#yes you can expect a book review from me about this book later this year! XD

[clarislam]

Finally started reading “Legends & Lattes” by Travis Baldree and I now understand why so many people kept recommending it to me when I asked for book recommendations that were similar to Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon.

I mean, there’s no farms in the book, it’s a coffee shop, but it has similar vibes. 

[thebearer]

some carm + jewelry thoughts after reading your blurb about his dangling chain:

-he buys you a gold anklet with a “c” charm on it so he can watch it dangle when he puts your legs up on his shoulders to fuck you

-he has a signet ring embossed with a design (maybe a bear? st anthony? family crest?) and he turns it so the design is facing inwards and he spanks you so it leaves a brand on your ass

-after the big checks start coming in he buys you an exorbitantly expensive necklace and fucks you with nothing else on

omfggggg smut ahead minors dni 18+ but i have to elaborate

ok number one the anklet???? yes. yes. yes.

you mention wanting one, sorta in passing, and carmen's like weirdly adamant about you getting one lol??? you don't really understand why but he shows up a few days later with one you'd shown him online, except it has an embellishment. a tiny 'c'.

carmen's kinda blushy about it but you're beaming and squealing and just smothering him in affection bc it was so cute and sweet, and he really was too!!

then you quickly realize why carmen likes the anklet so much when he's putting it on you, then your legs are up in the air thirty minutes later as a "thank you".

your heels are digging into his shoulders, and normally his eyes are on you solely when he's fucking you especially like this. but you keep catching him staring at your anklet, fucking you hard, gripping your claves while he watches it bounce lightly.

maybe it's the thought that he has a sorta mark on you now. wherever you go, you've got something that symbolizes your his- that he's yours.

it was his grandfathers, then mikey's, and then his. mikey gave it to him when carmen went to new york because "you're a big shot now. need the ring to match since you're gonna be goin' to all that fancy shit, carm."

the ring was gold with a black onyx surface, a gold encrusted 'B' in old english font laid on top so it stood up. carmen didn't wear it often, didn't want to lose it or damage it, but every now and then- on date night, mainly, he'd wear it.

and you loved it.

the chain, nice outfit, plus pinky ring? you were drooling. watching him grab the door handle, cut your food, hold your hand in the car. you couldn't help yourself. he knew you couldn't either. it's why when you got home, he just nodded and you were over his lap.

carmen would take his time pushing up your dress, letting his hand glide over the small of your back, down your exposed cheeks, smug at the way you shuddered in excitement. he'd turn the ring around so the etched side was inwards, cracking his hand down on your ass over and over.

you'd squirm and mewl, gripping onto his legs or the sheets. carmen would just stare, mesmerized by the faint emblem showing on your skin only for a flash before fading.

the bear had made the chicago tribune after a raving review from a lifestyle travel influencer posted a video on the menu and it went wild. you were booked a year out, a waitlist a mile long, a million newspapers, magazines, and interviewers wanting a chance to write about the bear. it was buzzing around chicago, and carmen couldn't be happier. or busier.

he felt bad that with the newfound press, he'd been busy. you'd always been understanding but still, he felt bad, heart breaking every time your shoulders would fall when he said he had to work.

the two of you had just moved into the brownstone. you spent your days decorating and unboxing, showing him swatches of paint that you'd mull over for hours.

"carm, which one looks better?" you'd ask, turning around to see him standing there. only this time, he wasn't empty handed.

the infamous teal bag in hand, grinning at you proudly. "what's this?"

"a gift." carmen shrugged, pulling you over to the couch, setting you between his thighs.

you hummed, unraveling the tiny box. "you really didn't have to get me- oh my god." you were expecting a tiny piece of jewelry, not the dazzling strand of diamonds that sat on the tennis bracelet.

"carmen." you gaped, snapping the box shut, holding it against your chest. "how-how much was this?"

"doesn't matter." carmen shrugged, prying it gently out of your grasp. "let me put it on you. i wanted to get you somethin'. the restaurant is doin'... great. and ya know, i couldn't do it without you baby."

you pressed him about the price, but carmen waived it off. you knew he'd been making money- your new house and car told you that, but the kind of money to casually get gifts at tiffany's? it was new to you. a splurge still, but one that you treasured.

carmen left the necklace on, hips rolling while he fucked you in front of the fireplace, right on the new rug. he wanted to take a picture of the moment, watching you ride him, your head tipped back, diamonds sparkling still even in the low glow of the fire.

[sebastianswallows]

The English Client — Five

— PAIRING: Tom Riddle x F!Reader

— SYNOPSIS: The year is 1952. Tom is working for Borgin and Burkes. He is sent to Rome to acquire three ancient books of magic by any means necessary. One in particular proves challenging to reach, and the only path forward is through a pretty, young bookseller. A foreigner like him, she lives alone, obsessed with her work... until Tom comes into her life.

— WARNINGS: Tom hurts himself like an idiot and tries to hurt reader like an idiot

— WORDCOUNT: 2.6k

I

When she returned the next morning, she didn’t have the sense that anything was wrong, even when she found the ledgers placed in the wrong order underneath her desk. It wouldn’t be the first time… So she followed her routine and spent the chill hours of the morning making coffee in the little kitchen in the back and finished a review of Pliny the Younger she’d begun two days ago.

It wasn’t until later, after lunch, when she went into the back rooms to put Pliny in his place that she realised something was definitely wrong. The carpet, usually so carefully smoothed over the trapdoor, was creased in a light wave, its yellow tassels ruffled. The table in the centre of the room was quite askew as well, the items on it shifted to the right. She froze, then rushed to check the hidden door.

But the door was safe. There wasn’t even a scratch on it… She placed her signet ring into the keyhole and it popped open with a click, just as it always did. She lifted it and stepped inside, down the steps that led into the tunnel. It was dark and quiet… Nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe she was the one who made that mess the last time she was there. She did tend to be a bit clumsy sometimes…

With a sigh of relief, she climbed back up, and as her face reached the level of the floor, something shiny underneath the table caught her eye. She got up and closed the door behind her, then crawled on her knees underneath the table to grab the foreign thing.

It was one of those fancy pocket knives with all sorts of uses… Red handle, stainless steel blade. Her heartbeat turned frantic and sweat cloyed at her hairline, and she felt her stomach drop — someone else had been there. And she’d have to report this. With brisque and heavy steps, she went back to her desk and picked the phone up.

“Hello?” she whispered once the Curator picked up. “It’s me, upstairs. Erm, has anything gone missing? What? Oh, n-no reason, just, I think we had a break-in and — No, it’s fine! Just — I don’t think so. Erm, did I call him? Not yet. I —”

She listened to the frustrated cursing of the man downstairs as she stared at the Swiss knife, turning it in her hands, her whole body tense and weak, when suddenly her frown melted away and lips parted. There were two letters inscribed into the blade: C. M.

“It’s someone with the initials C and M,” she said quickly. “Know anyone? No, I don’t either… Alright. Alright, I’ll call him now. Thank you.”

II

“Yes, it’s not much to go on, but —”

“There is no need,” scraped the voice from the other end of the line.

“What?”

“You said nothing was taken?”

“A-as far as I can tell… Downstairs is safe too.”

“Hm. Possibly something forgotten by a customer.”

“H-how can you be sure?”

“If it had been an intruder, you would not have found a knife,” he said. “You would have found a corpse.”

She frowned, not really understanding him but ready to accept this resolution.

“S-so, what would you like me to do?”

Silence on the other end. Perhaps he expected her to increase security, or just carry on as normal since he seemed so calm about it…

“Put a copy of Torchia on display.”

“What?!”

“If it really was a break-in, and it has to do with the auction, we will test the resolve of our thief.”

“Do you want that book or…”

“Yes. Ask Ambrogio,” he said, and in the background, she could hear the scratching sound of him writing something down.

“Alright, sir…”

The scratching persisted until he hung up on her.

III

Tom smiled against the receiver. He so hated telephones with their smooth plastic in unnatural colours, but they were faster than an Owl… Besides, muggles seemed to love them.

“Yes, if you could manage it, I’d be ever so grateful,” he drawled silkily, putting on the same boyish airs he did when meeting with another of Burke’s clients. “No no, not right now. I’ll tell you when. Is that alright? It is? Oh, wonderful. You know, I keep thinking of that hotel you mentioned. You were right about this one, it’s awful. Yes. Yes, I’ll consider it.”

He hissed a few more pleasantries and said goodbye. When it was over, he reached to the bedside table to hang up, but not without some difficulty. He sighed and rested his cheek against his long cold palm cushioned by the pillow. Tom was lying on his front on the narrow hotel bed, a pack of ice on his hip — just a few cubes tied up in a handkerchief. It did little to reduce the bruise that bloomed there, but at least it kept the swelling down. He could think of a dozen potions that would do much better than this, but he had none of the ingredients on hand. His own fault for leaving London without buying some supplies first…

He held the pack to him and got up gingerly, growling all the while. He should have been happy, he’d made a great deal of progress in finding where they held the book, even if the way was closed to him. And with a bit of luck, he might yet find a way to gain their trust.

Tom limped over to the window, a drop of water sliding down his naked leg. The sun was setting and the streets were filling up, frothing with white dresses and silk scarves. How he hated being around muggles…

He let the curtains close again and waved his wand to brew him a cup of tea. Fire spells were so useful even if you didn’t have your mind on arson. He was at least glad he’d brought some tea leaves with him, and could brew them at just the right temperature. The milk they served around these parts was also not so bad, and worked wonderfully with the brew. It soothed his nerves if nothing else.

He sat down in the armchair, legs askew, loose shirt covering him to his thighs, and picked up his notebook. At least he knew they had the Trevisan that he was after... It would make the perfect excuse to visit again — in a more overt manner.

Absentmindedly, he placed the ice pack on his lap, and immediately jumped up in his seat.

“Oh fuck! Cold!”

He growled and with a sharp flick of his wand transformed the pack into a pillow, and settled down again.

IV

It should have delighted her that Frederico found the freedom to ask her out for lunch again. She sometimes thought she worked too many hours, but that impression faded when she heard from him. All Fred ever talked about was work. His shop was two streets away — not his of course, just as Casa Ur wasn’t hers — but he behaved as if it was his child sometimes, so dutifully he tended to it. She put it down to the speed with which she worked, as she was younger than most of the other book dealers in the city and less worn down by its pressures. But even she could not muster the endless enthusiasm of her friend.

Their lunches together had nothing romantic about them, they never did. He was a kind, soft-spoken man in his mid-forties, his skin just starting to sag around his cheeks, his forehead creased from frowning, brown eyes wet and tired behind a thick pair of glasses. The way he looked at her unnerved her sometimes, but then again, he seemed to look at everything that way…

He picked her up from Casa Ur and they went to a restaurant together, his paunch swinging before him and the sun shining brightly on the bald spot at his crown. He loved to talk, his high hoarse voice filling up the silence. She didn’t mind. She needed the company.

“And anyway, to prevent the shipment from being late, we found an old pathway they could take to avoid the flood, and they arrived five minutes before schedule,” he said, finishing the latest drama from his shop as they sat down at the restaurant across from the Fontana Trevi. “Can you imagine? Flooding, in the hottest summer on record?”

“Oh, last summer was even hotter.”

“You think so, but that’s not what they said on the weather report.”

“I think I’ll have carbonara,” she hummed, licking her lips. She loved the menu at this place…

“Hm? Oh, parmesan gnocchi for me, I think. With cream and garlic, oh yes… Wine for you?”

“No, I don’t think so. Just water.”

“Might be a while until they come around to us. So many tourists out today. Awful. Anyway, I wanted to tell you about the reason we found that route. Guess.”

“I don’t know,” she laughed.

“Guess, guess! Alright, so, it was our collection of Martinelli maps.”

“Fascinating. Oh, there’s a waiter! Scusi, cameriere!”

She hadn’t liked Fred when they first met two years before, but she’d gotten used to him. Or, she’d learned how to put up with him, allow herself to be carried on the wave of conversation that he wove. Now, it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, eating in the open air, letting his enthusiasm drown her worries as he wagged his sausage fingers in the air to summon up the largess of the maps that saved his boss’ shipment.

Every one of their colleagues was different, each with their own flaws and problems — broken marriage, spiteful children, loneliness and illness and malaise — but they all carried the same passion for books. Books most people never heard of, books only obsessives cared about, books older than countries. They, few and a little insane, were together enchanted by their beauty.

So she could forgive Fred his childlike wonder, even during their lunch break, because the same passion smouldered, albeit very deeply, within her. It was what kept her going in spite of her loneliness, her anomie, and the drudgery of daily life.

“By the way, who’s coming at the next auction?”

“Most of the same,” she sighed, her breath fogging the half-empty glass of water. “A few new names this time. Foreign names. Can’t say I know any of them.”

