#guest reviewer

[scarletimania99]

Reviewing Eyes by Imania Margria (Guest Review)

Jamal Johnson's Review of Eyes by Imania Margria

Aiko’s Ratings Story Rating: 10/10 Character Rating: 10/10 Mood Rating: 10/10 Uniqueness Rating: 10/10 Overall Rating: 10/10 Overall Review (This is the review we post on our review pages.) A suspenseful mafioso tale about falling in love while standing on the edge of a knife. The story is multi-layered, gripping and full of twists and turns. The mid-1900s cityscape setting is bursting…

[t-hirstreview]

[vimbry]

I'm impressed by how many angles tmbg can approach the theme of 'work sucks' and have it not feel like they're retreading old ground. every single one of them has something new to say, which becomes very depressing if you think about that for too long.

"put your hand inside the puppet head": thinking about a terrible job in hindsight rather than being in the thick of one, and the importance of keeping some perspective instead of falling afoul of romanticising the past, once the bad memories wane with time.

"snowball in hell": the lament of a tedious job that doesn't suit your needs. the past tense makes me think of it as the narrator reflecting on the day after clocking out for the night, and how pretty soon they'll have to face the monotony all over again tomorrow, just to stay afloat.

"someone keeps moving my chair": I dunno how accurate this is, but I've kinda been interpreting this one as illustrating the rigmarole of office politics. all the tasks and busywork and even worse higher-ups to answer to, all new ideas that get brought in and go nowhere - yet somehow, it's the most petty of annoyances that bother mr. horrible.

"hearing aid": there's an almost zen-like attitude towards the managerial pecking order here, which is also alluded to in "puppet head". both narrators mention fleeting sympathy for their awful bosses, knowing they're just as much a victim of a flawed system as they are, but not excusing their actions. I guess it's a vent about not letting the pressure get to you and doing nothing more than your set responsibilities, if even that. real "go out there and give it your 60%" type song from a totally checked-out character.

"minimum wage": a mockery of these types of jobs treating you like a mule (not only from the 'hyah' and whip noise, but the lyric being sung in the style of "mule train"), but oddly playful in a somewhat bitter way. it gives me the same kind of vibe as someone working an early student job they can afford to treat with a bit of levity, because they know they won't be here long enough to care.

"sleeping in the flowers": focuses more on the fantasy of being with a crush than work, but it's in there. the narrator would much sooner ditch their job, regardless of consequences, and spend that time with the woman they're in love with. this is the second song to mention an infatuation with someone working at a copy shop after "snowball in hell"; you could probably theorise that it's the same person.

"memo to human resources": their most serious and haunting song on the matter. the references to an attempt aren't subtle. the lyrics seem to function as both a metaphor of the narrator's state of mind and their plan, and a literal description of the day-to-day tasks that exacerbated their spiral. another double-meaning I like in its title is how it's a report of the incident, as well as a note.

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Epilogue

what in the biblical language is this, it’s such a contrast to Nona’s narration. love a good TLT epilogue shift to a completely different perspective and narrative style

Alecto’s first word is ‘You’, which presumably connects to the end of saying ‘i still love y-’ in the poem at the beginning?

HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS is back baby!! my girl is finally in the same room as Gideon for the first time in two books. i cannot wait to see Harrow’s reaction to Kiriona Gaia in AtN

‘I only die in longing for thee’ ok so the language here is definitely coloured by Alecto’s narration style, but i love that Ianthe’s response to Harrow calling her ‘bitch’ is to apparently say something extremely romantic

THEN PERISH

pfff and Alecto just tosses Ianthe aside. the last third of this book has not been great for Ianthe’s ego 

ok so the the attitude of Alecto to Pyrrha here is very interesting to me, specifically the mention of ‘appeasement’ - Alecto says that John ‘laid [her] down’ to appease ‘them’, presumably the Lyctors, which fits with what we know about the situation of Alecto being put in the tomb already. but what stands out as slightly odd here is that Alecto also says ‘he fed you to them as an appeasement to them’ - the Lyctors seemed more upset by the whole ‘consuming the souls of their cavaliers’ thing, rather than ‘appeased’. again i think there’s a lot more to the original ascension than the reader knows yet

‘and now all he has done is teach me how to die’ well that’s ominous. and also horrifically sad that this is clearly something learned as Nona, who had accepted her death, in contrast to Harrow’s assertion in John 5:4 that the only thing that scared Alecto was death

between Ianthe and Alecto Harrow just seems to be extremely kissable 

also Alecto biting Harrow as her understanding of a kiss vs Nona having an innate understanding of body language … its so sad. i miss Nona so much already

‘Get in line thou big slut!’ listen that cannot be anyone other than my girl Gideon!! i have a feeling that Alecto being in service to Harrow is going to cause Tension in the next book

‘At which John awakened and said, Annabel, good morning’ WHAT. what the hell is going on right now

that is one hell of a line to leave the book on, and pretty fitting given that the book has essentially told both of their stories (Alecto as Nona, John via Harrow’s dreams), and ends with them actually being on page together for the first time. also it is just like John to be totally, annoyingly chill about his kinda ex stabbing him in the chest smh

[retropopcult]

Photographs of Disneyland by Loomis Dean, July 1955.

