#This colony is great I'm having so much fun <3

[pushing500]

I didn't know that the anxiety trait gave colonists panic attacks. Aw, poor Vu. At least Candlelight was there to help calm her down.

Irwin wants everyone in the colony to have a good time, which is all good and well, except that the food we're binging on is only edible by about three colonists. Everyone else is gonna be living off tea and coffee for two days.

We all headed down to the riverside for the feast, which was very eventful and lovely (well, lovely for some people- Candlelight couldn't walk for a few days, but that's what she gets for getting into a fight with someone who is actually capable of melee combat).

Why does nobody want to take the only colonist I actively dislike?? I don't want to deliberately accidentally get him killed, but it's getting to the point where I think it might be my only option...

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#rimworld #gracie plays #art #my art #traditional art #rimworld art #unpolished art #tw panic attack #As frustrating as the feast was I'm glad they used my riverside picnic area #It's very pretty and I like it #The only person who uses it regularly is (ugh) Wookshys #That's just because the table is near where he does his fishing and he eats lunch at it #Looking forward to Kaz and Fafo's wedding!!! #Hoping for an Impid baby or two in the near future <3 <3 #Baby Andy is going to need some friends after all #Candlelight is awful at melee #As is the norm for most t'au I suppose but Candlelight's not even fire caste #And Laurie is a very large and scary woman who DOES know how to fight #This colony is great I'm having so much fun <3 #Hope y'all are having a good time too!!! #The Animist Alliance

[poetrysmackdown]

hi hiii i wanted to say that your account is so refreshing to see, esp with the passion you have for the arts. as someone who's been meaning to read (and write) more poetry, do you have any recommendations? some classics that everyone and their mothers know? perhaps some underrated pieces that changed you? or even just authors you like, I'm very open to suggestions :]]

Hi! Thank you so much for this kind ask :) So exciting that you’re looking to delve deeper into reading and writing! I had to take a little time to answer this because my thoughts were all over the place lol.

For a review of notable/classic poems/poets, I honestly just recommend looking at lists online or, hell, just binging Wikipedia pages for different countries’ poetry if that’s something you’re into, just to get a sense of the chronology. I read one of those little Oxford Very Short Introductions on American Poetry and thought it was pretty good, but online is quicker if you’re just searching for poets or movements to hone in on. Poetry Foundation also has lots of resources, in addition to all the poems in their database. I guess my one big classic recommendation would have to be Emily Dickinson (<3), but really the best move is just to find a poet you already enjoy and then look around to see who their peers were/are, who they were inspired by, who they’ve maybe translated here and there, etc. and follow it down the line as far as you can.

For some personal recs, here are some collections I’ve really enjoyed over the past two years or so. Bolded favorites, and linking where select poems from the book have been published online. But also, if you want a preview of a couple poems from another of the books to see if they interest you, DM me and I can send them over! You can also feel free to pilfer through my poetry tag for more stuff lol

Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon trans. Don Mee Choi

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo

DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi

Hardly War by Don Mee Choi

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier

Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Mouth: Eats Color—Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-Translations, & Originals by Sawako Nakayasu

The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam trans. W.S. Merwin and Clarence Brown

The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright

This Journey by James Wright

God’s Silence by Franz Wright

Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (the translation I read was by Alfred Corn—I thought it was great, but idk if there are better ones out there!)

DMZ Colony, Hardly War, Dictee, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, and partially Whereas are all book-length poems with some prose poetry and varying levels of weirdness/denseness/multilingualism—if you were to pick one to start with, I’d say do Don’t Let Me Be Lonely or Whereas. Mouth: Eats Color is some experimental translations of Japanese modernist poet Chika Sagawa, with other translations and some of Nakayasu’s original stuff mixed in—it's definitely a bit disorienting but ultimately I remember having such fun with it, as much fun as Nakayasu probably had making it. It’s a book that emphasizes co-creation and a spirit of play, and completely changed my attitude towards translation.

If you’re less interested in that kind of formal fuckery stuff though (I get it), can’t go wrong with the other books! Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings is the one I read most recently, and it’s great—Harjo also featured in Round 1! Franz Wright also featured, and God's Silence is the collection which "Night Walk" comes from. James Wright (father of Franz) is one of my favorite poets of all time, though his poetry isn’t perfect. Even so, I’m honestly surprised he’s not doing numbers on Tumblr—Mary Oliver was a big fan of his, even wrote her "Three Poems for James Wright" after his death.

I mentioned in another post that one of my favorite poets is Paul Celan, so I’ll also recommend him here. I read Memory Rose into Threshold Speech which is a translated collection of his earlier poems, but it’s quite long if you’re just getting to know him as a poet—fortunately, both Poetry Foundation and Poets.org have a ton of his poems in their collections. There’s also an article by Ilya Kaminsky about him titled “Of Strangeness That Wakes Us” (!!!!!) that’s a great place to start, and is honestly kind of my whole mission statement when I’m reading and writing poetry. Looking at the books I’ve recommended above, a lot of them share feelings of separateness or alienation—from others, from oneself, from one’s country, from language—that breed strange, private modes of expression. That tends to be what I’m drawn to personally, and that’s some of what Kaminsky talks about.

Sorry of the length of this—I hope it's useful as a jumping-off point! And if you or anyone ends up exploring any of these poets, let me know what you think! If folks wanna reply with recommendations themselves too that'd be great :)

#ask #not a poll #i originally was going to link to previews of the books directly on this post but for some reason I suddenly feel very paranoid about #copyright LMAO. ik this blog is already like copyright infringement central but I feel like I can at least make an argument for the polls #being fair use lol. in the way that i could not for the pdf previews I made. (i also have a full pdf of hardly war if anyone wants lol) #and i know it's not entirely rational bc this is tumblr and nobody looks on tumblr. but i'm not used to having this many followers lol so i #admittedly just getting anxious about silly things #but please please feel free to DM me! or send an ask off anon #discussion

[thethirdromana]

In honour of Doctor Who's 60th birthday, here are 60* things that I like about less popular** Doctor Who stories.

(*in multiple posts because I'm falling foul of the character limit)

(**IMDB rating of less than 7/10)

1. Susan is great in The Sensorites. She's at her absolute best in stories like this where she gets to be genuinely a bit alien and a bit weird.

2. "So," said someone at the BBC, "we're going to produce an allegory for different political systems, using insects. Choreographed by a mime artist. On a budget of about £2.50." The Web Planet might not entirely have succeeded, but my god, you have to love that they tried.

3. They introduced Jamie, the best companion, in The Highlanders! How is does this have less than a 7/10 rating, what is wrong with you people. It's Jamie.

4. I applaud the utter bonkersness of The Underwater Menace, and Patrick Troughton really gives it socks.

5. The Wheel in Space is proper 60s sci-fi: Servo-Robots, x-ray lasers, radio beams! I can practically smell Penguin mass-market paperbacks thinking about it. And with the introduction of Zoe, it completes my all-time favourite TARDIS team.

6. The Dominators contains the Quarks, who are adorable. They weren't supposed to be, but it doesn't matter.

7. Zoe is still relatively new to the TARDIS, but she has heaps to do in The Krotons. Nice having a female companion who's written as smart and capable.

8. We have entered the 70s, so with Colony in Space, we get Social Issues. Especially an Evil Mining Corporation, which are always fun.

9. More Social Issues in The Mutants, but this time they're paired with big sci-fi ideas. Ancient tablets! Strange life cycles! Love how much is going on here.

10. The Time Monster is like the Eurovision of Doctor Who. Deeply silly, but what would Doctor Who be without silliness? I'm sorry about Jo's coccyx too.

11. I love that they returned to Peladon in The Monster of Peladon, especially with the 50-year time jump. I'd like to see that kind of follow-up more often.

12. Is it not cool to love K9 any more? Well, I like my Doctor Who with a dose of silliness, and The Invisible Enemy delivered that. Every time traveller needs a robot dog.

13. The design of the Seers in Underworld is excellent, I love a brass dome.

14. Doctor Who doesn't have enough giant squidmonsters looming on the horizons. I'm glad the The Power of Kroll does something to address the deficit.

15. The Creature from the Pit gave us the line "a teaspoon and an open mind", and I appreciate it for that at least.

16. Romana wears one of her best of many splendid outfits in The Horns of Nimon.

17. I liked all the arch dialogue between the Doctor, Enlightenment and Persuasion in Four to Doomsday.

18. Heathrow airport is an underrated setting. I also appreciate how Time-Flight prominently features Concorde, making it far more 80s than they could ever have planned.

19. I don't intend this to be damning with faint praise (even though it probably sounds like it) but my favourite thing about Arc of Infinity is that we get a little jaunt through 80s Amsterdam. I do love a tram.

20. Babyfaced Martin Clunes doing his spoiled princeling thing in Snakedance is enjoyably disconcerting.

21. Terminus is tense and scary and bleak. Another one that I'd expected to be more highly rated.

22. Warriors of the Deep gives us a very solid base under siege. Silurians + Cold War is a winning combination.

23. Landing in a modern village doing a historical re-enactment in The Awakening is a witty touch.

24. I can’t say I enjoyed the idea of the Doctor’s violent moods in The Twin Dilemma, but I have to commend it as a punchy way to introduce the new regeneration.

25. The Mark of the Rani should surely get some love just for introducing the Rani: camp, delightful, iconic.

26. Herbert turning out to be HG Wells in Timelash is a lovely twist and handled well.

27. The Trial of a Time Lord is so grand and ambitious. If the show hadn't been struggling in general at this point, it would be among the all-time greats.

28. With its colour-coded gangs and faux-urban slang, Paradise Towers is gloriously of its time in a way that currently feels quite naff, but that I suspect will be fascinating to revisit in about 30 years.  

29. Delta and the Bannermen is action-packed and has one of the best titles in 80s Who.

30. Possibly the most terrifying moment in all of Doctor Who is Kane's face melting in Dragonfire. This series is nothing if it doesn't send children running for safety behind the sofa.

31. Got to love it when Who gets aggressively anti-Thatcher, and they never did it more than in The Happiness Patrol.

#doctor who #doctor who 60th anniversary #dw 60th #long post

[meanieinspace]

So the Fallout show was good. It wasn't like amazing or mind-blowing or anything, maybe playing it a little too safe and doing the thing that writers usually do where everything fits together a little too neatly at the end, but it was good.

One of the problems with talking about Fallout the Series is that I can't really imagine what it would be like to watch it without being into the games, so lets start there (it's gonna be a lot before we get to the show).

If you would ask me what the best Fallout game I played was, I would have to say Fallout: New Vegas, like not even the Honest Hearts DLC can ruin it for me (edit: that's a really bad way to put it like who am I to let the game be ruined by that for me it's not directed at me, what I was trying to say is that I try to ignore it because it's really fucking racist and it does reflect negatively on the entire game). But one of the great things about New Vegas is that it's depth and fun comes from being an open world video game, where you can engage with the factions and the world on your own - and that is not really adaptable. Fallout 3 & 4 on the other hand have this disdain for history and space that is a real liability if a big chunk of the gameplay is navigating the world - it's not just that the world doesn't make any sense (who are the raiders raiding? why is the most historic event of the last 200 years a robot going on a killing spree? etc etc) - it's that it seems to be designed for a story in the vein of Gulliver's Travels, where you visit a bunch of cooky, satiric locations, and then move on; a linear travel, not a repeated navigation of the same world. It's the open world gameplay combined with the writing only accounting for singular, disconnected events and encounters that make Fallout 3 & 4 fall apart if you play them as much as intended.

