fell in love with it since the first chapter. I love the world building you have and your characters. Haha I have to yell Tae is precious every time. It’s such an amazing fantasy story and I just wish I could write something amazing like it. I can’t wait to see what other adventures you send your readers on next.

 @jincherie​ – Ok so I’m sure you know how much I love your stories with how much I say it in my reblogs haha but I really love your stories. You are versatile in so many different writing tones that it is amazing. From serious and smutty to silly and cracky to heart warming fluffy and everything in between you got it. I love your creativity and writing style. I really want to work to writing as well as you!

 @cinnaminsvga​ – You make me laugh, you make me cry, and you make my heart warm and fuzzy. I really love how you write and explore your characters. Your pokemon AUs I think are amazing and you got me interested in looking at the social media AUs. I love how diverse you are as a writer! Thank you for being so awesome!

 @btssavedmylifeblr​ – Ok I started reading kpop fanfiction with your fics on AO3 and found you on here and it opened me to the gateway of kpop heaven so thank you! I think how much research you put into your fics is amazing. I’m more used to academic writing now than creative so when I see you talk about your research, I’m like I can do that too. So now I just need to find a topic I really want to go crazy on and go from there and see how that helps me on my writing. Thank you for your stories and the hot crazy adventures they send everyone on.

 @readyplayerhobi​ – You make my sci-fi heart weep with joy. Starfire makes me want to write my own sci-fi story but whenever I try to plan anything your story keeps popping up in my head because I think it is the perfect space adventure. I just want to yell all the sci-fi things at you haha. All of your fics are amazing. I still think it is funny how I read all your funnier fics first haha. I appreciate the vulnerability you go into with your fics and with your characters. Also, thanks for sharing fics you like as well. They help me find lots of good new things to read.

 @underthejoon​ – I love your writing and it makes me really happy whenever I see you up on my dash. Your really good at playing with my heart strings in your writing. I want to learn the art of writing both super sweet and ugh angsty feels from you. Your so talented! My heart can’t take it haha.

 @kpopfanfictrash​ – I love your determination as a writer and wish I could have that same drive. I think it is amazing you are writing your own book, and that even though your last project like that didn’t turn out how you wanted you are still giving it a go. I also really like all the writing advice you post, its super helpful. I love all your stories, you have so many and so many of them are so long. There are so many different genres and tones and ah your crazy talented and again I thank you for your dedication to writing. I know I’m late to the exo train but I really enjoyed reading those along with your BTS fics.

@stutterfly​ – I know I mentioned this before but I really love your found family vibes from your Love Bytes fic. I love how all your characters are so different yet click together so easily. My heart isn’t ready for your future installments but I’m also super excited. Please teach me the art of slow burn. Your stories make me go crazy haha.

 @gimmesumsuga​ – Sweeter than Sweet is like the holy grail of this fandom I feel like haha. It is so amazing. And your dedication to finish such a long series is awesome too. Ah I’m so sad its over but it was such an amazing journey. I remember reading Beneath the Boughs and it was so crazy to read it just because of how you write Namjoon in STS. Both feel like you really captured part of the essence of Namjoon and yet those two characters are so different from each other. It really shows your writing prowess, poof mind blowing. I also really love By Its Cover so much too, again so different from everything else. I can’t wait to see what you do next!

 @crystaljins​ – Your also one of the first fanfic writers I started reading on Tumblr and I really love your work. Your so good with friendship and building up relationships in your stories. You take your readers on the ups and downs of relationships. I reread your fics a lot, Schemes and Tricks to Win her Heart is one of my favorites. Thanks for writing and sharing!

 @hobiwonder​ – Thank you for putting up with all the commissions I threw your way. I really do think you are an amazingly talented writer. I keep reading them over and over, the Jimin one always pulls at my heart. Your fics on your masterlist are so hot and awesome. Let me just say your awesome x 3000.

 @suga-kookiemonster​ – You are ruining me with Taehyung just to let you know. He is wrecking me so hard please stop haha. In all seriousness I love all your fics. How do you write things so hot and amazing?! I’m a slut for satisfy and the hush series. Ego is also super amazing and I love how wacky it is. Like how do you come up with the poop in the dishwasher!? I love how you write your characters so much too. I hope one day I can write wacky and sexy as well as you do.

 @johobi​ – When You Least Expect It. Alskdjfas, I don’t even know what to say haha. If I can write something just 10% as good as it, I’ll be happy. There’s so much of everything I can’t take it. The tension in it is killing me. I really like the take you make on it with the mc as well. Everything on your masterlist is amazing!

 @jungshookz​ – I love your stories so much. I find the bullet point format interesting and I may have to try that in my writing and seeing if that helps me out. I love how long and escalated your ideas have become even though you finished the stories for those characters. Your ideas just seem to be never ending and its amazing. I love how your readers just throw ideas at you and you run with them so well too.

 @hollyhomburg​ – I also really like your bullet point style and want to try it out sometime. I really like your scenarios and your BTS as witches one I reread a lot. It really makes me want to try my own scenario writing too. The romances in your stories are so good and sweet, I love how you build them. Dance to this is one of the first hybrid series I read so thank you for such a good start in that genre, I love that one a lot.

[terramythos]

TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Books 15-18 of 26

Titles: The Murderbot Diaries -- All Systems Red (#1), Artificial Condition (#2), Rogue Protocol (#3), and Exit Strategy (#4) (2017-2018)

Author: Martha Wells 

Genre/Tags: Science Fiction, Cyberpunk (ish), Novella, Agender/Nonbinary Protagonist, Asexual Protagonist, First Person 

Rating: 9/10 (note: this is an average-- see under the cut for individual ratings) 

Date Began: 6/15/2020

Date Finished: 6/23/2020 

Murderbot is a SecUnit -- a humanoid security construct created to protect contracted clients in a corporate, spacefaring future. Following mysterious/murderous events in its past, Murderbot hacked the governor module controlling its actions. Now it prefers to watch media serials and half-ass the whole “protecting human clients” thing. 

This changes when it discovers someone is sabotaging its clients’ planetary mission, putting the team in grave danger. Even worse, these new clients start to treat it like a person, much to Murderbot’s discomfort. In the resulting fallout, Murderbot finds itself answering questions it’s avoided thus far -- who it is, and what it really wants. 

I’m doing something a little different and combining these four novellas into one review; they are too short and interconnected to review individually in my regular format. Under the cut, I’ll start with my overall impressions of the series, then a look at/rating of each individual story. 

Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas. 

(Yes, that was sarcasm.) 

Overall Thoughts 

I really enjoyed this series! The strong point is without a doubt Wells’ excellent characterization of a distinctly non-human viewpoint character. Murderbot is a very interesting protagonist, and its constant snark and parenthetical asides are a joy to read. Much to its dismay, there’s also a lot of emotional punch entwined in Murderbot’s character arc and interactions. Murderbot may not be a human, but it’s definitely a person. 

It seems obvious to me that Murderbot is intended to be autism spectrum/ADHD coded. I���ve never encountered an unambiguously heroic protagonist that displays similar behaviors to my own, and it’s affirming to read. Difficulty with processing emotion? Hyperfixating on media to comfort itself? Issues with direct eye contact and touch? Truly a bot after my own heart. Honestly, I dreaded the point in the story where these are presented as weaknesses for Murderbot to overcome... and was overjoyed that it never happens. In fact, characters accommodate these aspects of Murderbot’s behavior/personality and respect its boundaries. This totally surprised and impressed me. 

Finally, I do really appreciate Wells’ approach to nonbinary characters. While it’s nice that we’re getting more representation, it can be very grating/telling if all nonbinary characters in popular media are nonhuman. Wells asks “why not both” and introduces a nonbinary human that uses neopronouns in Artificial Condition! I don’t use neopronouns myself, but I know plenty of people who do, and this is the first “mainstream” thing I’ve ever seen use them. 

I found this first arc in The Murderbot Diaries relatable, entertaining, approachable, and easy to read. I’m super excited to see where the series goes from here. 

All Systems Red (#1) -- 8/10 

It’s wrong to think of a construct as half bot, half human. It makes it sound like the halves are discrete, like the bot half should want to obey orders and do its job and the human half should want to protect itself and get the hell out of here. As opposed to the reality, which was that I was one whole confused entity, with no idea what I wanted to do. What I should do. What I needed to do. 

This is a good introduction to the premise. Murderbot's interactions with the human characters are a highlight throughout the series, but I think it’s especially true in this part. Wells does an excellent job, as many others have said, making a distinctly nonhuman perspective character sympathetic, interesting, and relatable. I like that the human characters treat Murderbot like a person/member of the team by default and generally respect its personal limits-- AND we didn't get some trite cliche about it-- AND that this throws Murderbot into an emotional crisis because it hasn't experienced this before.

If I have criticism here, it’s that the plot feels incidental; more a vehicle for certain character interactions than an involving story in and of itself. While the conflict and central antagonist do return in Exit Strategy, in this one they don’t feel especially relevant. The narrative thrust is more about Murderbot's personal development and denial/coming to terms with its attachment to the human characters, especially Dr. Mensah.

To be fair, it is weird to give this a numeric score because it feels like rating the first fourth of a full novel. So take this with a grain of salt. 

Artificial Condition (#2) -- 9/10

But there weren’t any depictions of SecUnits in books, either. I guess you can’t tell a story from the point of view of something that you don’t think has a point of view.  