“Must be invited by Oso.”

“Oh, I doubt he has the authority.”

“No, but you know how the Baron looks up to him.”

She chuckled, her lips pursed to stop a toothy grin. “Given his condition, it’s hardly surprising.”

“What do — Oh, you mean the… Oh, that’s quite cruel,” said Fred, his eyes two charcoal slits beneath the fat dark crinkles of a smile.

“Sorry, sorry…”

“But anyway, you know he could talk him into doing just about anything.”

“Maybe… Would you like to have some coffee before we go?”

“Sure,” he said. “I know you don’t really like talking about the auctions.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that… just that…”

“Just that you don’t like it,” he laughed.

She was playing with her fork in the leftover sauce of carbonara while Fred waved a waiter over when she noticed from the corner of her eye a familiar contrast of black hair and deathly pallor. Was that Mr. Riddle? His eyes were hidden by shades and his full lips were pressed against the rim of a wine glass, but she was certain it was him. She turned before he spotted her.

While Fred kept droning on about another fascinating problem he’d had at work, she found her thoughts drifting, dreaming, and a soft smile blossomed on her face at just the memory of how good Tom looked the last time he was in her shop. Those dark curls falling over his eyes, how she longed to ease them back, to trace the sharp angles of his jawline, to kiss him… His lips looked so soft.

She sneaked another glance his way when the waiter took their plates. Leisure looked good on him, even if he seemed an amateur at it. A workaholic, perhaps, like her… He wore a pale green shirt today. The colour tasted sweet in her mind, like pistachio gelato. It was generously parted at the neck where his sweat was cooling, and underneath the table she could tell his legs were crossed, clad in sinfully tight silver-grey trousers.

“And once we had the original manuscript, we realised it referred to the Capuchin Catacombs, not the Parisian ones! My dear, are you listening?”

“What? Yes, the catacombs, of course,” she said, hiding her warm smile behind a cup of coffee.

V

The shop was more quiet than usual when Tom stepped in that day. That was to say, it was quieter than when he’d broken in. There was a tense silence to the place, one that slithered up his spine and settled pleasantly at the back of his brain.

He hadn’t missed the Torchia displayed in the window, in the centre of a carefully constructed swirl, holding court over far lesser volumes. In fact, it was the reason he had come.

“Buongiorno.”

“H-hello!” she called from behind her desk, getting up quickly enough to knock over a stack of papers when she noticed him.

“Didn’t expect to see me again, did you?” he grinned, sliding a hand casually in his pocket.

“Not really, no,” she chuckled. “How can I help you?”

Her eyes flitted to the window before coming back to him. She was expecting him to ask for the Delomelanicon again. She probably had a whole little script ready once he did. As if Tom would fall for so obvious a trap…

“Well, I was wondering if you had a copy of The Lost Word, by Bernard Trevisan.”

“W-what?”

“Is it a bit too obscure? He’s a —”

“Fifteenth-century alchemist,” she said, her smile suddenly beaming with nothing of the apprehension from before. “The Lost Word is a famous alchemical treatise! Yes, I know it. Which edition?”

“Doesn’t matter. Any would do.”

“We have a solid copy. Not too old, but faithful to the original, and at a good price.”

She began leading him into the second room before she’d even finished speaking. What a charming girl… She’d hoped he hadn’t been the intruder, and Tom had just confirmed it. He had gained her trust.

He followed her quick and careful steps, a heady perfume trailing behind and the metronomic echo of her thin high heels.

“It’s quite deep inside,” she said.

“Is it indeed?”

His hand came slowly out of his pocket, holding his wand.

“Not much further now, through this door.”

Tom stopped, took aim, and cast it.

“Imperio.”

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” she asked as she kept walking.

“…Nothing?” Tom muttered to himself in wonder. He looked down at his wand as if it were impotent.

“What?” she said, half-turning.

He shoved the wand back between the folds of his jacket before she could see it.

“Ahem, nothing,” he smiled. “Please, continue.”

A chill ran down his skin and bile rose in his throat in anger. It was clear to Tom now that this building, or perhaps the very land it sat on, was protected by some counter-charm. His usual solutions of bending locks and minds would not suffice, but he could not call himself the Heir of Slytherin if he could not find a way. Tom eyed her figure, infuriating and sleek, and decided then and there that she would be his key.

[moonlitlex]

i have so much to say abt chalice of the gods so im just gonna copy paste my review from goodreads here. you can also read it on goodreads

ok. i promised i would hate this book. and i do. i hate this book. i also hate rick riordan. in addition, i hate capitalism. i promise that’s relevant.

let’s talk about the book now. i’ll cover the things i love first. i love percy jackson. i love grover. i love annabeth. i love sally. i love paul. i love percy annabeth and grover together. all of these things are very obvious and self-explanatory. percy is hands down THE main character of all time. i have nothing bad to say about him. his literal fatal flaw is loyalty. he’s actually perfect and has no flaws. this is expected from the son of sally jackson, the perfect person. paul is sweet and kind to sally and that’s really all that matters. annabeth is awesome and supportive and so is grover and they’re all besties forever. you get it. you’ve read percy jackson.

the jokes are better than before. there are definitely some legitimately funny jokes in this book, which i was really missing from the last few rick riordan installments. and i don’t think this is because rick suddenly got funnier. i think it’s because this style of joke works for percy. of all of rick’s protagonists, percy seems the most natural fit for these jokes.

sally is great. grover and annabeth are generally on form. so is percy, as much as can be expected from rick riordan at this point. i will elaborate on this later.

now to complain. this is the stupidest premise i’ve ever heard of. percy is a high school senior. he is going to go to new rome university. he needs 3 divine recommendations. this is already a stupid premise but don’t worry, it gets worse. poseidon reveals that the reason percy needs these recommendations is that it’s a special requirement for him specifically made by zeus. and the reason he gets to have this stupid requirement is that he’s a child of the big three and shouldn’t exist.

hello. zeus. yes, lord zeus, it’s me. alexis.

what the absolute FUCK are you saying.

this doesn’t MAKE SENSE. the only reason percy shouldn’t have existed was that the gods had a stupid pact to not have any kids because of a stupid prophecy. two things here. one - that prophecy is OVER. everything turned out fine. thanks to percy jackson. you’re welcome, gods of olympus. two - percy has literally saved olympus TWICE now. two times. this is genuinely such a dumb and made up reason to send percy on a quest that i can’t even turn my brain off and enjoy it. it’s not fun. leave percy alone. LEAVE HIM ALONE.

it’s literally insane how stupid this setup is. rick keeps writing books about how the gods are horrible and take advantage of the demigods and the demigods live terrible lives. in this book, percy has LITERALLY saved olympus TWICE and motherfucking zeus (literally) had to be talked down from making him get 25 letters of recommendation to 3. this is AFTER percy spent 3 years in pjo almost being killed and got his memory wiped for 6-8 months depending on which book you read in hoo and then got sent on a quest to save the entire world AGAIN. this CHILD got like a 2-4 month break (depending on which book you’re reading) and he woke up with no fucking memory and had to spend like 2 more months fighting monsters and the literal primordial earth goddess. and now he has to go on literally pointless quests that someone who didn’t just get back home from saving the actual world could ALSO just do. because he needs to get some fucking letters of recommendation.

look. genuinely. percy jackson should snap at this point in the story. this boy should’ve snapped like at least 5 books ago. at minimum. rick wrote the perfect setup to show us percy’s instant descent into madness. he should LOSE it. all the gods have done for the ENTIRE time he’s known he’s a demigod is treat demigods like disposable tools. this is the point in the story where percy goes. wow. luke was right. you guys are all assholes who don’t care about us even a little bit. i am NOT saying what needs to follow is a fanfic-esque dark!percy story where he successfully destroys olympus or something. what i AM saying. is at bare minimum this is where percy goes you know what fuck you i hate you guys and washes his hands of being a demigod at least temporarily. at the very least he should sit back and think yeah, i don’t really want to go to new rome university. it’s not worth it. i will just go to a different university. look. it’s percy jackson. he can literally one shot all but the most fearsome monsters (typhon, the giants, a drakon, etc). he is literally going to be 100% completely fine going to mortal university AND he wont have to deal with zeus’s annoying ass.

listen. MY percy jackson wanted to kill smelly gabe as a 12 year old because he abused his mother. MY percy jackson doesn’t like bullies. MY percy jackson challenged ares to a fight just on the basis that ares was a fucking asshole.

MY percy jackson is not going on useless fucking quests to go to new rome university of all places.

which reminds me. why DOES he want to go to new rome university. this is percy jackson. he LOVES new york. why is percy “what did they do to my city” jackson going to university ACROSS THE COUNTRY from the city he loves. why is he doing that. and hey look. sally and paul (and soon estelle) are ALSO going to be in new york. so like WHY is he leaving for real. percy my fatal flaw is loyalty jackson. IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE OK! it’s percy he is seriously not going to have issues with common monsters attacking him. we literally saw him fight off titans and giants a fucking hellhound isn’t gonna get his ass. WHY is he leaving. it does NOT make sense.

there’s this scene ok. where sally tells them she’s pregnant. and percy’s like oh my god…. i’m going to be in california…. and my sister is going to be here…. and i was just sitting there going. yeah bro. why are you going to california. i literally do not understand. you literally are from nyc. you live here. your family is here. your friends from chb are like a short pegasus ride away. there are like 50 universities in new york. just go here. why are you leaving. you are percy jackson. being a new yorker is literally one of your defining traits. stay here. WHY AR EYOU LEAVING I DO NOT UNDERSTAND PERSEUS

and listen. if your argument is that annabeth is going to be in nru. why the FUCK is ANNABETH going to nru!!!!! WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT!!!! EXPLAIN IT!!!! percy LITERALLY says annabeth is such an overachiever she’s already run out of ap classes to take. he literally says that. why the fuck is this girl going to nru where let’s be real her admission is guaranteed. annabeth is 100% someone who would want to go to an ivy. and would you fucking believe it there’s an ivy right here in nyc. like let’s be fucking realistic here. annabeth started her architecture career at SIXTEEN designing the city the fucking GODS live in. so like. don’t you think she’d want to be a bit more challenged. don’t you think she’d want to go to a university that is actually recognizable to mortals. annabeth did NOT love new rome that much like did richard forget what he wrote. this girl was freaking out about new rome until percy said he only likes it because they could live together there. she literally does not care about new rome and she is WAY too ambitious and academically inclined to be happy with going to some small as uni 99% of employers have never heard of.

this isn’t even the worst character assassination in the book. that award goes to the way rick wrote percy. percy. my darling percy. my beloved percy. perseus jackson. light of my life. as i said before, he is MOSTLY on form. the him really wanting to cali thing is definitely ooc for him but it is NOTHING compared to the sheer amount of times rick portrays percy as stupid in this accursed novel. his internal monologue is constantly shit like i’m always so behind annabeth and omg i’m being so dumb right now and annabeth calls me seaweed brain because i’m an idiot and blah blah fucking blah.

dick riordan has forgotten that perseus jackson is, in fact, not stupid at all. he is INCREDIBLY clever. he is just not particularly academically inclined/not very book smart and it would also be perfectly understandable given the fucking books that riordan wrote to interpret that as percy being very discouraged from engaging with his studies. he genuinely enjoys chiron’s class at yancy because chiron is an engaging teacher and encourages him. he spends 90% of his time in pjo deducing what’s going on with extremely limited information because rick decided none of the characters can tell him anything because of plot and exposition reasons. in son of neptune he literally just coasts on having sherlockian (not bbc that’s a whole other angry review) powers of deduction. to the point where the characters around him are amazed at how he’s figuring stuff out. literally in house of hades annabeth’s pov’s are constantly her commenting on how she gives percy shit for being a dumbass but he’s actually really clever.

it genuinely feels like at some point during the writing of mark of athena rick decided to just slowly start making various fanon ideas canon. percy being stupid is very commonly accepted fanon because he doesn’t realize how smart he is (and fans don’t realize he’s an unreliable narrator) and the fans also love to infantilize characters with more in your face adhd (leo is another victim of this phenomenon). we’ve spent 5 books in percy’s head and he doesn’t think he’s particularly clever so it makes sense to ignore the mountains of evidence pointing towards his quick and creative thought process in favour of haha percy is dumb jokes.

the wild thing is, percy isn’t even that hard on himself in pjo. he obviously doesn’t see himself in the same way we later come to find out other people see him (mainly thinking about hazel and frank in son of neptune, which is the only time in hoo he genuinely feels like the same character as pjo percy) but he’s not really dealing with crazy self doubt and self esteem issues. he does have his down on himself moments but they’re all extremely understandable given the context because he literally faces impossible odds in every single pjo book. at one point he’s disappointed he couldn’t tell that ares and luke manipulated him… like yes bestie that’s a very valid thing to feel upset and betrayed about. it doesn’t mean that he’s actually stupid though and genuinely he comes across more as humble and not realizing just how awesome and cool and interesting he is than anything else. percy consistently shows that he is really clever. half of pjo is percy figuring out a new and interesting way of defeating his enemies and the other half is percy figuring out how to bait his enemies into a duel to improve his odds. it’s horrible what rick does to percy in his internal monologue.

