#stand alone book

[arndtezra]

Heads Up, Seven Up!

Thank you, @vcaudle, for the tag! I'm tagging @jowritesfantasy @authfelixgraves @kmenright @thephoenixandthecrocodile @fictions-stranger @therealdesastr @shimaira. The rules are to share a snippet or a line from your recent work and then tag seven people. Anyone feel free to do this challenge if you want.

Here's a line from Cannibal Candy, my second-world gothic horror romance WIP about a trans-masc ballerina on the run and a cannibalistic heir in search of a spouse so he can inherit his family fortune with a world war raging on in the background.

[bluepancakesandanxiety]

A series of stand-alone books: exists

Me: let’s read them in order of which one looks best

Me: and let’s skip the third one completely because why not

[johnskleats]

Azula would have lost the Final Agni Kai no matter what. Here's why:

Azula is insecure. That's why she takes cheap shots. She did it with Katara, and she did it with Aang in CoD, AND she did it with Iroh striking him with lightning. One could even argue that her behavior in CoD foreshadows some of what happens in the Agni Kai, where in CoD, Katara fights Azula, and Zuko saves her, whereas in the Final Agni Kai, Zuko fights Azula and saves Katara. It's a little mismatch of dynamics.

Azula cheating (constantly), is a staple of dishonorable behavior, which I think is interesting.

We see her "play with her food" like a cat, with the Dai Lee and other opponents she encounters. She tricks them and manipulates them and there's no threat. Killing Aang with lightning was SUPREMELY stupid on her part, and she wouldn't have done it unless she was cornered. She didn't even stick around to make sure he was dead or have any of them followed-- because she was scared. Zuko NEVER flees in fights out of fear. He doubles down like a lunatic and tries to get himself killed instead. Azula is not willing to risk her life, and that's why she's a worse fighter. The insecurity gets to her head and she psychs herself out

Azula has a lot of fire power (lol), but Zuko has the heart and commitment to see actions through to the end. That's why he would have won, had Azula not cheated.

By the end, they were evenly matched in firepower anyway. They did the Raging Line of Flames Competing Colors thing and met in the middle, and stayed there. That's how animation tells us about their ability.

Azula's seat of power in her firebending is spite and fear. She's not even mad, bro.

Zuko's seat of power, at the end, is light and life and love. One is a powder keg that runs out after you blow it up once, and the other is like an oil fire in a parking lot. There's essentially infinite fuel there.

Zuko would have certainly outlasted her. And did, if you think about it. Because she panicked.

Azula's entire persona is a mask, just as Zuko's bravado and pettiness in the first season was a mask. (Funny, that he can only be himself when he's hidden the scar with the blue spirit mask, therefore freeing himself of the shame and the mark that brands him as a villain)

They show us that Azula's mask is not only slipping, but cracking, crumbling in the mirror scene. That's why it's there: to show the audience that all of her running has finally caught up with her.

This world that Azula created has been a sham from the beginning. Castles in the sky to make up for what she lacks: love.

Which is why she would never win against Zuko if they both reached their full potential, as they did during the comet.

[poetrysmackdown]

what makes a poem a poem? does it have to be written in a certain way? is this question a poem if i want it to be?

Fun question! This is just my personal sense as an avid reader and less-avid writer of poetry, but for me it’s useful to distinguish (roughly) between poetry as a genre and poetry as an attitude or philosophy through which language and the world can be understood. And of course these two go hand in hand. I see poetry the genre as essentially a type of literature where we as readers are signaled, somehow, to pay closer attention to language, to rhythm, to sound, to syntax, to images, and to meaning. That attentive posture is the “attitude” of broader poetic thinking, and while it’s most commonly applied to appreciate work that’s been written for that purpose, there’s nothing stopping us from applying that attentiveness elsewhere. Everywhere, even! That’s how you eventually end up writing poetry for yourself, after all. There’s a quote from Mary Ruefle floating around on here that a lot of folks have probably already seen, but it immediately comes to mind with this ask:

“And when you think about it, poets always want us to be moved by something, until in the end, you begin to suspect that a poet is someone who is moved by everything, who just stands in front of the world and weeps and laughs and laughs and weeps.”

