#the page-to-page pacing is atrocious

[saxandviolins77]

"This is blasphemy! This is madness!"

"Madness?

This...

is...

CAMINUS!!!"

*Spartan kick but make it being ripped apart molecule by molecule*

[bleaksqueak]

Insomnia is letting up off and on, but I'm still super jelly brained from it case in point, I want to continue back with posting WIPs for the aired pages, but I can't remember what page I left off on now lmao (guess I'll have to dig through my blog to check... eesh. at least it's decently organized by tags?) Not a result of goo brain, really, but equally "AUGH" is that I let my screen protector go for too long without replacing it and now it's slick as snot and I don't have a replacement handy to put on it. This isn't a resulting consequence of goo brain but it does mean I'm going to be trying to draw without any traction while I'm already loopy. Good times ahead!

[lordsardine]

.

[saint-starflicker]

Nice post!

Narrative Voice is a bigger factor than I want to admit. I think the only narrative voices that I noticeably loved are Percy Jackson (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) and Shori Matthews (Fledgling) — but "good narrative voice" to me is less about relatability and more about if it's comfortable or sturdy enough to get to the next sentence. Shori's story is not at all comfortable, but her narrative voice is, so that's what got me through a very uncomfortable and tense and at times violent and gory story.

Omniscient Perspective, I love omniscient perspective. I have read and understand a lot of the reasoning for first person instead—that first person is less disbelief to suspend because the story is framed as being told by somebody that was there, and there's opportunity for Unreliable Narrator twists, if there is one character's thoughts or feelings constantly being divulged by an omniscient narrator then why not just write in first person then, or especially for Young Adult novels it's apparently mandatory by now because (marketers, editors etcetera think so) readers of those genres want a one-sided conversation with a character they meet and make a connection with by that first person...But I almost can't stand it, because first person now reads as gimmicky to me.

Emotionally Lacking Protagonists, I can adjust to this. I don't love it nor am I averse to it, but I'm open to what it's doing.

Robotic Dialogue, I think I can adjust to this but then I remember the dialogue in Atlas Shrugged that was like watching a tennis match between two brick walls.

Slow/No Pace in a Plot-Driven Book, I concur, although I can vibe with the mood-without-plot too.

Stale Tropes ...I keep hearing that this is a thing that makes contemporary literature bad now, but I don't really get it. What's everyone reading that the concept of recognizable tropes are a bad thing? I lived through a trend of High Fantasy Mentor Dies, and I guess that got predictable and annoying...and when somebody says "love triangle" I think I already know what they mean and I want to get as far away from that story as possible because I have not read that done creatively since maybe around the Arthurian era... But I don't know what the stale tropes of today are. Fake Dating To Real Romance, Enemies To Lovers, Only One Horse...? I don't know, I think if it gets popular enough to be annoying than it says something about where most people's minds are at. That's not always bad, mind you, that's just information.

Like... High Fantasy Mentor Dies might symbolize most people growing into a mentality in which they now have to do difficult and scary things all alone without guidance. Love Triangles might belong to a generation in which there wasn't a lot of clarity in whether what they truly wanted was the right thing. Fake Dating might resonate with the struggle of how even what we pretend to be will say something about what we're truly like, or how performing our obligations can have us re-discover the real feelings behind why we bother. I keep hearing that Enemies To Lovers is popular because it's the fantasy of having shown one's worst side to another person who can still know and love that, whereas "healthier" relationships between characters who were never enemies can have an off-putting tinge of pretentiousness or superiority about them to enjoyers of Enemies To Lovers exclusively.

Only One Horse can perish as a trope. That poor animal.

Otherwise I think even cash-grabby, transparently manipulative and boring uses of a trope can provoke thought about why it's there—or why it's everywhere in fiction, and thank goodness it is confined and contained in fiction where it can be examined critically.

(Or readers can just love it or leave it. That's a thing we do, too.)

What Makes A Bad Book In My Eyes

Books aren’t easy to write. There are always bumps along the road, whether they are a part of the writing process or events in life, which can set writers back and make an already difficult task much harder. In the end, a book is produced, but they don’t always get the same reception from their readers. Here is a list of elements in a story (or excluded from the story) that make a bad book in my…

[thewebcomicsreview]

The Webcomic Reviews Mini Reviews Masterpost, Part 1

People always ask me what I think of various webcomics, so I decided to start collecting my thoughts in one place! Click the images to go to the comic! Comic titles with a ⭐ after them are recommended, but even if I don't give a comic a star, that doesn't mean you won't like it.

[un]Divine ⭐

What is it: A highschooler sells his soul for a big titty demon gf, and now has to have anime battles against angels who keep trying to eat him.

The Good: Excellent art and monster designs, some of the better fights in webcomics.

The Bad: Danny is kind of a bland protagonist. The comic keeps threatening to veer into femdom porn, which may be a good thing for some of you. Comic is on permanent semi-hiatus and updates very infrequently

You should read it if: You wanna read a comic with big fights, big angels, and big titties.

Ava’s Demon

What is it: A bunch of kids possessed by demons have space adventures and are sad

The Good: Extremely good art. Occasional "high production value" moments with music and limited animation. The single-panel page format really highlights the art.

The Bad: Bland writing, weak characters. The single-panel page format really slows the flow of reading it.

You should read it if: Learning that the Wrath demon is named “Wrathia” doesn’t strike you as comically dumb

Awkward Zombie ⭐

What is it: It’s a comic that makes jokes about video games

The Good: It’s the best comic that makes jokes about video games

The Bad: If you haven’t played the game in question, you might not get the jokes. Awkward lack of zombies.

You should read it if: You like jokes about video games. I don't....it's not a complex premise.

Camp Weedonwantcha ⭐

What is it: A bunch of kids are left at summer camp forever by parents who’ve abandoned them to die. Wacky comedy and feel-good moments ensue.

The Good: Cute adventures with kids, reminiscent of some of the better Nicktoons from the 90s. Surprisingly emotionally effective when it wants to be.

The Bad: While the ending is satisfying in its own way, many plot threads go unresolved

The Terrible: Nickelodeon bought the rights and is sitting on them.

You should read it if: You like slice of life adventures with blasts of dark humor and feels

Cloudscratcher

What is it: Ducktales, with Genocide!

The Good: Cute and generally likable characters. Decently paced

The Bad: Doesn’t really excel at anything. Weirdly insistent about totally not being a furry comic even though it obviously is.

The Terrible: The author is a white nationalist, and the lack of link is intentional.

You should read it if: You like 80s cartoons and hate minorities

Cornucopia ⭐

What is it: A ninja is sent on a mission to literally steal candy from a nation of morons, fails.

The Good: Good art and well-paced storytelling. Clever use of different types of word balloons. High joke-per-page ratio

The Bad: Doofy tone may not be your cup of tea. Seems to have died young, though the first chapter is still a complete story

You should read it if: You like JelloApocalypse’s videos on YouTube, or his series Epithet Erased, since he made this

Dresden Codak

What is it: A genius inventor has wacky adventurers, then goes to a flying city and spends most of the comic’s run embroiled in a conspiracy run by evil anime villains.

The Good: The drawings are pretty. The early comedy adventures are quirky and charming.

The Bad: Panel layout and composition, especially early in Dark Science, is atrocious. Presents the comic as a feminist power fantasy, but the main character usually has her tits out and has had her clothes burnt off on multiple occasions.

The Terrible: The author is a notorious jerk. As of this writing, The Dark Science storyline has been running for eight years and has yet to reach a triple-digit number of pages, even though it’s a full-time job for which Diaz earns $4,000+/mo on Patreon.

You should read it if: You thought the best part of Ghost in the Shell was the lesbian orgy boat.

