#no it’s not gonna be quite as dark as the dystopia concept

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really That Bad?

When it comes to infamous animated films, few are treated with quite as much revulsion as Mars Needs Moms. Based off of Bloom County creator Berkley Breathed’s storybook, brought to life by ImageMovers Digital (who created The Polar Express, that...beloved?… Christmas classic), distributed by Disney, and produced by Robert Zemeckis, the film really had the deck stacked in its favor… and yet, it quite infamously fumbled.

It released to become the 12th worst opening for any film in three thousand or more theaters, netting only $6 million on debut, and then proceeded to only gross $39 million dollars worldwide—and that’s including 3D theaters. With a budget of over $150 million, this cause a net loss of over $110 million dollars, which unsurprisingly led Disney to cut their losses and shut down ImageMovers Digital… which is what I would really rather say, but the depressing fact is that Disney nuked the studio before the movie even came out, as if they knew they had a massive bomb on their hand and wanted to punish the studio ahead of time.

As divisive as the studio’s animation was, it’s never really fun seeing an animation studio get scrapped like that. With its death, we lost some interesting film concepts, such as a remake of Yellow Submarine (which would have probably been even trippier with the motion capture animation), Roger Rabbit sequel, and a kaiju throwback film by Michael “Trick ‘r Treat” Dougherty called Calling All Robots. Say what you will about the studio’s output, but it’s genuinely a damn shame these ideas never came to fruition.

Over the years, just about every animation critic worth their salt has given this movie shit, from Mr Enter to the Nostalgia Critic, and Disney has largely seen fit to sweep this under the rug and pretend it never happened. But I can’t do that, can I? Y’all voted for me to watch this for the first time over a decade after it came out, and see if it’s really that bad. Did this movie manage to prove far better than its infamous reputation, or am I gonna have to put myself in a Martian memory extractor?

THE GOOD

Milo is actually pretty believable as a kid. I know some people find this character really annoying, or bratty, or obnoxious, but… that’s just how kids are. He’s a little bit of a shit and doesn’t understand the gravity of things he says sometimes, but he has a good heart and when it gets down to it he does all he can to save his mom. Like he’s just a child in need of harsh life lessons, typical of any fantastical family film. In a movie brimming with awful characters, he’s easily the least worst. Joan Cusack as the mom is pretty good, getting some funny line deliveries, and I’m sure she’s made someone’s list of “Hottest Animated MILFs.”

I think the core ideas behind the Martian society are really fascinating. Here we have a fascist, sexist dystopia. Every quarter of a century children are hatched, and females are passed off to nanny-robots to be raised while males are tossed down the garbage chutes to become feral, hairy wild men. The nanny-bots are programmed with the memories of abducted human women, memories which are forcibly extracted in a very fatal process. The women are then made to serve as the enforcers of the fascist regime, ruled over by an aging ruler who governs with an iron fist and doesn’t accept deviance from her desires, desires stemming from a deranged belief she is bettering society with her straw feminist viewpoints. On paper, it’s all very deep, dark, and intriguing.

The operating phrase, of course, being “on paper.”

THE BAD

Let me just get this out of the way: The animation is awkward, uncanny, and unpleasant. This is not a new or interesting observation, so I just wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, though it does feed into a few other issues, particularly the design of Ki.

Ki is just absolutely aggressively female in her design. Like, she’s pink, she has those curvy hips, she’s just really in your face about being a girl Martian. And yeah, the girls are the ones we see a lot of because of how the society is structured, but she’s so glaringly feminine it’s kind of obnoxious. Like she’s clearly given this overly polished design because she’s the beautiful, heroic lead character; other Martians do not look nearly as pleasant as she does. That’s not even getting into the obnoxious decision to have her speak in outdated hippie slang, a decision that’s about as pleasant as jamming splinters under your fingernails.

She’s not even the most annoying character, though. That would be Gribble, played by Dan Fogler, the fat dude from Fantastic Beasts. You’d think that because he was the best part of those flaccid spinoffs he’d be the best part of this movie, but you’d be absolutely wrong. He’s every annoying comic relief trope smashed into one incredibly obnoxious character, and considering almost no one else in this movie is likable at all he really sticks out as being unpleasantly annoying. It doesn’t help that the single moment they try and give him depth—when he recounts to Milo the harrowing experience of watching his mother die as her memories were extracted, so close to saving her and yet so far—is immediately followed by Ki showing up and Fortnite dancing and spitting out some more of her obnoxious slang.

