#liveread

[fartguy5000]

whatever dinah and shiva have going on rn has definitely been explored in some old yuri anime ill tell you that

[benjaminutes]

Join us on TWITCH or TIKTOK LIVE JULY 26th 27th AND 28th for the LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HOMESTUCK GAMESHOW A charity event benefiting the PALESTINE CHILDRENS RELIEF FUND!!! The TOP DONORS will be INVITED TO COMPETE! The AUDIENCE can donate to buy the contestants LIFELINES!

Every CONTESTANT will have 13 challenges 4 them! 5 TELL ME ABOUT HOMESTUCK challenges where you must correct an incorrect statement I make about HOMESTUCK - as well as 8 SUPER SECRET BONUS ROUNDS!!! You won't wanna miss it!

I'll be having FRIENDS OF THE SHOW, SECRET SPECIAL GUESTS as well as the TOP DONOR compete each day! Can't donate enough to be a TOP DONOR? No worries! You can still influence the game by DONATING smaller amounts to help your favorite CONTESTANTS by buying them LIFELINES:

PATRON TROLL - CONTESTANT can talk to our HOMESTUCK EXPERT for 1 MINUTE

SCRATCH - CONTESTANT can retry a challenge after failing

EXILES - TWITCH chat is READABLE for 1 MINUTE

This will all be part of the 10am-8pm pacific HOMESTUCK LIVEREAD 2024 EVENT! Each day we'll run the GAMESHOW 3 separate times with 3 separate CONTESTANTS!

[sisislair]

Loving the writing style, I honestly think it holds up pretty well even as an adult.

She does such a good job of quickly establishing everyone's core character traits, with the occasional little tidbit of, oh, that was what they used to be like huh?

Foreboding.

I couldn't remember which book Tobias got stuck in hawk morph, but it QUICKLY became apparent it would be by the end of this one. His reluctance to turn back mixed with his shitty home life? Oh yeah.

Do love that Jake realizes he's an immediate concern, and that he even gets it a bit, when he just lets the dog take over so he doesn't have to think about his yeerk infested brother saying they should kill or infect him.

Also! She's really good at writing kids. They feel the right amount of both naive and more smart than you give them credit for.

Honestly was not expecting it to get dark that fast lol. He ate him alive and some of the pieces fell and were eaten by other things?!!

Trauma for life, and we've barely even started!

Love that the plan fails, because there wasn't really a plan! These are just kids, they don't know how to fight a guerilla tactics war. They'll be learning though.

Aughhhhh Tom showing through briefly to try and warn his brother? Frothing at the mouth.

Love the little hints we get that the andalites might not be all they seem. There's a lot of emphasis on, seems cute and nice at first, but then you get to the back. And then there's a massive fuck off blade!. Also, will always be wary of mind speech that transfers emotions as well. It is REALLY easy to manipulate people with that, maybe not even intentionally! But still.

Anyway thoroughly enjoyed this first book, and it's ending body count of uh, I don't think I could even count honestly. Which is somewhat concerning lol.

[alexanderwales]

Finished book 2 of Crystal Society. I enjoyed it about as much as the first book, though I do have a few quibbles, and I think I might have liked it better if it hadn't had so many cases of outside perspective and stuck with Face (or aspects of Face).

Spoilers follow.

About halfway through the book, Face undergoes a radical change in personality and goals, essentially an entirely new character. This makes sense narratively, but it's very close to being a protagonist switch, and I could feel some of my investment bleeding away. I had enjoyed reading about the old Face, I guess, particularly the prospect that Face had divided up into virtually-embodied aspects that interacted with each other, and it felt like that lasted for only about a chapter. And New Face is less personable, less distinctive, which is a problem.

Stuff I liked:

The route-hack and workaround stuff, as well as some of the exploits.

Some of the shock-value dissonance when Face does things that would be insane to a human.