Which is to say, for all their weak writing, they are much better suited for an adaptation into an adventure TV show - and they do have their strong points, even if those are uneven. I would love to go in depth about what I hate and love about these two games, because there is a lot in both categories, but I'm going to limit myself to what I think is relevant to talk about Fallout the show.

So Fallout 3 is a coming of age story - and if you engage with it on that level everything else kind of clicks into place. Like you're 19, you find out that everybody lied to you your whole life and you have to go out into a hostile world because your Dad has abandoned you, a world that abides by nonsensical rules, a world in which you can't rely on anybody to make your decisions for you and people talk on the radio about what you've been up to. I think that is a mindset easy to connect to and if you do it reframes the world and the game into something much more meaningful (but still at times badly thought out and racist).

Fallout 4 has it's good writing too, but it's much harder to appreciate. Personally I love replaying the Far Harbor DLC in survival mode over and over again, they kind of nailed that. But. In the main game, between all the settler colonialism (what were they thinking making the settlement system about literal colonial settlers? with making you murder all the raiders and supermutants and then, and then calling the supermutants greenskins? wtf??) and whitewashing there isn't really anything to salvage. But there are two/three moments that stand out: The Brotherhood of Steel and the moment you first get into the Institute (and the parts of Deacon's dialogue that don't relate to his atrociously written backstory). When you first enter the underground facility of the Institute in Fallout 4 you get to listen to a long monologue by its leader, and as the elevator lowers to the point where you can see the brightly lit, squeaky clean green and white main area of the Institute, he says something along the lines of "what we have to do at the surface, the killer robots and everything, that isn't us - this place right here, the people here, the work we do, that's us" and it's not subtle that that is horseshit. Like, you treat your in-group well and exploit whoever doesn't belong to that in-group however it's convenient to you? And you want to be judged by the former and not the latter? You're not special. Every political system is like that. But what I feel critical discussions sometimes miss, is that this bare-faced admission is not hypocrisy, it's a feature, an offer. We take care of our own and we do take care of our enemies. Having the leader of the Institute outright say it is not like a feat of great writing or anything, but it's a nice moment, having it uttered in a way that is an obviously ghoulish justification for his crimes, but you can see that it works precisely because it's obvious.

If you do the Brotherhood of Steel quests, there is a side quest at their base that is about how somebody has secretly trapped feral ghouls in the cellar of one of the buildings, and is feeding them. I haven't played it in a while, so my recollection isn't going to be super accurate, but you have to snoop around the base and talk to people to find out what's going on. And there is this one girl who is a gunner on a vertibird and when you talk to her about the ghouls and everything she goes on and on about how fun it is to kill the ghouls and how great it feels to swoop in on a vertibird and just mow down everything and how beautiful that is. When you find the guy who feeds the ghouls, he does it because he feels sorry for them. It's probably not as dramatic as I remember, but the monologue of the gunner gets at something that I honestly didn't expect the writers of Fallout 4 to be able to get at, with how almost everything else in the game is set up. So the Brotherhood murders ghouls and synths on sight, this is a racially motivated genocide policy by the Brotherhood, the problem is just, when you play the game, it does not care at all about racism. The Ghouls and Synths are a vague handwave-y reference to real world racism and slavery but there isn't really put enough work into it for it to be a real analogy. Like the game is designed for you to spend half of it killing raiders, ghouls and supermutants for settler's Lebensraum but now, with the Brotherhood, suddenly you're supposed to care? It just doesn't work. The monologue of the gunner at the Brotherhood base on the other hand? That works. It's not just a celebration of violence, it casts the mass destruction and cruelty of war as spectacle. At the end of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin writes about the aestheticization of politics and gives examples of fascist poets that compare sounds and sights of destruction in war to orchestras and paintings. The thing is, I don't really remember if the dialogue with the gunner really is all that, but it does get at it. It glorifies, to very loosely paraphrase Benjamin, war as the highest expression of the mobilized capitalistic industrial forces of production, an end goal that in it's beauty and glory justifies all. Which is a core part of what Fallout is about, and this quest, that's easy to miss and not very dramatic, makes the case for the Brotherhood being a continuation of the very same fascist drive that destroyed Fallout's pre-war america much more successfully than anything else in Fallout 4, 3 or New Vegas. There are many signs that a society may be fascist, but waxing lyrically about how beautiful the machinery of war is in action has got to be up there. And again, haven't played it in a while, so I'm probably exaggerating here and there is probably no "waxing" in the dialogue, but the point is casting war as this beautiful industrial project the productive population is working towards. And I'm pretty sure it at least successfully hints at that. Because at the end of the day, Fallout's Brotherhood of Steel is fascist first and foremost in its relation to technology, as something that has to be procured, protected and harnessed by the righteous for the cause, which is nothing but violent expansion.

Anyway, now I have spent a lot of words on two parts of Fallout 4 that probably take only like 30 seconds to watch in succession on youtube, and definitely aren't worth playing the game for, but I did it so that you can understand what my reaction was, when, in the Fallout show, Maximus entered the scene as a fanatic believer in a Brotherhood that not only tramples him, but regards him as not even good enough to be cannon fodder - a fanatic believer who is fully aware of that fact. A Brotherhood that nonetheless actively seeks to produce people like him, who are fanatic because it's the only thing left to them. A Brotherhood with Elders who are dorky monks that preach about how true virtue, the only virtue that counts, is wanting to die for them. A Brotherhood that explicitly profits as much from the destruction as the pre-war corporations. And, to get back to Fallout 3, how I reacted when Lucy had to go out to come of age in "the real world" even though she is already very much of age. How her father and Moldaver talked to her.

Yes, my thesis statement is that the Fallout show takes the best parts of Fallout 3 & 4 and turns them into a Hero's Journey.

And it's like a bit boring (how interesting can a Hero's Journey ever really be? despite all my high minded bs it's still entertainment before all else (which is okay I like to be entertained but...)) but it's still good. I mean maybe it's just because I expected so much worse, but whatever. I think I'm probably going to go into more detail in a future rb, once I have rewatched the show, there is kind of a lot to talk about and I'm not sure how to do it yet and how solid my first impression really was.

#fallout #fallout show #fallout 4 #which is why i am raider overboss even though that is such a waste of time long live the disciples #im a robber #the peoples new california republic #the bear and the brotherhood

[electronickingdomfox]

"Mudd's Angels" review

Published in 1978, and written by J. A. Lawrence, who continued the episode novelizations after James Blish' death. I'm only reviewing the short novel included: "The business, as usual, during altercations". Since the rest are just the novelizations of the two Mudd episodes of the series. Usually, if Mudd is in there, I know it's going to be fun, and this was no exception.

Spoilers under the cut:

Starfleet faces a sudden shortage of dilithium crystals, and if nothing is done about it, it will soon become totally inoperative. So of course the Excelsior the Enterprise is tasked with the investigation. Kirk starts interrogating the miners of several colonies, and finds out they've made contracts to sell all their dilithium to suspicious-sounding companies: The British East India Company, The Yukon Fur Trading Company, The Great Western Railway Company... All the miners seem to have found strangely complacent wives as well. It becomes evident who's behind all this speculation, once all the fake companies can be traced to the same planet: Mudd's planet, where he was last abandoned among the androids.

Upon visiting the planet, they're met by Mudd (actually a Mudd android), and invited to the Taj Mahal he's built for himself in there. He has also produced a lot of Uhura androids (called Aruhus), because he liked her that much. Unfortunately for Kirk, Mudd hasn't done anything technically illegal, but they still have to chase him to solve the shortage. The real Mudd has escaped the planet in one of the many spaceships he built using the Stella androids, aptly named "The Interstella", "The Stella Sapphire", "Evening Stella" and so on.

After this comes some very crazy stuff. The Enterprise follows Mudd and his cargo of dilithium beyond the Galactic Barrier, the dilithium causes an entire galaxy to explode (not our galaxy, but still) and everyone is sent back in time, to a point before Mudd started his evil schemes. In the end, Mudd is sent to trial before a court of his own androids, who in the meanwhile have established an independent government. And sentenced for the crimes he has committed (though actually, he hasn't committed them yet)... Well, it's complicated. Time-travel shenanigans.

This is the first truly comedic novel I've encountered, and as I said, it's pretty fun, and there's lots of absurd, witty humor. One has to suspend disbelief at some things, like the Enterprise and its crew surviving the goddamn explosion of an entire galaxy. But given the tone of the novel, it's forgivable. And some sections, like the trial, drag a bit too much, but without becoming boring. There's also quite a lot of funny moments with Chekov. He's chastised by Kirk for being drunk. He's hypnotized by McCoy to explore his subconscious, since Chekov is believed to be the most similar to Mudd of the crew (the poor guy). And finally, he turns completely nuts while crossing the Barrier, channels his ancient Tartar ancestors, and kicks Kirk out of the Captain's chair.

Spirk Meter: 3/10* Or rather, Mcspirk. After the galactic explosion, Kirk wakes up and sees Mudd's mug in front of his face. That makes him conclude that he's in hell, and condemned to watch Harry for all eternity. But then he hears Spock's voice. And oh, suddenly there's a piece of heaven in hell! And then, McCoy comes into his field of vision, and it's twice the heaven! It's just a little thing, but well, take it as you like.

*A 10 in this scale is the most obvious spirk moments in TOS. Think of the back massage, "You make me believe in miracles", or "Amok Time" for example.

#star trek tos #star trek novels #novel review #star trek #mcspirk #harry mudd

[shkika]

ABSOLUTELY do ponder on early moon like literally anything yu wanna ramble about

Like... I wonder like the ceremonies n stuff would there be different kinds??? Would they have stuff like Christmas?? would they rope iterators into it too?? [Would probably depend on the ancients the iterator is around but pffshsh] How would the ancients have reacted if idk the solution was found when they were still around how are iterators built THEYRE silly questions I think

Completely random one too I wonder how pebbles got into his like interests originally like why did he decide to think abt idk poetry n history. What a silly guy

Early Moon would be so fun to explore. I heavily doubt she would be prickly or anything, but I do think she'd be more work oriented and sciency and less interested in peoples feelings. She was a little more like Pebbles. Strict and disciplined and not here to waste your time or to let you waste hers.

And!

It'd be lovely if her endless patience and kindness came from the experience of being so old. She's talked to and helped so many other iterators (outside her local group too), she started being considered a teacher you can rely on. And I think that's very sweet. What time is there really to waste? So many cycles have passed and she has many more to endure.

When she was very very young it'd be fun to imagine if she had genuine respect and even admiration for her parents.

Then as time goes on it sours. More and more until we reach Saint campaign times where she genuinely despises them with all she's got. IT almost feels like Moon blames them for her collapse more than she blames Pebbles (at that current time). Truly great.