Artificial Condition introduces another nonhuman character who is distinctly different from Murderbot, yet still fun and compelling: ART the research ship! Who’s moonlighting as a cargo transport. It's the ship on the cover, which I didn’t know going in, and this blew my mind for some reason. Anyway, the friendship between ART and Murderbot was really fun and genuine. I know ART shows up later, so I’m very excited for that; it adds a lot to the narrative. While I didn’t find the human cast as interesting as in All Systems Red, I do appreciate that there’s an actual nonbinary human character. 

The plot of Artificial Condition is still pretty secondary, but it does connect to Murderbot’s past, so I found it more engaging. In general, Murderbot gets a lot of interesting character development, and over time gains a lot of nuance. I think this is great, considering how complex and well-written it is from the start. There’s an excellent moment of delayed emotional payoff near the end when Murderbot helps a character after learning something earlier in the story. It’s hard to describe without spoilers, but I thought this was really cool. 

Rogue Protocol (#3) -- 9/10

Or Miki was a bot who had never been abused or lied to or treated with anything but indulgent kindness. It really thought its humans were its friends, because that’s how they treated it. 

I signaled Miki I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private. 

Like Murderbot, I find myself missing ART, but we do get an alternate nonhuman character in Miki. Overall, Murderbot's character arc feels way more connected to the conflict and action in this story than the previous installments, which is nice. While this is presumably a throwaway cast based in the ending, I thought Miki and Don Abene's friendship was an interesting foil to what I assume is going to happen with Murderbot and Dr. Mensah.

While this trait has been present throughout, this installment makes it very clear that despite its protests, Murderbot genuinely does want to help and protect people of its own free will, even when doing so is not the quickest or most self-preserving choice. There are multiple points in this story (and the previous ones) where Murderbot could choose to save itself or abandon people in need. But it doesn’t; it just sighs and complains about having to protect stupid humans. I love Murderbot. 

Also, this is one of those works where the meaning of the title doesn't really hit until you finish it, and oof.

Exit Strategy (#4) -- 10/10

So the plan wasn’t a clusterfuck, it was just circling the clusterfuck target zone, getting ready to come in for a landing. 

This one just slaps from start to finish. We get the full post-development emotional payoff re: Murderbot’s complicated feelings about the humans from All Systems Red. The characterization, plot, humor, and action are all on-point and the best in the series.  

I don’t really have anything else to say except this is an awesome conclusion to the first arc, and definitely my favorite of the 4 stories. I’m excited to see where things go from here. 

[entamewitchlulu]

so i did a reading challenge this year and i wanna talk about what i read

transcription under the cut

i did Popsugar 2019 and wanna talk about what i read:  Book Reccs and Anti-Reccs 

1.) Becoming a Movie in 2019: Umbrella Academy (vol 1) by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

4/5. A fascinating take on superpowers, dysfunctional families, and the apocalypse. Can get pretty gory, confusing here and there and you have to pay close attention to panels for lore, but overall an entertaining romp.

2.) Makes you Feel Nostalgic: Circles in the Stream by Rachel Roberts

4/5. Middle grade novel about the magic of music, belief, and of course, friendship. Definitely written for kids, and has some unfortunately clumsy Native rep, but overall an absolute joy to dive into once again.

3.) Written by a Musician: Umbrella Academy (vol 2) by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

4/5. Ramps up the confusion to ridiculous degrees with some absolutely bonkers, unexplained arcs, but still fun to watch this dysfunctional family do its dysfunctional thing.

4.) You Think Should be Turned into a movie: All That Glitters by Rachel Roberts

4/5. Continuation of Circles in the Stream, but with more unicorns, more rainbows, and more fae, which makes it automatically even better than the first.

5.) With At Least 1 Mil. Ratings on Goodreads: 1984 by George Orwell   

1/5. I understand why it's important and all but wasn't prepared for some of the more graphic scenes and the overall hopelessness of the message.  Would not recommend or read again.

6.) W/ a Plant in the title or cover: The secret of Dreadwillow carse by Brian farrey

5/5. A fantasy world where everyone is always happy, save for one girl and the princess, who set out to solve the mystery of their kingdom. Poignant and great for kids and adults.

7.) Reread of a favorite: Cry of the Wolf by Rachel Roberts

4/5. Yet another installment in the Avalon: Web of Magic series, which clearly I am obsessed with.  Please just read them.

8.) About a Hobby: Welcome to the Writer's Life by Paulette Perhach

5/5. A welcome kick in the pants, chock full of great advice told without condescension, and full of hope and inspiration for writers both new and old.

9.) Meant to read in 2018: The Poet x by Elizabeth Acevedo  

4/5. Absolutely beautiful coming of age novel told in verse.  Do yourself a favor and listen to the audiobook version.

10.) w/ "pop," "sugar," or "challenge" in the title: Black Sugar by Miguel Bonnefoy

2/5. I think maybe I just don't understand this genre.  Or maybe the translation was weird. I was confused.  

11.) w/ An Item of Clothing or Accessory on the cover: Our dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani

4/5. It had a lot more slurs/homophobia than I was prepared for, but otherwise is a very touching, relatable collection of queer characters living in a heteronormative world.

12.) Inspired by Mythology or Folklore: Ravenous by MarcyKate Connolly

3/5. A girl goes on an impossible quest to save her brother from a child-eating witch. Really wanted to like it more because I loved the first one, Monstrous, but it dragged a little.

13.) Published Posthumously: The Islands of Chaldea by Diana Wynne Jones

3/5. I adore Diana Wynne Jones, but this one was missing some of the magic of her other books. Not sure if it was because it had to be finished by someone else, or if I just grew out of her stories.

14.) Set in Space: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

4/5. Powerfully written story of a girl straddling tradition and innovation, who wields power through mathematical magic, surviving on a spaceship alone with a dangerous alien occupation after everyone else has been killed.

15.) By 2 Female Authors: Burn for Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian

2/5. Ostensibly a story about a revenge pact in a small island town, but leaves far too many dangling threads to attempt alluring you to the sequel.

16.) W/ A Title containing "salty," "bitter," "Sweet," or "Spicy": The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith  

3/5. It's okay but I literally just never know what anyone means at any time. Are they being reticent on purpose or do i just not understand communication

17.) Set in scandinavia: Vinland Saga by Makoto Yukimura

2/5. Technically and historically accurate and well made, but the story itself is not my cup of tea.  Very gory.

18.) Takes Place in a Single Day: Long WAy Down by Jason Reynolds

4/5. A boy goes to avenge his murdered brother, but ghostly passengers join him on the elevator ride down. Stunning and powerful character-driven analysis.

19.) Debut Novel: Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

4/5. Charming and then surprisingly heart-breaking comic about Nimona, a shapeshifter who wants to become a villain's minion. Really love the villain/hero dynamic going on in the background, along with the dysfunctional found family.

20.) Published in 2019: The Book of Pride by Mason Funk  

4/5. A collection of interviews with the movers, shakers, and pioneers of the queer and LGBTQ+ community.  An absolutely essential work for community members and allies alike.

21.) Featuring an extinct/imaginary creature: Phoebe and her Unicorn by Dana Simpson

4/5. Incredibly charming, Calvin and Hobbes-esque collection of comics featuring the adventures of Phoebe and her unicorn best friend.

22.) Recced by a celebrity you admire: The Emerald Circus by Jane Yolen

2/5. Recced by my fave author Brandon Sanderson. An unfortunately disappointing anthology proving that any story can be made uninteresting by telling the wrong section of it.

23.) With "Love" in the Title: Book Love by Debbie Tung

4/5. One of those relatable webcomics, only this one I felt super hard almost the entire time.  Books are awesome and libraries rule.

24.) Featuring an amateur detective: Nancy Drew: Palace of Wisdom by Kelly Thompson

4/5. REALLY love this modern take on Nancy Drew, coming back home to her roots to solve a brand new mystery. Diverse cast and lovely artwork, though definitely more adult.

25.) About a family: Amulet by Kabu Kibuishi

4/5. Excellent, top tier graphic novel about a sister and brother who have to go rescue their mother with a mysterious magic stone. LOVE that the mom gets to be involved in the adventure for once.

26.) by an author from asia, Africa, or s. America: Girls' Last tour by Tsukumizu

4/5. Somehow both light-hearted and melancholy. Two girls travel about an empty, post-apocalyptic world, and muse about life and their next meal.

27.) w/ a Zodiac or astrology term in title: Drawing down the moon by margot adler

3/5. A good starting place for anyone interested in the Neo Pagan movement, but didn't really give me what I was personally looking for.

28.) you see someone reading in a tv show or movie: The Promised NEverland by Kaiu Shirai

4/5. I don't watch TV or movies where people read books so i think reading an adaptation of a TV series after watching the series counts. Anyway it was good but beware racist caricatures

29.) A retelling of a classic: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Rey Terciero

5/5. We can stop the Little Women reboots and retellings now, this is the only one we need. In fact, we can toss out the original too, this is the only one necessary.

30.) w/ a question in the title: So I'm a spider, so what? by Asahiro Kakashi

4/5. Cute art despite the subject matter, and a surprisingly enthralling take on the isekai genre. Love the doubling down on the video game skills.

31.) Set in a college or university campus: Moonstruck (vol 2) by Grace Ellis

2/5. An incredibly cute, beautiful, and fascinating world of modern magic and creatures, but unfortunately falls apart at the plot and pacing.