Similarly, after adopting the attentive posture of poetics, there’s plenty of things that can feel or sound like a poem, even when they perhaps were not written with that purpose in mind. I’ve seen a couple of these “found poems” on here that are quite fun—this one, for example. The meaning and enjoyment you may derive from the language of a found poem isn’t any less real than that derived from a poem written for explicitly poetic purposes, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t be called poetry.

That said, I do think that if you’re going to go out and start looking for poetry everywhere, it’s still important to have a foundation in the actual language work of it all. Now, this doesn’t mean it has to be “written in a certain way” at all! But it does mean that in order to cultivate the attentiveness that’s vital to poetry, one needs to understand what makes language tick, down at its most basic levels. It will make you better at reading poetry, better at writing it, and better at spotting it out in the wild.

Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook is an extraordinary resource to new writers and readers, and a great read for more experienced folks as well. Mary Oliver’s most popular poems are all to my knowledge in free verse, and yet you might be surprised to find her deep appreciation for metrical verse (patterns of stressed/unstressed syllables), as well as for the most minute devices of sound. In discussing the so-called poetry of the past, she writes,

“Acquaintance with the main body of English poetry is absolutely essential—it is the whole cake, while what has been written in the last hundred years or so, without meter, is no more than an icing. And, indeed, I do not really mean an acquaintanceship—I mean an engrossed and able affinity with metrical verse. To be without this felt sensitivity to a poem as a structure of lines and rhythmic energy and repetitive sound is to be forever less equipped, less deft than the poet who dreams of making a new thing can afford to be.”

In another section, after devoting lots of attention to the sounds at work in Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, she writes,

“Everything transcends from the confines of its initial meaning; it is not only the transcendence in meaning but the sound of the transcendence that enables it to work. With the wrong sounds, it could not have happened.”

I hope all this helps to get across my opinion that what makes a poem a poem is not just about the author's intention, and not just about meaning (intended or attributed), but also about sound and rhythm and language and history, all coalescing into something that rises above the din of a language we would otherwise grow tired of while out in our day-to-day lives.

I'll always have more to say but I'm cutting myself off here! Thanks for the ask

[nenehyuuchiha]

Tim Drake is DC Taylor Swift

[sophiesonlinediary]

i’ve been sitting in bed for 20 minutes trying to understand why liz buxbaum and wes bennet would break up.

[raineandsky]

#121

The barrel of the supervillain’s weapon turns a bright white as it charges. The villain is ready for this—they’ve planned it, they’ve imagined it, they know that this has to be the thing that redeems them.

The supervillain laughs as he turns to face the weapon towards them. The heroes never really believed they’d changed. Why would they? A villain once is a villain for life. Whispers followed them, hard glares burned into their back, the odd ‘accidental’ shove followed by laughter that could’ve been as cruel as a villain’s.

The supervillain says something, but they’re not listening. Well. The villain’s about to show those stupid heroes what change looks like. They’ll die here, the hostages will have that extra time to escape, and the heroes will finally see the villain as one of them. As a person.

The villain closes their eyes. The machine in front of them whirs excitedly. This is it. This is it.

Something hard collides with their side, sending them crashing to the pavement. No! their mind shrieks. Gravel digs into any bit of skin it can find, the sharp ache of future bruises under their clothes. Painful, but not as much as this was meant to be.

The supervillain grunts in frustration as the villain risks opening their eyes. A hefty crater is smouldering in the concrete where they were just standing, puffing smoke into the air like a grim image of what they’d have ended up as—ash, at best. They can’t move; somehow, seeing the destruction that could’ve so easily been them is paralysing.

“Oh, god,” someone says from behind them. “You’re not dead, are you?”

The villain finally notices the tight hold around them and manages to wriggle out of it. “Wh—” They push away from the hero, incensed. “What are you doing?”