Drop Out (NSFW) ⭐

What is it: Two girlfriends go on a road trip to kill themselves in style

The Good: Short enough to be read in one sitting. Surprisingly good visual storytelling for a first comic. Realistic dialogue and high tension keeps you engaged even when not much is happening. Subtle details that don’t become apparent until a second read reward paying attention.

The Bad: Heavy subject matter. Lettering can be tough to read in early pages.

Content Warnings: Drug Abuse, Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Detransitioning….a list of all the difficult content in this comic would be so long it’d look like I’m making a joke. This is a heavy comic.

You should read it if: You like arty dramatic comics that deal with uncomfortable topics

Dumbing of Age

What is it: College students obsessed with late 80s-early 90s pop culture have relationship troubles

The Good: Of all the popular comics it’s trendy to shit on, this is by far the best. Solid gag-a-day strip with plots that move at a decent pace.

The Bad: Realistic depictions of abusive parents co-exists in the same comic as a literal superhero, leading to some jarring tonal confusion.

You should read it if: You like newspaper-style drama comics.

Everything Is Fine

What is it: Maggie and Sam are a normal married couple in a very strange world where proving your loyalty is the key to winning, and the best way to prove your loyalty is to show someone else is disloyal. And also everyone wears mascot suit cat heads all the time.

The Good: Well-written characters, a novel premise, and excellent pacing. I’m not the biggest fan of the webtoon “really tall page” format, but it’s taken advantage of at times for nice transitions

The Bad: The webtoon format can be irritating, and the worldbuilding is toeing the line between “compelling mystery” and “If there were two astronauts on the moon and one shot the other wouldn’t that be fucked up?”-ism.

Content Warning: Gore, Suicide themes. Every page with such content has a warning on it (which works better in Webtoon format, actually)

You should read it if: You liked the dystopian fiction fiction books you had to read in high school.

Gunnerkrigg Court ⭐

What is it: A girl attends a scientific school in a magical world that’s honestly not even slightly like Harry Potter but people say it is because they think J. K. Rowling invented British schools

The Good: Good art and fantastic panel composition. Slow-burning dark fantasy mystery.

The Bad: Takes a little while to find its groove. Starts feeling rushed and confusing near the end.

The Terrible: Boxbot

You should read it if: You like dark fantasy stories, or stories in general.

Homestuck ⭐?

What is it: A kid wants to play a video game but it’s downstairs and he doesn’t feel like talking to his dad yadda yadda yadda the universe explodes. Was briefly ungodly popular.

The Good: High production values, many updates are music videos with excellent music. Great character writing, especially in Act 5. Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale, did a lot of the music, and arguably isn’t even the best musician featured.

The Bad:The early part of the comic is brutally slow-paced, and is an impossible hurdle for some.

The Terrible: The ending is widely considered a major disappointment, and attempts to turn the comic into a franchise have been met with mixed reviews. The prose epilogues are deeply divisive.

Content Warning: A lot gorier than you might expect, mitigated by the cartoony art style, abusive relationships, the epilogue is just generally gross.

You should read it if: You want to see what the hell all those kids in grey face-paint at anime conventions were about

You should also consider: Just getting the music off the bandcamp, it’s really good.

Homestuck 2

What is it: A “dubiously canon” sequel to Homestuck, following from The Homestuck Epilogues, made by a different creative team. Follows two intersecting future timelines

The Good: The art is quite nice, and the new characters are fun and likable. Very bold in its ideas, for better or for worse it’s rarely boring. One of the few webcomics to be able to integrate trigger warnings clearly while remaining non-obtrusive with them. Faster-paced than the original Homestuck (low bar!) and has a few clever presentation ideas. Willing to be its own thing. If you’re worried it’s just “Homestuck 1 but more of it”, this is not that.

The Bad: Not at all a stand-alone comic, Homestuck 2 is completely incoherent if you’re not familiar with Homestuck 1 and the Homestuck Epilogues. Does not have the big multimedia productions Homestuck 1 was known for. Beloved characters from Homestuck 1 can come off really badly, which upsets a lot of people. If you’re looking for “Homestuck 1 but more of it”, this is not that.

The Terrible: At times, this comic is actively trying to piss off the readership by dragging out unpopular plot revelations. I actually like this about it, but unsurprisingly a lot of people don’t.

You should read it if: If you have to ask “Should I read Homestuck 2?”, the answer is probably “No”. This is a comic for people who are riding the Homestuck train to the bitter end.

You should also consider: Reading my Liveblog of it 

Kiwi Blitz ⭐

What is it: A precocious young girl gets a Kiwi-shaped robot and decides to become a superhero ridding the world of nefarious furries. More of a cute character drama than a superhero comic, and more of a superhero comic than a mecha one.

The Good: Cute artstyle. Not without dramatic stakes, but fairly light and fun throughout minus a few people getting shot. The android 42 is stand-out great character.

The Bad: Prone to long hiatuses as the author's main comic is now Sleepless Domain.

You should read it if: You liked Sleepless Domain, and are looking for a somewhat lighter comic by the same author.

Latchkey Kingdom ⭐

What is it: A girl goes on adventures in a magical land of idiots

The Good: Good but not overbearing comedy. Tight chapters. Strong side characters

The Bad: Thanks in part to Patron-backed stories in between the “main” chapters, can feel like an episodic series with no main character or driving plot

The Neutral: Willa is a semi-silent protagonist, and often gets overshadowed by the wacky people she meets. Cerberus Syndrome, executed well

You should read it if: You like adventure, silly characters, and jokes about Dark Souls.

Leasebound

What is it: Two lesbians are contrived into sharing an apartment, then the comic becomes a polemic about how trans people are evil. The second-best TERF webcomic on this list

The Good: This comic has no redeeming qualities

The Bad: It’s hella transphobic, and not even particularly interesting about it the way Sinfest can be. Everything that’s not hateful is boring, and the comic is practically going “Go on, be offended, blog about me, give me atteeeennnnttttiiiiiooooonnn!”

You should read it if: You really shouldn’t, and I’m not linking to it

Least I Could Do

What is it: Rayne Summers is the best at everything and you should listen to him

The Good: This comic updates on time regularly. Sometimes it updates without word balloons by accident, making it surreally funny

The Bad: Poorly thought-out political rants; few jokes, severe overuse of beat panels, copy-pasted art.

The Terrible: Designed to go viral, not to be entertaining; makes panels wordless just so they can be used as preview images

You should read it if: You have committed horrible sins and wish to atone

Legend of the Hare

What is it: I wrote this! A white trash loser girl is peer pressured into becoming a magical girl by a pair of pushy rabbits. A spinoff of the print comic Blade Bunny, written and drawn by the current creative team of Saffron and Sage.

The Good: Bouncy and cartoony art. Strong and memorable characters. Very weird and freewheeling.

The Bad: The plot is an absolute mess, stalling out and even going backwards at times, though it mostly comes together at the end. The tone is wildly inconsistent.

The Terrible: Kind of South-Parky in its humor sometimes

You should read it if: You like Saffron and Sage and want to see a comic by the same team when they were less experienced.

Nan Quest ⭐

What is it: In this spiritual sequel to Ruby Quest, a goat girl electrician sets out to fix a broken fuzebox and ends up ensnared in a psychological horror conspiracy.

The Good: Much more effective use of the simple MS Paint art style, with more color and some simple animations (animated panels being marked [A], a convention Homestuck would later adopt for its [S] sound panels). The characters are better fleshed out than in Ruby Quest, and the horror is more effective as well, with less gore and more tension.

The Bad: Though used effectively, the art is still MS Paint doodles. The story mechanics behind the mystery are much more ambiguous, which can be a plus.