And that right there really highlights what’s wrong with this movie: It is tonally inconsistent to an absurd degree. With a title like “Mars Needs Moms” and the general atmosphere of the opening as well as the marketing really lead you to believe this will be a simple, silly family comedy where a kid learns to appreciate his parents a la Jimmy Neutron. But then we get into the Martian dystopia, the explicit mass murder of moms, the grim visuals, the constant peril, and it’s pretty obvious the film wants to be serious and say something as well… all while keeping the funny wisecracking fat guy mentor, the Fortnite dancing monkey Martian men, and the pink and perky alien hippie graffiti artist who loves to talk like she just stepped out of Woodstock. It’s not impossible to handle two wildly different tones in a film, but to say this movie bungles it is an understatement; it ultimately causes the film to lack any sort of identity and just dissolves into an ugly mess of interesting ideas and confused writing that is impossible to take seriously.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

The short answer? Yes, this movie is really, truly awful. But a short answer is pretty unsatisfying, isn’t it?

I was honestly, genuinely hoping going into this that the critics were wrong and maybe there was something to like here… and yeah, there were a couple of things I thought were done pretty decently, but overall the movie is just an incredibly sloppy and tonally inconsistent mess that never really settles into what it wants to be. It actually had me thinking about another movie while watching it, and that movie is The Guyver. While I’m saving a full review of that for when I bring back Michael After Midnight, the film had the same sort of wild tonal whiplash that Mars Needs Moms does, a sort of dissonance in the story where it can’t decide if it wants to be dark and edgy or lighthearted and goofy. But while I don’t think either film is particularly good, I think the fact I find The Guyver to be infinitely more valuable as a film highlights the strength of live action cinema over animation. Jarring tonal inconsistency is just so much easier to swallow when you don’t have to look at some of the ugliest animation you’ve ever seen, y’know?

Mars Needs Moms is honestly quite a bit worse than that score would suggest. This is definitely one of the worst animated movies ever made, unlike what happened with The Emoji Movie, I don’t think the overwhelming revulsion towards the film is over-exaggerated by much. Like, yes, this isn’t the worst movie in human history, nor even the worst animated movie, but the fact that it’s not only bad but bad enough to ruin an entire studio makes it kind of legendary in terms of badness. At least Sony Animation was able to put out the two best Spider-Man movies ever made after The Emoji Movie flopped; ImageMover Digital got no such second chance, and not only went under but dragged the entire motion capture animation style down with it. I think it tarnishing an entire style alongside everything else (and thus probably being partially responsible for the lack of a Tintin sequel) really seals the deal on this being a piece of shit.

I’d honestly drop this film into the low 2s at best. It’s a bottom 100 contender for sure, and it’s far worse than some of the movies on there. Gigli? This movie is way worse than that. Cats? That movie is way campier and has far funnier use of uncanny valley animation. The Room and Trolls 2? Those are both way too funny to be worse than Mars Needs Moms. Fucking Batman & Robin? That’s an actual solid movie, how is it rated lower than this? Hell, I’d even say The Emoji Movie is better, because at least it doesn’t hurt to look at.

The thing is, while I think it’s objectively awful, I can’t say I can personally muster up too much hate for it. It’s so confused tonally that it’s almost fascinating to watch. If you’re a bad movie connoisseur like I am or just generally fascinated by bombs of this magnitude, it’s worth a watch. But outside of that, this movie is just too messy to really find even a cult audience. So if you don’t fall into that weird niche of people who watch bad movies for some reason, don’t bother. You’re not really missing anything valuable.

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

should I write an Idol AU where the Haikyuu!! teams are all boybands y/n

[paradigmsofbrittaperry]

⭐️ for whatever fic you’d like!

okay SO gonna use this as an excuse to talk about my pretentious Riverdale soulmate fic!! 

the whole thing was inspired by this post about how Riverdale is a soulmate AU dystopia where characters form genuine connections with one another only to say somewhere down the line that they can’t be together because they aren’t endgame and sadly return to their assigned lovers. it’s a quality of the show that I hadn’t been able to put into words, but had bothered me since somewhere around mid-season 2. like, a big part of Archie Comics is the love triangle between Archie, Betty, and Veronica, but the show doesn’t allow itself to explore different relationships for too long and insists on maintaining Bughead and Varchie as the status quo, presumably only because the amount of hate comments on RAS’s posts spike whenever those two couples aren’t together (insert post that’s been stewing in my brain about social media bringing about the end of organic media since showrunners and directors are letting easily accessible fan opinions directly influence their works more than ever before). there’s multiple scenes in the show proper where characters lament the fact that they can’t date someone because they’re “supposed” to be with someone else (side note, pour one out for my man Reggie, he deserved better than Veronica just casting him aside once Archie came back) so I wanted to take that a step further and push the concept to include cosmic signs of approval. 