32.) About someone with a superpower: Moonstruck (vol 1) by Grace Ellis

4/5. Though nearly as messy plot-wise as its sequel, the first volume is overwhelmingly charming in a way that overpowers the more confusing plot elements.

33.) told from multiple povs: The Long way to a Small, Angry Planet by becky Chambers

4/5. Told almost in a serial format, like watching a miniseries, a group of found-family spaceship crew members make the long journey to their biggest job ever.

34.) Includes a wedding: We Set the dark on fire by Tehlor kay mejia

4/5. Timely and poignant, a girl tumbles into both love and resistance after becoming one of two wives to one of the most powerful men in the country.

35.) by an author w/ alliterative name: The only harmless great Thing by brooke bolander

3/5. Much deeper than I can currently comprehend.  Beautifully written, but difficult to parse.

36.) A ghost story: Her body and other parties by Carmen Maria Machado

4/5.  It counts because one of the stories in it has ghosts. A sometimes difficult collection of surrealist, feminist, queer short stories.

37.) W/ a 2 word title: Good omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

4/5. Charming, touching, and comical, probably the best take on the apocalypse to date. Also excellent ruminations on religion and purpose.

38.) based on a true story: The faithful Spy by John Hendrix

4/5. Brilliantly crafted graphic biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and his assistance in fighting back against Nazi Germany.

39.) Revolving around a puzzle or game: the Crossover by Kwame alexander

4/5. The verse didn't always hit right with me, but the story is a sweet, melancholy one about family, loss, and moving on.

40.) previous popsugar prompt (animal in title): The last unicorn by peter s. Beagle

5/5. Absolutely one of my all-time favorite books, it manages to perfectly combine anachronism and comedy with lyricism, melancholy, and ethereal beauty.

41.) Cli-fi: Tokyo Mew Mew by Mia ikumi and Reiko Yoshida

4/5. Shut up it counts

42.) Choose-your-own-adventure: My Lady's choosing by Kitty curran

3/5. Cute in concept, a bit underwhelming in execution. Honestly, just play an otome.

43.) "Own Voices": Home by Nnedi Okorafor

3/5. The storytelling style was definitely not my style; while the first book was slow, too, it felt more purposeful. I found my attention wandering during this installment.

44.) During the season it's set in: Pumpkinheads by rainbow rowell

3/5. Cute art, but precious little substance.  The concept simply wasn't for me in the first place.

45.) LITRPG: My next life as a villainess: All routes lead to doom! by Hidaka nami

5/5. An absolute insta-fave! Charming art, endearing characters, an incredible premise, and so much sweet wholesome fluff it'll give you cavities.

46.) No chapters: The field guide to dumb birds of north america by matt kracht

3/5. It started out super strong, but the joke started to wear thin at a little past the halfway point.

47.) 2 books with the same title: Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roger

4/5. A brave and enduring personal story of growing up in and eventually leaving the Westboro Baptist Church. Really called to me to act with grace and kindness even more in the future.

48.) 2 books with the same title: unfollow by rob williams and michael dowling

1/5. How many times do you think we can make Battle Royale again before someone notices

49.) That has inspired a common phrase or idiom: THe Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

4/5. Definitely good and deserves it's praise as something that pretty much revolutionized and created an entire demographic of literature.

50.) Set in an abbey, cloister, Monastery, convent, or vicarage: Murder at the vicarage by agatha christie

3/5. I just cannot. physically keep up with all of these characters or find the energy to read between the lines.

ok that's all i got, what did y'all read and like this year?  (oh god it’s gonna be 2020)

[iwritesometimes]

thank you to the gorgeous @wordssometimesfail for tagging me in a get to know you thing RIGHT when I most needed some procrastination material!

Nickname: i don't have one that people outside my family use. my folks call me "sis" or "sissy" cause it's how my little sister's always referred to me.

Zodiac: your friendly neighborhood textbook capricorn.

Height: some nebulous area between 5' and 5'1". *fistbumps Aaliya* we were too powerful. god had to nerf us.

Amount of sleep: for optimal sarah maintenance, 7 hrs a night, but I can function okay on five and sometimes push it further bc i am not well adjusted.

Last movie i saw: watched the first installment of Lonesome Dove with @northstarfan last week, and my baby boy got et by water moccasins, so that went well.

Last thing i googled: "symphony of the night voice actors" looking for the name of Alucard's VA, bc the wiki unhelpfully just lists Yuri Lowenthal as Alucard's voice and i knew that couldn't be right. this gleaned me one of my favorite things: a series VA comparison collection, which has given me my favorite and now forever canon Alucard incarnation.

Favourite musician: it's been the band Keane for a long time, and it probably still is, but lately i have been reminded just how insanely good nickel creek are, so as keane is on indefinite hiatus/probably never making another album at this point, they're a top contender too.

Song stuck in my head: "bloody tears" bc it's been lodged in there for about two weeks straight and is the only song that matters to me anymore. but liberally seasoned with "simon's theme" and "vampire killer."

Do i get asks: sometimes! i always crave more. please PLEASE come scream at me about anything in which we're mutually interested!!

Blogs following: is this blogs i'm following, or blogs following me? it's 200 and 809, respectively, though only maybe a quarter of those following are real people.

What im wearing: a-line skirt with a tiny black and white herringbone print and black piping, and a royal blue peasant top w/ 3/4 sleeves and a big swirly white embroidered floral pattern on the front. and my Magical Talisman Bracelets. :)

Dream trip: i mean. everywhere. i wanna go so many places i'll never be brave or partnered enough to go to. at the moment i'm dreamily "planning" a road trip through northern california and the pacific northwest to see the redwood forest, the pacific coast, Seattle, etc. i also want desperately to visit Iceland and drive the ring road.

Dream job: not really sure anymore. i'm really comfortable as a copy editor, with a good salary doing a job i'm good at on a team i like, and when i'm off the clock i get to forget about my job completely and do whatever the hell i like with my free time. i think at this point all of those things are more important to me than having The Best Job Ever.

Favourite food: macaroni and cheese, hands down.

Languages: just English, shamefully. i really wanna pick Spanish and German back up, though...and lately i've been reminded what a fun language Romanian is.

Play any instruments: "played" cello for a school year, actually played flute for about seven. gonna try to pick it back up. i also own a guitar and want to learn.

Favourite song: it's been "crystal ball" by Keane for years, but "sovereign light cafe" and "won't be broken" are awesome too. i also love, in no order except that in which my dumb brain remembers them: "rest of my life," "why should the fire die," and "love of mine" by nickel creek; "the mighty rio grande" by this will destroy you; "on the nature of daylight" by max richter; "to build a home" by the cinematic orchestra; "magnificat" by arvo pärt; "i thank you god for most this amazing day" by eric whitacre; "welcome home" by coheed and cambria; "televators" by the mars volta; "übers ende der welt" by tokio hotel; "geht ab," "grau," "perfekt," and "bevor du gehst" by panik; "sarajevo" and "majka ruži kćer" by dino merlin (actually the whole Burek album); "heroes of earth" by wang leehom; "mirror", "vanilla", "returner," and "orenji no taiyou" by gackt (+ hyde on that last one; actually the whole Mars album); "ue o muite arukō" by kyu sakamoto; "to zanarkand" by nobuo uematsu; "somewhere i belong", "the radiance," "breaking the habit," and "the messenger" by linkin park (really both Meteora and A Thousand Suns albums); "o nata lux" by morten lauridsen; "the book of love" by peter gabriel covering the magnetic fields; "castle in the mist" by michiru oshima and koichi yamazaki; "lover's cross" by jim croce; "the mountain wayfarers" by the woodsheep; and like a thousand others. but when it comes right down to it, i think my actual bulletproof favorite song of all time might just be the king's singers covering airwaves' "you are the new day," aka, the greatest love song of all time.

Random fact:  i'm double jointed in both thumbs! this has not garnered me any edge in video games, which i consider a gross oversight on the part of the universe.

okay this took me like three whole days to finish and i would link all that music but i think i'll do that in another post in the interest of finally finishing this one. so i tag @bebeocho @omicheese @lazaefair @poemsingreenink @syphrilfox @filigods @look-and-wonder @northstarfan @pixelhanzo (obv only if you want to!) and LITERALLY anybody else who's feelin chatty, tag me if you do so i can come spy on ur life!!

[preserving-ferretbrain]

The Archon's Retread

by Robinson L

Friday, 06 May 2011Robinson L reviews the second book in Catherine Fisher's  Oracle Prophecies trilogy~

The Archon (American title: The Sphere of Secrets) is the second book in the YA fantasy series Catherine Fisher began with The Oracle. Again, I'm using the American cover because I like it better.

It seems Fisher recognizes the truth behind the old cliché “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” As

The Archon

opens, young Alexos has been installed as the eponymous religious leader, but in terms of power, the status quo has largely reasserted itself. Hermia and General Argelin still effectively rule the country, which is still blighted by drought.

Argelin, shrewd strategist that he is, has promoted Seth, provided Alexos with a bountiful supply of pets and toys and baubles, and provided Obleck with a bountiful supply of wines and spirits. This keeps them all too busy or distracted to plot further against himself or Hermia.

But when a petitioner pays tribute of a shiny sphere to the Oracle, Mirany discovers this Sphere of Secrets is actually a map to the fabled Well of Lost Songs. Alexos decides to go on a quest for the Well, taking Obleck and Seth with him.