Content Warning: Gore, threatened sexual violence.

You should read it if: You like Ruby Quest and/or psychological horror comics that can be read in a few hours.

Moby: Back from the Deep

What is it: A zombie killer whale attacks a small town.

The Good: The art is nice

The Bad: Egregious overuse of narration.

The Terrible: It’s a beat for beat ripoff of the movie Jaws, down to some characters having their names only marginally changed from their Jaws counterpart (e.g. “Alex Gardener” is the name of the Alex Kintner analogue)

You should read it if: You can’t find a Jaws torrent.

Mokepon ⭐

What is it: A dickhead teenager is forced on a Pokemon adventure, and learns a valuable lesson about friendship while being dragged into a criminal conspiracy. A Pokemon fanfic that’s somewhat darker than the source material (though not really “grimdark”)

The Good: Good action scenes, nice manga-style art. Notable improvement in art and storytelling over time. Atticus’ slow-burn character growth is satisfying.

The Bad: The early chapters are almost a completely different comic, and it takes a little while to find its groove.

You should read it if: You liked Pokemon Special

Monster Pulse ⭐

What is it: Kids’ internal organs become sentient external organs, and they have to keep it a secret from an evil orginization.

The Good: Cool twist on the surprisingly rare monster pet genre. Not afraid to upend the status quo

The Bad: No real obvious flaws, but if you don’t find the premise interesting, you probably won’t like it.

You should read it if: You were a fan of monster-pet stories like Digimon Tamers

The Monster Under The Bed

What is it: A teenager finds a demon girl under his bed, rom-com ensues

The Good: Cute anime-esque premise

The Bad: Gets progressively hornier to to point where I'm not sure if I should even leave it on this list. Egregious use of photos instead of drawing backgrounds, making outdoor scenes look awful

You should read it if: You like trashy Japanese animes

Narbonic ⭐

What is it: A shlubby loser gets a job working for a mad scientist. Mad sciencey things occur, and the comic experiences an incredible jump in quality in the back half

The Good: Short comic, comfy and easy to read. The best and most satisfying ending arc of any webcomic ever.

The Bad: Some “LOLRANDOM” humor, especially early on.

The Terrible: The first few comics are almost literally unreadable due to messy handwritten lettering and low quality scans.

You should read it if: You love seeing a story build to a proper conclusion, and you don’t mind a rough start.

Octopus Pie ⭐

What is it: Slice-of-life dramedy where twenty-somethings try to become adults and/or get laid while navigating New York life. Completed comic.

The Good: If you direct your attention above, you will see the incredible coloring. There are other comics that have better plots and even better characters, but Octopus Pie is uniquely good at hitting a mood. Occasionally does some infinite canvas stuff that’s neat.

The Bad: This is a comic about exploring ideas and kind of drifting around through life, and isn’t a big plot-focused comic with a lot of big dramatic reveals. Which I don’t think is bad, but it might not be your thing.

You should read it if: You liked stories about adults trying to figure out how to grow up, and like seeing characters age.

Out-of-Placers ⭐

What is it: A human man is turned into a female rat creature, and has to navigate a low-fantasy world while learning their incredibly stupid ways and trying to get himself back to normal.

The Good: Really good worldbuilding, with interesting, fleshed out, and unique fantasy races. There are licensed Dungeons and Dragons books with less cool ideas for a campaign in them.

The Bad: Can get kind of edgy in ways that don’t always work, and occasionally gets a bit gross. If the premise made you think it was a furry fetish comic, it’s not, but it keeps threatening to become one if you don’t whap it with a newspaper and say “No” very firmly every now and then.

You should read it if: Your favorite DnD race is kobolds.

Paranatural ⭐

What is it: Kids bust ghosts in a parody of shounen anime tropes

The Good: Good banter, creative panel layouts, and characters you want to root for.

The Bad: The story rapidly increases in scale, causing the pacing to slow down somewhat. The story later transitions to an illustrated prose format, which some people can't really get into.

You should read it if: You liked Bleach before it became Dragonball

Prequel -or- Making A Cat Cry: The Adventure ⭐

What is it: An Elder Scrolls fanfiction, in which an alcoholic catgirl heads to a new land to try to make a better life, and generally fails.

The Good: Inventive use of the web as a storytelling medium. Great character writing. Lovable protagonist. Excellent payoff to years or life kicking the protagonist in the face.

The Bad: Years of life kicking the protagonist in the face. Can thus be depressing, especially early on, sometimes to the point of being offensive (see Content Warnings)

The Terrible: Very slow and irratic update schedule

Content Warnings: Alcoholism, Depression, the protagonist gets blackout drunk and wakes up in bed next to strange men several times, which is played for comedy.

You should read it if: You like slow burn character development. You like stories where the protagonist has a hard time

Problem Sleuth

What is it: A detective tries to leave his office using user-submitted commands, and gets in a few tangents along the way. Mostly known now as “The thing Andrew Hussie did before Homestuck”, but it was a popular comic in its own right.

The Good: Much better art than most reader-driven comics, bizarre and clever, with a dramatic finish.

The Bad: Holy shit, you thought Homestuck meandered? Problem Sleuth will do nearly anything and everything readers asked him to do, and this is a veeeeeery convoluted comic that has thus aged somewhat poorly.

You should read it if: You thought Homestuck was best before the Trolls got involved.

Questionable Content

What is it: Humanity achieves a technological utopia in the background while hipsters in Massachusetts complain about their dating lives. Later begins focusing much more heavily on all the robots.

The Good: A rotating menagerie of quirky cute girls. Had a major trans character before it was cool.

The Bad: The comic kind of transitions from being about one thing to being about another thing several times, to the point where onetime protagonists show up less and less or even get dropped altogether in favor of the New Thing the comic is.

You should read it if: You want a comfy and diverse slice-of-life comic.

[avelera]

Ugh, popped on Twitter to geek out about the Wheel of Time S2 and immediately find a bunch of WoT dudebro fans complaining that a 15 book series of 800+ pages each isn’t getting the exact word for word adaption that exists inside their heads when they read the books. And let me remind you all, these books were my life, my first fandom, and basically my personality pretty much from when I first read them in 1999 until Robert Jordan died (alas, I read to the end but Brandon Sanderson never quite captured the magic of RJ’s writing for me again, even if I think he did the best job anyone possibly could.)

So let me just say from a place of deep respect and obsession with these books that any hate for the show based on it not being a page for page adaptation is patently insane. Much of Wheel of Time relies on the strengths of prose which are untranslatable to a visual medium. Stuff like how magic (or the One Power) feels to cast makes up a huge proportion of the book. You can externally portray a feeling, sure, but there are still limits.

They forget that Book 1 was written to be standalone and has a ton of inconsistencies with later books that need to be shored up. That means logistical changes which cause necessary alterations almost all of which have actually been massive improvements in my mind. For all my love of Wheel of Time, its pacing is atrocious and I think even RJ would agree that if he could go back with the whole story in mind and edit it to be more streamlined, he absolutely would have. The show HAS to do that or we’d still be in the goddamn Two Rivers with the book pacing.

Centering the first season on the White Tower and Moiraine’s POV makes sense. The book relied on Moiraine being a Gandalf figure that gave information away at the pace of reader reveals, in tiny drips meant to tantalize a slow-paced book’s reader. That would be immensely frustrating for a tv show viewer of a story set in a sprawling fantasy world that needs tons of explanation and world building up front to have any idea what’s going on. Focusing on Moiraine, who has the answers, instead of sticking to the ignorance of the kids isn’t just a good choice it’s very nearly the only choice you can make. The White Tower is one of the most complex and interesting parts of that world. Centering it and introducing it earlier was an incredibly wise choice.

