#but the worldbuilding is excellent imo

[se7ens-oc-heaven]

Cheshire!

I always forget how little I post art of him until times like this. But that's ok. I wouldn't have it any other way if it means I get to remind people this atrocity exists xD

(This is just cropped for everyone's sanity though. Rest assured I did The Full Thing In Abhorrent Quality lmao)

Anyways, profile time!

B A S I C S

full name: Kenji "Cheshire" Matsushima

gender: male but in a gnc way

sexuality: aro

pronouns: he/him

O T H E R S

family:  none left

birthplace: Columbus, Ohio (wow, a normal ass location!!)

job: Vampire hunter (former); SPC agent/hero on-call ('current')

Fears: "vampires", losing

guilty pleasures: perhaps enjoys destroying things a bit too much when he's angry. He usually sticks to useless junk or punching bag type stuff though to be safe

M O R A L S

morality alignment? chaotic good

sins - wrath

virtues - justice, kindness

T H I S - O R - T H A T

introvert/extrovert: highly introverted

organized/disorganized: too minimalist to tell.

close minded/open-minded: close-minded depending on comfort levels.

calm/anxious: fairly calm

disagreeable/agreeable: somewhat disagreeable, depends on the audience

cautious/reckless: tends towards recklessness, but he does value caution conceptually

patient/impatient: not very patient, which feeds into the above contradiction.

outspoken/reserved: not super talkative, but will make his opinon known without hesitation.

leader/follower: more likely to lead, but will follow if you have his respect and trust.

empathetic/unempathatic: empathetic enough to know he misses the mark sometimes.

optimistic/pessimistic: tends towards pessimism.

traditional/modern: depends on context? He finds value in either category depending.

hard-working/lazy: neither, prefers to be efficient rather than either end of the spectrum.

R E L A T I O N S H I P S

otp: none atm, his social circle is too small

ot3: ditto

brotp: Cheshire and Luca, bros in everything but name and blood

notp: shrugs. I mean. Him with Luca or Hesperides for obvious reasons (found family dynamics + age gap for the latter) but other than that not sure? Also a notp is his alt universe self, once again for obvious reasons lmao

#yaaaay did it! that's the last one #an excellent note to end on imo #ocs #cheshire #vamphunters #profiles #shyyren #worldbuilding wednesday meme #long post

[daily-izutsumi]

what is dungeon meshi??? i keep seeing it pop up on my dashboard and specifically izutsumi.

Dungeon Meshi, or or Delicious in Dungeon, is a manga (soon to be anime) about eating monsters. The general plot is that the adventuring party of the main character (Laios) gets wiped by a dragon inside of a dungeon. Everyone manages to get teleported out to safety at the last second, except for Laios's sister, Falin, who gets killed and eaten by the dragon. Laios, along with two of his party members, resolves to go back through the dungeon so he can revive Falin before her body gets completely digested, after which resurrection won't be possible anymore. But in order to get there as soon as possible, he decides that instead of wasting time and energy with rations, it'd be faster to eat things they find in the dungeon.

It's a really good manga imo, with excellent worldbuilding and a lot of really good jokes. I've never been very good with explaining things so if you want to know more I'm sure someone will add onto this

[impulsivesuperrobin]

i saw a post talking about neverafter slander on twitter so i went to check it out

here are some thoughts: (keep in mind, i’m not calling anyone out or saying your opinion isn’t valid if you agree with one of these points. try to read this as a light hearted discussion, like talking about a book with a friend)

a lot of it is people saying the season wasn’t horror enough and while i agree it’s not exactly as straightforward horror as the marketing suggested i think that that’s a take that is fundamentally misunderstanding what this is. it’s the horror season of dimension 20 which is a d&d show first and foremost. it’s not going to be following the beats of a horror movie because that’s not what they’re doing. when you run a horror campaign you fold in horror elements which they have been excellent at doing especially in the eldritch and existential categories

not to make assumptions but it seems to me that a lot of people making a big fuss about this haven’t played d&d for themselves. the things i have seen suggested the most for making the season more in line with the horror people were expecting involves turning the campaign into a more dm vs players situation (which is joked about a lot in fandom but in more of a meta humor way than is being suggested). this is something that anyone who has ever played in a bad campaign knows makes it a hell of a lot less fun to play and, i’m assuming, not so fun to watch either. the point of playing d&d is to work together to tell a story, if you go into to making a campaign with the goal of making your players lose, everyone is going to be miserable and your story is going to suck.

following that, some people are ragging on brennan for forgetting details and not having the lore entirely fleshed out. as someone who does unnecessary worldbuilding for homebrew campaigns every single time, i would just like to say on behalf of dms everywhere: it’s hard! there’s so much stuff to keep track of and so little time to keep the lore straight if you want the session to keep moving smoothly, i’m sure it’s even harder when you have a limited time to film the episodes/season

and maybe it’s just me, but i love horror movies (and other media) and neverafter is about as scary as most horror movies i’ve seen. it’s definitely better written than a lot of horror movies, we get to know the characters and are fully invested in them when bad things happen. it’s sort of on the level as the hellraiser reboot imo. some people make the point that besides the body horror, there’s not enough gore/blood kinda stuff, but i think gore isn’t truly horror, especially in a spoken format. it’s more of a shock factor thing, like a verbal jumpscare

and i’ve seen people saying that the pcs are too much like heroes/they’re too capable to be in any real danger, but in a horror movie, most of the bad things happen around the protagonist(s), they’re still thrown into the shit but most of the time they make it out. horror as a genre is so ill-defined anyway that people still debate if slashers and thrillers even count. plus, how many times in a movie has a side character been forgotten or something about the lore has been off? and that’s with multiple people overseeing the production.

jumping away from the “it’s not like the horror movie i envisioned” complaints, i’ve also seen a lot of people say it’s confusing??? and tbh i’m more confused about that than the campaign. to me it’s pretty straightforward, no more confusing than starstruck at the very least.

for the big picture: it’s different factions of people with conflicting (but occasionally overlapping) goals than all need to get to macguffin in order to reach whichever goal they’re aligned with

the pcs have their own character arcs which are very clearly laid out throughout the season

the minute details are there because that’s how you make your world feel lived in

and yeah, there’s a lot of potential in the stuff they could’ve done but didn’t. but i feel like that’s the whole point, y’know? this is the story they did tell, and the thousands of other ways they could’ve told the story live on like every retelling of a fairytale.