Moon misc I'd like to share is that the queen is petty to me <3

I just think it's funny and it's vaguely based off the fact that it's SUPER easy to get her to NOT want to talk to you AT ALL in game. Even call you little tormentor and be passive aggressive every way that she can. It's sad, but also funny. The queen is just petty!!

'How would the ancients have reacted if idk the solution was found when they were still around."- Sliver did that! It was catastrophic and awful <3

I cannot speak for ancients' traditions, I imagine that colonies often had different ones depending on region! They can have a different government structures so I don't see why having different celebrations would be off the list.

And lastly as for why Pebbles got into art and history? Maybe that's just me, but some interests just click with you! I'm not sure why I love birds so much for example either. Perhaps there is a reason, like he does REALLY wish he lived through older time periods like Moon did. So he makes up with learning all about them instead. Either way the lil Pebs brain just clicked with those subjects I imagine and ?? good for him.

#ask #rain world #kiki rambles #anonymous #pinkavtomation #also dear anon!!! #you sent another ask about worrying u were rude #u arent its okay!! #Im happy to provide moon rambles #im glad you are interested hehehoho #all is good <3

[booksandchainmail]

3, 4 and 20 for the end-of-year book asks?

3. What were your top five books of the year?

with the caveat that favorites are hard:

Furious Heaven, by Kate Elliott. Alexander the Great in space, nicely hefty space opera/military scifi. I've though about this book more than maybe any non-web serial book in the past couple years. I have a playlist for it. Persephone Lee blorbo of all time. I need to remember to keep reading Kate Elliott, her stuff is mostly intimidatingly long but I've loved every book of hers I've read.

To Shape a Dragon's Breath, by Moniquill Blackgoose. After hatching a dragon, a Native American girl is forced to attend a colonial dragonriders school. This book was so perfectly targeted to me, I'm a sucker for books where people raise dragons. And the worldbuilding! Such an interesting alt-history, and such a fun magic system that is mostly actual chemistry/physics. This is one where I also got really really invested in the side characters, Theod's arc in particular hit me really hard. But it's also great to have a book (not even a super long book!) where I can say things like "I'm interested in the main character's older brother's girlfriends plotline about inventing long-range airships", and have that level of engagement across a wide cast. Also, this book has the perfect title in ways that become clear partway through.

Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. After Earth collapses, it's terraforming experiments live on. The best part of reading for the Hugo awards has been getting to find Adrian Tchaikovsky's work. I love this book (and the series I'm using it as a proxy for) deeply, the kind of science fiction so sweeping and devastating and heartbreakingly compassionate it makes me cry.

The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera. An odd novel about a man who has decided not to be a chosen one. I keep turning this one over in my head, it's a strange book in genre and tone, but I think very effectively. It's not so much of a personal choice as the others on this list, but it had real weight and power to me. One where I posted a bunch of quotes, and have more I want to share.

He Who Drowned the World, by Shelley Parker-Chan. A genderqueer retelling of the founding of the Ming dynasty. The first one is one of my top books of all time, and this was a worthy sequel. Great character work, and great complicated messy relationships and tangled sexuality and gender.

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

So many good new authors! I listed out twelve who I enjoyed but that didn't seem in the spirit of this question. Moniquill Blackgoose and Vajra Chandrasekera both made it on to my top list with their first books. I'd also add CSE Cooney, both her novel and short fiction are excellent and I love the way she uses language.

20. What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

Probably He Who Drowned the World? I loved the first book so much, this was one of the few books I preordered instead of getting through the library. And I'd say it lived up to it, maybe not quite as good but the first book set such a high bar.

Other choice would be Some Desperate Glory, which I got obsessed with from prerelease material. Unfortunately I overhyped it in my head, it would have had to be hundreds of pages longer to have what I wanted. Even so it was excellent, but I'd like to come back to it with clearer expectations because I think I'd appreciate it more.

#furious heaven #the saint of bright doors #to shape a dragons breath #children of time #he who drowned the world #books

[whovianwatchingstartrek]

A Whovian Watches Star Trek for the First Time: Part 092 - Trip and T'Pol have a Child?!

Star Trek: Enterprise - Season 4 Episode 20 - Demons

We open with some humans in suits watching over a baby Vulcan. Why they're doing this, is left a mystery, at least for now. After the intro we find out Enterprise has once again returned to Earth, to better formalise the alliance created in the Romulan Arc. We get some fun banter about how the person giving out the speech left out Enterprise's involvement, and everything seems fine and happy! That is until a wounded human gives T'Pol a tube containing hair, saying "They're going to kill her".

Phlox cross references the hair's DNA and it appears that it's the child of Trip and T'Pol. How did this happen? T'Pol hasn't been pregnant at all, and it appears they're both just as confused as I am. Apparently though, T'Pol has Vulcan senses to tell that the DNA result is accurate.

Starfleet Command however, wants to keep the information secret, as it could result in human Xenophobic factions derailing the alliance conference, so the investigation into this is going slowly. But, because Archer is more eager, so he asks Reed to contact Harris to get things going faster. According to Harris, the woman who gave T'Pol the hair is part of a Xenophobic movement called Terra Prime, who killed her off because she was trying to leave. Apparently the governor organising the human conference is also a former member of Terra Prime, and Archer uses this information

We then cut to the suit guys, presumably Terra Prime, on the moon, however they don't give us much insight into their plans, however it's clear that whatever they're planning, it's already in motion. Later in the episode we also see the main suit guy watching a speech from what appears to be a genocidal warlord from the aftermath of World War III. World War 3 has been mentioned a couple times before, but I think this is the first time that the show has given me any information surrounding the Third World War, and I'm curious to see if we'll ever get some more lore details about that.

In med-bay we get a really cute scene with Trip asking Phlox as much as he can about the baby! It's really cute seeing his father instincts activate.

We're given a Sub-Plot about Travis meeting up with an Ex, who's now a Journalist. It's not the most interesting sub-plot in the world, but Travis is just such an under-utilised character that I'm happy he's being given anything to do.

The Crew through various means, manage to narrow their investigations down to a mining colony on the moon, and Trip and T'Pol volunteer to investigate undercover, and are given temporary jobs at the colony to do their mission. Trip pretty much instantly gets pulled into Terra Prime's recruitment within moments of arriving. It's kinda wild that Terra Prime's rhetoric is only a couple word changes away from current day real world right wing rhetoric. This is the kind of allegory that makes Sci-fi as genre really work. Anyways, Trip goes on to Infiltrate Terra Prime, but our duo have been outplayed. T'Pol is shot while doing her own investigations, and Trip is exposed while he's infiltrating their meeting.

Also apparently the universal translators have started malfunctioning. Apparently, Travis's journalist GF is a spy from Terra Prime who informed the leadership about Enterprise's mission.

Trip and T'Pol are captured and sent to Terra Prime's leaders, and apparently the entire Lunar Colony is a space ship, which is now taking flight, and Enterprise goes into pursuit. The ship heads to a facility on Mars, and takes over a weapon system used to redirect comets, and sends out a threatening message to earth, which serves as our cliffhanger.

I really enjoyed this episode, I loved it's racism allegories, especially as I mentioned before parallels in Terra Prime's Rhetoric. It's writing around Trip and T'Pol was great. I can't wait to see how all of this finishes up.

Comparing my Enjoyment of this Episode with a Doctor Who Universe Story of the Same Title

Doctor Who - Season 8 Serial 5 - The Dæmons

A nice little jaunt to the Third Doctor Era, with The Dæmons, from 1971. Not an exact title match, but close enough. The Dæmons (Which going forward I'm just going to spell with an e, it's easier) is very well loved serial in Classic Who fandom.

The Demons one of the rare nice interceptions between Doctor Who as a Sci-Fi show, and fantasy elements. It's one that very much plays with the classic "Sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic" idiom.

Keeping the Summary brief, basically some Archaeologists have uncovered a Bronze Age Tomb, Which the Master intends to crack open to unleash an Alien Called Azal, which is the in-universe inspiration behind the Devil, and it's up to the Doctor and UNIT to stop him.

As wild as a plot summary of "The master tries to summon Satan" sounds, and while it is played with that very specific 70's Who flavour of Camp, it still also manages to be pretty subdued. It's atmosphere is amazing, the direction of the serial is dark and mysterious and absolutely treats it's sufficiently advanced technology as magic. As serial it has kind of the same vibes as the Hammer Horror movies, and really starts the whole Gothic horror sci-fi hybrid direction that a lot of the Early 4th Doctor era would decide to follow.

Roger Delgado's performance as the Master is at it's best here, even if his take on the Character isn't normally my cup of tea, and Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor is also on point here. This is serial a great showcase of the kind of Mentor/Assistant relationship between the Third Doctor and Jo Grant as a companion. I do however have to say that the UNIT boys are not given much to do here, even if this story do give us the absolutely classic "Chap with the wings over there, Five rounds rapid." line.

To pick one story over the other though, I'm going to have to go with Doctor Who's The Daemons as the better one. Enterprise's Demons was great, but it did feel mostly like set up for the finale to come, where as Doctor Who's Daemons was a complete story in it's own right, and hits on a sub-genre that I love, and is just directed in a way that you don't often see from Sci-Fi.

#whovian watching star trek #enterprise #star trek #star trek enterprise #star trek ent #star trek: enterprise #ent

[theriverbeyond]

Ok I'm recommending the unbroken by C.L Clark. I was so ready for this book to be good, everyone said it was an amazing deconstruction of colonialism and the monarchy. Absolutely was not. They ended the book in basically the same place they started, except for the main character was allowed to switch sides four times even though her whole thing is loyalty. The entire plot is driven by on character with the power of a foot soldier making bad decisions. Which sure sometimes that's fun to read but the tone of this book was far to serious for that and also none of her decisions were character complaint. It was supposed to have a really great sapphic pair but the whole relationship was very unbalanced and just a wee bit toxic. None of the characters learn very much or change enough to make them redeemable in my eyes. All of the characters had a lot of potential and I think individual characters and settings were well made it was the plot and motives that fell short. I'd give it a 3/10

ok ok ok the unbroken has been on my TBR for AGES bc it's like. idk. part of Contemporary SFF Sapphic Book Canon, but I've always been somewhat put off by the author's very active twitter presence.... makes me feel like I'm being watched idk I want to be able to discuss a story without feeling like the Eyes Of The Creator are watching.

may read it at some point but don't feel like I am in a rush for it rn. i do admit i love reading about toxic and unbalanced relationships, however, 😔

#ask games #ask #anon #may not do more of these but THANKS EVERYONE for sending em in i had fun #also anon i assume u mean UNrecomending #also i think the author said something i disagree w wrt gideon and butchness at some point last year

[pushing500]

I absolutely love your Rimworld saga, I've always wanted to do something like it for one of my colonies but I'm a better writer than I am an artist. Any tips for someone not used to drawing people?

Thank you for the great stories and adorable artwork 💕

Ah, thank you so much!! I'm glad you like the Rimworld stuff, I really love making it, and I'm happy it seems to have found an audience that enjoys it.