[modularmedia]

Knowing Your Worth as a Creator Feat. @vangeluscentral - Modular Components Episode One Hundred & Five

The Gang are joined by one of the OG YouTube Toy Reviewers to discuss the evolutions of being a online content creator, a Transformers fan & a Tokusatsu fan in the west.

[fuckyeahgoodomensfanfic]

the concept of a fanfic review blog is outdated and gross. These are free works, they’re not meant to be critiqued as if they are published works.

I think if you take a look at any of my posts I'm not being critical of any of the stories I've posted about, and have said before that I think of my posts as long form rec posts more than reviews. I may point out parts that didn't work for me but it's never done with malice?

Frankly, I think this is a tiktok take that's getting a little away from itself. Yes, I don't think people should be talking negatively about fanfics, but I personally don't think all discussions/reviews are inherently negative.

I don't know I guess. If anyone else has any other takes/advice I'm willing to hear them. I'm sorry you feel this way about this blog. As I say in my info post, if any author is uncomfortable with their story being here I will immediately remove it

[putting-gourmand-in-restaurants]

Welcome to my gimmick blog!

I’m your host, @phishtoast and I’ll put our big boy Gourmand from Rain World into any restaurant you request!

Here’s a couple of rules (READ BEFORE SENDING AN ASK PLEASE):

- The restaurant you request must be able to be found and has pictures of the inside and their food

- If it’s not a restaurant chain, specify the location where it’s from in your ask!

- Be specific with your ask! you have to say the name of the restaurant

- It has to exist in real life!

Good requests:

“Can Gourmand go try out a Jollibee’s/KFC?” (Chain restaurants, they don’t need a specific location)

“Gourmand should go eat at Casa Yaax in Miami!” (Specific restaurant with a defined location)

Bad requests:

“Can gourmand eat at an (insert a kind of restaurant here)?” (Not specific enough, and no restaurant name)

“Gourmand should eat at Delmonico’s!” (Not a restaurant chain, but where is it?)

Also here’s some extra info:

- This is my first gimmick blog, please be nice!

- I’ll try to post at least once per day, so sorry if your request takes a long time it might be in queue hell :(

- Gourmand may review the restaurant he went to if he feels like it!

- Repeat asks will be ignored, so please search for the restaurant you want before sending an ask! I will make a master post for all the popular chains that get frequent asks once I make enough posts

- I am in America so I may not be familiar with restaurants chains around the world, but I’ll try my best

Tags

- #gourmand’s restaurant reviews is on posts where he reviews the restaurant

-#gourmand’s eating out today is on the regular posts

-#gourmand ate at home today is on annoucements and misc posts

-#gourmand’s guests feature gourmand’s friends who come with him to the restaurant

Have fun everyone!

[in-the-stacks]

Presenting The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai and translated by James Kirkwood . Reviewed by The Next Read Detective for In the Stacks.

https://www.inthestacks.tv/2024/08/the-next-read-detective-the-kamogawa-food-detectives

[therealnightcity]

11 months of cyberpunk (and one imposter)

I’d been a little nervous about posting this but finally just decided to go for it. I have improved over the year, even if it’s the first tentative forays into modding (or the realization that I could take vertical shots in vanilla if I was willing to tolerate the neck strain) and hoping I can continue to further improve over the coming year.

A big thanks to all of the people I asked for modding advice and who were so encouraging and let me talk their ear off about OCs—y’all are the real inspiration.

(Template credit goes to @pinkyjulien and the shots are all mine 🩷)

[fantasyfantasygames]

The Department

The Department Susan Cathleen Powell, 2019

-----

Sabrina Hawthorne is a fellow enthusiast of rare RPGs. She's the one who actually found a write-up of The Revolution by a GM for a table of players who didn't want to read the whole thing. We originally met at a mini-golf course, of all places (fuck you, windmill), and ended up chatting about mechanics in card-based games. When she told me about this one I knew it was a perfect fit for the blog and invited her to write a guest post. Here it is!

----

You know the SCP wiki? You know those articles that dive super far into the deep history, where characters straight out of the Hebrew Bible use arcane orbital lasers to wage a planet-wide war on mutant flesh monsters, and bigfoot is there too?