#tbh a lot of the criticism feels like people nitpicking to find stuff to hate but you can’t please everyone ig #feel free to disagree and tell me why! just please don’t turn my notes into a rage-bait discussion #dimension 20 #d20 #neverafter #dimension 20 neverafter

[kustas]

For the silver eve arc in wha , what did you envision or think it would be like in comparison to other anime arcs , episodes or anime movies & manga? Or in other words could u share more on what energy/pacing/direction/visuals you wanted to see? Hope this makes sense !

Hi anon! Thank you for asking! Earlier arcs in WHA were super short, only a few chapters long, around an arc or two per volume when the transition was mid volume. Honestly, I have mixed feelings about arc structures in the first place because of stories like early WHA - "arcs" only feel like distinct, strong parts for specific long and often shonen type series. It seems like with the evolution of the story and stakes in WHA it's transforming into this. Because arcs are convenient I'll keep using them to answer though!

Purely in matters of what I like, raising the stakes is a problem. It's entirely subjective but I personally care less and less about stories the higher the stakes are. I like narratives centered around a small group of individuals and if it involves worldbuilding I like the worldbuilding to be expressed through everyday interactions. This is something early WHA excelled at and who continues to be a strong point in the series. The author has crafted a believable, engaging fantasy world who's intricacies are shown through personal problems first, before reattaching them to societal problems second. Instead of showing you it's witch society through grand info dumps of historical moments, you learn about it alongsides a little girl who's fascinated by the world the same way the reader can be.

What I thought the Silver Eve would be was a step back from the currently established factions (the atelier, the knights, iguin's brimmed caps) to consider the greater picture of how witches interact with outsiders. The arc was introduced by Tartah's proposal for a stand and the arrival of the Three Wise at the King's castle. I was expecting those two POVs to cover the duration of the festival: on one side, the atelier girls selling their wares and on the other the politicians organizing it all. Both were to answer the question raised with the phantasmal flame chapter: how do you regulate how to use magic? Outsiders want magic which and it is up to the witches, who's faction chose to control it exclusively, to decide how to distribute it. And from this stems the questions of corruption (Engendil), control (king vs Wise), poverty (Custas), yadda yadda.

This hyped me up a lot because it's an amazing opportunity for more worldbuilding including a major city we hadn't seen yet, politicians we hadn't seen yet and their POVs and outsiders! Asides of the first chapter with Coco, Custas&Dagda were pretty much the only outsider characters and their life conditions were pretty extreme. This arc promised to me to show way more "normal" magicless people and their associated takes on the witches. Think the chapter where Oru and Hiehart go to work and help both the nobleman and the poor kid. It also immediately started with teasing the king had other bigger plans, as well as introducing a potential new faction or brimhats with Ininia and her master. This was around chapter 40-45.

A few chapters later none of this was resolved at all. We still don't know what the king wants, or Restys. The subplot with Custas is without a resolution. To this kept being added more backstory material fleshing out more characters (don't like that either but it's a whole other can of worms) which usually prepares you for their big time of relevance but uh. That did not happen. Instead we have: the leech.

That leech was, imo, entirely unnecessary. It dropped at a moment where the stakes were already at an all time high with all old and new factions involved in a single event, at the same time, something the story had thus far entirely avoided with smaller more separate arcs. And it ballooned all stakes to city ending mass massacre stuff without resolving any of the established issues. I...don't thing WHA needs giant monsters. It's a story about a little girl learning things in a society she's uniquely placed to see the unfairness of. I like how human it is and I don't think kaiju battling will contribute to that. The human scale is literally and figuratively gone with something like that.

Pacing wise, I'd have liked for all those little individual groups of characters to continue being individual and indirectly influence each other via their role in society. I'd have wanted for subplots to be closed off one by one or allowed to bait for next story beats like was done before. I'd have kept the blood eating monster a small one off incident way further that'd have to be solved by a crew of characters. While not all subplots need final closure the earlier arcs did a great job of addressing a situation and moving on from it in 3-10 chapters. The silver eve isn't over and it's length is approaching to be longer than the rest of the arcs combined.

Visually, while the outfit and world designs continue to go hard, I dislike how the character art has simplified away from a semi realistic take to smoother, more ... "moe" characters. It's more conventional and I don't like it. I like my characters to look distinct and this includes the little everyday traits that are dismissed by many authors for not being conventionally attractive. While WHA makes a visible effort to be inclusive it's the unfortunate reality that while the author can draw old people, fat people, people with all skin tones and all sorts of scars and stubble she...does not. I want to see it more. I would have liked to see it from day 1 actually, instead of having extras like the adult woman helping the leech victims sporting those one off designs, I'd have wanted Qifrey or Olruggio to have her look. It's too late for this and I hope it gets slowly changed with how the series continues and grows.

I don't really read a lot of long manga and nearly don't watch anime so I can't compare much to other media, I hope otherwise I've answered your question and don't hesitate to ask me again if I haven't or if you want further details!