As for art tips, here are three things I always try to remember when I'm drawing:

1. It's okay to use references!

I see a lot of people worried about art theft, tracing, and stealing, which are important issues to keep in mind. No artist wants their work stolen, and nobody wants to be accused of tracing or things like that. Certainly valid concerns for all parties.

However, I've noticed that a lot of people avoid using references because of those concerns. It's alright to use references for your artwork! You can and should look for references to practice with. It's not easy to make up every single pose from nothing, but I've seen a lot of artists give up because they can't figure poses out without looking up references, and they feel like that means they're not real artists.

I'm partial to stock photos personally. There are stock photos for every conceivable situation. Behold, one I used just yesterday:

References are good and definitely okay to use. Use them a lot! They're a wonderful way to practice, and it's much easier to make up your own poses and draw people once you're used to drawing the human form from your references.

2. Don't be afraid to be silly!

Not every piece of art needs to be a serious and carefully thought-out commentary on the nature of humanity or society or things like that. Not every piece of art needs to be beautiful, or perfect, or even comprehendible. When I first started drawing art for a Rimworld colony, I was sitting beside my little brother and watching him play. I was doodling pictures of his colonists, and do you know what I ended up with? Nothing deep and meaningful, that's for sure.

I ended up with memes. Memes that are still blu-tacked up where everybody who comes into my house can see them.

I love them. I had so much fun drawing them. That's the important bit! They're ridiculous, silly, stupid memes, and I love them so much because I loved drawing them. Have fun with your art. Don't make it a chore. Be silly. Let yourself enjoy the act of creating, even if you end up with something dumb. That's the best kind of art.

3. Do so much art! So much of it!

The old saying says practice makes perfect, and it's not entirely wrong. I don't think I have ever met someone who has ever created something and decided it was perfect, no matter how much they practised.

However, the more you practice, the better you will be. I would post pictures of my older art to demonstrate the improvement, but I still haven't quite managed to choke back the gag reflex that comes with seeing the old drawings I have tucked away.

Maybe one day, when I'm braver, I'll show you the wonky caricatures of people I used to draw, and you can see for yourself that the more you make, the better you'll get. For now, though, I shall leave you with a tiny sampling of my sketchbook collection and one (1) spooky boi:

I don't know if any of that was helpful. I'm not much of a teacher, I'm afraid, but I do wish you the best with your artistic endeavours! For what it's worth, I'd read a written story about a Rimworld game just as eagerly as I would absorb pictures of it.

Thank you for your lovely compliments, and I wish you the loveliest of days! 💕

#asks #rimworld #gracie plays #art #my art #traditional art #rimworld art #unpolished art #cat #probably unhelpful art advice #I feel like a proper artist now #People asking me for art tips #Must mean I've done something right XD #I love you so much and I hope you can get something out of this nonsense I've written #If not then I hope you like the cat #He's a good boy and is very soft #have the most beautiful day!! xoxo

[popculturebuffet]

The Kablammiest Retrospective: KaBlam! Season 3 (Comission for Cory Bryant

Hey there kablamoids, wake your grammy as it's time once again for more Kablammy. I'm back on my Kablam retrospective for season 3 as I keep my heiner in the recliner. It also feels weird to be almost done with the series, with only one season and a bunch of fun odds and ends left before we turn the page on this retrospective.

Season 3 was a weird watch.. not in terms of content: Henry and June visiting Colonial Williamsburg, Sniz becoming a faith healer via a power washer, Lou Rawls singing about loving the action league, Loopy invites burping aliens to colonize earth, and Tod isn't struck down by god herself is pretty standard wacky nonsense for the show and I'm here for it.

It was a weird watch more because it both changed.. and stayed the same. Most of the founding shorts are still here and will be till the end next season and have largely settled into what they are. The end of the Off-Beats last season and the departure of Mike Brandon from Sniz and Fondue felt like they'd really change up the show.. but it really dosen't. Two new segments show up in their place, Jet Cat and Race Rabit, but both a only have two shorts each this season. There seemed to be no real intrest in replacing either short.

There's also only ONE pilot this season, something that'l lchange next season as from looking ahead, something i didn't do this time, the series does try more to fill the gap left by it's departing segments. In their place are some music videos with the zambonis, both good songs, but it feels like a Kablam that both knows what it is.. but also dosen't know what it's going to do with that extra space. IT seems to settle up more by next season as jet cat and race rabbit appear more often and more pilots set in to fill the void left by our faviorite ambigiously gay ferrets, but it's still a strange time for our faviorite cartoon cramaganza. So let's see how this season shakes out and how our faviorite segments do in this time of change.

Henry And June continues similarly to season 2, but there's a theme I only noticed as I sat down to write this; network interfernece. There's a lot of episodes where the show's format is changed due to the network deciding on some weird new trend or raitings stunt. Our heroes pivot to being an educational show, go to colonial willamsburg, deal with a writers strike. get sidelined when Mr Foot proves more popular, and deal with a pompus director from Saved by the Bell: The New Class.

It's a fun idea too.. and lowkey feels like venting as the shows star with the network was slowly falling due to them shuffling the show around randomly. As a result we get some true classics. We also get bits where Henry or June will have green or blue eyes , respectively, a nice little animation bit. Overall season 3 of Henry and June is fantastic and a nice new coat of paint ot an already stunning hot rod of a segment.

More Happiness Than Allowed By Law: Henry and June celebrate their birthday (and creaton by Mark Marek). Henry naturally beefs it by getting June nothing while she gets him a nice remote control car, forcing him to scramble for a new gift till he settles on a really nice mood ring. A decent segment, not much to say.

Money Train 2: This one is just a bunch of assorted segments, but said segments are gold. They try a fan of the month program to spotlight the fans.. only to get a convict, Henry pretneiously explains why we need villians, the two do some mountain climbing and eventually ask

And the two try to guess the mystery celebrity but end up pissing off Ben Franklin instead. This is also easily one of my favioroite back covers, which tend ot tie into the story more this season, as after June guesses the mystery guy is wesley snipes, we get a hypothetical money train sequel with him and ben franklin. In a time of ip revivals great , small and sometimes really fucking weird please whoever owns money train.. give us this sequel.

Your Logo Here: KaBlam! goes educational by network mandate, leading to a fun educational tv spoof as our heroes try to turn this very much non educational show into one and also grapple with Ed the Educational otter, the first otter i've wanted to punch in the face. Ed is smiley, takes the duos antics not very well and even tears up a comic book when talking about the joys of reading. Despite the fact comics are fucking rad and their in one. Naturally he ends up getting beaten up as he should for being an uptight dick. Still it's a fun tounge in cheek adventure and one of my faviorites of the season.

Holdeth the Pickle, Holdeth the Lettuce: Another favorite, this one has our hosts doing the show from Coloneal Williamsburg. Why?

The sheer nonsense of the idea coupled with our heroes growing frustration with how the actors WILL NOT break character even when they need power or an interview, cumilating in our heroes taking a swim only to get put in stocks... it's great stuff.

It's All in the Wrist: Another random segmetns episode and this one... isn't as fun outside of the end one where they make a kablam arcade game tha'ts just henry getting hit by things and June's reaction to this not reflecting the show.. is to have mr foot drop thigns on him. Honestly feels closer to their season 1 characterizations.

Year Round Fun: The KaBlam! writers go on strike and I wish i'd knew about this one when we did our writer's strike special last year as it shows WHY shows need writers as our heroes slowly break down without them, and has a fun ending as our heroes offer them to turn the page in good faith, but it's not in their contract. A really stellar episode.

The New Class: My faviroite of the season and it's not an easy choice, but the concept is once again nicely bonkers and meta: our heroes get a new director, the pretentious Glen R Dilworth, probably a gentle poke at Courage the Cowardly Dog creator and Sniz and Fondue pilot director John R Dilworth.

Glen.. is fantastic. He's a pretentious director.. whose previous credit was saved by the bell the new class, which he treats as high art, particularly hyping up Screech. Just the fact someone was this far up dustin diamonds ass is glorious, as is the specific reference. It's extra juicy as for some weird reason.. NBC is not streaming the new class. And it's not a rights issue as the new class DID show up their website apparently before everything was converted to peacock, so I have no idea why they buried this thing. I mean it could be terrible but i'd still at least watch some of it to complete the trinity.

While i've seen this character type before it works really well here, with Glenn's acting exercises, constant interuptions of the show and Henry beating him with a screech impression, luring him outside so mr foot can put glen in the trunk of his car.. and.... okay....

People Henry Has Had Killed Counter: 1

Great for Paper Traning: June brings a dog to set. It dosen't go well. You've seen this plot before and done better. Next

You'll Love Our Selection: KaBlam! installs an audience enjoyment meter o rama thing and it rates our heroes high.. but mr foot thorugh the fucking roof. So the show pivots to focusing on mr foot who rises to the occasion, while Henry and June struggle on the sidelines. The weird mr footcentric verison of the show is great as is his movie... i'ts the best use of the foot man so far and a nice break from him just mauling people or reading something. It's a fine gag but they've done it a LOT and you get.. numb to it after a while.

You May Already Be A KaBlammer: June hires an expy of Ed McMahon to be her sidekick and Henry is insecure the guy dosen't find him funny and tries a bunch of stuff to be funny.. then his mom shows up. It's a fun runner and the guest guy is genuinely hilaroius even if you don't ENTIRELY scope the refrence.. which i only.. half do. Like I've seen ed mcchamon once or twice and listend to the weird al yankovic song "Here's Johnny", but i'm not really up on late night with Johnny Carson and likely never will be and i'm happy with that. I know just enough for homages and that's fine by me.

KaFun!: A grab bag to close out the season and a really strong one for a change. My faviorite bits are JUne being disapointed she dosen't need deoderant so henry fakes she needs some to feel more mature, which just feels genuinely sweet , and the ending where it turns out Henry's on japanese knockoff Ka-Fun!.. which i'd love to see, paticuarlly prometheus and yoshi. I am a bit annoyed they didn't call it a manga and while I get the term wasn't as widespread as it is NOW it was something they probably coudl've looked up. Not easily but still.

For what's sadly the last time. And I went into these expecting them to be terrible... I mean the creator left and these wer emade without him because they still owned the IP. Normally that situation.. dosen't make great art.

And while Sniz and Fondue: The Final Chapters isn't amazing, it has one of the series best episodes tucked away and the others are decent. I was expecting a trainwreck and what I got was mostly

Nothing truly horrible, but only one of them really felt outstanding and bonkers. Brandon was right in that they coudln't quite get the dialouge down, as the characters talk with less weirdly specific slang and we don't get as much waxing lyrical, with only the fourth short doing it. the personality's faded out a bit thanks to Brandon leaving and you can tell. It dosen't have Season 2's clear sense of exaustion, which IS a plus, but it dosen't really have the soul of the series. Sometims a series CAN go on without a creator, and sometims it has to because that creator's a sex monster. Sometimes a work can be revivied with a fresh voice. But in this case, at least at the time Sniz and Fondue simply coudln't work without Brandon.

It's a shame the series ends with kind of a dull thud. I loved these shorts and their 90's style and wish Brandon was more determined to actually.. do something with them again. or nick but let's face it nick's genuine atittude these days tends to be

So I have no real hope of a revivial of Sniz and Fondue or KaBlam as a whole.. but I can dream can't i?