Mirany stays behind with Argelin, Hermia, and the rest of the Nine. However, even before the trio set out, political machinations have set in motion which could swallow up all their lives, and much more.

Reading

The Archon

was much like reading

The Oracle

, except that now I've taken Fisher's measure, she no longer surprises me; I know what to expect from her.

Fisher tries to give her characters added depth by keeping the viewpoint character (and the reader) guessing about the true nature of the people around them. She did something similar—with moderately more success, to my mind—in

Incarceron

.

My problem with the characters in

The Oracle

and

The Archon

is that they never feel alive and three-dimensional to me. Please refrain at this point from skipping to the comments section and drafting a response beginning “My dear sir, are you aware ...,” explaining how this sense of characters as real people is merely illusion. I know all that, but it is a necessary illusion for creating truly powerful and engaging characters.

The characters in

On the Jellicoe Road

or

The Woman in White

or even

Schroedinger's Ball

feel real to me in a way those in Fisher's works generally fail to do. I'm at a loss to explain the phenomenon, which I also experience when reading the works of

Llyod Alexander

, for instance. Possibly, as our esteemed editor

suggests

, I have no soul.

Since I'm unable to connect with the characters on any meaningful level, reading the

Archon

was a lackluster experience for me. It doesn't help that this time around, our heroes' journey through the desert is epic in terms of both length and tedium.

That said, the book is perfectly readable, the plot interesting, and the story flows quite well—bar a few unfortunate scenes in the desert. The characters, though flat, are all right, and I do appreciate the way Fisher plays around with the the supporting cast and her readers' perceptions of them.

Rhetia, in particular, stands out in this regard. In

The Oracle

, she was the self-centered-jealous-antagonist-turned-unlikely-ally. With

The Archon

, Fisher could easily have kept Rhetia in the role of Mirany's ally—instead, she keeps true to the antagonistic as well as the cooperative side of Rhetia's character by having her pursue her own agenda over Mirany's objections.

Fisher challenges conventions in other ways, as well. Most strikingly for me was a scene where a servant stumbles upon Mirany eavesdropping on Hermia and Argelin. Mirany knows the servant will rat her out sooner or later, so instead of retreating or trying to bribe the servant as most protagonists would in her shoes, she marches into Hermia and Argelin's room as if that were her intention all along.

I'm of two minds about the climax. On the one hand, Fisher evokes one of my least favorite narrative tropes—without straying too far into spoiler territory, we'll leave it at a supporting character sacrifices their life to save a main character. On the other hand, it's probably the most exciting climax of Fisher's I've read so far. The final chapter of the book is downright explosive, and while the story nominally ends, it leaves many questions unresolved for book three,

The Scarab

.

The climax was for me, hands down the most engaging part of the book, and I should add that I found it exciting in its own right, not merely in comparison to the rest of the story. Although I suspect

The Scarab

will be more of the same, I admit the ending leaves my interest piqued to learn what comes next.

In summation,

The Archon

is a little weaker than

The Oracle

, but otherwise much the same. Anyone who's already read the former would be justified in assuming their reaction to the latter (positive, negative or neural) will be similar, and should proceed accordingly. Anyone who hasn't read

The Oracle

might as well start there, and see whether it's worth their while to continue to

The Archon

.Themes:

Books

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Young Adult / Children

~

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~Comments (

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)

Wardog

at 11:06 on 2011-05-06I'm kind of saddened to read this review. I know I reacted with similar dismay to your review of the first book but since, despite being quite openly a fan of Fisher's work, I still haven't got round to either finishing the first book or starting on the second. Which makes me suspect that either I have no soul as well or that some of your criticisms are correct. Wah. I do remember Incarceron with deep pleasure though - although perhaps it was just the awesome setting overwhelming everything else. The thing is, I don't really remember much about the characters in The Oracle, but I do quite vividly remember Claudia and ... uh ... the other dude.

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http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

at 23:08 on 2011-05-08I actually find Fisher a bit hit and miss. I love her "realistic" fantasy, like Corbenicand Darkhenge, but find that her high fantasy tends to fall a bit flat. I never quite believe in the characters- very nearly but just can't manage it. I found this with the Snow-walker trilogy, and Incarceron, though the people were a little more real, felt formulaic and dull, even though I know it shouldn't have. The ideas behind it are good and new, but it just feels off somehow- somehow it reminds me of Dragonlance novels, if they were written with more skill. I'm definitely going to read Sapphique to find out what comes next, but I really prefer her stories set in the modern world.

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Robinson L

at 15:30 on 2011-05-09

I do remember Incarceron with deep pleasure though - although perhaps it was just the awesome setting overwhelming everything else.

I could see that. The setting really is imaginative and well-realized.

I actually find Fisher a bit hit and miss. I love her "realistic" fantasy, like Corbenic and Darkhenge, but find that her high fantasy tends to fall a bit flat.

I haven't gotten around to

Darkhenge

yet. With

Corbenic

, it took me until about the last third of the book to feel really emotionally invested in the characters, but I'm pretty sure I did get there eventually.

By the way, how many articles does an author need to rate a theme handle at this point?

[love-takes-work]

Steven Universe Comic #16 (2018) - Outline & Review

The sixteenth installment of the ongoing comic series for Steven Universe is about Amethyst and Steven collaborating with Kiki and Jenny Pizza to sneak out for a local band's concert. After they encounter some setbacks on the way to the show, they have to decide how to access help without blowing their cover. The paper issue I bought has the main cover by Grace Kraft!

Plot:

Steven and Amethyst start their day with a stop at Fish Stew Pizza. They place their order with Kiki (Steven: Smoked Salmon Surprise; Amethyst: Three Cheese Halibut with pineapple and mayonnaise), and then Jenny approaches the table to let them listen to a new song by her favorite local band. Everyone really likes the sound, even Jenny's sister.

The group decides it would be awesome to go to their concert that's happening the same night, but Kofi overhears and objects to their attending because the next day is National Pizza Day and he anticipates big business. He won't allow them to go, but Kiki suggests maybe they could just sneak out for a little while. Steven agrees with Kiki that it could be fun if they're cautious, while Jenny and Amethyst love the rebellious plot. The twins pretend to go to their rooms and then sneak out, meeting with Amethyst and Steven and going on their way.

Jenny delegates navigation to Kiki while she drives, and as they ride along the scenic route, they discuss responsibility. Amethyst and Jenny are happy to get a break, and Kiki and Steven agree that people depend on them to provide their services. On the way, they get a little lost and Kiki is having trouble with her app, so Steven tries to help while Jenny gets frustrated and Amethyst tries to calm her down.

Then disaster strikes: the car gets a flat tire and they don't have a spare, so they're stranded. They try to push the car but it's not working, even when Amethyst tries to do it as Purple Puma. Kiki tries to give up and call their dad, but her phone's out of juice from the navigation app, and Jenny's afraid to make the call because she doesn't want to get in trouble. Steven tries to call his dad for help, but some mysterious shape leaps out of nowhere and steals his phone, freaking everyone out. Kiki demands that Jenny call their dad, but she tries Buck and Sour Cream first, and they don't answer. A frightening growl sends the group into a panic.

Amethyst reassures Jenny that she doesn't have to be the cool one when they're in danger--she relates, as the Gem who's always trying to play it cool in scary situations, but she urges her to play it safe and call Kofi. She finally calls her dad, while Steven and Amethyst decide to up their chances of keeping the crew safe by fusing into Smoky Quartz.

While Jenny makes the call, Smoky fights the mysterious shadow and gets yanked into the bushes by their yo-yo. Kofi, to his credit, hears his daughters are in danger and doesn't waste time scolding; he leaves immediately to find them. Meanwhile, the thing in the bushes turns out to be Lion, and he REALLY likes Smoky's yo-yo. Danger averted, they unfuse.

Kofi, having gotten a ride with Greg Universe, arrives to save the day. The dads make sure everyone's okay, and Greg brings out a spare tire to fix the Pizza car, requesting Amethyst's help to change the tire. Once the crisis is averted, Kofi grounds his daughters for sneaking out, but admits that he is glad they called him in an emergency and grants them permission to attend the next concert. With one caveat: He'll drive.

Notable:

1. Jenny never names the band they're seeing. She just calls them "my favorite local band." Seems peculiar, but I guess since she hasn't named a favorite band in the show, maybe the writer didn't want to potentially contradict canon? She could’ve just said it was one of her favorite bands, I dunno.

2. The speech patterns of the characters are very show-accurate. Some of the phrases are almost directly lifted from episodes, such as Kofi threatening Jenny with grounding (like he did in "Beach Party").

3. Jenny and Amethyst as the risk-takers and Kiki and Steven as the voices of reason is a really cute dynamic.

4. Amethyst's concert outfit is a callback to the outfit she chose in "Too Short to Ride," except she hasn't made herself look taller. It's just the outfit on her typical shape.

5. The car getting a flat leading to a suggestion that they could just walk to the party is sort of reminiscent of when something similar happened to Pearl, Amethyst, and Steven in the episode "Last One Out of Beach City," except they ran out of gas in the episode.

6. I'm kinda confused about why the group decided to try to push the car at one point--were they just going to push it the rest of the way to the concert?--but it's also weird that four people can't push a car when two of them are Gems with super strength. Amethyst as Purple Puma can't even move it, despite that she probably should be able to pick that car up. She even shapeshifts into a jack later to help Greg change the tire, so why can she lift the car by herself if pushing it doesn't work?