#ask #witch hat atelier

[meikuree]

shingeki no kyojin fic recs: hange zoë edition

in no particular order, here are some fics about hange zoë i’ve enjoyed reading. most of them are canonverse oneshots, ranging from 1k to 4k words in length, with an equal distribution of genfic and relationship-focused fic.

this list was compiled in Aug/Sep 2022, and I admittedly don’t keep up with snk fic often now, so anyone’s welcome to add self-recs or other recs in reblogs that you’ve enjoyed.

gen, pre-canon, missing scenes

Downriver by Lady_Bluebird (Levi & Hange | Gen | M rating | 1.2k) Hange patches Levi up in the woods after Zeke’s attack on him. M rated for graphic descriptions of violence and injury (it’s otherwise platonic, and centred on their professional relationship). a gritty, realistic look at their situation on the eve of the Rumbling.

knock down drag out by Senri (Levi & Hange | Gen | T rating | 1.6k) post-Wall Maria, Levi and Hange have a confrontation about Levi’s decision to give the serum to Armin. an excellent missing scene that builds on mere hints of Hange’s ambivalence about their involuntary promotion to Commander in canon to give them the airtime they deserve. we get to see exactly why and how being Commander’s a poisoned chalice for Hange, not to mention Hange’s resentment over the serum affair and Erwin’s death. Hange’s a principled person, but has their rough spots too; this fic showcases that well with nuance.

Zugzwang by Minos_forlorn (Pieck & Hange | Gen | G rating | 1.3k) Hange plays a game of chess with Pieck, while she’s captured and under their care in Paradis. a great look at these two connecting with each other outside of the circumstances within the manga, with good character insight into both of them.

Hanji's Notebook by lightningwaltz (Gen | T Rating | 4k) a pre-canon look at hange’s backstory, told through excerpts from their notebook/journal. it’s written in first person POV, but don’t let that faze you: this fic nails Hange’s idiosyncratic but reflective thought process, which is an impressive feat. the worldbuilding & deeper scythe into the lives of the Survey Corps’s members is wonderful too!

relationship-focused fics

Acceptable Cost by gogollescent (Erwin/Hange | Other | T rating | 1.5k) a short fic centred around a birthday celebration for Erwin, that offers a peek into Hange’s wonderful camaraderie with their comrades, and Hange’s life + outlook in the Survey Corps before the start of the manga. the characterisation is wonderfully sharp and insightful. although it’s tagged Erwin/Hange, imo this can pass as Gen until the last few sections.

alike by soapyheels (Hange/Pieck | Other | T rating | 2k) short and well-written bittersweet look at Pieck’s post-canon situation as she reflects on some Rumbling interactions with Hange, featuring a deeper conversation than what we got in canon. beyond Hange’s role, I really liked the notes about Pieck’s inner conflict, and how Pieck was able to build bridges with an enemy commander, and the hopeful note this ended on.

Lose the Ballads by Anonymous (Hange/Petra, Other | T rating | 1k) Petra can carry her own weight and whatever the Corps has to throw at her, including Hanji Zoë. a short fic charting Petra’s first meeting with Hange and a subsequent (implied) relationship. excellent Hange voice and characterisation, with sharp and resonant prose too; I’m in love with the version of Hange presented here, whirlwind-like but principled and with hidden depths.      

And debauchee of dew by tselinoyarsk (snowlikeash) (Hange/Petra, F/F | T rating | 1k) Hanji learns not to just drink any little thing on Petra's drafting desk, else she be preyed upon. a short but fun interaction between petra and hange, featuring fun dialogue.

to end this off:

for my recs, please pretend I’m holding up a big stadium sign for all these saying “THIS FIC IS REALLY GOOD!!! you should be reading it!!” most of these fics are from criminally underrated authors, so the usual bromide applies: if you enjoy any of them, consider leaving kudos or a comment!

#cc-ing senri although you probably know most of these recs #snk #hange zoe #hange zöe #fic rec #pikuhan #hanpeto #eruhan #levihan #but mostly platonic #shingeki no kyojin #aot #attack on titan

[st-just]

Opinions on the novel and novella categories excluding Elder Race?

Okay so, uh, 3 months late finally answering this (sorry - but I DID read Elder Race in the meantime!)

So, novels-

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine The central metaphor of how an empire can only understand something by consuming/assimilating it into itself was imo well-done, one of the better uses of a hive mind alien I've seen in a while. Mahit and (especially) Three Seagrass continue to be delightful. The whole palace drama plot in the City leaned a biiiiiit too close to 'the Empress is just and good! Sadly scheming ministers and self-interested officials have attempted to mislead her for their own ends' for my tastes, which absolutely made me start rooting for scheming vizer guy out of spite. Still kind of confused what happened to the Judiciary Minister who vanished 2/3 of the way into the first book without comment. Excellent read, would recommend

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers Absolutely my favorite thing Chambers has written, but that is a very low bar. There were a few pages of actual interpersonal conflict that wasn't just a silly misunderstanding! (Even if they had apologized and agreed to disagree by the end of the next chapter). In principle I approve of any sci fi with no human characters in major roles. Aeleon demography continues to give me a headache (how do you spend so much time on worldbuilding and just mess up the basic math?) - though honestly Pei's whole conflict over the societal expectation to have a kid would have had a bit more tension/drama to it in a setting where her species was legitimately endangered and at risk of extinction (the sheer angst potential!) Anyway, yeah, well-executed but Not For Me.

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki I did, uh, not much like this book. In a 'spent a couple hours cathartically ranting about it on discord after finishing it' sort of way. The central romance didn't work, every character arc was perfectly predictable, the whole incessantly hammered home bit about the magic and wonder of home-cooked food just makes me want to gag, I can kind of see what Aoki was going for with the sci fi half of the worldbuilding but it just didn't work at all, and so on. Still not entirely sure what to make of the fact that if you did the 0.5 degree shift necessary to turn the finale into a Christian morality play the quirky alien family plays an identical structural role to where the angels would be. The cursed/demonic-violin repair lady was fun, though.

