#that said. i think. with some novel related revelations. i could do some more fun stuff in the river

[dirtbra1n]

minds in half a dozen places or so I need to be able to do more than one thing at a time. hanzashiro is calling to me like at least two different videogames are calling to me library book that could be used as a murder weapon is calling to me. Hanzashiro Is Calling To Me.

[teethoftheeditor3]

I was gonna start this with "I wanna talk to you about" but quickly realized its more like this:

I'm gonna talk and you can't stop me.

Anyway, I want to talk about a book I've been reading. I've already discussed a number of my thoughts on Youjo Senki, a book with a much larger following in Tumblr than I ever expected. I think that book is actually pretty fun. The apparent idolization of 20th century Germany is... concerning and it kinda feels like it was written by that kid in highschool that claims to be a history buff but only knows WW2 military history. That said, it is a book that goes into the logistics of war and is chock full of flawed characters. Even Tanya herself, or rather especially Tanya. But this isn't a post about Tanya, or rather it's a comparison with Youjo Senki as a reference frame. I want to talk about a little something called...

86

Eighty-Six is similarly a light novel with a war setting, however it's set is a purely original world sci-fi setting compared to the alternate history / urban fantasy setting of Youjo Senki. The story is very complicated to summarize to a point where the one thing I want to talk about is. Essentially:

The story is set in the Magnolia Republic, the fact that it's a republic is interesting in the setting but not that relevant to this little rant. The neighboring empire declared war on all of it's neighbors and began waging an autonomous war that drove the Republic to the brink of extinction, crushed to the 85 sectors of the capital city. During this, the dominant ethnicity in Magnolia declared all other ethnicities to be little more than "pigs in human skin" as a way to deny their citizenship, seize their property and conscript them to serve in the military as front line soldiers. These peoples, the 'Colorata' as they are referred to in the story as a generalization of not Alba, are forced into internment camps or serve 5 year military service to get their citizenship back, all outside the 85 sectors, the de-facto 86th sector making them "the 86". I'm not gonna pretend the racism plot is not sloppily handled, oh boy is it extremely messy and I definitely think it could have and should have been handled better, but once again, not the point of this rant so I will leave that extremely loaded minefield for another day. This military service is piloting these mecha spider tanks which are pretty fuckin rad but also are flimsily constructed and handle poorly. Inside the 85 sectors, these are referred to as "unmanned drones" because if the pilots aren't considered human, then there are no casualties in the war.

Okay, summary out of the way. Let's do this. (Btw, I'm not fully through book one yet, but I had to talk about this.)

Our main characters are split in two, an ace squad of "Processors" (86 Pilots) led by Shin aka Undertaker, and Lena, their Alba 'handler' with her heart... mostly in the right place unlike most of the upper brass of the military. I'm again not going to dig into too much, please go read it yourself it's very good, but there is one bit I want to talk about that made me go 'holy shit' and it is a spoiler so fair warning. The scene comes after a pivotal moment in Lena's character arc that forces her to confront her own biases and realize some of her own shortcomings, while also showing the uncompromising divide that exists between the her and the 86 that she can't overcome just by being friendly with them. In fact, it showed how her efforts were at best in vain and at worst actively harmful to everyone involved. She realizes for the first time the true extent of the damages done, and in a way this is the first time where the plot point about racism becomes more nuanced in how it relates to the oppression of marginalized people and how it takes immeasurably more effort to make things right than it does to fuck them up in the first place. After all of this, and then a few more slightly horrifying revelations for good measure, Lena and Shin are speaking over comms when Shin says:

"You're going to lose this war, Major."

Now, I think Asato Asato has a tendency to overexplain some of her really good bits and this is one of them. Shin explicitly uses the words "You're gonna lose this war," despite being a soldier of the republic, if not on paper because of the aforementioned dehumanization. Asato Asato specifically calls attention to this wording, and while I think it could have hit harder if she didn't, I'm in a way glad she did because people that may not think too deeply about it will at least know the gravity of this line. While Shin is not in any way a representative for the 86, this line delivers a perspective that seems to be held by a lot of the Colorata. In no uncertain terms is he telling her that he has no allegiance to the Republic, he is not on her side. Sentiments of this sort are shown to exist in a lot of their squad, and in a way became the catalyst for Lena's character growth, but how this line is delivered, and when it's delivered adds so much to it that is hard to put into words. This one line perfectly highlights the difference in perspective between the 86 Processors and the people and military of the Republic.

It also brought to mind Youjo Senki when I read it, not because Tanya doesn't also have good lines, but because it shows how the two books talk about war drastically differently. Youjo Senki is, at it's core, a book that has a one track perspective on war, awe. There is some talk about how war is bad and the conditions are miserable, but it is mostly covered by Tanya being inhumanly good at war. The Empire in Youjo Senki is highly nationalistic and is supposed to command respect and awe for it's military and strategic might. But 86. Eighty-Six at it's core is about the human cost of war, in more ways than I'm explaining here because spoilers. The Magnolia Republic is a mess. And worst of all it's a mess in ways that are sometimes frighteningly similar to the real world. There's the rampant discrimination, wealth inequality, there's about to be a food crisis, a lack of funding, and that's just the start. Basically everything is sucks, but the powers that be are hellbent on putting up the illusion of utopia, and most of the citizens believe it. And that's saying nothing of the autonomous war drones that seemingly have no programming of international wartime law or the concept of sparing civilians. The war in 86 is shown to be hell, yet the people living through it are given humanizing character moments which makes the awful shit they have to deal with seem that much worse. It helps that the cast is more than just one person, but each of the cast of 86 feel so much more human than Tanya... although her characterization is intentional too.

Long story short, I think 86 Eighty-Six is very good, and I recommend it. I loved this moment and wanted to talk about it, and I really said like nothing. Is it perfect? No, but the only book that's perfect is... well I haven't made up my mind. Like with Youjo Senki, my opinion is open to change and whatnot, and I definitely should read more of both so I have a more informed opinion but my backlog of books is endless and I picked these up preowned at my local comic shop.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, and also Id love to hear about how the anime handled this scene. I never really got into the show, but it's been on my reading list for a while.

[dreamersscape]

@panharmonium - this post is partly serious ponderings and partly just me having some lighthearted fun, so apologies once again in advance if the tone is all over the place, but you mentioned in our conversation that you feel "less settled" about how Yamato feels about/views romance and how it relates to him personally, and - big surprise! - once more I'm in the same boat as you. You might not be as interested in discussing this or might not have much to say about it since we're not given as much "evidence" in comparison to Kakashi, and if so that's totally okay, but I got to thinking about it idly and then I got sucked in and went back and referenced some relevant episodes and now my brain is Intrigued, haha!

Of course, what I said before about my 'default' being essentially "just about all characters are a-spec until distinctly substantiated not to be" holds true in Yamato's case as well, but at least with Kakashi we've seen on a few occasions how he behaves when someone shows romantic interest in him; we get a pretty good sense where his head is at in those circumstances. There hasn't really been a similar situation with Yamato, he's much more of a 'blank slate' in that regard. He went from being an experiment in a giant test tube, to being a member of a covert organization where he had no name of his own, no past or future, no life beyond his assigned missions, and then spends the rest of his life up until very recently in the slightly-less-secluded-but-still-covert sister branch of the previous organization where he now has a bit more personal experience with things like friendship, but his life is still mostly spent doing things like assassinating people, gathering secret intel, spywork, etc. I can't really imagine Danzo sitting down all the orphaned or otherwise 'stray' kids that grew up in the Foundation to discuss "the birds and the bees" with them. 😂 So my assumption is most of them had to make do with picking up what they could from any of their older peers on the topics of sex education and dating advice? Since Danzo was apparently still considering recruiting Kakashi when he was around 19-20 (and after he ordered him to be killed a few years before that, the nerve!), it appears that not all Foundation ANBU grew up there/had some scraps of personal lives outside Foundation headquarters? But obviously I would guess very little romance/dating if any was tolerated under Danzo's watch.

So then, cue me picturing 14-year-old!Tenzo asking Kakashi stuff like, "Hey, senpai? How do you know if you have a crush on someone?" and Kakashi just replies, "Beats me, kid." and pats him on the shoulder.

What if--and this is a very silly idea, forgive me--what if Kakashi first picked up an icha icha novel as a way to, like, find examples to more easily explain romantic matters to Tenzo, who can then figure out for himself how he feels about it all? And then Kakashi, who we saw was already a bookworm as a kid, gets drawn into the plots because they're light and frivolous and the opposite of the dark, unpleasant, life-or-death lifestyle of the ANBU.

What REALLY got my mind going down a rabbit hole was when I remembered how Yamato reacted to Sakura trying to convince Naruto she loved him now instead of Sasuke. Going back and watching that scene again, Yamato has one of the stronger shocked reactions/expressions when Sakura makes her declaration, and once the surprise wears off a little, he's still very taken aback and there's even some consternation when he questions, "What is going on?!?" and Kakashi has to physically hold him back from intervening. Yamato is continuously caught off guard by all the revelations made by Sakura and then Sai, with a marked difference in how he accepts the news that Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro deliver to them immediately afterwards. And then, he doesn't even get to be there to witness the confrontation with Sasuke and everything that happens and is said there! He only hears the abridged version. So it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if right before Yamato leaves with Naruto on their "secret S-rank mission", he quietly takes Kakashi aside and asks, "Are... are the kids gonna be alright? Sakura just tried to kill the person she loves. And I'm still a bit ticked off he ditched me again, but Naruto did just had a panic attack so bad that he fell unconscious from it! I tried to get him to eat some porridge, but he didn't have any appetite and he said he was having nightmares about Sasuke. And now he apparently seems okay with fighting Sasuke again, even if it means they both die? What do I do if we run out of ideas for ways for Naruto to train or other things to do stuck on a boat for weeks and Naruto gets so bored he starts thinking about stuff and he ends up upset again because the girl he likes lied to him and agrees with everyone else that Sasuke needs to be treated like an enemy? I'm not trained for this, senpai!" And Kakashi is reminded again of how much he regrets trying to reassure Sakura everything would be okay after Naruto's and Sasuke's first fight on top of the hospital, and all he can say is, "Well, if it's any consolation, you can't do any worse than me at comforting crying, heartbroken subordinates." And that's the last thing they talk about the last time they saw each other? They're both doing all they can to help and protect these kids but they both feel so inadequate on a number of levels and it makes me so sad! So then I try to put a humorous spin on it... 🙃

Anyway, I'm not trying to portray Yamato as this poor innocent baby when it comes to how romance works, but it struck me that he probably hasn't had much opportunity to experience much in the romantic realm, and then he's thrust head-first into substituting for his personal hero and not only is that first mission a disaster, but he's now surrounded by a bunch of pining, angsty teenagers! Maybe it's a good thing he might've not heard that the reason why Naruto completely lost control of the Nine Tails during Pain's attack and he wasn't there to stop him from transforming, was because Hinata confessed her love to Naruto and then was very nearly killed in front of him?

[radramblog]

Halo 2 is the most Two

According to a semi-reliable source (TvTropes’s Halo/Funny subpage), Halo 2 was once described by a Bungie PR guy as, and I quote:

               “like Halo 1, only it's Halo 1 on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas ... And, the ninjas are all on fire, too.”

2004 really was a special time, huh?

But I’d argue the thing that quote fails to mention is how much 2 is in Halo 2. Duality is a core theme of both the gameplay and story, and that’s something I’d like to highlight.

Not because it’s important. Because it’s fun.

Halo 2 is a game about two. Literally, in fact, as the story revolves around two protagonists, whom you switch back and forth between as the Campaign progresses. John-117, the Master Chief, hero of the first game, who spends 2’s opening moments being hailed for his achievements during the previous story. And Thel’ Vadamee, the Arbiter, background villain of the first game, who spends 2’s opening moments being publicly humiliated and tortured for his failures during the previous story.

This cutscene is very much intentional, it’s a cool parallel that sets up the twin stories of the game, but it far from ends there. Because Halo 2 is a sequel, it’s setting up a grander universe, one that began in the novels that released between the games. However, because the game is still a big-budget sequel to a smash-hit game effectively owned by one of the biggest companies on the planet, the game could never be as experimental or the story as interesting as the world suggested by said novels and lore.

So there’s a lot of twos. We see a second Halo ring in the second Halo game, which is confusingly named Delta Halo even though it’s the second one we see in the franchise. Also, it’s official Forerunner name is Installation 05, even though Delta is the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet, and the Halo from the first game was Installation 04…

Tangents aside. Twos. Ultimately the story is less two-ey than what I’ll get to in a bit, but there’s still some there. The second Halo comes with a second Monitor, and the first of the two Covenant Prophets that are encountered (and killed) over the story’s course. Two of Earth’s orbital defense platforms are obliterated in the first level, uhhh, two new major Human characters are introduced (Lord Hood and Miranda Keyes) along with two named Sangheili (Both the Arbiter and Rtas ‘Vadumee, as the Heretic Leader isn’t given a name in the game proper). There’s like, two real boss fights? I guess? Regret doesn’t fucking count.

I think I’m kinda grasping at straws so I’ll move into the gameplay, because boy howdy there’s where the twos really come in. While Halo featured both Human and Covenant weapons, Halo 2 was the game that defined them as two clear opposed factions- much like in a Strategy game, each has equivalent items to each other. The Battle Rifle and Covenant Carbine are both new weapons that add a mid-range option for each faction, as well as making up for the severe nerf to the Magnum. It’s now effectively paired as a sidearm with the Plasma Pistol, their deadliness largely confined to one half each of the Shields/Health divide the game uses for Multiplayer. The SMG replaces the Assault Rifle to better mirror the Covenant Plasma Rifle, and the Beam Rifle is introduced as the Covenant variant Sniper Rifle. The Energy Sword and Fuel Rod Gun are both now actually playable, serving as counterparts to the Shotgun and Rocket Launcher respectively. You get the idea. This somewhat carries over to the Vehicles, with the Covenant Spectre being introduced as a counterpart to the Warthog, though that’s the only new vehicle off the top of my head. Yknow, because I’m talking out my ass.

Oh, also this is the game where they put in dual wielding guns.

The campaign progression is also fond of its twos, if you ignore the first level. Two cutscenes (or, a cutscene and a tutorial+in-engine-cutscene+cutscene), the one we’re ignoring, Two Chief levels, Two Arbiter levels, Two Chief, Two Arbiter, then we actually alternate. Twice. Because why not.

Late into the game, however, there is somewhat of a shift in this dual natured game. The Great Schism occurs in the plotline, as the Covenant Civil War begins, and a second Covenant faction breaks off after having been betrayed by its leadership. There is, in fact, a third Prophet in the form of Truth, who survives the game (but not the sequel). There is also arguably a third protagonist for this extra faction, but not one we get to play as- the game’s final boss, Tartarus, leader of the Brutes, and head of the Covenant military once the Schism occurs. This third faction adds a new weapon, the Brute Shot, the sole weapon in the game not in the style of the gunmetal-black UNSC or the typically colourful and gleaming Covenant armoury- the Brute Shot’s dull muddied grays and browns and wicked bayonet a reflection of its wielder’s personality. The two story paths of Halo 2 run alongside each other before meeting and splitting off following the dramatic introduction of the Gravemind.

This is a reflection of the true nature of Halo 2, as the final product strayed farther from the initial vision than many are aware of. There’s a little known fact these days that the Halo trilogy wasn’t meant to be a trilogy, with 2’s planned story extending into what would become the majority of the third game. 2 was supposed to end at the Ark, with the death of Truth, with the revelation of the truth of the Forerunners and the end of the war.

But things change. Halo 2 spent a lot of time in development on an engine that wasn’t practical for the game they were trying to make, so much of the time was wasted. Add in a hastened Christmas release date, and you get the abrupt finale and cliffhanger that is Halo 2’s story. This isn’t to say that the game is bad, far from it, but it had potential to be so much better. Like the endgame of its plot, Halo 2 could have also been Halo 3.

I’m going to be honest, I thought I had a lot more tangible points to hang on to when I started writing this than I actually did. Much like my last Halo-related post, there’s a lot of grasping and chasing shadows in this. Maybe next time I should just talk about why I like these games or something instead, that’s a lot easier.

Anyway does anyone wanna come play Firefight with me please do it’s been so long since I’ve done that with anyone other than internet randos

[rawliverandcigarettes]

Mass Effect Retribution, a review

Mass Effect Retribution is the third book in the official Mass Effect trilogy by author Drew Karpyshyn, who happens to also be Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2.