7. Jenny's contact photo on either Buck or Sour Cream's phone is really cute.

8. Buck and Sour Cream practice safe concert habits by wearing earplugs.

9. First appearance of Smoky Quartz in the comics! And the hand-grasping motion they use to initiate fusion is reminiscent of how they do it in "Know Your Fusion."

10. I think it's a little goofy that Lion pounced and stole Steven's phone for plot convenience and Steven didn't even realize it was Lion until Smoky Quartz confronted him. Oh well.

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

[kihong-source-blog]

Ki Hong Lee gives us the deets on ‘Maze Runner’ and his new digital comic!

Meg Bonney: First off, congratulations on the success of Maze Runner: The Death Cure!

Ki Hong Lee: Thank you!

MB: For those who haven’t seen it yet, what can you tease about your character in The Death Cure?

KHL: Well, the third and final movie picks up right where the second one left one. My character, Minho, is captured by WCKD and my Glader friends are trying to get me out!

MB: Do you run in real life or is that just some spectacular acting?

KHL:  Last time I ran was when I ran to my door to get the pizza delivery. 🙂

MB: Haha! I also wanted to congratulate you on your new digital comic, Love In Time! I was just reading that not only are you one of the creators, but that your likeness will be used for the main character! Is this the first time you will see an animated version of yourself?

KHL: Yes! Super excited to see how it turns out. Honestly, it’s just a chance for me to shift gears and sit in the creator seat for a bit. It’ll give me some creative flexibility and a chance to create an opportunity for myself.

MB: That’s awesome! What can you tell us about the story in Love In Time?

Chris Dinh (co-creator of Love In Time) :  Love In Time is about a scientist from the future (Ki Hong) who’s been trapped since the 1800’s. After waiting in isolation for over 200 years, he’s finally on the verge of going home when he meets and falls for an aspiring musician. Going against everything he was taught, he takes a peek into her history and discovers that she gets murdered soon after their meeting. He decides to save her, risking not only his one shot to get back home, but also irreversibly altering the future.

MB: That’s awesome! What kind of platform is that on? Will readers get story installments weekly? Monthly?

CD: You’ll be able to find it exclusively on the Tapas App! We’re still waiting to see if it will be weekly installments or if it will be more like a binge release. We promise to let you know as soon as we do!

MB: I can’t wait to check it out. It sounds amazing!

KHL: We can’t wait for everyone to check it out too!

MB: We are huge nerds here at PureFandom.com and love to geek out about our favorite things. What is your favorite show, movie or video game right now?

KHL: Some underrated shows that have not received enough love: Disjointed and Atypical. Personally though, both shows had amazing casts and it helps that fellow actors in the community, Liz Ho and Amy Okuda, respectively, were able to showcase their talents.

CD: Our co-creator/co-writer, James Chen, recently introduced me to the “Red Rising” series and I can’t get enough of it. I’m also currently reading the graphic novel “Paper Girls” by Brian K Vaughan. I’m also finishing up Season 4 of Black Mirror, Electric Dreams and iZombie. We’ve also been reading tons of books and comics on the Tapas app as well and I find myself always going back to “His Barcode Tattoo.”

MB: We are all about iZombie too! In the spirit of sharing, I covered the show Teen Wolf while it aired, which starred your costar Dylan O’Brien. Did you ever watch it?

KHL: Yes – although I have to admit, I haven’t had a chance to check out the most recent episodes!

MB: Okay, we need to know – who is your favorite Teen Wolf character?

KHL:  I heard that Arden Cho plays a badass character named, Kira. I have to check it out. Couple of the Maze Runner cast and I watched the show with Dylan one time a couple of years ago. Gave us another excuse to hang out in between shooting the Maze movies. It’s a great show and Dylan absolutely kills it as Stiles.

MB: We totally agree! Ki Hong, what would you say is the main difference between your character in Love In Time and your character in the Maze Runner movies?

KHL: Well, first off, Locke is from the future and is a scientist. So maybe in an alternate reality Locke could have worked for WCKD and tortured Minho like they do in The Death Cure! I’m not sure how fast Locke can run – but I would imagine he would have some very cool futuristic tech to aid him in his running.

MB: Aw! I was obsessed with that book too! Would you say that it influenced you when working on Love In Time?

CD: James Chen came up with the original concept and I think it hit a chord with both Ki Hong and I because I think we just crave a good love story sometimes. It’s definitely a diverse mix of influences that we bring to the table. We chat about everything from our favorite K-Drama moments to favorite Sci Fi moments.

MB: We can’t wait to geek out over Love In Time! It sounds amazing! Thank you so much for taking the time to chat!

KHL:  Thanks so much for having us on your site!

CD: Thank YOU for chatting with us!

(source)

[christinaengela]

Hello friends and fans!

Welcome to my 46th newsletter – October 2020!

On A Personal Note

September was a fairly quiet, uneventful month… actually, no… who am I kidding? There were a few things that made September an interesting and busy month! Aside from the editing work I’ve been doing on the sideline, I also had to undertake the Herculean task of migrating my website from WordPress.com’s hosting to a new home. The newly migrated site is pretty much sorted out now, but if you find any glitches, like broken links or missing images etc. please do let me know! I also added a ecommerce functionality to the site – now that I’m able to use plugins – and visitors can buy eBooks direct from the shop page now without having to go to other online shops – isn’t that nice? 🙂

On the social side, I had a brilliant email interview with fellow South African author Simon Corn this past month, you can read that from the link further along!

Further afield, I indulged my love for woodworking this past few weeks, and finally got round to building that bookshelf I longed for to complete the feel of the ‘study’ corner of our lounge! As you can see in the photo, it’s in the corner (which makes it stronger – a must to hold all that weight haha) and it’s filled with an array of some of my favorite books – fiction and non-fiction! Our Star Wars collection of memorabilia fills the gaps quite nicely too! The shelf above the window is home to the bulk of my collection of antique telephones, and beneath the shelf – on a cupboard you can barely see in the photo – are two antique typewriters, a 1939 Remington, and a 1952 Olivetti, both in good working order!

This year’s almost over – and with the entirety of the last week of September being taken up by my website migration, I’m looking at the remainder of 2020 a little bleary-eyed! I still have some work left in the writing department for this year – aside from the editing projects I’m doing for clients – and as always, I’ll keep you posted on my progress!

Moving on, let’s take a look at the usual list of goodies!

Art

I also indulge in painting from time to time – and no, I don’t mean walls! The following paintings are in my portfolio:

#gallery-0-21 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-21 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 20%; } #gallery-0-21 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-21 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

2017_Human Nature A4 acrylic canvas

20200620_Balancier A2 acrylic canvas

20200628_Rescuer A2 acrylic canvas

20200705_The Awakening A2 acrylic canvas

20200712 The Earth Wept 40x40cm acrylic canvas

You can read more about my art projects on the Art page.

What do you think of them? Feel free to let me know!

Music

Yes – I also make music from time to time!

A selection of music tracks I made using eJay and other similar apps between 1999 – 2008 are available on my YouTube channel.

You can read more on the Music page on my website!

Activism

For those of you interested in my activism-related posts and activities, you can follow them at “Sour Grapes: The Fruit Of Ignorance“.

Current Writing Projects 

For the past few weeks, I’ve been dividing my time between performing editing and formatting work for Moon Books Publishing, and writing new material for Galaxii Book 4, which I haven’t formally named just yet! Operating under the working title of “Dreams of Innocence” – from an old draft I’d worked on a long time ago and which set the background foundation of this otherwise entirely new story – this book will once again be looking at the Corsair menace.

Set a short time after the collapse of the Corsair home world Meradinis, the story focuses on the starship I.S.S. Munray – a ship crewed by ill-disciplined misfits barely one step away from court-martial and dismissal, filled with bitterness, resentment and axes to grind with anyone in authority – and the Captain’s the worst of the lot! His career has soured and he ‘works the system’ to get himself removed from command and assigned to an easy desk job at a starbase – but the powers that be have other plans…

A new Captain is assigned in place of the malingering Captain Polluk – a young, ambitious up-and-coming and capable officer – and Sonia LaBelle is the literal new broom! She manages to overcome all the obstacles in her path; a ship in a poor state of repair, an uncooperative senior staff, negative hopeless crewmembers – in time to meet the deadline set by Vice-Admiral Beens.

Meanwhile, a couple of extremely dangerous high profile Corsair convicts escape from an isolated, virtually escape-proof prison complex, which sets the cat among the pigeons! The Munray is diverted from a routine space patrol to pursue the escaped Corsairs, an exercise which will push the already strained interpersonal relations among the crew – and between the crew and its new Captain – to the limit!

At least, that’s more or less the broad overview of the fourth book in the Galaxii series! I’m quite excited about it, since I haven’t really worked on that series since I last revised all the titles back in 2018! Book 4 doesn’t feature any of the characters of the previous books (at least not as yet) but I might still be looking at drawing in one or two later, I’ll see how the story progresses and where it takes me!

Editing

I recently completed editing “Avenging Aranis” by UK writer Steve McElhenny – a sci-fi tale for Moon Books – and the first part of a trilogy! Currently I’m editing “The Darkness Within Me”, a dark fantasy novel by South African author Anya Louw, also for Moon Books.

I’ve also recently started offering my editing services on a freelance basis to interested parties. More about that here.