Solitare Confinment: The setup for this one is good. Fondue gets a computer... says he got it from some guy who came down from space. Had some issues with it

Fondue however gets addicted to solitare, and hides that he is from Sniz. From there.. the episodes decent but i've seen enough gaming addiction episodes to have seen better. The big with a burglar robbing them because Fondue's too distracted and telling themn "I'll call the police.. after one more hand" is fantastic though. The ending with Sniz as a computer is also sweet. Together they'd create Baltaro.

Penny-Ante Vigilantes: This is just the Ed-Touchables but not as good. Or, to use an episode that aired before this one, Homer the Vigilante but not as good. Either would be a better time than this which is just... bland, and while the twist was sufficently twisty, it's really not tha tfunny and Fondue didn't quite go far enough to justify his getting beaten by a big unruly mob. Also fondue got beaten up by a big unruly mob.

Hosed!: So you know how i've been saying there was one exception to the seasons blandness? Well snap me down, here it is. It's such a goofy, glorious concept I can't help but love it. Okay so a random burglar man steals some wheel chairs, using one to escape. Sniz is testing the new power washer fondue got him and accidently sprays the guy.. then Fondue assumes the guy was healed because he got up and walked. So our heroes.. become faith healers.. using a high pressure hose. It's such a bonkers premise I love it so much. It was a sign that MAYBE they coudl've kept going, as it has that same creativity and singularly weird brain the Brandon shorts did. Naturally they once again get chased by a big unruly mob.

Big Unruly Mob Count: 2

The Great Chilli Cookoff: Our final short and it's.. okay. It's a "our heroes compete" episode, this time for a ride in a fire truck which after binging enough Chicago Fire to consume a planet, I get it. But it's your pretty standard compettion episode.. albeit the heartwarming resolution to join chillis burns down a fire house

So at least the series ends fittingly. Also the fire house was having a cook off at all because their antics destroyed the last one. I gesture you to the adorable puppies above.

So that ends our time with these boys.. and i'm really sad to see them go. While Seasons 2 and 3 had issues... I still loved these characters and it's one of the prototypical "two dudes get into shenaigans show" Sniz and Fondue walked so Regular Show Could run and Close Enough could fly. And for that .. i'll always be greatful.

Action League Now Season 3 is excellent. I prefer Season 2 slightly more, but Season 3 is still top notch and hilarious, keeping the league as unlikeable idiots so the slapstick works better, keeping it creative with the settings, and keeping it fresh. There's not much new here and having watched mass quantities of Bluey recently, I can tell you I prefer when a show evolves.. but sometimes it dosen't really need to. This show is simple, stupid fun and it's all it wants to be, and it's gotten good at it. After seasons 2 and 3, i'm gonna love the league.

Flippers of Fury: In a very obvious GI JOe parody, which fits perfectly given Stinky is very obviously an old gi joe figure rekitted, Stinky must face his old ninja rival the red ninja with the help of Master Pu. This segment is pretty good.. admitely it has a decent amount of 90's "we saw a kung fu film once" type asian sterotyping with master pu, a very white guy is voicing him very badly, but otherwise stinky's training, how he wins just by using his plunger and the spot on parody of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow help compensate. A solid start.

Rags to Riches: The Mayor Unleashes a mummy's curse. I could really end it there, but the fac tit gets unleashed on the Chief, who doubts it at first is great. A decent episode if only for having a mummy's curse. I'm a sucker for a mummy's curse i've just seen it done better. And I say that a LOTTT IN THESE reviews.. but i've been watching cartoons for most of my life, never really dropped off them as a teen like most kids, and thus i've seen a LOT of these plots and both Courage the Cowardly Dog and Aqua Teen simply did a mummy's curse slightly better. That being said neither has the Mayor trying to sell said cursed items on a home shopping network, so this episode still slaps, so it's not like say "Penny Ante Vigilantes" where ther'es zero reason to watch it. It's still good, other stuff's just better.

Melty Dearest: Meltman becomes mom to a giant spider. It's funnier than it has any right to be and ends with meltman getting cocooned by a giant spider and I love the spiders googly eyed design so ... decent.

Tears of A Clone: If I had a nickle for every episode of an animated show i'd seen with this title i'd have two nickles.. which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice. This episode is a LOT of fun though as Bill the Lab Guy gets into cloning. The Mayor understandably orders it shut down: No clone saga's or inferno's in this lab.. but that's AFTER the league bumbles into it. So we get 5 or so of each league member all failing to do anything right and getting some of them killed and it's glorious. I also love the mayors scheme, stealing fine china.. whcih naturally, like most of the clones, ends up over a cliff. I do love when they toss shit over a cliff, it has a gravitas the other stunts sometimes don't. I mean they had to clean that shit up, and it was so worth it. I also like the solution: the mayor clones himself. And now he has 5 beautiful kidneys. he feels freaking amazing.

Art of Thunder: The Mayor steals a valuable bit of art by timmy, a 5 year old boy and that alone is great. I love these little bits of world buildindg, seeing how the action figures use the human world house. Naturally the league destorys it. A decent episode.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen: We find out WHY Stinky is such an asshole: it turns out in the war his own mother sold him out. He bonds with a real life dog named smelly, whose a good boy yes he is... btu was trained by the worst boy, the mayor so he tears up the league like dogs do and Stinky has to be saved by his tratirous mom. This episode is redicluous, shockingly heartfelt and a lot of fun. It's not the first time they did dog shenanigans but it's honestly even more fun than the dog as godzilla thing. I've seen that. I haven't seen an action figure try to emtooinally heal using a dog that turns out to be used by evil.

A Star Is Torn: The Mayor pretends to be a film maker to trap thundergirl. What I like abotu this one is Meltman spots the obvious issues.. btu Thundergirl is absorbed in the ego despite loosing everal limbs.. and the others are her agents. Seeing Flesh and Stinky talk alike hollywood agents in thier goofy voices just works for me. What can I say. Another solid one.

Melty's Girl: My faviorite of the season. Meltman got a girlfirend.. I and I expected this to turn into a "she's using him for the fame" or "she's secretly evil' plot as is standard. Instead.. she's just genuinely supportive and likes him

So the problem is that... Meltman really isn't WORTH IT. She thinks he can do better than just gathering the coffee, sets him up with his own office and even gives him a flashy new costume as dr melt

I just love this idea of someone being just.. generally dogshit at superheroing and having a super supportive partner who instead tries to hype them up. It's a concept i'l lhave to file away as it could be really good on it's own and it's grea there as Meltman only succeeds by accident and breaks up with his girlfriend.. not because she's bad but simply because she believes in this idiot and this idiot cannot live up to that.

Roughing the Passer: It's the all star game and the Mayor wants to quaterback but isn't being brought in as not only does the coach already have several all star ones, but the mayor also sucks suprising no one. So naturally his counterplan is "murder them all and then get to be put in coach", while the league TREIS to help but naturally does a few accidental murders itself. A fun episode and the mayor even gets his dream by becooming the ball... it's a fun one even if I don't recognize a single person because I don't follow sportsball.

Hit of Horror: Hodge Podge returns and he's started to wear on me as his only gimmick is having a dumb voice nad calling them action jerks and we don't see as much of him. He brainwashes the public to attack the league and their stupid enoguh to go out to a parade. Thankfully Bill the Lab guy has an antidote: LOU MOTHERFUCKING RAWLS. Who we're going to be talking about a LOT on this blog this year.

For those who dont know him

Secondly he's an r an db singer from the 60's and 70's. He was on the muppets, has the voice of an angel and I found out about him when I gorged on the garfield specials as a teen, as he performs an opening song for all but one of them. And their all fucking bangers. Every last one. The man is a legend so him singing a rendtiion of his classic "you'll never find" that says "your gonna love the league" instead of miss my lovin is fun. It's also fun just to see little action figure lou rawls. This episode is lou rawls out of lou rawls.

And Justice For None: The weakest episode of the season and naturally the last... it's a clip show trial episode. They win because the judges naturally get crushed. While Henry and June lampshade it being a clip show that.. isn't enough to save it. A weak ending to a great season.

Same as it ever was really. I'm not a huge fan of these shorts, zoned out a lot and still respect the hell out of them. Their gorgeous to look at they just aren't for me. I can respect however that, intetinoally or not they are a good allegory for colonalism. Yes.. really.

Stay with me: Prometheus tries to "edcuate the savage" but a lot of the things he's trying to force on bob.. are things he either dosenj't need or want. Bob seems entirely fine as is despite having less technological advances than his tall friendo, but Prometheus tries to force new stuff on him anyway rather than introduce what would be benficial (such as a couch or clothing) slowly. Blend it with his cave culture instead of just trying to replace it.

Hammock: Some fun hyjinks. I didn't say I was ambivilant about ALL of them

Ball: I forgot this one happened. I said all of them not "most of them"

Birthday: this one is REALLY fun as Prometheus forgets that most caveman see fire as bad when he lights Bob's birthday cake on fire.

Toilet:... how did I forget this one?

Treehouse: It's bart's birthday and everyone's having fun, but Homer realizes he forgot a present, so he goes to the shop of an asian sterotype who sells forbidden objects from where many fear to tred, and also frozen yogurt which he calls frogurt. He gives him a krusty doll but warns him it's cursed. That's bad. but it comes with a free frogurt. that's good. the frogurt is also cursed. That's bad. But you get your choice of topping. That's good. The toppings contain potassum benzoate. That's bad. Can I go now?

Bed: Bob tries to sleep on a bed. Shenanigans insue

Robot: Finally one I liked. Promethus makes a robot of himself but it goes haywire and ends up making a bob. They run off to reno and get married. Good for them.

Arctic: ICE FLOW NOWHERE TO GO ICE FLOW NOWHERE TO GO LOST IN THE BLINDING WHITENESS OF THE TUNDRA

Laundry: I have too much of it

Glue: GLUE GLUE GLUE GLUE GLUE GLUE.

I'm happy to say Life with Loopy made a comeback. Season 2 wasn't bad.. but it wasn't as consitantly fun or imaginative as season 1. Still amazingly crafted.

Season 3 on the other hand takes the series to new heights with a fun season of wacky nonsense. The concepts here are pitch perfect and capture the series premise well again: take something a kid would misunderstand or go through, and have whatever their mind could cook up play out instead of the more mundane solution. We've got burping aliens, mom being part of a secret government project, clones, ducks, bulls in china shops, dog prisons and the revelation Loopy's into aliens and also bi, neither of which suprises me. Loopy is the best of the recurring segments this season and it's not even close, and it's fun to see the show at full throttle. Like with Sniz and Fondue I think some exaustion was seeping in, and the break to make more segments worked out like gangbusters. It's why while I may not like long hiatuses, I can undrestand them as it means the show comes back a swining and loopy certainly swung

Send in the Clones: Those laughy daffy clones. Okay simpsons refrence aside this was a very good start to the season with a very relatable problem: Loopy wants to play with her dad, but he's so busy with the 80 dozen things he has to do. I love how the two have a genuinely close and caring relationship.