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark This was fun! Nothing hugely ground-breaking and extremely trope-ey, but in a good way? Like the process was clearly 'buddy cop story in into steampunk urban fantasy Cairo' more than anything that evolved naturally out of the characters or setting. But like, eh? The finale involved a giant robot controlled by enslaved ifrit and a mad sorceress trying to restore the British empire attacking the city, nuance and subtlety clearly weren't the goals here. The central mystery was barely a mystery, though. You could pick out the villain by the end of the first act like three or four different ways. Still, yeah, great time. Very pulpy.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir If you don't know that this is by the The Martian guy going in, it will be extremely clear by the time you're 50 pages in. It's a writing style with a real personality bleeding through - if you don't like it, the book will I'm sure be torture. But anyway, I'm a sucker for first contact stories and properly weird but still sympathetic and agentic aliens, and that's the beating heart of the story so I mean, of course I enjoyed it. The science also all seemed plausible/not-obvious-bullshit to me, and Weir did a really good job of getting tension and drama without ever making anyone a villain, with all the threats being faced being natural/environmental. Fun read, assuming very high tolerance for technobabble and also magic amnesia that you don't apply anywhere near the standards of the rest of the books' science to.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan I mean the whole premise of 'mythic/low-fantasy retelling of the founding of the Ming dynasty but with lesbians' feels like what you'd get if you simmered down my reading consumption of the last year or two and poured out the reduction. So like, yeah, of course I liked it! Probably would have been my vote for winner, though not at all sad that Desolation got it instead. As a character type, I really, really love the whole 'arranges everything to work out perfectly through desperate, furious scheming, then absolutely never breaks character and insists it must be providence and they're but a simple monk/scholar/whatever" so Zhu's whole bit there was just catnip to me. The whole melodrama in the mongol court was great, too. And how can you not love a book that ends with the heroine murdering the messiah in cold blood?

novellas-

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire The only other thing I'd read by McGuire before this was Middlegame, which may have given me unrealistic expectations but, like, this was fine? Or, like, I get the sense that this is very much a YA/Middle-grade book, insofar as it really feels like the literary equivalent of a tv special you'd watch with your kid niece and nephew because hey, it's not painful for you or anything? Really funny that this exists entirely independently of the apparently-a-real-thing cartoon Centaurworld, though.

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky This was fun classic sci fi. Like, really classic - I kind of thought 'fantasy setting that's secretly a post-apocalyptic sci fi setting where all the 'magic' and 'monsters' are just poorly understood hypertech' went of fashion with the millennium. Anyway I adore things that play with POV and have different people see the same events and process/interpret them radically differently, so the whole book was catnip that way, and it managed to authentically feel like just a small slice of a vaster, weirder universe, and both deuteragonists really work for me. Don't have a solid pick for my preferred winner but this is one of the two I'm torn between.

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard First and so far only thing by de Bodard I've read, which I should probably fix given how big a name she is. Anyway, this was fun! Nothing too groundbreaking, but that is 100% down to my reading habits rather than, like, 'lesbian court drama in a fantasy analogue of an asian country under threat of colonization' is an over-filled niche, or anything (really the only surprising thing was that I hadn't read this already).

The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente The other one I might have voted for. On the level of stories she's a bit hit and miss but on the sentence-to-sentence and paragraph-to-paragraph levels Valente is seriously one of my favorite writers working, and this was no exception. Just an absolute delight to read. Also, 'post-apocalyptic magical realism on the city-sized garbage heap floating in the ocean populated by a culture of survivors after the world drowned' is just a great premise. And my shriveled husk of a soul appreciates just committing to the character study and the ruin and the elegy without giving into the urge to make a grand redemptive quest of it all.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers I, uh, liked this significantly less than Galaxy and the Ground Within. Utopias are basically necessarily didactic but, like, you really don't have to lean all the way into literally having the heart of the story be conversations between the protagonist and a sacred and innocent alien whose always correct about everything. Also the whole 'we 100% could be immortal but we chose not to because, like, nature or something. Aren't we so amazing?' thing with the robots is bullshit. Which, combined with the entire aesthetic of the world just left be feeling peevish and asking questions which really weren't the point (Where are the mines? The foundries? You can't make solar panels or modern antibiotics in a basement workshop! And you sure as hell can't cobble together and repair fully mobile and sapient robots in a cave with a box of scraps.)

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow So it's not that this was bad, exactly. But, like, I feel like it should have come out sometime in the '90s? (Okay without the explicitly gay bits but that's a matter of a few sentences tbh). Like, the deadline for metafictional feminist retellings of classic fairtails being genuinely novel or subversive was sometime before Disney got in on the game, sorry. Also, like, I'm sure it's just down to me being a weird morbid kid, but the whole shocking revelation about how fucked up the original Sleeping Beauty myth is was, like, something I knew before I hit puberty? Only other thing of Harrow's I've read was the Ten Thousand Door's of January and I'm really, really disappointed comparing them, honestly. (Also, as a general rule I dislike anything where it's very clear whether you're supposed to like or trust a character from the scene they're introduced and this is never wrong)

In other categories L’Esprit de L’Escalier should obviously have one novelette, "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" short story, Terra Ignota series, and Monstress comic, based off the foolproof criteria of 'those are the ones I've read'

#reply #anon #books #in this essay i will #draft purge #technically #A Memory Called Empire #A Desolation Called Peace #Arkady Martine #The Galaxy and the Ground Within #Becky Chambers #light from uncommon stars #Ryka Aoki #a master of djinn #P. Djèlí Clark #Project Hail Mary #Andy Weir #she who became the sun #Shelly Parker-Chan #across the green grass fields #seanan mcguire #Fireheart Tiger #aliette de bodard #The Past Is Red #catherynne m. valente #a psalm for the wild built #Elder Race #adrian tchaikovsky #a spindle splintered #alix e. harrow

[brotherdusk]

@occasionalmaven replied to your post “the dresden files tv show will have you tearing...”:

As someone who’s never read the books or seen the show… do you recommend waiting to watch the show until I’ve read some of the books? 

hi! ​as someone who was in the same boat at the start of the year, and has since watched the entire show and read two of the books: not at all, you can jump into the show straight away if you want to! Dresden took the basic premise of the books and directly adapted a couple of them into episodes, but it mostly does its own thing with the characters and world.

