#connected it’s a standalone series which happens to have 2 of the same characters and be really really good

[insomniamademedothis]

Oswald Danes is 100% based on Donald trump and there is nothing you can do to convince me otherwise. In 2011!!!

#torchwood #miracle day #yeah I’m watching miracle day guys really it’s actually good you just have to mentally detach it from the rest of torchwood like it’s not #connected it’s a standalone series which happens to have 2 of the same characters and be really really good #even if it is largely based in America.. #but you can’t tell me any different about Danes and trump #maybe if more people watched miracle day 2016 wouldn’t have happened

[inspector-montoya-fox]

let me hop onto this kinda underrated but definitely outdated post for a minute and ask: did Dr Michael PhD know about Clockwerk? it's not like i want the owl to be the ultimate catalyst in Sly's life - he was the end-all be-all for two games, it was time to move on for sure - but at the same time murdering an entire lineage of raccoons isn't um something you stumble upon everyday ?

i know how enticing it can be to want to connect all the dots when writing sequels and i'm so happy SP didn't pull a Roman Bridger told Billy Loomis to become Ghostface with Clockwerk and Dr Michael. actually, when you think about it, Sly 3 resists the urge to bring up Clockwerk in any way, which is very respectable. the way the game connects to the other two is through the aftermath of ClockLa (which is hardly mentioned) and returning villains as new gang members. if we removed those from the equation, Sly 3 could be a standalone entry. it's a very refreshing game after, again, two games that centre around Clockwerk and his subsequent resurrection but it's also a bit jarring to think that he is barely (or not at all?) mentioned during a game that involves two characters who worked for him as well as one who used his own tail feathers. at times it feels like the game is deliberately going out of its way to tiptoe around the subject.

personally, Honour Among Thieves left a lot to be desired, especially as the final episode not only of the game but of the series. more specifically, i love Dr Michael's conversation with Bentley so much but i feel like it was too little too late. i get that it acted as a climax for the 'Bentley wants to step out of Sly's shadow' storyline but the conversation gave birth to so many huge implications that it felt like we were just then getting to the juicy bits. why does Dr Michael have such vitriol for ConnEr Cooper? what happened between the gang members? was ConnEr truly a piece of shit or is it all Dr Michael's perspective? did every Cooper have a Bentley and Murray figure in their life?

whereas the player got to know Neyla through her various appearances throughout Sly 2, Dr Michael's character development is put on pause due to the fact that Sly 3's episodes aren't interconnected via the common thread of "a gang of villains". as a result, many questions arise in the final episode and never get answered. one of them being: what's his connection to Clockwerk? as highlighted in the paragraph above, there are other questions that are easily prioritised over this one because they are pointed at during the conversation with Bentley. that being said, it feels a bit bizarre for Dr Michael to not even bring up Clockwerk once. when he first sees Sly he thinks it's ConnEr, which raises the question 'does he even know about Clockwerk murdering ConnEr in the first place?' that's definitely one possibility. the gang dispersed and when ConnEr settled down as a family man, that's when Clockwerk came into the picture. ok! probable scenario...

... but idk i'm not really buying it. i don't want to be the tin foil hat girlie and i'm truly not, like in terms of narrative logic it makes total sense. but from a consistency standpoint, how can you create a character that is actually portrayed as more of an omnipresent, all-powerful entity, the literal embodiment of evil, to then just have him go *poof* ? Clockwerk is the stain on the Cooper legacy, the Cooper killer and Dr Michael, who prides himself on hating ConnEr so much, has no idea who he is? the evil scientist who is infatuated with the Coopers and creates animal hybrids doesn't know about the owl robot that survives on Cooper hate? mama what are the odds. again, i'm against trying to unnecessarily connect all the dots, but even a mention would suffice. cutscene appearance even. like what if Dr Michael acted as this Judas figure who approached Clockwerk post gang breakup and spilled on how to track down ConnEr or some sort of secret? it would also help flesh out Clockwerk's character posthumously, which i find so clever. this is something discussed on the new episode of Safehouse Chats btw (shameless plug-in sis), where we debate whether or not Clockwerk benefits from being shrouded in total mystery. as for my initial question? i think Dr Michael bottomed for Clockwerk. block me

#the Scream reference is the actual bottom behaviour here #sly cooper #what if Le Paradox was actually Dr M's son. that would also help flesh out Miss Decibel's character very nicely #god help me

[linkspooky]

Hi! I love your meta btw, your recent posts reminded me that yu gi oh exist lol i used to watch it as a kid but I don't remember anything so I wanted to ask you what's the best watch order and (maybe) your general opinion about the various spinoff

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters: I'd recommend watching this one first because every spin-off after this one either recycles archetypes, or subverts tropes from the original so it'll enhance your viewing experience.

Afterwards, the simplest is release order. GX -> 5DS are in the same continuity as Duel Monsters, and they have a crossover Film Bonds Beyond Time.

Zexal's basically a standalone it has no connection to the previous, but I'd reccomend watching it after Duel Monsters because there are a lot of references in plot and tropes to the original.

You need to have watched GX, 5DS, and Zexal to understand Arc-V because they reference settings and characters from the original series. It's basically every single Yu-Gi-Oh! Series fights in a Denny's Parkinglot.

You don't need to see any previous series to watch Vrains.

You need to watch Sevens before Go!Rush because the main character of Sevens shows up in Go!Rush, and Go!Rush is a prequel sort of kind of.

As for my general opinions and reccomendations, below the cut:

Duel Monsters is the original and sets the standard. I think the manga is better on this one because it acknowledges Death-T, which I think is crucial for Kaiba's development. He did more than just steal one of Yugi's Grandpas cards. The arc of the main characters Yugi and Yami with Yugi learning confidence and Yami unlearning arrogance is really good, especially in the manga where Yami starts out as a lowkey serial killer. Battle City and Duelist Kingdom are also two really good tournament arcs, Battle City in particular is probably the best Tournament Arc in the Series.

Yu-Gi-Oh GX! Is my personal favorite but it's a mess. I've once heard it described as "GX is two seasons of absurdist nonsense, and then a complete emotional breakdown." In my opinion there's a lot of good foreshadowing and buildup for what will happen in Season 3, and Season 3 is one of the best shonen deconstruction arcs especially of it's main protagonist in anything ever.

Honestly the worst part of Season 1 and 2 for me isn't even the pacing, it's that it recycles plot points from Yu-Gi-Oh! but less good. The Seven Shadow riders just do shadow duels because they did that in original Yu-Gi-Oh, there are three super powerful cards like the Egyptian God Cards. In season 2 there's a villain with a split personality like Marik, and the Genex tournament is really bad plotless meandering tournament arc compared to Battle City.

Season 3 is also masterful at utilizing things that were foreshadowed in the past 3 seasons, especially in regards to Judai's flaws which have been swept under the rug until now.

I think YGO GX is one of the best casts, and also one of the best at balancing screentime of its cast so characters show up when they're relevant and disappear when they're not relevant, and every major character has an arc. However, it's very much the Judai show, and if you're invested in a character that's not Judai you'll likely think your fave didn't get used to their fullest potential.

Yu-Gi-Oh 5DS has one of the best beginnings of any Yu-Gi-Oh series and it's excellent at building Fortune Cup -> Dark Signer and jacking up tension. Dark Signer, Barian Arc and Gx Season 3 are probably my top 3 arcs. I won't talk about it much because I don't want to spoil.

Season 2 is still good, and the ending is excellent as well as the villains, but the pacing becomes abysmal due to production issues. Carly and Aki are probably the two best female characters in all of Yu-Gi-Oh, and all their screentime and relevance gets erased. If you watch Yu-Gi-Oh for the duels, the relay duels suck and last 3 whole seasons and nobody gets to win a duel if they're not Yusei Fudo. As someone who really enjoyed Yusei in season 1, him becoming a perfect hero who always saves the day and never makes mistakes and never gets challenged signifcantly by the narrative because he's always right makes him super uninteresting. I want to clarify I think Yusei is still a character with depth and character flaws, but the narrative doesn't challenge him on this flaws. Aporia and Z-One do a lot to redeem Season 2 though and it ends on a real highpoint.

Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal is probably the highest quality Yu-Gi-Oh series overall, especially since there's no drop in quality ever it ends on it's highest point. Shark is probably the single best written character in all of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Vector is the best written villain.

I actually don't have much to say on Zexal because I don't want to spoil what's good about it. My only complaint is that it's cast is padded with way too many characters who do nothing. You could cut Yuma's entire friend group and lose absolutely nothing. The female characters in Zexal are abysmal too, the worst in any series. The characters with arcs though are all good and iconic.

It's also the only show that manages the ambiguity where none of the villains are actually villains, almost every single character has a sympathetic reason for what they're doing even the ones that are wrapped up in revenge plots. It gives a really interesting challenge to Yuma the pacifist protagonist who doesn't want to pick sides. Yuma's up there with Judai too in top ten protagonists.

Arc-V.... I think you can still have fun with Arc-V, but the Z-arc plotline just was not a good idea and it makes the show fundamentally flawed because everything from episode 20 onwards is built around the Z-Arc plotline.

Vrains has some solid ideas and themes. I especially love the emergent ai ideas that are present with the ignis and bohmann it's one of my favorite topics in science fiction. I've got two main problems number. I enjoy playmaker as a character, but much like Yusei I feel like over time he's not as challenged as character by his narrative. THough, the final season does a lot to rectify that.

Vrains second and biggest problem is that it plays it really safe after the production disaster that was Arc-V. Which means the first two seasons while enjoyable enough feel kind of by the numbers at times. The third season is amazing though, but it suffers from the series being cut short so it's only about 20 episodes. Still ending on a high note is always a good thing.

Sevens is kind of the closest to a slice-of-life Yu-Gi-Oh which makes it hard to compare to the other series. I do enjoy the main cast of characters, but to be honest it's really hard to get invested for me personally, when every arc is just "I hate Rush Duels. I'm going to try to destroy Rush Duels. Nevermind, Rush duels are awesome actually." Every. Single. Arc.

I'm only 16 episodes into Go-Rush and it's not finished yet, but my main take so far is: Yudias! Yudias! Yudias!