I didn’t expect to pick it up, because to be very honest I didn’t expect to like it. 9 years ago I borrowed Mass Effect Revelations, and I still recall the experience as underwhelming. But this fateful fall of 2020 I had money (yay) and I saw the novel on the shelf of a swedish nerd store. I guess guilt motivated me to give the author another try: guilt, because I’ve been writing a Mass Effect fanfiction for an ungodly amount of years and I’ve been deathly afraid of lore that might contradict my decisions ever since I started -but I knew this book covered elements that are core to plot elements of my story, and I was willing to let my anxiety to the door and see what was up.

Disclaimer: I didn’t reread Mass Effect Revelation before plunging into this read, and entirely skipped Ascension. So anything in relation to character introduction and continuity will have to be skipped.

Back-cover pitch (the official, unbiased, long one)

Humanity has reached the stars, joining the vast galactic community of alien species. But beyond the fringes of explored space lurk the Reapers, a race of sentient starships bent on “harvesting” the galaxy’s organic species for their own dark purpose. The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human black ops group Cerberus, is one of the few who know the truth about the Reapers. To ensure humanity’s survival, he launches a desperate plan to uncover the enemy’s strengths—and weaknesses—by studying someone implanted with modified Reaper technology. He knows the perfect subject for his horrific experiments: former Cerberus operative Paul Grayson, who wrested his daughter from the cabal’s control with the help of Ascension project director Kahlee Sanders. But when Kahlee learns that Grayson is missing, she turns to the only person she can trust: Alliance war hero Captain David Anderson. Together they set out to find the secret Cerberus facility where Grayson is being held. But they aren’t the only ones after him. And time is running out. As the experiments continue, the sinister Reaper technology twists Grayson’s mind. The insidious whispers grow ever stronger in his head, threatening to take over his very identity and unleash the Reapers on an unsuspecting galaxy. This novel is based on a Mature-rated video game.

Global opinion (TL;DR)

I came in hoping to be positively surprised and learn a thing or two about Reapers, about Cerberus and about Aria T’loak. I wasn’t, and I didn’t learn much. What I did learn was how cool ideas can get wasted by the very nature of game novelization, as the defects are not singular to this novel but quite widespread in this genre, and how annoyed I can get at an overuse of dialogue tags. The pacing is good and the narrative structure alright: everything else poked me in the wrong spots and rubbed how the series have always handled violence on my face with cruder examples. If I was on Good Reads, I’d probably give it something like 2 stars, for the pacing, some of the ideas, and my general sympathy for the IP novel struggle.

The indepth review continue past this point, just know there will be spoilers for the series, the Omega DLC which is often relevant, and the book itself!

What I enjoyed

Drew Karpyshyn is competent in narrative structure, and that does a lot for the pacing. Things rarely drag, and we get from one event to the next seamlessly. I’m not surprised this is one of the book’s qualities, as it comes from the craft of a game writer: pacing and efficiency are mandatory skills in this field. I would have preferred a clearer breaking point perhaps, but otherwise it’s a nice little ride that doesn’t ask a lot of effort from you (I was never tempted to DNF the book because it was so easy to read).

This book is packed with intringuing ideas -from venturing in the mind of the Illusive Man to assist, from the point of view of the victim, to Grayson’s biological transformation and assimilation into the Reaper hivemind, we get plenty to be excited for. I was personally intrigued about Liselle, Aria T’loak’s secret daughter, and eager to get a glimpse at the mind of the Queen Herself -also about how her collaboration with Cerberus came to be. Too bad none of these ideas go anywhere nor are being dealt with in an interesting way!!! But the concepts themselves were very good, so props for setting up interesting premices.

Pain is generally well described. It gets the job done.

I liked Sanak, the batarian that works as a second to Aria. He’s not very well characterized and everyone thinks he’s dumb (rise up for our national himbo), even though he reads almost smarter than her on multiple occasions, but I was happy whenever he was on the page, so yay for Sanak. But it might just be me having a bias for batarians.

Cool to have Kai Leng as a point of view character. I wasn’t enthralled by what was done with it, as he remains incredibly basic and as basically hateable and ungrounded than in Mass Effect 3 (I think he’s very underwhelming as a villain and he should have been built up in Mass Effect 2 to be effective). But there were some neat moments, such as the description of the Afterlife by Grayson who considers it as tugging at his base instincts, compared to Leng’s description of it where everything is deemed disgusting. The execution is not the best, but the concept was fun.

Pre-Reaperification Paul Grayson wasn’t the worst point of view to follow. I wasn’t super involved in his journey and didn’t care when he died one way or the other, but I empathized with his problems and hoped he would find a way out of the cycle of violence. The setup of his character arc was interesting, it’s just sad that any resolution -even negative- was dropped to focus on Reapers and his relationship with Kahlee Sanders, as I think the latter was the least interesting part.

The cover is cool and intringuing. Very soapy. It’s my favorite out of all the official novels, as it owns the cheesier aspect of the series, has nice contrasts and immediately asks questions. Very 90s/2000s. It’s great.

You may notice every thing I enjoyed was coated in complaints, because it’s a reflection of my frustration at this book for setting up interesting ideas and then completely missing the mark in their execution. So without further due, let’s talk about what I think the book didn’t do right.

1. Dumb complaints that don’t matter much

After reading the entire book, I am still a bit confused at to why Tim (the Illusive Man’s acronym is TIM in fandom, but I find immense joy in reffering to him as just Tim) wants his experimentation to be carried out on Grayson specifically, especially when getting to him is harder than pretty much anyone else (also wouldn’t pushing the very first experiments on alien captives make more sense given it’s Cerberus we’re talking about?). It seem to be done out of petty revenge, which is fine, but it still feels like quite the overlook to mess with a competent fighter, enhance him, and then expect things to stay under control (which Tim kind of doesn’t expect to, and that’s even weirder -why waste your components on something you plan to terminate almost immediately). At the same time, the pettiness is the only characterization we get out of Tim so good I guess? But if so, I wished it would have been accentuated to seem even more deliberate (and not have Tim regret to see it in himself, which flattens him and doesn’t inform the way he views the world and himself -but we’ll get to that).

I really disliked the way space travel is characterized. And that might be entirely just me, and perhaps it doesn’t contradict the rest of the lore, but space travel is so fast. People pop up left and right in a matter of hours. At some point we even get a mention of someone being able to jump 3 different Mass Relays and then arrive somewhere in 4 hours. I thought you first had to discharge your ship around a stellar object before being able to engage in the next jump (and that imply finding said object, which would have to take more than an hour). It’s not that big of a deal, but it completely crammed this giant world to a single boulevard for me and my hard-science-loving tastes. Not a big deal, but not a fan at all of this choice.

You wouldn’t believe how often people find themselves in a fight naked or in their underwear. It happens at least 3 times (and everyone naked survives -except one, we’ll get to her later).

Why did I need to know about this fifteen year’s old boner for his older teacher. Surely there were other ways to have his crush come across without this detail, or then have it be an actual point of tension in their relationship and not just a “teehee” moment. Weird choice imo.

I’m not a fan of the Talons. I don’t find them interesting or compelling. There is nothing about them that informs us on the world they live in. The fact they’re turian-ruled don’t tell us anything about turian culture that, say, the Blue Suns don’t tell us already. It’s a generic gang that is powerful because it is. I think they’re very boring, in this book and in the Omega DLC alike (a liiittle less in the DLC because of Nyreen, barely). Not a real criticism, I just don’t care for them at all.

I might just be very ace, but I didn’t find Anderson and Kahlee Sanders to have much chemistry. Same for Kahlee and Grayson (yes we do have some sort of love-triangle-but-not-really, but it’s not very important and it didn’t bother me much). Their relationships were all underwhelming to me, and I’ll explain why in part 4.

The red sand highs are barely described, and very safely -probably not from a place of intimate knowledge with drugs nor from intense research. Addiction is a delicate topic, and I feel like it could have been dealt with better, or not be included at all.

There are more of these, but I don’t want to turn this into a list of minor complaints for things that are more a matter of taste than craft quality or thematic relevance. So let’s move on.

2. Who cares about aliens in a Mass Effect novel

Now we’re getting into actual problems, and this one is kind of endemic to the Mass Effect novels (I thought the same when I read Revelation 9 years ago, though maybe less so as Saren in a PoV character -but I might have forgotten so there’s that). The aliens are described and characterized in the most uncurious, uninspired manner. Krogans are intimidating brutes. Turians are rigid. Asaris are sexy. Elcors are boring. Batarians are thugs (there is something to be said with how Aria’s second in command is literally the same batarian respawned with a different name in Mass Effect 2, this book, then the Omega DLC). Salarians are weak nerds. (if you allow me this little parenthesis because of course I have to complain about salarian characterization: the only salarian that speaks in the book talks in a cheap ripoff of Mordin’s speech pattern, which sucks because it’s specific to Mordin and not salarians as a whole, and is there to be afraid of a threat as a joke. This is SUCH a trope in the original trilogy -especially past Mass Effect 1 when they kind of give up on salarians except for a few chosen ones-, that salarians’ fear is not to be taken seriously and the only salarians who are to be considered don’t express fear at all -see Mordin and Kirrahe. It happens at least once per game, often more. This is one of the reasons why the genophage subplot is allowed to be so morally simple in ME3 and remove salarians from the equation. I get why they did that, but it’s still somewhat of a copeout. On this front, I have to give props to Andromeda for actually engaging with violence on salarians in a serious manner. It’s a refreshing change) I didn’t learn a single thing about any of these species, how they work, what they care about in the course of these 79750 words. I also didn’t learn much about their relationships to other species, including humans. I’ll mention xenophobia in more details later, but this entire aspect of the story takes a huge hit because of this lack of investment of who these species are.

I’ve always find Mass Effect, despite its sprawling universe full of vivid ideas and unique perspectives, to be strangely enamoured with humans, and it has never been so apparent than here. Only humans get to have layers, deserving of empathy and actual engagement. Only their pain is real and important. Only their death deserve mourning (we’ll come back to that). I’d speculate this comes from the same place that was terrified to have Liara as a love interest in ME1 in case she alienated the audience, and then later was surprised when half the fanbase was more interested in banging the dinosaur-bird than their fellow humans: Mass Effect often seem afraid of losing us and breaking our capacity for self-projection. It’s a very weird concern, in my opinion, that reveals the most immature, uncertain and soapy parts of the franchise. Here it’s punched to eleven, and I find it disappointing. It also have a surprising effect on the narrative: again, we’ll come back to that.

3. The squandered potential of Liselle and Aria

Okay. This one hurts. Let’s talk about Liselle: she’s introduced in the story as a teammate to Grayson, who at the time works as a merc for Aria T’loak on Omega, and also sleeps with him on the regular. She likes hitting the Afterlife’s dancefloor: she’s very admired there, as she’s described as extremely attractive. One night after receiving a call from Grayson, she rejoins him in his apartment. They have sex, then Kai Leng and other Cerberus agents barge in to capture Grayson -a fight break out (the first in a long tradition of naked/underwear fights), and both of them are stunned with tranquilizers. Grayson is to be taken to the Illusive Man. Kai Leng decides to slit Liselle’s throat as she lays unconscious to cover their tracks. When Aria T’loak and her team find her naked on a bed, throat gaping and covered in blood, Liselle is revealed, through her internal monologue, to be Aria’s secret daughter -that she kept secret for both of their safety. So Liselle is a sexpot who dies immediately in a very brutal and disempowered manner. This is a sad way to handle Aria T’loak’s daughter I think, but I assume it was done to give a strong motivation to the mother, who thinks Grayson did it. And also, it’s a cool setup to explore her psyche: how does she feel about business catching up with her in such a personal manner, how does she feel about the fact she couldn’t protect her own offspring despite all her power, what’s her relationship with loss and death, how does she slip when under high emotional stress, how does she deal with such a vulnerable position of having to cope without being able to show any sign of weakness... But the book does nothing with that. The most interesting we get is her complete absence of outward reaction when she sees her daughter as the centerpiece of a crime scene. Otherwise we have mentions that she’s not used to lose relatives, vague discomfort when someone mentions Liselle might have been raped, and vague discomfort at her body in display for everyone to gawk at. It’s not exactly revelatory behavior, and the missed potential is borderline criminal. It also doesn’t even justify itself as a strong motivation, as Aria vaguely tries to find Grayson again and then gives up until we give her intel on a silver platter. Then it almost feels as if she forgot her motivation for killing Grayson, and is as motivated by money than she is by her daughter’s murder (and that could be interesting too, but it’s not done in a deliberate way and therefore it seems more like a lack of characterization than anything else).

Now, to Aria. Because this book made me realize something I strongly dislike: the framing might constantly posture her as intelligent, but Aria T’loak is... kind of dumb, actually? In this book alone she’s misled, misinformed or tricked three different times. We’re constantly ensured she’s an amazing people reader but never once do we see this ability work in her favor -everyone fools her all the time. She doesn’t learn from her mistakes and jump from Cerberus trap to Cerberus trap, and her loosing Omega to them later is laughably stupid after the bullshit Tim put her through in this book alone. I’m not joking when I say the book has to pull out an entire paragraph on how it’s easier to lie to smart people to justify her complete dumbassery during her first negotiation with Tim. She doesn’t seem to know anything about how people work that could justify her power. She’s not politically savvy. She’s not good at manipulation. She’s just already established and very, very good at kicking ass. And I wouldn’t mind if Aria was just a brutish thug who maintains her power through violence and nothing else, that could also be interesting to have an asari act that way. But the narrative will not bow to the reality they have created for her, and keep pretending her flaw is in extreme pride only. This makes me think of the treatment of Sansa Stark in the latest seasons of Game of Thrones -the story and everyone in it is persuaded she’s a political mastermind, and in the exact same way I would adore for it to be true, but it’s just... not. It’s even worse for Aria, because Sansa does have victories by virtue of everyone being magically dumber than her whenever convenient. Aria just fails, again and again, and nobody seem to ever acknowledge it. Sadly her writing here completely justifies her writing in the Omega DLC and the comics, which I completely loathe; but turns out Aria isn’t smart or savvy, not even in posture or as a façade. She’s just violent, entitled, easily fooled, and throws public tantrums when things don’t go her way. And again, I guess that would be fine if only the narrative would recognize what she is. Me, I will gently ignore most of this (in her presentation at least, because I think it’s interesting to have something pitiful when you dig a little) and try to write her with a bit more elevation. But this was a very disappointing realization to have.

4. The squandered potential of Grayson and the Reapers

The waste of a subplot with Aria and Liselle might have hurt me more in a personal way, but what went down between Grayson and the Reapers hurts the entire series in a startling manner. And it’s so infuriating because the potential was there. Every setpiece was available to create something truly unique and disturbing by simply following the series’ own established lore. But this is not what happens. See, when The Illusive Man, our dearest Tim, captures Grayson for a betrayal that happened last book (something about his biotic autistic daughter -what’s the deal with autistic biotics being traumatized by Cerberus btw), he decides to use him as the key part of an experiment to understand how Reapers operate. So he forcefully implants the guy with Reaper technology (what they do exactly is unclear) to study his change into a husk and be prepared when Reapers come for humanity -it’s also compared to what happened with Saren when he “agreed” to be augmented by Sovereign. From there on, Grayson slowly turns into a husk. Doesn’t it sound fascinating, to be stuck in the mind of someone losing themselves to unknowable monsters? If you agree with me then I’m sorry because the execution is certainly... not that. The way the author chooses to describe the event is to use the trope of mind control used in media like Get Out: Grayson taking the backseat of his own mind and body. And I haaaaate it. I hate it so much. I don’t hate the trope itself (it can be interesting in other media, like Get Out!), but I loathe that it’s used here in a way that totally contradicts both the lore and basic biology. Grayson doesn’t find himself manipulated. He doesn’t find himself justifying increasingly jarring actions the way Saren has. He just... loses control of himself, disagreeing with what’s being done with him but not able to change much about it. He also can fight back and regain control sometimes -but his thoughts are almost untainted by Reaper influence. The technology is supposed to literally replace and reorganize the cells of his body; is this implying that body and mind are separated, that there maybe exists a soul that transcends indoctrination? I don’t know but I hate it. This also implies that every victim of the Reaper is secretely aware of what they’re doing and pained and disagreeing with their own actions. And I’m sorry but if it’s true, I think this sucks ass and removes one of the creepiest ideas of the Mass Effect universe -that identity can and will be lost, and that Reapers do not care about devouring individuality and reshaping it to the whims of their inexorable march. Keeping a clear stream of consciousness in the victim’s body makes it feel like a curse and not like a disease. None of the victims are truly gone that way, and it removes so much of the tragic powerlessness of organics in their fight against the machines. Imagine if Saren watched himself be a meanie and being like “nooo” from within until he had a chance to kill himself in a near-victorious battle, compared to him being completely persuaded he’s acting for the good of organic life until, for a split second, he comes to realize he doesn’t make any sense and is loosing his mind like someone with dementia would, and needs to grasp to this instant to make the last possible thing he could do to save others and his own mind from domination. I feel so little things for Saren in the former case, and so much for the latter. But it might just be me: I’m deeply touched by the exploration of how environment and things like medication can change someone’s behavior, it’s such a painfully human subject while forceful mind control is... just kind of cheap.