(putting the rest under a cut because this got LONG)

I think a quote from the fic that really hits the core of all my feelings on soulmate AU’s is this one:

Besides, people settled down with people who weren’t their soulmates all the time. The universe could be cruel, and sometimes, it simply wasn’t practical to spend your whole life searching for someone you may never find.

one of the first things I always think about when it comes to soulmate AU’s or just a universe with soulmates in general is how impractical it would be in practice. what if your soulmate is on the other side of the world and you never get the chance to meet because you’re never in the same place at the same time? would the universe make accommodations for that? what if you meet your soulmate after you’ve already fallen in love with someone else? the last concept is one I enjoyed playing with quite a lot in this fic, using Betty’s love for Archie as the basis to discuss what happens when the person you’re in love with finds their soulmate and it’s not you. 

aside from the tumblr post, the texts I read this semester in my English class (particularly Notes From Underground and The Secret History) really kicked my brain into high gear. with both of those texts, my class had been talking a lot about the realities of a deterministic universe, which is what a universe with soulmates would be. one of the concepts we discussed at length was how if you’re given all the right answers on how to live a perfect life, then the only way you can make an impactful choice is to make the wrong choice (this was connected to a discussion on how choice making defines us as human, and that without choice, we have nothing to set us apart from machinery). we also discussed how for something to be beautiful, you have to be able to lose it, or it must be something that can’t be undone. in this case, I used the Barchie car kiss and how Betty fell for Veronica over the summer to link the two ideas.

Now this, this was terrifying. They had teetered on the edge of a ravine and dove right in with no reservations. It was beautiful, really. The ultimate act of free will in a world of predetermined outcomes and correct answers.

choosing to express love for someone other than your soulmate once you are aware of them would be the ultimate wrong choice in this world, so it would also be the most beautiful act in the world since it would be irreversible and could destroy the universe-approved relationships that those involved were a part of.

one thing that I was lowkey proud of was the imagery I associated with each of the characters; Jughead as the ocean, Archie as a fire, and Veronica as a field of lavender. honestly I don’t have precise explanations for why I chose what I chose to represent them, I just went with what my gut said Betty would associate them all with. if I was pressed to give explanations, I think that it’s because Jughead seems calm and predictable, but is prone to fits of rage and random bouts of unrest that can throw everyone else off course; Archie is the most passionate of the core four and is often expected by others to blaze trails and lead them through the dark; Veronica appears gentle and smells sweet, but could be concealing any number of snakes and other dangerous creatures. (I know it’s gonna seem like I actually *did* think of these previously and lied earlier in the paragraph but I swear, these just came to me. this is why I analyze my own work, even if it’s silly little soulmate AU fanfiction.)

another concept I LOVED working with was that of one knowing that they love someone else more than their soulmate, but deciding to go back to their soulmate because it’s safer. I think this next passage is my favorite exchange in the whole fic:

“Did she love you?”

“I don’t know,” Betty answered truthfully. “I hope she didn’t.”

“Because if she did-”

“That would mean she gave up love for fate.”

“Comfort and certainty over the terrifying unknown.”

like...we all like to think we’d be strong enough to choose our own path in a world that explicitly deterministic. but would we really? would we be willing to risk not only our own happiness and safety, but also that of our soulmate’s? would abandoning your soulmate for another love be seen as the most selfish of actions? would there be any situations where soulmates who knew each other would mutually agree not to be together? would they question the decision for the rest of their life and come to regret it? hence this passage from the end:

“I think we’re going to be just fine,” Archie said. “Who knows what might happen next.”

