I’m looking at Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The cover is beautiful, but it does make me doubt that Earth could have shards, since the planet appears to be gooey and stretchy, like a galactic caramel. Let’s see what this chewy caramel has in store for us. You can follow along by reading the sample on Amazon.
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Serizawa's Night School is going on a class trip of sorts! Which means Serizawa will be away from the office. How will Reigen deal with this temporary absence? And what does this weird other force have to do with any of this? Will Reigen be able to reach out? To ask for help?
Good questions!
A slightly light hearted tale about learning to ask for help, a softer sort of separation arc
Rated Teen and Up
Reblogs, Kudos, and Comments are deeply appreciated ♡
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Colours in Our Skyy 2 Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars ep 2
With this first crossover ep and the whole thing set in Chiang Mai/Pha Pun Dao, I was interested to see whether the colours I had interpreted in Bad Buddy would continue. @respectthepetty has written a great post on the use of lighting in atots, but I didn't pay as much attention to the lighting in this crossover to be able to say whether it's been consistent here too (maybe they will!).
I did notice, however, that the villagers wore a lot of blue and red (although a quick scan of atots reminded me that they wore a lot of those colours in that series too...although weighted more on the blue side).
Hello Toto and sound-booth-guy! (I think he had a name but I couldn't find it again). Also, I think they raided the wardrobe for Aou in Vice Versa for Pat's Chiang Mai clothes - why has he gone from sleeveless shirts in BBS to pocketed vests in OS2?!
Beyond all the blue and red, the other colours featured as well...starting with Pran in an orange shirt, which I said I would talk about in my ep 1 post. I love the idea that the orange might be a reference to Ink and how she entered Pat and Pran's story as a potential faen fatale in ep 4 of BBS. Initially, Pran regarded her cautiously as a love interest for Pat and similarly in Our Skyy 2 Pran is first looked upon warily by Tian as someone suspiciously close to Phupha (the children don't help by saying Pran is Phupha's boyfriend). This leads me back the tent in ep 1, and the orange there could also have been a nod to the faen fatale character - of Wai coming between the couple by being mistaken by Pat for Pran. Anyway, note Pran's yellow socks below! He might have left Pat behind but his love for him is still with him.
Pran's orange could also have been a choice for Aof to create the wonderful parallel with Moonlight Chicken, of Mix's character being witness to the 'baby-gays', alongside Pat's blue striped top. But Tian's olive-green top (and Phupha's camouflage), suggests the conflict and hostility between both couples.
The next day, despite sabotaging Pran's attempts to get Phupha and Tian to make up, Pat is wearing a yellow top, perhaps proclaiming his love for Pran out loud. Pran, despite telling Pat he wanted to come alone and get the signatures without his help, is wearing Pat's colour - a loud proclamation itself. And we soon see that they have exchanged colours again, with Pat wearing Pran's colour close to his under his shorts (@dimplesandfierceeyes pointed out a great little parallel with this to BBS ep 7 here). Note also Pran's yellow socks again - maybe this is the start of them matching their tops and socks 🤭
Jumping back to the night before and the dark green and brown of their tops could symbolise their fight - their stubbornness to not give in to the other becomes an obstacle to their happiness and they go to sleep disgruntled with each other.
But then the next night is a different matter, when they *ahem* test the structural integrity of the hut... Pat's love for Pran makes him always want to help Pran, seen in the yellow of his top, and they end up unified again (shaking the hut) as symbolised by all the teal and mint green (do we include the Nong Nao mask in this? 😄).
The next day, Pran is in his own red, perhaps feeling back to himself again after pulling away from Pat...and Pat is confusedly in the strange 'Aou from Vice Versa' outfit above 🤷🏽♀️ (sometimes clothes are just clothes 😏) Later, Pran wears yellow stripes (in front of a yellow lantern) whilst singing about his and Pat's love. Pat's also in stripes and the blue could add to his confidence as the 'engineering top-notch'. The green, however, is quite neutral - a 'primary' green, neither good (lime, mint, or teal) nor bad (forest/olive), and maybe this alludes to the draw he eventually has with Phupha and that the outcome of their drinking was neither good nor bad.