SPEAKING OF THE REAPERS. Did you know “The Reapers” as an entity is an actual character in this book? Because it is. And “The Reapers” is not a good character. During the introduction of Grayson and explaining his troubles, we get presented with the mean little voice in his head. It’s his thoughts in italics, nothing crazy, in fact it’s a little bit of a copeout from actually implementing his insecurities into the prose. But I gave the author the benefit of the doubt, as I knew Grayson would be indoctrinated later, and I fully expected the little voice to slowly start twisting into what the Reapers suggested to him. This doesn’t happen, or at least not in that slowburn sort of way. Instead the little voice is dropped almost immediately, and the Reapers are described, as a presence. And as the infection progresses, what Grayson do become what the Reapers do. The Reapers have emotions, it turns out. They’re disgusted at organic discharges. They’re pleased when Grayson accomplish what they want, and it’s told as such. They foment little plans to get their puppet to point A to point B, and we are privy to their calculations. And I’m sorry but the best way to ruin your lovecraftian concept is to try and explain its motivations and how it thinks. Because by definition the unknown is scarier, smarter, and colder than whatever a human author could come up with. I couldn’t take the Reapers’ dumb infiltration plans seriously, and now I think they are dumb all the time, and I didn’t want to!! The only cases in which the Reapers influence Grayson, we are told in very explicit details how so. For example, they won’t let Grayson commit suicide by flooding his brain with hope and determination when he tries, or they will change the words he types when he tries to send a message to Kahlee Sanders. And we are told exactly what they do every time. There was a glorious occasion to flex as a writer by diving deep into an unreliable narrator and write incredibly creepy prose, but I guess we could have been confused, and apparently that’s not allowed. And all of this is handled that poorly becauuuuuse...

5. Subtext is dead and Drew killed it

Now we need to talk about the prose. The style of the author is... let’s be generous and call it functional. It’s about clarity. The writing is so involved in its quest for clarity that it basically ruins the book, and most of the previous issues are direct consequences of the prose and adjacent decisions.The direct prose issues are puzzling, as they are known as rookie technical flaws and not something I would expect from the series’ Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and 2, but in this book we find problems such as:

The reliance on adverbs. Example: "Breathing heavily from the exertion, he stood up slowly”. I have nothing about a well-placed adverb that gives a verb a revelatory twist, but these could be replaced by stronger verbs, or cut altogether.

Filtering. Example: “Anderson knew that the fact they were getting no response was a bad sign”. This example is particularly egregious, but characters know things, feel things, realize things (boy do they realize things)... And this pulls us away from their internal world instead of making us live what they live, expliciting what should be implicit. For example, consider the alternative: “They were getting no reponse, which was a bad sign in Anderson’s experience.” We don’t really need the “in Anderson’s experience” either, but that already brings us significantly closer to his world, his lived experience as a soldier.

The goddamn dialogue tags. This one is the worst offender of the bunch. Nobody is allowed to talk without a dialogue tag in this book, and wow do people imply, admit, inform, remark and every other verb under the sun. Consider this example, which made me lose my mind a little: “What are you talking about? Kahlee wanted to know.” I couldn’t find it again, but I’m fairly certain I read a “What is it?” Anderson wanted to know. as well. Not only is it very distracting, it’s also yet another way to remove reader interpretation from the equation (also sometimes there will be a paragraph break inside a monologue -not even a long one-, and that doesn’t seem to be justified by anything? It’s not as big of a problem than the aversion to subtext, but it still confused me more than once)

Another writing choice that hurts the book in disproportionate ways is the reliance on point of view switches. In Retribution, we get the point of view of: Tim, Paul Grayson, Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders, David Anderson, Aria T’loak, and Nick (a biotic teenager, the one with the boner). Maybe Sanak had a very small section too, but I couldn’t find it again so don’t take my word for it. That’s too many point of views for a plot-heavy 80k book in my opinion, but even besides that: the point of view switch several times in one single chapter. This is done in the most harmful way possible for tension: characters involved in the same scene take turns on the page explaining their perspective about the events, in a way that leaves the reader entirely aware of every stake to every character and every information that would be relevant in a scene. Take for example the first negotiation between Aria and Tim. The second Aria needs to ponder what her best move could possibly be, we get thrown back into Tim’s perspective explaining the exact ways in which he’s trying to deceive her -removing our agency to be either convinced or fooled alongside her. This results in a book that goes out of his way to keep us from engaging with its ideas and do any mental work on our own. Everything is laid out, bare and as overexplained as humanly possible. The format is also very repetitive: characters talk or do an action, and then we spend a paragraph explaining the exact mental reasoning for why they did what they did. There is nothing to interpret. No subtext at all whatsoever; and this contributes in casting a harsh light on the Mass Effect universe, cheapening it and overtly expliciting some of its worst ideas instead of leaving them politely blurred and for us to dress up in our minds. There is only one theme that remains subtextual in my opinion. And it’s not a pretty one.

6. Violence

So here’s the thing when you adapt a third person shooter into a novel: you created a violent world and now you will have to deal with death en-masse too (get it get it I’m so sorry). But while in videogames you can get away with thoughtless murder because it’s a gameplay mechanic and you’re not expected to philosophize on every splatter of blood, novels are all about internalization. Violent murder is by definition more uncomfortable in books, because we’re out of gamer conventions and now every death is actual when in games we just spawned more guys because we wanted that level to be a bit harder and on a subconscious level we know this and it makes it somewhat okay. I felt, in this book, a strange disconnect between the horrendous violence and the fact we’re expected to care about it like we would in a game: not much, or as a spectacle. Like in a game, we are expected to root for the safety of named characters the story indicated us we should be invested in. And because we’re in a book, this doesn’t feel like the objective truth of the universe spelled at us through user interface and quest logs, but the subjective worldview of the characters we’re following. And that makes them.... somewhat disturbing to follow.

I haven’t touched on Anderson and Kahlee Sanders much yet, but now I guess I have too, as they are the worst offenders of what is mentioned above. Kahlee cares about Grayson. She only cares about Grayson -and her students like the forementioned Nick, but mostly Grayson. Grayson is out there murdering people like it’s nobody’s business, but still, keeping Grayson alive is more important that people dying like flies around him. This is vaguely touched on, but not with the gravitas that I think was warranted. Also, Anderson goes with it. Because he cares about Kahlee. Anderson organizes a major political scandal between humans and turians because of Kahlee, because of Grayson. He convinces turians to risk a lot to bring Cerberus down, and I guess that could be understandable, but it’s mostly manipulation for the sake of Grayson’s survival: and a lot of turians die as a result. But not only turians: I was not comfortable with how casually the course of action to deal a huge blow to Cerberus and try to bring the organization down was to launch assault on stations and cover-ups for their organization. Not mass arrests: military assault. They came to arrest high operatives, maybe, but the grunts were okay to slaughter. This universe has a problem with systemic violence by the supposedly good guys in charge -and it’s always held up as the righteous and efficient way compared to these UGH boring politicians and these treaties and peace and such (amirite Anderson). And as the cadavers pile up, it starts to make our loveable protagonists... kind of self-centered assholes. Also: I think we might want to touch on who these cadavers tend to be, and get to my biggest point of discomfort with this novel.

Xenophobia is hard to write well, and I super sympathize with the attempts made and their inherent difficulty. This novel tries to evoke this theme in multiple ways: by virtue of having Cerberus’ heart and blade as point of view characters, we get a window into Tim and Kai Leng’s bigotry against aliens, and how this belief informs their actions. I wasn’t ever sold in their bigotry as it was shown to us. Tim evokes his scorn for whatever aliens do and how it’s inferior to humanity’s resilience -but it’s surface-level, not informed by deep and specific entranched beliefs on aliens motives and bodies, and how they are a threat on humanity according to them. The history of Mass Effect is rich with conflict and baggage between species, yet every expression of hatred is relegated to a vague “eww aliens” that doesn’t feed off systemically enforced beliefs but personal feelings of mistrust and disgust. I’ll take this example of Kai Leng, and his supposedly revulsion at the Afterlife as a peak example of alien decadence: he sees an asari in skimpy clothing, and deems her “whorish”. And this feels... off. Not because I don’t think Kai Leng would consider asaris whorish, but because this is supposed to represent Cerberus’ core beliefs: yet both him and Tim go on and on about how their goal is to uplift humanity, how no human is an enemy. But if that’s the case, then what makes Kai Leng call an Afterlife asari whorish and mean it in a way that’s meaningfully different from how he would consider a human sex worker in similar dispositions? Not that I don’t buy that Cerberus would have a very specific idea of what humans need to be to be considered worth preserving as good little ur-fascists, but this internal bias is never expressed in any way, and it makes the whole act feel hollow. Cerberus is not the only offender, though. Every time an alien expresses bias against humans in a way we’re meant to recognize as xenophobic, it reads the same way: as personal dislike and suspicion. As bullying. Which is such a small part of what bigotry encompasses. It’s so unspecific and divorced from their common history that it just never truly works in my opinion. You know what I thought worked, though? The golden trio of non-Cerberus human characters, and their attitude towards aliens. Grayson’s slight fetishism and suspicion of his attraction to Liselle, how bestial (in a cool, sexy way) he perceives the Afterlife to be. The way Anderson and Kahlee use turians for their own ends and do not spare a single thought towards those who died directly trying to protect them or Grayson immediately after the fact (they are more interested in Kahlee’s broken fingers and in kissing each other). How they feel disgust watching turians looting Cerberus soldiers, not because it’s disrespectful in general and the deaths are a inherent tragedy but because they are turians and the dead are humans. But it's not even really on them: the narration itself is engrossed by the suffering of humans, but aliens are relegated to setpieces in gore spectacles. Not even Grayson truly cares about the aliens the Reapers make him kill. Nobody does. Not even the aliens among each other: see, once again, Aria and Liselle, or Aria and Sanak. Nobody cares. At the very end of the story, Anderson comes to Kahlee and asks if she gives him permission to have Grayson’s body studied, the same way Cerberus planned to. It’s source of discomfort, but Kahlee gives in as it’s important, and probably what Grayson would have wanted, maybe? So yeah. In the end the only subtextual theme to find here (probably as an accident) is how the Alliance’s good guys are not that different from Cerberus it turns out. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

7. Lore-approved books, or the art of shrinking an expanding universe

I’d like to open the conversation on a bigger topic: the very practice of game novelization, or IP-books. Because as much as I think Drew Karpyshyn’s final draft should not have ended up reading that amateur given the credits to his name, I really want to acknowledge the realities of this industry, and why the whole endeavor was perhaps doomed from the start regardless of Karpyshyn’s talent or wishes as an author.

The most jarring thing about this reading experience is as follows: I spent almost 80k words exploring this universe with new characters and side characters, all of them supposedly cool and interesting, and I learned nothing. I learned nothing new about the world, nothing new about the characters. Now that it’s over, I’m left wondering how I could chew on so much and gain so little. Maybe it’s just me, but more likely it’s by design. Not on poor Drew. Now that I did IP work myself, I have developed an acute sympathy for anyone who has to deal with the maddening contradictions of this type of business. Let me explain.

IP-adjacent media (in the West at least) sure has for goal to expand the universe: but expand as in bloat, not as in deepen. The target for this book is nerds like me, who liked the games and want more of this thing we liked. But then we’re confronted by two major competitors: the actual original media (in ME’s case, the games) whose this product is a marketing tool for, and fandom. IP books are not allowed to compete with the main media: the good ideas are for the main media, and any meaningful development has to be made in the main media (see: what happened with Kai Leng, or how everyone including me complains about the worldbuilding to the Disney Star Swars trilogy being hidden in the novelization). And when it comes to authorship (as in: taking an actual risk with the media and give it a personal spin), then we risk introducing ideas that complicate the main media even though a ridiculously small percent of the public will be attached to it, or ideas that fans despise. Of course we can’t have the latter. And once the fandom is huge enough, digging into anything the fans have strong headcanons for already risks creating a lot of emotions once some of these are made canon and some are disregarded. As much as I joke about how in Mass Effect you can learn about any gun in excrutiating details but we still don’t know if asaris have a concept for marriage... would we really want to know how/if asaris marry, or aren’t we glad we get to be creative and put our own spin on things? The dance between fandom and canon is a delicate one that can and will go wrong. And IP books are generally not worth the drama for the stakeholders.

Add this to insane deadlines, numerous parties all involved in some way and the usual struggles of book writing, and we get a situation where creating anything of value is pretty much a herculean task.

But then I ask... why do IP books *have* to be considered canon? I know this is part of the appeal, and that removing the “licenced” part only leaves us with published fanfiction, but... yeah. Yeah. I think it could be a fascinating model. Can you imagine having your IP and hiring X amount of distinctive authors to give it their own spin, not as definitive additions to the world but as creative endeavours and authorial deepdives? It would allow for these novels to be comparative and companion to the main media instead of being weird appendages that can never compare, and the structure would allow for these stories to be polished and edited to a higher level than most fanfictions. Of course I’m biased because I have a deep belief in the power of fanfiction as commentary and conversational piece. But I would really love to see companies’ approach to creative risk and canon to change. We might get Disney stuff until we die now, so the least we can ask for is for this content to be a little weird, personal and human.

That’s it. That’s the whole review. Thank you for reading, it was very long and weirdly passionate, have a nice dayyyyy.