Betty knew. She knew that this was a temporary lapse on his part and that he’d go right back to believing in fate and the universe. He’d remember that she wasn’t his soulmate and that he couldn’t love her. Veronica would be convinced of the same and fall right back into him. That would leave her and Jughead, unmoored, searching for a sign. Something else would bring them back together; whether it be a case or the paper or simple boredom. They’d live out the rest of their days in comfort, forgetting free will and falling into what was always meant to be. They’d tuck away all of their questions and live in willful ignorance until the day they died, when all of the questions would come spilling out and they’d have regrets again.

in this universe, you can’t win, no matter what you do. you either settle down with your soulmate, give up your humanity via giving up your ability to make meaningful choice, and regret not taking chances OR you create your own future for yourself through choice, deal with the hardships and guilt associated with blazing your own path, and regret not settling down and living what could have been the perfect predetermined life. 

this was A LOT of words about the CW’s Riverdale of all things. what can I say, I’m a sucker for the accidental moral quandaries and dilemmas that incompetent showrunners put in their work. fluffy soulmate AU’s are out, soulmate AU’s that examine the horrifying implications of the universes they take place in are in.

[wickymicky]

my top ten favorite kpop singles of 2021 so far: first quarter edition (january-march)

10. Pixy - Wings: I’m not as into this song as other people, but it’s grown on me, and I think they have a lot of potential. I did not expect a group called “Pixy” to have this dark of a concept haha, I like that. I like the choreo and overall performance of it too, I think that’s the highlight for me

9. G Idle - Hwaa: Not my favorite G Idle title track, but I do think it’s in the top half. It’s interesting to me that they did this song, since it is pretty much all in Korean, there’s no English whatsoever (the only English is a “yeah” at the beginning haha), which for a group like G Idle who has used a lot of English in the past and is very popular internationally is kind of a bold choice, and I’m into it

8. Ateez - Fireworks (I’m The One): I’m still not fully sold on Ateez’s direction post-Wonderland/Answer, with the “end” of their pirate concept (possibly, it seems complicated lol, idk, but you know what I mean anyway), but I do kinda like this song! It sounds kinda like... European lmao. Like I keep thinking I hear accordion in the drop, but idk maybe I’m just imagining things. I mean all that in a good way, btw. Like a good kind of European (if you can imagine such a thing)

7. Shinee - Don’t Call Me: As someone who only got into kpop in 2019, and didn’t even get into a single boy group for like 6 or 7 months (and even then, for a while I just had one single token boy group lol), Shinee isn’t a group that I had checked out much from until fairly recently. I’m still new here, I suppose lol. But yeah idk, this song is good! I love the production and their obvious charisma and talent. Like, I can tell even just from this song that their reputation is earned. It’s just a solid release

6. Purple Kiss - Ponzona: I do prefer Skip Skip, but I decided to limit this to singles and title tracks. I also prefer My Heart Skip a Beat (by a lot, actually), but that came out last year lol. This song has really been growing on me a lot though! Like, a lot actually. I like the violin, I think that’s a really interesting touch haha, I feel like that adds so much to the way the song sounds overall. Yuki’s rapping is impressive too, I like her flow in every song I’ve heard her in so far, especially since she writes her raps herself and Korean isn’t her native language. Honestly that’s one of the most impressive things about Purple Kiss... they seem to be involved in writing all of the things they do! That’s SO RARE for a group to do right from debut, especially for a girl group! I think that’s a great sign that things are changing, and girl groups are being taken more seriously and being allowed more creative freedom than ever before. Ponzona was literally a song written for a monthly evaluation when they were trainees. That’s really impressive. Skip Skip was too, but yeah lol. 

5. Pentagon - Do or Not: I mentioned that for a while I just had one token boy group that I liked, and that was Pentagon haha, they were my first. I like that this is a return to their fun sound, but in a different way... like, this song doesn’t sound anything like Shine or Naughty Boy lol. Pentagon are just really good at conveying passion in their songs and I think that shines through here too! I like the way the bass and percussion sound, that’s just quality mixing lol. I also love that even though it’s this kinda pop-punk-ish-doo-wop-ish kpop song, it still has a bit of sadness underneath the fun, which is something I think is a trademark of Pentagon’s style haha. But mostly, it’s fun

4. Tri.Be - Doom Doom Ta: The main reason I checked this out was because it was written and produced by LE from EXID, and you can really tell haha. In fact, her voice is in the song at certain points, and like... she has a really distinctive voice lol. Anyway this song is like a pretty hard commitment to this Latin/moombahton kind of sound, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that trend in kpop, but either way, I do think this song is a bop. I’ve had it on repeat way more than everything below this point, in fact all the songs in this top 4 I’ve had on repeat like an order of magnitude more than the songs from 5-10 lol. it’s been a slow beginning to the year. I don’t have a lot of specifics to mention here about Doom Doom Ta, I just think it’s an earworm 

