#get it soon

[richincolor]

Title: The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee Author: Ellen Oh Genres: Contemporary, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Romance Pages: 305 Publisher: Crown Books for Young Readers Review Copy: eARC provided via NetGalley Availability: Available now

Summary: Mina has become the hero of her own story. Literally.

When Mina Lee woke up on Saturday morning for SAT prep, she did NOT expect

Nearly be fried by a superhero who turned out to be a supervillain.

Come face to face with Jin, the handsome boy of her dreams.

Discover a conspiracy involving the evil corporation Merco that she created.

And it’s all happening in her fictional world. Mina is trapped in the story she created. Now it’s up to her to save everyone. Even if it means losing Jin forever.

From the award-winning author of Finding Junie Kim and co-founder of We Need Diverse Books, Ellen Oh. In the speculative fiction adventure Colliding Worlds, a teenage artist grapples with her first love, grief, and learning how to take charge of her own life.

Review: [The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee contains scenes describing human medical experimentation that, while not graphic, could be unsettling for some readers. Grief is also a present theme, as Mina’s mother’s died three years ago, and the Jin in the webcomic is based on a childhood friend who died of cancer.]

If you’ve ever enjoyed a webcomic where a “real world” person ends up in a fantasy world, you should give The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee a chance. It’s a solid example of the genre while still being able to have a bit of fun with the medium itself through meta moments like Mina realizing that something big will almost definitely happen at a school dance—just because it’s a school dance, and she’s in webcomic set at a high school. A lot of tropes, events, and characters get played straight or played around with in entertaining ways, and I enjoyed Mina’s lampshading throughout.

Mina and Jin were the stars of the book, and they had a sweet, sincere webcomic romance. I enjoyed their banter and their teamwork, and Mina was a lot of fun as a narrator. I liked watching her figure out how her powers worked as the webcomic’s creator, and her commentary on genre conventions and other meta gave the story a lot of flavor. Much of the supporting cast was fairly simple, though, and I do wish there had been more time to flesh them out—especially the character that was supposed to be the hero before Mina arrived in the webcomic world.

I would consider The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee to fall on the younger end of the YA spectrum due to its writing style and breezy pace. Some of the horror isn’t as deeply explored as I would expect in an older YA, like Mina’s powers to (accidentally) force the webcomic people to conform to her storyline or the medical/body horror inherent in the villain’s schemes. That said, the book doesn’t shy away from the heavier topics of parental loss—Mina’s mother’s death is still a significant influence on Mina and her father’s lives. I also appreciated the juxtaposition of Mina’s parents’ absences: her mother to death, but present in her art; and her father to work, but present in his worry about Mina’s future.

Recommendation: Get it soon if the premise appeals to you. Ellen Oh’s The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee is a fun, comfortable high school adventure with a dose of entertaining meta on top. There are some places I wish had been explored more, but the novel is a solid entry in this genre. I finished the novel wanting to read more stories like it, and that’s a sign of a satisfying story.

Extras: Read an excerpt from the publisher

[chongoblog]

[naomistares]

caught up with farcille lore i am back

[tackmins]

everyone come look at this fucking AITA post i just saw

[vulturedimension]

we are discussing our childhood passions on the dash tonight

[thekingkez]

happy homestuck day, you filthy animals

[stuckinapril]

Honestly the cliche advice is true. If you fill your life w things you’re passionate about, if you challenge yourself every day, if you give your own opinion of yourself more weight than you do other people’s opinions of you, you will actually thrive. Like no one can tell u anything

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i'm begging you guys to start pirating shit from streaming platforms. there are so many websites where you can stream that shit for free, here's a quick HOW TO:

1) Search for: watch TITLE OF WORK free online

2) Scroll to the bottom of results. Click any of the "Complaint" links

3) You will be taken to a long list of links that were removed for copyright infringement. Use the 'find' function to search for the name of the show/movie you were originally searching for. You will get something like this (specifics removed because if you love an illegal streaming site you don't post its url on social media)

4) each of these links is to a website where you can stream shit for free. go to the individual websites and search for your show/movie. you might have to copy-paste a few before you find exactly what you're looking, but the whole process only takes a minute. the speed/quality is usually the same as on netflix/whatever, and they even have subtitles! (make sure to use an adblocker though, these sites are funded by annoying popups)

In conclusion, if you do this often enough you will start recognizing the most dependable websites, and you can just bookmark those instead. (note: this is completely separate from torrenting, which is also a beautiful thing but requires different software and a vpn)

you can also download the media in question (look for a "download" button built into the video window, or use a browser extension such as Video DownloadHelper.)