Other smaller choices make sense too if people thought about it for two seconds. Aging up the kids makes sense. They’re teens in the books and it would be incredibly awkward on screen. But once you age them up, it makes sense that at least ONE of them has been married before. Perrin makes SENSE to have been married if he left Two Rivers later. He’s a responsible guy with a good trade and a level head on his shoulders. He’s sweet and caring and mature. Of course he got married, he’s from a small farming community in a medieval-esque world with shorter life expectancies. Furthermore, I love Perrin to death but his obsessive fear of hurting Faile later is frankly ungrounded in anything that isn’t benign misogyny on some level. It doesn’t update and translate well on its own. Giving him Laila, giving him the manner of Laila’s death grounds his later attitudes towards Faile so well I literally gasped when I put it all together.

Other changes like in S2 having Min and Mat meet the way they do in Tar Valon was genius. It matters more that Mat and Min have rapport than that they meet in the same circumstances as the book (and Mat wouldn’t even remember that meeting anyway lol). The rapport set up and the way it showed Mat’s genius and con artistry was brilliant. Showing these characters LIKE each other was incredibly engaging and endearing which is so important because the adaptation has to be enjoyable to non book readers too, especially since the 15, 800+ page books of meandering pacing are pretty much impenetrable to new readers. Book readers simply can’t make up the majority of the audience, there’s not enough of them to sustain a show with any kind of budget which WOT requires. Thus, it needs to be an enjoyable show in its own right, not just a meandering exact adaptation ffs.

I can literally point to any show change and say it was either logical, practical, thematic, or simply genius. Wheel of Time desperately needs an edit to be accessible to modern audiences. What an adaptation prioritizes is always a risk that’s going to be run for a fan of the original material but so far I’ve been wildly impressed by every choice made in how logical or thoughtful and most of all loving it was to the actual important emotions and themes of the book. Any complainers are seriously missing the point of what an adaptation even is.

[thetypedwriter]

Children of Anguish and Anarchy Book Review

Children of Anguish and Anarchy Book Review by Tomi Adeyemi

This book was so horrible. 

No one is more disappointed than me to say that. 

I’ve gone to two of Tomi Adeyemi’s book signings, including a recent one for Children of Anguish and Anarchy.

Tomi Adeyemi herself is absolutely wonderful. She’s so intelligent, hilarious, addictively charming, and can work a room like no other. The book signing was fantastic. Too bad the book couldn’t hold up to the event itself. 

Children of Anguish and Anarchy follows as the third and last installment of the Legacy of Orisha trilogy, but doesn’t read like that at all.

Other than having the same four main characters of Tzain, Zelie, Amari, and Inan, nothing about the book concludes any issue, plot story, or character development from the previous two novels. 

A completely new villain is introduced, someone we haven't heard about as a reader in the last two books whatsoever, and obliterates any of the conflict and tension that Adeyemi worked so hard to build in her previous stories. 

Gone is the tension and literally hundreds of years of in-fighting between the Maji and the monarchy, gone is the civil war and its repercussions on Orisha, gone is even one of the main characters from the last novel, Roen, who was a significant love interest for Zelie and who has been completely disappeared in this new book all together (like, what???). 

It was incredibly lazy writing to wipe away everything the first two books created in order to “unite” against this new enemy. The sentiment is nice, but it’s not the finale we wanted or needed. 

I desired answers to Amari and Zelie’s broken friendship, closure to the Inan and Roen love triangle, a verdict on how Orisha would rebuild and who would rule. 

We get none of that. 

Instead Zelie and the others spend half their time in the book on a ship with very strong slavery parallels, and the other half in the introduced land of New Gaia.

While I thought the descriptions of New Gaia were beautiful (albeit very similar to Avatar), I was dissatisfied because the whole series at this point has been focused on Orisha and Orisha’s problems, not New Gaia and not the Skulls. 

While the plot was bad and aggrieving, the characters were even worse. 

None of the characters were interesting. They were carbon copies of each other in which all they talked about was avenging their fallen Orishan people, killing the Skulls, and protecting loved ones.

Rinse and repeat. It was boring as hell to delve into four different characters’ minds only to find that they all sounded exactly the same. 

I often had to go back to the start of the chapter to tell whose internal thoughts I was reading because they were so interchangeable and self-righteous and dull.  It is never a good sign when you can’t automatically tell who’s POV you’re reading based on their internal dialogue and tone. 

Lastly, the pacing of the book was atrocious. Everything happened so goddamn fast that I felt like I never had the chance to properly digest or internalize anything.

Oh they’re on a ship? Moving on from that. Zelie got some sort of medallion shoved into her chest?? Moving on. Wait, Maji and Titans and the monarchy are all working together after two full books of them killing each other??? Five pages and it’s done with. 

It was outrageous and insulting. 

The pacing made everything feel shallow, unimportant, and unnecessary. More than most of the plot were action scenes, while difficult to write and interesting in their own right, in this book it was so repetitive that characters killing other characters 90% of the time became egregiously tedious. 

And speaking of the action, I also found it incredibly violent and graphic for a YA book. As someone who is not a fan of gore and blood, this book had so many explicit details for no reason other than being gratuitous.

For example, at one point Zelie shoves a chicken bone through someone’s cheek. I found it repulsive and it was also incessant. 

I know some people can handle brutality, but I can’t, and found it a huge turn off and made me dislike the book so much more, especially as this was a majority of the book to boot. 

Disappointment can’t even contain my full feelings for this story. For such a wonderful trilogy to succumb to such a terrible end is a tragedy. I wish the best for Tomi Adeyemi and success for her future, but I will not read another book by her again. 

Score: 2/10

Recommendation: Read Children of Blood and Bone, a magical story that will inspire and entertain you. Read Children of Virtue and Vengeance if you really need something else, but even this book I wouldn’t recommend picking up.

Do not, I repeat, do not read Children of Anguish and Anarchy. It will leave you feeling dismayed and disheartened beyond redemption.

Bonus: Here's me, my fiance, and Tomi Adeyemi at her book signing!

[strawberryybird]

ok fuck it. in honour of fire emblem: free real estate timeskip day, have some disability headcanons.

edelgard with crutches. thats it thats the post. done.

but also i absolutely think edelgard can have some mobility aids as a treat specifically for me, mobility aid user and edelgard enthusiast. i think the double-cresting she has going on means she has some level of chronic fatigue. use crutches babygirl <33 you know what? She can use a wheelchair, too. And a cane. All the mobility aids for my girl.

lysithea too, for that matter. I'm very fond of lysithea being the default recipient of Hilda's embellishment and decorating. I think Lys has trouble with her joints and uses braces, wraps, and ergonomic designs of things. Whatever motif Hilda has designed this month, Lys will give a test run.

Lys and her dislocating joints creating new spell-casting techniques by force of need and love of her craft.

Hilda's love for jewellery and decorating leading to her interest in the exact intersection of utility and design. Anything to stop people from having to put in so much effort to do things. That's atrocious. Use this, for Seiros' sake.

Magic users with Magic!Psoriasis in their joint extremities. Hands, feet, kneecaps, neck. Anywhere, really. Magic causing immune system reactions my beloved headcanon.

Claude takes out a new tangle from a new pocket in every class. where did he get them. why does he have this many. how did he get a new tangle in the span of the last 6 minutes. claude what the hell.

Marianne & Bernie having enthusiastic sign language chats in the tea gardens. Byleth makes sure to teach them every swear they've ever learned.

If Byleth has to step outside for a bit of air when they realise they're missing another memory from Before, no one makes a big deal. The world will keep moving with them, says Ignatz, who can't bear loud noises anymore.