#askspookies #Spooky Speaks

[sstan-hoe]

MASTERLIST NO. 2

⍣ ೋ TAGS | BLOGS | WEBSITE | AO3 | WATTPAD

⍣ ೋ TAGLIST | KINKTOBER | VALENTINE'S DAY EVENT| WIP's | NAVIGATION

you are responsible for the kind and amount of media you consume, therefore it is not my problem if you find something you don't like. While I appreciate if you are at least 16, I advice the majority of this blog as 18+

you do not have permission to copy, translate or post my writing on any other website/ app or anything — I do not own the rights to the character = this is for entertainment purposes only! which also means I write when I feel like it.

the rest of my characters and series are on navigation

-> series masterlist

Barber's Production - there is no real summary, these are all standalone fics which are connected but you don't need to read all of them to understand the concept.

-> multiple!pornstars/multiple!reader | several one-shots | series | smut | angst | fluff

Show Me How - meeting him might be the best to ever happen to you. He showed you things you've never thought you'd try, he learned you to stand up for yourself and be confident. For Bucky Barnes you were an angel, a savior and maybe the one he's been searching for all his life.

-> ceo!bucky/baker!reader | series | smut | fluff | angst

The Devils Den - all you wanted was to go on vacation but your car didn't have the same idea. Almost breaking down in the middle of nowhere you luckily made it to a house with lights. A handsome stranger and his friends offer to help you. They're devilishly handsome…or almost demon like? Something about them entrances you.

-> multiple!incubus/one!reader | series | smut | fluff | angst

They Changed Me Forever - they wanted you, they enjoyed the hunt just as much as you enjoyed being chased. You didn't make it easy for them but it only prepared you that life with them wouldn't be easy.

-> mob!andy/mob!lloyd | series | smut | fluff | angst

Your Arms Are Home - steve and you split over a year ago, but still you end up in his bed most night, he was addiction. Then on the other side there was Bucky; Steve's bestfriend who is always there when you needed him and was the perfect uncle...you need them but one could be your ruin and the other your happy end. You couldn’t have both...or could you?

-> ex husband!dilf!steve/(uncle!)bucky | series | smut | fluff | angst

-> house of the dragon masterlist

Aemond Targaryen

Riding With the Dragon – Aemond wants you to ride with him on Vaghar, but you always avoid it until he makes a deal with you, you take a ride with him and in return he does the thing with the tongue you like so much

-> normal!aemond | one-shot | smut | fluff

Dancing with the Dragon ☆ – aemond doesn't like to dance, but for you, his wife he makes an exception...sometimes and today he decided not to, which leaves you to do the only right thing; make him jealous

-> normal!aemond | one-shot | fluff | smut

My King – Aegon fleed with success and now a new King is needed, Aemond is stepping up as King making you his Queen

-> king!aemond | one-shot | fluff

Be My Valentine

-> modern!aemond | drabble | fluff | event

Thankful for You

-> modern!aemond | drabble | fluff | event

Until all Waters Break

-> modern!aemond | drabble | smut

Paparazzi – life with aemond is always risky...but not just because of his status in society. No, more because he likes doing risky activities...

-> actor!aemond | one-shot | smut | angst

Daemon Targaryen

Special Gift

-> normal!daemon | drabble | fluff | event

-> the last of us masterlist

Joel Miller

Thank God You're Pretty — you love joel, but god he can't cook. Meaning it's time that he learns a thing or two! However having a daughter who finds it quite amusing could make things difficult.

-> pre-outbreak!joel miller | one-shot | fluff

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen smut #daemon targeryen x reader #daemon targaryen smut #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #my one eyed prince 💫🐲 #my rogue prince 🖤⚔️ #my protective miller daddy ✨️🤍

[stormblessed95]

Hi I’m an 8th/9th grade teacher and I’m looking to buy some new books for my classroom and you seem to be reading a lot of YA recently!! Would you mind sharing some recommendations you think are uh appropriate for me to purchase through the school? You seem to read a lot of fantasy/sci fi/romance which is a lot of what my kids like 🥰 thanks!

YA fantasy/scifi and romance! Yessss I can!

I just finished Legendborn by Tracy Deonn and started it's sequel today and it was AMAZING. Highly recommend. It's a King Author + magic retelling, Black Main Character written by a Black Author and done SO WELL because duh, own voices. It's dark academia fantasy and such a killer debut novel FOR SURE. And it's got a the classic YA love triangle and some romance thrown in too. Plus February is Black History Month, great time to support BIPOC authors 💜 (Duolgoy)

Scythe by Neil Shusterman is a YA SciFi dystopian and its SO GOOD. It's a story about how in the future, death no longer exists. The only way a human can die is by being gleaned, aka murdered, by the Scythes. They are trained to deal out death to those who deserve it and contain the human population in the most humane way possible. Yet, there is lots of betrayals and power plays and double crossings happening between those in power of the Sycthe organization. And yes, a very cute side plot romance here too (Trilogy)

The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong. It's a YA Paranormal Urban Fantasy. It's actually like the YA verison of one of my favorite adult series of hers and it's set in the same world with little Easter eggs connecting the series. But can be read as a standalone trilogy. It follows Chloe discovering she is a necromancer and thrust into this supernatural world and all that comes with it, including a werewolf love interest and the classic YA love triangle and romance. Still so good honestly too. (Trilogy)

This Savage Song by V.E. Schwab. It's a YA Dark Urban Fantasy that basically explores the overall themes of how humans can be the monsters too. It's SO GOOD. Basically 2 kids of powerful men on either side of a war that is destroying their city, must choose whether to become heroes or villains—and friends or enemies—with the future of their home at stake.... and while one is human, one might be something else entirely 👀 Literally it's so good. And yes, it does end up having romance too (Duology)

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. It's a YA Paranormal fantasy story about a gay trans boy who while trying to get his family to accept both his gender and his powers (the men are traditionally spirit guides and the women are healers), accidentally summons a ghost, who then refuses to move on. And yes, its got a VERY sweet and cute romance here too. Plus own voices trans rep (Standalone)

Illuminae Files by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman. A YA SciFi Trilogy where it's one of the most unique formats of crafting a story I've ever read. It's told through a series of files and emails and transcripts and it's SO FUN. It follows the story of Kady and Ezra and the journey they go on after their tiny space mining colony was attacked and destroyed. And oh yeah, they had just recently broken up but they Still love each other 😏 and what in the AI happens in this book too! Lol (Trilogy)

And I really wasn't kidding about it being a uniquely written book and yet somehow the audiobooks are just as well done too lol

Warcross by Marie Lu. A SciFi YA Dystopian Novel that is basically like an emersive video game. It follows our main character as she becomes lowkey a spy and bounty hunter. Yes, it's got romance and betrayal and plot twists and rainbow hair and constant reminders that nothing is truly as it seems. And it's so good. (Duology)

As always, make sure you look up content warnings. I didn't list them here this time. But these are all scifi/fantasy YA novels that include a fun romantic side plot that I've LOVED when I read them. Hope this helps and thanks for asking! I have more I can suggest too of course

#storm recommendations #YA fantasy and scifi recs

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hi! I’m only starting to learn more about writing craft concepts and trying to think through the story and characters before just jumping in as I used to do. It’s a little confusing at the moment but the question I’m thinking about now is character arc. As far as I understand the character has to have some flaw or some sort of a belief which is actually false and they should go through change by end of the story and develop as a person because that’s what makes the book interesting and it’s great! But what about characters in a series, for example, of mysteries, like Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie’s novels (Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot) and others where the main characters don’t really change throughout individual books and don’t change in the series in general (well, mostly). So what to keep in mind where you’re writing series of books like that? Can a character stay the same? Or should they work on some minor flaws each story? Sorry I this question is silly, I hope it makes sense, sorry for my English if anything’s wrong

Plot-Driven Stories, Serial Novels, and Static Arcs

There are two reasons why novel characters like Nancy Drew, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, James Bond, and others don't change through character arcs:

1 - Because they are plot-driven stories, not character-driven stories or a combination of both.

2 - Because they are serial characters, not series characters.

Plot-Driven Stories

"As far as I understand the character has to have some flaw or some sort of a belief which is actually false and they should go through change by end of the story..."

It's important to know that's only true if you're writing a story that is character-driven or a combination of plot-driven and character-driven.

Character-driven stories are about the character's internal conflict and how that gets resolved. There aren't any mysteries to solve, evil super villains to foil, or heists to pull off. They're just stories about someone with a problem or desire, and they have to figure out how to resolve that problem or desire for themselves. That's why some level of change is important, because that change is the result of their success or failure to resolve their internal conflict.

Plot-driven stories are about an external conflict happening in the character's world. They have to solve the secret of the old clock, figure out who murdered the old vicar, or try to thwart Goldfinger once and for all. These stories are less about the character and more about what's happening to them, so while there may well be some level of character development, it's not necessary to go too deeply into internal conflict and change arcs.

Many stories these days are a combination of plot-driven and character-driven. A modern version of Nancy Drew (like the new TV show, I'd imagine) would see Nancy wrestling with her internal conflict alongside the mysteries she's trying to solve.

Serial Novels vs Book Series

Another important difference between a character like Nancy Drew and a character like, for example, Katniss Everdeen, is that books like Nancy Drew, Miss Marple, and James bond are serials rather than series. It gets confusing because we tend to refer to serials as series, but whereas in a book series like The Hunger Games, the books are united by an overarching plot, in a serial like the Nancy Drew mysteries or the Miss Marple books, the books are united by a protagonist, premise, and sometimes even a setting, but the stories are usually standalone. They're not usually connected via an overarching plot.

A finite book series allows you to map out a character's arc from the beginning of the story to the end of the story, because there's one overarching story that unites all the smaller stories. But in a serial, there's not usually an obvious end in sight. You might write ten Detective Fred Borkington novels, or you might write twenty or thirty. You can't map out a character arc for Fred if you don't know how many stories that arc will have to play out across.