3. Weeekly - After School: This was really highly anticipated for me, because I love their previous title tracks. Tag Me especially is a song I consider to be almost perfect, which is not something I say about very many songs at all haha. I personally don’t think After School is quite as good as Tag Me or Zig Zag, but I do really like it! It’s always good to get more fun, exciting, unashamedly catchy songs haha, it’s a breath of fresh air. I love this concept for them too, I think it fits them really well! They’re just a lot of fun. This mini-album, We Play, is my favorite of theirs so far too, though that doesn’t necessarily affect my placement of this song in particular

2. Cherry Bullet - Love So Sweet: God damn, this song is really good. It’s really simple, but that works to it’s advantage imo. I love that the background melody of the instrumental during the verse is the same as the vocal melody in the chorus (or at least very close), that’s just super satisfying. Ending the song with an extended “da da dadada da da” segment was a big risk too lol, that could have been annoying, but idk I think that really is one of the highlights of the song. This song feels like the kind of song where the songwriter came up with that melody and went “YES! this is IT! YESSSSS” and they knew they had come up with something really, really catchy, and they built the rest of the song around showcasing it. And it works!

1. Dreamcatcher - Odd Eye: This probably isn’t much of a surprise lol. But similar to After School... This isn’t my favorite Dreamcatcher comeback, and tbh I think it’s my least favorite of the Dystopia trilogy. But like... that’s still enough to make it my favorite song of the first quarter of 2021. It’s great, I love the way they do the cyberpunk concept and sound without going into the synthwave direction like Everglow La Di Da did. I love La Di Da a ridiculous amount, but I just mean that it’s nice to see variety even within a similar overall concept. Also! Handong is back! And she crushed it! In previous title tracks she and Gahyeon often got the least amount of lines by far, and the least amount of screentime and such, and Gahyeon definitely got times to shine during Scream and Boca and made it clear that she’s leveled up a lot, and I was really hoping that Odd Eye would be able to do the same for Handong (without sacrificing Gahyeon’s screentime and lines)... and yeah, it really was, lol. Handong was all over this song, and her voice reaaaaaally complements this sound. This group has no weak links, and obviously all of us already knew that, but now even the people who only casually listen to them know that without a doubt too.

idk... i’m not totally sure about this list but that feels mostly right to me i guess. I feel like Odd Eye is definitely my favorite so far, but to be honest I don’t feel like it’s the Song of the Year. like, if it had been released in 2020, I don’t think it would have made my top 10. If nothing better than Odd Eye comes out for the rest of the year then sure, it will be my SOTY haha, but idk, I just think that there hasn’t been anything *truly* great so far yet. And that’s okay... I’m very picky about this kind of thing. I don’t give high scores to things that don’t deserve it lol... and like in my opinion there were only 4 songs in 2020 that are the kind of near-perfect instant-soty song I’m talking about, and three of those four came out in the second half of the year. So the fact that I don’t think anything so far has been at that top level isn’t a bad thing, and isn’t really something I’m worried about. I think we definitely have not gotten the best songs of the year yet (unless everything else ends up sucking lol, but idk i hope thats not what happens...)

oh also there was an WJSN comeback today, and that would probably have been on this list, but I havent heard it yet because i was waiting until I finished writing this haha. like, since it came out on March 31st, tbh I’m just gonna count it as an April comeback, so i’m sure it’ll be in my list for the second quarter that i’ll post at the end of June lol. i mean, unless i dont like it. but i’ll probably like it haha.

[howlsmovinglibrary]

All of the question tags!!

Damn, it seems that this is what happens when you run out of phone data and are away from wifi for a while. The 11 questions tags take over.

Imma gonna answer every tag that I can find in this one long post, and sweet jesus I’m not tagging anyone in this particular chain, for fear of starting some kind of infinite loop that eventually becomes sentient and takes over the world.

So, time to seriously overshare!!

From @books-are-portals​

1. Favourite mythological being (of any kind)?

It’s a tie between dragons and unicorns, and you know what that means…..FIGHT!