[josukespimphand]

I haven't posted in a while but <333

[awetfrog]

Here to throw them into as many romcom tropes as possible

[thegirlhoodtheory]

I WILL BE GOOD AS LONG AS YOU WANT ME, 1/28/24

image from wikimedia commons

[richincolor]

Title: Ride or Die Author: Gail-Agnes Musikavanhu Genres: Contemporary, Thriller, Mystery Pages: 384 Publisher: Soho Teen Review Copy: Received ARC from publisher Availability: Available now

Summary: Best friends Loli Crawford and Ryan Pope have earned their nickname, the “Bonnie and Clyde of Woolridge High.” From illegal snack swapping in kindergarten to reckless car surfing in high school, they have been causing trouble in their uptight California town forever. Everyone knows that the mischief starts with Loli. When it comes to chasing thrills, drama, and adventure, no one is on her level.

At least until Loli throws the wildest party Woolridge High has ever seen just to steal a necklace and meets X, a strange, unidentified boy in a coat closet, who challenges her to a game she can’t refuse—one that promises to put her love of danger to the ultimate test.

Loli and X begin an anonymous correspondence, exchanging increasingly risky missions. Loli’s fun has always been free and easy, but things spin out of control as she attempts to one-up X’s every move. As Loli risks losing everything—including her oldest friend—she’ll face the most dangerous thing of all: falling for someone she shouldn’t.

Review: [RIDE OR DIE contains two scenes of threatened gun violence, but no one is injured.]

If I had to pick one word to describe Gail-Agnes Musikavanhu’s RIDE OR DIE, “chaotic” would be at the top of my list. It’s a fast-moving book that constantly ups the stakes in increasingly wild ways. Some that, frankly, strained my suspension of disbelief but turned out to be entertaining anyway. Musikavanhu has a gift for coming up thrilling hijinks and creating a protagonist I would completely believe would go through with them.

Loli is constantly chasing a thrill and eager to push against any and all boundaries to keep from being bored and to search for people worthy of increasingly exclusive friendship levels. It’s easy to tell from the start how quickly her game with X could go off the rails, and it’s no surprise when Loli’s obsession with the game and with X soon become significant sources of conflict between her and her friends. Loli’s adventures were fun to read about even when I was desperately hoping she’d realize the effects she was having on others soon as her letters to X provided multiple opportunities for self-reflection.

Loli’s character arc felt a bit rushed at the end, even though I did appreciate where she ended up after she got called out by some other characters. So much time was spent on the hijinks that there wasn’t much room for characters outside of Loli, X, and Ryan to be explored more. (I’m especially sad about how little screen time Cairo got as she seemed like she had a lot of potential.) Then again, the book was so fast paced that giving Loli’s emotional realizations more time to play out before the climax or develop more characters probably would have bogged down the story too much and interfered with the mounting worry/dread as things escalated with X. It’s a delicate balance that I think Musikavanhu got mostly right.

Recommendation: Get it soon if you’re a fan of fast-paced thrillers/mysteries. Debut author Gail-Agnes Musikavanhu created an entertaining thrill-seeking protagonist who finds herself nearly in over her head more than once. While character development is thin in some places, RIDE OR DIE is a fun, fast-paced summer read for readers who like an adrenaline rollercoaster.

Extras:

Q&A: Gail-Agnes Musikavanhu, Author of ‘Ride or Die’

Author Interviews: Gail-Agnes Musikavanhu

[haemosexuality]

one step closer to being real

[wuntrum]

pioneering something called "gritted teeth optimism" where everything is gonna turn out okay even if i have to bite and claw and gnash my way through it

[mutimatuti]

[kithj]

games (mostly text-based) about houses and places-- exploring them, haunting them, feeding them:

childhood homes (and why we hate them) - after a decade, you return home.

return - a text-based horror game about coming home.

singing from the far side of the hill - about a trans woman, homeless after a bad breakup, who rents a stranger's spare room. it's a decision she comes to regret.

anatomy - Explore a suburban house, collect cassette tapes, study the physiology of domestic architecture.

leave house - leave house

the open house - We at Northtree Real Estate (in partnership with Optix Dynamix Labs) are proud to present our new, state-of-the-art, open house simulator!  Come and take a quick tour of 15615 Hollow Oak Lane, a familiar and comfortable showcase home in one of our premier developments!

what girls do in the dark - This little game is based off one of the greatest fears they had as a teenage girl: showing up late to a stranger's slumber party.

unbecoming - a sonically-textured interactive horror fiction exploring cycles of trauma and unspeakable forces of nature in a mythic rural American landscape.

13 laurel road - an interactive fiction game about the relationships we have with places and reconciling with trauma. You play as a young man named Noah who has been tasked with picking up some things from his cousin’s old house.

domvs - a gothic mystery game in which you rely on your environment to uncover the truth.

flesh, blood, & concrete - you find yourself in a vast, empty apartment complex.

i am still here - a short, unconventional ghost story and vignette reflecting on the end of a long lockdown.

vacant - Film a ghost-hunting show.