Static Change Arcs

I also want to point out that even in books that are fully or partially character-driven, you can still have characters who don't have a positive or negative change arc. Some characters have static arcs, meaning that they don't change over the course of the story, but rather they maintain their convictions from the beginning of the story to the end... the conflict comes from the ways these convictions are challenged and how they struggle but succeed in holding true to them. If you wanted to bring some solid character development to your serial character, this would be the way to do it.

I hope that explains everything! ♥

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[davidmariottecomics]

The Continuity Conundrum

Hey, welcome back! 

As so often happens, I was scrolling through Twitter one day over the winter break and saw the very talented up-and-coming artist Kara Huset post a couple of polls about whether or not the Big 2, Marvel & DC, are due for a reboot. A lot very thoughtful and passionate takes from the people commenting. A little while later, I saw a post I can't source now because I've lost it talking about the idea of elastic continuity and the importance of being able to let it have give and take when you need it for the story you're telling. And then this morning I saw a very good thread from Comrade Bullski on Twitter about the strangeness around the history of the Justice Society of America, tracking them from being the first super-team to being one of the first major retcons in comics that made them from another universe to their extended runs that kept them locked in the past up to the one decade where they basically got to just be a modern day superteam with everyone else and beyond. 

Understandably, all of this got me thinking about the value of continuity in comics and the ways in which it serves to enhance and restrict the medium. So, I want to talk about that: the good, the bad, the compelling reasons to throw it out entirely and the reasons it is often one of the most helpful tools a creator can have in their corner. 

I've Done a Couple of Hard Relaunches

While I don't usually bring out my bona fides on something like this, I do think in this particular case, they speak to where I'm coming from so we're all starting at the same understanding. I have spent an awful lot of my career in comics working on bring new life and direction to existing, long-running titles. Notably, in 2019, we launched a brand new Transformers universe, often referred to as IDW 2.0, that stood on it's own from all other TF iterations, particularly our previous 13 year run. In 2018, we launched Sonic the Hedgehog, again, a brand-new version of the series totally separated from the last 24 year run with another publisher. I've been involved in standalones for various mini-series and OGNs, revivals of long dormant franchises, and general cleaning-up of stories that didn't always mesh together but that were in need of having some connective tissue. I have preserved continuity, helped build new ones, and have thrown it out completely when it was to the benefit of the story. Having met it in all it's forms, I think I have an insight that not everyone working in this industry does. 

Real Quick: What is Continuity? 

Again, just so we're working from the same terms. Continuity is the way in which past, present, and future events are connected and their meaning is reinforced as a form of consistency. It applies at all sizes of scales. It can be as simple as making sure that if a thug is drawn holding a knife in his right hand in one panel, in subsequent panels that depict the same thug, he continues to be holding the knife and/or righthanded unless an action in the story requires differently. And when we're talking about characters who have publishing histories of 8 decades or so, continuity allows for the events of previous stories to be remembered and reused in telling current and future stories. 

So What's so Bad About it?  The big issue that people will point to with continuity is that it is daunting. Action Comics has been published off-and-on for 85 years and over 1050 issues. The characters featured have had many decades and many thousands of other stories published about them outside of that particular comic, that are often still considered meaningful and true to Action Comics. From the exterior, if you thought to enjoy the latest issue, you had to know the exact events of all those other thousands of issues, not because they are necessarily relevant but because they could be, that would be a lot. 

When you're telling a story, you often want to make the accessibility threshold low. By being clear and concise, you allow more readers/viewers/whatever to hop in and engage with the work. As more work gets added to continuity, it continues to raise the bar on the accessibility threshold, which can be a major turn-off to potential new readers and returning readers who don't remember/know/have full context for all the details.

It is a system that inherently gets more complicated and convoluted each time a new work is added. It is a dense thing to sort through, often to the point of being impenetrable. 

It is also a very flawed system. While the idea is that continuity is supposed to clarify and solidify events in relation to each other, it makes contradictory information very obvious--whether that's two events happening simultaneously when they can't possibly be to rewriting and sometimes ejecting previous stories for the new story to make sense. Taking the earlier example I shared of the Justice Society of America, things that had to be altered at various points included whether or not it made sense for there to be multiple Bruce Wayne Batmans and Clark Kent Supermans, whether or not the JSA existed before the JLA in a single universe, how the JSA members maintained their relative youth despite having been adults fighting in World War II. If they were in their 20s to 40s in the 1940s, that puts them in their 100s now, for the most part, though they still primarily look like they're in their 40s to 60s at the latest. 

All-in-all, the problems primarily come to the amount of responsibility that you want to give to creators and readers alike to know the details and the legitimacy of stories (including the making illegitimate of other people's stories) that is built into the system. 

Okay, So What Happens if We Get Rid of it?

If you throw continuity out, it often opens up your options. I look at say, the DC young readers books, all of which operate in their own worlds, maybe linked to other volumes by the same creators or loosely tied with someone else's work, but they are largely standalone and easily accessible because of it. Prior knowledge is a tough ask and removing that barrier can open up the story to new audiences. 

Open interpretation also can help give characters new life. Before the past decade, if you liked Gwen Stacy, you basically had a handful of Spider-Man comics in the 1970s that she starred in without being the main character, and then the occasional revisiting of that time in stories that reinterpreted/retold it (Spider-Man: Blue) or that changed the circumstances of those stories, often in ill-informed ways (there's a lot of weird stuff with Gwen, Norman Osborn, and the Jackal...). Now, she's Spider-Gwen/Spider-Woman/Ghost Spider, and she's the hero of her stories and she's in a cool band and she's got her own universe of stories. The flip side to that being, so much of what informs the Spider-Gwen stories, particularly the early ones, is being framed in contrast to the understood continuity. It is about how things are different from what the expectation is or how they worked in the Spider-Man comics. So even when you remove a character from the trappings of continuity--you open them up to reinterpretation and not having to be constrained by certain "fixed" events, they are often still subject to it because their story is told is other to what is established. 

And therein lies the big issue with why it's so hard to fully remove continuity. Continuity is shared information. For as much as it can be a headache, it can also be a bridge to mutual understandings, and a way of texts interacting and responding to each other. For as much as it raises the bar of the accessibility threshold, it also adapts to create new connection points throughout the publishers' history that aids other readers and creators in bringing things together. 

But You Said You had Done Some Reboots I did. And it was hard. There are things that will get left behind: characters, characterizations, ideas, plots, growth, that may never get picked up again in an official capacity. And that's a bummer. But when I've done it, the trade-off has always been quickly starting to establish a new continuity and deciding what pre-existing knowledge to play off of--it may not be in continuity with anything else, but what do we expect the audience to understand about the world or the story that helps ease their burden because they can make more connections more quickly? I've been pretty proud of the answers the teams I've worked with have come up with. 

Lastly, as a note, I want to touch on "elastic continuity" again, which I think maybe is often the most helpful thing. The idea of elastic continuity is that the details can be adjusted as long as the spirit is true. If Punisher and Iron Man were both still in the Vietnam War, similar to what happened to the JSA, it would make them much older in the current comics than they're usually depicted. And so the war that Punisher served in and that Iron Man was injured in changes with the times, to keep that central part of their story true while fitting better for the ease of access to a modern reader. 

Not to sound inconclusive, but I think there are advantages to reboots. I think there are advantages to sticking with existing continuities. I think often the deciding factor is how much is getting cut or written out or otherwise "lost" (not that most media is actually lost nowadays) relative to how inviting the changes are. And if you are a person looking to work on a property and in a position to pitch something, keep all that in mind when suggesting starting over. 

Talk to you next week! 

What I enjoyed this week: Vaccine booster (Enjoyed is maybe a strong word, I was out sick the next day, but I do like being vaccinated for the safety of myself and others), Blank Check (Podcast), The Menu (Movie), Chainsaw Man (Manga), Honkai Impact (Video game), Shin Megami Tensei III (Video Game), Nancy (Comic strip), Abbott Elementary (TV show), White Noise (Movie), Sweat & Soap (Manga, finally actually finished it and it was delightful!)

New Releases this week (1/11/2022): Godzilla Rivals II: Rodan vs. Ebirah (Editor) Godzilla: Monsters & Protectors - All Hail the King #4 (Editor)

New releases next week (1/18/2022): Sonic the Hedgehog: Scrapnik Island #4 (Editor)

Announcements: Arizona Comic Book Arts Festival - 2/25! It's a one day comic-focused event in Phoenix, AZ. Tickets are only $10. Attending artists include me, Becca (who once again is dropping some new stuff on their Patreon, see below), Mitch Gerads, Steve Rude, John Layman, Henry Barajas, Jay Fotos, Jeff Mariotte, Marcy Rockwell, John Yurcaba, Andrew MacLean, Alexis Zirrit, Meredith McClaren, James Owen, Ryan Cody, and many more! Come and see us! Becca'll have some very cool new merch, too! 

Pic of the Week: Becca made this wallpaper of their character, Drew, publicly available from their Twitter to use as a phone wallpaper. They have more wallpapers as well as an alternate version of this art on their Patreon. They're doing weekly art prompts this year, so there's going to be a lot of art coming! Check it out! 

#comics #comics editorial #continuity #superheroes #karahuset #justice society of america #jsa #bunny girl #beccabeean #arizona comic book arts festival #idw

[nalyra-dreaming]

i'm intrigued by the show's timeline & how much of books 1-6 have happened already? i know s3 is tvl, but if qotd, totbt & mtd have happened in some way, wont lestat include them in his memoir too? it'd be kinda arbitrary for him to consider his life story 'over' at the end tvl, so we may be in his pov for a while. i hope they keep some of those plots for the modern day tho - the action-based ones (esp. akasha's vamp apocalypse) won't hit the same if the audience can infer the outcome too much.

I think (by now) that they're likely doing a mixup of various events of the books, but in a way that the main points of the stories are still reached.

IWTV is a different setting, a different time, a different timeline... but it feels still right, feels still like them because the emotional and main story points are reached.

I think it will continue that way.