Incidentally, I liked that Pat woke up on a bed of red, initially thinking he was with Pran, and on top of another mat that looks yellow and blue, and was covered by a blanket in his own blue. With the amount he loves Pran, it's not hard to see that he wouldn't have cheated on him, even blind drunk (the same maybe could be said for Phupha with Tian).
It was interesting that Phupha and Tian also wore teal whilst Pat and Pran were trying to get them back together...and they might have succeeded if it hadn't have been for the letter - perhaps Tian's olive green pants and Phupha's camouflage allude to this...or, going back to @respectthepetty's interpretation of lighting, the fact that the lighting is quite cold here could show that the night would not end well for them.
And so on to the brown on Yod and Kampung - perhaps showing Phupha yielding to Pat's challenge, and Pran yielding to Tian's desire to walk to Pha Pun Dao. It's a nice touch that it looks like Yod has a dark blue shirt over the top of his brown (whilst with Pat) and Kampung has the red jersey (whilst with Pran).
And lastly, we end on olive/brown and camouflage - symbolising the trouble ahead for both couples (and for our sanity) and the sacrifice that they might have to make. (Or, you know, it just makes sense for them to be wearing this because they're forest rangers 🤷🏽♀️).
[ep 1] [ep 2] [ep 3] [ep 4] (<- I'm being hopeful)
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I think I cried harder today over my dad's jackets than I did at his deathbed. That was a miserable time of course, a memory that will likely be seared into my brain until I die, but I cried... I think a normal amount, all things considered. More than I ever usually do of course, but I typically don't cry At All. All this free crying is certainly surreal.
The jackets, though. I was put in charge of doing his laundry, because we don't want to pack up dirty clothes. I was expecting it to be unpleasant bc my dad's dirty clothes - gross. But really, it was much more unpleasant in that... those were his. It felt wrong to touch them. Felt wrong to treat his jackets as gross. Because they were just his jackets. They weren't even in the hamper. And then I was remembering him wearing them, and then I was crying. Again. And again. Weeping over these damn jackets.
Then I found a shirt on his bed that still smelled like him. It smelled like a Hug From Dad. And that set me off crying even harder.
In total, I think I cried like 6 times within 40 minutes. It took me that long to finish sorting the damn clothes bc I just. Was a wreck. Like, what are you supposed to do when you're living life like normal, vaguely hopeful bc you're taking steps to secure your own happiness, and then 4 days later you're sorting your dad's laundry because he fucking died. Suddenly. Without a goodbye.
And you have to worry about his lack of a will (even under an ideal situation, only 2 heirs and no conflicts between us, probate's a fucking Bitch), and arranging the funeral, and prepping his obituary, and picking out pictures, and writing a speech bc you want to talk at his funeral, of Course you want to talk at his funeral, but even just thinking about anecdotes you could share has you crying yet again.
I've cried more times in the past 3 days than likely the entirety of last YEAR. And that's WITH my cat, and uncle, and family friend dying. Those all hurt, my uncle most of all, & I was real fucked up over it. But this? This was my Dad. Likely the person I'd have named 2nd closest to me in my life, second only to my sister. He wasn't perfect, but he did so much for me throughout my entire life. All he wanted was to raise us to be happy and independent. And he accomplished it, we're getting by without him, but we still wanted several more decades with him. He was only 57. We should've gotten several more decades with him.
But here we are now. Playing investigators to his life, digging into all his shit, trying to find documents and take inventory of all his things, and learning Many things about him in the process. In his lockbox of sensitive documents, like his SSN and birth certificate and all that stuff, we found an old letter. About a decade old now, written in my hand. Right at the very top, we found that he'd kept the letter I wrote to him telling him frankly about my struggles and the things I wanted him to do better. He kept it. He tried to take it to heart. He looked at it again, sometime more recently than all the rest of the documents. That was on top.
His love for us is evident everywhere. The pictures he has hanging up all over the place, majority of them with us in them. The old fathers day cards placed on display in his bedroom bookshelf. The gifts we gave him, even stupid little knick knacks, placed around his apartment with pride. I wish we'd taken more videos of him. I don't want to forget the sound of his voice. I don't want to forget his smell either, the smell of a Hug From Dad, but I still tossed that shirt into the wash even though it felt like saying yet another goodbye.