it’s to an insane degree. yes i realize i have already written 500 words about percy not being stupid alone but i must stress how egregious this is. it’s literally characters who have previously acknowledged percy’s intelligence who start remarking about how he’s stupid. in house of hades percy and annabeth get out of fucking TARTARUS and reyna makes a jab about how percy wouldn’t be able to find his way out of a paper bag without annabeth. that is an INSANE thing to say for reyna and for rick. rick has not written a stupid character so it’s weird to make that something a character does without really trying to show them being wrong. from reyna’s perspective, this is a guy she was complimenting a few short weeks ago. this is a guy she immediately wanted to make a leader at the camp that she loves and is her home. this is guy she barely knows and she pretty much immediately proposes to him. WHY would she suddenly start making jokes about how dumb he is? it’s not like she actually knows him better now. he came to the battle with reinforcements and basically immediately dipped after the feast. how are we to accept reyna treating our beloved perseus in this horrific manner? we simply cannot. it is unnacceptable. this is inaccurate.

it’s so WRONG to do this to percy. yES I UNDERSTAND I HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THIS FOR TOO LONG. I DON’T CARE. PERCY JACKSON IS MY BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE AND I NEED TO DEFEND HIM FROM THIS SLANDER. I AM ONLY PARTIALLY JOKING. listen. liSTEN. this is the guy whose signature move is manipulate your enemy into dueling with you when you’re outnumbered or outmatched. he very coolly manipulated bob into killing his own brother (btw this was very hot and sexy and clever and attractive perseus is king of gaslight gatekeep girlboss). he is NOT stupid. he is impulsive. he is extremely oblivious about some things. he is NOT stupid. i watched perseus jackson grow up for 5 books and he is not stupid. i always say this. i always say that percy is not stupid and richard riordan refuses to listen to me.

there are such horrendous lines as “i am a guy of limited talents. if i can’t kill it with water, a sword, or sarcasm, i’m basically defenseless.” richard how DARE you say this about my beloved perseus. he is NEVER like this. he literally would never say that. even at absolute worst percy’s internal monologue was “this plan is stupid and will get us killed. but it’s the plan i have.” he’s NOT a being defenseless guy. what hte fuck are you saying. richard did you read your own books. RICHARD. DID YOU. at one point he says that he is constantly several steps behind annabeth’s thought process. he has literally never thought this before and it is also untrue. richard. i hate you. read your own fucking books oh my god.

ok. i think i have sufficiently harped on the fact that percy is not stupid. now i will complain about another thing. and this was just in one part but it bothered me and this is my review so i get to talk about whatever i want. if you don’t like it read someone else’s review. don’t hate read my review. i didn't charge you money to read it

at one point, percy has to wrestle a god who hercules once wrestled. and annabeth says something about hercules brute forcing it. and look. i GET that hercules was freakishly strong. i get that. i understand it. but when annabeth says hercules just brute forced it they’re both like ah shit i can’t do that. perseus. beloved. you ripped the minotaurs horn off its head with your bare hands as a 12 year old with no training. you are literally insanely strong as is. that is an insane thing for a 12 year old to be able to do. hell, that would be an insane thing for a grown adult to do. i don’t think rick realizes how op percy is. he was so caught up in making percy cool (which is, you know, extremely understandable and right and correct percy jackson is the coolest man in fiction for a reason i get it) that he forgot that he made percy extremely unbelievably powerful too. with the curse of achilles he was potentially matching minor gods in power level. he fights while sustaining mini-hurricanes and explodes glaciers and shit.

some more things. the prose is… acceptable. the plot reads like a fever dream. there is a smoothie shop called himbo juice that annabeth percy and grover are evidently regulars at. and there are. himbos. that serve. juice. so you can imagine what this fever dream looks like. like the last couple rick riordan releases, this one reads like published fanfiction too, just with better quality of writing than the sun and the star.

there are some WEIRD continuity errors in here. one of them is fairly minor but i still noticed it - percy says his father compared his mother to a princess. this is not true. poseidon compared sally to a queen. specifically, he called her “a queen among women”. i know this because i am sally jackson’s number 1 fan.

more egregiously, however, is annabeth’s yankees cap heebie jeebies. percy puts on annabeths’s cap and gets the heebie jeebies while using it. and then he goes wow annabeth. you never told me that using the cap is like this. and annabeth is like yeah well. power is like that. richard. riordan. did you fucking FORGET that percy has, in fact, worn annabeth’s cap before. and it was literally completely. once again, richard, did you read your own books.

one more good thing - when percy fights geras/gary, who is the god/personification of old age, the way he does it is by imagining him and his friends getting older and embracing it. this was a genuinely good and sweet moment and it was very touching. the trio’s talks about this after the fact are also absolutely a return to form from riordan. for like, a few paragraphs. but still.

the biggest problem is just how obvious it is that this book is a cash grab. we had pjo. then we had a sequel series. then we had ANOTHER sequel series. and now we’re getting random standalone novels that are extremely unnecessary and don’t add anything. rick riordan has dollar signs in his eyes. these are not stories that make sense. these are not stories rick genuinely wanted to tell. these are stories that are being told because the purpose of publishing books now is to maximize profit. (sidebar - i told you the capitalism thing would be relevant. you should believe me more often. smh) the only reason rick is still writing these books is that they make money. they feel extremely empty and hollow.

percy is trapped as a teenager forever because rick refuses to let him age up. percy accepting old age would make FAR more sense for a percy who’s in his 20’s and just now realizing that he lived past all the shit he thought was going to kill him and he has a real life that he likes and he could actually grow old now. but percy must be a child for marketing purposes, so he stays a child. the world itself is trapped in a cycle of the gods promising they’ll be better and the gods literally not changing at all. and for the sake of the book series, it can’t change. if we had real change in the world, that would actually mean something, silly. we can’t have consequences. we have to reset every 5 years like a fucking comic book so that we can make infinite money. this is the infinite money glitch irl. just make trash that doesn’t need to be made. the end point of capitalism is making trash no one asked for that has no artistic merit just because you can make money off of it.

by the way, dr emily wilson’s iliad translation, which was also out on the same day, is LESS expensive than this book. this cashgrab nonsense novel is MORE expensive than a book a professor in classics who has a phd spent 4 years on. this is just wrong. the fun and stupid cashgrab book should NOT be more expensive than a book that someone spent 4 years meticulously translating from ancient greek. it’s just so clear and in your face. trials of apollo absolutely felt like a cashgrab but at least there was SOME semblance of effort there. this is literally just the most plain and simple cashgrab novel you can make.

hey. you know the infinite monkey theorem? the infinite monkey theorem is that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text including shakespeare. richard riordan is a monkey with a typewriter. you get it. you’ve read percy jackson.

rick riordan struck gold with pjo. it’s genuinely to this day one of my favourite things i’ve ever read, flaws and all. it’s FUN. it’s COOL. it’s THEMATICALLY COHESIVE. the characters grow and change. they feel like real people with personalities. it literally doesn’t even matter how op percy is because THAT’S how good of a character he is. he is so compelling that you want to read about him anyway even though you can tell right from the minotaur fight that this kid can decimate whatever opponent he has. the books are funny and moving because you can genuinely connect to these characters. the more i read rick riordan’s work, the more certain i am that pjo was a fluke. i don’t think he knows what he’s doing. i think he should retire from writing.

unfortunately for me, richard riordan seems to have no intention of retiring. he has announced another percy jackson book that will be released next year. i assume there will be at least 2 more books based on the setup in this one.

rick. listen. i know you’re listening because what else will you do with your time. rick, why are you doing this. hasn’t percy been through enough. when will it end. give it a rest. stop it. get some help. at the very least, read your own books before writing percy. i am right about him and you are wrong about him. you are the author and i’m killing you right now. i am strangling you and i am hitting you with weapons. all at once. i am very proficient at causing deaths. (this is a metaphor referring to roland barthes’ death of the author. i wish no bodily harm to richard riordan).

this book is… alright. percy is my smart king. sally jackson is queen of my heart. it’s a fun read but you do have to turn your brain off completely and read through some serious percy defamation.

[edit: i am downgrading this book to one star (was at 2). the more i think about it, the more angry i am. there is literally a paragraph tailor made to rub jason's death in our faces. it's about how he looks forward to getting old being married to piper and having grandchildren. it's a very low blow. jason is literally rick riordan's biggest missed opportunity and he's rubbing in how poorly he treated jason even after killing him off for apollo's character development.

annabeth still keeps putting percy down because rick doesn't realize how mean she is i guess. she's still scared of him. canonically. which is a really weird and fucked up thing to write imo. this relationship doesn't seem healthy in canon (they are healthy in my head, however, because i know what women are like) but rick refuses to address it or let them break up. i LOVE annabeth. i love her. but she is an extremely flawed character and rick never treats her as such. and it just makes it exhausting to read about her.

percy IS on form but it genuinely feels like he's tlt percy, not post hoo percy. his inner voice sounds way more immature than it has for most of pjo and in son. riordan also repurposes the "look, i didn't want to be a half-blood" line from tlt to make a dumb little joke about how high school is hard. it was a GOOD opening line. it immediately set the tone and told us so much about percy in literally just a handful of words. now it's a joke about how being a senior in high school sucks. it's this mcu-esque allergy to being sincere that pjo never had.

there is BARELY any grover in this book. i love grover so much that i was cheering any time he was there, but there is very little of him. he's in like 2 or 3 scenes and has his own side plot going on with juniper and being bad at understanding what his girlfriend wants or whatever. extremely unnecessary and not what i want for grover. this book kind of ends up feeling like it's about annabeth but from percy's perspective. she gets good moments at percy's expense. percy spends the book monologuing about how annabeth is way smarter than him and all he has is his sick ass water powers and the best swordfighting skill in 300 years, both of which are very downplayed. percy explodes a river and it's treated like this crazy freaky scary thing but two years ago in universe he made a volcano erupt and everyone was like yeah this makes sense percy is that powerful. in son he explodes a glacier and it's just a normal tuesday for him. he literally doesn't even react to it. and now we're supposed to believe his exploding and purifying a river feat is some unbelievable feat.]

in conclusion, i want a refund. no i did not purchase this book. however, i would like to be reimbursed about $5000 in emotional damages. i will also be suing richard riordan for defamation on percy’s behalf. good night new york city. and my beloved perseus jackson who lives in new york city.

[81scorp]

Constructive criticism: Raya and Wish (2023)

Ah yes, Raya and the last Dragon and Wish... and a bonus

Raya and the last Dragon

Taking place in the fictional country of Kumandra, based on Southeast Asian culture, the movie follows the warrior princess Raya as she seek the fabled last dragon to save her father and the land of Kumandra from evil spirits that are known as Druun.

Critics gave the film positive reviews; some critics praised the imagery and depth but criticized the limited Southeast Asian representation.

The movie is very good on a technical level, Visually impressive, fun characters and the story is good... until the third act.

It`s message doesn`t really fit into it`s narrative. It tries to fit a square shaped peg into a round hole.

If I could wish upon a star that I could travel back in time and do some changes to the script I would like to make one small change.

Namaari giving her "This is just as much your fault" speech and Raya acting as if she`s right

The biggest downside in this scene is Raya`s reaction to what Namaari says, looking at her own reflection in her sword as if to say: "My god, what have I become?"

How I would do it: Raya and Namaari fight. Raya gets the upperhand, disarms Namaari and is about to strike the final blow... but then she looks at what`s happening around them, the city is falling apart, killing Namaari is not gonna solve this. She drops her sword.

Raya: "My original plan was to steal the gem. It was Sisu who convinced me to talk to you. She believed in you. And for a moment... so did I."

Then she leaves to save what still can be saved of the people of Fang.

Namaari looks at her own reflection in one of her twin swords and has a "My god, what have I become?" moment.

I guess I could stop here, but I want to change one more scene.

Raya giving her gem piece to Namaari

In the scene where they are all in the pit trying to fight the druuns with their gem pieces and Raya realizes that they have to put the pieces together, it would be better if Namaari gave her piece to Raya before she gives her piece to Namaari.

Namaari would then step backwards and let the Druun take her. The others would then give their pieces to Raya, stand next to Namaari and be turned to stone. Raya tries to put the gem back together, nothing happens, she places herself between Namaari and the others (Tong, Boun, Little Noi and the Ongis), puts a hand on Tong`s arm and a hand on Namaari`s shoulder as if to form a bridge between the two. (Symbolism!)