The Department is one of those, in the form of a hack for The Quiet Year.

You play as the board of directors for the titular Department, who are the SCP foundation in all but name. Your researchers have come across an anomalous archaeological dig site, and it’s your job to guide the organization to learn as much as they can about it – and the secret world history it’s a part of - before it’s destroyed by the vague sleeping horror that you disturbed when the site broke ground.

For the most part, the game runs the same as The Quiet Year, but with spookier and more bureaucratic flavor text. There’s a phase at the end of each round called a Board Meeting that’s a bare bones hidden role board game that doesn’t really feel as scheme-y or capitalistic as it wants to, but other than that it runs smoothly.

The real life of the party is the Countdown mechanic. Whenever a player draws an Ace of any suit from the deck, the Countdown advances, causing more strange occurrences and anomalous dangers to crop up around the dig site. When the last Ace is drawn, the game ends, and players are strictly forbidden to tie up any loose ends that their improvised story left hanging. And since in this one you pull from a combined deck of 52, those aces can come randomly at any time.

There isn’t any art in The Department, which makes sense. It’s 12 pages, and it’s only that long because of a very thorough section on consent and safety tools. Nonetheless, it’s packed with exactly the kind of style that this game needs. The front and back covers look like a manila folder, and the whole thing looks like a partially declassified government document.

Susan Powell apparently sold a few of her games through her onlyfans page, alongside more of what you might expect of an onlyfans page. I got my copy from a friend though, and I haven’t been able to track Susan down anywhere on the internet.

[t-hirstreview]

[clonerightsagenda]

She remains remarkably composed for the most part but Holly Munro is really going through it tbh. Imagine: you are 18 and your boss is a 15 year old. You have a minor crush on one of your coworkers who hates you because she sees you as a threat to her crush. (He is a boy. You are a lesbian.) The two of you have such a bad fight it destroys a building and then she quits and everyone, including your boss, thinks it's because of you. Then she comes back and you try to bury the hatchet while sharing a hotel room and she reveals she's been enacting a horsegirl movie with an undead graverobbing cultist and fondly reminisces over how he'd encourage her to kill you with various kitchen implements. Over the span of a year you blow up a research facility, rob a grave, fight a crime ring, and take a day trip to hell. You were hired to be an admin assistant.

(Joking tone aside, she's vague about why she left her last job beyond that her boss was "disgusting" and "didn't treat his employees well", but given that she was a young woman who'd just turned 18 working as a secretary for a powerful older man, I wouldn't be surprised if he was acting inappropriately, which would make it even more galling for Lucy to immediately get her hackles up. The last thing Holly wants is special attention from her male boss. I hope she enjoyed blowing up Rotwell's laboratory.)

[oldshowbiz]

January 1958.

Bad review for Tonight Show guest host Jonathan Winters.

[thislovintime]

On the set of "Monkees Watch Their Feet," 1967.

Micky’s 1971 single “Easy On You”/”Oh Someone” was co-arranged by Peter (with Micky and David Price). “Coincidentally, "Oh Someone” came together after a chance encounter Price had with Peter in 1971. The superb liner notes of the MGM Singles Collection, written by Mark Kleiner Biggar, elaborated on the meeting. ‘I was walking down the street in Hollywood when I looked up and there was Peter,’ said Price. 'We hadn’t seen each other in a while, and he said, “I’m recording up at Micky’s; why don’t you come up?”’ The song took a few hours to record, and featured Price on rhythm guitar, Peter on bass, and Micky behind the drums.“ - Monkees Live Almanac blog post, December 2015 “[Dolenz] has just released a single for MGM Records entitled ‘Easy On You.’ As with much of Davy Jones’s stuff, this is highly forgettable. The flip side, however, is another story. ‘Oh Someone’ is really pretty good material, and very well performed. There is what sounds like a Moog synthesizer as the main instrument, and the effect of the record as a whole is quite good. Oddly enough, it lists the fourth Monkee, Peter Tork, as one of the arrangers.” - The Record, October 31, 1971 “[N]o one of us really supported any of the others except that, that I like to think that I tried to support Micky in a way which, for some reason, he never did pick up on. I mean, I think that Micky has a certain kind of genius that he was never able to acknowledge in himself.” - Peter Tork, Headquarters radio, September 1989

[ruby-red-inky-blue]

With AO3 guest comments disabled (and many people, myself included, putting their fic on "logged-in users only" access): if any of you guys need an invite to create an account, I have eight AO3 invites left to give away! DM me if you're in need, first come first serve :)

I've had my AO3 account for so long I legitimately forgot that you need an invite to create an account lol