The hero lugs themself to their feet. “Making sure you don’t die?”

The villain follows them up, ignoring the hero’s hand held out to them, as the supervillain tuts irritably. “Heroes cannot save you, [Villain],” he calls with a cold smile. “You really think you are anything more than a stain to scrub out to them?”

The villain lurches back towards to supervillain, the hero grappling for them and missing. “Then give them something they’ll physically have to scrub out of this road!”

The hero appears next to them, their hand around their arm. “[Villain], stop.”

The villain shrugs their hand off, but it’s back immediately. “Go away, [Hero]. Let me do this.”

The supervillain’s weapon lights up. “No,” the hero snaps stubbornly. “Why are you so set on this? What is dying really going to do?”

Whirring hums in the air again. The barrel turns that heavenly white. “Because maybe then you’ll see me a little more as a person and less as a mindless criminal.” They shove the hero away. “There’s hostages, you know. Go be a hero and help them.”

“The other heroes have that sorted,” the hero says coolly, “because I’m a bit busy trying to save someone else right now.”

The villain doesn’t get a chance to pull away from the hero this time. Their hand tightens on the villain’s arm, and before they can react they’re pushed to the side and out of harm’s way a second time.

“Stop!” the villain cries, their voice barely a rasp. “You think I’m blind? You think I can’t see that all of you would rather I was dead?”

“Maybe a few of the nastier guys, sure. They don’t like anyone,” the hero says sharply, “but I promise you, [Villain], not everyone wants you dead.”

The supervillain’s weapon clicks. The villain recognises the sound; a reload, a brief respite in the war. The hero pulls the two of them behind a slab of upturned road, out of the weapon’s line of sight. Not that it wouldn’t blow this thing to smithereens if the supervillain wanted it to.

“You are a fool to think the heroes will ever think of you as one of them,” he says with a grim smirk. Another click, another bolt in. “But if you do not want to accept that, I am happy to erase the thought from your mind.”

“I need this,” the villain snaps. The hero’s still clinging to their arm. “Let go of me.”

“No you don’t,” the hero says shortly. “You need redemption.”

“This is redemption.”

“No it’s not.” The hero’s hold on them tightens, almost painfully. “This is sacrifice. For nothing.”

“I’m— I’m buying time, the hostages—”

“You realise,” the hero cuts in, “you can buy more time if you don’t keel over.”

The villain stares at them. The supervillain’s weapon clicks one final time. “Come out, [Villain],” he says brightly. “Let us relieve the heroes of their moral duties. I’m sure they’ll thank you for it.”

“Dying doesn’t fix anything,” the hero says lowly. “Don’t make amends by avoiding what you’ve done. Surviving—living with your mistakes—is the biggest atonement you can make.”

“Come on, [Villain],” the supervillain says again. The smile is audible in his voice; coy, knowing, confident. “I’ll make it nice and easy for you, I promise.”

The villain’s stare has long stopped focusing on the hero. They’re well beyond looking at anything. “Okay,” they say weakly. “Okay.”

When the shot of the supervillain’s machine crushes their hiding spot to pieces, the two of them are long gone.

[hyperfocuscentre]

tbh, hiss-majesty is basically just me. I would also wear a cheese hat simply because will solace wore a cheese hat.

[pjo-hoo-toa-freakazoid]

SIR-

[ratwavegamehouse]

So Godslingers begins with a Storytelling Phase. Each player rolls 3d6 and then uses a variety of tables to guide filling in an Old God's concept, domains and various interwoven stories.

These gods are all long dead by the time Godslingers Roleplaying Phase begins, but their legacy and power lingers in the hands of interstellar drifters.

Godslingers had a really loooong dev period. Like I was working on it simultaneously with the Old Gods and Young Guns setting guide and that came out in '22. It went through various GMless iterations (the book does still include rules for GMless play but that's no longer the focus) and the relationship between the gun and the Godslinger used to be much more fiddly and abstract mechanically.