Most of the social manipulation stuff, which I think it at its best when I have some sense of what's being done and why, and can track it (or have it explained to me) rather than just "hey, I did this, and it worked", though it's hard for me to tease apart which falls into what category.

Setting up the three-way war was a really strong ending for the book.

Stuff I quibble with:

The book has autofabs, and while there are several 3D printers in our house, I think some of the things these autofabs are doing come close to being magic. The thing I'm particularly raising an eyebrow at are all the things that require microchips. I'm reading this as a physical book, so couldn't ctrl+F, and it's possible I missed something.

There are a few times in the book when there's some segregation of cause and effect, at least narratively, and there are many ways in which the motives of characters (particularly the AI ones) are opaque. The one that stood out to me most is the attack by the aliens against the base, which completely disrupts everything that had been going on, and doesn't feel motivated. I was left wondering whether this was caused by one of the characters, whether it was someone's gambit, but it felt like it came out of nowhere. ("Knowing what's happening and why" is one of those "unrealistic" things that I think is often very important to fiction unless you're really trying to evoke a feeling of "gotta roll with the punches in this random and chaotic world that's so hard to understand".)

I do want to know what's going on with Earth. I do want to know exactly what Growth did to make Acorn and how that works, and the negotiation that Dream and Vista had to become Vision. We're stuck in the viewpoint of Face, and I feel like sometimes we hop over to someone else who is less connected to the main plot, but not someone who is more connected to the main plot?

I'm onto book 3 now, and curious where the story is going, since a battle between superintelligences with their own specializations sounds great, yet my impression of audience reception is lukewarm.

[welcomingdisaster]

they’re talking about u… embarrassing

[cheshire-creeper]

NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT THEM

Love how it looks like rose is now trying to alchemize the very essence of classpects????? Because that's like. An almost pitch-perfect rendition of the symbol for light. Also. Love how it has a more sketchy appearance and is in black and white compared to the rest of the image, which is going for that class lineless style. Like, even though Terezi is in Orb mode, G’LUYRB, OF PORTENTS MOST GRIM is permanently stuck in Sprite Mode. Anyways. I just wanted everybody to notice the tentacle abomination in the room, and how good this update was. That's all. I'm going insane this is what I wanted and dreamed and feared about and now it's HERE and they are actually doing this they are making this happen

[owlslivereads]

And I am starting! This is the start so I'll either not say anything or say far too much every two sentences. Still, this is a livereread and I put off starting long enough.

In we go!

[franticfloralfrenfern]

I ADORE THESE LITTLE WARNINGS???? THE STYLEEEEEEEE I ADORE

[mercutiotakethewheel]

oh my goddddd wtfff wtf wtf 🙃😢😢 they just killed my boy. oooof. i def see that le guinn was building to it but ooof. “but he never answered me; only in a way he ansewered my love for him” 🫠🫠🫠 life is pain.

[maryjanewatson]

I liked this bit from one of the poems in carson’s “men in the off-hours”

[fartguy5000]

theyre so fucked up. like theyre so fucked up to her right now. if i had to third wheel dinahbabs i would kill myself in front of them

[streamofconsciousofatree]

Headpats from the kuudere alien.

[sisislair]

Oh also, really foreshadowing how fucked this will be when at the ending of the first book, the best thing that can be said about the situation is that at least all of our friend group is still alive. With one being stuck as a hawk for presumably forever.

Not counting all the people who definitely died during the failed rescue, or that one cop it's implied Cassie might have killed. Or at least assisted in his death.

Eager to see if the weight of, oh fuck I was indirectly responsible for several people's deaths and personally killed at least a few people, is going to hit them next book

[rodriktheereader]

Stannis is the King of Ungraciousness

[scatterstory1]

holy fucking MIPPY

[cheshire-creeper]

going to try to liveread several MSPFAs to try it out and see how I do. I have no idea when I'll start this, but I'm going to probably do it Tomorrow. Sometime. I have no idea WHAT I'll do beyond the basic concept, but sure. I'll do this.