[sanktagenyas]

alrighty so i guess coherent thoughts about this book might be a very generous estimate of what i’m about to write here but i’ll write down my thoughts anyway ‘cause i wanna share and possibly hear yours like for real interactions with my posts are not just welcomed they’re encouraged.

ok so to start our protagonists are alina and mal and our antagonist is the darkling and i pretty much related to alina right away because i love a hero with insecurities and doubts, i love an underdog so of course i was always meant to fall in love with alina starkov on sight. now the darkling... should be that i and everyone else would be beyond tired of the dark, tall, handsome and mysterious/scary men in fiction especially when they whisk our hero away for even more mysterious and/or nefarious purposes that they leave them completely in the dark about BUT the charisma fucking jump off of the pages i don’t know what else to tell you. and i am deeply intrigued about him and his backstory and also him and how he feels about our protagonist because when you catch the attention of a centuries old immortal being that says something about you but it says more about said immortal imo.

we come to learn that the darkling is beyond ruthless and yet he still a capacity for love after all this time even if it’s quite out of use to say the least. and just the fact that out of the thousands of people who have crossed his path there’s this one girl he saw and he was like well look at that someone who’s not unremarkable for once. and i know that’s not exactly a romantic sentiment but that’s how it starts, folks.

but anyway to cap my little ramble here despite the fact that i’ve seen that kind of villain before i do still really love the darkling. i like that we don’t have all the facts yet about what led him to become who he is so there’s just the right amount of mystery around him to keep you wanting to discover more and he is just human enough that he is not this caricature monstrous villainous figure (alina would beg to differ but i don’t listen to what alina yells at people when she’s angry)

now onto mal. i’m trying to word this in a way that doesn’t make me come off as a raging anti because the truth is that would require me to be invested in mal enough to hate him and as of now i’m just not. with book one being told entirely in alina’s perspective it’s pretty in your face that we should care about mal. our hero loves him and we want her to be happy, right? plus we really shouldn’t ship her with the villain there are so many wrong aspects about that dynamic just to name one aspect the deceit and the lies. the foundation of darklina is so fucked we should not ship it, right? well see that’s where i would argue that my biggest issue with darklina as a ship is the darkling in the final act all but saying fuck alina’s agency i’m going to make her my puppet for eternity not because that is necessary to accomplish my plan but because i’m jealous and resentful that she left me behind and didn’t embrace my plans for ravka and therefore embrace me.

and you might think wait i’ve lost the plot we were talking about mal and now we’re talking about darklina and the darkling but rewind back a little i said my issue with darklina in the final act of the book is the darkling pissing all over alina’s agency. and he might do that in more extreme ways than mal but mal certainly does seem to view alina as property at times and that implies him not respecting her agency. i could point to the fact that saying “don’t tell me we don’t belong together” is only framed as romantic statement because it comes out of the mouth of one of our protagonists and not our antagonist but that’s a cheap shot, it’s easy. instead i’ll echo my thoughts i shared about that malina reunion in chapter fourteen. mal was not one bit concerned about alina there and even though he says later on that not one hour was spent not thinking about her and wondering about her wellbeing all that flies out of the window the second he sees her with the darkling during the fete and here’s the thing if he had caught them mid makeout session i could understand him letting jealousy completely overtake him to the point that he doesn’t ask if she’s ok or how she’s been treated here and just assumes based on appearances (let’s not forget before she unlocked her powers alina was well and truly miserable regardless of the luxury afforded to her by her new grisha status so appearances don’t mean shit malyen) that she must be hunky dory and then tiptoes the line around slutshaming her but definitely crosses the line over into making her feel like shit for circumstances beyond her control territory and all that over seeing her do magic trickery at a party with another guy. 

alina is allowed to be attracted to another man, she’s allowed to have feelings for another man. they’re both guilty of miscommunication as they obviously both feel the same way about each other but alina has the decency to keep her jealousy to herself and not have outbursts about mal getting close to other girls like she owns his ass or something. that put me off and then i was hoping there would be a talk that would clarify things and he would apologize and that happened but it also came with the revelation that mal was upset to see her happy with the darkling. so he’d rather see the woman he loves miserable and alone rather than happy and belonging? and that’s the romantic lead i’m meant to be fawning over? i’m just not seeing it right now and that’s why even as he so generously offers her absolution (idk if you can read my sarcasm but just to be clear it’s sarcasm) for having loved the darkling and tells her he loves all of her even the part that loved the darkling i’m like..... i don’t believe you boy.

i guess in summary my thoughts about mal as a love interest is i need some consistency you cannot have him throw a jealous fit over seeing alina standing with another man (that’s literally all they were doing for real) and looking happy about it and then have him be like i don’t care i love you anyway. you cannot have him act as though he owns alina and in the same breath throw in her face that the darkling owns her (i hate this foreshadowing thank you very much) and you cannot have him get cold or angry at so much of a mention of a life she might have that doesn’t include him and then expect me to believe he’s made peace with her having feelings for more than just him. he’s not even able to accept a scenario where she goes off and does shit that doesn’t involve him as he shows no interest in her life in the little palace for the longest time. meanwhile you can literally read all about alina wondering what happened to him and what he went through trying to get to her. and for the love of saints i would love it if alina would stop acting like she needs to be forgiven for these feelings i absolutely get that she feels conned and ashamed about it but you do not need to ask anyone for absolution for falling someone who made you feel seen for the first time in your life. fuck that noise.

i just know trust issues are gonna arise and i know he doesn’t feel that way truly. if alina turned around and at some point decided to show mercy to the darkling mal wouldn’t understand or accept it and i’d fully expect a guilt trip to ensue.

now that’s my thoughts on mal as a romantic lead and that’s about the biggest aspect of him we’re focusing on but i do think he is a brave man who genuinely cared for his friends and genuinely cares for alina as that whole journey to hunt morozova’s herd definitely proved. he loves her i don’t doubt that but one grand gesture doesn’t excuse the way he treats her earlier in the books is my point and as been pointed out by others i don’t like how much alina relies on him even when he isn’t here. her refusal to let go of him was directly affecting her happiness and overall health as she couldn’t come into her powers before she thought he was lost to her. if i’m not liking who the hero becomes when she’s with the love interest it’s a big indicator i’m not gonna love said love interest as much as i’m clearly expected to by the author. i like mal just fine, he’s not without redeeming qualities, i just don’t love him yet and i may never do and that’s ok.

now i wanna take a moment and a couple sentences (it won’t be a novel i swear, pinky promise!) to talk about the twist that i should have seen coming miles away and i already know once my sister watches the show or reads the book whatever comes first i will be mercilessly teased about not seeing it coming. but when i found out the black heretic and the darkling are one of the same my jaw dropped. as memers might say i took that personally. and even though we have a lot of grounds to covers still and unanswered questions such as is the darkling still alive? if he is what is he up to now? is baghra dead in a ditch somewhere or worse? will alina and genya ever see each other again? why was zoya so standoffish and violent with alina, what’s her story? the question in my mind most prominent is what happened to the darkling? what happened for him to become who he is. i love the quote monsters are not born they’re made and i much prefer to see a villain who wasn’t always one than one who is just evil for the evulz. so i want a backstory and i also wanna learn about baghra while we’re at it.

it’s all fun and well for her to denounce her son’s actions but and i hate to break it to her but YOU RAISED HIM LADY. so yeah baghra’s whole speech to alina is missing parts for sure because she’s not just gonna admit her hands are covered in blood as much as the darkling’s are. not without some pressing at least. 

sooo to cap off all this i guess i would have just two throwaway remarks and that is that i am getting a lot of gay vibes from alina and if i took a shot every time she remarks on genya’s beauty or just gushes about genya in general i’d be drunk by now and i hope we get an actual queer romance somewhere in these books even just between side characters. second remark would be ivan i’m waiting for you to find some redeeming qualities my dude, i was rooting for you! at first he is a raging dickhead about it but seemed to mellow some and then near the end it’s right back to square one and i am really sorry about his brothers dying but having lost family members is not actually a get out of jail free card that gives you free range to mistreat people just because you can.

[booksandwords]

Sword Dance by A.J. Demas

Series: Sword Dance, #1 Read time: 1 Day Rating: 4/5

The quote: I think this masculine-feminine thing isn’t just because I’m a eunuch. I think I would have been like this—sort of wanting to be both—even if I’d grown up as a whole man. But I might not have known what to do with it. — Varazda

I did not know what to expect when I read this. I did decide to read it because of the nb angle and likely the enemies to lovers concept. But it was a beautiful story with well-written characters and just a beautiful relationship. The plot reveals itself in a timely fashion while there perhaps some elements of slight predictability to it. The beats are familiar even if the people hitting them are not, if that makes sense. But that said it isn't about the plot for me so much, it's about the characters. On the setting, it's only in the afterword that A.J. Demas confirms the setting for the novel. “set in a fictional world loosely based on the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean”. Pseuchaia feels a bit like it could be Greece, Zash/Sasia could Turkey in that case. Look I like geography even fictional geography. I figured it was in a Mediterranean setting quite early but it was nice to have hat confirmed.

On the characters, it is quite a substantial cast but it is largely focused on the main characters Varazda and Damiskos. Varazda (formerly Varazda son of Nahaz son of Aroz of the clan Kamun) is called Pharastes by everyone other than Damiskos. They mean the same thing, warrior, but most people in Pseuchaia can't pronounce Varazda so he goes by Pharastes.  Varazda is a eunuch, a former slave and a highly talented sword dancer. His being free is a rarity and he lives in a super cute found family with two other freed slaves and a precious little girl (all of whom I believe readers meet in Saffron Alley). There is no sexual relationship between Varazda, Yazata and Tash. Varazda is nonbinary but is always referred to by masculine pronouns, importantly his nb-ness has nothing to do with his eunuch-ness.  I adore Varazda he is so well written. He is unexpectedly complex for a story of this size. Because of his past he has major trust and intimacy issues, he doesn't have an interest in sex now after years of sexual assault. But Damiskos just works for him. Its a combination of factors mostly acceptance and willingness to come to his level ie speaking Zash. “Aristokles’s slave was lovely in a way that seemed somehow basic and elemental, as if he were really neither male nor female, but a being of his own unique nature with a beauty that had no relation to either”. Varazda is stunningly attractive a wonderful blend of masculine and feminine. The way he is written is intelligent. He flows between masculine and feminine contextually, his movements are usually almost catlike which is quite appealing for a dancer.

Damiskos Temnon is the narrator. A former soldier he is lame (as in crippled) due to something in his past but as a soldier, he was an elite soldier. He is not what he appears. He's severed in Zash and has some understanding of where Varazda is coming from. The breakup of his engagement in Zash is closely tied to Varazda. It is worth saying that Damiskos is a man of principle and a master strategist. It's an interesting combination in a single man (something Varazda finds intoxicating). “I don’t know if you’ve worked this out, First Spear,” came Varazda’s muffled voice, “but I fancy soldiers.” I'm going to be honest the dynamic between Varazda and Damiskos is enjoyable to read and so well written. Their intimacy is unexpected and fully triggered by laying out of the truths. Varazda wants to explore the sexual attraction he so rarely feels. Damiskos is just revelling in the uniqueness of Varazda. Their flirtation is so much fun.

The supporting cast is broad and largely female. This is definitely aimed at women, the leading men are endearing and in love the women are strong and sure.  Their strength comes from loyalty and love for each other and family. Nione Kukara is a badass woman who did well in her prior role and is now making her way in the world. I think she likes people to underestimate her. Her long-running friendship with Damiskos is part of the set up for the story and honestly to be admired. They have been friends for over 15 years, both of them in roles where that would be unusual (well with someone of the opposite sex at least). Niko is something of the comedic relief, a child slave in Nione's household. He's a piece of levity as the plot grows dark. The old men are just stupid in that way that you want to facepalm over their actions.

Sword Dance ends at the right place. It allows for Saffron Alley to fit right in but if a reader wanted to read only one book that would work too. I really like the writing style. It's almost visceral. "The kiss lingered on his senses like a vanished phrase of music, tantalizing and irrecoverable. The cool softness of Varazda’s lips; the tiny, fleeting brush of his fingertips along Damiskos’s jaw; the scent that he wore, citrus and something spicy, neither masculine nor feminine.", basically anytime Varazda's dance or fighting is written it is truly enchanting. A.J. Demas does a great job of getting the reader in the narrators head. The characters are beautiful and their coding is intelligent, no one is two dimensional. Sword Dance is wonderfully aware of some of the potential issues in play. Damiskos does think his attraction to Varazda could just a kink. Varazda knows the difference having experienced his identity being used. The potential distractions that their chemistry may cause in a fight, neither of them try to stop. Also, the whole concept of what is being written "the idea of catching Varazda when he dropped from a railing suggested midnight assignations and romantic fiction more than escape from a reconnaissance mission gone wrong". There is a deep appeal in Remi's existence and Varazda's whole family that is a fantastic use of the found family trope and Damiskos's acceptance of the situation no questions asked.

This is a book that plays with LGBTQ themes. There are multiple characters of varying identities, nonbinary, lesbian and I'm guessing bi or pan. I want to add a warning there is a not-insignificant amount of hate speech in Sword Dance. Some is directed at the eunuch main character, Varazda. The rest is directed at well almost everyone else in the world, the antagonists have a whole thing with ‘Phemian purity.’, racial purity. Both of these can be problematic for people but works well in context.

[downwithpeople]

shady mordor's story is complete garbage. it is a poster child for shite video game writing. it has everything you would expect from a triple-A action video game: a brunette dad in his 30s, a dead family, a revenge story, maximum of two female speaking characters of any consequence. pretty much all of the dialogue is bland fantasy stakes-setting or oblique descriptions of whatever gameplay shit is happening at that instance. talion and celebrimbor never interact with each other in any kind of natural way, two people who are physically connected with each other but who never try to connect. all of this is pretty much as expected.

i think a more interesting way to look at this is specifically as a LOTR story. from that angle, it is still bad but it is also a complete betrayal of all of the themes of LOTR. like i said in my earlier post, it is a story entirely about power and ambition but without ever questioning it; T&C are in complete agreement that the orcs are subhuman savages who exist only to be subjugated. a crucial thing in tolkien's writing is that the people who think like this are the bad guys - dudes like sauron and saruman are evil because they want to control others, not necessarily because of an inherent evilness. there's actually plenty of room in the story to question this, especially with the revelation that celebrimbor is himself controlling talion, but it never does.

i think having celebrimbor as a main character was a novel idea but i hate the game's interpretation of middle-earth metaphysics. it feels very much like nerd power level shit, especially when talion suggests that celebrimbor makes a new ring of power. when the game shows us the flashback of celebrimbor wearing the one ring it is very much depicted as a power multiplier that takes him over 9000 and lets him flash-step and smack about sauron. it's a complete failure of reading comprehension to view the one ring as like some kind of upgrade that makes your kung fu the strongest. i think the opening scene of the fellowship of the ring movie that has sauron as a big guy in armour knocking people about with his morning star has damaged people's understanding of the story.

related, i don't know why talion would think making One Ring 2: Electric Boogaloo would even work in the first place. going by the classic cosmology celebrimbor is absolutely someone who has the ambition and the puissance to use the ring. talion isn't even a numenorean like aragorn, he's just some schmuck with a sword. his biggest ambition is to fight sauron and then die. he couldn't do shit with the ring even if he wanted to.

game is extremely fun tho. love the nemesis system and it's a shame that they went out of their way to make sure no-one could put it in a better game. still gonna pick up the sequel when it goes on sale just for more of that sweet sweet nemesis action.

[deardragonbook]

A post about foreshadowing (Spoilers for Out of Body Experience)

It’s in the title, but I’m going to repeat this, this has major spoilers for Out of Body Experience, you want to read that? Do that first. It’s free, it’s best binged and it’s relatively short. 

Onto the foreshadowing this story uses. 

So, if you haven’t read OfBE, it’s a short novel that takes place in a world where some people get genetical mutations that cause them to develop powers. This would be pretty cool if not for the fact that said mutations attract monsters to your location. Because of this the government found a perfectly functional system where people with this mutation go to a so-called base where they have all their needs met and will study, work, basically it’s a tiny society of magic users. 

The mutation usually becomes evident when you’re older, but there are exemptions. It’s also inherited, so most magic parents know their kids will probably join them. 

This novel starts with a group of girls, most importantly among them is Abigail and Ella. They are enjoying a birthday party and a monster attacks, Ella escapes and Abigail does not. 

We see Ella take the mutation test and come out as positive, thereby having to leave her mother behind to go off to the base. 

The whole novel follows Ella integrating into the base, making her new found family with Lucas and Benjamin. As well as her first mission. Throughout the novel Ella is supposedly seeking out her powers, she know she has magic but claims not to know what those powers are. 

The grand reveal at the very end is she does know. She knows, and those powers are that she can switch bodies with someone she looks in the eyes. The reveal is that Ella isn’t Ella at all, she’s Abigail, and Ella died in her place. 

This reveal is the climax of the story. It’s what everything is leading up to. So what’s everything? Foreshadowing. I don’t know how I can explain foreshadowing, so instead I’m just going to show you. 

1.- In the first Chapter it starts off focusing on Abigail, the final paragraph reads: 

And reflected in those green eyes, she saw the monster pounce and her body fall limp to the ground.

It seems like just creative writing until you know the ending and suddenly it's literal. She looked her friend in the eyes, effectively changing bodies and then saw her own body fall limp to the ground.

2.- In Chapter 1, they point out that it’s Abigail’s birthday she’s nine and is the oldest. Making Ella still eight. 

In chapter 2, she need to think about her age before responding to Benjamin. 

He smiled, "sure, Ella. How old are you?"

A pause, "eight."

And in chapter 4 she straight up says the wrong age when speaking to Lucas. 

“Well, duh, what are you like, five?”

“Nine.” She scrunched up her nose in offence.

3.- In Chapter 2 her mother is shown to be attentive and caring, despite this she doesn’t seem to know her daughter’s favourite food. 

“How about your favourite, spinach and eggs?”

Ella’s nose scrunched up when her mother had her back turned, “sure.”

Later, Ella moved the food from one side of the plate to the other, anything to put off eating it.

Of course not, because that’s not her daughter. This also explains why Ella is happy and almost in a hurry to leave the household, in a new society where nobody knows her, pretending is going to be way easier. 

4.- In Chapter 4 we get this scene: 

She sat down and opened up the notebook, there was very neat and small cursive writing, decorated with stickers. Ella held back tears as she flipped to the first blank page and wrote down the date. Then she wrote her name. Her full name, then a description, both physical and personality. Then a list of likes, dislikes, favourite things.

We see her sad, mourning the death of her friend and we see her working to keep up an act. And if that wasn’t enough in Chapter 9: 

She handed back the paper with it’s neat blocky writing about magic and politics.