personally I read Storm Front, the first book in the series, in parallel with the show. imo it was valuable in terms of adding depth to the worldbuilding (especially the magic system and its limitations) that the show couldn't fully explore within its 45 minute time slot. the tv version of Storm Front is a bit weird anyway, as it was cobbled together from the pilot episode and isn't representative of the show's final direction at all. I was actually advised to skip it entirely on my first run-through of the show - it doesn't fit tonally and interferes with the flow of the overall narrative. so I was able to safely take in both the book and show in parallel as I knew that the show wouldn't spoil the book's ending for me! it was a convoluted but cool way to enter the Dresdenverse 😭👍

but it's absolutely not necessary to read the books, especially as the show alters most things and introduces new overarching plots that are really unexpectedly good. it also expands upon certain book characters so drastically and so well that it's hard to believe that the version in the show is basically a tv original. Bob the Skull is kind of Dresden tv's version of the Cleonic Dynasty haha, a lot of people who don't like the show still think tv!Bob was a great idea. honestly the whole adaptation style is similar to Foundation - it's cool to have the extra context of the book, but it veers so far from the original stories so often that it's not as much of a help as you'd expect.

but yes please give this show a try! I compare it a lot to mid-2000s Doctor Who for a reason - it can be kinda goofy in tone and the CGI was made on a budget of approximately $3, but it's got so much heart and goes from "wacky supernatural romp" to "unexpectedly emotional character study" when you least expect. it's also very pretty to look at - it's shot and lit shockingly well for the budget, and everyone involved including the set dressers and cinematographers are clearly giving it everything. it's 12 episodes in a monster-of-the-week format so it's very zippy, and the acting is also fantastic across the board. obviously I'm biased as hell and think the Paul Blackthorne - Terrence Mann shared braincell double act is the best thing ever and only gets better as the series progresses. but even the actors who show up for a single episode are excellent! the one-off characters in episodes 3, 9 and 10 are among my favourites :3

#'bee the foundation tv fan to dresden tv fan pipeline isn't going to happen stop trying to make it happen' no! I won't! #dresdenblogging #txt

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine - Propaganda Post

S-Class Heroine is my all-time favourite Otome Isekai for sure. I've reread the available webtoon chapters a stupid number of times, then read the webnovel and became even more insane about the story. Here's why you should read it too!

---

The premise of the story is pretty standard. Lady in her 20s gets hit by a truck and is reincarnated as a mob character who's destined to die early. Her new world is full of danger because dungeons filled with demons can spring up whenever, but she has the help of a game system and its benevolent moderators (the gods that transmigrated her there) cheering her on.

Top 3 things that make the story stand out from other OIs:

No romance while they're children

It's a low bar but one that lots of OIs fail anyway, so it's worth mentioning.

Excellent Pacing

Speaking of childhood arcs, the author has the good sense to skip all the unnecessary skill grinding. We're only with the MC in the important parts where (1) worldbuilding mechanics are introduced (2) she makes important friends, or (3) she acquires fundamental skills that she's going to use for the rest of the story. You never lose track of the stakes involved because the story isn't dragged out. But it also isn't rushed; the story takes the time to pause for jokes and small moments too.

The in-universe the tutorial/childhood period is 10 years long, but we're only with the MC for like a couple of months in total. Can't imagine being in the childhood arc for 100+ chapters. (sorry Matriarch. I did love you but I simply cannot see why the last 3 arcs I read needed to exist at all)

ML doesn't fall into any of the typical archetypes.

I dunno how to describe Tesilid. He's a hero, he's a damsel in distress. He behaves saint-like but he doesn't even really want to be that way.

His character revolves around some magic restrictions on his behaviour. He has to adhere to the 7 heavenly virtues and abstain from the 7 deadly sins, which basically means that he's always very kind and gentlemanly. He's also a doormat who's constantly betrayed and taken advantage of because he's essentially not allowed to stand up for himself.

He's such a funny guy ever because when he's like 10 and still not very great at handling himself, he petulantly mutters and complains under his breath about why he's the only one who has to live so rigidly. You can definitely tell that if he were given the choice, he definitely wouldn't be doing so many saintly things, but here he is anyway and looking like an angel while at it. But he's also not a selfish prick. He's the guy who in the original novel died 80+ times trying to save the world. He consistently wishes for others to avoid living the same restrictive life as he does in the in-universe church, even though this incurs penalties from committing the sin of envy.

imo Tesilid doesn't feel like a typical bland ML, maybe because he's quite literally an action fantasy MC who's now in a rofan lol. By the grace of the transmigration gods he now has a transmigrator who wants, above all, for him to have a freer and happier life.

His interactions with FL are both very cute and somehow devastatingly sad and hopeful at the same time. She's the only one with whom he is exempt from the penalties of committing the seven deadly sins, which means he can actually be himself around her. If she's the one giving him food, he can eat it without it counting as the sin of gluttony. So after the childhood arc they have this wordless agreement where she piles food on his plate without being asked and he cleans the plate. They look like a married couple to everyone else, but they're probably rationalising it on the inside. It makes me want to combust.

FL also became strong in order to defend him. I love how narratively speaking, lots of times Tesilid is the damsel in distress. There's no ML coming in to solve all the FL's problems, because he's constantly weaker than her. But it's not demeaning, because it means that for the first time ever, someone is there to catch him when he falls. And despite being weaker and being rescued by the FL lots of times, he's also never stripped of agency. He's always thinking and acting to protect her in turn. And as he gets stronger, she sometimes ends up having to keep up with his plans and antics instead.

TLDR; romance aside, Tesilid is a really interesting main character because his entire thing is about resisting the Saint-like character and destiny imposed onto him. I know OIs are about romance, and this one does have (slow-burn) romance, but I love it when stories transcend that and make their characters more than just their relationship with their love interests. Also it's very nice how he and FL flipped the damsel in distress dynamic and without making it emasculating or demeaning for either party.

—

Anyway there's more good things about the story, like it being really funny and having excellent art. I would explain and also talk about the MC who's also so funny and so driven, but unfortunately Tesilid has my entire brain in his grip. I could talk about him forever but he has already made this post long enough.

Please read S-Class Heroine ❤️ The pacing is so good and also Tesilid exists. Thank you for listening to my TedTalk.