So her solution is to clone him a bunch. this goes poorly as not only is he TOO present now, she gets no privacy, but turning the washer into a cloning machine means their mom's nearly gone insane from doing laundry by hand. Her solution is to simply make too many loopys.. and yes that's the exact same one the action league later used.. but hey it works as the reason WHY it works is diffrent: for the action league chief simply wasn't able to corral the dumbasses alone, while with Loopy it simply overwhelmed her dad's into non existantance by asking all the questions that drive parents insane. Granted we're left with a lotta loopys but I assume they formed a colony on the moon after loopy lassoed it again. A great start

Big Burp Theory: Loopy burps and aliens come down to colonize the planet as a result of speaking their language

It's still not bad at all, and the solution of Larry solving things by farting, thus offending them, while I could see it coming.. is still a pretty good fart joke. Not amazing, but still decent.

Secret Agent Mom: This one is a LOT of fun: So once a month Mom plans a fishing trip for Dad and the Kids, but Loopy wonders what she does. She claims she's cleaning out the basement and she kind of is.. but it turns out mom's a secret agent for the government. Her mission though is what makes the episode: turns out there's an alien in the family basement, and he was SUPPOSED to share his secrets with them. Instead he sat around and ate a lot, sort of like what I do between reviews. And during them. I may relate to this guy just a bit too much. So it's time to send him home. I also like that once Loopy finds out mom tries a half assed denial... and then just lets her ride shotgun. It again speaks to how much Loopy's parents love her and encourge her weird shit. Hell loopy saves the whole mission by helping the guy exercsie as they didn't adjust his craft for his belly buddy. I call mine fred. So Loopy helps him get buff, they get him home, and no one wille ve rknow an alien was in the basement and probably farted it up a bunch

Loopy and the Snow Lady: This one is touching. It's tale as old as time: Loopy makes a snow lady, she comes to life but OH NO THE HEAT WILL KILL HER. Loopy does keeper her alive a while btu eventually dad wants the freezer space back. No really he wants to kill a sapient being to store steaks. JUST GET ANOTHER FREEZER FOR THE WOMAN MADE OF SNOW DADDD.

Instead Loopy plans to take her to winter world, but has to deal with snow lady getting sidetracked and enjoying the warm world. She's seeing the world AND she got the beach. She got it all. They do get her there in time though and loopy joins her as their latest attraction. Awwww.

Goin South: Another fantastic episode in a row as Loopy runs into a canadian duck trying to go south for the winter, eh, but he can't fly so Loopy agrees to help her new friend. What's nice is he finds a new home too, as they end up in the south pole with a bunch of pengies. The pengies gladly accept their new duck friend and it's a touching, funny ending for all.

Sweet Dreams; Larry keeps having a very boring recurring dream, so to help him Loopy does an inception. I really love the reason WHY the dream is looping: the guys in charge can't think of anything so they put him in reruns. It's such a hilariously petty and mundane solution and Loopy crashing it and accidnetly unchaning his nightmares allows him to be the hero and save her, and gives the guyzos plenty of new material. Now Larry's dreams will run for years and years to come.

Fang Fairy: This one's really fucking weird and I love it. As Larry refuses to get dental surgery, Loopy hears a joke about the fang fairy and takes it seriously leaving some fake teeth to proove she's right. She is but the fang fairy's a real dick about it and makes her a relcutant werwolf. Her family's response is to runaway despite having seen weirder shit at this point, so she finds out she's his first client in centuries nad he get sa job as Larry's dentist, presumibly scarring him for life

Bull In A China Shop: This one is really fun and as a clumsy kid myself painfully relatable: Loopy keeps breaking shit so she goes to a china shop to train herself not to.. and meets THE bull in a china shop who not only runs it but runs a support group for it, helping loopy and some others. While this would be more than enough what I like is tha tat graduation the three accidnetly break more stuff.. and the bull feels liberated, realizing that while it's one thing to be mindful, hating yourself for simply being a tad clumsy even when your trying.. isn't healthy. Granted the solution of leather knick knacks isn't really WORKABLE but like this message: sometimes your just clumsy and tha'ts okay.

Whale of A Time: One of the season's weaker episodes but it does have our heroes getting eaten by a whale. The Wedon'tknowtheirlastnamejustgowithit family is on vacation with something for everybody!.. except larry whose intended activity, the charlie chicken summer spectacular, is canceled. Turns out they were eaten by a whale and found a ton of treasure, so our heroes trick them into remembering it's for the craft, not the money. It's okay though the whale does look pretty damn cool. The puppets on this show are always so dang impressive.

In the Doghouse: Loopy goes to retrevie a ball from the neighborhood dog... whose running a prison camp and holds her, a boyscout and a mole against their will

Thankfully she helps them escape and helps the dog see that maybe playing is more healthy than a home prison.. granted anything is more healthy than that but still, baby steps.

Larry's Girl: one of my faviorites this season. I love a good dance episode and Larry needs a date... however he's also too "teenage boy" to consider his standards are too high. So Loopy goes to a dating service ran by cupid, whose giving computer dating a shot. He pulls up a tentacle alien and while Loopy's intrested, she knows Larry isn't into tentacle monsters. So instead she gets a girl that's TOO cool for schoool.. and for charlie chicken. Thankfully loopy trying to use the old arrow bit finds him a girl who is down with the chicken, and yes that's the term they use. THeir going to get high and watch charlie chicken and that my friends is true love.

Jetcat is based on a series of comic stories by Jay Stephens, as part of his comic strip oddville then as part of a dark horse anthology. He pitched four shorts based on it to nick, sold them all, and thus we get JetCat, a new segment for KaBlam!. I won't be reviewing the comics for the odds and ends as I ... didn't think of that when I set tha tup, but I wouldn't be opposed to doing it someday.

Jetcat is decent: I love the reason for the name as young Melaine Mcay flies like a jet and is fast as a cat and the costume slaps. The action is decent and it's goot a nice cartoony feel

It's problem for these two segments.. is Mealine's best friend Tod. The first ep covers him finding out she's jet cat which could've been neat as he's genuinely hurt, especially since she makes a bit dael out of "best friends telling each other everything". The problem is it then gets ruined by tod being a giant sized shit in a tiny body, demanding she get him shit and milking her guilt. He gets beat up by a robot for his hubris but it dosen't feel like enough nor like he really learned his lesson

The reason for this is the next short. I could've forgiven him for falling a bit into his vices once or twice or in diffrent ways.. but no the next short he once again tries to take advantage of being a superheroes best friend. And look wanting some of the perks with that fine. You want them to take you to another country to get pizza or take you flying or just bring you some cool shit from saturn if they happen to be by there fine. But Tod just geninely seems to think he's entitled to get shit from mealine because his friend's a superhero, asking abotu her secrets for a book report, not getting that might leave her a wee bit dead if her enemies read it. Why her enemies would be reading an elementary school report, I don't know, but given how many arch enemies tend ot be a person the hero knows, it's a risk she shoudln't take so Tod can get a d+.

So the smug shit instead wants to interview a supervillian out of spite and nearly dies for it.. yet I don't feel bad as he glosses over the guys genuinely tragic past just wanting death rays and shit. I mean I like death rays and shit as much as the next guy. Tod once again nearly dies for his sins... .which sadly is just "nearly" but i'll take it. So two decent shorts held back by one of the worst sidekicks i've seen in a superhero work. To the point.. he goes in the hall.

Welcome home you little shit goblin. So to explain this to both new readers and to cory, the hall of aggrivation is where I put characters who for one reason or another, really boil my ass. The most obnoxious shit heads imaginable. And specific verisons too for those who cross franchise lines, as the sins of one version aren't vistied upon another. For those curious whose who

Row 1: Julie Powers (Scott Pilgrim (Comics), Helen Lovejoy (The simpsons), Billy Butcher (The Boys (comics), Bernice (Luann), Daisy Duck (Legend of the Three Cablleros)

Row 2: Mindy's Mom (Animaniacs), Peepers (Sam and Max Telltale Games), Whizzer (See Peepers), Roger (Miraculous Ladybug), Yivo (Futurama)

Row 3: That Idiot What Opened UP the Necrionicon despite ash writing warnings in blood (Evil Dead), the Stone Head of Abe Lincoln (Sam and Max Telltale), Prowl (Transformers IDW Comics (First Continuity), Steph (Luann), Tweety Bird (Looney Tunes) Row 4: Todd (Jetcat), Henry Peter Gyrinch (Marvel Comics), The Two Shitheads from Biodome, Havok (Marvel Comics), The Batman Who Laughs (Dc Comics)

Now we're all caught up onto

I REALLY liked Race Rabbit. RR comes to use from Scott Fellows, who would go on to make my beloved tweenhood faviorite Ned's Declassified School Surivival Guide.. which I REALLY gotta cover sometime. Someday... for now though he made these shorts, one of Kablams few live action segmetns and it's only recurring one.

The formula is simple: Race Rabbit is a world class Racer, and also a really good guy who stops every episode to help some person in need, which his super chip/ai max never takes well. The series is weridly british and fun as Race races to both do his good deed for the day on time, from helping get teeth from the queen herself to a young boy to helping deliver baby food, and to outrace the Boolies, two "inbreed bulies from the upercrust" who wantj to catch him and stuff him but their way too slow. Race Rabbit is fun fast paced and lovingly nonsense, and the boolie sare dleightfully hammy. I love their second defeat especailly as the ypretend ot be a moose in the road.. and Race, having equipment to detect them, sees through it, drives on by.. and lets a car that specifically says "i break for no one" ram the bastard. Well one of them the other is trying to catch him. At any rate only two shorts this year but a LOT of fun

Like I said there wasnt a ton of Suprising Shorts, scaling back to the four or five of season 1. There's also almost no pilots this time: Patchead returns, we get some music videos and we get one pilot at the very end of the season. We do get new recurring-ish segments with Jet Cat and Race Rabbit, so I get WHY this was scaled back, I just miss it: some of my faviorite shorts in seasons 1 and 2 were these one off experiments and even the ones I wasn't super over the moon on like the Brothers Tiki were still a lot of fun to look at. Part of what makes KaBlam! special is it feels like indie animation given a platform at a time where that simply didn't happen and part of that is various one off shorts, creative little bits from directors you really DON'T see often on kids shows outside of pilot showcases like Oh Yeah Cartoons! or What a Cartoon. I appricate it even more now with the current indie animation boom: Nowadays shows like Helluva Boss, The Amazing digtial Circus, Orion and the Stars and more can just.. go straight to series or share the pilot to see intrest instead of having to go thorugh hoops. It makes me appricate how much harder these animators had it and what a wonderful platform this was.

What we have though is good so let's get to it shall we.

PatchHead: Demolition Mission: Apparently these shorts had most of the voice rerecorded for these versions. Something I forgot to point out last time. Anyway Patchead's at the races today and Torque Dipstick is the faviorite to win. I also like his weird plastic lantern jaw. it's great. What isn't.. is that he has a confederate flag on the back.

This dosen't necessarily mean Torque was present on January 7th, as lots of people just used that flag without thinking "Gee this was fighting for slavery, maybe I shoudln't put this on my nitro burning funny car vroom vroom. " I mean the web comic PvP frequently used the general lee from the dukes of hazzard as a gag in the 2000s.