By giving us the hint with TVL we have a certain... setting that has to happen (in some kind of way), because at least the bigger part of TVL, Lestat's backstory, Armand, the theater, Nicki, Marius, Those who must be kept... has happened. ^^

In the books there are two instances of vampires multiplying out of control (as mentioned in the show), and then being, errr... reduced. It would be interesting to see them combine that, tbh. Which would mean Qotd will still happen, maybe in combination with the spirit part Prince Lestat arcs (I actually like that idea a lot, tbh, what if that spirit is what drives Akasha and then that arc segues into the other).

But the rest of the books does not necessarily need to follow a pattern, or a structured order either. I think we're in Merrick territory in modern Dubai right now, but that doesn't necessarily mean that QotD or Memnoch etc have to have happened yet - though, tbh, I do think Memnoch would be much harder to show than TtotBT - which Rolin Jones has addressed already (so it's floating round his brain).

But even if QotD has not happened yet, Lestat's one-hit-wonder rock career might have?! He could have done that for (lots of) other reasons - even though IWTV has not been published (yet) in this universe, it does not necessarily mean that TVL has not been published.

In general I agree, they would do well to give the "Dubai-storyline" a grand arc that is ultimately action driven.

However, I do think that QotD would be more like season 4, because... I honestly cannot see Lestat telling his story (and it has been stated already that we get to see his POV in season 3) while Akasha is wreaking havoc.

So whatever is happening in Dubai has to have a certain... lull, imho, after season 2. A breather, if you so will.

And then, when Lestat tells his story, it could easily pick up again and turn into this QotD and PL-arc mashup with the vamp apocalypse :))

I am not sure where TotBT would fit in, but maybe they could somehow mix that with the Mayfair Witches and those crossover books. The characters are connected after all. Maybe even as some kind of standalone series.

(And in the end, when they're all done with the action stuff, we can get to the aliens *laughs*)

I think that would be cool :)

#asks #iwtv #interview with the vampire #show timeline #book timeline #show book timeline #iwtv speculation #ask nalyra

[mejomonster]

yakuza 0 is a fascinating game. from my perspective, as a standalone, since it was the first entry in the series i played and so i treated it as its own single thing with no prior knowledge or context. also as a prequel game, i imagine it may have been somewhat aimed at new players to the series like some prequels are as ‘entering points’ into series

1. it highlights the serious drama/silly heartfelt sidestories structure, the way the mini games and then more fight-heavy combat go alongside each other to make this mash up game (which in some ways reminds me of Persona 3 combining life sim with turn base combat, or Devil Summoner Raidou combines action combat with these very slice of life social gaming aspects of making demon friends/case solving). 

2. it serves to introduce the families at play, clans at play, the tojo clan and omi alliance, and show kiryu at his youngest as like his origin. 

3. as standalone stories, kiryu and his entire involvement with tachibana is a full drama story of its own, majima and his entire involvement with makoto is a full drama story of its own. so what it ends up feeling like is 2 games in one. 2 games that could have maybe stood on their own as 2 independent stories/yakuza games, combined into one single game. likely because they revolve around the same large-scale event of the empty lot and dojima leader being taken down from power.

4. because the game at no point has the 2 leading characters (who are leading their own respective “own stories/games” in the game) never meet, it pretty much start to finish feels like playing 2 parallel stories/games. i found this an interesting but really odd choice? i am not sure i remember any other game where 2 leads of 2 stories which connect (since their larger stories do connect as flip sides of each other) never meet or cooperate in the game. I can think of Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories where Sora never meets Riku but Riku IS actively looking for sora and at the endgame interacting with his body/his safekeeping as the ending conclusion. Or KH Dream Drop Distance where Riku and Sora are often apart and unable to communicate or work together, but know each other before the gameplay starts and interact again in the endgame. Meanwhile, I expected the same of yakuza 0 - for majima and kiryu to either meet in endgame and Work Together or to at some point be aware of each other to a decent enough degree to be acknowledging it (even if its like “this kiryu working with tachibana, this majima who helped makoto and is now taking out Dojima while i go to protect makoto” referring to an off-screen known ally to their goals). But that never happened. The ENTIRE game, even inside each other’s spheres of influence as they are deeply tied during the endgame in their goals/who they know/what they’re doing, they never are aware of each other (beyond this k-san i’m investing in lol). it seemed very interesting to me that the writers chose to keep the stories only parallel without ever having the 2 leads run into each other or acknowledge each other’s participation much. It makes me wonder WHY they chose to write it that way. did they want to show what majima and kiryu have in common in their past, even though the 2 men themselves dont know its a shared experience? did they want to simply show a backstory for why BOTH characters are the way that they are now, and so felt they both deserved an origin story? (which would imply majima is Quite significantly viewed as a character, to get to deserve an origin story explanation with as much attention as main-character kiryu, since majima is a full on required playable character with his entire own story going on). I am playing Yakuza Kiwami now, and the game itself so far (I’m in chapter 4) has had majima around as a helpful “train me” guy, but he doesn’t particularly yet seem like he’d be any more significant as a character than say Bacchus in Yakuza 0 or Reina or Nishiki - maybe significant sure, but not enough to merit his own entire game-playthrough and story. So its just an interesting design choice for yakuza 0 to decide he IS that significant, to be on kiryu’s level as a main character. It may have been a fanservice choice, in that maybe majima became more popular through the series and by yakuza 0 he’d become More Important and worth making a 1/2 a game entirely on. It may have been he’s always been an important parallel to kiryu’s character, and this was a way to showcase that more. 

5. again... what’s perhaps most interesting to me isn’t even that majima gets co-lead status in yakuza 0. but that kiryu and majima Never cross paths during the game’s plot in person, despite being both dragged deep into the main story events of the empty lot, makoto, and dojima. i wonder why they chose to keep them apart. (i can make guesses - perhaps its important to the characters histories, that they met as casual coworkers with no inkling of what each other USED to be like, but it was still important to show Audiences what they both used to be like. that perhaps their actual early relationship has some significance in some plot, so it could not be altered to serve this yakuza 0 plot - but this yakuza 0 plot could still individually highlight both their own character arc stories individually. or maybe the makers just wanted to make 2 parallel games with yakuza 0 like an A and B side of a story).   

#yakuza 0 #lb #rant #feel free to ignore #i just find a lot of the design choices interesting #from a intro to series perspective? 10/10 this does a good job #showing ppl what yakuza games offer and if they'd like them or not #but then like. also the choice to make 2 not-touching main characters is a choice i rarely have seen #and i doubt it will show up in much of the other yakuza games #so i do wonder why they made the choice #im HAPPY i got all the majima side story lol. i loved majima and makoto together. i loved the cabaret running #nishitani. the guilded cage situation. all worthwhile to me #but it doesnt feel like they Had to add it in to make a 'decent complete yakuza game' #so im really curious Why they still added it and made it 50% of the game

[jasonblaze72]

Big Sky Season 3 Episode 2: Release Date, Preview & Spoilers

ABC's crime mystery "Big Sky" has returned for a third season as of September 21, 2022, with the first episode titled "Do You Love an Apple," where the few months that the town of Helena enjoyed relative peace came to an abrupt after the arrival of Sunny Barnes and her family. The Barnes had established Sunny Day Excursions just past the edge of the town, and things went amiss right after that with Cassie brought in to look into the case of a missing backpacker while Jenny and Beau, the town's new sheriff, tried to track a murderer on the run. The previous season saw Ronald Pergman, the primary villain that the ABC drama focused on, meet his end, along with several other characters, including the remaining Legarski brother, Wolf, who was suffocated with a plastic bag by an antagonist masquerading as a paramedic, apparently sent by John Milton. Rick Legarski, Wolf's brother, had died earlier in Season 1 of Big Sky when his own wife flogged him to death after learning that her husband had feigned amnesia to be pardoned of his sex crimes. Big Sky Season 3 Episode 2 Preview In this week's episode i.e, Episode 2, which is titled "The Woods Are Lovely, Dark and Deep", we will see an angry real estate agent Tonya call the cops on a squatter who broke into one of her homes and when Jenny arrives at the scene, she discovers a startling connection to her past linked to the case. https://youtu.be/FlpZbJP7Q3k Meanwhile, new sheriff Beau and Cassie team up to track the backpacker who is still missing while Sunny tries her best to guard a secret of her own which is hidden in the forest. But when Sheriff Beau's daughter Emily decides to take things, in particular the campground investigation, into her own hands, she chances upon a story that is a lot more wicked than anyone could have imagined. Big Sky Season 3 Episode 2: Release Date New episodes of Big Sky Season 3 are released every week on Wednesdays, and this week's episode, the second of the season will air on Wednesday, September 28, 2022. Moreover, Episode 3, called "A Brief History of Crime," will air on October 5 at said time on the same day. Big Sky Season 2: How To Watch? Big Sky airs on ABC on the said days at 10 pm ET/PT. ABC is can accessed by viewers in the United States with a traditional cable subscription or through the various live streaming services in the market, including Hulu with Live TV, YouTube TV, and FuboTV. https://twitter.com/livelyackles/status/1572771150463381504?s=20&t=y5d2mW_6N0iqaF5_cVPzvw Fans seeking to catch up on the previous seasons of the crime drama may do so on-demand through ABC's official website, granted they have a subscription on Hulu, which allows users to sign up as a standalone service, and as a part of Hulu with Live TV or the Disney Bundle. For fans in the United Kingdom, episodes from Big Sky Season 2 are being regularly released on Disney Plus, as per reports. However, there has been no information yet on when episodes from the latest season, i.e, Season 3, are going to be made available on the streaming service. Big Sky Season 3 Plot and Cast From the pages of writer C.J. Box, Big Little Lies' famed storyteller David E. Kelly has brought us a brand new series in Big Sky, which revolves around private detectives Cody Hoyt and Cassie Dewell, who team up with the former's estranged wife, who also happens to be a former cop, to tackle crimes compromising the safety of their community. The star cast of Big Sky Season 3 consists of Katheryn Winnick as Jenny Hoyt, Kylie Bunbury as Cassie Dewell, Dedee Pfeiffer as Denise Brisbane, Jamie-Lynn Sigler as Tonya Wallis, J. Anthony Pena as Deputy Mo Popperak, Jensen Ackles as Beau Arlen, and last but not the least Reba McEntire as Sunny Barnes. From dealing with evil crime rings to kidnappings, Big Sky Season 3, also known as Big Sky: Deadly Trails, has introduced certain new characters who have unique roles to play in Helena, Mont, including Beay Arlen, the new sheriff of the town, and a mysterious new couple, the Barnes who establish an excursion company just out of town that goes on to be at the center of the season's mysterious happenings. Read the full article

[findswoman]

Finds’s Recommended Series Reading Order Lists!