Blocky writing is basically the alternative to cursive in case anybody didn’t know.

5.- In Chapter 6 she starts school: 

In the classroom Ella was promising. She was invested and eager to learn. Especially geography, history and sciences.

Her numbers were not great, she could barely count much less do anything math related, which was unusual given her good scores prior to her magic.

Again, with context, makes perfect sense. Not the same person, not the same strong na dweak points. 

In that same chapter she had a very awkward conversation with her “mother”. 

“I know what’ll help.”

“What?”

Her mother pulled out a small stuffed cat and handed it to her.

“Mr Whiskers,” she took it slowly, looking down into its eyes.

“I don’t know how you forgot!”

“Guess there were bigger things on my mind.”

This is obviously just a snippet. Another snippet: 

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” Still, she didn’t look up.

Her mother knelt down, trying to peer under her hair and eyelashes.

Ella looked away.

Her mother moved her hand to her cheek to try and move her head. But Ella closed her eyes tight. “Mother, please.”

It’s pretty obvious why she doesn’t want to look her in the eyes. 

6.- Something spread out more around the book is the fact Ella never looks anybody in the eyes. At no point in the story does it reference her making eye contact and it often references her looking away, turning or staring at the ground. 

7.- Also throughout the whole story Ella talks about not wanting to find her powers and about how it’s not important and... well, makes sense when you consider she knows her power set and doesn’t care for them. 

8.- In Chapter 9 she straight up uses those powers to kill a wolf. 

Growling.

She bit her lower lip and grabbed a stick that was close to her hand. She turned slowly to see the blueish wolf. A monster.

She held the stick up slowly; her eyes were wide. She looked straight at the monster in seeming shock.

Then the monster pounced, but not at Ella, it got the stick she held up stuck in its mouth painfully. It looked Ella in the eyes and the shock was over. She found her knife and stabbed the wolf, standing over it as the blue became red.

“Abel!” she called.

Except, it’s never specifically stated. 

And there is probably more, but I’m going to leave this here because that was the main point. 

Foreshadowing is doing the thing without saying you’re doing the thing. 

All of these stuff are pretty mundane and not noteworthy on their own, but with context they change. And if you’ve been paying attention (the reason I always recommend this series be binged) the revelation is the buildup of all these small details. 

Good foreshadowing makes re-reads way more fun by the way! 

In one of the chapters Ella reacts quite badly to Abigail’s father, she cries and is taken away. Re-reading knowing that he isn’t the father of a friend but her own father, it hits different. And that’s the goal of this short novel! 

I know this post was long but, I love foreshadowing and sometimes I just don’t know how to explain myself without examples. And this is my story with the most obvious examples.  

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 186

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 38 - “Precure 5′s Cinderella Story” Date watched: 15 May 2020 Original air date: 28 October 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Sc5B6vA Transformation Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/6k6SzS0 Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

Glass slippers: not even once

This episode introduces an idea that will get explored a fair few times in series down the road: the fairy tale episode. Cinderella is a particularly popular one, because it’s a simple story that little girls can imagine themselves in and there’s a lot of room to play with the narrative. It’s hardly a revolutionary idea for fiction, but it’s still fun to see how Precure plays with it, and the spin in this episode is particularly unusual for manifesting in two different ways. Let’s explore!

The Plot

Milk decides to try copying down the story of Cinderella for writing practice, as she plans to write her own novel a la Komachi, and copying a book is apparently a good way to study story structure. However, she gets bored copying it verbatim, so she decides to put her own spin on the narrative, portraying the cures as the characters. Nozomi is Cinderella, Komachi is the evil mother, Rin and Karen are the evil sisters, and Urara is the witch (no fairy godmother here). Coco fills the role of the prince at the ball and Nuts is another nobleman. All of the characters are strangely self-aware, except for Nozomi. They know the story of Cinderella, they know they’re characters in it, they’re basically going through the motions as the story dictates. When Urara shows up to give Nozomi her magical makeover, she winds up transforming her into other fictional characters first before she gets it right.

this dress should look familiar

Once she’s at the ball, Nozomi trips and falls, getting the attention of Prince Coco, who in turn dances with her. Nuts also approaches Komachi and asks her to dance, commenting that it’s just the kind of story they’re in. Karen and Rin have an exchange where they ask who Coco is dancing with despite both of them knowing exactly who it is. Urara shows up in a gown, and everyone knows she was supposed to be the witch. Did I mention it was weird? And to reiterate, Milk is writing this, these aren’t the real Nozomi and co. transported into the story. Milk has written them to be self-aware. What a strange book. Anyway, she has Nozomi trip and fall and they all end up in a pile on the ground and that’s where her story leaves off when she’s interrupted by the real girls knocking on her door. She hides her writing from them and tries to find somewhere more private to write, but as soon as she steps outside, Bunbee confronts her and decides to suck everyone into the world of her story.

Darkness imprisoning me, all that I see - wait have I used that joke before?

The next thing they know, they’re inside Milk’s Cinderella! But they don’t bother acting out the story, they see Bunbee holding Milk hostage and he turns the chandelier into a Kowaina, so they transform as well.

The Kowaina is able to use reflected light as laser beams to attack the girls so the team scatters. Dream and Rouge focus on fighting Bunbee to try to rescue Milk, but the kowaina keeps getting in their way, so Lemonade, Mint, and Aqua manage to hold it off while the other two get the jump on Bunbee. They free Milk, and then get upset at collateral damage to the castle being caused by their fight. Bunbee taunts that he’ll destroy this world like he destroyed the Palmier Kingdom, but all the girls respond by kicking his ass and the kowaina’s ass and then Dream performs Crystal Shoot to defeat it, and Bunbee flees.

After they detransform, the clock strikes midnight and they realize they’re still in the story, so they all run to get “home”. On the way down the stairs, Nozomi trips and one of her glass slippers flies off, opening a portal back to Natts House.

Somehow the glass slipper came back with them, and they remember that whoever it fits is supposed to marry the prince. Nozomi and Coco share a glance but before she can put it on, Milk LEAPS into the air and lands inside the shoe, claiming it as a perfect fit. Nozomi starts to chase her, demanding her shoe back, while Karen, Komachi, and Rin pick up the scattered pages of Milk’s manuscript. They take umbrage with her portrayal of them in the story, and the episode closes on Nozomi, Karen, and Rin all chasing her up the stairs.

The Analysis

It’s certainly a fun episode, a nice uptick from the last few. The spins on Cinderella are clever and funny, and this cast really makes it work. I do find it weird just how self-aware they seem to be in Milk’s story. One time in high school (probably around the time this show aired actually) I did a creative writing assignment which completely shattered the fourth wall, but my jokes were more absurdist than this. The characters act as though they’re the real Nozomi, Rin, etc who have been transported into the story and know they have to act it out, rather than like they’re characters within the narrative watching as the events unfold. I don’t really understand why it was composed this way, it doesn’t make sense from Milk’s perspective to have them be self-aware and make comments on their knowledge of the story, that sort of gag is much more suited for the characters being sucked into the story, which they did in the second half of the episode anyway. Structurally it may have been better to have them absorbed into the story early in the episode, play out the tale of Cinderella until the mid-point, and then Bunbee reveals himself or something and the rest goes as normal.

Regardless of whether the gags make sense in context, though, they are hilarious. The wicked stepmother being played by the nicest girl of the bunch is peak irony, and Rin and Karen the frequent head-butters as the stepsisters makes me laugh, although they didn’t really play up their little rivalry. None of them take their roles very seriously, which adds to the comedy. The highlight for me has to be when Urara shows up and transforms Nozomi. She cycles through a couple different outfits before she gets it right:

The most notable ones are Momotaro and Princess Kaguya, who are the subjects of famous Japanese fairy tales.

She also gets turned into a bear, a clown, and even a monster! I enjoy the self-awareness as well. Urara showing up at the ball despite and being called out by the others as the witch, the frequent comments about this all being “how the story goes” or what have you. My favorite exchange is when Karen asks who’s dancing with the Prince and Rin tells her it’s Cinderella, the title character, and Karen responds that she knows but she has to stick to the script. I don’t know why but this is peak comedy to me, and my greatest wish is that it be the actual characters who are saying this and not just Milk writing.

The payoff to this, however, is the revelation at the end when Karen, Komachi, and Rin look at Milk’s manuscript and realize exactly how she’s cast them. Even if Karen and Milk have a good relationship, she doesn’t like being exploited in this way, and when Milk remarks that an angry Karen is scarier than an evil sister, she and Rin lose their minds and start to chase her. Komachi, in typical fashion, is upset but not angry. I have said it before but I love the character interactions in this show. They always manage to play off each other wonderfully, and they seamlessly and believably transition between comedy and seriousness.

Curiously, Milk doesn’t insert herself into the story for whatever reason. You would expect her to place herself in the role of Cinderella so she could get the handsome prince, but she seems more content to play god with her friends, and especially to make Nozomi suffer.... although the worst thing she actually does is have her trip and break things a lot. Considering she says she wants to be with Coco romantically, she doesn’t show it much. She fantasizes about it a little bit when she’s in his presence but on some level she seems to realize he’s a better match for Nozomi. I think it’s telling that she automatically pairs up Coco with Nozomi and Komachi with Nuts even in her fantasy.

The villain plot of this episode is rather lackluster. Sucking the girls into the world of Cinderella and then destroying it isn’t as effective as sucking them into Komachi’s novel, which was an actual dangerous setting that Arachnea enhanced in that instance. It doesn’t benefit Bunbee in any way to have them in this setting, and that’s disappointing. I wish they could have better justified it. It does allow for a pretty good fight, but it’s not any better than battles they’ve fought in the real world. My favorite part is when Cure Rouge mule kicks Bunbee, and then a sequence where everyone gets single or pair attacks in on him where their animation is really warped because it’s going fast.

It’s not bad, you can only see this if you freeze-frame, but boy is it weird. And there’s some other animation oddities in this episode. I’m not sure if I’ve brought up before their habit of drawing a shot from far away that has low detail, and either zooming in on it or starting up close and zooming out, but the point is, when they do this, it really enhances how low-quality the drawing is. And there’s a shot of Bunbee that’s drawn this way for some reason. It’s zoomed in on him as a person, he transforms, and THEN the camera zooms out. I can only assume they originally blocked this shot out as being zoomed out always, because otherwise there’s no reason that his human model should be as low-res as it is.

Here’s a fun little bit of continuity I picked up on that relates to Bunbee as well. If you remember way back in episode 14, he used a missile attack that broke Mint Reflection, and they had to team up to deflect it. Well he uses it again here, but this time, Komachi has Mint Shield at her disposal, which we know is stronger, and it’s able to block the missile completely without anyone else’s assistance.

Additionally, one little oddity I picked up on is, of all things, a reused piece of background music! During the scene where Urara-as-the-witch appears to Nozomi-Cinderella, they cue her in with the track “Strange Occurrence” from the FWPC soundtrack. I haven’t noticed any other instances of them using backing tracks from outside this season’s OST, so this sticks out to me.

I want to say a quick piece about these ball gowns that they’re all wearing and then I’ll wrap this up.

If you have a keen eye and a good memory, you might remember Nozomi’s dress and Coco’s suit as being first seen in her brief fantasy in episode 34:

The others are new.... sort of. Chronologically speaking this is their first appearance, but they also show up in the movie which premiered a week after this episode’s broadcast, and I’m reasonably certain, because of how long movies take to produce, they were designed for that first and then incorporated back into the show. Reusing costume designs isn’t a new phenomenon, I pointed out way back in FWPC that they reused the Romeo and Juliet costumes in the dream episode, I just wanted to point it out.

This was a fun episode with some great gags in it, but while they tried to put an original spin on the concept of placing your characters in another established fictional work, the execution fell short of its potential and keeps the episode from being as good as it could have been.

My next review will be the Yes! Precure 5 movie! I always allow myself to indulge on movies, and this one will be no exception, so in order to make it the best review possible, it’s going to take several days of work to get done. I hope to have it out within a week, and I’ll make progress announcements about it on PCD Status, so please be patient and look forward to that!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 0 kettei!

[penzyroamin]

Hi I know it’s been a bit but I’m the confused bi anon. I really really appreciated your response and it wasn’t too long. You made me feel a lot better. I was wondering if you could maybe suggest some books, tv, movies with bi female characters. Thanks soo much for the entire last response . You are absolutely incredible and so sweet. This means more to me than you could ever know❤️

of course!! i’m glad that my first response helped <3

disclaimer of course: i’m not bi! so i’m not an Authoritative Source on bi rep and what people want to see more of. i do actively seek out stuff about lgbtq+ characters, specifically girls and women, so i have some recs! however, i’ll also be adding some things that some bi folks i know have recommended because while lesbians and bi women have a lot in common, these are at the end of the day representing them, not me :)

extra-super favorites will be bolded! i’m putting this under a read more because... i read a lot of books. and recommended a lot of them.

books:

her royal highness by rachel hawkins-- this book is a pretty easy read-- don’t expect any massive revelations about life from it, and you’ll have a good time!!! essentially, a bi texan girl named millie, after having her heart broken by her friend-turned-sort-of-gf, goes to boarding school in scotland and ends up rooming with the princess, flora. if this sounds outrageous and sappy, that’s because it is! and i love it! sexuality isn’t a BIG part of this book, but it’s discussed, and it’s just a generally fun enemies-to-lovers story about a bi aspiring geologist and a no-fucks-to-give lesbian princess and them falling in love!

fried green tomatoes at the whistle stop cafe by fannie flagg-- hello this is actually my favorite book! unlike hrh it is... a LOT to read. it essentially follows 2 stories-- one about a housewife named evelyn and her friendship with an old woman named ninny threadgoode who she meets at the old folks home her mother-in-law stays at, and the other about the stories ninny tells her about her sister-in-law idgie and her partner, ruth. the book was published in 1987, and ruth and idgie’s story is set during the great depression, so they aren’t actively labeled as lesbian or bi, but it’s made obvious enough through coding and the fact that ruth has relationships with men prior to idgie while idgie spends her entire childhood pining after ruth. both storylines are fantastic-- they have a lot to say about the lives of southern women in the 30s and 80s, and about race relations at both periods. i’ll warn you that there are depictions of extreme racism and of abuse, but it handles both delicately. it’s a critical piece of southern literature, and a landmark for lgbtq+ storytelling. as a bonus, my copy has a bunch of great recipes in the back, so if you read it you might chance upon an edition with those in it. if you like poignant period pieces about wlw relationships, women losing their damn minds, and abusive men getting what they deserve, this is the book for you! you will sob. this is a fair warning.

you should see me in a crown by leah johnson-- i haven’t personally read this one, but i’ve heard great things about it from everyone i know who has! an anxious black bi girl in indiana has to win prom queen at her mostly-white school in order to get enough scholarship money to go to the college of her dreams, but ends up falling for mack, another girl running for queen. 