Marketing – The Dreaded “M” Word! 

Portfolio 2020!

I thought it would be nice if I could produce a neat, organized catalog of all my books that interested parties could download and browse – a free, distributable and shareable catalog, and so I created “Portfolio 2020!” – a listing of all my currently available titles!

Portfolio is more than that though, because it also contains a biography as well as synopses for most of my titles – and I have a plan to update it regularly, perhaps on an annual basis! Portfolio 2020 is available as a free download from my website.

Videos

I’ve nothing new to show you here this time, but feel free to browse through the videos on my YouTube video channel!

Sales

Sales for September have been holding a constant trend, with figures for 2020 indicating that I’ve already doubled the total for 2019! Things have been slow in progressing, but at least they’ve been consistent, with a gradual improvements across the board – accompanied by an increase in distribution as well as with the addition of external marketing on the part of my publisher, Moon Books Publishing, who’ve been doing their own marketing of my titles! That tells me things will get better!

Additionally, having migrated my website to a new hosting service (where I can actually install plugins!!!) I’ve installed ecommerce and set up direct purchasing options for interested visitors, so I’ll let you know how that goes next time!

Publishing

These are the books I’ve released so far this year!

Between January and September 2020 I released eight new titles! Of these, two – “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” have been replaced by one combined title, “Mirror, Mirror” which includes both of them. Of course, this reduces my count back to 30 again – but when you already have 30 or so books to your name, what’s one here or there?

New Releases:

I’ve nothing new to show you here this time!

Audiobooks

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“Malice” (2020)

On September 11, 2020, “Malice!” was released as an audiobook, narrated by Michelle Innes!

“Malice!” is a collection of my horror tales. Read more about the book.

Details:

Published: June 25, 2019, audiobook September 11, 2020.

Words: 21770

Pages: (6×9 Paperback)

Duration: 02:10min (audiobook narrated by Michelle Innes)

Book Trailer Video:

Buy now: eBook Paperback Audiobook

Coming Soon

In the meantime, here’s a look at the covers for hot new audiobooks currently in the pipeline:

Stay tuned for updates!

Reviews

You can see all my previous reviews here.

Currently Available Titles

I now have 30 unique titles available in 4 series (not including books I’ve been the editor for, and my 16 free promotional items)! My books are available in three different formats: EBooks, Paperbacks and Audiobooks. Click the links or images below to view titles available in these formats.

Communication

Below are links to a few of my most recent posts and articles since my last newsletter:

Now You Can Buy EBooks Direct From Christina Engela Dot Com!

The Last Post! Please Subscribe To My New Website! 🙂

New Website For Christina Engela Dot Com!

New Release: “Malice!” – The Audiobook!

Indie Copy Editing Services Offered!

Another Round At The Crow Bar #45 September 2020

If you want to see more articles, just click on the category links below:

Elements of Horror

FAQ Answered

Fun Facts

LGBT Heroes

The Tech Side

Secret Weapons of the Resistance

Writing Advice

Guest Writers

Newsletters

Interactions

Fan Mail, Reader Reviews & Honorable Mentions

I have the following awesome items to show you this month!

I found this share of one of my articles “A Treatise On The Psychic Abilities Of The Common House Fly” on Odd Mag from February 02, 2020.

“Christina Engela is an excellent editor. She helped me open my mind to a different perspective, to see my work through the eyes of the reader. Most importantly she taught me more about writing than any teacher in my entire 12 years of education! I’d rate her at 100 out of 10!” – Anya Louw, author of “The Darkness Within Me” and “Normanwood” (Aug 28, 2020).

“I recently had the pleasure of an editorial experience with Ms. Engela. As an entry level author and with some trepidation, I submitted work to Ms. Engela for editing, uncertain of what to expect from the process. Ms. Engela read and corrected my work. Her approach is professional, encouraging yet precisely on point. There was not ever a need to query the work she did on my script. I was also particularly impressed with her turn around time. I would strongly recommend her editorial services and I look forward to a time when I can work with her again.” – Cedar J. Lockheart, author of “Skinwalker” (Aug 28, 2020).

“In running Moon Books Publishing I know the value of a good proofreader and editor. Christina is a proven author who has released over 30 books, so she knows the ins and outs of writing. I’ve discovered that not only is she witty, bright and verbose in her writing, but she is also meticulous and professional in her proofreading and editing skills. You won’t find a more professional proofreader and editor than Christina. That is why I will ALWAYS choose her to handle proofreading and editing at Moon Books Publishing.” – Brandon Mullins, publisher, CEO Moon Books Publishing (Aug 29, 2020).

A fantastic, swashbuckle through space. “While Fantasy is my primary love in literature, I have always enjoyed a good science fiction yarn and when this one came to me via the narrator I figured it may just satisfy an itch I’d been having of late.

Sheesh, where to start with this book? Simply put, it has everything! There’s adventure, space battles, fistfights, pirates and, of course. romance.

The story revolves around Mykl, ex-combat pilot turned down-on-his-luck cargo captain who begins the book afloat in space after most of his crew, for reasons unknown, mutiny and fly off in the ships sole shuttle. Shortly afterwards the starships drive explodes, killing his two remaining crew and leaving him marooned in deep space with no hope of survival. That is, until a ship full of marines rescues him from certain death only to then get into a battle with a ship full of space pirates, Mykl has to rely on his military training to survive and capture the dreaded Blackhart!

It’s only now that things really start to get bad when his military contract is reactivated and he’s tasked with a critical, possibly suicidal mission into enemy territory.

Every primary character in the book, from Mykl to Ripley and Blackhart himself are extremely well fleshed out, interesting and fantastically voiced by Nigel Peever, each given a real sense of identity and more than a little snark. In addition to the reading, there is the addition of sound effects and some incidental music which is just enough to add atmosphere without distracting from the reading like often can happen with this in audiobooks.

There’s so much in this story that I could talk about but I don’t want to spoil anything but do strongly suggest that, if you like Buck Rogers, Firefly or Pirate stories you give this book a go as I thoroughly enjoyed everything it had to offer.” – Ryan Pascal review “Blachart” Audible UK, August 29, 2020.

“Christina performed a fantastic editing service for my novel. I was blown away by the pace she worked at, her accuracy, and the improvements she made. It would be no understatement to say she went above and beyond what I expected and was incredible value for the more than reasonable cost for her services. I look forward to using Christina again in the future as I know I’ll be in safe hands.” – Steve McElhenny, author of “Avenging Aranis” (Sept 07, 2020).

“Blachart. A good read. Well written good story line. Well narrated. All in all a good listen.” – Richard Davis, Audible UK, “Blachart”, September 09, 2020.

Spotted on the internets… Brandon Mullins of Moon Books Publishing made and shared this awesome meme to market my audiobooks:

Quotefancy shared a quote by me, found on September 22:

I display my Fan Mail, Reviews & Compliments with pride, gratitude and humility. You’re always welcome to have a look.

Hate Mail & Horrible Mentions

I’m rather proud of my hate mail, and you can review my collection here – but be forewarned, don’t do it while eating or drinking, or you might choke while laughing!

Apparently I’m unhinged and need help? LMAO… Oh, won’t someone please help me?

Interviews

A Moment With Christina Engela – I had an interview with Simon Corn on his author blog – it went live on September 28.

All my interviews are linked to from this page. If you would like to do an interview with me about my work, please do get in touch!

In Closing

Well, that’s all for this time, folks! 🙂

Thanks again for all your support, friendship and interaction!

Feel free to email or message me via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn if you have any comments or questions!

Until next time, keep reading!

Cheers! 🙂

Catch me on social media!

Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Academia | Minds | Instagram | GoodReads | Author’s Database | Library Thing | YouTube | Pintrest | Stage32 | The Book Marketing Network

If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website.

If you’d like to send Christina Engela a question about her life as a writer or transactivist, please send an email to christinaengela@gmail.com or use the Contact form.

Show your appreciation for Christina’s work!

All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2020.

Another Round At The Crow Bar #46 October 2020 Hello friends and fans! Welcome to my 46th newsletter - October 2020!

[savingpeopleslayingthings]

Defy The Worlds (ARC) Review!

It’s Tuesday so let’s review a great book I just read. If you wish to skip to certain parts of the review covering specific topics, look for the bold words! Also, there are NO SPOILERS AHEAD

I received an ARC of Defy The Worlds at NY Comic Con just a few days ago, and I am so grateful I was able to get my hands on it. 

To see my review on goodreads, click here!

Overall: 5/5 Stars Characters: 5/5 Setting: 5/5 Writing: 4.5/5 (ARCs usually have mistakes though, so that’s normal) Plot and Themes: 5/5 Awesomeness Factor: 5/5

If you don't feel like reading this long review, here is my opinion in a nutshell: Defy the Worlds is a fantastic sequel to an equally fantastic book. It's action packed, adorably romantic, and full of fun (and slightly terrifying) science and technology. This book is absolutely brilliant and if you need to pick it up now.