Dorothea unabashedly handing in her essays on dyed paper, because the pink means the letters stop sliding around. Bernie made her a little quilted pouch for her green-lensed glasses.

Ferdinand making Edie nearly weep with laughter as he matches her pace on the stairs, threatening to have them all demolished for domestic terror and regicide.

Annette and Constance inventing the dicta-quill, creating ye-olde speech-to-text. Annie sends one personally to Lorenz, who lost his left forearm in the final battle. She gets 3 pages of effusive praise and thanks back. Their correspondence gets so long, that the post service starts charging their letters as parcels.

[sometimes-sleeby-octopus]

I cannot explain how much I love them but I can put them in goofy situations

Smiling Friends Headcanons:

Things the Main 4 Would Do Together And How Often (Part 2)

8. Eating a meal together - They would do this twice a week for sure. Ordering in, going to a restaurant, cooking for each other, snack break, you name it, they would do it. I think Pim would enjoy cooking and also be the best at it the most out of everyone. All the other three would ADORE his food. Charlie would be the expert on ordering in and cheaper restaurants while Alan would know about the fancier places. Glep would find all the most delicious and interesting snacks all over the place. (Imagining them sitting at a table together brings me insurmountable joy)

9. Walking - This is probably close to a daily occurrence because it’s so easy and nice, even if it’s just leading each other out as they say goodbye for the day. Alan and Glep would both be the speed walkers, while Charlie and Pim would be more leisurely, humming or singing as they walk. This could change based on the situation though like if they’re tired or excited. If it’s a longer walk where they’re talking, I think they’d keep pace with each other.

10. Reading - This is something they would do if they were bored on a Sunday or something, so not too often nor on a regular basis. I’ve had this funny scenario in my head where they do “Book Club”, except they’re all reading a shitty book by like Colleen Hover or something at the same time. They’d be all over whoever’s room and every so often someone would laugh and shout out the number of a funny or shocking page. And then the slower readers would quickly flip forward and the faster ones would flip back if they missed it. I think Charlie would skim the book and read it closer if he’s amused while Alan would just naturally read fast, making them the faster readers, while Pim and Glep would be slower just because they’re taking their time and enjoying it to the best of their abilities.

11. Going to church - Considering Charlie is canonically(?) catholic, I just had to add this one. This is something they would do once and never again or they’d just go for Christmas and Easter. Charlie would be chill about it and try to show the others what to do the first time, but (as an ex-catholic myself) participating in mass is a skill you can only really learn over time, so the first time would be a little rough. Pim would enjoy it because of the singing and the “Peace be with you’s” while Alan would be nervous since he doesn’t really know what to do (he doesn’t seem to be/have been part of any sort of faith, so it’s pretty new to him). Glep would be bored out of his mind and just take a nap on the pews. Thankfully, Charlie doesn’t give a shit what the other people at his church think (although at a busy time like Christmas or Easter, less people would be paying the four of them any mind anyway) so he just tries to get everyone through it. It would be somewhat exhausting for everyone involved, but they’re doing it for Charlie so they guess it’s worth it? I highly doubt they would keep this up over the years lmao.

12. Going to an Arcade - They’d go at least a couple times a year! Maybe team on a couple claw machines, Battle it out on Dance Dance Revolution and Air Hockey, honestly they would love all the PVP stuff and if there are tickets involved, I think they’d get a bunch of candy and just stash it in the office somewhere for a rainy day.

13. Going to Brunch - I separated this from “Eating a meal together” because I feel like Brunch is a totally different ballpark for them. I imagine they would cosplay as posh Victorian ladies just for shits and giggles wearing the most fancy, beautiful dresses they can find. They would then spread the most ATROCIOUS MADE UP GOSSIP known to man using the names of people they’ve met just to fuck with everyone at the brunch place. And not just any brunch place, it’s THE brunch place. They make reservations at the same one every time. This would be a seasonal event done twice in Spring for the funniest impact. Charlie brought it up as a joke once and Alan and Pim absolutely ran with it (Alan suggested the gossip and Pim suggested dressing up). However, Glep is the RUMOR MACHINE and the others are always so impressed and amused with what he comes up with. They get really into it, even doing stuff like drinking tea with their pinkie out and eating fancy food. Though they do go eat somewhere after because the food they eat in character isn’t filling nor their favorite to eat. Nonetheless, they always laugh so hard afterward and it usually makes their year.

14. Karaoke - I feel like they would start doing this once around Christmas time and then just keep doing it as a tradition every year. They would also do it on boring rainy days sometimes too. Regardless of when they do it, they can pick any song they want. Want to sing a Christmas song in January? Sure, why not. However, after a few years of this, they would eventually ban playing more than two Wheezer songs in a row because they all like singing Wheezer and some days it’s all they will have in the queue. Other than Weezer, I think Alan would be into any Lemon Demon and Weird Al songs, Pim would be into older Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande songs, Charlie would be into Jackson Dean and Jimmy Buffett, and Glep would be into The Vanished People and 100 Gecs.

[justaboutdead]

House of Leaves, 2001, and Daisy Bell (and why its not creepy)

(Fairly minor) Spoilers for House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and 2001: a Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick

About 500 pages into House of Leaves, Will Navidson begins falling. Alone in the twisting labyrinthine corridors of the House, he is alone, out of supplies, by all metrics thoroughly and definitively defeated. The floor suddenly disappears beneath him and he begins to fall. And there it is, vertically stark against the white page, as many lines are in this section, falling just as he is.

“Daisy. Daisy. Daisy. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy over the love of you. That’s not right.”

Daisy Bell was written in 1892 by composer Frank Dean under the pen name Harry Dacre. A relatively prolific composer at the time, he is thought to have written the song about Daisy Greville, the Countess of Warwick at the time, although evidence for this factoid is sketch at best, and the lyrics directly contradict this reading.

Daisy Bell is a very simple romance song that tells a very endearing story of a young couple’s romance, being unable to afford much more than the eponymous “bicycle built for two.” There’s also an often ignored line about how they will both “despise Policemen and lamps as well.” Even from a modern perspective this song feels really intimate and cute, expressing joy despite poverty, in the policemen line even expressing disgust at cops and urbanization without care for the environment.

Through a variety of circumstances, Daisy Bell, despite this global appeal, has become primarily associated with advances in computing, being the first song to be synthesized by a computer in 1961 on an IBM 7094, and references to this development persist.

The resilience of references to this accomplishment are remarkably popular, primarily due to Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey in which the computer HAL 9000 sings the opening lines of the song as he is deactivated, calling back to the IBM demo, which Clarke himself had witnessed.

This rendition, and the original synthesized rendition are often described as creepy and off putting, but I find them strangely endearing. The original version represents a massive leap in computing, its few seconds of audio, and is extremely imperfect. The choice of Daisy Bell, and simple live song from a hundred years ago also helps to humanize the voice singing it. HAL 9000’s rendition is pained, sung as he looses his memory and cognitive functions in what feels like an eternity, in both novel and film. HAL 9000 is a painfully sympathetic character for me. While in the film his intentions remain fairly ambiguous, in the novel they come from a conflict in his instructions, and how he chooses to navigate around those instructions, interpreting them extremely literally being a computer.

It is clear that the intention with the character was to present an uncanny valley human-like consciousness, but honestly a lot of the time it just reads like he’s on the spectrum. He speaks extremely deliberately with awkward pacing. He reflects, in many ways my own anxieties about being excluded, as-well as a very human survival instinct. He is a bad liar, and extremely trepidatious about the task he believes he has to do. He reads in many ways as I would expect a human to in a position of such intense responsibility.