I’ve had it suggested to me that I put together a reading order list for my OC-based fanfics, given that many of them have connections to each other. It’s a good idea, so this post is my attempt to do that. For each of my primary series and character groups, I give notes on recommended reading order (or lack thereof).

Please note, however, that the order in which the series/character groups are listed here is not a required order in which to read those groups. (For example, the fact that the Lasan Series is listed before the Gand Series doesn’t mean the former is intended to be read before the latter.) That’s why I call this “lists” rather than a singular “list.”

All links are to AO3.

The Lasan Series

(Banner by @jedi-valjean ! Thank you again!)

This series includes stories of a wide variety of lengths, from short vignettes to lengthy multichaps. Within the series, the stories are ordered chronologically in-universe (note that that is not the same as the order in which they were written by me). You may read them in that order if you wish, but in most cases, they are standalone stories, and it’s not necessary to read them in the order in which they’re placed in the series.

I say in most cases, not all, because a few stories in the series come in pairs that I recommend reading in a specific order for purposes of establishing necessary/helpful context:

@spacemomcreations ’s The Beginning of Honor before Sleeping Honor (that story of hers is the shoulders on which my entire series stands)

The Sad, Sad Story of Porfozald Marballees!, Calm after the Storm, and “I am my prayer to you,” in that order

From the Mountain’s Heart before Romance among the Stones

Shaman, Traveler, Oracle before Stand Together on the High Places (Yes, I know ShTO is very long, but STOHP directly references some happenings from chapters 19–23 and 29–30. To save time, you could read just these parts before proceeding to STOHP.)

Stand Together on the High Places before the third and final section of Long, Lonely Time

The Book of Gand and the Gand Series

(another awesome banner by @jedi-valjean !)

The Book of Gand is a single long multichapter work, and its component parts are intended to be read in order (part 1, then part 2, etc.—I’m aiming for four five parts eventually). It is organized as a series simply because that’s the most effective way to organize such a work on AO3.

The shorter stories that I have placed under the series heading Gand Series are of course related to BOG and incorporate some of the same characters and elements, but it is not strictly necessary to read BOG before reading them, nor is it crucial to read the shorter stories in any specific order.

The Early Rose Evergreen Stories, the Rose Evergreen Stories, and the Drabatan Lady Stories

This is where things become tricky, because the this is where things become interconnected. There are five characters in the crew of the Rose Evergreen, but four of them originated in the other series listed above:

Telfien (Gand Findswoman), who is also a central character of BOG and the Gand Series but enters the Lasan Series in Shaman, Traveler, Oracle, chapter 14;

Shulma (Lasat shaman), who is also a central character of the Lasan Series;

Lua (Drabatan seamstress), who was first introduced in Shaman, Traveler, Oracle, chapter 15 (and thus within the Lasan Series);

Rika (R1-K4, astromech droid), who was also first introduced in Shaman, Traveler, Oracle, chapter 15 (and thus within the Lasan Series).

So, here’s what I recommend:

The group of stories I’ve labeled Early Rose Evergreen stories are very short one-shots that feature both Glockel and Telfien, dating from 2014–15 (before I created Shulma, Lua, and Rika) and most in response to various prompts I received in the past.

Because I hadn’t yet created Shulma, Lua, and Rika when these stories were written, I consider that they take place before Shulma and Lua joined the Rose Evergreen—that is, before the stories in the regular Rose Evergreen Stories series. However, you don’t need to read the early stories in order to understand and enjoy those ones.

Except for the first three items in the early series (Early Morning Thoughts of a Hutt’s Gardener, Pandemonium at a Hutt’s Garden Party, and Of Urgent Transmissions and Curious Dropped Objects), which form a brief arc of their own and are best read in order, the reading order of these stories is not important, even if some stories refer briefly to events within another. (For example, The Spacer’s Song expands on a previous happening mentioned by Telfien in In Search of a Hutt’s Dinner Music—so yes, the former would have preceded the latter chronologically, but it’s not absolutely necessary to read them in that order.)

The group of stories labeled Rose Evergreen Stories feature all five members of the Rose Evergreen ensemble: Glockel, Telfien, Rika, Lua, and Shulma, and the Drabatan Lady Stories center on Lua.

Reading order within these groups is not necessarily important, either, but for context on how the Rose Evergreen group came together, you might find it helpful to check out chapters 15–16 of ShTO. This is not only the first appearance of Lua (the Drabatan lady herself) and Rika (Glockel’s astromech), but also where Lua and Shulma join the crew of the Rose Evergreen to form the ensemble of five characters.

For one of the five women’s first missions together, read ShTO chapters 19–23 (which also features some Ryn guest OCs borrowed from the my talented friend and OCologist aikisenshi). Again, potentially helpful for context, but not absolutely necessary.

And that should, more or less, cover it. Whew! I hope that didn’t make matters even more complicated than they are. Questions are always welcome!

#reading order #finds writes #fan fiction writing #lasan series #book of gand #ocs #Lasat #gand #drabatan #star wars fan fiction #any tags I’m missing?

[vidalinav]

Nesta even losing some of her powers was unnecessary.

Prefacing this by saying, I can understand why Nesta trains, but I can’t understand why she doesn’t also discover more of her powers. The whole thing set up by Nesta’s character is that in order to control a lot of what she feels, because she feels too much as Feyre suggests, is that she pretty much shows no emotion, or she makes a great show of being aloof and taciturn and arrogant (Darcy 2.0), putting up walls, and the one emotion that slips through the cracks is always anger. Anger that incontrollable flame that we know has been associated with her and with Cassian, who goads that anger out of her, almost yearns for it. She is raised, we learn, to be this way. She has to be this way or she will drown under the weight of it all, as it’s suggested. Drowning is like that main motif running through the entirety of acosf. Nesta drowned in that cauldron, she was pulled under, there’s a constant theme about the sea. We learn in acofas that Nesta one, doesn’t feel anything except sometimes anger, and two, that she can’t control her powers. She couldn’t control them in the war, which she uses as a way to form some feeling of irrational internal guilt, and she doesn’t use them in acosf for the majority of the book, really. Which would be understandable in some ways because reasonably by the end we learn that she doesn’t really want to feel anything, and when she does promise that she’ll feel it all that is the direct instance where she is seen to use her powers to save Feyre, because she makes that deal with the cauldron and in some ways the Mother. We definitely get instances of her using them unknowingly in ways that suggest the powers are not evil (i.e. the sword, the house, etc) though we have the contrasting perspectives of the IC believing that they are malevolent because of... Nesta?

However, I feel this book completely lacked the idea that Nesta took that cauldron’s power, something I consider to be set up as empowering (because well she gained power and control) which is the other half of this whole situation of the power overwhelming her. This is something that many fans have brought up in the case of people not liking Nesta losing the power, that “oh it was overwhelming her, so I don’t think her getting rid of the power is bad thing,” and I’ve always kind of taken that stance as like ehh, because I’m like yes... but no... It’s not that the power overwhelms her, it’s that her entire being overwhelms her. That she feels too much and she burns with it--that’s what Feyre says in acomaf. She keeps walls up to keep herself from being overwhelmed. And what happens throughout acosf only to end where Nesta loses power? The entirety of the book is that Nesta needs to change, and being accepted is the heavy conclusion. I won’t re-make that argument it’s in another post. 

However, I am saying that that is why I don’t like Nesta losing her power, even if it was a self-less act on her part. That was never a doubt. Nesta has done constant things to prove that she would be there for Feyre/people at the drastic end, even if she’s not welcoming in the uneventful middle. The wall scene, the “we’ll be fine” scene in acotar where she’s like we don’t need you be free, To the queens in acomaf, sticking up for Feyre/Cassian with Tamlin in acowar, telling her story to the High Lords, using herself as a sacrifice in the end of acowar. We didn’t need another scene of Nesta doing a dramatic thing for Feyre. I’d argue we only needed a scene where they came together and mutually understood each other for once in their lives. But that’s not what we got, we got a scene that following Nesta having revelations that she’s “okay” and hopeful after being constantly berated and shoved in a house and walked up mountains as punishment, where her father is seen as okay (???), where we learn she has had a bad childhood, where she is in constant situations that are exactly the same as the situations that made her trauma in the first place, and where she doesn’t ever come to the conclusion that perhaps her thoughts are both accurate and incorrect, that she can be both the victim and the tormentor, which are two sides of the same coin. Nesta loses most of her anger... and then she loses most of her power... It remains to be seen how much she’s lost, but that’s a great big chunk of character. That’s quite a bit of everything we know of her character. 

But going back to the power itself and anger. Feyre in acotar says that her father wouldn’t have went and saved her because he didn’t have “the courage, the anger... but Nesta had gone with that mercenary” to find Feyre. Something that can be viewed as the first act of love to Feyre. Something that makes Feyre change her mind about who Nesta is. This is the first time that her anger is associated with something directly “good” because that’s how Nesta is, which is then show again and again.  

 And then in acomaf, Nesta who is put in a terrible situation where she has no control whatsoever, which is the start of something deeply traumatizing, in her anger steals from what is stealing from her. Similarly, I feel to learning how to fight so that she can have control. Nesta takes some manner of control in a situation where she has none. 

And then Nesta in her anger at almost losing Cassian obliterates the queen and her power is felt across Prythrian. 

And what I’m trying to really piece together here, is that Nesta’s power--Nesta’s anger--can be both something good and bad, something overwhelming and empowering... Something that Nesta logically may never be able to control completely, but can learn to accept, learn to minimize damage or know that she must constantly be aware, which is I feel the more natural way of growth. That growth is a constant battle. It is also something that remains to be seen whether it is good or evil, perhaps is neither of those things, something that remains in the middle to whatever situation occurs naturally. That is overwhelmingly good at the drastic end as Nesta is, and may be neutral or so-so or chaotic or unwelcoming in the (un)eventful middle. 