2. Least favourite drink?

I hate coke/diet coke/pepsi/cola. I’m quite intolerant to caffeine in large doses, so the last time I drank a glass of coke, at like 4pm in the afternoon probably about 8 years ago, it kept me away until 3am D:

3. What book(s) do you recommend for everyone?

The Wicked and the Divine comics. It’s hella diverse, the art is amazing, and it’s about insanely powerful magical pop star gods. EVERYONE SHOULD READ.

4. Can you touch the tip of your nose with your tongue?

No – I have both an incredibly small nose and a very stubby tongue.

5. Least favourite book protagonist?

Ummm, bar all the protagonists from classics that I could endlessly moan on about all day and all night (I’m looking at you, Pamela), I’m going to say Zoey from The House of Night series, for all her toxic slut shaming, double standards, and just generally horribly written narrative voice (‘bullpoopy’ is a word that will forever be branded on my mind).

6. What TV show/film makes you happy?

Brooklyn Nine Nine is my go-to happy tv show, Spirited Away/Howl’s Moving Castle are the film equivalent.

7. Favourite trope?

Anything where a platonic friendship (particularly between two women) gets prioritised above a romantic relationship.

8. What piece of fictional technology would you like to have?

An alethiometer from HDM – it tells you the truth, but not enough to stop you from being in control of your own fate (the beauty of a book about free will, I guess.)

9. Finish sentence: I didn’t get enough sleep last night because…

…my back aches from lugging all my books to storage.

10. Favourite food to eat when you’re feeling down?

To be honest, it’s probably toast (with peanut butter if it’s been a really bad day).

11. Can you knit?

I can, but I can’t knit well. If you want a scarf, I can, in theory, do that. Anything that isn’t just one uniform band of the same stitch and I am not the person for the job.

********

From @heretherebebooks

1. Have you ever fallen out of love with a book? Why?

There are a lot of standard answers: ACOTAR, Twilight, etc. but my most recent is Borderline by Mishell Baker – I really like books with ‘unlikeable’ protagonists so I gave this a very high rating on first review, but I didn’t realise how damaging this representation of BPD is until I read multiple own voices reviews on the subject.

2. What’s the strangest book-related dream you’ve ever had? 

I have a lot of book dreams which feature me as the protagonist in my favourite fantasy novels, but then when I try to use magic to defend myself my brain goes ‘but Emma, magic doesn’t exist’ and so I’m suddenly facing down a demon hoard with no powers whatsoever.

3. Have you read a book that you didn’t really appreciate until later on? 

Ash by Malinda Lo is the main one for this, because  I didn’t appreciate that Ash is not supposed to get with the unbelievably hot fairy prince…until I reread five years later and saw that the hot fairy prince is a dick.

4. What book would you like to see a musical adaptation of? (Bonus: any ideas for song titles?)

To be honest, I just want Starkid to do a ‘A Very Potter Musical’ version of Cursed Child and watch the fanfiction of the fanfiction.

5. Have you ever thrown a book across the room? What was it? 

Ms Marvel Volume 4 (my ship was sunk…for now, anyway).

6. What book cover do you absolutely hate? How would you redesign it?

The Falconer and Dark Days Club UK covers are just super tacky – I’d take the Falconer US covers, and replace the Dark Days standard ‘pretty woman in fragile looking pose’ covers with either ‘plain looking woman fighting a fuck tonne of demons’ or just ‘fuck tonne of demons’, which is what the story is about anyway.

7. Have you ever cosplayed a character? Who?

I’m read this question at a con while dressed as Newt Scamander, so…. (last year I was Violet from the Rat Queen comics).

8. What’s the last book that made you want to scream from the rooftop? 

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty (the thing I screamed was “MURDER. IN. SPAAAACEEE!” when my housemate asked me what it was about, although I was not on a rooftop at the time.)

9. What’s your favourite subgenre? 

My new favourite is ‘geeky contemporary’, bonus points if it’s ‘geek convention contemporary’ (Queens of Geek, Geekerella, Unconventional)

10. If you could bring an author back to life to write one more book, who would it be? 

I think Angela Carter could write one hell of a feminist YA fairy tale retelling, so I’m gonna bring her back.