Then the dragongem starts working, everyone gets unstoned, the dragons return, Kumandra is united and everyone`s happy.

The end.

Yes, I know. Raya needed to learn how to trust, but Namaari needed to show that she could be trusted.

Wish (2023)

Disney (the company that owns your childhood) was turning 100 years old and decided to give itself a big pat on the back by making an animated movie that would celebrate it`s legacy.

The film received mixed reviews, with praise directed towards the vocal performances, the animation and references to the wider Disney canon, but criticism levelled at the plotting, songs, and screenplay.

People were disappointed in Wish because it was supposed to be a milestone, the movie made to celebrate that the Disney animation studio has been around for 100 years! It just couldn`t live up to the hype. But if you take all the hype and great expectations out of the equation and just view it, not as this BIG thing it was intended to be, but just, as the movie it is, it`s... just OK.

Later when the art book of the movie came out and people saw what could have been, many youtubers decided to do what I have been doing since 2015, and do a little constructive criticism of their own. With so many rewrites of Wish popping up on the internet and my history of playing script doctor, it only seems logical that I too throw my hat in the ring and submit my own Wish rewrite.

So... if I had a fairy godmother who could Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo me back in time to when this movie was written, this is what I would change.

People willingly giving their wishes to Magnifico

It would have been better if Magnifico took peoples wishes from them without their knowledge. It would have made him a better villain. He could take peoples wishes when they are asleep.

Asha

I`d dial down her quirkiness a little. Personalitywise she could be an ambitious overachiever, kinda like Hermoine, with an adorkable side.

Valentino

Does everything he says have to be something comical? I like jokes but not all of them landed. It was like his funniness was mandated. Dial down the number of jokes.

Some of the songs

It`s not that the songs are bad per se, some of them just don`t fit into the scenes where they are used, like "At all cost".

They should either have :

A: Given Julia Michaels more time and let her be more involved in the production. (Howard Ashman was very involved in the making of The Little Mermaid.)

or

B: Hired people experienced in musicals. Maybe the people who wrote the songs for Wicked, Hadestown or Hazbin Hotel?

Magnifico needing a book to be evil

The biggest problem this movie has is that it couldn`t decide if Magnifico should be a redeemable, three dimensional antagonist or a classic Disney Villain, so it did both and the results were underwhelming.

I would have made him a twist villain, but instead of waiting for the third act I would reveal it near the end of the first. He would be a charismatic leader, great at fooling people that he has their best interests at heart, who`s paranoia gets the better of him.

To Starboy or not to Starboy, that is the question.

At first I wasn`t gonna bother with the whole Starboy thing since it`s not really an issue. The movie`s biggest problem lies in how they wrote King Magnifico. However, a while ago I saw a video on youtube by ColeyDoesThings who talked about what the movie could have been if they had gone the Starboy route, and she made some compelling arguments. So for this rewrite I`ve decided to go with the Starboy idea.

Starboy`s personality could be a lot like Aladdin, a little bit like Peter Pan with a pinch of Flynn Rider. A bit of a contrast to Asha. I did not change change Star becase I thought it was necessary, but because I thought it sounded interesting.

I would also make Hal and Bazeema gay and have them kiss eachother in the end.

Plot

Asha prepares to interview for the job of Magnifico's apprentice on the day of her grandfather Sabino's 100th birthday.

When Asha is around, her mother and Saba put on a happy face for her, when she leaves they become a bit apathetic. This is something that many people in Rosas over the age of 18 (who have had their wishes taken) do.

She leads tourists through the town as she sings about what an amazing place it is and what an awesome king they have in "Welcome to Rosas". She rehearses for her job interview with her friends,

There are three wishes that the king refuses to grant:

Wishes about killing people.

Wishes about making someone fall in in love with someone else.

Wishes about bringing people back from the dead.

If you wish to become a magician you`ll have to become the king`s apprentice (and you don`t have to be 18.)

Queen Amaya shows up and takes her to Magnifico. At first it goes a little shaky because she`s nervous but then it goes well and Magnifico thinks she is worthy to be his apprentice.

They sing a duet, but not "At all cost". It is a song about optimism and ambition, about what a great student/mentor team they`ll make. The chorus could go:

Magnifico: "With you as my student!"

Asha: "With you as my guide!"

Both: "Great things will happen with you by my side!"

Something like that.

The interview is over and Asha leaves Magnifico`s study.

She is excited. She gets to work with the king! The most awesome king in the world! She does a dorky little victory dance. Valentino shows up, he snuck into the castle with her. Asha starts chasing him, she doesn`t want him to break something expensive, she really wants this job!

Valentino sneaks in through a door to a big (and probably forbidden) room and knocks down an ancient scroll. Asha picks up the scroll to put it back where it was, then she notices the title: How to remove someone`s wish.

Remove? The king grants wishes, he doesn`t take them!

She tries to convince herself not to read it, it`s not meant for her eyes, it`s classified, but her curiosity gets the better of her. She reads in the scroll that the spell should not be used on people under the age of 18. The individual who has had their wish removed becomes docile and free of aspirations, and in some rare cases, even lethargic (just like Simon). They will feel like something is missing from their life but are not able to put their finger on what.

She refuses to believe this. This can`t be true! Magnifico wouldn`t do something like this! He`s a good king!... Right? There are magical orbs of light floating in the ceiling, she takes a ladder and climbs up so that she can get a better look at them. One of the orbs shows a woman that wishes she could fly, another a woman who wishes to sail the seas, another a man who wishes to climb a muntain, and one of the orbs shows... her Saba! It is true, the king takes peoples wishes from them!

She climbs down, puts the scroll back and leaves the room quietly with Valentino under her arm.

She`s about to leave the castle through the main gate when Magnifico shows up. He tells her that there will be a wish-granting ceremony later that evening and he wants her to be present. Asha is nervous, but not a "OMG! I`m meeting my hero!" kind of nervous, but a "Hope he doesn`t figure out that I went into a forbidden room and saw things I shouldn`t have seen" kind of nervous. He seems not to notice, but at soon as Asha leaves the room we see that he did.

Later that evening there`s a wish-granting ceremony, a woman gets her wish granted, the people cheer for Magnifico and Asha sits there next to the queen, stiff and nervous.

Later that night: Asha tries to tell her family the truth about Magnifico, but they don`t believe her. Distraught, Asha runs away and makes her own wish on a star as she sings "This wish". (Not a bad song, but it could have used better lyrics in some places.)

Starboy appears and surprises Asha who smacks him with a branch. (Meet-cute!)

Magnifico senses Starboy's arrival and sees it as a threat to his power.

Starboy doesn`t really grant wishes per se. He`s only as helpful as giving the means, but it’s up to the wishmaker to put the work in order to have their wish fulfilled.

Starboy's magic brings the forest to life, giving voices to the animals, plants and Valentino. They sing "I`m a star", but with better lyrics. (No "we're all shareholders" or "Get that through your system. Solar!") Asha, Valentino, and Starboy embark on a mission to recover Sabino's wish. She wants to save all the wishes, but if she can only save one she`ll have to focus on Sabino`s.

Tension rises in Rosas, Magnifico makes a public appearence and promises a great reward for any information relating to the strange light phenomenon. This makes Simon react. The residents of Rosas begin questioning his rule for the first time. Magnifico gets uncomfortable, leaves and sings "This is the thanks I get" (But sinister, not upbeat, and no "I let you live here fo free and I don't even charge you rent").

Asha returns Sabino's wish and he is overjoyed to have his memories back and sings "A wish worth making", playing his lute. King Magnifico bursts into the family's home, having been informed by a mole that Asha was responsible for Starboy's arrival. He crushes her mother Sakina's wish as punishment, rendering her overcome with grief. Starboy tries to defend her and is spotted by Magnifico, who vows to capture him. Asha and her family flee with Starboy. Sakina can barely stand after what Magnifico did to her wish, so Starboy uses his magic to give her the strength to walk. Sabino and Sakima hide somewhere safe while Asha goes back to Rosas to free the other wishes.

Magnifico turns Simon into a knight, not in a public wish-granting ceremony though, but in his study.

Later, a brainwashed Simon is walking the streets with the company of other knights, searching for Asha and the rest of her friends. Asha sees him and looks for a place to hide. She finds her friends` hideout, not because of Valentino`s butt, but because of his sense of smell. She rallies the rest of her friends, Queen Amaya shows up and joins them.

Asha and her friends start making a plan.

Meanwhile: King Magnifico has made a staff, Amaya shows up and tells him what Asha and her friends are planning.

Gasp! Queen Amaya is a villain! (Dun dun dunn!)

She and Magnifico sing an evil duet villain song which is kinda similar to "With you by my side".

Asha`s friends infiltrate Magnifico's study to open up the ceiling and free the wishes while Asha plans to distract Magnifico. She and Starboy hides in the woods, she is nervous, Starboy tries to comfort her, so they talk a little. The talking leads to feelings being revealed which leads to singing. They sing "At all costs" and dance a romantic dance, first on the surface of a lake, then high up in the sky. (Thanks to Starboy`s magic.) Starboy gives Asha a magic wand to use as he leaves to help her friends, he then notices that he is getting weaker. Magnifico arrives, he and Asha fights. Magnifico turns out to be Simon disguised with an illusion and he breaks Asha`s wand, Asha finds a way to knock him out using the environment to her advantage.

Her friends almost free the wishes but are betrayed by Queen Amaya. Starboy tries to stop her but she pulls out a dagger and threatens to kill one of Asha`s friends, Magnifico shows up and zaps him with magical chains that he can`t break free from.

Asha returns to the city, is caught by Magnifico, finds Starboy in magical chains and finds out that Queen Amaya was just a mole. Magnifico darkens the sky with clouds so that the people won`t be able to wish on stars.

Asha (to Magnifico): "I believed in you! I thought you were a good king!"

Magnifico: "I`m not a good king. I`m a GREAT king!"

All hope seems lost, Asha starts to sing the reprise to "This wish", her friends and the people of Rosas join her and their singing makes Starboy strong enough to break free from his chains. The breaking of the chains creates a shockwave that knocks Asha, Amaya and Magnifico off the tower. Starboy, still weakened, only has enough strength to save one of them, so he saves Asha.

With Magnifico defeated, his spell powers down as a new day dawns over the kingdom, with the citizens, Asha's mother included, are able to get their wishes back, afterwards, Asha is soon confronted by a regretful Simon, who understands if she doesn`t want to forgive him, but she does as she understands why he did it.

Starboy keeps getting weaker and has to go back, he gives Asha a new wand and the two of them say good bye. She wonders if she`ll ever see him again, he tells her that he`ll be the second star to the right.

With urging from her loved friends, Asha promises to help others earn their wishes as a Fairy Godmother, aiding everyone in making their dreams come true.

Post-credit scene: One year later: Asha is walking to the wishing tree in her fairy godmother outfit. She walks past a grave stone. Sabino is sitting in the tree playing "When you wish upon a star" on his lute. A tear rolls down Asha`s cheek. After Sabino has played the song he disappears as if he was a ghost. We see that the grave stone that Asha walked past earlier was Sabino`s. She wipes away her tear, looks up at the second star to the right, takes out her wand and teleports to some place where she might be needed.

And that`s how I would do it. Not great but hopefully not bad.

I cut "Knowing what I know now" because it was getting a little tight between songs. It would be hard to fit that song, Magnifico and Amaya`s villain song and "At all costs" so close to each other, while still maintaining a good narrative flow.

At first I wasn`t gonna turn Queen Amaya evil because I couldn`t come up with enough evil stuff for her to do (that I could fit into the plot without making it worse). But then I made her a villain because it would make things harder for Asha and her friends, which would make the movie more interesting.

But like I said before, the movie`s biggest problem is not that the Queen wasn`t evil, but that the writers couldn`t pick a lane when deciding if they wanted to make Magnifico a three-dimensional antagonist or a classic Disney Villain.

And now... a Bonus

One more thing about Frozen 2

Turning Kristoff`s Lost in the woods into a cheesy 1980s rock ballad musicvideo

I was gonna have this in my Frozen 2 CC but forgot and didn`t remember until after I published it. Since I don`t wanna go back and edit it I`ll write it here.

This scene is admittedly entertaining and if you don`t care about tone as long as it`s entertaining it`s fine.

But funny songs works better for funny characters and what Kristoff is singing about feels sincere, which clashes with how the song is executed.

The 1980s rock sound: Lose it.

The visuals: Have Kristoff walking around in the woods, seeing things that, to him, looks like Anna: a pile of rocks, a pile of leaves, a cloud in the sky. Stuff like that.

Probably an unpopular opinion.

It is of course very easy for me to write these because I have the luxury of hindsight. And unlike the filmmakers I didn`t have a movie studio full of corporate suits breathing down my neck, focus grouping the movie to death, forcing in unnecessary changes and pressuring me to get it made before a deadline.