@landlessbud wanted me to shout out red, white, and royal blue by casey mcquinston-- you’ve almost definitely heard about it before (first son and prince of wales, enemies-to-lovers with a side dish of political drama), and it is primarily about a mlm romance, but nora is a fabulously fun bi girl side character and there’s a lot of great stuff about figuring out your sexuality in it.

leah on the offbeat by becky albertalli-- i’ve read a lot of complex thoughts on this book, and mine are... i like it! it’s flawed, sure, and i wish it had handled a few things a little better, but you know what? it’s cute as fuck! leah is a fat bi drummer, and she’s super cool! abby is a great love interest, and she goes through a whole bi realization throughout the book. all in all, it’s just a fun wlw high school romcom with a couple solid dramatic beats and a lot of goofball shenanigans. also, if you were an american girl kid??? one scene in this book will make the entire experience worth it for you.

harley quinn: breaking glass by mariko tamaki and steve pugh-- hey, we’re in graphic novel territory now! this book is RAD. a really neat look at gentrification, community solidarity, giving people what they deserve, and fantastic lgbtq+ found families. teenage harleen quinzel is taken in by a group of drag queens, and is caught between two sort-of love interests-- mysterious vigilante the joker and classmate and community activist ivy-- and the different forms of protest and resistance they represent. the art here is STUNNING, and it’s a great read!

laura dean keeps breaking up with me, by the great mariko tamaki with art by rosemary valero-o’connell-- the vast majority of the characters are lgbt, with a lesbian main character, and the supporting cast including a bi nonbinary character, a bi girl character, and two mlm characters! this is mostly a piece about modern lgbtq+ teenagers and the way toxic relationships take over our lives. it’s one of the most cathartic things i’ve read in a LONG time, and especially if you’re at a point where your sexuality feels kind of vague, this is a great read because it embraces that vagueness by not needing to clearly label the characters and celebrates whatever point of clarity the characters are at. probably some of the most gorgeous art i’ve ever seen in a book, with a beautiful black-white-and-pink color scheme and a really neat approach to visual storytelling.

movies:

i don’t watch many movies, because i get bored really quickly hskdhskhds. but the movies i DO watch are usually gay!

wowie zowie its fried green tomatoes again!-- fannie flagg came back to adapt this into a film and HOT DAMN is it just as good. the plot is primarily the same, with some stuff obviously cut or trimmed to make it a two hour movie instead of a 450 page books fhsjdhsjhds. mary-louise parker plays ruth!!! it got a GLAAD award and an oscar nomination, and god it’s good. there are a couple scenes in here that i think are going to be in my mind until the day i die. the level of pure butch energy that idgie radiates in this film is a one-hit k.o. and it KILLS me.

birds of prey-- listen. this is not a profound movie. harley’s bisexuality isn’t emphasized, and romance is basically nonexistent in this movie. there is some... quite graphic violence. that said, this movie is so fucking fun. it’s mostly just a bunch of women fucking up everyone who crosses them while margot robbie gives a gleeful performance that you can just TELL she enjoyed the fuck out of. the last 20-30 minutes of this movie are the absolute best part, with a long sequence that kind of reinvented what an action/superhero movie could be for me. again, bisexuality isn’t a massive part of this-- it’s mentioned, and then harley just continues on in her gloriously campy outfits and breaks peoples’ knees. again, i CANNOT overemphasize just how fucking good the last 20-30 minutes are. this movie knows what it is and it embraces it. also, women beating people up in costumes that don’t horrifyingly objectify them is always a plus!

imagine me & you-- i’d be remiss if i didn’t mention this one, considering it’s probably one of the most iconic wlw romcoms. a woman named rachel, while at her own wedding, meets a florist named luce, and they fall in love. it’s a very sweet look at questioning your sexuality when you were already secure in it, and rachel’s husband wins “most genuinely understanding guy in a wlw movie” award. it has a lovely happy ending, and articles have been written about the importance of rachel being a bi character who a) gets a happy ending and b) isn’t shamed for figuring out her sexuality later on or slutshamed. this is just... a sweet movie. it’s the romcom a lot of us need in our lives. also, a LOT of floral imagery.

tv shows:

ok, i’ve got a confession. i reaaaaaaally don’t watch much tv. seriously, the only shows i’ve watched a substantial amount of recently have been parks and rec, schitt’s creek, the good place, and gilmore girls. i have a really REALLY short attention span.

that said, eleanor from the good place is bisexual!! the good place is a really wild ride, it’s half afterlife comedy half philosophical musing, and it will almost certainly make you gasp, laugh, think, and also probably cry. also, eleanor is just buckets of fun and she, like many of us, is often blown away by tahani (jameela jamil) and her beauty.

ummm shows i haven’t watched entirely or at all but that have bi women in them and seem pretty good: black lightning, sex education, jane the virgin, arrow. 

if you haven’t already watched it, do not believe what people are going to tell you about watching glee. it will drag you into a pit of despair and white men rapping, and it’s quite biphobic to top it all off.

i hope you enjoy at least some of these!! i tried to include some of my own favs and some that were pointed out to me, so i hope that at least a couple connect with you and make you feel better. again, the bolded ones are my 100% favorites. i love you and i’m glad you reached out again!!! feel free to send some more asks later on <3

[snapshotsinsidethehotel]

Urges Of Nostalgia (Chapter 2)

Here’s the second chapter for the previous story. You can find it here if you want to check that one out first!~

I tried my best to sound professional and reasonable, hoping that this will help in avoiding his burst of anger. Unfortunately, it didn't go my way. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up when Michael showed clear annoyance. He was about to reply before Jerry interrupted him with a clap. We turned to him and I thanked him in my mind for saving me in that situation.

Chapter 2:

"Michael...I can see where you are heading with this entire thing, but don't you think it's too unlikely? The school clearly said to everyone who enrolls that we will be staying here until we graduate, which is about..ten years or so? It's unbelievable to hear already, but that doesn't mean our parents forgot about us.."

"I agree with Donny. The entire thing seems way too fictional to be true. What are we talking about, a mystery novel plot? I think you need to lay off the coffee and take breaks during study, my guy. Your brain is probably mixing up reality and fiction now."

Michael crossed his arms again and sighed loudly. He stayed silent and started to collect his cool. His eyes lit up as he remembered something and started to rummage through the other stacks of paper on the floor. He gave each of us a copy of the same five newspaper pages and smirked.

"Read it. I believe you all love the phrase, seeing is believing. So why not give it to you all to make sure you all are by my side!"

I carefully watched Michael as he walked to the open windows. It was already midnight, and my dorm was still far far away. Ignoring the future of walking alone in the cold night, I looked down at the pile of papers on my hand.

'Tragic disappearance at Matanoeo Camp', 'Mysterious vanish of all students', '30,000+ Students gone missing', 'Kidnapping or Something More? : Matanoeo Camp', 'Boarding school students disappear one by one'

I stared at the array of newspapers being displayed. How...Why? These can't be official news! I gulped as I continued switching through the different papers with fear rushing through my blood, trying to deny it. I looked up at everyone else who also had the confused face. Alexander scanned the room as well and spoke up.

"I'm..No...I know that the world isn’t that fine and dandy out there, but nobody out there believes we're still alive?! Mom doesn't know i'm still alright? All alone.."

His voice broke at the end, maybe out of sadness? or fear? I hesitated to talk but Michael's eyes were focused on me, almost as if they were mocking me. This prompted the others to turn to me with their hopeful eyes searching for someone to guide them. Sheesh..As if I even understood the entire thing. I cleared out my throat and set the papers that I was holding down.

"Erm... Listen. I don't totally understand whatever is happening right now, but um..Michael. Where did you get these papers? I'm not a believer, but i'm a bit curious about this. For all I know, it could have been from someone in our school trying to be funny"

Through my shaking hands and nervous voice, I managed to string together those words. It wasn't from the heart, but rather from the incomprehensible rummage from my brain. I could see Michael slowly giving me a soft smile and he walked back to the table with the others.

"First off, thank you for giving me a chance to explain myself. These documents were handed to me by a friend. You see, that friend...is the son of the principal. He's been on our sides before you all even enrolled here, as he was the one who found out about this revelation in the first place!"

The sounds of gasping and confusion escaped from all our faces, including mine. But after a moment, I started to laugh a bit from our stupidity. All eyes were on me again, I really should've gotten used to it by now.

"Guys..Michael is the student president for goodness sake! It should be expected that he would at least be on good terms with the principal's son!"

Michael nodded and smiled, approving of my understanding. He fully calmed down and was much more happier than he was when they first arrived. Alexander grinned while leaning on his arm,

"The principal had a child? I thought he was one of those creepy old men you see in horror movies."

He remarked with a snarky tone while brushing his hair back. This increased the laughter and the general mood, helping everyone become a tiny bit closer. The only thing missing in this lively mood was a handful of drinks and then everything would be a normal house party!

"Hahaha, Hey! Why is it specifically us, by the way?"

Kurt blurted out through his laughter. This immediately caused everyone to quiet down and think...Something nobody enjoys doing when you're having fun. Michael's smile grew increasingly wider and he stood up again.

"There it is. I was wondering when one of you will mention it. All of you have a record of missing class, and I assume it's due to you all skipping it.  Don't you dare try lying to me as I've been researching all of you for a long long time now. And so! This will help me in my little plan"

Jerry looked up from the papers when he heard that this relates to plans. I quietly laugh, knowing that Jerry loved making plans from the bottom of his heart. It used to annoy me back then, but I've gotten used to it after years with him around. He continued to stay silent to the rest of Michael's rambling speeches, which I wasn't listening to either. Suddenly, Michael stopped talking and scanned the room again.

"I have decided to escape from this prison. Maybe help others out if they want to, but my main goal is to get this circle of people to leave this place. I have hope for all of you, since you all know the reality of the outside world compared to the other ignorant students. It's an ambitious idea for one man to handle alone, so I have decided to ask...No! BEG for your participation in this so called 'project'. I will assign you all roles so that this entire thing will go on successfully"

For the first time, I could feel calm around the student president. He radiated determination in his plan and his tone held no fear. It assured me that nothing will go wrong with whatever his plan would be, which would've been a one out of one hundred chance. Even so, I was reluctant to go along since the others still held skeptical looks. Kurt kept switching between the papers and Michael, his dramatically worried face quickly change into an annoyed one.

"You mean this entire thing was so you could get US to help YOU to escape? You should've just gotten your little section to help you instead of us idiots or whatever way you think of us. Don't go on about how amazing your idea is if you don't actually have one in mind!"

He stood up as well and slammed the papers down, glaring at Michael who also became irritated. It was honestly surprising how quickly those two could change personalities in a second, as if they were long lost non-identical twins.

"You're misunderstanding me, Kurt. I suggest you listen more than talk, It might be beneficial for-"

"Yeah right! Get off your high horse and show me the proof of the plan, you don't need to act all highly!"

I stood up since they were starting to get closer and I didn't want to get involved with their own problems. I made my way over to Kurt's seat and made myself comfortable, since he had walked closer to Michael.

"Wasn't this supposed to be a secret thing? Why are they yelling?"

Alexander continued his talk when I sat down besides them, curious about their conversation.

"Shouldn't you stop them? This is turning into a sleepover at this point"

I asked them, confused about the entire situation. The two smirked and nodded at their newly formed plan.

"Michael, Jerry, please take your seats first. You must be professional in meetings"

He demanded them as if he was copying Michael's leader tone. This worked surprisingly well and the two went back to their designated seats, apart from Kurt since I was currently in his spot. Once they were there and were both calm, Jerry started.

"Anyways, let's bring it back to the reason why we're here. As Michael has mentioned, he has a plan for us. But what are those plans? Apart from the escaping part, how can the others and me help the plan progress?"

I chuckled inside and started to remember those times when he had a schedule for the both of us, and forced me to follow them no matter what. If he doesn't approve of this plan, Jerry would do everything in his power to make it correct. Details was the number one important thing to him, so I was obviously internally excited about this.

Michael was panicking by the looks of it, but he smiled again and grabbed an empty bond paper from underneath again. He stood up and motioned Jerry to sit down, so that he would be the only leader in this meeting. He wrote our names and stared at it for a bit.

"I have assigned you roles. These roles will aid you all in the future, and it's based around your skills and talents rather than personality"

He continued writing our roles and showed it to us again. He had assigned himself as obvious leader and spy, Kurt as the medic of the team, me as the supplier, Jerry as the planner, and Alec as the fighter.

Everyone was confused with their roles, as it was vastly different from our skillsets. As for me, how was I able to get the supplier role? I wasn't that good at convincing people to do anything, let alone giving me their stuff. I was dumbfounded! The others were equally as confused and shocked while looking at the piece of paper.

"Okay...Okay! Let me explain myself for a second. Kurt, your dad is a doctor so you must've learnt something from him"

Kurt furrowed his brows and shook his head, trying to interject but Michael continued on.

"Donovan, although you don't talk a lot, you know how to make some good friends. Influential friends too! We'll find a way to get in contact with them, and your help would be appreciated"

I smirked sarcastically, because although my other friends were good at getting supplies, I just felt like a useless road to get to the ultimate destination.

"Alexander, I've heard about your pain tolerance, which is amazingly high. You'll be great during whatever battles!"

Alec stared at him without commenting, not minding his position in the team.

"And Jerry, best for last! You can make our plans, thank you!"

Michael cheerfully proclaimed, which made Jerry a bit annoyed. Kurt was fuming in the corner, but I tried to ignore him for now and focused on Jerry's increasing anger. I almost started laughing when Jerry erupted,

"Michael, I understand that you're just a single guy and not everything will be finished especially if it's this big of a project, but isn't the plan the exact point you invited us all here?"

He was trying his hardest to stay calm, obviously so. Michael only smiled again and nodded, walking closer to Jerry.

"Yes, Jerry. But if you truly want to leave to see your family again, please help us all. I've focused all my attention attempting to collect these documents to make a plan, but I realized that there weren't any time left to form a good plan. So if you could make a plan by tomorrow, it would be highly appreciated!"

Jerry stared confusedly at him. I felt the same, since there was no chance that a normal high-school student would be able to finish a functioning plan by tomorrow. Exams and homework were already piling on, and adding a difficult task to the mix would complicate things further for Jerry.

"Come on now man. Jerry can't handle that, he's only a single guy too! Couldn't we all just work together to make this or something? I mean, we all have the same ideas"

Kurt ran out quickly as soon as the offer was given, but his room was just two floors away anyways. We followed him outside so it doesn't become awkward again inside the room. Alexander waved goodbye as he climbed the pole up to his dorm room.

I tried my best to back up Jerry, as he had done for me before. Michael nodded and agreed, but still seemed hesitant. He got out of the seat and walked over to his bed and sat down.

"I dismiss this meeting today. We may continue tomorrow, but I am not sure. Be careful out there men, it's only going to get better now"

"Heh..This was a rough night, wasn't it?"

I turned to Jerry, who was still admiring the stars. He smiled and nodded without talking, just focusing on the stars as we continued walking. He was probably tired and was too bewildered by the odd offer earlier, so it was understandable. When we arrived at our room, Jerry plopped onto the bed and fell asleep directly which contributed to my theory of him. I walked aside for a bit, just thinking of this rare chance to go home and see my parents again but at a high risk cost.

I'm not even sure I remember my parent's real names due to how long I've been staying here, which makes everyone else my brand new family. Maybe they truly did forget about us? Or they truly did believe I died... This wasn't going to end well, but what other chance do I have? I wanted this. I stared at the roof for a moment before I stood up and walked back to the room.

The idea of being a supplier seemed like hard work, but everyone had a hard time with their own set roles so what can I do but complain? It bothered me to no end, and I ended up not sleeping for the remaining hours of night.

--

[broadway-book-badger]

Let’s talk about books

Back in the day, about three years ago, I went through a phase of posting monthly write-ups of what I’d been reading on here. In these trying times there seems to be a little bit more time for reading, plus escapism and procrastination are always fun, so I though I’d share a few recommendations. There’s a few different genres (amazingly, hardly any YA fantasy), and I’ve mostly read these in the last year or so. I’ve kept my thoughts as spoiler free as I can. Read them under the cut.

1. The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

Everyone and their mother has read The Hunger Games. I have read The Hunger Games before. But, a couple of weeks ago, I reread the trilogy for the first time since my first reading, which was around Christmas 2011. And to be perfectly honest, these books hold up! I think maybe it’s because I read so many not so good dystopian YA novels after I first read the Hunger Games that I thought less of this trilogy, but I don’t know. This is a solid series. If you’ve never revisited it (or if you’ve never read it at all), now could be the time! I love the fast paced writing - once things kick off, they do not stop and I burned through the whole trilogy in about three days. The world building is decent, and it doesn’t back away from some pretty heavy stuff. I remember certain scenes being much more gory, but that’s probably just because I’ve read much worse in the past 9 years. Also being older, I appreciate Katniss as a character a lot more. I remember 13-year old me getting annoyed, but now I kind of like that she is allowed to be confused about her feelings and struggle with what she’s been through and generally be a pawn rather than a flawless 16-year old rebel commander as seen elsewhere. The love triangle also isn’t as bad as I remember, although I was reminded of my own love for Peeta. Some people complain that he’s boring, but I think he’s a lovely boy.

2. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

I’ve been wanting to read this since I saw someone on the internet pitch this as something along the lines of “The queer dragon fantasy epic you’ve been waiting for.” I did a lot of waiting for it to come out in paperback, because it is an absolute behemoth over 800 pages, and while incredibly pretty, the hardback was just too big. It was, however, well worth the wait. I haven’t read a ton of adult fantasy, because a lot of it is so big, but this was a good place to start, because the writing style is pretty easy to read and also its a standalone, so the story is told by the end, it’s not the first of like 6 800 page bricks. While the plot and the characters and the love story between a queen and her handmaiden who’s a badass sorceress in disguise are all enjoyable, the thing I loved the most was the worldbuilding. I love the time and effort that was spent developing the religions and mythologies of all the different kingdoms and how they clash in ways such as different takes on the legend of St George and the dragon, and the contrast Western dragons as monsters to be slain by knights vs benevolent Eastern dragons that kind of echoes real world mythology. I saw one review of this describing ‘Priory’ as ‘a feminist successor to Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.’ While I think you could definitely say that that is the case, I would say that equally being more feminist than either of those titles is not a particularly high bar, given that there are only about 5 named women in the whole of Middle Earth, and most of the women in Game of Thrones are assaulted and brutalized for no good reason. 

3. Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

This book made me so happy, you have no idea. An enemies to friends to lovers story about the son of the first female American president and the Prince of England, that reads kind of like fanfiction but in the best possible way is exactly what the world needs right now. Everything about this book is delightful, from the characters to their relationships to the pseudo-alternate history that its set in. I think the thing that increased my enjoyment of this is the fact that the main characters are in their early twenties. It seems to me that most protagonists, regardless of genre are either 16 or pushing 30, and while I still enjoy their stories, there was just something infinitely more relatable about a character the same age as me. If anyone knows of any more books with characters in this age range, please let me know, because they seem few and far between. Back to this, however, I think I was grinning like an idiot through most of this book. I laughed, I may have shed a little happy tear, I fully recommend.

4. The Broken Earth Trilogy by N K Jemisin

Another foray into adult fantasy, this is such a good series. The books aren’t too long and the writing style is easy to digest, but it is DARK. It’s set in a world which experiences apocalyptic natural disasters every couple of centuries. There are people with powers that can help control this, but they’re super oppressed and treated as evil, rather than potential saviours. The story follows a woman searching for her missing daughter in the wake of an apocalypse, a young girl coming into her powers and others, and it is so well done. It’s such a unique and diverse world, and there are some great reveals as to why the story is being told the way that it is, as well as interesting takes on things like living vs surviving and systems of oppression.

5. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

An aging and reclusive Hollywood star decides that the time has come to share her life story to an unknown journalist and it’s amazing. This is so well done that its easy to forget while reading that Evelyn Hugo is not a real person and you cannot go and watch her films. I first heard about this book and thought it sounded interesting, as I have a love of Old Hollywood musicals. I then promptly forgot all about it, until I heard other people on the internet talking about how it had a bisexual protagonist, which both reminded me about it and made me want to read it more and here we are. Evelyn Hugo had a hell of a life, with seven husbands and another great love story, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about it. This book does a great job at showcasing both the glamour and less glamorous underside of the era, as well as the lengths people are willing to go. It also had me sobbing at 1am because I couldn’t put it down, and if that isn’t the mark of a quality book, I don’t know what is!

6. Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy

A coming-of-age story following two childhood friends as they move from their small town to Dublin for University in the 1950s. Quite a chunky book, but a lovely story and I found it read pretty quickly. As I was saying about Red, White and Royal Blue, it’s rare to find books about characters of this sort of age range. Equally rare I think are books with a university setting - the only others I can think of are Fangirl, the Magicians and the Secret History - any recommendations, let me know! I enjoyed the characters growing and finding their confidence and independence, as well as the period setting. I also greatly appreciated the ending, in terms of the main character’s love interest, as it’s something that you don’t often see in this type of book. I may have to read more by this author.

7. Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

This is one of those books that I just happened to read at the perfect time in my life, and for that reason it means a lot to me. I read it at the very end of 2018, when I was feeling really down and not myself, and something in there just spoke to me and maybe gave a little perspective. I don’t read much non-fiction and this is just the memoirs of someone as she navigates her teens and twenties. I can see why someone might not like it, but I really did. There’s some relatable content in here. As the book went on and I read all these parts about bad dates and third-wheeling friends, I kept waiting for the part where she said, ‘but then I met so-and-so and it all changed’ but that NEVER happened. By the end of this book, this woman is still single and praising all the types of non-romantic love in her life, and that I think is a bit of a revelation. It is so rare for a woman to stay single at the end of a book (see every YA love triangle ever, even when both boys are terrible), and so this resonated deeply with me. I laughed, I cried, I go back and reread bits every so often, and I wholeheartedly recommend.

8. Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare

There are those who say that Cassandra Clare needs to stop, but I wholeheartedly disagree. As long as she wants to keep writing Shadowhunter books, I will keep reading them, because they are a hell of a lot of fun. I’ll admit, bits of the OG Mortal Instruments series aren’t the best thing I’ve ever read, but the historical series are in another league altogether. I adore the Infernal Devices trilogy, which features one of the few good love triangles in YA, and Chain of Gold is a promising start to a new series about the children of the Infernal Devices characters. I think there’s something about the historical setting that just works so much better than the modern series, it could be the angst that comes from things like marriages of convenience and ruined reputations, but I digress. I really enjoyed getting to know this new cast of characters, while also getting some appearances from old favourites. The plot was solid too, and I liked the new expansions to the mythology, while wondering what they mean for what’s coming in the rest of this trilogy. I think the fact that I read this in less than 48 hours, mostly sitting in the same spot tells you everything you need to know.

[linskywords]

Why Hockey RPF?

Hey friends! This is a question I've been thinking about for a while, and I finally put together a list of my answers. Caveat that this is me attempting to analyze my own psychology and so may be very incomplete and/or wrong. :)

First, the general "why slash?" bits. These apply across fandoms (though I think some are extra strong in hockey, as I'll get to below).

One. Going against the script. I cannot stress enough how important this is to me in a romance. You know that thing where a man and a woman are in the same room together in a movie, so you know they're the love interests and they will kiss at the end? I hate that. It makes me feel like their love is probably fake. If they feel like they're supposed to be attracted to each other, and then they are attracted to each other, it probably isn't real attraction at all. Says my brain, anyway. If they feel like this person is not at all someone they could EVER be attracted to, and they're attracted anyway...it is instantly, like, fifty thousand times hotter to me. Works way better with gender for me than with other stuff that's traditionally been used in romance, like social class.

Two. Freedom from typical romantic gender roles. This has been said a lot, but: gender roles in romance SUCK. (They suck in most places. But romance really has a lot of them.) It's hard to grow up in a Western culture and not have an extremely conflicted relationship with them: you've been trained to find certain behaviors romantic, but you've also learned enough about feminism to question whether all of them are healthy or smart, and it's hard to write a satisfying romance when you're caught in the tangle of being drawn to the thing but also wondering if maybe you shouldn't be. It's so much easier for me to indulge my idtastic desires when I don't even have to think about whether I should be having the woman be the one taken care of, or if that makes her weak, so I should swap their roles, but then if she takes care of the guy does that mean she's doing all the work in the relationship and he's a giant man-baby...you see how that would bog you down. If both characters are men -- or women, or nonbinary -- it's easier to give them whatever roles I want without having to think about whether I'm furthering my own oppression.

Three. Getting to live in bodies that aren't our own. The previous point about gender roles can apply to femslash, too, and as a bi woman, I can get into that -- but sometimes it's better not to have to think about my own gender in the equation at all. There's so much crap associated with being a woman in our world, especially when it comes to sexuality. It can be liberating to write sex scenes when no bodies like mine are part of it even a little and you just don't have to negotiate the crap at all. This isn't an absolute for me -- I do write and enjoy femslash -- but I write way more slash than femslash, and I think this is part of it.

Four. Humanizing men. This is a big thing in a society (such as mine) where the best men are supposedly the ones who most embody a toxic masculinity where they don't experience normal human vulnerability or feelings. We're supposed to admire these men, and fall in love with them, and raise children with them (some of us), and it's so easy to resent and fear them instead. It is both satisfying and healing to portray men who are full of need and hurt and longing and love. Like, you know, humans are.

Five. Giving our desires power. In my culture, and in many others, men are the ones whose desires have power. A man wants a woman who doesn't want him back? He just needs to pursue her harder; she'll come around in the end, and if she doesn't, she's a heartless bitch. A woman wants a man who doesn't want her back? She's pathetic. Her desire makes her ridiculous. If you're a women who desires men, or who desires anyone at all, it's so humiliating to see your own desires minimalized and stripped of power like that. So if we want to write about our desires -- our desires for men, in particular -- it can be very satisfying to give those desires to another man. Those desires have POWER, then. They're legitimized. They have agency. We can revel in them without doubting our own right to have them.

So that's slash in general. Wow, there was a lot in there about cutting through the tangle of internalized patriarchy, wasn't there? Funny, that.

Hockey, though. Why hockey, amidst the many possible slash fandoms? Why did I start reading hockey RPF without ever having seen a game and fall for it so hard?

Six. The heteronormativity. And to take it a step further: the pressure in general to present yourself to the world as a certain type of person. I've written before about how a huge part of the appeal of the hockey world to me is the immense pressure it puts on its players -- which plays into the thing above about going against scripts, because the heteronormative script is extra in effect when it comes to professional sports, but it's not just that. These guys are under such a spotlight, and in exchange for their privilege and wealth they not only have to keep performing at an elite level that's hard to maintain, but they also have to force themselves into such a narrow, publicly acceptable mold. I'm not an athlete, so I can't relate to that specific set of pressures, but that makes them even more satisfying to write about. I can write about my feelings about the pressures that are on me -- the unwritten societal expectation to be important, successful, happy in easily recognized ways -- without having to think about those specific pressures, because I can substitute these ones instead.

Seven. Validation. I wrote above about giving our desires to men so that the desires have more power. In this case, it's giving the desires to successful, competent, famous people so that the desires have validity -- because the people who hold them have validity. Hockey players have the kind of prestigious, easily-recognized-at-cocktail-parties-and-high-school-reunions type of success that so many of us feel on one level or another than we should have, and they have it so unquestionably. When someone like that experiences a type of neediness I might feel -- the desperate longing for another person to notice them, the extreme obsession that comes with a crush, the miserable sureness that the person they want won't want them back -- that feeling is automatically valid, because THEY are valid. As someone who has felt a lot of longing in my life, I really enjoy exploring it in characters who have an automatic get-out-of-worthlessness free card.

So those are the navel-gazing ones, where hockey does the same kind of thing your average slash fandom does, but sometimes to a greater degree. Then there are the amazing storytelling benefits of the setting:

Eight. Team. Oh, team. Friends to lovers is my jam. I love writing characters who've spent so much time with someone, they don't even realize when their feelings for the other person cross the line from friendship to something else. This must be what friendship is, because it's what I feel for X person, who is my friend! And then the joy, of course, of having to see that person every day once you realize it isn't just friendship, and you're being tortured by knowing they'll never want you back (or so you think). Add in the thing where you and this person are fighting for something together every other day, where your successes bolster each other's, where your chemistry can mean the success of the team, and if you have a falling out (say, over someone's inappropriate crush) it could ruin your careers and the team's success...I mean, how do you resist a setup like that?

Nine. The flexibility of the setting. One of the wonderful things about hockey is that there's so much of it. If you want to set a story during a homestand, you can. If you want a road trip, you can find one. The season is seven months long, plus playoffs, and during those months you can set a story anytime and know that your characters will be seeing each other every day, creating lots of opportunities for interactions and relationship progress. And the hockey games themselves can feature -- but they don't have to. They can be just as important or unimportant as you need them to be for story purposes. Need your character to be down about something? Throw in a loss. Anxious about something? Mention a point drought. Sharing a happy moment with their person? Give them a win. If you're strictly following game schedules -- which I try to for the most part -- you might not be able to put those things exactly where you want them, but you can usually find a way to make your timeline match up with actual events. Unlike so many canons where there are specific, exciting adventures that have to be accounted for or worked around, hockey is years and years of fertile ground for whatever you want to put there.

(Corollary to the last one: this is a big part of why I find it so much easier and more fun to write fic than original fiction. When you write a novel, you usually need to create an actual plot, where external events impact each other and build to a conclusion. You can include a romance, but it has to be woven into these other events, and that gets complicated. Need a bonding moment? You'd better hope you designed your external plot to give them one. On the other hand, when you write fic, especially hockey fic, the hockey season can just march on merrily in the background, impacting your story only as much as you want it to, and you can pick and choose the parts of it that most strongly shape your romance. SO much easier to build and maintain a line of romantic tension that way.)

So those are my reasons. Put them all together, and they go a long way toward explaining why I write so much hockey -- and not just stories that borrow hockey players as characters, but stories set in the actual hockey world, with maybe an AU element, but hockey definitely present. There's just so much that the setting does for me and for my ability to write the stories that matter to me.

How about all of you?

[shimikonde]

Romeo and Juliet and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Return of the King pt. 1/5 (4th light novel, pg 76-85)

Finally finished with the first part of the translation :) I hope everyone has as much fun reading it as I did. I’ll try to get the next part up in around a week but i’m also v busy this weekend so we’ll see lmao

Be sure to thank @imitationpersonne for proofreading!!

“We will now begin Class 1-B’s spectacular Grand Fantasy, ‘Romeo and Juliet and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Return of the King.’”

The announcement and the reverberating buzz from the crowd quieted at once, as if the noise had been sucked from the assembly hall. The lights quickly dimmed, cloaking the stage in darkness as the curtain rose without a sound. After a dramatic pause, filling the venue with anticipatory silence, there was a clicking sound, and the stage filled with light.

Thus began Class B’s opening act.

“Ahh, what a refreshing morning! Can words describe the beauty of the slumbering sun finally waking to shine down over mine Gondor?”

Monoma, dressed in a prince’s costume, stood upon a set modeled after a castle terrace, looking dazzling as he cast his gaze from one side of the hall to the other. Shoda Nirengeki and Awase, who had been on standby behind the backdrop door, entered the stage.

“Romeo, my prince, you’ll catch your death if you go out onto the terrace in those thin clothes.”

“If something happens to you, it’s us, your retainers, who will hear it from the king.”

Nirengeki and Awase’s outfits were simple, befitting of retainers: medieval-looking shirts and trousers.

Monoma turned over his shoulder slightly at the two of them. “Frodo. Sam. Hahaha, if my king father scolds you, then I, his prince son, shall cover for you. So stop with the stiff speech! Our friendship goes deeper than our social status, doesn’t it? Why, just last night you were my accomplices when I snuck out of the castle for a night of drunken merriment in town!”

“Prince Romeo! Should the king find out about that, our necks won’t be enough to calm his wrath!”

“You practically forced us to guide you, insisting you wanted to get to know the lifestyles of the common people!”

“Even so, we’re accomplices. Whatever happens, we three share the same fate. Rather than friends, perhaps we are better stated partners in crime? Hahahaha!”

Here and there in the audience, people began to smile in response to Monoma’s resounding laughter.

Watching from the left wing, Honenuki Juzo, the stage director, breathed a sigh of relief. “Nice. Keep it up…”

The stage director was the person responsible not just for setting the stage, but for all things related to the play. Behind the scenes, he had to perfectly grasp the situation on the stage and use it to send the actors their cues, so it was a position that demanded both a broad perspective and level headedness. The script and direction of “Romeo and Juliet and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Return of the King” was primarily written and directed by Monoma. In theater, a performance couldn’t come to life without both the people standing on the stage and the people supporting them behind the scenes.

Backdrops and props for different sets were tucked away in the wings along with the costumes. The actors waiting for their cues and the scene shifters alike peeked out from their spots on the wings, covertly watching over the stage.

From beside Honenuki, his assistant, Kaibara Sen, said, “But, you know. Even though I know that the prince is supposed to be a friendly guy, even though Monoma’s acting is totally on point, knowing his personality I can’t help seeing him as an evil prince.”

“Same,” agreed the stagehand, Tsuburaba Kosei.

“Isn’t it fine? He’s magnificent all the same!”

Having been watching excitedly,Tetsutetsu spoke at his normal volume, and everyone simultaneously warned him, “Tetsutetsu, whisper…!”

“Ah, sorry!” Tetsutetsu replied, flustered and just as loud, then quickly covered his mouth with his hand. Before the play began, they’d all had a talk with him about speaking in whisper while in the wings.

“You wanna put on a mask until it’s your turn to go on?”

Tetsutetsu’s role was that of Count Paris, Romeo’s fated archenemy, and it was still some time before he would be introduced. Honenuki had given the suggestion thinking that perhaps wearing a mask might help Tetsutetsu be more aware of his mouth, and thus his volume, but Tetsutetsu shook his head.

Concentrating as hard as he could, he whispered, “That’s not necessary… I can do anything if I put my mind to it…”

“We’re counting on you.”

Not far from Honenuki was the hair and makeup person, Komori Kinoko, dressed in frilly clothes and looking as if she might step onto the stage herself. She laughed innocently. “But Monoma looks great! He really turns into a fun guy when you put him in the spotlight!”