11. Mug full of tea on your bed - yay or nay?

I just….I don’t live life this dangerously xD

*********

From @bookcub:

1. Who was the last character you related to and what were they from?  

Luca from The Burning City by Amanda Foody – he was basically the reason I kept reading that book, which otherwise wasn’t really my cup of tea, despite being a perfectly good book. He was the love interest, and was explicitly demiromantic. Although I’m not entirely sure where I place on the ace spectrum, and also felt that his portrayal was a little bit too cut and dry – with no sexual attraction until the MC shows up and then all the sexual attraction immediately at once with not really any grey area – his indifferent attitude towards sex as a general concept until those feelings latch onto a specific person, and his hesitation surrounding how to handle a relationship when it’s not something he’s has to consider before that point, were both very relatable for me. It certainly fitted my experience a little better than Tash Hearts Tolstoy.

2. What’s your favorite genre of music? 

Hmmm…there’s a wide range but I guess singer songwriter covers it? I care more about a song’s lyrics than what genre it’s in.

3. Which tags on tumblr do you follow and why? 

*whispers* I still don’t really understand how following tags works…..(someone plz explain)

4. Do you have any book related jewelry? 

I have a necklace of an owl delivering a Hogwarts letter, and Howl’s earrings from the Ghibli movie.

5. Thoughts on booklr being dead? 

I think the parts of booklr that were active a few years ago might be dead, but that’s just one specific group of people and they’ve probably moved on for a reason. Given it’s only in the last year or so that I’m getting notes and making friends, if booklr truly is dead then it seems that I’m either a necromancer, or having one hell of a party in the graveyard.

6. What are some of your favorite picture books from when you were a kid?

We’re Going On a Bear Hunt is the classic (my parents used to sing it to me to get me to go on hikes). When I could read for myself, Varjak Paw. 

7. What’s the first book you remember reading or being read to you? 

My dad read me the first and half of the second Harry Potter books on the Eurostar train from London to Disneyland Paris.

8. What’s your favorite dystopian novel and why? 

Hmmm, I’m not really a fan of dystopias all that much (more of a fantasy person), but I really like the Wolf by Wolf series, which I think counts due to it being alt. history, and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. The first because a) it has fantasy elements, and b) A* character development over the duology. The second because it was the first ‘literary’ book I read for school and enjoyed, and because the TV show has been one of my favourite things this year.

9. Where do you get/buy most of your books? 

Truthfully, Amazon. I’m trying to do better now that I’m no longer strapped for cash.

10. Favorite animal? 

Cats. Fluffy, smooshy faced cats in particular ^^.

11. What book release are you anxious for (one you know the release date for) (yeah that means not Doors or Stone) 

It’s a toss-up between The Stone Sky by NK. Jemisin (which is out like, next week!!), Provenance by Ann Leckie, and Warcross by Marie Lu.

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From @accidentalspaceexplorer:

1. What do you think of science fiction?

I think it is good when written well, where the focus on world building doesn’t leave the characters one dimensional. Unfortunately I also think it is coded masculine in a number of ways - the focus on a ‘logical, technological’ world rather than ‘illogical’ femme coded magic  -  which means that sometimes I find it quite an frustrating and alienating genre. 

2. What’s one of your pet peeves?

Mansplaining. Currently there’s this really horrible man at my book club who keeps trying to explain narrative to me and I’m like, dude, I’m an English Literature graduate.

3. If you could pick one magic system to exist in real life, what would it be?

Oh, fuck. There’s so many that would be amazing, but I think the main I always gravitate back to is Elemental magic a la the Avatar universe, because that was the first type of magic system I fell in love with.

4. What is your favorite tree?

Cherry blossom

5. Do you have any plants around the house?

I do not own any personally, but my housemate has like fifteen spider plants to which I like to think I am a caring godmother figure.

6. What is the book with the weirdest premise that you’ve read and would recommend?

The Jane Austen Project - time travellers go back to Regency era Britain to befriend Austen and try to steal one of her lost manuscripts.

7. Have you loved books for as long as you can remember, or was there a particular event that sparked you becoming a reader?

As long as I can remember - I remember giving a presentation in class about how I was going to be any author at age 9.

8. What is your favorite recipe?

Lemon meringue cake - cake, lemon curd, a fuck tonne of meringue, what’s not to love?

9. Do you reread books? If not, why not? If so, what’s one that you reread again and again?

Yes. Always reread. My three main ones are The Dark Days Club, Uprooted, and (of course) Howl’s Moving Castle.

10. What’s your favorite weather?

Cold sunshine in winter. 

11. Do you read every day?

Pretty much (I read on my lunch break at work).

I think that’s every outstanding question answered - sorry if I’ve missed anyone!