#manhwa #otome isekai #korean webtoon #shoujo #a transmigrator's privilege #the perks of being an s class heroine #also tagging #tesilid argente #bc more than half the post ended up being me gushing about him #squeezes him like a stuffed toy #also crossposted on reddit #bc i think the audience is bigger there #PLEASE i cant keep being the only person in the fandom

[mrbexwrites]

Writblr Q& A

Tagged by @surroundedbypearls here. Thanks so much :D

1. What motivates you to write?

I don't know...I've always spent a lot of time in my own head, and I've always just written down the stories that my brain likes to make up for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2. A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

I absolutely adore this line by @sarahlizziewrites from her WIP Grey Sky Lark :

"I spent the better part of two decades looking for you. I would do it again."

It's just...it gives me actual chills and I think about this line at least once a week.

5. What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

I think the strongest aspect of my writing is my dialogue. I used to hate it when characters would speak, and I'd end up having them info dump and the speech would be so stilted and robotic. I worked hard to make my dialogue more realistic, and I (hope) my hard work has paid off, and it's now the best parts of my works!

6. What do you enjoy most about the Writeblr community?

I absolutely love seeing everyone else's creative process, and how generous people are with sharing their skills. So many of you just post massive chunks of knowledge about your own publishing/editing/writing experience to help us all get better at what we do, and I'm just in awe! I love the support that everyone has for one another.

7. A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech to text, a writing program etc)

I have a notebook to scribble ideas, names, plot lines etc. I've tried to use flash cards in the past, but I tend to lose them, so a note book it is. I treated myself to Scrivener but I haven't really transferred my WIPs across to it yet, as I've not properly had a chance to sit and familiarise myself with it. So still chipping away with Google Docs due to my own procrastination!

8. A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

So, Searching for Starlight, a WIP that doesn't get spoken about often has some excellent worldbuilding imo. I'm especially proud of the concept of 'solar sails' for how my spaceships were powered. Totally impractical and wouldn't be able to work with actual physics, but real-world stuff be damned!

9. What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

Just take it one day at a time. Don't force yourself, and be careful of burnout. Listen to music, walk, partake in media you life, and don't feel guilty for not working on your WIP 24/7. Your story deserves to be told, but not at the expense of your health (speaking as someone who hopitalised themselves a couple of years ago doing NaNo who definitely did not take my own advice- I am older and wiser now. Look after yourselves guys; be kind to yourself!)

Tagging @cee-grice @at-thezenith @sam-glade @scifimagpie @queen-tashie @cowboybrunch and leaving an open invite for anyone else who'd like to join in

#tag games

[auntieoneandauntietwo]

My opinions on renegades this reread:

Overall much tighter than I remembered, despite the two plotlines being largely unrelated for the most of the book they’re independently pretty strong.

Getting insight into the lives of the trader caravans and holdless is super interesting, and leads to a lot of general worldbuilding. Unfortunately Aramina has literally zero personality which is a shame because she was interesting in the Girl Who Heard Dragons. Thella is honestly an awesome character, she’s both sorta an interesting example of the way women function on pern and delightfully evil (now when do we get to see her and Kylara interact? Evil sisters ftw).

Even more fun is Piemur, Toric, and Sharra. I find Piemur’s narration wildly entertaining, and I love seeing more of Sharra in her Dragondrums realm as opposed to her White Dragon realm. She’s better before Jaxom starts describing her. Insight into the day to day operations at southern hold is fun too. Toric is an excellent character imo, and this book gets soooo much farther into the politics around the southern continent that twd just brushes on.

It does fall apart at the end a little, when things start to pick up at Landing. Any of the sections, especially before atwop, that are just a bunch of random characters hanging out at Landing who really only are there because Anne wants to mash them all together, are honestly a little silly. Idk I thought they were super fun when I was younger but now I just wonder why no one is doing their real job.

The last section also completely throws a way the focused lens of the rest of the book in favor of the “how many people can we cram into this one scene without developing any characters” style that atwop is in. It works for the action that’s happening but it’s jarring when you’ve just read a whole book that’s not like that.

The Piemur/Jancis situation literally just appears at the end of the book because of COURSE we can’t end without pairing him off with someone. That being said I can’t hate it because woman smithcrafters are awesome

On to all the weyrs…

#i had fun slotting it all in chronologically with dragondrums and the white dragon #renegades reread #renegades of pern #pern reread #all the weyrs of pern #pern #dragonriders of pern #anne mccaffery

[bookishfreedom]

what can i say that hasn’t already been said?

this is one of those books where i found it important to make a distinction between a fun book and a “good” book. i really enjoyed reading Fourth Wing, but it definitely belongs in the fun category.

the best way i’ve seen this book described is: it’s a romance book with a fantasy setting, not a fantasy book. if you’re looking for elaborate worldbuilding, you’re likely to be disappointed. if you’re looking for a mildly spicy romance with some dragons thrown in? this is your book

Fourth Wing definitely brought me back to my dystopian era in the best way. (specifically, imo, if you loved divergent as a teen, you’re gonna love this book) I read it super fast and genuinely enjoyed figuring out the world alongside Violet. (badass disabled protagonist? excellent stuff)

there are times, though, that it was obvious Yarros isn’t used to writing fantasy, especially when it came to word choice. I was definitely pulled out of the story a few times because of vocabulary. (i mean, a fantasy novel where they talk about a person’s “vibe” being off? a bit jarring). definitely could’ve used another editor.

so was this the greatest book i’ve ever read, as the hype might suggest? nah. but was it one of the most enjoyable reads of this year? probably.

#fourth wing #rebecca yarros #booklr #books #book #reading #read #reader #bookish #mine #bookblr #bookworm #book rec #sprayed edges #hardcover #book review #book reviews

[optiwashere]

I stopped reading Gardens of the Moon after 250~ pages because frequent character switches got confusing and I couldn't get a solid idea of the magic system. Does it ever get better?

I liked the the prologue, but I feel like they just dropped me into middle of 50 different powers scheming against each other after that. Also the coin is spinning.