I read Defy the Stars immediately after it came out and fell in love with the universe, the characters, and the writing. The second I finished it I desperately wanted the sequel, and now that I've finished the sequel I hate how long I'm going to have to wait for the next book. The Constellation Series takes place an a universe filled with Earthen colonies, and Genesis, the one planet fighting back to protect itself. This breathtaking universe is brought back in Defy the Worlds, with even more to discover. The setting remains as one of the aspects of this book that really sets it apart. Each planet is so different and described so vividly, you will be imaging you are there with the characters. Defy The Worlds manages to include familiar settings from the first book, while also introducing brand new locations for you to explore with Noemi and Abel. I can't go into too much detail (no spoilers here!) but I can say its really fun seeing these new places along with the old. By far, my favorite part of this series is the characters. Defy The Worlds brings back all of our favorite characters (some when you least expect it), while also introducing a few newbies into this world. My favorite character will always be Abel, and in this novel you see him continue to develop and grow more in-tune with himself and become more human, similarly to as he did in book one, but even further. In my opinion, Noemi's development wasn't as pronounced in this book as it was in the first, but it was definitely still there and I can see this book setting her up to change even more as a character in the next installment. Once again, we also see Burton Mansfield up to his usual shenanigans (you know, wanting to kill Abel so he can live forever, that fun stuff). This time though, he is less of a direct player and more of just the motivation for who I feel is the larger threat in this book, his daughter, Gillian Shearer. I wont go into details on this, because spoilers, but trust me when I say she brings some very interesting things into this book. Finally, some old friends from Defy The Stars are brought back into the spotlight, and all I will say was that I loved seeing them again. Another interesting aspect of Defy The Worlds was the overall themes. In comparison to the first book, religion didn't play as big of a role, but it was definitely still discussed and mentioned often. One of the recurring questions in this book is "What are you fighting? And what are you fighting for?" For Noemi especially, this question is harder to answer than it seems. Also in this book, the theme of humanity vs. machine, and what the difference is, is continued to be explored and debated by various characters throughout the story. I personally love reading about this, but I could be biased considering I'm a computer engineering major who wouldn't be opposed to creating an AI even if it could take over the world (I mean- that would just be so fascinating!) (yeah I'd definitely be the mad scientist villain in a YA book. Maybe Mansfield is hiring). My overall thoughts on this book was that it was absolutely amazing. Claudia Gray has created a universe so bright and intriguing while also being frightening in its flaws and dark side. I cannot wait for the next book!! Oh god, its only October, I'm going to have to wait awhile aren't I? Claudia why do you always do this to me😭?????

[thebooknook2705]

Book Review: Starsight by Brandon Sanderson

Rating: 5/5 stars

Genre: Science Fiction

Synopsis: Starsight is a sequel to Skyward, the first book in a 4-book series. Skyward is about a civilization of humans stuck on a planet called Detritus who are fighting for their existence against aliens called the Krell. Our main character, Spensa, dreams of nothing more than becoming a great pilot, but the DDF (Military) won’t allow her to join because they have labeled her father as a coward who abandoned his flight. Spensa’s goal is to clear her father’s name and get into the DDF, and she finds something in the caverns below Detritus that could change everything.

Review: (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD) Holy crap I love this series so much!! This was a really goo installment. I will admit I didn’t love it as much as the first book, but still! M-Bot, as always, was delightful in this book and I enjoyed meeting the new cast of characters on Starsight! One thing I noticed was there was a lot less deaths of named characters, which I guess makes sense since there were a lot less actual battles than the first book. RIP Hesho! That fake out death with M-Bot really got me for a minute there- I’m really glad he didn’t die.

Alright, now that that’s over with, let’s talk about the big reveal: Doomslug was a hyperdrive all along! I thought that that was an extremely well done plot twist. I didn’t see it coming at all, but it made so much sense! I literally had to close the book for a minute and think about the implications of this development. I will admit, I was kind of ticked that this whole undercover mission could have been avoided, and I did really miss hanging out with Skyward flight- my favorite part of the first book, but like I said, I enjoyed the new flight group as well. (Still missed the og crew though).

Also- Jorgen! It’s kind of ambiguous but it looks like he’s part cytonic or something of that nature. Wasn’t it mentioned in the first book that the rich lower cavern people once sided with the cytonics of the Defiant? And didn’t want people to know about the “defect” because they might carry it? Something like that? So Jorgen could have slight cytonic capibilites! And he found a huge heard of hyperdrive slugs! But can only cytonics or part cytonics hear them? It was never covered in the first book if Rodge could hear Doomslug. Because Jorgen said no one else could hear the singing. Very intriguing!

Also do all cytonics have Spensa’s connection to delvers? Where it affects they’re emotions in the same way? Or affect the delver in the same way?

In short, I have a lot of questions that will hopefully be answered or expanded upon in the next two installments of the Skyward series!

Side note: I saw Rise of Skywalker the other week and all I could think was how awesome a Skyward movie would be- anyone else?

[gywair]

I finally watched Endgame. I’d put it off a week since its release. It felt like planning to attend a funeral. This series has been part of my life for a decade. Going to see the cumulation of over twenty films felt too heavy to see. Putting it off only made the tension build though. Finally, bite the Infinity Stone and ordered tickets.

First, I watched it in “4DX”. This is similar to the theme park rides that started popping up that are a mixed medium experience. So the seats move, air blasts at you, there are water effects, lights flash, and even smells get pumped into the room. In theory, this seems really interesting but usually, I go to movies I don’t care about to try out new gimmicks. My first 3D film was My Bloody Valentine. It was silly and fun. It also helped me adjust to what a 3D movie would be.

My first 4DX-like experience was the Empire State Building ride as narrated by Kevin Bacon. A sentence that makes me feel like I suffered a stroke while writing but is a real thing that exists that I have experienced. It’s been a few years since that and I think it lasted less than 20 minutes (probably less). Sitting for an entire movie seemed like a whole different worm can.

For me, I didn’t really like it. The water, lights, and smells were cool. The smoke was nice too. The seat, however, is made for someone slightly smaller. So when Iron Man gets kicked in his kidneys, oh spoilers BTW, the seat hits you too like a demented message chair. I think normally it would softly strike you in the back on your rib cage. For me, it went straight to my soft organs. This made the fights are to concentrate on (a problem for a movie about fighting). Likewise, little jets of compressed air go off just above your head. For me, they were pointed directly into my ears. So each time they fired off, I couldn’t hear and had the painful sensation of a ghost giving me a wet willy (I’m also blessed with ear problems so your experience may vary).

Anyway, big thoughts:

The Good:

The job of wrapping up 20+ movies was a big task. This film does that. It has a large cast of characters and several errant storylines to wrap up in a short timeframe. Cause even with 3-hours, this felt like there was still more to say. Which isn’t bad cause that means there can still be more films but for a chapter closer it was ambitious.

I was satisfied by the investment I’ve made into the franchise. This was a fitting close to this chapter. Each film contributed in ways that made the complete journey feel fluid and necessary.

It makes several subversions of expectations. Not just for characters but for narrative design. It kept me guessing the entire time. Even with seeing a handful of tiny spoilers, I was never sure what was going to happen.

Avengers served up heaping mounds of gratuitous fan service in the best ways possible. Sometimes this can be very bad like in animes when the whole episode is about boys spying on girls in a hot tub. Here, it’s Captain America fighting a copy of himself or Professor Hulk half-assing some smashing. One of the best parts of the film is about time travel. Here they show off fan-favorite Loki popping up at different points in history.

One important aspect to me for a story of any kind is how much foreknowledge a viewer needs before starting the work. If you watch Pirates of the Carribean 3 or Return of the Jedi, you will be pretty confused. However, you can pick up just about any Marvel movie anywhere in the series and have a fair idea of what is going on. This continues in this installment. Some context is lost or hidden but anything you need to know is shown/told/explained to you. This, for me, is what makes a story stand on its own legs.

See?! This scene just makes sense all on its own.

The Bad:

With so many cooks in the kitchen, there are still weird dangling problems in the continuity. Things still feel left open to interpretation. Even the filmmakers didn’t agree on how elements in the film worked which is something that should have been determined before the first Avengers movie was written. It feels haphazard with how certain things were written off or ignored.  This plays well into feeling like a comic book where different creators retrofit things to fit their narrative but it still felt jarring.

For example, in Captain Marvel, the cat has a stone. Well… so does Thanos… but also now Loki… There is a lot going on and even a whole (if well delivered) exposition still didn’t completely cover all their bases. It feels like they slapped it together at random at times. I get that they can play with the timeline literally but I feel like there were still a lot of open questions that should have been answered that weren’t.

I could rewatch all the movies (read as: will eventually) to get the full context. This makes the act of enjoying these films more academic though than just for pleasure viewing. It’s not that I don’t want to do this but for casual viewers, there was a lot of backstories to keep up with to get each nod.

The Ugly:

After years of hearing that fans want more women characters, the film tried to give them the limelight for an action sequence. The rest of the film is mostly about a boys’ club rushing around doing action hero stuff. Yes, Nebula and Black Widow make important contributions to the plot but they feel sidelined or overshadowed by the boys. The problem here is that the women are treated more like set dressing than people important to the plot to move ahead. If Spiderman had finished running the Infinity Glove to the van it would have served the same device. Instead, they made a big show of having the girls team up for a few seconds.

Supposedly this movie was gonna have a “Big Gay Film Moment” TM that would make people happen. Instead, it just suggested that gay people do actually exist. IDK man, like that, is a pretty cold take. If Warmachine and Bucky had started making out after the big fight I would have been cheering my head off. I’m not upset by any means. This is more of a missed opportunity for the filmmakers to do something and instead, they took the safest path.