Thus HAL 9000’s final song to me Isn’t creepy, its confirmation of just how human he is. It is, distinctly, something he asks to sing, he almost reads as excited to show it off. It is fitting that the last song he sings is the first song a computer ever sung. I care way more about HAL than I do any of the other characters in the movie, despite his atrocious actions. In many ways he seems the most human, and I think that was part of the point.

My favorite rendition of the song comes from this popular lineage of synthesized version. Tamachang’s Daisy Bell from Future Music With Future VOICES is hauntingly beautiful. Composed of three synthesized voices, that of IBM 7094, Vocoder, and Vocaloid 4 Cyber Diva, as a fusion of old and new, it’s genuinely a really beautiful piece. Each voice has its own unique qualities, all of which lend the song distinctly different emotion.

The narrative I like to imagine is one i have seen dozens of comments on the song mentioning, and stems from the fact that Cyber Diva sounds far more youthful than the other two. In this framing, it is a newer computer saying goodbye to her old relatives as they die, via singing an extremely human cheesy love-song with them. All of these narratives around computers and Daisy Bell are a byproduct of our tendency to over-anthropomorphize computers.

House of Leaves, on the other hand, seeks to draw on themes completely unrelated to the long lineage of robotic Daisy Bells. My first thought when I saw the line in the novel, was of Navidson’s daughter, Daisy. I could see this having been a lullaby, sung to her as he put her to bed. I do not believe this reading to be the most compelling, however. The novel does not spend much time on Navidson’s children.

An often cited fact about the novel, and the Navidson record in particular is that its actually primarily a love story. I believe this to be a far more compelling understanding of the song’s conclusion. Will and Karen Navidson have been through hell together, and this song, sung when things seem darkest, as Navidson falls, as we latter understand, towards his wife, is the subtle confirmation, that despite everything they’ve been through, they will be ok.

House of Leaves, in general, is about, on some level, love (not just romantic) in the face of adversity, both through the lens of the Navidsons troubled reparation of their relationship, as well as Johnny’s slow collapse and our eventual understanding of his past. Daisy Bell is a perfect expression of the realization of these themes. That love can persist even when circumstances seem dire, and can in fact help you through those circumstances. A relatively simple message, but with many complexities

Thank you for entertaining my over-analysis :)

Fav Daisy Bell:

Original synthesized Daisy Bell:

Daisy Bell Hall 9000:

[emeritusprofessorofnothing]

So I'm reading a book from an author i like ok. Not a favorite but still skilled and I keep getting stunned by the pacing. It's flawless. It doesn't feel rushed. The tension is perfect. And having read some of her more recent work, I think that's what has been bothering me about books that have been released lately.

The pacing is atrocious pretty much across the board. Even formerly really good authors seem to have pacing issues. It's either high tension across the whole book, which is kind of stressful or the highs and the lows are so bad, or the climax of the book is rushed in the last twenty pages.

I wonder if authors have all caught some sort of weird disease, or all of their editors are just garbage.

[shostakobitchh]

chapter 45 sneak peek

as always, this is a rough draft, but it’s the opening of the chapter that I have so far! 

The girl was acting… strange.

She’d taken dinner in her room and hadn’t come out once. Severus had watched the Monitoring Charm to find that she’d been pacing for the better part of an hour and a half. She’d gone into a frenzy of flipping open her textbooks, using some sort of spell to help locate keywords, but had abandoned them for walking the length of her room back and forth.

Severus tried to ignore it but there was a gnawing voice in his head demanding that he check on her. It was unlike Miss Evans to hide herself away if something was wrong. Normally, she’d mope openly and wait for Severus to pick up on it… or she’d wait until she knew she was in over her head. This was an annoying trait shared with her Housemates that Severus had begrudgingly accepted. He couldn’t teach the girl when to know her limits. He supposed it was why she’d ended up with the self preservation of a worm.

He spent the evening putting the final touches on the Patronus Potion for her and waiting for her to come and join him, but the door stayed closed. She was still awake after taking a shower that lasted almost ninety minutes. When she began pacing again, Severus decided that enough was enough — something was wrong, and he wasn’t going to wait to find out what it was.

When Severus rapped at her door, he heard a BANG that shook the floor. The girl swore loudly as something thumped against the wall. The Monitoring Charm twinkled, indicating that she’d fallen over. Severus rolled his eyes and jerked open the door to find Miss Evans frantically shoving something under her pillow.

So she was hiding something — he fucking knew it. She possessed the subtlety of a freight train.

The girl froze, like a rabbit who caught wind of a wolf’s scent. Her nose twitched, the freckles paling. “Er — yes?”

Severus’ eyes swept across the room for anything amiss. It was a mess — her desk looked like it had been ransacked, an ink pot tipped over on the floor, dripping onto the stone floor. When he looked back to her, he noticed her hair disheveled, even pulled back tightly, like she’d taken a page from Granger’s atrocious haircare.

“What in Merlin’s name are you doing?” he demanded, his voice sharp as an arrow.

She stared at him, letting her hand slowly come out from under the pillow without breaking eye contact. “I was doing research,” she stuttered through a few more consonants clumsily before something coherent came out. “On the Charm, that’s all.”

His eyes narrowed. “Is that so?”

“Yeah,” her chin lifted, her dark eyes brightening with that Gryffindor defiance he loathed more than anything. “Why? Is something wrong with that?”

He’d lied — it was Gryffindor arrogance he hated most of all. “There wouldn’t be, if that’s what you were actually doing.”

She paled. Without another word, he slammed the door shut behind him and Summoned the pillow, revealing a thick, black book underneath. She moved to grab it, but Severus was quicker, flipping it open the second it hit his hand.

He immediately recoiled when he flipped it open to see Potter waving up at him. Severus tossed the photo album onto the bed as though it had burned him. The sight of Potter made his stomach twist in pure, unadulterated loathing — that smug motherfucker —

“I was looking for stuff to use as memories,” the girl wouldn’t look at him. “I thought it might jog something… if the Dementors can make me remember all the way back to when I was a baby, maybe I could remember something about them.”

Severus let his gaze flicker back to her face. She seemed resigned but too cold, too distant.

“I know you hated Dad,” she muttered, glaring at him. “I was trying to be considerate.”

Something curled around his spine and up to his brain, something insidious and envious — she doesn’t want you, she wants Potter, she wants Potter here — Dad —

“I don’t need you to spare my feelings,” Severus sneered back at her.

“I was concentrating.” she crossed her arms and looked down, like she wanted to disappear into the floorboards.

The bitter hatred quickly dissolved into concern. It lapped at the edges of his Occlumency like gentle waves beating against the shore as Severus studied her face. There were dark circles under her eyes and she seemed paler, her skin almost gray, but it might’ve been the dim lighting. When she turned away to put away the photo album, he noticed that her socks weren’t matching and that she only had one shoe on.

Severus crossed the room and caught her chin, holding it until she met his eyes. It never got any easier, seeing echoes of himself in her, hating every sharp edge in her cheekbones and the gentle glitter in her black eyes. They were much softer than his, like black pools, a tranquil surface undisturbed — untainted.

“No more Patronus Charm for the next few days,” he looked into her face, her eyes slightly bloodshot. “You’ll never be able to cast it if you run yourself into the ground trying. I won’t have you making yourself ill trying to prove yourself over something that is not worth your health — and your sanity, for that matter. Am I clear?”

Miss Evans’ mouth parted, as though she were about to protest, but instead, she looked away and nodded mutely.

Severus sighed, his hand falling away from her face. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or shall I leave you to wallow?”

She shook her head, rubbing at her temple. “It’s nothing. It’s like you said, I’m spending too much time on something that isn’t happening.”