TL;DR — This is a series that I love but really struggle to recommend.

Anon, it took me... ten years (?) to finish that book. I still think it's pretty terrible even having read the whole main series. So, I get where you're coming from lol.

That said, the writing quality immediately skyrockets when you hit Deadhouse Gates due to the fact that he wrote that book so many years after the first. But the books fly around a massive world and constantly switch around POVs, so...

If you don't like frequent POV switches, then you won't like the series. Flat out. There's something like 450 POV characters, but some of those brief POVs are some of the most powerful. Some of the characters are really high up in my faves of all time. Onos T'oolan, Tavore & Felisin Paran, Beak... Samar Dev??? Korlat!!! Itkovian, my beloved... there's some amazing characters mixed in with some truly awful ones.

And if you're someone that likes hard magic systems, you won't like Warrens. I don't like hard magic — when a book touts its "magic system" first, I'm immediately negatively biased towards it through no fault of the writer in 99% of cases — so it worked for me.

Pros:

Really broad worldbuilding with lots of cultural influences that aren't Western blended in with traditional Western fantasy.

Erikson has an excellent prose style later on (yeah, I know, it's very difficult to believe considering Gardens) and he has a very elegant way of expressing postmodernist ideas.

Extremely varied women characters (hell, Tattersail in Book 1 is already pretty unusual, sadly, in fantasy for being a fat character who's noted as extremely attractive — and Erikson doesn't stop at her when it comes to hot fat women, what a king.)

My favorite withdrawn, depressed, badass, ruthless lesbian commander character of all time, Tavore Paran.

Very strong messages about compassion and what it means to do "the right thing" in the face of overwhelming adversity.

Despite largely dealing with militaries and soldiers, the books are really about kindness, loss, and love, as well as finding the space within oneself to reject the notion of unconquerable despair.

Cons:

Erikson has, like, four character archetypes and they all blend together (barring a few standout characters.)

The worldbuilding is so broad that it sometimes feels pretty shallow.

Erikson loves using excessive epithets (the soldier, the ex-priest, etc.) and it's wild that those made it through professional editing.

Sometimes, Erikson likes his own prose style so much that we have to listen to identical characters internally monologue over identical woes and dramas. I love the Tiste Andii, but holy shit...

There are so many cases of plotting being hidden from the reader in transparent ways. Conversations where two people will refuse to elaborate their thoughts where they often cut off one another with inane, oblique reasons so that the reader is left in the lurch in a way that is often personally unsatisfying.

Possibly neutral or possibly a con, but there's a trillion content warnings scattered all through the books that are actually really, really serious (lots of sexual assault, and in several of those cases it's either completely unnecessary or actively detrimental to the story IMO.)

Having said all of that, I'll leave you with some quotes for why I still love the series despite its (to me) many flaws:

Open to them your hand to the shore, watch them walk into the sea. Press upon them all they need, see them yearn for all they want. Gift to them the calm pool of words, watch them draw the sword. Bless upon them the satiation of peace, see them starve for war. Grant them darkness and they will lust for light. Deliver to them death and hear them beg for life. Beget life and they will murder your kin. Be as they are and they see you different. Show wisdom and you are a fool. The shore gives way to the sea. And the sea, my friends, Does not dream of you. —Reaper's Gale

"No tyrant could thrive where every subject says no. The tyrant thrives when the first fucking fool salutes." —Toll the Hounds

Against a broken heart, even absurdity falters. Because words fall away. A dialogue of silence. That deafens. & The failure of hope has a name: it is called suffering. —The Crippled God

#hey you can ask me things! #malazan posting??? it's more likely than you think #the conclusion to the main series still sits with me to this day #even if I CANNOT stand book 9 (it's literally an Act 1 in ~380k words)

[dixbolik-lovers]

im very curious about something. please dont take this the wrong way, but why are you in this fandom? from all of your aus and fics, you seem too much prefer submissive dudes, so like, why? 😂😂 i read all of your au thingies even though im very much not into that kind of stuff bcs i really like your writing, so i thought that might be it but lets be honest, dl's writing is not the best 😂😂 so how and why? dl is still a dating sim after all, so i really dont understand 😂😂

The Diaboys may think they're doms, but the way I see it, they're traumatized disasters who have convinced themselves they're a bunch of dominant sadists for reasons varying from "a desperate attempt to have some control in his life" to "maintaining a tough-guy ego to drown out the trauma" to "allergic to vulnerability".

And by that, I mean that canon is easy to ignore and I have no problem executing an interpretation that they're subs in DEEP denial and/or just plain fun to break. XD

Also, I kind of disagree with you about DL's writing. The worldbuilding/plot can be all over the place, and they're definitely cramming a lot of sellable fanservice, but imo, the characterization is excellent. I was first drawn to the series because of how well it's shown that the boys are all incredibly fucked up. Also, mommy issues. Trauma and mommy issues are like, the two top traits that draw me to an anime boy.

The dating-sim part also helps! I'm VERY into reader-insert (obviously), and DL is certainly a lot darker and more complex than the majority of the fluffy, "wholesome" otome games where the guys are still dominant and all, but don't even have any horrible psychological problems to make up for it! o3o

#Ask

[selenesaysstuff]

happy fiftieth birthday to pong

in honor i thought id reccomend some incredible games that i have enjoyed

terraria- with a very loose plot, you can really do anything in this game. build things, fight bosses, run around like an idiot, sacrifice your friends into the depths of hell, collect cute animals and so much more.

starbound- terraria with a lot more structure. uncover the history of civilization in an attempt to save the universe.

portal- a decent sized puzzle game with excellent worldbuilding possibilities, challenging levels, creative mechanics and everyones favorite robot

hiveswap- a 2d puzzle game thats decently challenging. still under active development, but what we have right now really shows the games potential. play as joey claire as she attempts to escape her monster-infested house and finds a not so friendly way out.

undertale- long after a war between humans and monsters, all of the monsters are trapped underground by human magic. fall down a mountain, meet some monsters and kill no one in this challenging and story rich rpg.

deltarune- three unexpected heroes of legend attempt to fulfill a prophecy through the power of chalk, moss and friendship. still under active development.

if you need something to do id highly reccomend checking some of these out! theyre all great games for their own reasons imo

#video games #terraria #starbound #portal #hiveswap #undertale #deltarune

[vellaphoria]

hi hi! c: for the Get to know your fic writer! meme - 1, 17, 22, 56, and 67? (however many you'd like to answer!)

hiiiiii :D

thanks for the ask!! <3

Do you prefer writing one-shots or multi-chaptered fics?