Why do I write these?

For several reasons. I`m nitpicky. Sometimes the movies I criticize aren`t bad, I just like my own ideas better. Sometimes the movies I critize are bad. I care about good storytelling and it`s a fun excerize in creativity and script doctoring.

But also because I have a lot of of free time.

---------------------------------------------

Other movies on my Constructive Criticism list that you can look forward to

Supergirl (1984) Jonah Hex (2010) Dragonball evolution The Spirit (2008) The Dark Knight trilogy

And as usual: English is not my first language, so if my writing doesn`t seem to flow naturally, you know why.

[faintingheroine]

hey my italian lit professor told about the Betrohed and also about another old important italian novel (by Foscolo) that the authors put the "love story" plot in it because basically love and drama always entratein the readers, but they actually wanted to write about others things that often get overlooked in theirs books.

It made me think about ask-i-memnu.

Do you think it may be the case for ask-i-memnu also? That readers get attached to the triangle/love story but the aspects thecauthor wanted to highlight in his book were others and get overlooked.

If so, which are these aspects that get not considered enough, both in popular reading and academic criticism, due to the excessive attention on the "forbidden love" part?

I don’t think that it is exactly the same thing with Aşk-ı Memnu. I haven’t yet finished The Betrothed (it is among the pile of books that I hopefully will finish in summer) but it is definitely a book written to highlight social issues, so I can definitely see how a love story was used to get people interested in these issues. Though to Manzoni’s credit he selected a love story that was very suitable for highlighting these social issues.

Aşk-ı Memnu is not a book written to highlight social issues. It is not as uninterested in social issues and divorced from the world as critics tend to accuse it of being, but it is definitely not a book written to highlight any social issue. I also don’t think that it is a “love story” in the common sense of the word though. The tagline of the soap opera is “a love story that searches for love” and though it is as cheesy as everything about that adaptation, it also sums it up quite nicely. It is a story about searching for someone to love you rather than about an actual romantic love between two people.

So yes, Aşk-ı Memnu is definitely a book whose narrative and plot is built around marriage and romantic love, but it is not a “love story” between Bihter and Behlül. It became so in popular culture both because of the expectation caused by the title and the ever-present expectation that any story must have a young attractive Male Lead and a young attractive Female Lead.

As for the title I have speculated before that it might have been chosen to draw in readers but decided against it:

“Maybe there is a simple explanation, “Forbidden Love” was maybe simply chosen as a title that would draw in readers, but I don’t know… Halit Ziya was from a rich family and didn’t need money and he wrote Aşk-ı Memnu in incredibly ornate prose that is not easily read by most readers, actually the literary community he was a part of relished in not being understood by the masses, I don’t feel that he would give a salacious title to his book just to have more readers.”

But is the title just about Bihter and Behlül’s relationship (a relationship that is, let’s be frank, that at most 20 percent of the book is about) or does it have other meanings?

Once again I want to quote from Mehmet Rauf’s (Halit Ziya’s close friend and fellow writer) 1901 review of the book. Because he seems as confused as we are 123 years later:

So is Nihal’s “search for love” the forbidden love or is it Bihter and Behlül’s “forbidden love”? If Bihter and Behlül’s forbidden love is “the part the author really wants to write” then why in God’s name had he chosen as the subject of his book the comparatively less obviously interesting subject of Nihal’s life? Who knows?

But that’s the good thing about Aşk-ı Memnu. I don’t know what the writer fully intended with it, which is a rare thing for a Turkish classic. This is the most personal thing Halit Ziya said about this book and his characters:

“Firdevs Hanım, Nihal, Bihter, especially the unfortunate Beşir. Now as I think of these I am under the impression that I see all of them, one by one, from afar. Especially Nihal, in front of my eyes, with her gaunt yellow face, always wanders around next to her father at the pine groves of the Island. I am hearing Beşir’s coughs. From where did I find that unfortunate Ethiopian? Maybe there was a face similar to him in my family.”

So, in conclusion, even though I don’t think that Halit Ziya was using any part of his story as a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, I also don’t agree that the part that he wanted to write was Bihter and Behlül’s forbidden love. I think he wanted to write all of it simply because he wanted to, no part of Aşk-ı Memnu is there because it had to be there. But yes, the public latched onto Bihter and Behlül because sex sells.

As for the title of the book, I don’t know, I am not sure. His friend clearly didn’t know either so I am in good company.

[whatifwekilledgodandwebothgirls]

Alright alright im done crying now and since i did a book review of the symposium im doing a book review of alcibiades so buckle up . Yes , i am aware no one cares about this , but its fine . First i gotta say this is marginally worse than the simposium but in a woerd way . Its still good , dont get me wrong , but i like the symposium better . I dont know if its just because i like long peices of text , which the simposium had but this one lacks , or because its simply lacking in content . The messeges are alright , nothing shocking so far , very aproachable , very understandable very easy . You can tell its written with a goal to educate people of all intelligence . Its an easy book thats what im saying . Now

This decked me in the face with a steel chair

( trans: i belive , son of clenias , that you wonder despite the fact that i fell in love with you first, im the only one who continues to while the others have left , and continiusly pester you , while all these years i havent even greeted you )

Right off the bat , this is very different from the simposium . We are getting explicit proof that alcibiades and socrates are in a romantic relationship. First i thought that the book was imidietly worse that the for stating it so obviously, because i quite liked the ambiguity in the simposium, but then i undertood that the two books , despite being difrent , complement eachother perfectly and present a natural chain of events.

First off all in the simposium it is made clear that alcibiades got rejected because he had nothing to give to socrates besides hollow beuty and socrates had nothing to give to alcibiades, since the knowlage he belived he had wasnt real ( one thing i know i know nothing and so on so forth ) . Now we are getting a more in-depth explanation as to how they ended up together despite that little talk . Basically from what i gather since socrates doesnt like being a teacher because he doesnt know shit he used the maieutice ( or however the fuck its spelled ) because he belives that to gain knowledge one must first undertand that they are lacking it and second ask themselves questions to try to get it . He didnt think he could give knowlage to alcibiades then because he didnt think alcibiades desired to learn . He couldn't make him a good man , but he could later help him grow and learn so he could make himself a good man , all of those things needed alcibiades willing to put the work in , and not relay on socrates to just snap his fingers and turn him good , like he expected in the simposium .

( trans: speak , my dear , and i will listen)

Now the word for word translation is a little different. That little " ωγαθέ " litterally translates to " good " , but since both men use it generously and plenty throught the dialogue, i can only assume it was a common pet name of the time . Its worth noting that calling people good ( καλε μου , καλη μου ) is also a pet name in todays greece , or maybe 50 years ago greece , that ive deeply assosiated with posh , high class very polite ladies and gentlemen. I dont know why but ive only heard it used in that uper society politeness, and when i first read alcibiades saying it it fit like a glove

Socrates also tends to pamper alcibiades with compliments all throught the text , and making a lot of attemts at flattery , which i think serve the purpose both to showcase that socrates is an admirer of beauty, to show that goodness and virtue are to be praised , but also because he is being so unbelivably annoying that without those little compliments to keep him on his good side , alcibiades would have puched him in the face . He calls him brave ( also tranlated as virtius ) beutiful , smart , beutiful again , like a bunch , and overall slaps a pet name next to his name any time he mentions him

( trans : no , by our mutual friend zeus , who protects both me and you , in whose name i would take a fake vow . If you have such teacher , say it )

( trans : by zeus i didnt ignore it , but i knew clearly i was being wronged )

Now zeus is mentioned a lot in this text . Thats not entirely true . Zeus is mention a lot by alcibiades in this text . In the instance socrates talks of him , he uses an epithet and not his actuall name , praises him , and very clearly states the importance and nessecity of the vow . He is being very cerful and very poilite. Alcibiades just short of does whatever . He contantly says by zeus , for no aparent reason , and as an awnser to anything and everything , just casually sprinkles it i converastion. Now im not sure if this is blashemy , or if im just entirely mistaken , but its really highlighting the fact that alcibiades doesnt cae and never has cared much about being proper to the gods. It reminded me of that one line from the simposium, where alcibiades vowed something to possidon for abseloutely no reason and socrates hot mad at him in a very casual way , in the way he would scold a ten year old for having candy before dinner . He knew alcibiades saw blasphemy as a part time sport , he was used to it and he didn't bother yelling at him much , since the act was bound to repeat its self regardles . Similarly here , alcibiades very casually and normally takes gods name in vain , for no serious reason , and socrates is too used to it to react .

And finaly , the wholy grail

( trans : socr :you will speak to them ( the people of athens ) and this , which is right ?

Alc: i have to )

Socrates asks alcibiades if , later in the week during his political speach , when he adresses the people of athens , he will talk to them about matter that are moraly right and wrong . To me , this is the most crutial part of the dialoge , this is the backbone of the wntire consept and the translation does not do this justice . He asks if he will speak of right or wrong , and alcibiades replies " ανάγκη " . " i must " i have too " or more litterally " out off need "

Now at first i was confused when i read alccibiades , out off all the people in the world , talking about wanting to be morally good . Alcibiades has always been a cunt . He is a genuengly horrid human being . And then i thought about it a bit and realised that when he is speaking to the people , he really is not. Reading a single speach of his that thucides has written and tgen comparing the image he portrays with his biography makes my point obvious . He uses morality to get what he wants constanly. In sparta , whils convincing the king to provide his shelter he didnt go the petty route , even if he could have . He didnt go the " i hate them and want revenge " route . He could have pulled it off . But he didnt attempt . No , instead he made himself apear virtius , apear good , saying he is just trying to regain his home , painting himself as a wronged man who is trying to undo his enemies wrongdoings . He used moral superiority to convince constantly and then turns around and fucks someones wife , because in privet he has abseloutely no need for morals .

Need is such a strong word . If you dont get what ypu need you will die , the fact that the author chose that in particular is inane to me . This is the part when it bacame obvious that alcibiades doesnt care about goodness , but cares a whole lot about greatness . He doesnt care about morality , but he would do anything to be gonsidered a great leader and get power . Socrates made sure he understood that to be great you first need to be good , but in turn , alcibiades understood that goodness is a tool for him to use to get what he trully wanted , a means to an end , not a final goal. He cannot reach true power without being good , and so he is forced into a road of virtue that doesnt fit him . He is a camilion in this instance , like plutarch called him in his biography , he puts on a virtus persona so he can gain influence and get things his way , even when later admiting to his true nature , to the fact that sometimes to him moral acts are not desirable , he frazes it strangely , never completely addmiting to it ,saying its improper to share such thoughts . He is the pinical of diplomacy, he used morality as a sield and as a front , as is visible in his later life in which he convices people to act on whats right and then privetly acts like a complete degenerate .

Now do i think that in some part he actually desired morality just for the sake of it ? Yes lf course , but its very obvious from the way he was raised that socrates failed to convince him to desire it for himself , not just for his work as a politian

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🦇 One Last Stop Book Review 🦇

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

❓ #QOTD If you could live in a different time and place, when and where would you choose? ❓ 🦇 August expects moving to New York will only prove her cynicism right. The only way to live is to do it alone. That is, until a mysterious girl on the train hands her a scarf, sparking not only a major subway crush on the Q, but an adventure that will alter August's perspective of the world forever.

💜 Oh. My. Goddess. This book. THIS BOOK. This book hit me like a freight train (yes, yes, I see the pun). It's been a month since I read it because I couldn't find the words...I still can't. But I'll try. 💜 This. Book. Why did NO ONE tell me about this book?! 💜 From page one, this book is a childhood friend reaching out and tugging you into a warm, solid embrace before lifting you off your feet, spinning you around, and causing the word to blur. Casey McQuiston's narration is familiar, inviting, intimate. I couldn't stop annotating. August is raw and vulnerable and real, but still figuring out who she is away from her mother and messy childhood. We're only lucky enough to discover the woman she is alongside her. 💜 I don't want to spoil this story for anyone who hasn't read it yet, because there's a moment that changes EVERYTHING -- the genre, the plot, August, EVERYTHING. It's executed so well that I still feel the impact. WHY am I tearing up writing a review for this a MONTH later?! 💜 The underlying messages in this story are so heavy and impactful, yet written with such ease and grace and respect. There's: 🚇 Beautiful representation and discussion about virginity 🚇 Kisses for evidence-gathering 🚇 Exploration into New York's queer history 🚇 A Chinese lesbian displaced during the 70s 🚇 Lost memory 🚇 HIV/AIDs activists 💜 Beyond that, there's a beautiful sapphic ship, quirky cast of queer side characters, and sense of found family that's beyond heart-warming. I'm completely onboard for whatever Casey McQuiston has planned next.

