Aro book review: Tell Me How It Ends by Quinton Li
A fantasy novel following tarot reader Iris as she leaves home for the first time to help rescue a stranger's imprisoned friend.
Marin, the stranger Iris befriends over the course of the novel, is ace and 'somewhere on the aro spectrum'. I really appreciated the use of these words in a fantasy setting! Their aromanticism is brought up a few times in the story, and they talk about how they enjoy flirting but are not looking for a relationship.
Overall I enjoyed the plot and easily got through the book in the few days I had before it was due, despite a few quirks in the writing I wasn't a fan of (way too much of 'the blonde' type of description, and side characters seemed weirdly easy to change the minds of a couple of times.)
While Iris has hints of a romance at the end, the emphasised relationships in this book are platonic. I would guess these are likely to still be important in the sequel(s?) even if romance is added, and definitely plan to read book two when it comes out.
i do unironically think the best artists of our generation are posting to get 20 notes and 3 reblogs btw. that fanfic with like 45 kudos is some of the best stuff ever written. those OCs you carry around have some of the richest backstories and worldbuilding someone has ever seen. please do not think that reaching only a few people when you post means your art isn't worth celebrating.
Keeper -- a short comic about an angel meeting a robotic lighthouse keeper that doesn't know the world has already ended. Made in about 18 hours for a 24-hour 24-page* black and white comic challenge (that I arrived late to, ha.)
*the actual submission does not include the cover, which was created after the fact for this post.
This was a really great learning experience as someone who's... never really made a completed comic. I ended up really attached to the story by the end of the project (possibly due to all-nighter deliriousness lol) and ultimately am very proud of what I made.There are some things I'd still like to change, particularly text placement, but in keeping with the spirit of the challenge I've elected to leave it as is.
something so fucked up about Chat Noir’s whole deal is that he is in a lot of ways Adrien playing a character. Like Adrien picked up his miraculous and was told he’d be a superhero so he was like “ok, time to act like a superhero!” and he lets himself have fun w it and play up the role and let loose and kind of just allow himself to be silly and goofy and have fun and for once in his life not care about performing Perfection™.
But. But none of the other characters KNOW THAT. So everyone just sees Chat Noir and is like “look at this guy’s ego. He’s so full of himself. Surely it’d be fair to knock him down a few pegs” without being aware of how few pegs he actually HAS. He’s like the “insecure character who overcompensates in ego” trope except he’s really not doing it unironically, he’s just having a fun LARP pretending to have self worth in his off-hours but nobody else is on the same page about it being a game and he refuses to tell them. He just dramatically pouts about it and lets them laugh and pretends like he’s not internalizing it and it is almost 3 am and my brain forced me to write this instead of sleeping I’m gonna take a melatonin
To all my writers who have a tough time with smut terms and not knowing which ones to use, I have found the holy grail for us.
This reddit user, who I've recently found out is @kjscottwrites here on tumblr, took a poll of 3,500 people and went really in depth with asking their favorite terminology, along with actual pie charts on what the readers preferred to see in their smut.
Check out their post with the link to the Google doc here!