It depends on what I'm going for! I think that broadly I'd prefer to write one-shots, but I'm very very bad at being concise in writing, so often they turn into multi-chapter fics without me noticing lol The fun thing about oneshots is that you can be Vague and leave people guessing about implication breadcrumbs left through the fic. But the fun thing about multi-chapter fics is that I do really love worldbuilding...

17. What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

For a lack of inspiration, usually I have to step away from the project for a while. Trying to write while uninspired tends to do me more harm than good, and inspiration tends to find me at the most unexpected times. So chances are I'll be coming back to it pretty quickly, when the time is right.

For writers block, I usually bring the issue to my beta reader and we talk through it and brainstorm. Getting a second opinion is really helpful! Especially when the other person can see things that you've missed because you were the one writing it. So, shout out to my beta reader for being excellent (and also for enabling me lol) <3

22. Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

There are! But for different reasons. Style: I think that epistolary style can be done very well, but I'm not super good at it and have no particular desire to expand my writing skill set in that direction. POV: Likewise, first person and second person pov can be well done (harder with second person, imo), but they're not for me. I could probably write third person omniscient, but I much prefer third person limited because playing with perception and who knows what (and when) is really fun for me! The downside is that sometimes people reading my fic are like. Why didn't the POV character know this thing that they couldn't possibly have known at the time in the plot?? So I think that some people don't understand that third person omniscient and limited pov's are different things Genre: I'm really really really really not a fan of slice of life, as a genre. Or coffee shop AUs. Any genre where narrative conflict is deemphasized is a genre that I'm not super interested in reading or writing Tropes: I won't write AOB because I'm squicked out by the biological determinism and recreation of heterosexual gender dynamics in queer relationshps. Like, I know there are subversions that don't do that, but the majority of it plays it straight, so it's not for me. I also won't write pregnancy of any sort or child acquisition because the first squicks me out and the latter makes me uncomfortable. For DC-specific tropes, I won't write joker junior because the concept makes me sad. I've also been leaning away from a lot of the fanon tropes (i.e. stuff like Tim having a coffee addiction) because while they're fun as jokes, the way that some people are treating them as canon annoys me. Long answer is long lol

56. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

I like to think that I write pretty compelling relationship dynamics. Or at least I write them in the way that I want to read them, so. That's all that really matters to me at the end of the day <3

67. Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas?

I prefer prompts and challenges since I get to interpret them broadly! Chances are that by they end, they've become completely independent ideas anyway XD

(questions are from this prompt list)

#jagn answers #ask games #gerryrigged #:D

[st-just]

Hello! I found your blog scrolling through the Baru cormorant tag in the daze following reading the final chapter of Tyrant. You seem cool and we seem to have about the same taste in books (lesbians committing atrocities while having complex feelings about imperialism). I see Baru and TLT and often A Memory Called Empire rec’d together but very rarely Ninefox Gambit which is too bad because it really does deserve to be included in the category of disaster lesbians and imperialism. Anyway, just wanted to say hi and also ask if you had any recommendations of things to read which scratch the same itch as these books?

Oh, thank you! And congrats on the excellent taste!

Okay, other recs! (writing on a break so sorry for lack of description)

Ancillary Justice/Imperial Radch - you've probably already read it, but basically the progenitor of the whole, like, sub-genre, so probably worth a try if you haven't. Honestly never quite fell in love with the series the way a lot of people did, and thematically a bit muddled imo, but still a very fun read.

The Poppy War Trilogy - set in obvious fantasy China during what's socially the fantasy 19th century but with weirdly primitive tech and some magic. So, if you feel like Baru was too soft-hearted and had too many moral qualms stopping her from doing what was necessary to fight imperial, oh boy is Fang Runin the protagonist for you! (Okay the books are honestly pretty uneven and luxuriate in describing various atrocities a bit much, and Rin is theoretically textually straight, but if you need an anti-imperialist girlboss committing war crimes hit this is the series for you)

The Unbroken - Fantasy Algeria/Egypt after colonization by the fantasy-French, about a colonial auxiliary soldier whose returning to her homeland for the first time since she was adopted/conscripted as a child and the princess there to quell a rebellion to gain enough political capital to take the throne despite being disabled (and also make things better for the natives) who she ends up serving in the household of. Of the 'historically accurate racism and colonialism, but patriarchy and homophobia aren't really things' school of worldbuilding. Touraine is a great protagonist, but also very frustrating in that she's got the skillset of Gideon but keeps trying to be Baru.

The Jasmine Throne - Fantasy-India, about one of the last surviving acolytes of a massacred priesthood devoted to the primordial demons who once almost conquered the continent (theoretically) and the imperial princess sent by her brother to rot in that conquered city after she refuses to burn herself alive as she was expected to. (The subgenre's just full to bursting with princesses and not-quite-knights, isn't it?). Clashing loyalties, terrifying mystical powers, intrigue and rebellion, you know the drill. Very good and a sequel's coming out soonish, I think?

Monstress - I don't know if you read comics at all, but if you do read Monstress. If you don't, also read Monstress. (Do not read Monstress if you've got any sort of weak stomach in either a metaphorical or literal sense. There's a lot, and it's all lovingly illustrated)

That's all just off the top of my head, will probably reblog this with more recs at some point after my brain stews a bit more.

#reply #yours-in-calendrical-heresy #books #book recomendations #lesbian space atrocities #ancillary justice #the poppy war #The Unbroken #the jasmine throne #monstress