💜 Literary Awards: 🚇 ALA Alex Award Nominee (2022) 🚇 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Romance (2021) 🚇 RUSA CODES Reading List for Romance (2022) 🚇She Reads Best of Award Nominee for Romance (2021)

🦇 Recommended for all readers; namely fans of Delilah Green Doesn't Care, She Gets the Girl, and Imogen, Obviously. This book is absolute magic. I read this in February but I can already say it's one of my top reads for the year. Yes, I'm still tearing up. What is wrong with me?

✨ The Vibes ✨ 🩷 Queer Found Family 🚇 Bisexual FMC 🩷 Diverse Cast 🏙️ Coming-of-Age 🩷 Sapphic Ship 🚝 Smut 🩷 Sci-Fi Twist

💬 Quotes ❝ Truth is, when you spend your whole life alone, it’s incredibly appealing to move somewhere big enough to get lost in, where being alone looks like a choice. ❞ ❝ August looks at her as the train reverses past Gravesend rooftops, this girl out of time, the same face and body and hair and smile that took August’s life by the shoulders in January and shook. And she can’t believe Jane had the nerve, the audacity, to become the one thing August can’t resist: a mystery. ❞ ❝ "Your friendly smile of acceptance—from the safe position of heterosexuality,’” Jane reads aloud, “‘isn’t enough. As long as you cherish that secret belief that you are a little bit better because you sleep with the opposite sex, you are still asleep in your cradle … and we will be the nightmare that awakens you.’” ❞ ❝ August laughs and wants so badly to know what it feels like to show off the person who’s yours from across the crowd...Maybe what she really wants is to be the person across the crowd who belongs to someone. ❞ ❝ “The attraction between you two is literally a spark, and it’s the same spark that’s bringing her back into reality." ❞ ❝ “I fell in love with you the day I met you, and then I fell in love with the person you remembered you are. I got to fall in love with you twice. That’s—that’s magic. You’re the first thing I’ve believed in since—since I don’t even remember, okay, you’re—you’re movies and destiny and every stupid, impossible thing, and it’s not because of the fucking train, it’s because of you. It’s because you fight and you care and you’re always kind but never easy, and you won’t let anything take that away from you. You’re my fucking hero, Jane. I don’t care if you think you’re not one. You are.” ❞

[aprikosenklang]

Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender Live Action

First, some context: I started watching A:TLA when book 2 was airing. Since then, I watched it at least 10 times. Half of it in German and half of it in English. The last time was in 2020. I know a lot of lines by heart—yes in both languages. Zuko was my fist teenage crush and Oncle Iroh’s quotes helped my through a lot of dark times in my life. I might be biased because I love the original series a lot. But I try to reason everything carefully.

The Good

I loved it visually! Bending looked so cool and never felt out of place or weird. All of the shown places could be recognized in a blink. It was beautiful to see this world adapted in a realistic way.

The casting was mostly done perfect. A lot of the characters looked a lot like I would have imagine them.

The Kiyoshi Warriors were really awesome. Especially Suki—even though she didn’t got a name at all?!

I loved the addition with the 41st devision. It gave Zuko‘s crew actually a reason the respect him and fitted to his character and backstory.

Zuko and Iroh give the same energy as in the original. Usually this wouldn’t be something to mention, since I would expect this from and adaption. But due to issues you can read further below, I have to mention it. Zuko and Iroh might be one of the few characters that never felt out of character. I’m happy we got those two true to original at least.

The Bad

Since there is so much, I structure it even further into story, production and costumes.

Story:

I didn’t liked any of the story changes. I don’t even understand why they had to tangle all the storylines. The original book 1 is 20 episodes each about 20-25 minutes—which results in 400-500 minutes in total. The live action had 8 episodes each about 45 minutes to an hour—let’s say about 400-450 minutes in total. So basically, they could have taken the timeline as is is. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t advocate for a 1:1 adaption here. I just don’t get why they saw the need to tangle storylines, pull in things from later seasons and leave out important scenes, places, character traits and even whole characters. Each and every story change felt out of place, out of character and over all pointless. Nothing added anything that made sense. Just like it was changed because they had to change something.

Aang didn’t even learn water bending!!! Like what is the whole season even about if the main character doesn’t have a real character arc? All he does is having guilt over disappearing for 100 years. Yes that’s also a thing he has to overcome. But it is just half of it. And he even doesn’t really get over it. He has none of his childish fun moments like he does in the original.

Why did Sokka have SOOO much screen time?!?! Sometimes it felt like he‘s the protagonist of the series. Especially with Aang not even learning water bending.

Momo in contrast had like 0 screen time. But than in the last episode when he became important as plot device Sokka was weirdly attached to him.

Katara being her own master made it pointless to actually go to the northern water tribe. Yes there was Aang's vision. But in the original the plot is not mainly driven by what the fire nation does, but by what team avatar needs to do. Like… Aang learning bending!!!

We didn’t get the epic intro we could have. It felt like they tried to make up for it in the first episode. But having three different versions of the epic lines and finally Gran Gran dropping the original ones was actually the worst. It felt forced and as if she would read them out.

Everything regarding Azula was sooo off for me. She felt like a completely different character with other motivations and struggles. I wish she would not have been so present in the first season.

Uncle Iroh drank not enough tea. Lol. This is maybe a personal one and I cannot reason it to be honest.

I‘m disappointed by the Lu Ten moment. Fist of all, why did it need to be in season one?! But also: It was a bonding moment for Zuko and Iroh. It didn’t payed any respect for Lu Ten in my opinion. And leaves from the wine was barely noticeable and didn’t make feel anything.

Katara never lost her necklace. Which I don’t mind. But it made a huge plot hole for the headhunter Zuko hired. They tried to cover it with randomly finding a piece of fabric. But how did they know this belonged to the Avatar? This change feels similar to the one with the water bending scroll. Important things just become meaningless.

Agni Kai was once mentioned but never explained. If I didn’t know what an Agni Kai is from the original series, this would probably be either the most missed or confusing thing.

Hei Bai was never healed!!! Yeah sure, Aang saved the villagers. But what about the forest and spirit?! And why was there no winter solstice? And in general why did everything in the spirit world was so all over the place?

The siege of the Nothern water tribe being a distraction for Omashu is stupid. It would take them way too long to hear about it. So they would not be able to send troops there by time and it would not weaken them in any way.

The world feels super flat and boring. Because they tangled so many story lines, they got rid of a lot of places. No fire nation prison in the earth kingdom, no nothern air temple, almost no villages. You never get a change to explore the world and learn about the ordinary people.

Production:

The directing felt bad. A lot of people say, the acting was bad. But I don’t agree. First of all, a lot of the cast were children. I think it is not fair to judge them so easily and hard. In my opinion the directing wasn’t good. And you could tell because even the older and more experienced actors were really stiff.

The dialogs were almost always awkward. This adds to the previous point and is another sign that the acting isn’t the problem. The lines were sometimes random, jokes felt forced and original lines never made the same impact as in the animated series.

Some of the CGI green screen backgrounds were awful. They reminded you that this is a show which really pulled me out of the immersion.

Costumes:

The costumes felt lifeless. They could have added so much details to the garments and accessories. But of all things they decided to stick to the original with the costume design?! I expected the outfits to be a lot more toned down in brightness too. That’s something you need in an animated series, but not in a live action. So much missed potential.

Why could they not cast old people for old characters? All of them looked so stale, emotionless and almost uncanny.

I was sooo disappointed by Yue! Maybe I’m biased here, because she was one of my favorite characters of book one. But somehow she was the only character that didn’t felt casted perfectly. And especially her hair was awful and looked like a cheap wig.

Conclusion

Overall, I‘m disappointed. Again, I didn’t expected a 1:1 adaptation. But I don’t see that the same care was put into it like it was for the original. I would have wanted to have something that creates similar emotions and an overall known feeling. But it doesn’t. It’s confusing, flat and carelessly made. I can definitely see why the original creators stepped back from it.

If you think about watching it, I would recommend you the original. Especially because it is not that much longer. So better invest your time wisely.

[magpiefngrl]

8, 12, 17! for the book asks 🥰

Hello, hello! Thanks for the ask and for the excellent questions!

8. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

I did, some of them. I posted about this year's reading goals in January and I'll make a more detailed post later in the month, but as you can see from the crossed out sections, I did pretty well in two out of three. Namely, I wanted to read series I'd left unfinished and I managed to read most of them, which makes me very happy. And second, I'd created a reading challenge to inspire and motivate my readings and I did very well there too.

12. Any books that disappointed you?

Yes, unfortunately. I won't talk here about books I DNF'ed or books that I just didn't like, but about books I had high expectations of.

The biggest disappointment of the year, in this regard, is the final novel of Alexis Hall's Arden St.Ives trilogy. I... I don't know what that book was. It wasn't romance (and it was marketed as such), it wasn't sexy, it wasn't what I expected in any way or form. I loved the first two novels, and the main pairing is one of my faves of Alexis Hall's works, but somehow this potential got all squandered. I honestly don't remember feeling so disappointed about a book in years.

I was also not happy with Rule of Wolves by Bardugo, the second in the Nikolai duology.

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

Yes! I won't mention the books from authors I love that I expected to enjoy, but the ones that were a surprise.

They were three:

A Lodestar of Ys is a free m/m romance novella, which I got mainly because it was free and I saw a good review. It turned out to be one of my favourite books of the year. I already read it twice and I'll definitely revisit it.

Heated Rivalry is an m/m hockey romance. I bought it ages ago because of some good reviews, but didn't read it because I don't actually like contemporary much and I know zero about hockey. It's a very exotic sport to me. Anyhoo, lately I've seen it recced to high heavens--I'm talking rave reviews all the way. So I finally read it with scepticism and, turns out, it deserves all the rave reviews.

The Amberlough trilogy. I expected it to be decent. It was recced by a fandom author (currently published to much acclaim) years ago (you might see a pattern here), and I expected it to be good, but I ended up appreciating a lot more. Compared to some of the bland US SFF stories I've come across recently, this is miles better.

2024 end of year book ask

(other replies here)

[symphonyofmalice]

Reflections on the show

So it's been a week since I finished Season 1, and I've had some time to reflect on it, read/watch other people's reactions, and gather my thoughts.

Actors great, characters inconsistent I want to say that all the actors were well-cast for the show. They did excellent work bringing the scripts to life. The trouble was, the writing sometimes had them playing wildly different characters. Sam Reid makes an excellent Lestat, when the script let's him play Lestat. Louis is sometimes philosophical, detached, and refined. Sometimes he's coarse, direct and irreverent. Yes, characters can change and no one is just one thing. But there was no clear arc, they seemed to flip-flop episode to episode. Lestat is sometimes recognizable as his impulsive, needy, theater-kid self, and sometimes he's a cold, calculating chessmaster. I want to be clear I do not expect the characters to be good people. These are vampires, and I expect them to act monstrously. But with book Louis, I have a basic idea how he might react to different situations- when he might be passive, when he might snap and act out, what might upset him and what he doesn't care about. This Louis? No idea. He's fine with eating humans until he isn't six years later, he'll delight without any hesitation in murdering people who made racist remarks, but is too squeamish to enact his own plan (because it's his now) to kill evildoers, in the modern day he no longer kills but gives the 'alpha predators' speech.

What did y'all do to the family dynamic In my initial reviews, I noted the 4th episode was the first that really felt like the Louis-Lestat-Claudia dynamic I expected. And I think it's because it's the only episode that didn't decide that Lestat just hates Claudia from the very beginning. All the other episodes lean hard into the idea that Lestat never wanted to make Claudia at all, is constantly happy when she leaves/trying to drive her away, wouldn't want her back if not for Louis, and is barely tolerating her very existence for Louis, and would hurt/kill her if he could. Now, in the books, their relationship obviously sours- she kills him, after all. But they do have a genuine love and respect, and it is in the hope of repairing the decaying relationship and 'making peace' that Lestat accepts her gift of poisoned blood.

Pick a lane/Easter eggs are not adaptation points I think a big reason the characters flip-flop around so much is that the show is trying to tell two stories. One is the story of a Jazz-age queer Black man discovering vampirism as a possible escape from the restraints of society. One is Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, with it's plot beats of Louis, Lestat and Caludia. And since the first is pretty different from the second, anytime the show has to switch tracks, it introduces sharp turns and inconsistencies. The crew promised easter eggs for book fans and sometimes it seems like easter eggs are all there is. "Look, Lestat said Savage Garden! He mentioned his mastiff! Nicolas name drop!" which ended up feeling almost distracting. A metaphor for adaptations:

The original books: A black forest cake. Rich and dark and bittersweet. A classic that is iconic and famous, though definitely not for everyone.

The 1994 movie: A black forest cupcake. A little condensed, a little different. Smaller in size, so it's not the full experience. But in flavor and structure, it's a pretty close match for the original.