Buuuut the Storytelling Phase was actually pretty set from very early on. So when it made sense to include some pre-written gods in Thirty Foes OR Once again, we are defeated (a storytelling/mapmaking game about powerful outsiders protecting a dead end village from an entire army, inspired by Seven Samurai) the way I did was I just went through the Storytelling Phase from Godslingers by myself multiple times.

Anyway all three books set in the Fourth Galaxy are pretty sick and also completely stand alone, as much as they can inform and weave into each other.

Godslingers is out now brand new and you can get all three Fourth Galaxy books in a bundle for a tenner discount.

[thelonelyshore-if]

Question, if we were to go down the fog-touched route. Is there any chance we get a "happy ending" or at least not a completely unhappy one?

Yes, for sure. No magic path dooms the MC completely.

The way I see it, the magic in this world is an inherently corrupting force. You can use it and stay yourself, especially if you learn to control it, but there will be options and choices that will lead the MC deeper and deeper down the path of magic. And the deeper you get the harder it is to keep your grasp on it.

Most of the characters who use magic will have the chance for the magic to corrupt them throughout the course of the series. It comes down to what you (and those npcs) ultimately do with that magic.

Long answer lol, but to reaffirm, the fog-touched path won't lock you into any bad and/or unhappy endings on its own <3

[badgiraffe]

hi! i stumbled across one of your tags on a post back in august mentioning that reading Tress and Yumi was your introduction to brandon sandersons works.

since reading them both, i felt that they'd be incredible standalone works to introduce someone to the Cosmere superseries but i've so far refrained from recommending them to anyone "green" due to how referential they are to his earlier writing, as i feared this would make the fun less accessible.

would i be able to get your perspective on what going into Tress/Yumi first was like? how did you find the narration and the way it glosses over the existence of other worlds and magic? were you introduced to the books by someone/people who could answer any questions, or was the info in the text itself enough?

looking forward to hearing your thoughts!!

Okay, so the background info is that my roommates are big Sando fans and have read most of his books and so they know lots about the Cosmere. Through hearing their conversations, I may have been able to recognize some references to other Cosmere things in Tress and Yumi more than someone with zero knowledge of his other works. Didn't mean I got the references, just recognized them. I really don't think either book relies on the reader to have a working knowledge of the Cosmere to enjoy them, I'd say they're great gateway books for someone wanting to get into his various works. It was easier for me to commit to than a big series.

I have since started a 3rd Brando Sando book, Warbreaker, which is a favourite of one of my roommates, and I am enjoying the different narrative style (not Hoid). But honestly, Hoid as a narrator is also just so, so great. Everyone should know that joy. I don't even really know who or what he is, he's just really cool.

I hope that made sense. TL;DR - You don't need knowledge about the cosmere to enjoy Tress or Yumi, they are both amazing books, Hoid is great, and Warbreaker is also pretty great so far.

[deoidesign]

Dang it... They sent me gloss books instead of matte 😭😭😭 I want the whole set to match...

I'm going to go through customer service about this, but I think their solution is to send me new books... But I have no idea what I'll do with thesw 300 extra books if they do that!!!

Any ideas???

[pheonixrainbow15]

THE SUN AND THE STAR SPOILERS

"'That doesn't sound like me,' Nico said, trying to play a deadpan, but Will gave him a stern look. Nico laughed. 'Okay, Okay, fine. Maybe that sounds like me.'"

Page 88 of tsats

"'That doesn't sound like me.' [...] 'Okay, perhaps that is true,' the god (Hades) allowed."

Page 439 of tsats

Like father like son.

[bishonenspit]

Eroica & the Major - Princess Roman Deluxe Part 2 (1982)

[nrcbookclub]

-sips coffee-

Animal (puppy) for 4 hours for Trystia

Hallucination for 2 hours for Freya

-🌙🏔

*wakes up*

bow-wow?

(what the fuck?)

*she blinks and stares at a corner*