Fun Fact: I had this issue once.

We just.. thought of it as a relic and not a relic of racisim. White dumbasses tend to do that.

Trying to stop Torque is Crash Kudzu. Yes folks to my most plesant suprise Nick Offerman has returned to KaBlam!

I don't know if he's in the other patchhead shorts, but one can hope. Either way it's just.. such a joy to see Nick Offerman on my blog. I hadn't realized just HOW little i've got to cover anything with him till we got to Patchead these last two times.

Kudzu is once again up to cheating shenanigans, this time sabotaging Torques car. SO Patchhead naturally JUMPS ON THE FUCKING THING, then repairs it in mid run like he was that kid from speed racer as Torque uses various dick dastardly inventions on his nitro burning funny car vroom vroom to combat them. It's just fun to see and the early cg holds up decently. It's not exaclty convincing, but the sureealness of the patchhead shorts means it fits it in fine. Our heroes win, and Torque credits patchhead for his help and gives him a helmet for his helmet.

Pizza Rocket and Hockey Monkey: These are two music videos each animated by Mark Marek but each for a diffrent indie rock band.

The first is PIzza Rocket by James Kolchaka. The name SOUNDED familiar but I couldn't place it till I looked him up. Turns out Kolchalka is an indie comics artist, writing Johnny Boo a series i've never read but have seen before. He's done a lot of anthology work and is also a prolific musican, having a ton of albums.

Pizza Rocket is a decent song. Not really my forte, but I get why this man is popular. The animation is decent, it's just again for a song that's not my thing.

Hockey Monkey on the other hand.. is magical. It's from the Zamboni's a band I also didn't know existed, but is truly magical. Their a band that entirely plays hockey based songs. That's it. that's their gimmick. And having gotten a love of Hockey from watching Letterkenny and Shorsey, i'm entirely on board with this. Kolchaka also cowrote Hockey Monkey so good for him. Their also still around and I hope thier stuff can be featured on Shorsey one day. I mean it fits Jared Kesso's style: the music used is mostly techno or rap, but he can vary it up, as evidecned by this brawl set to born to be alive. You probably didn't know that existed but your very welcome.

So Hockey Monkey is a deeply wholsome deeply fun song about how all the scientests and national guard are running around looking for the monkey but he can't be found because he's down by the pond playing hockey with the kids, and all the parents and teachers are running around looking for the children but they can't be found because their down by the pond playing hockey with the kids. And it's 123 the kids love the monkey and 456 the monkey's got a hockey stick and 789 having a good time yeahhhhhhh.

As you can tell I REALLY love this , and the video itself is fun, using black and white live action bits for the people running around and nicely minimalist animation for the kids nad the monkey. it's REALLY fun and wholesome. Great stuff.

It's time for our third Kablammy awards! ANd i've realized I SHOULD have been giving out an award for best overall episode, but since it'd be weird to bring that in halfway I thought of a compromise. I'm going to do ONE FINAL kablammy awards at the end of all of this in the odds and end episode for best overall shorts from each one. That'll include best episode for each season and overall best episode of the series. Onto the awards

Best Henry and June: the New Class. I have a big soft spot for saved by the bell, another thing I should've covered by now but haven't somehow, sot his was an easy win.

Best Sniz and Fondue Short: Hosed. It's not even close. You faith heal with a pressure hose and tell me you can do better. You can't.

Best Action League Now! Short: Melty's Girl. I didn't really hide how much I loved this one, and that's for good reason. The Dr Melt costume is hilaroius and the idea of trying to prop up someone as pathetic as Meltman as a solo hero is hilaroius to me. And keep in mind I LOVE me a b list superhero, I think any superhero can be great in the right hands.. but meltman in this context is the worst and this epsiode only backs that up.

Best Life with Loopy Short: This was a tough one as this season was REALLY good.. but my pick is Bull in a China Shop. Larry's Girl was cloes as I love a good school dance and a godo dating service.. but I just like the bull himself, from his upperclass voice to the aseop he teaches and the china shop just looks neat.

Best Startling Short (Includes Jetcat and Race Rabbit): Hockey Monkey. I mean Patchhead is once again close, it has Nick Offerman.. but that song is just too dang catchy.

Best Overall Short: Hosed. It's just.. so delightfully stupid and while it's not the last aired sniz and fondue short, it was the last produced and feels like a proper sendoff.

And with that we're done with season 3. It was a good ride and we have another at the start of may as we reach the END of KaBlam! (if not this retrospective) with season 4. Will it stick the landing? Will I survivie without sniz and fondue? Let's find out next time.

#kablam #action league now #sniz and fondue #life with loopy #prometheus and bob #jet cat #patchhead #race rabbit #long post

[its-the-cat-queen]

*flutters down on iridescent wings*

It is me! The Infodump Fairy! I have come to cast a spell upon you that will cause you to ramble for way too long about Trolls! Please, o’ talented one, tell me why this series has captivated you so!

(Ok but seriously I’ve seen your stuff for it (which fucking SLAPS btw) and this is a series I’ve never really been very interested in, so I’m very curious about what draws you to it! Only if you want to share, of course! As you can see, I am not a real fairy and my spells are fake lol)

Oh dear Infodump Fairy! Your spell is taking its effects!

Asfdhgd seriously though, believe me, I have no problem rambling about Trolls all day jvjfjhf. This is not gonna be very coherent, so sorry in advance. 😅 (Also, thank you, I'm so glad you like my work! <3)

Okay so. I've actually been here since the trailer for the first movie came out (I wasn't very active in the fandom back then, though). I was already invested from that moment on, specifically in the two main characters, Poppy and Branch, and their dynamic, who I took one look at and said, "yeah, I ship that" hfjhf. I think what mostly got to me was the characters, the designs, the fact that it's such a fun and colorful world, and of course, the music. The songs are so good! Like, all of them. Yes, they are mostly just covers of already popular songs with some word changes here and there, but my GOD, are they good covers! But anyway, love me a musical with fun characters! Personally, I think all of the characters have deeper issues about them than what you can see on the surface and what you would expect from a children's movie franchise. Like, Branch has so much trauma it really just feels like in every movie they are just trying to give him more and more problems hdkhdjd. Which of course, makes him a pretty compelling character altogether. Do other characters have as deep issues as him? Some of them. But like, they don't really have that much screentime, sadly. While Poppy and Branch are equally important characters in the first movie (and well, in all of the movies, imo), the second movie is what I would dub as "Poppy's Character Development - The Movie" jgkjfjfj. While the first movie operates with the whole "happiness is inside of all of us, we just need someone to help us find it" kinda message (which doesn't fully stick the landing but oh well), the second goes for stuff like differences, equality (of sorts), and tbh some kind of colonialism metaphor?? It also widens the world of trolls as we've known it, as we learn of other tribes of trolls, who are all connected through different kinds of music. So the whole worldbuilding here just makes things even more interesting.

Now the third movie. In the words of youtuber Mann of 1000 Thoughts, it "gives no fucks in all the right ways". Tbh the Trolls timeline has already been questionable, as is, with the Netflix tv shows that came out after the first and second movies, but this just throws another ranch in the system, and says fuck you to the timeline altogether jckbfh. Like, I managed to make it work once I dedicated a good half hour figuring out how Branch's secret long lost brothers who he was in a band with when he was a baby fit into the picture, but it's not perfect even then. There would definitely still be plotholes gkfhfgf. But at this point you just gotta turn your suspension of disbelief on and just go along with it, cuz it is SUCH a fun experience besides all that. (This goes for all the movies btw. Turn your brain off, you're gonna have a great time jfkhf.) Ngl this is the movie that really got me to jump right back into the fandom with full force, and now I'm back to thinking about all of the previous movies as well and appreciating all of the characters. Tbh when I watched the trailer for the third movie, I thought that the whole long lost brothers storyline was the worst idea they have ever come up with, and then I watched the movie and I was like, "fuck this is the best thing ever" gjfgdhd. Idk, we learn enough about Branch's brothers for them to be compelling characters of their own, while we also have a 20 year old gap in which we can pretty much imagine anything into, cuz we don't actually know all the details about how they got to where they are today after the band broke up. Idk, it's like a sandbox you can play in. And that is so much fun. Also, yeah. The music in the third movie also SLAPS! I listened to the soundtrack on loop for a week after watching it jfkhfh.

The humor is also great in all of the movies, in my opinion. I think my humor operates on Trolls standards at this point, which everyone can decide for themselves if it is good or not hkfjfj. I'm having fun so that's all that matters to me.

But yeah, it's just. Idk. It's difficult to pinpoint something very specific that lured me in. Although, I did mention quite some stuff altogether jfkjjf. It's all about the experience for me. The movies are just filled with so much energy, which I love, and they are, in my opinion, the perfect combination of that energy and emotional impact. Are they perfect movies? Absolutely not. But I'm enjoying myself immensely while watching them, and that's l that matters. Soooo yeah. That's about it for now, I've already been talking too long hkfhfjf

Hope some of this made sense, at least jkfjfj. Thank you for the ask <3 You sadly had no idea about the beast you would unleash fjdgdhd.

#ask #buttercup bs

[holyshonks]

Worldbuilding tidbits for the Don't Go universe

While I was preparing to write this story, there were certain aspects of the Halo universe I fleshed out for the purposes of this series. Most of it is grounded in at least some things we know about the canon Halo universe. It was a lot of fun to do, so I thought I'd put it down somewhere.

The Foster Care System

By the end of the Human-Covenant war, humanity's numbers were cut in half. In half. That is an insane amount of lives lost. Though this story does not take place during a time when the main character, Julia, was in foster care, she is an orphan and a product of the foster care system, and it plays a huge part in her characterization. Like in our current, actual universe, the foster care system in Halo is fucked. One thing that I took directly from canon is that children who don't get adopted are expected to join the UNSC to "earn" their way out of the system. Julia avoids this by running away, a common, overlooked occurrence. I further extrapolated that, when evacuating a planet, there is an emphasis on rescuing children first. This means that many planets in the outer colonies are almost entirely inhabited by young people, as most older people perished during a Covenant invasion. Ships full of a crush of unaccompanied minors would arrive at a planet's doorstep. To incentivize planets to accept these children, the UNSC would award a grant for every child accepted. This led to a bloated, disorganized system, rife for exploitation by governments who accepted children they were not prepared to care for. The neglect created a generation of orphans who grew up poor and struggling. Many fell through the cracks. Anyone who was not finally lured into the UNSC typically took on a series of side gigs to hustle out a living, some above-board, some not.

2. Civilian Understanding of the Human-Covenant War

It took me a while to come to a conclusion about how much the average human civilian knew about the Covenant and their motivations. From what I can tell, it seems to boil down to: not much. Human schools curricula did cover the Covenant, so there was some exposure, but the finer points about its motivations appeared to be kept secret.

Similarly, while the word "Forerunner" would be familiar to the average human's ears, they would only be referenced as the Covenant's gods. There was no explanation of the connection to Humanity.

The Halos were definitely kept secret, at least until Outpost Discovery. Now I think its treated more like an open secret, kind of how we have the CIA admitting to batshit things 20 years after the fact. You probably didn't hear about it then, and would you even believe it now? Julia wants to know the truth about the war. If only there was someone not bogged down by UNSC red tape who could tell her.