The musical: A black forest cocktail. Structurally, this is a very different experience. If you don't like cocktails/alcohol in general, than you probably don't want your cake in cocktail form. But if you do, then it's pretty decent! There's a clear attempt to get the essence of the taste across, and for some people (like me) it can be a wonderful way to immerse oneself in the same flavors in a different way.

QOTD movie: Cherry cheesecake that's gone bad/old. First of all this isn't even close to the original, and second of all you cared about it so little that it's gone sour and even people who might like cheesecake probably don't want this.

The show: Black forest (brand) gummy bears. This is clearly just a different thing. It can be really good as it's own thing! No having the brand-name black forest does not make it the same. No, it doesn't particularly help that some of the gummy bears are cherry flavored and black forest cake also has cherries. No it would not help to dip the gummy bears in dark chocolate.

Let's not "secret good fourth Sherlock episode" ourselves I've seen some theories that the discrepancies in Season 1 are deliberate, due to unreliable narrators, or Armand's mental influence. The trailers for season 2 so far certainly seem to lean into that, with the repeated memory theming. It's possible they'll pull something off with this. But I'm also hesitant to accept it as a blanket excuse. Even if they do retcon some of these details later...why? How is that any better than an "it was all a dream" excuse? Why should I, as a viewer, remain emotionally invested in the show if, at any moment, I could be told none of that happened? Twists and reveals can be good, but they can't be everything. 'Don't worry, season 2 will explain season 1' is not very promising for season 1 as a story.

Concerns about Season 2 I'm going to watch season 2. I have to, the same way I watched the QOTD movie knowing I'd dislike it. I'm curious to see what they do, and if nothing else, I might get some Nicolas images out of it. From what I've seen of Joseph Potter, I believe he can act Nicolas very well...if the script lets him. I'm also concerned about escalation. Everything in blood and violence was dialed up to 11. In the books, Lestat hits Louis (when Louis interrupts his feeding on Freniere) in the show, it's an extended beating. He punches through the priest's brains, and drops Louis out of the sky. In discussion with someone, I described this as "Lestat acting like Armand" since that kind of roof-dropping is literally a thing Armand does. And if they keep Armand's role as the 'villain' of IWTV/TVL, I'm concerned to what levels of extremity they'll have to push him in comparison.

[fimproda]

Author talks: (Negative) Opinions and reviews

(Grab some snacks and a drink. This is a chunky boi.)

This post was a long time coming.

I wrote a version of what you're about to read back in, like, 2019, on my Italian Wattpad profile, after years spent dealing with ungrateful authors and being called rude, wrong, and whatever negative adjective you can and cannot think of.

It's time to address this topic yet again, in English, here on Tumblr, hoping to reach as many people as possible and, the writing gods willing, change a mind or two.

The straw that broke the camel's back (or rather, my back) was a series of TikTok videos, made by a bunch of Italian booktokers, either in support or in opposition to another booktoker who had dared to review a pretty popular book that had made its rounds on Wattpad before being self-published on Amazon.

It so happened that I, for one, knew the author from our shared time on Wattpad, and I also knew the book, which wasn't good back then and is not any better now; moreover, I saw the video review and I agreed with the booktoker's every word, especially with the way this girl kept an even, calm, almost professional tone and justified every critique.

So you can imagine my surprise when a veritable swarm of detractors began stitching this booktoker's video, saying that her opinions were wrong, that she was bullying the author, and yadda yadda yadda; thankfully, some other booktokers were on her side, but this also meant that this back-and-forth shitstorm went on for days, and maybe it hasn't even ended yet.

I need to add that the author blocked this poor girl on every social media, and the book's most passionate readers (the ones that the author brought over from Wattpad and the author's friends/family, I assume) flocked to the booktoker's other accounts to keep blaming and disgracing her.

All this over a negative, yes, but overall objective and respectful review.

And it doesn't end here.

Many other straws continued to destroy the camel's back.

For instance, some accounts I follow for fandom content on Instagram or even here on Tumblr, who for the most part are not authors themselves, make a point to regularly remind people not to tag authors in their negative reviews of those authors' books.

On the other side of the coin, I've seen some authors, especially on TikTok, flip their shit over a "negative" review (and I should add even more quotes around the word negative, to be honest). Some even stated that a 3 out of 5 stars rating is a negative one, saying, "What would you think if a person called you 3/5 cute?!"

I don't know about them, or about you, but I would preen like a peacock if someone called me 3/5 cute.

(It'd be different if they said I was 3/10 cute, of course, but we can't really expect basic maths from some people, can we?)

Back in my Wattpad days, I've even stumbled upon someone who said that, seeing as all content on Wattpad is free (which is not even true nowadays, but whatever), no one has any right to leave a negative review. @zoyalannister can vouch for this; in fact, I believe it was her who sent me a screenshot of that comment, and we're still shocked about it years later.

I'm sure that some authors among you will understand how utterly pissed I get when I read, hear about, or get otherwise involved with such things.

So, with all this in mind, let's clear up a few things, shall we?

None of us is writing because we've got a gun to our head. We're writing, posting, interacting with readers, and everything related to this, because we want to.

In wanting this, we make our works public.

Some websites like AO3 allow us to choose if we'd like to "protect" our stories by keeping them out of reach of the unregistered users, but for the most part, everyone can search for our works, read them, and comment on them.

These are the terms and conditions. And yes, nobody really reads the terms and conditions before accepting them, but this doesn't give us a right to bitch about the consequences when they come a' knockin' at our door, does it?

Fuck around and find out, am I right?

Granted, there's comment and comment. If I, reader, come to you, author, and start insulting you, your family, your cow, and the interior designer who remodeled your kitchen, you have every right to call me all kinds of names (I wouldn't do that if I were the author, as it would mean debasing myself to the reader's level, but anyway) and slam-dunk my opinion into the trash.

(Yes, this happened to me. I've been insulted. One girl went as far as offering to, and I quote, "shit on your head, so that you close that sewer of a mouth". Context: I had commented on a story—not this girl's story: she was another reader, the author actually agreed with me—saying that I thought something was cacophonic; in Italian, this word sounds very similar to the verb cagare, which, indeed, means "to shit".)

Same thing if I, reader, come to you, author, and correct your grammar when there's absolutely no reason for me to do so, because your grammar is already correct.

(This happened to me, too. Many, many times. I know I've got an impeccable grammar in Italian; I even scored third in my age category at the nationwide Italian language Olympics when I wasn't even sixteen years old. I've been reading since I was, like, three or four, and "seriously" writing since I was thirteen. But people didn't like when I corrected their grammar, so they felt the need to come and correct mine. One memorable occasion was when a girl declared, in all seriousness, that the second singular person of the imperative of the verb fare must be always written as fa', with the apostrophe, and that my writing it as fai was wrong, because that was the second singular person of the indicative of fare. She ignored both that 1. the indicative and the imperative are the same exact thing in most cases, and 2. fa' and fai are the exact same thing as well, with the apostrophe representing the elision of the final i.)

Or, same as above, but exchanging grammar for, I don't know, a historical event, or a certain piece of information, or that kind of stuff in general, when you author were in the right and it's my sources that were wrong.

(An author, who was in university at the time, told me that she didn't know what inflation and spending power were, and so she hadn't accounted for them in her story. This happened after I mentioned those things when I pointed to her that you wouldn't hire an assassin in the 1960s with the same amount of money you would use nowadays. If I recall correctly, that author was majoring in a STEM field.)

(As a counterpoint, I was positive, for a long-ass time, that the hip bones were in fact a hip bone—meaning, that I should use the singular word, cresta iliaca, instead of the plural version, creste iliache. A reader corrected me on this, and I'm still thanking her today.)

You understand what I mean, right? Don't let me insult your intelligence by spoon-feeding you the meaning of my words.

But.

But.

If I, reader, come to you, author, and either correct your grammar when it's wrong, or a certain piece of information you chose to include in your story that is wrong, or whatever I decide to comment that could be perceived as negative—

—but I justify my point, cite my sources, maybe even linking them if possible, and keep my opinion contextualized and objective, you must at the very least lend me an ear and listen to what I have to say.

Never, in my nine years of roaming the fandom part of the Internet, have I ever written a comment on a fic saying something that I just pulled out of my ass, without checking first if there was any merit to my words. Never.

@zoyalannister can also vouch for this, as she's known me for eight of those nine years and witnessed many, if not all, of my altercations with my fellow Wattpad authors over my opinion of their story (which, allow me to clarify, they had literally asked me for—but again, even if they hadn't, their works were public and open for anyone to comment on, and I still would've been in the right).

Alas, it appears that many authors lack the self-awareness and self-criticism I believe are needed if you want to try your hand at writing, especially if you want to do it professionally.

And, good God, so do many readers.

Why, oh, why do some readers (some non-authors) go around proselitizing that people shouldn't tag authors in their negative reviews?!

Are they close personal friends with an author who doesn't like to be tagged in negative reviews of their books? Are they being paid to push this agenda? Do they have such a terrible relationship with criticism in every way, shape, or form that they feel like it's okay to get mad on someone else's behalf and dictate other people's actions?

These people like to say—parrot, is more like it—that negative reviews either don't benefit anyone, which is such an enormous pile of bullshit that I don't even know where to start dismembering it, or could only benefit the reader, essentially working as a way to help someone decide whether or not to read and/or buy that particular book.

I think negative reviews benefit both the author and the reader.

As an author, particularly as a Wattpad/AO3 author (but, if I understand correctly, self-published authors on Amazon can edit the digital version of their book with more or less the same ease), I cherish each and every correction comes my way, precisely because I can edit my text right away and, by doing that, make it better.

Aside from "small" corrections with regard to grammar or some other objective aspect of my fics, good, chunky, lenghty, justified, contextualized negative reviews in general help me rework my stories and make them better, both retroactively and for the future.

What I just said also applies to the flip side of the coin, when it's me, as a reader, writing the negative review.

Instead, with regards to reading negative reviews, even though I myself never look at reviews when deciding whether or not to add something to my already gargantuan TBR list, I can see why some people would rather read the reviews and survey the ratings before making that choice.

I should warn you, though, if you're one of these people, that very few reviews, be they positive or negative, can be taken at face value.

(In what follows, I will be talking almost exclusively about negative reviews, but everything I say can be applied to positive ones, as well.)

In my twenty-two years of age, I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that not everyone can truly read, and even fewer people can truly write, so the first problem you could run into is this: the person behind the review either understood fuck-all about the book they just read, or they did understand something but cannot put their opinion into words, or they didn't understand the book and cannot put their opinion into words.

The second problem is that some negative reviews are written with a specific purpose in mind, which is entertainment in some cases, clout in some others. Yet again, @zoyalannister knows how many times I barged into our Whatsapp chat to tell her that a SJM detractor on TikTok straight-up invented some stuff to rant about, subsequently getting views and likes and comments and general activity on their account.

Moral of the story: don't believe everything you see or hear about on the Internet, and always, always form your own opinion based on facts, not hearsay.

(Funnily enough, this is how I got hooked on SJM: I wanted to form my own opinion about her books. The rest is history.)

And, moral of the whole story:

Readers: as long as your opinion is not a personal insult to the author or even threatens to spill into that territory, and as long as the author didn't explicitly say that they don't want to be tagged in a negative review, don't ever restrain yourself from writing one and/or tagging the author, whatever other people might tell you.

Readers: stop speaking on authors' behalf. Not every single one of us will lose their mind if confronted with a negative review. Some of us are searching for just that. Let it be, as it should, an individual decision.

Readers: contrary to popular belief, you do not need to suggest an alternative route for all the things you comment negatively on. You do not need to sweeten the pill for the author with the proverbial spoonful of sugar. You do, however, need to explain the reasoning behind everything you say (or at least that's my opinion).

Readers: I will never block, slander, or insult you if you write me a negative review, even if you don't use the same courtesy towards me and your opinion is not justified in any way. In that case, I will only get mad and refute your every point, as I believe is my right to do.

Authors: don't be a bitch and listen to your readers, if they're making sense. Don't try to convince yourself that they're not making sense when they are.

Authors: look at your works with a judging eye. Be your first critic, be your own critic.

Authors: when facing a negative review, don't hide behind half-assed explanations or apologies or, God forbid, suspension of disbelief. If you fucked up, you fucked up. Cherish the reader who told you that, who maybe even told you how to fix it.

Authors: some reviews have to be destructive before they can be constructive. If there's mold on your bathroom ceiling, you don't just paint over it: you remove the mold first, and then paint over it.

Readers and authors: conduct yourself with dignity. Keep your cool, be level-headed, turn on your brain. And always, always, tell the truth.

Aaand I'm done.

A huge thank you (and congratulations) to everyone who got this far. Unfortunately, I'm everything but laconic.

I'd like to hear your thoughs about all this!