She didn’t have to lose anything. Not only is it something that S/JM has done so many times. Not only is it something she doesn’t do with her male characters. It is not necessary, when everything is set up perfectly fine to have developed those powers and in turn develop her character, because they’re equally related instead of having the end lead up to losing her power and in turn losing a major facet of herself, which is something that has a constant presence in this book. In no way is this book more about acceptance than it is about change. 

Acosf lacked the nuance that is Nesta’s character. It was one side of a coin. Which 1. is not fitting for a standalone in which romance occurs but character growth was suppose to happen in and sort of be relatively completed in (the bulk) and 2. it’s why I don’t understand why S/JM just didn’t leave Cassian’s pov out or integrate it better or leave some of the plot that was irrelevant. It’s also why I get deeply perturbed about this book series, because it can be so good and it’s just so disappointing. She set it all up. It doesn’t take a genius to connect dots. So why was this book so woefully underwhelming? Oh I know, it’s because she drastically reduced a character to “I hate myself. I hate my power. I hate my anger. All of these must be gone”/”These characters think my anger is bad, they’ll also think my power is bad and I’ll agree” and then did virtually nothing to prove that all of this was irrational in both cases, except with a “losing my power” moment that wasn’t even necessary or set up well. 

#thank you I love complaining about this book #it's so horrendous #I can't #It's the epitome of hubris to think that SJM thinks this is a good book #as a seasoned author #I should really not be a perfectionist if this is what is allowed to be published #anti sjm #nesta archeron #nesta archeron meta #Wednesday rant days #anti acosf

[kimsnnn]

Part 1

Disclaimer: This post is in favor of my ship, Elriel. No hate, just an opinion. This is what makes sense to me. If this isn't your cup of tea, and it came up on your feed, no worries just skip please. 

If you look at it this way:

If the series were to officially end at ACOWAR then that would mean that there would be no need to add any more books due to the majority of the plot being resolved. If there were slight questions or plot holes that were left open, we as readers can basically create our own conclusion based of where these characters and their stories were left off at. That’s the beauty of being a reader, being able to use our imagination to extend the stories based on canon information to infer or even speculate what happened to those beloved characters of ours.

If its easy to answer these questions, fill these plot holes and resolve any issues within that story, then there would be no need for any additional books, and lets say there were questions that were pressing but not complicated to answer, a simple extra book could be added to resolve that like ACOFAS. ACOFAS could’ve concluded everything. She could’ve also showed Feyre or whoever freeing Vassa and then created a whole spin off on Vassa and her adventures including the plot of her defeating her captor Koschei while also dealing with the queens and humans basically introducing us to a whole new world and continent with new fae/fae territories (like chaol introduced in his book from ToG). Her LI would most likely be Jurian because Lucien would have ended up with Elain which we know because she resolved that in ACOFAS.

BUT

That’s not at all what happened. Things were not answered/resolved during ACOFAS.

The author which in this case is SJM knew that whatever obvious inferences/speculation we the fandom would have is not the accurate ending she had for these characters. So she decided to introduce far more books into the series as standalones but, still part of the overarching plot to truly get the full scope of what she has in store for these characters. Why make additional books based on the obvious ?  She’s a writer, she knows the importance of creating mystery or writing plot twists that we either didn’t or decided not to realize or even accept. So ACOFAS and even ACOWAR wasn’t there to answer last minute questions, to show us that our favorite ships did end up together, no it was there to be used to set up future stories like SJM said and be as close as can be as opposite of obvious.

At the End of ACOWAR we have :

Nesta

-THAT Nessian moment 🥰  (& Nessian moments in general in ACOWAR)

We can infer based on where those characters were left off that :

-They would end up together eventually.  I mean come on, Cass’s line *chef’s kiss*.

BUT what people forget is that was also her breaking point (trauma) 

-We didn’t know how her trauma would affect her, her life and loved ones, & how she’d heal Or what were even her powers. These questions were built up throughout all of ACOWAR

So what did SJM do?

-She wrote the answers to those questions in ACOSF while also resolving questions about Nessian’s status especially since Nesta first had to start healing to let herself be loved.

The evidence ? The set up to gain support to find these answers ? Its in ACOFAS

-Nesta’s drinking, isolation, rage, fear, loneliness and self hate

-Nesta’s avoidance of her sisters, the IC and Cassian

-Cassian’s persistence, confusion. Feeling helpless.

Same thing can be seen for Elain

At the end of ACOWAR

Elain

-Civilness between E and L.  She seems more at peach and want to plan gardens/rebuild

We can infer

-Elain talked to Lucien so she forgave him or is on track to forgive him. From this we can assume the possibility of Elucien being endgame.

Elain also must be healed because she smiled and wants to help rebuild. So that all equals acceptance of her powers (on occasionally seeing things and that it, that’s her power), her new life and bond

BUT what we forget is the iconic Elriel moments (Hybern camp & truth teller connection), Elain’s world/future going up in flames, the consequences/trauma of having been gifted these powers

-We don’t know the full scope of her powers, why the cauldron adores her, how she feels, why were we given blooming moments between Elriel 

So again what will SJM probably do?

-Set Elriel to be endgame. Cause civility/friendship/forgiveness/CLOSURE between Elain and Lucien. Get In depth about her powers, her trauma and how it has affected the life she thought she would have. Have her come into her role in the NC and have self growth. 

The evidence? Its in ACOFAS & ACOSF

-Elain’s anger and desperation to have a choice, to have her own agency

-Elain’s avoidance, tolerance, discomfort of Lucien ( she wilts and regresses)

-Elain’s push to contribute more and firmly declare she’s a member of the NC

-Elriel’s tension & build up ( glances, smiles, blushing, gifts, humor, awareness, longing, protectiveness, attraction, actively trying to distract themselves, etc I could go on and on)

-Confirmation of Elain’s power still existing. Her whereabouts: where is Elain when the IC are facing obstacles?

-Her visions still to happen. The fourth dead trove needs to be found: it makes sense that it would be found by Elain (& Az) ( the crown: Braiylln, the harp & mask: Nesta, the fourth trove: Elain)

*If there are 3 cauldron made and Braiylln found one (& is now dead), Nesta found 2 but couldn't get a good read of the fourth, that means it'll be up to Elain & Azriel because they are basically the only two in the IC who closely work with shadows and even mist. Maybe Nuala and Cerridwen would also join in searching which id love.

Now let’s ignore the evidence.

From that moment at the end of ACOWAR again: 1) we see Elain who seems better and 2)we have Elain and Lucien who seem to be in a civil place 

So we assume she’s healed or on track, and her relationship with Lucien is looking up. So why would SJM write a whole standalone on the obvious?

If she’s healed and okay, if she and Lucien will be a sailing ship why be so secretive and unclear on Elain’s story, on who she ends up with?

Nessian was so clear, there was no REAL doubt that they would not end up together despite the obstacles between them, two of them being her rage and trauma. But Nessian would be and are endgame period. All the other “prospects” were just for angst, development and humor. Not real threats.

She wrote Nesta’s story because the worry and question wasn’t on Nessian’s validity, she established their validity and their romance when Nesta prepared to die with Cassian, when Cassian promised to find more time with her, when Nesta called for Cassian, when Nesta Wass worried for Cassian, when Nesta would constantly pay attention to him without realizing it (his wings) when Cassian ran after her during solstice, when Cassian bought her a gift etc. The worry and questions were ALWAYS on and about Nesta’s role, powers, and trauma because they were the influencing factor that affected everyone’s future, Nesta’s life/health and Nessian’s ability to finally able to come together.

If Elucien were endgame we as a fandom would know without a doubt that they are. There would be many more moments of ooh’s and hmmm’s and less mystery and confusion on their validity. There would be far more angst and these characters would have be seen more often together (seeking each other out, but Elain never does) or at least have them have more than one scene of mutual civilness where they dont talk awkwardly, and have a real conversation not one that seems forced, especially by Feyre. Even with the obstacles between them and their distance (because of the obvious elephant in the room) we should have scenes that showcases clear interest between them but we don’t. There is only one true scene where we have that and its at the end of ACOWAR, Im not blind i could see where people might interpret it as Elucien confirmation and who knows maybe I'm wrong and it is but, I read that differently. That to me was confirmation that a friendship between them is possible. Something completely platonic but just as sweet in a different way. That scene to me wasn’t charged it was not even a slow burn or even a spark it was healing and the foreshadowing of a possible friendship.

ALSO:

*Possible ToG spoiler below*

I don’t think it’s too far fetched to assume that Vassien is a thing. And in all honestly I also don’t think its too far fetched to have Lucien (& Vassa) have their own book like Chaol (& Yrene) did. Chaol was an important/original main character from the very beginning of the series who ended up doing grave mistakes. He found himself lost in life to later finding himself gaining a new purpose outlook & perspective when he left the continent to only meet his new LI Yrene freaking Towers who SERIOUSLY changed the whole game ( I freaking love her) and was extremely valuable to winning that war. This is so similar to Lucien’s story so far and Vassa (the firebird) who I expect to resemble Yrene in value and vitalness  BUT it is important to state that Lucien is nothing like Chaol and is far more SUPERIOR. So No this is not me saying Lucien is like Chaol. This is just me seeing the resemblance in their journeys so far, which might be due to SJM possibly reusing the same template on purpose.

Part 2

#elain #elain archeron #elain x azriel #elriel #acotar 5

[aegonbeingfakeisracist]

@severelyuniquebarbarian I’m going to take this as an opportunity to discuss the ways all the tie in books connect with the main series in depth. 😂 Forgive me.