It's the suddenness that hurts the most, I think. We were planning on having him help me finally get my license this year. My final words to him, the last thing he would've seen from me, were messages asking up on whether he'd called his car insurance company to make sure there wouldn't be problems. I should've called him more. I don't know if I'm going to learn from this.
I cut my 2 weeks off early to have time to grieve and to work on things for the funeral and settling the estate. The last thing I'd wanna do right now is selling fucking bubble tea in a job I already decided to leave. So here I am without a job, though with potentially two life insurance policy payouts to come. Inheriting half his 401k. Inheriting couches, knickknacks, keepsakes, paintings, art pieces, maybe even his guitar and other furniture if we can figure out what to do about space (I don't have room for this furniture, I don't know if I even have room for the couches, but God do I want to keep so much of this furniture). It has me even considering keeping one of his guns, just one. A tiny little revolver, it sits so comfortably in my hand. I don't even want to use it for anything. I just want to have it, keep it stored in a drawer with its ammo kept separate. I don't like guns, but this is a part of him. He loved collecting guns. He was about as responsible with them as someone can be, keeping them locked in a lockbox and impressing upon his children the importance of gun safety (I've known the basic gun safety rules ever since I was a little kid. Of course, of course, of course.) It reminds me of him. It's horrifically easy to have a gun in Indiana. I apparently don't even need a permit to carry anymore. (I have no intention to ever carry this in public.)
It's all a cycle. Business, grief, thoughts about my future. Round and round, like the most nauseating carousel in existence. I don't know how I'm still so functional. My skills with compartmentalization have been my lifesaver.
And im just thinking about the story my dad's best friend shared today. About a friend of theirs who lost her father. She reached out after hearing about my dad to share his words with her: "it's okay to grieve, but don't make his death your life".
He explicitly referenced himself in this, saying if he were to die suddenly that he wouldn't want us to define ourselves by it. Grief is expected, but he wants us to be able to move on. He's always wanted us to establish ourselves and make ourselves happy. He wouldn't want to be a weight holding us back from that.
So every time I start to feel guilty for thinking about having nicer furniture or using his life insurance payout to fund the rest of my college, I remind myself of that. Thinking about the material isn't a bad thing. I'm only human. And in the end, he'd Want me to be thinking about it. He never intended to die, certainly not without warning like this, so he would've only encouraged me being pragmatic about it all.
He only ever wanted us to be happy. So I need to do what I can to live up to that.
I love him. I miss him already.
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I’m looking at The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, the first in the bestselling The Folk of the Air series. This book has a polished cover that looks like every other YA fantasy for sale right now, a nicely drawn fairy-tale map in the front pages, and illustrations around the chapter titles that are actually pleasant, including cutesy flowers, mushrooms, a bee, and a little spider. Smells like a big publisher.
But what about the writing? Let’s have a look. Like usual, you can follow along on Amazon, though now you have to hit the “read sample” button, which seems to have replaced the “look inside” feature.
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Who do you think is in the right in across the spiderverse? Miles or Miguel.
Alternatively as a question,
Who is your favorite spidersona from the flim?
Hmm...well, first of all, while I am most certainly a simp for ATSV version of Miguel, I am pretty disappointed that he's almost nothing like his comic book counterpart which ended up making his character a lot more aggressive and hostile (this being a dude who can't even have an argument with a woman without sitting down to make himself less threatening because he's afraid of seeming abusive like his dad)
BUT...I do kinda agree with 'the sacrifice of one for the safety of billions'. Of course, obviously, the child is going to try to save his dad and any way of stopping someone's death should be tried, but ultimately, its for the sake of an entire universe. Miles could potentially lose his dad or he could lose everyone. And from what they've seen from Miguel collapsing a dimension and Pavitr's creating a massive block hole, it's a pretty substantial theory. I don't blame Miles, but I gotta agree with Miguel. It's less of who's 'right' and who can guarantee the lesser of two evils.
On a lighter note, absolutely love this spidermom and her kid who are holding hands in every shot and even during the chase throughout headquarters. That's so fucking cute.
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