3. Feldokran Culture

Feldokra is a stormy Sangheili colony and notably, the birthplace of Sesa 'Refumee. This is a point of pride for the colony, who were quick to side with the Arbiter after the war. However, this also meant that it had a front-row seat in the Blooding Years, and suffered great casualties.

Because Feldokra is so extensively covered in water, it is prized for its trade in sea glass, which feature prominently as beads in their clothing and jewellery. Feldokrans are proud of this and are noted to wear more adornments than the average Sangheili, leading to a reputation for gaudiness. I also wanted to make a point in this story to shed some light on Sangheili culture that's not just war. They have economies!!

Feldokra is also always raining. I read an article once about how Seattleites can spot a tourist by who takes out an umbrella during a drizzle. I like to imagine its like that. They are accustomed to always getting rained on.

______________________________________________________________

What am I talking about? I'm talking about my Halo fanfiction series, Don't Go Where I Can't Find You. You can read all of Part 1 here, if you'd like:

#i'll keep adding to this as i go along #its just a fun exercise bc there's so many things that influence the story without being explicitly mentioned #this is not canon this is just me vibing #look i'm promoting myself #i did a thing #my writing

[gwilin-stay-winnin]

Tag 7 people you'd like to know better!

was tagged by @ladytanithia

i don't know seven people to tag here on tumblr quite yet, so i'll tag two for now. feel free to play along if you want :3 @maldov and @inkysqueed. here are the prompts:

_–_–_

Last song listened to // Convergencia – Emiliano Salvador & Pablo Milanés

Been hooked with this one lately, ever since I heard it at the beginning of this movie. Features some breathtaking vocals by Milanés.

_–_–_

Currently watching // The Bear

My brother recommended it to me. There's a reason everyone's been talking up this show! The fast-paced, verisimilar dialogue and the simple plot lends itself well to the series' intense focus on details. Nothing in the script feel superfluous, though; every character has a purpose, and there's so much depth packed in so little space. I love how it subtly explores and comments on things like competition, ambition, tradition, misogyny, and racism in the present. I'm definitely partial to stories dealing with family drama, so this was a real treat for me.

_–_–_

Currently reading // The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon and The Imaginary Middle Ages: Movie Medievalism by Nickolas Haydock

First book is about the collective and individual psychology born of colonial relationships. Sounds fancy, but it's actually a fun read. The author uses some pretty colorful prose to illustrate his analysis, and the intro by Sartre is spectacular.

Second one is about putting the popular image people have of the Middle Ages in its context, i.e., "here's what you see in movies, in TV shows, in books, and here's what it was most probably like, and here's where that discrepancy comes from". The writing on this one isn't exactly thrilling (definitely takes some determination to get through), but it offers excellent insight into what exactly happens in that moment where the audience consumes images, unknowingly connecting them with ideas all the while.

_–_–_

Current obsession // Baking chocolate cake

There's this chocolate potato cake recipe I stumbled onto about a year ago (here on Tumblr, actually). It's from a Depression-era cookbook. Originally, the idea to put potatoes in the batter was to make it more filling and improve the yield, but it turns out the potato gives it a really great texture. I modified and refined the recipe to the point that I can't eat another chocolate cake without thinking about this one ;-; Here's the recipe in case anyone would like to give it a go:

CHOCOLATE POTATO CAKE

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 3/4 cups brown sugar

3/4 cups butter (melted)

2 eggs (room temp)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup mashed potatoes (1 large baking potato produces enough)

1 cup sour cream (room temp)

1 14oz bag of milk chocolate chips (ground up)

Place chocolate chips in freezer.

Thoroughly wash and peel one large baking potato. Make sure to remove all eyes or spots. Boil for 20-25 minutes until tender, then mash. Place in a tall glass container without covering and allow to cool.

Beat together sugar, butter, eggs, and vanilla.

Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl.

Add in the cup of mashed potatoes to the 'liquids' bowl and beat thoroughly. Mix in sour cream.

Blend chocolate chips in a food processor until they are as fine as possible. Mix into 'liquids' bowl.

Fold in the dry ingredients.

Place in a deep 9x9 inch baking pan or a bundt pan and bake for 50-55 minutes at 350˚F. Insert a toothpick into the center. If it comes out clean, it's ready.

#tag game #heeheehoohoo <- new tag for silly little games unrelated to gwilin

[berkeley-mews]

for the book ask game: #3

thank you so much for the ask <3

3. what were your top 5 books of the year?

i won't attempt to put these into a specific order of preference, but the first book that came to mind was certainly william godwin's 1794 novel, caleb williams!! it was essentially a fictionalisation of godwin's earlier works on political philosophy, very saliently exposing institutional oppression, injustice, and abuses of power in britain at the time. what really drew me to this book, however, was godwin's gothic, suspenseful mode of writing, and its memorable characterisation. the central characters' dynamic and mutual obsession with each other really clinched it for me (and produced quite a number of queer readings, which i later followed up on!!). it's also just pure, unbridled fun most of the way. shenanigans were plentiful: from eighteen-year-old caleb's attempts at probing his employer's psychology through small talk about alexander the great, to his rants calling for prison abolition, his (several) prison-escape attempts, his joining a group of anarchist thieves, and donning very silly disguises. definitely a highlight this year!!

i also read jane eyre for the first time this year (which is very strange to think about, because i feel as if i've known her forever). i went into it knowing the plot twist at about halfway through, but without other expectations, and i was very pleasantly surprised. from the first few pages i was fully drawn in & immensely invested in jane's fortunes, and later, her relationship with rochester. i also find jane eyre to be narratologically fascinating, i think charlotte brontë does some very interesting things with narrative voice & also constructs her characters' psychologies really well -- i could talk about foils and parallels for hours and hours, so i better stop here!! i've also managed to read wide sargasso sea, jean rhys' post-colonial response or "writing back" to this novel, which provided even more perspectives & ideas!! <3

this year i've gotten into philip k. dick's works for the first time, having read both the man in the high castle and do androids dream of electric sheep? while i was much more invested in android's character, high castle was probably the more worthwhile & rewarding reading experience. it was anything but easy trying to get into it, and i found it wasn't really doing anything for me in the first hundred pages or so. slowly, a little inexplicably, perhaps, i came around to it, and allowed it to take me on a journey through alternate history, different realities, and planes of existence. the world-building is less interesting to me than the uncertainites, the interruptions of meaning, and the unspoken in particular this novel. it also had some very interesting things to say about the production of art & its role in history-making & culture more generally, but i'm still getting my thoughts about that in order -- essay forthcoming. /j

i've also read rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead this summer!! it feels as if were very late to the party, but i'm glad i managed to get here in the end. this one really speaks for itself -- Two Of Them, the absurd, existentialism, meta-theatre, whacky temporality (!!) & the whole shebang. i actually didn't quite expect it to be as funny as it was, now that i think about it, but i did thoroughly enjoy its humour at least as much as its weightier implications.

aaaaand finally i will go with george eliot's the lifted veil -- a gothic novella (and subtle frankenstein pastiche, i like to think) narrated by the world's most pathetic, sad, sopping-wet sliver of a man, known only as "latimer", who finds himself developing clairvoyant & psychic powers. it is extremely well-structured, without a single awkward, unnecessary, or out-of-place sentence (or maybe i'm saying that becuase i'm just really, reaaally partial to eliot's writing style!!). the narrative structure is chilling, and is constructed in such a way that the reader feels as if they were partaking in latimer's strange powers. as is usual for her, eliot offers percepitve & profound insights into the human psyche and character, without ever losing a beat as to the progression of her gloomy, gothic narrative -- and everything is neatly, devastatingly tied up in the story's inevitable conclusion.

well, there's 5 books!! i could mention many, many more (jean toomer's harlem renaissance masterpiece cane comes to mind, so do several short stories & the novella mathilda by mary shelley, rhys' voyage in the dark, acd's valley of fear, agatha christie's and then there were none, austen's persuasion, and even dracula, which i also can't believe i read this year), but i shall restrain myself and stop here, to everyone's relief, i'm sure :)

[perexcri]

44, 50, 71, 77, if you're still doing the book asks from a few days ago!!!

hello lovely it is never too late to get me to talk about books ever✨

(though only two of these have pics unlike my last asks, mostly because i borrowed the third one from a friend and the fourth one is not worthy of a picture <3)

44. your favourite fantasy novel

The Poppy War trilogy by R. F. Kuang!!

R. F. Kuang is one of my favorite writers of all time, and she absolutely won me over last year when i read this trilogy. i already went on and on about it in another ask, but basically, imagine 20th century Chinese history in a fantasy setting heavily influenced by folk religions told through the eyes of Mao Zedong if he was a girl. it's sooooooo so good, has one of the best and most flawed and nuanced female protagonists i've ever read, plus it's just interesting to learn from! Kuang is getting her PhD in Chinese lit right now and she has a Master's in Chinese Studies, on top of being the child of immigrants from China, so she's well-versed in the history and weaves a lot of depth into the story with relation to topics like colonialism, genocide, classism and sexism, and religion

50. a book that made you cry a LOT

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak!!

ok i'm actually lying because i don't remember actually crying about this book - in fact, i vividly remember being 13 and crying much more violently upon my first read of The Book Thief. here's the thing, though: there's a deep and personal sadness to this book that hit close enough to some of my own experiences that i haven't been able to read it since. i love Zusak's writing so much and this book was beautiful and heartbreaking and wonderful - and i will probably never read it again! i've reread books that made me cry before, but when one makes me feel this deep of an ache, i tend to avoid it, and this book hit just the right spot

71. your favourite LGBTQ+ fiction

I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston!!

ok this is kinda sad but i actually haven't read a lot of books that are specifically focused on LGBTQ+ issues, identity, etc. i've read more books where background characters are incidentally queer ofc because when i was the prime ya target audience that was where things were at the time, but thankfully the times have changed!! now if only my tbr list would catch up to match them lol

i really enjoyed this book though specifically because of its setting: a tiny private Christian school in the Bible Belt. that's literally the kind of school i attended for almost my entire life, so it was so fun to get to see that setting transferred into fiction, especially from an author who also attended a tiny private Christian school in the Bible Belt. and because of the author's familiarity with the subject, they did a great job of showing the kind of layers that environment has, and that queer kids do grow up in those environments and how that effects them.

plus, this one was a fun read because it's just this fun mystery, and the opening quote is from Mr. Brightside. that alone is enough of a reason to read something tbh

77. a book so useless that you could use it as a coaster

i would argue literally any required reading i had to do in high school, but it's absolutely tied between Silas Marner by George Eliot and Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. i hate both of these books just as much as i did in high school because they are boring as hell, beat you over the head with their moralizing, and have the subtlety of a punch to the face with brass knuckles. hell, they aren't even worth being used as coasters. i think they'd ruin my mugs if i set them on them

and on that note, thank you so much for the ask!! i'm not scuttling over to your inbox to send some questions of my own heheheh 💜💜💜

#ask #book rec #also not rec do not read silas marner or pilgrim's progress