The tie in books fall into two categories, really: the Megamorphs and the Chronicles. The Megamorphs are very similar to the main series, with the same characters, but they’re longer and told from alternating perspectives, rather than the single PoV of each main series book - so basically an adventure-of-the-week with some body horror and trauma thrown in. The first two I don’t really have strong feelings about - one’s a standard “Visser Three has come up with a plan to trap us, and we must find a solution” with some convenient amnesia thrown in, and the other involves them going back in time to the Cretaceous period and running away from dinosaurs because the series was written by a pair of Star Trek nerds. I enjoy them, but if I’m being totally honest, a lot of that is childhood fondness carried through to adulthood, so someone reading for the first time as an adult probably wouldn’t miss it if they were to skip them, especially because the ending of MM 2 should be important in a character arc way but isn’t. The third and fourth Megamorphs are awesome, though - one’s time travelling to stop another time traveller from screwing with history and the other is a for-want-of-a-nail story about what would have happened if they never cut through the construction site. I really love them and would recommend them, but not nearly as strongly as I would the Chronicles.

Now onto the Chronicles! Those are basically the prequels. They provide a lot of the context of the war to explain the Yeerk war with the Andalites, what went down on the Hork Bajir homeworld, how the Yeerks ended up on Earth, and so on. These are what I’m really talking about when I say that a lot of my favourite material comes from the side stories. These are a lot more relevant than the Megamorphs, even though they don’t feature the main characters of the core series beyond just framing devices, for a couple reasons. The first is just for thematic reasons - Animorphs is fundamentally a story about war, and the contextualization that the Chronicles provide is essential to conveying the scope of that theme. But also, they’re plot relevant, which is true in many ways. There’s a reveal in book 23 of the main series that comes out of absolutely nowhere if you haven’t read the Andalite Chronicles first (I will refrain from going on a tangent about 90s childrens publishing), plus the plot is driven by a character that you’ll know nothing about if you haven’t read THBC. In 34, a different character shows up that was introduced in the Hork Bajir Chronicles, and the entire book revolves around what went down in that prequel. The Ellimist Chronicles takes place in the middle of book 54. More broadly, character actions and motivations have a great deal to do with these past events.

Visser is kind of the odd book out. I used to think it should have been categorized as a Chronicles, but I no longer think it’s as like the others as I once thought. The Andalite and Hork Bajir Chronicles fit very naturally as part of a set. The Ellimist Chronicles is different, but it’s also very much a young alien coming of age standalone story. Visser is...not that. And even from a plot level, it doesn’t match - the Chronicles are essentially whole book flashbacks that don’t involve the actual Animorphs as characters. Visser shifts back and forth between the past and the present. It’s a really great book, but the more I think about it, the stranger it is that it exists as something so different from the rest of the series. It’s biggest similarity to the Ellimist Chronicles is a very specific storytelling choice - they’re both technicallly side stories that don’t impact the main plot, but the framing devices are such that they fit in very specific places in the main series, which TAC and THBC do not - you just have to read those before 23 and you’ll be fine. But TEC, like I said, takes place within 54, and 35 leads directly into Visser. 

A while ago, I wrote a spreadsheet for a friend containing which books I insist she read and which she can skip, plus a little info about each one. Here is a snippet:

Anyway. None of this is relevant. You just gave me an opening and I pounced. 😂 TL;DR: they’re great, read them.

#severelyuniquebarbarian #replies

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 19 of 26

Title: A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2) (2016)

Author: Becky Chambers

Genre/Tags: Science Fiction, Third-Person, Female Protagonists

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 7/25/2021

Date Finished: 8/5/2021

“Lovelace” is an AI system aboard the Wayfarer, a wormhole tunneling ship. Following a critical error, she awakens as a fresh installation, overwriting the beloved version everyone knew and loved. Faced with a distraught crew, she accepts a strange offer: upload her consciousness to a humanlike “body kit” and live with an independent tech on Port Coriol. She renames herself Sidra and moves in with Pepper and her partner Blue. Despite their support, Sidra struggles to figure out who she really is, and the type of person she wants to be. To complicate matters, her existence as an AI in a body kit is strictly illegal… and discovery means certain death. 

Pepper has her own shaky past. Once “Jane 23”, a genetically engineered slave from a fringe colony, she escapes from a scrap processing factory. Amid the continent-spanning junk heap, she discovers a trapped, functional AI named Owl. Owl saves her life and teaches her about the galaxy beyond. As Jane struggles to survive in a harsh and desolate wasteland, she resolves to fix Owl’s broken ship and escape the planet together. But such a feat is easier said than done. 

“Just because someone goes away doesn’t mean you stop loving them.”

Content warnings and minor spoilers below the cut.  

Content warnings for the book: Slavery, child abuse, child death, animal death. Depictions of PTSD/panic attacks. Traumatic injury and severe malnutrition. Recreational drug use. 

I enjoyed A Closed and Common Orbit much more than The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. From what I understand, all the books in the Wayfarers series are standalones, but this one does have a direct connection to the previous story. It stars two minor characters from the last book— Pepper, a genetically engineered technician who escaped from slavery on a fringe colony, and Sidra (i.e. Lovelace), an AI installed in an illegal, humanlike body. While A Closed and Common Orbit can be read on its own, the last book is helpful for some context and worldbuilding.

Official descriptions for the book don’t do it justice. Common Orbit follows two narrative threads. There’s a “current” story that follows Sidra as she adjusts to her new body and learns how to be a person. This storyline doesn’t  contain much action, but there is some tension with Sidra hiding her true identity. With Pepper and her partner Blue’s help, Sidra gradually accepts/overcomes her unique abilities, challenges, and limitations. Sidra’s story functions as a scifi flavored coming-of-age story. It’s not all fluffy and heartwarming, containing realistic interpersonal conflicts and a rocky friendship with an Aeluon tattoo artist named Tak (who is awesome—a genderfluid character whose pronouns change throughout the book, and no one sees it as weird or a big deal. Hell yeah). I like seeing fictional friendships that take work to develop, but become genuine as both characters grow.

But in my opinion, the meat of the narrative lies in the “past” thread, which serves as Pepper’s origin story. It details her childhood as a slave called “Jane 23”, her escape into a continent-sized scrapyard, and her chance meeting with Owl, an abandoned AI trapped in a junk ship. Owl takes on the role of a parent and does her best to raise Jane. This story is excellent for many reasons. It’s a parallel coming-of-age story. Like Sidra, Jane learns to become a person, but hers are bleak circumstances; isolated from other humans, eking out an existence hunting feral dogs, and slowly patching up the shuttle. Jane struggles with PTSD and the grim reality of survival in a world that wants her dead. This culminates when she resolves to repair Owl’s ship and escape the planet. The simplistic, childish language in the early chapters gives way to more nuanced prose as Jane learns more about the galaxy. There’s a heavy focus on the close, familial relationship between her and Owl. As the story progresses, the reader naturally questions what happened to Owl, and why she’s absent in the Sidra storyline. Both stories converge in the third act to resolve this. 

One thing that’s really nice about parallel narratives is when they complement and add context to each other. It’s such a basic thing, but I love when writers do it well, and Chambers is no exception. Pepper’s “past” story provides the context for her motivation to help Sidra. Pepper sees AIs as fully sapient and deserving of the same rights, treatment, and dignity as any other person. Owl saved Pepper’s life and raised her because it was the right thing to do… so Pepper fulfills a similar role for Sidra. Another great detail is Pepper’s obsession with a children’s media franchise, Big Bug. Initially it comes of as geeky and a little silly. But when we see the reason for her attachment in the Jane storyline, it hits like a gutpunch. There’s lots of other similarities between the stories, but we’d be here all day if I went into them. 

In general, many of my complaints about the last book don’t apply to this one. I think fewer leads helps, as there is more focus on individual character arcs. To me, many of the characters in the last book felt tacked on, to the point I didn’t feel any investment in them. But here, the focus on Sidra and Pepper feels deeper and more intimate. I’m apprehensive about the next two books, as they both have broad ensemble casts. I hope they avoid the problems present in The Long Way, but I’ll be optimistic. Common Orbit also has lasting conflict and consequence, something severely lacking in the last book. It’s nice to see that characters who like each other and consider each other family still have arguments and conflicting motivations. This sounds basic, but again, it’s something the last book either didn’t convey or resolved right away. 

While I enjoyed this book, I have a few criticisms. Several key scenes are missing, to the story’s detriment. A big one is Owl’s “introduction” to Sidra’s storyline. As I mentioned earlier, it’s clear that Pepper’s motivation to help Sidra stems from her relationship with Owl. When Owl suddenly becomes relevant, it’s hand-waved that Pepper told Sidra about her at some point. Yet we never actually see Pepper do this. Considering the narrative setup between these characters, it seems like a huge missed opportunity to skip a critical scene that ties the three together. I also wanted to see more development with Blue; while I like him, he doesn’t have much narrative impact. He’s present in both stories but mostly serves as a passive, emotional support character. It would have been nice to see him take an active role at some point. 

I gave this book the benefit of the doubt, and it paid off. I have to say I’m impressed with the level of improvement between The Long Way and Common Orbit. While I am nervous to see what the last two books hold, I hope I like them. As mentioned, each book is a standalone story. I’m reading them in order, but from what I can tell, you can start with any of them. I certainly recommend this one!

#2021 reading challenge #9/10 #taylor reads

[moonshinesapphic]

So you were disappointed in Throne of Glass...

 (DISCLAIMER: This post does not intend to offend anyone who loves ToG. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and likes and dislikes and is allowed to express that. This post is meant to share books that have similar qualities to ToG for people who were disappointed in the series, like myself, but anyone who does like ToG can absolutely find great recs here! However, if you don’t want to hear anything ToG critical I recommend skipping over this post. Thank you!)

So last week I finally got rid of all my ToG books. I was mostly relieved that I now have more room on my bookshelf but I also felt a little sad. It was a series I really enjoyed when I first read it two years ago, and on some level it will always have a special place for me. It was one of the many books that got me back into reading after a five year slump, it’s the reason I became friends with the wonderful Nicole (@/rainbowbooktheif on Instagram) who was the first person irl to make me feel less alone as a bookish nerd, and it, unintentionally, helped me hone my critical reading skills. However, I slowly began to care less and less for the story and characters as the series progressed and ended up not reading the last two books because I just stopped caring. I wondered why a series that I loved so much in the beginning went down hill so fast for me, but in the process of falling out of love with ToG I realized I wasn’t the only one who felt this way about the series! The lack of diversity (and misrepresentation/mistreatment of diverse characters when they were there), sexism, lazy editing and lackluster world building, among other things, came up many times for me and other former ToG fans when discussing why we became disappointed in the series. But the pitch for the book (badass morally gray assassin taking down a tyrant king for her freedom, so cool!) and some of the elements (romance, female friendships, magic, trials) sounded so amazing even though in the end it was executed poorly. So, I decided to compile a list of books that I have read and loved that have some elements and themes of ToG. This list is by no means exhaustive and is limited by the books that I have read (which is not many when you look at how many books exist in the world) so I would love to see your recommendations! Please feel free to add onto this post any recs that you have! Now onto the list!