He wanted to take whatever it was that was bothering Miss Evans and crack it into pieces. Severus’ hand twitched in her direction, wanting to pull her close, but he restrained himself. He felt fucking ridiculous, standing there and watching her stumble back to the bed, shoving the photo album of her former life back under her pillow.

“Here,” Severus took the vial from his pocket instead. “This will help.”

The girl stared at his outstretched hand for an inordinate amount of time, like he’d offered her a severed head. Suspicion mounting, Severus thrust it into her hand, only letting go when her fingers finally curled around it.

He raised an eyebrow at her, leaning against the doorway expectantly. “Well?”

Her nose crinkled. “What, right now?”

“I’d like to know that it works, Miss Evans.” his frown deepened. Why didn’t she want to take it? She’d been reduced to tears at Christmas, and it had helped her escape the Dark Lord. She should’ve been elated.

She hesitated. “I was hoping to wait, to try the Patronus without it.”

“It won’t hinder or aid you unless you activate it.” Severus said. “And since you’re taking a break, that is of no concern anymore, yes?”

She gave him a long look — why was she staring at him like that? A mixture of trepidation and resignation, a look Severus hadn’t seen on her in a very long time.

“Alright,” Miss Evans muttered, ripping off the cork with a soft pop. “yeah, you’re right, it couldn’t hurt.”

The look on her face told him otherwise. What —

She Summoned her wand from her mess of a desk and pointed it at her heart, biting her lip. Then, she sucked in a deep breath and whispered, “Lumos,”

The blinding light filled the room, the girl’s face incandescent. She held her hand over her chest, breathless, wearing a smile that Severus had longed to see since he’d come in, making his chest loosen in relief.

“It worked,” she said, almost to herself, before looking back to Severus. “I’d — I’d forgotten how strong it is.”

“As is the Patronus Charm. That is the emotion you are trying to capture.”

Miss Evans nodded slowly, caution creeping back into her face like fog. She set the vial down slowly on the nightstand, eyebrows pulled together in deep thought. “How long will it last?”

“The same as the last batch, six months or so, depending on how often you utilize it.” Severus paused for a moment, the silence between them a tangible thing in the air. “My hope is that it will help you sleep.”

She gave him a small smile. “Thank you.”

That should have been the end of it. There was no need for Severus to linger longer, but there was something different about the girl, something thicker in the air, something she was keeping from him, and it wasn’t that fucking photo album. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders until her teeth rattled but it was clear that she was growing uncomfortable the longer he lingered.

Too bad Severus didn’t care. She would tell him, whether she liked it or not.

“Miss Evans,” Severus began softly, gauging the girl’s reaction. She stiffened, her back turned to him as hurried over to her desk, quickly casting Repairo on the mess. He cleared his throat — damnable girl. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering your school things.”

Her shoulders relaxed. “Oh… alright. I can pay you back —”

“Don’t you dare. I’m not taking Potter’s money.” he threw back at her, watching it hit her square in the face.

She frowned. “Why not? You shouldn’t have to pay for my stuff.”

Severus gave her a long, searching look. She shrank away from it and he frowned — what was the matter? She’d spent the morning trying to cast the Patronus like she did every bloody morning, but never came back this scattered. She was usually completely knackered and mournful, pestering him to show her the goddamn Charm himself.

“It’s my responsibility, not Potter’s.” Severus said stiffly. “I’ve reimbursed him — or rather you, I suppose — for your tuition as well, since we’re on the topic. It’s fully paid through your Seventh Year.”

“Y-you shouldn’t have —” she stammered.

His eyes narrowed dangerously. “And why is that?”

“I just meant that you — you didn’t have to.” the girl gave him a weak smile, one that Severus didn’t buy for a second. “Thank you.”

[beevean]

Considering the state of IDW, I'm truly curious if we'll see Surge and Kit again.... and even more what will be done with them when they return. Redemption? Sudden death? Pulling another disappearance for like a year? I cannot help but feel the writers put themselves in a complete corner regarding what to do with these two...🤔

Their fate is so ambiguous (read: I did not understand what happened in that page) that they could feasibly be brought back. And like... the writers have still quite a lot of potential to milk from them: they could reveal where they come from, they could change their relationship into being fully inseparable siblings, they could actually deprogram them somehow and give them something of a happier ending...

As for whether they'd do it... I don't know. I don't believe, like others here, that S&K completely lost popularity: ofc they got less fanart now that they're less relevant, but I still see some of it, and I still see some saying that they are the best thing that came out of IDW. A return would be appreciated. But what would they do? The way Flynn talked about Surge after #50, he sounded like he truly believes her to be nothing more than a "maim maim kill kill" villain that Sonic had to calm down (bruh lol), so I wonder if he even sees the complexity of his own characters. We do know, OTOH, that Stanley has a passion for milking angst out of characters, so maybe she would go down that route?

Also the problem with IDW is that its pacing is absolutely atrocious, and the writers simply don't know which events need more screen time and which ones could be limited to a few issues. Remember: S&K were put under the spotlight for more than a year! And at the end of the day they were barely utilized! Would they be reduced to a filler 5-issue arc, or replace Eggman for anothr year? :^)

[paigebbooks]

Fairy Tale - Stephen King (Not Much A Fairy Tale)

Have you ever read a book and the descriptive writing turns you off. Especially for in this example, Stephen King writes about this bridge where Charlie's (Main Character) mom get's hit and killed on much early on in the book and every time Charlie mentions the bridge it is GODDAMN BRIDGE. Every time Stephen King brings it up it is always THAT GODDAMN BRIDGE. Ok King, we get the fucking point but don't have to put it into each sentence and at times, in a couple chapters, in the next couple of pages, 10x on each page. It is a real turn-off from reading and makes the reader lose connection with your story. It is poor story writing but sadly that never improved in this novel at all. 600 pages? Please, could have been done in 300. The extra 300 is a waste of paper in my opinion.

I found this novel, which many described to be one of the best of King yet, to be so slow that I literally put it down for a month and came back to it later and was still able to know what was happening. It is like a poorly written soap opera and its sad to say even those are written better. There is nothing keeping the reader hooked in this story until 400 pages in, when the story is finally reaching the climax, is when it starts to get really faced paced and good. As A King fan, I was truly disappointed in this book. Maybe my expectations were to high, I don't know, but truly I did find the writing to be atrocious and I had hoped it would get better but once I was 200 in, I came to the conclusion it never would.

The gladiator fighting in the novel truly intrigued me and that is when I found the story to really get going is when we finally meet the horrifying Night Soldiers, Living Dead Soldiers, and I loved that the twist is the brother of the royal family that was all presumed dead. That kind of surprised me. Leah, princess in this story, becoming Queen once she helps practically kill her brother to save her world, but not getting Charlie and Charlie not getting the girl, I truly loved.

The one other thing I truly did not like about this novel is that it felt completely plagiarized and lacked any originality. Story building also lacked. That truly made me sad for Stephen King. Hope his next book is better.