“……”

Staring intently at Komori from the darkness, Kuroiro Shihai seemed as if he wanted to say something to her, but instead muttered softly to himself, “The eternal void of darkness is my stage…” He returned to his job taking care of the props, picking up an old-looking piece of paper that they would use later.

If ever there was a person who could be said to thrive on attention, it would be Monoma. That’s why, whenever Class A stole the spotlight, he always found some way to get back at them. Of course, it was also true that, because of his great love for Class B, he couldn’t accept them being overshadowed by Class A.

People who revelled in the spotlight always postured themselves immaculately, heads held high. They were grandiose, naturally calculating their words, their actions, their timbre, so that they could get the reactions they wanted from people. It was natural that Monoma looked great on stage.

On stage, Monoma said, “Then, I’ll be off to greet my father good morning.”

Exiting, he came into the wing, where Honenuki told him, “You’re doing great.”

“Well, yeah.” Monoma smiled, and then turned back to the stage. In no time, he’d need to go back on.

Nirengeki and Awase were speaking about Romeo on stage.

“Honestly, that prince! He knows he’s about to be announced as the official heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Gondor, and still he acts like this.”

“That amiability makes him well-liked by his subjects, but as a ruler of a country it comes across as immature…”

“That said, our king is still in good health. For the time being, we must ensure that Prince Romeo grows into a man befitting of the throne…”

In the wings, Monoma watched the pair’s acting with the eyes of a director and nodded, satisfied.

“Mhmm, Nirengeki’s polished his worrywart performance to perfection. Awase looks fed up, too. They’re totally in the zone today, huh?”

It occurred to Honenuki that they were both letting their real feelings for the overly-aggressive Monoma shine through, but he decided to keep it to himself. According to the scenario, Monoma-as-Romeo would just be finding out about the king’s disappearance and letting out a shocked outburst. Kuroiro handed him the paper he’d been holding.

“Hehihi, the king’s letter.”

“Thanks.”

Confirming that Monoma had taken the paper out of the corner of his eyes, Honenuki watched the timing of Nirengeki and Awase’s performance carefully and gave him the signal to go.

At Honenuki’s cue, Monoma screamed, “Father?! Father…?!” He waited for a moment before dashing onto the stage in a flurry.

“It’s a disaster… Father has… The king has disappeared…!”

Then, as Fukidashi Manga, in charge of audio, let out a startling BAM sound from stage right, the three actors froze in place.

The person in charge of audio was responsible for atmospheric sound effects, as well as playing and stopping the background music at the right places. Honenuki signaled his timing to him using a wireless radio. “Perfect,” Honenuki told him, and Fukidashi responded calmly, “Well, it’d have been faster if I’d have just said it instead.” His quirk was Comic. He could materialize any onomatopoeia he made. However, if he materialized all of the sound effects, the stage would be soon become buried in onomatopoeias.

With a soft, wry laugh at his words, Honenuki gave Fukidashi his timing. “…Narration.”

“Okaay,” Fukidashi said as he played Monoma’s narration, which had been recorded prior.

“The sudden disappearance of Gondor’s king… It was a bolt out of the blue.”

“Kamakiri.”

“Rodger.”

Standing beside Fukidashi and listening to Honenuki’s cues through the radio, the lights man, Kamakiri Togaru, dimmed the lights on the stage. Monoma’s narration played alongside the unsettling background music in the darkness.

“Learning of their king’s absence, the citizens were overcome with unease, and the capital…”

“Everyone, forty more seconds.”

During the blackout, Monoma and the rest on stage had to quickly exit via the left wing and switch into their travelling costumes.

“This one’s for Monoma!”

“Got it!”

With Komori directing, everyone free swarmed around the three and helped them change. In the meantime, Tsuburaba led the set change, setting up for the new scene which would take place in a forest. Still yet to debut on stage, Yui Kodai, Shiozaki Ibara, and Tsunotori helped with setting placement, using their respective quirks: Size, Vines, and Horn Cannon. Stopwatch in hand, Honenuki continued to give them the time, watching everyone’s progress intently. Without teamwork, the play could not go on.

“Ten more seconds… eight, seven, six, five, four, three…  Clear.”

The lights came back on, and the stage had transformed into a forest. Having successfully pulled off the scene change like they’d practiced, everyone exchanged a silent thumbs-up, extolling each other’s hard work. Having received Honenuki’s cue, Monoma staggered onto stage.

“Having lost its king, Gondor was falling into ruin… Despairing the destruction of his beautiful country should things be allowed to continue as they were, Prince Romeo set out on a journey to find his king father.”

As the recorded narration came to an end, Monoma collapsed in the center of the stage with a moan.

“Ahh! Where on earth has father gone to…? The father I know would never throw away his people, throw away me, throw away his country…! Am I to believe he’s been possessed by some kind of demon? If that’s the case, then I have no choice but to defeat that demon and bring back my father… bring back this country’s king!

“Ahh, what a tragedy. No, comedy is more apt! To think me, who has hardly set foot outside of his own country, who did nothing but try to escape from sword and Force lessons, would be on a quest to exterminate a demon….! If I had known something like this would happen, I would have had our country’s best Force user, Master Obi-wan, to oversee my training…. Ahh, rather than cursing my fate, I’d prefer to punch my past self!”

Monoma’s performance drew all eyes to him, and as he grew more heated, it rapidly enraptured the audience.

The story was that Romeo, going on a journey to find the king, meets his true love, Juliet, grows as a person, battles his arch nemesis, Count Paris, and learns the shocking truth, ultimately leaving him a splendid king by the end. A lot of the proper nouns in the story sounded suspiciously familiar, but it was all just an unbelievable coincidence… Or, that was what they were going with if anyone asked, Monoma insisted. It was a hodgepodge that took all the best parts of the heroic journey, slice of life, romance, and revenge genres and put them into a single story.

Neither Kendo Itsuka nor her attendant, Yanagi Reiko, could be there on account of the beauty pageant, but when they’d watched during the dress rehearsal, they’d both been surprisingly moved. To be able to move people who knew Monoma’s personality that deeply, it went without saying that the audience, who didn’t, would be more than just touched. They might even get a standing ovation. Everyone had been working hard towards that goal.

“In that case, might you prefer a return to Gondor?”

“Frodo! Sam! But why?”

Frodo and Sam had just appeared on the stage, having followed Romeo.

“Master Obi-wan is also searching for the king. When we happened to meet, he requested we convey a message to the prince.”

“He said to be careful of Count Paris. Who is this Count Paris, my prince?”

“…Count Paris… Once, I was introduced to a man by that name at a ball, but… Why would Obi-wan tell me to be careful of him…?”

Monoma-as-Romeo mulled it over, unsatisfied, as Nirengeki-as-Frodo reached into his pocket. “Also,” he said, softly pulling out a golden ring and offering it to Monoma.

“We were also entrusted with this: this legendary ring, which has been handed down the royal family for generations…”

“Apparently it protects the royal family, no matter who… I guess it’s like a good luck charm.”

In response to Awase-as-Sam’s line, Monoma shook his head as if bewildered. “I’ve never… heard of such a ring.”

“It seems that the ring is only passed down when a new prince takes the throne.”

“But, what a beautiful ring… It’s bewitching, as if it might steal your heart away.” Taking the ring from Nirengeki, Monoma faced the audience and held it up above his head. The ring would become a very important item in the future.

Part 2

[riversnthedesert-blog]

Some Real Talk on Hollywood and the Deep Things in Life

Well, I was originally going to slide this in as a Facebook post, but I had this sudden idea to just make it a blog post. The first of many, let’s hope! There have been so many times where I have started to comment/make a post, etc., and then I began writing a novel. But, it’s called Face “book,” so you think it’d be ok, right? Listen, I have thoughts. Don’t you? One thought here, another there, and then my mind be like, “OH! Forgot about that...and YEAH! That, too!”…and a lot of the time it’s easier to just write and get my thoughts out that way rather than speaking it. It’s a relief, man! Write ya mind. It would suffice to say there’s a lot that goes on up there. Better log it quick because as soon as I have something important...here cometh something else. Ah, feelings, the mind, expressions, inner things, brain files....

So, now that you, reader, have become acquainted with my thought processes, because you desperately needed to know...let’s get to the content.

You guys pray for Hollywood. There are some really creepy things going on behind the scenes….and creepy is an understatement, as I’d do well to keep it kosher in my description. Many things would shock you. But if one isn’t awake so to speak…or one isn’t open to hear in full, there’s confusion. If I could compare it to a puzzle: it’s like there’s all these pieces to a big puzzle. And until someone is ready to sit down and actually put it together, it’s just all these random pieces everywhere...and it’s messy and annoying. You must be willing to sit, observe the pieces, and study them because by themselves they don’t fit anywhere. And since you don’t know what to do with it, it just sits there, and never gets connected; the bigger picture never gets seen. This all might seem confusing, because you haven’t yet sat down to solve the puzzle. Let’s me just say...I don’t have 100% of the puzzle solved, but there are certain things that have been brought to light. But if we go back to the puzzle analogy, if you put together enough pieces of a particular part of the puzzle,you may not see all the details, but you see enough to maybe see, “Oh this is puzzle has a cat in it.” In the case for Hollywood, you might get to a place where you’ll say, “Oh, this puzzle has a rat.” It may seem like I am just finding something to poke at or what have you, but listen: 

The Bible says, “be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)”  and in Ephesians 5:8-13, it says, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible--and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.”

The Bible in different places talk about knowing wisdom (of God), being discerning, and having knowledge. Jesus said in Matthew 10:16, “Behold, I send you out as sheep among wolves, therefore be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.”

With that in mind, it’s important to note that we shouldn’t be unaware of the devil’s schemes. We should know our enemy’s tactics in order to guard against it. So when we see the deception, the lies, the fake news, the idolatry, the game of distraction, and materialism and fame, the plan of the enemy to sway hearts deceitfully and subtly for his kingdom, we are prepared and not caught off guard.

[Later, hopefully, I will try to discuss this more in depth at as it relates to the Antichrist agenda that is at work in the world by globalist leaders.]

Getting to the point here:

 Pray for your favorite celebrities. God has an army, but so does the devil. God wants to recruit, but so does the the devil. One is Light, one masquerades as light, but is actually darkness. One is good, one appears good. One is true, one is the counterfeit.

Please hear me. The world’s biggest influencers are definitely a target of Satan because they have the platform to be able to change an entire culture. How does this happen? MUSIC, ART…things that grip the HEART. Things that speak to the deepest places in people, the places of pain, emptiness, woes of many kinds. Why is this such a soft spot for the human race? Why are most songs about love and pain? I mean, why is music the language that everyone understands? We’re about to get into that.

[Disclaimer: I don’t know everything, and I don’t claim to. But with evidence from the Bible (God’s word), and when hings that were once just an idea or only talked about begin blatantly flaunting themselves in plain sight, you tend to not just tuck it away hoping that what you saw wasn’t real. With that being said, here we go.]

It’s not hard to find the answer if you really wanna know (read Matthew 7:7). Our inmost being cries out for LOVE. But, hey man, why does love in this world seem to suck a lot of the time? Could it be that we’re going about it all wrong? Could it be that we’re hitting something, but haven’t quite dug it all up to actually see what it is? Love is real, ok. Love is DEEP and beautiful and poetic and all those things, but love is meant to be JOYFUL, though. Does this world see much real, raw, joyful love? Romanticism? Yes. Infatuation? You bet. Any idea how to sustain a marriage? Look at the divorce rate. What is that all about, my friends? Does anyone know what love is anymore? There are SONGS about this. People want to know, though. Their souls try out to know...WHAT THE HECK IS THIS LOVE THING THAT TAKES ME OVER AND THEN LEAVES ME BROKEN AND WASHED UP ON THE SHORE TO SHRIVEL UP AND DIE?Okay, we’re getting somewhere, but in order to go any further, we must admit: Something is wrong, perverted, amiss, broken, disturbed, frustrated...yet, we gotta have it in order to LIVE. This is crazy revelation, right? Fasten your seat belts, people, and as Samuel L. Jackson said in Jurassic Park, “Hold on to your butts!”

So we have just come to the point of realization that someone is doing something wrong. Right? *heh*

First step. Admitting something is wrong.

But chin up fam, there’s no shame. Because the world’s just trying to do the best they can with what they’ve got. It’s like survival mode. And you know animals when they try to find their food to survive...they kill, they go crazy to get their essentials. Dog eat dog world, am I right? The CARNAL mind. Did you know humans have carnal minds, too? Yeah, it’s a thing. The carnal mind deals with the flesh (aka: how we compensate without God. Doing life without Him...either on purpose or ignorantly. Survival mode, because if I don’t fend for myself, I’m at risk of dying. Fear mode. The twisted mentality that my desire (the heart) has to be met before I am fully satisfied.

And the Bible says, “Those who are in [operating out of] the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:8) 

K. Well, wait a minute, that sounds rather harsh. 

Hold on, though because I’m going to explain and bring more clarity.

What is the opposite of the flesh?  You might argue, “So if the flesh is all we know...what the heck, man! Like, I have desires, don’t you? I gotta give up my happiness and all that brings me joy?”

No bruh, not exactly. See, if someone is living in the flesh, they are living in an illusion. The illusion that if they “meet their desires themselves [based on their limited power and understanding as a human being of what it is they want/need]. Living based on the flesh will keep someone in a hopeless cycle of temporary fulfillment which will lead, eventually, to a state of deprivation, disappointment, and (un)fulfillment because they are depriving themselves of the SOURCE of their life.

What’s the source, you ask? Who made you and knows what you truly desire and need; what’s at core of your heart. Who knows how it operates? Who saw your unformed body? (Please friends, I’m begging you to read Psalm 139)

Does God just want take away our desires to rob us of delight and a fun, abundant life, just because? Does He want to see us thrive? 

Men, women, young and old, children of all ages. I’d like to introduce you to my Father in Heaven who is a God of GOODNESS. He is Spirit. And the nature of his Spirit are aaalll of these

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

God is good. Anything not good is contrary to His nature. 

Sin = not good. What is sin? Woah! Another post, for another time.

I have suffieciently dove into the deep end. There are rabbits hopping everywhere because my mind has gone down so many trails to explain this all to you. There’s more. 

*Self notes: post to be made on flesh desires and God desires.

 [Or read Romans 8]

Wrapping up our discussion with some further thoughts:

If the world doesn’t know the power and love of Jesus, they’re just trying to figure it out and compensate. We did something important earlier. We recognized we have been going about love all wrong. God wants to show us how to do it right, but He won’t force us. Instead, He lovingly leads, allows His children to live out the love they have received through Him. “We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19-21)” HA! Let me say it again. Love is not to be forced. Not saying that there isn’t sacrifice involved in love because there is, but when it’s properly received and you do it the right way, it looks like Jesus on the Cross. 

Gotta go to the Book with this. 1 Corinthians 13. Love.

*All kinds of things are stirring up in me because I know some are going to say to themselves, “well dats the Bible, that ain’t no solid truth. How can you say that’s truth, made made it!” I will explain to all my atheists friends out there one day, but not now because I literally will start writing a novel right here and now. Help, me, Lord. And like a faithful friend, He will.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (That’s 1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

So if that’s all the characteristics of love, we can say that those are the characteristics of God, too, because 1 John 4:8 says, “God is love.”

If we are imperfect people, we love imperfectly. But wait just a second here because in 1 John 4, if we read the whole thing, it says

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”

So if one isn’t a believer in Jesus, like hasn’t received Him as Lord and Savior, then it would be true also to say that they don’t know Love if they don’t know God.

When someone doesn’t know God, because we were made in His image and His likeness (Genesis 1:27, Gen. 9:6), we still have attributes and qualities of God. The Bible also says, “eternity was placed in the human heart, (Ecclesiastes 3:11), people can be without God but still be operating out of the qualities and attributes they were made with. I’m sure God did that intentionally to help us find our way back to “truth north” in the event that we should become lost. What I am saying friends is that people who reject Jesus at this point, choose Atheism, paganism, Gnosticism, and other forms of religion, they still have that eternity void that needs to be filled. And some further discussion on the void of eternity:

Think of eternity as an umbrella…and under the umbrella, there’s

LOVE

MEANING

PURPOSE

TRUTH

If all of these are within the concept of eternity, then all of us have the bent within us to go after them. It’s in us to find these things…because we are trying to get back to our “true north.”

But wait! Because if “true north” is God. How do we know which avenue to God is the right one?

“Oh, boy. You’ve done it now, Lex.”

[to be continued...]