1) Graceling by Kristin Cashore

I read this book the summer before I started ToG and completely loved it. It was one of the early books that got me back into reading and it was honestly the perfect book for that. It was exciting and I couldn’t put it down. It follows an assassin for a tyrannical king who begins to realize her own gifts for killing are more then she ever thought they could be. Cashore does a fantastic job developing the lead character Katsa and the ways that she dolls out information to the readers slowly is impeccable. While this book is technically the first in a trilogy of books taking place in the Graceling world, it can be read as a standalone fantasy (which I feel like are very rare). Another part of this book that I really loved was the romance. I usually don’t read very many straight romances (due to the sexist/problematic aspects many of the ones that I’ve read have) but the relationship between Katsa and Po is honestly a breath of fresh air when you’re used to a lot of toxicity and sexism with cishet romances in books. The two take care of each other and their relationship is very balanced. There are no gender roles pushed on either of them and they truly grow to become a team throughout the story and it’s wonderful to see! I would consider Katsa and Po, while canonically cis (there isn’t any explicit queer rep in this book), both quite androgynous characters who often express themselves in a fluid manner which I really appreciate. Over all this is an amazing classic YA fantasy that everyone should check out!

Synopsis: “Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight—she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug.

She never expects to fall in love with beautiful Prince Po.

She never expects to learn the truth behind her Grace—or the terrible secret that lies hidden far away . . . a secret that could destroy all seven kingdoms with words alone.

With elegant, evocative prose and a cast of unforgettable characters, debut author Kristin Cashore creates a mesmerizing world, a death-defying adventure, and a heart-racing romance that will consume you, hold you captive, and leave you wanting more.”

2) Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake

This book is the first in a five book series about three royal sisters raised to battle it out for the throne. I must admit the first book in the series is a little lackluster due to the fact that it’s setting up a lot but the second book just blows everything out of the water in a fantastic way. This series is dark and bloody and intriguing. I got completely hooked on this series and it brought out a lot of emotion to the point where I was gasping and shouting and throwing my book around as I was reading it (I got very invested)! I think that’s one of the things SJM can do well is get you hooked on her characters and Kendare can do the same (if not better). I love the dynamic between the sisters, this book does a great job at exploring the darker side of familial and female/female relationships (mostly platonic.. there isn’t very much queer rep unfortunately) that I really appreciate. The magic system and wolrdbuliding are also something that I enjoyed and I though was quite well done. Kendare does a good job at weaving in worldbuilding and magic system seamlessly into the story and I love that so much. Three Dark Crowns is just a fun and exciting series that I think anyone who loves fantasy YA should check out!

Synopsis: “ In every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born—three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions.

But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it’s not just a game of win or lose…it’s life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins.

The last queen standing gets the crown. “

3) The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

So a little disclaimer, this book is one of my favorite fantasy books of all time. I read it over the span of a few months last summer (its a long one guys...800+ pages) and it was one of the greatest, most well thought out fantasy books I’d ever had the pleasure of reading. I loved the characters, the world, the plot, the magic system etc. I loved everything! There’s some great political intrigue, dragon riders, epic battles, prophecies, weddings, funerals, romance and just general badassery and kickassery happening. Shannon clearly put so much time and effort into this book and it shows. That kind of dedication that shows is something that I really appreciate in a book, especially a fantasy book. Another aspect that I loved so so much is the diversity in this book. It came so naturally and didn’t at all feel like tokenism. The characters, with their differing genders, ethnicities, sexualities, ages, and nationalities etc, and their relationships with each other are truly what made the story. This book also has one of the BEST f/f romances I’ve ever read (as a queer woman I really loved that representation so much and felt very connected to both of those characters). Priory is a long one but if you have the time I highly recommend it.

Synopsis: “ A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction – but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep. “

4) Truthwitch by Susan Dennard

As a queer woman, I’m always a little on edge when someone mentions f/f friendship in a book. This is entirely because of the erasure many many f/f romances experience when they are just brushed off as friendships (we’ve all heard the term “gal pals”). It’s frustrating and even though I love a good f/f friendship when the f/f romances get erased and replaced by friendships it gets exhausting. However, Truthwitch is a true f/f friendship that I can fully get behind! Dennard is an author that I had been following for writing tips for a while before I finally picked up her book. I knew that she’s someone who is invested in making her series diverse, even if she herself doesn’t fit into those categories, and accepts criticism because she want’s to do her characters justice. That’s something I really appreciate seeing from white cishet authors and is one of the reasons I picked up Truthwitch. It’s so much fun and the heart of the story truly is the relationship between the two leads Safi and Iseult. Their friendship reminds me a lot of my relationship with my friends. Books about f/f relationships (romantic or otherwise) are few and far between so I really love that this book exists. Strong platonic relationships are so often pushed aside for cishet romantic ones so it’s SO refreshing to see a series where the book would not exist without Safi and Iseult’s bond. They are truly soulmates and their relationship with each other is the most important one in their lives and that is just beautiful. Not to mention this book has got an awesome magic system and is building up to an amazing fantasy series! There’s pirates, priestesses, princes and, of course, witches! It’s loads of fun all around!

Synopsis: “ Young witches Safiya and Iseult have a habit of finding trouble. After clashing with a powerful Guildmaster and his ruthless Bloodwitch bodyguard, the friends are forced to flee their home.

Safi must avoid capture at all costs as she's a rare Truthwitch, able to discern truth from lies. Many would kill for her magic, so Safi must keep it hidden - lest she be used in the struggle between empires. And Iseult's true powers are hidden even from herself.

In a chance encounter at Court, Safi meets Prince Merik and makes him a reluctant ally. However, his help may not slow down the Bloodwitch now hot on the girls' heels. All Safi and Iseult want is their freedom, but danger lies ahead. With war coming, treaties breaking and a magical contagion sweeping the land, the friends will have to fight emperors and mercenaries alike. For some will stop at nothing to get their hands on a Truthwitch. “

5) Monstress by Marjorie Liu (Writer) and Sana Takeda (Illustrator) 

Another disclaimer! This book is my favorite graphic novel, period. There is really nothing like Monstress out there and I think that it’s criminally underrated. Liu and Takeda are the perfect combo of writer/artist to make this GN come together. I’m constantly in awe of the world, characters, and story Liu built and the frankly stunning art Takeda creates to go along with it. It’s steampunk and dark and dirty and beautiful. The lead character, Maika, is one of the few truly morally gray characters that I’ve read. Her decisions will make you question if you’re a good person because you still love her despite the fact that she just killed that guy... and that guy... and those other guys. This graphic novel series is very reflective of the dark animes (like Tokyo Ghoul and Castlevania) that we are seeing more recently and I personally believe Monstress would make a fantastic animated series if it were ever to get an adaption. This book has also some great representation of queer women (Maika herself is a queer, disabled, WoC). It’s totally the norm for the world and all of the lead female characters are queer, which I just love. This story has amazing woldbulding, magic, characters etc. It’ll give you everything from giant dead gods, to talking cats with multiple tails, to demonically possessed teenage girls who need to eat people. It’s honestly amazing. (I would give a major trigger warning for blood/gore so as long as you know you can handle that I think you should check it out!)

Synopsis: “ Set in an alternate matriarchal 1900's Asia, in a richly imagined world of art deco-inflected steam punk, MONSTRESS tells the story of a teenage girl who is struggling to survive the trauma of war, and who shares a mysterious psychic link with a monster of tremendous power, a connection that will transform them both and make them the target of both human and otherworldly powers. “

6) The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen

I never thought I would love a cishet romance as much as I love this one but here I am. The Bridge Kingdom is not really the kind of book I would normally pick up but it was on sale on kindle so I thought “why not!” And I was not disappointed. This story follows the assassin princess, Lara, who was raised to be married off to her fathers rival kingdom and kill the king. However, things get sticky when she begins to actually fall for the king and starts to realize that her father isn’t exactly who he says he is. Not only was this romance steamy as hell (this is an ADULT book folks so there are some explicit sex scenes, beware) but the world is super cool. The political intrigue was something I really enjoyed and I loved to see the world unfold from Lara’s eyes. I also totally loved Lara’s character. She’s complicated and cutthroat but ultimately want’s to do what’s right and is a character made to change and develop. I usually don’t go for that character trope that Lara fits into (beautiful and badass and despite being the MCs they somehow end up being very bland...) but Jensen managed to create a very mature and ever changing version of the YA trope that I ended up loving completely. If you love steamy fantasy romances with cool worlds and intriguing characters this is absolutely the book for you!

Synopsis: “ Lara has only one thought for her husband on their wedding day: I will bring your kingdom to its knees. A princess trained from childhood to be a lethal spy, Lara knows that the Bridge Kingdom represents both legendary evil - and legendary promise. The only route through a storm-ravaged world, the Bridge Kingdom controls all trade and travel between lands, allowing its ruler to enrich himself and deprive his enemies, including Lara's homeland. So when she is sent as a bride under the guise of fulfilling a treaty of peace, Lara is prepared to do whatever it takes to fracture the defenses of the impenetrable Bridge Kingdom.

But as she infiltrates her new home - a lush paradise surrounded by tempest seas - and comes to know her new husband, Aren, Lara begins to question where the true evil resides. Around her, she sees a kingdom fighting for survival, and in Aren, a man fiercely protective of his people. As her mission drives her to deeper understanding of the fight to possess the bridge, Lara finds the simmering attraction between her and Aren impossible to ignore. Her goal nearly within reach, Lara will have to decide her own fate: Will she be the destroyer of a king or the savior of her people? “

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