[automatismoateo]

Just finished reading the Bible and now believe in God even less via /r/atheism

Just finished reading the Bible and now believe in God even less I started reading the Bible at the start of the summer for a multitude of reasons and just finished. I already stopped believing in God when I started reading but tried to go in with an open mind and a don’t knock it till you try it attitude but holy shit God makes a terrible argument for himself. The amount of contradictions, mistranslations that entirely alter the meaning of the text, and general terrible character of God himself really reaffirmed the beliefs I had more than I even thought it would. I thought as a literary work it was entertaining read for the first half of each testament but the second halves of each were much less so. The first half of the Old Testament with the historical stuff was generally entertaining(fuck chronicles) as it was pretty non stop with stuff happening. The second half of the Old Testament though was a bit more painful as you’re definitely not meant to read psalms and proverbs straight through and with the prophets I felt like I was going to go insane if they repeated that Babylon was going to destroy Jerusalem one more time. The New Testament was good with the gospels and acts but all of the letters were pretty mediocre as Paul makes atrocious theological arguments and the other lets weren’t much better. Revelations was batshit insane but actually really enjoyable because of it and such a welcome change of pace from the letters. I’d say my favorite book was first Samuel as that felt like it was practically a Greek tragedy and my least favorite was definitely second chronicles as it repeats what I literally just read and kings was already not that engaging to begin with so doing it again was like torture. Moses is easily my favorite character as his entire section feels like such a journey and has some of the best moments in the entire Bible on top of feeling really personal mainly in Deuteronomy. Even as just fiction the absolute aura on display in the Bible is astronomical with stuff like Moses parting the Red Sea, Jesus washing Judas’ feet, and Elijah on mount Carmel. That shit felt like it would never end as I had a student Bible which made it even longer than it already was making it nearly double the length. Those sections though saved me as it maintained my sanity having someone speak in modern prose giving clarification every other page and helped to point out a lot of historical things I wouldn’t have picked up on otherwise. I’m planning to read some of the apocrypha at some point but am planning to read the Quran first as it’s not that long. I have to say though I’m much more excited to read the divine comedy and paradise lost now. It is genuinely infuriating now though hearing a lot of Christians and realizing they don’t understand the basics of their own religion and knowing that even though I can literally point to the verse that contradicts them they just won’t listen. I have to say though I’m very saddened that all books can’t be printed like the Bible with leather covers and ribbon bookmarks built in. Submitted August 20, 2024 at 03:10PM by PIugshirt (From Reddit https://ift.tt/LBQ4rMT)

[arjun-muralidharan]

June 26th to 28th 2008 Venue: Complexe sportif Claude-Robillard Time clocked: 2:02.57 Olympic Qualifying Target Timing: 2.01.78 Location: Montreal Quebec Canada

The new Neophrene Speedo LZR racing suits were launched about a month prior to this meet and were all the buzz about how they are reducing about half a second for all the swimmers who got their hands on one. Only a selective few coaches were given these suits to help their swimmers make the Olympic cut. I asked my coach Byron Macdonald to get me one if possible. But he said it wasnt available in my size as i was a size 44 at the time. My teammate Terrence Hayes got his hands on a size 40 LZR which was his size. I asked him if i could borrow it for the 100 butterfly and he said yes. The suit took a good 45 mins to put on with the help of my brother but i knew it was too tight and difficult to breathe in but the tradeoff was worth it if it helped me make the Olympic cut. My target was to go 54.50 and qualify in the 100 itself and not leave it all to my main event which was the 200 fly. But unfortunately these suits as amazing as they were had a notorious reputation for having atrocious zips which never held together. On the blocks as the starter buzzed prepping to say "take your marks" my suits zip snapped open and my heart froze as i realised what happened. I swam the race with my entire suit filled with water way off the mark at 57.24. It was extremely disheartening and i decided to give up the idea of experimenting with any new suits and rely on my own Speed FS PRO suit for the 200 fly as that was my last chance.

100 fly results: https://www.swimrankings.net/index.php?page=meetDetail&meetId=530519&gender=1&styleId=16

Next morning woke up at 5:45 AM in my hotel room. Had a couple of bananas with energy drinks & stretched for about 30 mins preparing for the morning prelim swim. I had strategised to win the event and secure an Olympic QT i will need to secure a top 3 position in the prelims. My target was to swim 2:08 in the heats trusting that my conditioning and recovery rate helps me get ready & push through to 2:01 in the finals later in the day. Was about an hour's drive to the pool from our hotel as Montreal traffic jams are quite hectic. All through the journey had my ipod on listening to my usual rap tracks to be in the zone and suppress the butterflies in my stomach. Reached the pool and got in for the warmup. The water felt extremely light and muscles were feeling loose and fluid. This reinforced my confidence by a huge margin.

The race started out i was in the first heat. TIM RUSE of Pointe-Claire Swim Club and KISHIDA Masayuki of Japan took the lead early into the race with me comfortably in the third place. I decided to swim conserving energy i increased my stroke rate and pace around 150 meters pulling ahead of Tim RUSE and qualifying 5th for the finals swimming 2:09. Went back to the hotel had a big breakfast and a quick nap. However our swim coaches wouldnt give us a seperate room like the first two days and asked us to move and adjust with 7 other swimmers in one bed. Unfortunately some of the swimmers were given seperate rooms for their events. I knew i had a lot riding on this race to qualify for Beijing Olympics and i couldnt afford to let lack of rest and comfort come in the way of my performance. So i had to fight with other swimmers who didnt have events and ask them to move so i can get a bed to take a nap on prior to the finals. My older brother Amar who was after the same goal had swam in the morning and qualified third for the finals clocking 2:09. He couldnt get a proper place to sleep thanks to all the money saving going on by the club into clustering up swimmers so they dont have to pay for rooms. I was willing to pay more for my own room but the management and coaches refused to accomodate this request. My brother went out to Harvey's & Tim Horton's and got us both lunch which consisted of a few gatorade drinks and chicken burgers.

At about 3:00 PM we checked out of the hotel and went with all our luggage to the pool for the finals. I warmed up surprisingly feeling good but the water felt slightly cold which didnt matter much to me. I knew i am going to swim fast during the warm up but the question was how fast will it be and will it be enough? I meditated a bit after the warmup in solitude praying to the god of strength, visualizing my race and started suiting up in my FS PRO which was an old / outdated suit at the time but i trusted it'll get the job done.

As me and my brother walked out for the finals we suddenly saw the on deck commentator getting the crowd going on the last day. There were about 15000 people in attendance that broke out into a mexican wave. It was a sight to see and got me pumped up to swim the race fast. 10 mins after we were in the marshalling room getting ready to walk out to the blocks when the commentator announced the names of the swimmers walking out one by one. As our names were called out the announcer asked the crowd to give a big round of applause for us for coming all the way from India and racing in Canada. 5000 large crowd stood up and clapped for us making me feel honored and proud. It was a very unforgettable and special moment for us in our lives.

The race started with me opening out in the blistering 56.83 taking the lead. As i made the turn for the third 50 i saw the Toronto Swim Club team standing near my lane and screaming for me to bring it home. In the last lap at the 175 meters mark my hands turned to concrete but i knew it was a do or die situation. I said screw it and went 20 meters head down swim with my lungs nearing explosion but i wouldnt relent till i touched the wall, when i finally hit the last stroke i knew i left whatever i had and gave it my all regardless of the outcome. I turned around and saw that i missed the Olympic qualifying mark by .70 of a second. However i had broken the Canada Cup record and become the first and only Indian swimmer to win a gold at a foreign national championship. It was a mixed emotion of feeling you accomplised something but sad that you lost something at the same time. All my coaches, training partners came and gave me a pat, handshakes and three cheers along with the crowd as well. After coming out of the pool all i could do is take a bow and acknowledge the great people who were showing appreciation.

I had a long and heartfelt call with my dad and mentor who was back home watching the race live. He said "The only thing that matters is that you gave it your best and made your parents and country proud" In the end that is the main thing.

200 fly results: https://www.swimrankings.net/index.php?page=meetDetail&meetId=530519&gender=1&styleId=17

All in all it was a great experience and something i cherish to this day. Winning and Losing is all a part of the sport. What matters is what you take from it and how you grow thereafter. These are the experiences we impart onto our students who will be the champions of tommorrow.