[aristoteliancomplacency]

The Classics mailing list is having another ‘how many languages should People know?’ discussion. (And it is actually a discussion this time! Not to jinx it But it has so far not descended into Oxbridge professors telling postgrad students that if they haven’t spent a year living abroad in specific European countries then they shouldn’t even be doing Classics).

And like, I’m never gonna contribute to that discussion on the mailing list because there is always the chance that you’ll set someone off and I genuinely cba to deal with that, but the discussion so far is missing actual practical solutions of any sort.

Here are some facts:

- Classics scholarship gets published in a lot of languages. It is absolutely the case that the majority of it is in a smaller group of languages.

- it would be super awesome and great if everyone was multilingual!

- Most scholars are not multilingual.

- difference circumstances make it more/less likely that someone will be fluent in a second language. This includes Country, school, class, etc.

- there is literally nothing to be gained from excluding people from the subject for not knowing more than one language.

- everyone would produce better scholarship if we could read everything written on the topic we’re researching.

- there are a not insignificant amount of instances in which something was published in a language other than English and then someone else comes along later and writes the same thing again but in English and it gets all the attention (and honestly leaves you wondering whether the author deliberately chose to ignore the non-English work bc srsly how do you write an entire fucking book and not be aware of someone else’s whole entire book on the same theme??)

- non-native English speakers are more likely to get papers rejected from English speaking journals.

- it is absolutely not reasonable to expect them to be spending so much of their time perfecting their knowledge of the foibles of English academic language.

- searching for Research is a skill. Knowing what terms to use and where to search is a skill. Knowing another language doesn’t actually mean you will be good at searching using that language.

- DeepL and even google translate are pretty good actually.

Here’s some thoughts:

Publishing: I’m currently co-editing a volume and I spent a lot of time working with one contributor bc it’s the first thing they’ve published in English. They’ve been a delight to work with. And honestly, yes, it has taken me more time to help them polish their chapter than for others, but it’s not even the chapter that’s taken the longest. Like, one of the chapters written by a native English speaker has been a way bigger headache for me.

I know everyone is overworked and underpaid and being asked to Peer Review Journal/Book submissions for free in their spare time, but also, some of us are very much happy to help others polish journal articles/chapters for free too. I’d rather do that than peer review shit, tbh.

Sure, in an ideal world we’d get paid for all this kind of work, but we do not live in an ideal world, other scholars can’t afford to pay us to do that and frankly, like, they shouldn’t have to be literally paying more money than others to stand a chance of getting published just because they’re having to write in a second/third/etc. language. Ideally universities or other bodies could fund that cost but whatever. No one is putting me in charge of a university budget anytime soon, so I’ll just be here helping people for free if they need it.

Language learning: I don’t care about what the ideal situation is. I care about what we can actually, usefully do. Sitting around complaining that universities should make x or y language mandatory is useless. And there will always be more languages that it would be useful to know.

What’s actually useful, and far easier to implement:

- teach people how to use DeepL and google translate. Get universities to *subscribe* to DeepL. Teach this as part of standard research methods. Make it clear even from undergrad that there is valuable scholarship available in other languages and that students are expected to Not Ignore It.

- resource share. What’s actually the best place to search for academic research on Y topic in X language? And what’s the word for X person/art style/literary genre in Y language? Even if someone wants to look at lit in different languages, they still have to know what to look for before they start.

- ??? Idk what to call this, but like, it would be really fuckin’ great if we could tag stuff in multiple languages. Like, it would be better if a user could search for, say ‘Iliad animal metaphors’ and have it turn up all Language results rather than having to run 10 different searches to cover a bunch of different languages (also see above, re: knowing how to successfully search is a language-specific skill). But without knowing how to fix that problem, we should still be sharing the knowledge of how to use translation tools + the best search engines per Language / area + reminding people ‘that ���look up that term in X language dictionary and then search for that’ is something they should be doing.

Like, there are already tools at our disposal that should make cross-language scholarship easier for everyone. Whether you know one or five languages. We’re just shit at using them/teaching them.

[scara94]

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Spoiler Free Review

Howdy folks, Please keep in mind that this review is just my opinion, and if you disagree with me that is absolutely fine, great even. However, please do not be offended if I do not like a book that you love or vice versa. Regardless if you would like to leave a reply then please do, but try to keep it as spoiler-free as you can. ------------------ Arthur Dent was just trying to save his house from being demolished to make way for a new road. Little did he know that the whole planet was about to be destroyed. He is saved, and taken on a bizarre journey through space where he meets some strange characters.

This was the first book I read this year and honestly I was a little disappointed with it. Now, I know that it is a very huge cult classic at this point and a lot of people absolutely love it. I’m not sure if I just expected it to be something else or whether I had just built it up in my head too much (I do tend to do this with a lot of things) possibly it was a bit of both. 

So, I am willing to admit that this may have just been my issue and not the books.

Pros

The humour. It did take me a little while to get used to his style of writing humour through the dialogue sections. However, Adams ability to make me laugh while he has insulted me or humanity in general is, as a fellow Brit, something I can only applaud him for. Marvin. AKA my son! I loved him so much. Once he was introduced I was much more invested in the story. Again, it ties into Adams sarcastic humour that he put into this book, but for those of you who have read this book, we can probably all agree that we all have Marvin days.

Low page count. Now, for someone who has suffered/suffers with dyslexia and has challenged herself to read more books this year, being able to finish a book within a couple of days is a great feeling. So, the fact that this book is so short was great for me.

Cons

Pacing. It was too short. Yes, yes. I know I just contradicted myself. Though, the fast-paced momentum of this book felt very disorientating. It got much better as the book went on, but I struggled to keep up with who was who and where we were. I understand, that is the point of the book, it is very abstract and crazy and that is definitely part of the appeal to a lot of people; it was just very overwhelming at the beginning. I would have loved some more time with the characters, but maybe I will get that in the later books.

Worldbuilding. Or, lack of it. I never really felt like I was immersed in their environment. I think, because I am not hugely versed into the sci-fi genre (I tend to stick to fantasy) their surroundings didn’t feel like I could picture myself there. World building is one of my favourite things about reading. I like to get a description of the world, feel as though I could be there with the characters. Maybe this is a bit of a personal preference issue rather than a book issue, but it didn’t get me as invested in the story as I would have liked to be.

Overall thoughts

I really enjoyed this book. Yes, I was initially disappointed, but mostly because I thought I would love this book and I didn't. However, it was a positive way to kick off my year of reading more books. I gave it 3/5 stars because I thought it was a good, light-hearted read; it made me laugh, which is always a plus. But, I am not desperate to continue the series right away. I will definitely be continuing it, just not right now.I would recommend this book to anyone who likes sarcasm or wants to try and get into sci-fi because it was pretty short and sweet, despite the cons I mentioned, it was a pretty easy and quick read. Sometimes that’s all you need.

[shummashum]

Klaus Goldstein Ch3 [1~5]

Previously on Ch2! Liz, who was summoned to the Headmaster's office at Remb's request, learned from him that an investigation team would be formed to retrieve the academy's stolen goods. Would this investigation proceed well?!

...attack?

okay… let me hear his lecture we already heard in Zeus' route though

those were the days alas, I'm already starting to hear that bgm

yes!! how on earth is he going to show up later during the romance session I'm fucking scared

but… that's true but the walkthrough says I have to choose the option of denial eeh,,

right right our mighty Emperor Klaus always has been nice and kind!!

…what? what did you say what you I think you've been out of your mind since yesterday you forgot? you forgot the Klaus Goldstein in K1 route?

erm… erm……… is this the correct interpretation? is this? the correct? interpretation??

He patted her on the head, saying he never expected to hear her say like that.

look look look look and you say he's a nice guy??

Just then, the bell rang, signaling the start of classes.

oh god it's history I'm already sleepy but if that's the topic of the class, I have to listen, because it's lore but history is a sleeping pill subject

all citizens are happy? I get it this kingdom is fucking sus all citizens are happy?? so fucking suspicious it can't be! it's clear that some trick was used maybe they were hypnotized on a national level

oh… they had enormous military strength they said that national power was based on military power no matter how much other kingdoms spent on the military budget, they couldn't compete? this is……

anyway now I figure out why the Daylight wage war they had no reason to sign a peace treaty with the Nighttime, they already had the upper hand

Black Dragons, huh it's just a name, right?

Overall Review: it was an ideal lecture! if a person like this teaches the class, the class will be enjoyable but now that the evaluation standards are tight and strict, he's suitable as a major professor… it would be better to take classes from more laid back one when it comes to liberal arts but honestly it was more fun that I expected

Liz sent words of admiration to Klaus, but he denied it.

I guess so it's not easy to provide understandable information to people with different levels of knowledge and perspectives besides Klaus is a genius, it won't be easy for someone like that to process information so that average students can understand it

Anyway they headed to the library. Al and Cae were already there waiting for everyone.

uh…… I got a feeling those nocturnal idiots will show themselves up late again this time

what you know it's not wrong

Anyway, she decided to look for books to find information about the Daylight before the agreed time.

I have no good memories of the library though you're not getting sucked in again, are you?

And here comes Cae

but well I'm a little reluctant to tell him the curse and labyrinth will be mentioned Inevitably because she investigated the Daylight for Luci's escape, and Cae had something to do with it somehow if she talks to him about something like this, he might get scratched?

As expected, Liz revealed all of her intentions to him, but surprisingly, Cae responded calmly.

ooh… technology

Anyway, he took out a book from there and handed it to her.

well there's no way he didn't read it anyway thank you! she'll use this well

this is a bit troublesome even though he didn't commit it, he got entangled just because he shared the same blood anyway, does feeling responsible, even when it's not essentially his duty, prove that he's a kind person but I know there's a curveball in his route… I know he's not the character who can be simply described as 'kind'

anyway he's throwing in bits and pieces of his backstory okay! you wait I guess I'll be able to play your route in the second half of this year

[felinemotif]

3, 12, 23, 27 from the book ask game pls? <33

3. what’s a book you were pleasantly surprised by?

nightbitch by rachel yoder! themes of female rage and capitalism and motherhood. a middle-class woman convinced she's turning into a dog. about 200 pages, witty.

i really wasn't sure what to expect from it; it was a purchased on a whim because i liked the title. surprisingly pleasant. 3.5 stars. end wasn’t as strong**

12. have you read books in more than one language?

yes, spanish and english! just depends on which the original language was between those two because meaning can be lost in translation and if i can, i like to read in the language the author wrote it. but there are some books that i have loved so much, i'll read it in both.

do swedish language textbooks count?

23. what’s your favorite book that’s been assigned for class?

i love frankenstein. i actually got a special edition paperback of it in the mail maybe a year ago? it's very pretty.

after reading it, i did a deep dive on the author's life. mary shelley was a very fascinating woman.

27. any “unpopular” book opinions?

...i judge books by their covers. if it doesn't have an interesting cover, it doesn't grab my attention the same way and i'm less likely to want a physical copy on my shelf.

if the book sounds interesting, i'll still read it; just on library loan or as an ebook.

also, i don't think everything needs a sequel or a series. some things are better as a standalone.

hmm... i don't think authors or their team should publicly respond to book reviews. i bought piper cj's debut novel the night and the moon before it was available in stores -- i was following her journey as an up and coming self-published author pretty closely because i found her 'rapid series release' to be an interesting approach (the night and the moon was written in, if i remember correctly, less than a week), and was happy to support her novel before it hit the shelves.

piper also talked a lot about how meaningful the book was to her, as she in a way came out to her family through them, which caused her pain (she was estranged from her family).

plus, it was said to be a sapphic fantasy that touches on childhood trauma-- all things i'm interested in.

this was a little while ago; i still haven't read it because the author and a woman later revealed to be her editor responded to a very politely worded 2 star review in a manner i felt was inappropriate. the editor attacked the reviewer and piper, the author, responded by mocking the books the reviewer gave five stars in the past.

totally insane behavior esp bc one of the books was about the columbine shooting.

piper did apologize on youtube after, and said she reached out to the reviewer but her and her editor's actions was the pushing point of so much harassment towards the reviewer that they had to deactivate their social account(s).

piper's marketing of the book was that she didn't send it out to publishers (she self-published and then later re-published) because she couldn't take rejection towards a story that was so personal to her, and one that caused her to lose her family.

it bums me out tbh; i was truly looking forward to supporting her series despite knowing that it would come with many errors and that it wouldn't be the most well-written thing i could read; i just wanted to support the author herself.

but her actions, though she hasn't repeated them since, really convinced me that authors and their publishing team should never respond to reviews, good or bad.

reviews are for the readers; authors can read them, but i don't think they should publicly discuss them.

sorry for the rant jaja bookish drama is something i enjoy digging into with some snacks and wine and in this case, i was there while it all went down.

talk books with me