  Hope you weren’t invested in Starlord and Gamora cause that entire trio of films is pretty much null now so far as character development for Gammy. She had an awesome arc. Then they killed her off. Then she comes back but now she doesn’t know Quill. Okay, well this means that other dead people come back… right? Oh, no? Vision and Black Widow are still gone? Weird… I heard this is cause they were killed pre-Snap BUT so was Gamora and they got her back. I think they were just running out of time. I hope Scarlet Witch gets to go back to her robo-boyfriend.

Was that all just a wild middle finger to Gunn? That’d be drama.

The funeral… why isn’t anyone crying? Everyone seems so calm. Is this like when you have already been to like six superhero funerals that week and five are already back on their feet?

I told myself I wasn’t gonna cry.

Characters:

Alright, so this film had way too many characters to really cover perfectly as a group. I have some stray thoughts on several, however.

Hulk is my new boyfriend and I will fight you for him. Banner has made peace with himself and created a half-way point between Hulk and himself. Now he is permanently strong and smart. This is wonderful for character development as he finally finds the peace and belonging that he has wanted since Edward Norton tore up downtown as the rage-y green giant. His new hipster persona felt satisfying and fresh for the film universe. Something of a reversal of the Ragnarok Hulk.

Captain America finally bangs and accepts his position as “America’s Ass”. I’m so proud of my boy. He’s all grown up.

It took Iron Man a decade but Tony Stark finally discovered how to care about something other than himself. His character arc is the film universe’s arc to this point. He was the foundation for everything that came after. This film serves as much an Iron Man movie as it is an Avengers’.

Black Widow kind of gets the shaft here. She began as a coldhearted assassin and ends up as the corporate mom leading the heroes’ home base. There is so much to still unpack for her. Her character has so much potential just under the surface but no one seems to be interested digging into it. I mean Scarlett Johansson “kills” in the role but this movie doesn’t really give her anything to do except talk to Hawkeye…

Hawkeye tried to be the Marvel Aquaman comeback kid and he just comes off as edgy but not in a good way. More like a midlife crisis day buys a motorcycle than the Crow. Like, he tries to make it sound like his entire career of being an assassin was more good than being an assassin now. He does get a brutal back story but I feel like he falls short of reaching his character potential here. He does get some cool scenes and then just gets shoved to the back of the movie.

Thor is bae. He has a brutal journey to this movie but he gets a lot of character work here. His beer belly hermit hijinks provide a much needed comedic break. I also cried like a baby over him.

Rocket has finally gotten some growth as a person. In this movie, he gets to interact with the core team more. This was a lot of fun because of his sass with characters like Iron Man. Also, he finally dons his iconic blue flight suit and red scarf–not important but it was a fun Easter egg.

It only took two Guardians and an Avengers but they finally let Karen Gillan really make Nebula rule. Gillan is a fabulous actor so it was always painful that Nebula just ran around screaming. In Endgame, she finally gets to have some real personal moments that don’t feel weird. Paper football was the best scene honestly for the emotion and narrative. I mean, her whole career as a sour rage junky comes to a boiling point and then she FINALLY gets to open up the tiniest bit with Tony. I really hope there is something… anything in the future where she gets to be this new fun Nebula. It’s like your weird aunt went on vacation and actually had some personal growth and brings you back some neat shells and a guy named Desmond for herself.

Ant-Man got some funny moments in but nothing to really write home about. He was our Joe McEverydude here and it worked fine. I’m baffled at the taco scene but it was worth it for Hipster Hulk to share with him. Like, I know Scott Lang as a character isn’t super bright. That’s his whole thing. But, I just can’t understand what would drive him to go outside the fancy building to eat tacos on a bench facing the jet landing pad.

Warmachine got some interesting developments here. I’m sad now that he didn’t get to build a romance with Nebula (that is just barely suggested here). He felt like a full member of the team rather than just a sidekick from movies past.

The Falcon & Bucky were there. I really wish there had been some kind of closure or growth moment for them. In Winter Soldier, they were at each other’s neck. Now they seem cool. A friendly word or a high five could have sold me on their growth but they kind of get forgotten instead. I was never gonna see my Falcon-Bucky slash make it to the silver screen but would it have killed the Russos to have one heated kiss between these two obviously boyfriend material lads.

**EDIT** —–> THERE IS A SPIN OF THESE DORKS. OMG.

Alright. I’m psyched for this.

Captain Marvel comes in at the end of this list just like she did in the movie. That’s right, she shows up as a Deus ex Machina and looks cool but really got burned here. She deserved better. She just drops in for a minute to help and then jets. Still cool but she gets no development here. Her movie rules though so I’m gonna forgive it. Mostly. That said, it was wild to see basically an Amy Dangerous on screen and that was special for me.

Closing Thoughts:

It was a really fun movie. I may never watch it again. Just like the other Avengers, it’s a good time but it feels more like a spectacle than a great film. That’s not bad but when I watch a film, I wanna see characters grown in new unexpected ways. I want to see hard choices and emotions. Those moments were there but as little islands between big budget action scenes. I really enjoyed it but for the same amount of time, I might just watch Ragnorok again or Detective Pikachu. Finishing this movie felt like the end of a long (20 movie) hike. It was a great adventure. The fun of it was the friends we made along the way. I don’t regret a minute of it.

But it feels good to be at the end.

For now.

Endgame Thoughts I finally watched Endgame. I'd put it off a week since its release. It felt like planning to attend a funeral.

[krinsbez]

Speaking of Choose Your Own Adventure books from my childhood, I wonder if anyone on tumblr could help solve a mystery for me. In addition to the official CYOA books, I also would periodically stumble onto an installment in the “Endless Quest“ series, a competitor that diverged from CYOA in A: having a primary story-line with a happy ending that appeared at the end of the book, and B: Supposedly being based on existing, published RPG settings.

The very first of these that I read (taking it out of the library because of it’s awesomely badass cover image, which you can see above), and my favorite, which I re-read multiple times, was entitled The 24-Hour War. It was a sequel to a previous Endless Quest book entitled American Knights, both taking place in the post-apocalyptic “Gamma World“ setting.

Years later, I stumbled upon a discussion of this setting, and was shocked to find that, asides from general weirdness and being post-apocalyptic, what was described bore no resemblance to what I remembered; no Cannibal Biker Librarians, no Mother Truckers, no Scamish Knights, no Robot Spiders, etc. Looking things up in the interwebs, I found all references to Gamma World supported this new account, and not my memories.

To this day, I have no idea what the deal is; did the author of the series just get some very vague cliff notes and make things up out of whole cloth? Is there more than one Gamma World rpg? Have my memories totally lied to me?

Anyone have any info that can help solve this?

(I am tempted to babble on about the books, but that kinda distracts from the question)

[lifelibrariesandlemontrees]

Book Review: California Schemin’

Synopsis:

Conor's made it to Los Angeles to compete on the reality show, Singing Sensation, and is suddenly plunged into a whole new world. There's a houseful of people, all with the same dream of making it big in the music world and willing to do whatever it takes to win. Conor has to deal with the pressures of live performances, catty competitors, sour judges, a nearly naked roommate... and the attentions of a sexy, older rock star - all with cameras watching his every move. Conor's always been big on secrets. And the biggest secret of all - his relationship with Derek, the bad boy back home - may be the hardest one to keep.

Review:

Hey guyes, lookie here. You see this? Yup. It’s the sequel to Hanna Dare’s Sing Out trilogy, California Schemin’. It’s here! It’s a pun! And look at the nice new cover! Admittedly, when this book first came out it had the same terrible cover as the first one, but it’s taken me so long to get around to this review that she’s completely revamped all of the covers into pretty new images. And they’re awesome. So much better. So much so that I almost don’t feel bad about taking forever to review them! (almost)

Because it dd take me so long, however, I’ve since read the 3rd one too. But this review is just going to focus on this book, and hopefully I won’t get anything mixed up. It can be a little difficult to remember what exactly happened in which book after reading them all, but I promise to do my best. 

Like most second installments in trilogies, this book does suffer a bit from second book syndrome. It doesn’t have an initial interest of a first book of the climactic punch of the final book. That isn’t to say that it isn’t good, because that’s not true at all. It’s just that this book covers the necessary emotional development in-between stuff, and also our boys aren’t together.

At this point, Conor has left to be on the competition and Derek is dealing with some issues of his own back home. That isn’t to say that Derek’s not in this book because yes, phones are a thing. They’re a great thing! It’s just that the boys are using this book to develop individually, and learning about themselves without relation to the other. It’s important and I’m super psyched that it happened, it’s just that it means that the book is primarily Conor on the show, and interracting with the other cast members, and personally I care about the show the least. I’m totally on board for the Conor and Derek love stoy and this is the book where it hits a rough patch. I don’t have any complaints and I wouldn’t change a thing, it’s just that it makes this book the least interesting. 

The least interesting book in a great series is still plenty intresting though! I don’t want you to think for a second that I’m down on this book or this series, trust me, I’m not. In fact, I’m whole-heartedly recommending this series to any and everyone becaus it’s one of my favorites. You may notice that this is not a NetGalley review. Nope. Only the first book was available on NetGalley. I shelled out my own money for this and it was worth every cent. 

I love this book and I love this series. Hanna Dare is a great independent author and I strongly recommend you all pick up this series. It’s not expensive and you’re supporting an indpendent artist. You should give it a go! Take my word for it, you won’t be sorry. 

Re-readability: 4/5

Rated: 4/5