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elivanto · 2 years

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Review: Padawan by Kiersten White

I know this is the moment you have all been desperately waiting for since Padawan was released (/s) – my week was busy as hell but I finally managed to finish reading it! And good news, I liked it VERY much. I definitely didn’t feel conflicted about the characterization(s), plot and subtext like I did when reading Brotherhood, which was a huge relief. Kiersten White did a fantastic job imo!

The review could be kind of spoilery so maybe don’t read on if you’re sensitive about that kind of thing, but I’ve tried to keep major plot points out of it. TLDR at the bottom. Review obviously biased so don’t take my word for it (but I do like to think I’m able to think at least a little objectively).

THE GOOD (i.e. the things I liked)

1. Kiersten White’s take on Jedi. Oh my LORD. This felt worlds different to Chen’s exposition on Jedi culture and their relationships within the Order (I’m sorry I feel like I’m going to keep comparing Padawan to Brotherhood but it’s just a neat scale to measure it by lol). It’s emphasized a lot that they’re a family, and while it’s a big theme in the novel that Obi-Wan is struggling to find his place in the Order, it’s made clear that he thinks he isn’t the right fit for it instead of him going on about how the Order is restrictive or whatever. He cares about the Jedi and the Jedi Order a lot. Very well done.

2. Obi-Wan’s characterization. Yes, yes, yesss. It seems like White drew some inspiration from Master & Apprentice, which I love, and her Obi-Wan feels a lot like Claudia Gray’s Obi-Wan and it’s beautiful. He’s a teenager, he’s a bit miserable and lost (at least at the beginning of the novel 😉), and he is a good little bean. I love him very much.

3. The plot-to-Qui-Gon-ratio. Lmao yes that’s a very important point for me. If you’ve been following me for a while you know I’m not… too fond of Qui-Gon, to put it mildly, but I could tolerate him in this. It probably helped that he wasn’t present for much of the plot. And since he’s Obi-Wan’s master and thus an important part of his life in this novel, mentions of him don’t feel forced or ‘in-your-face’ like they did in Brotherhood. Consequently I wasn’t that annoyed by it. Still a bit annoyed because it’s Qui-Gon but it was fine. And some of Obi-Wan’s reactions to him are just delightful.

4. The nods to the High Republic. I won’t spoil anything because it was spoiled for me and I was a bit put out by that but if you love the High Republic novels and comics (esp. Into the Dark and The Fallen Star), there’s some great little details and references in here. I may have cried once or twice.

5. The (major) original characters. There’s a bunch of original side characters Obi-Wan meets on his little adventure, all teenagers, all lovely and complex. Apart from plot things, they help Obi-Wan figure out his attitude regarding attachments and relationships a little. And not to be like “I’m going to make ~representation~ a big part of this review” but there’s a non-binary Clawdite in this and they’re wonderful.

6. Things unrelated to the content of the story – The book is quite an easy read, has good chapter lengths and a good format (at least on ebook, but the pictures I’ve seen of the text in the printed version were pleasant to look at). And all in all it’s shorter than the typical Star Wars adult novel so even if you’re not that much into reading, it should be easy enough to read this one. If you’re up for it.

THE BAD (i.e. the stuff I didn’t like)

??? I don’t know? The only thing I can think of right now is that there’s a lot of back-and-forth in Obi-Wan’s internal monologue that I caught myself skimming over instead of reading properly from time to time, but that’s to be expected from a Young Adult novel. And that’s just me nitpicking, so. It was fine!

TLDR;

Kiersten White captured teenage Obi-Wan’s essence very well and crafted a beautiful story with conflict that feels real and a satisfying resolution of said conflict (plot-wise and character-wise). No annoying takes on Jedi, no annoying takes on Qui-Gon. A bit of a coming-of-age story for Obi-Wan with lovely original characters. A couple nice cameos and some nice connections to the High Republic. And a good, easy read; would definitely recommend!

Here’s my twitter reading thread if you’re interested. (LOTS OF SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY)

#star wars #sw lit #sw lit info #obi wan kenobi #padawan

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topicprinter · 5 years

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Why Gusto is WAY better than Paychex: My Personal Experience as a Medical ProfessionalHello everyone, I have been wanting to do this post for a long time now, but life is busy and I never got around to it. I’ve always believed that people more often will describe a bad experience over a good one, which can sometimes bias online reviews. This post covers the good and bad I have had using payroll companies. The story is complex and not easy to follow, but I will try my best.TLDR: Gusto is a simple, intuitive payroll solution for small companies and professionals looking to pay themselves. Paychex is an awful, bloated company that makes tons of human errors, has an opaque billing system, and is more expensive and impossible to quit. Use Gusto for your payroll needs and you can get $100 Amazon gift card and your first month free to see if you like it using the signup link below:Sign up with Gusto Get 100$ Amazon gift card and 1 month trial periodA little background:I am a medical professional and it so happens that my employer classifies me as an independent contractor so they can avoid giving me benefits or pay payroll tax to the government. This means that in order to do my job and set myself up to receive benefits like any ordinary employee, I need to have my own company and have that company pay me. I started an S-corporation and I am the only employee of that corporation, functioning as CEO, President, janitor, etc, etc.I didn’t know much about what to do, so my accountant recommended Paychex. He claimed to have a working relationship with them and vouched for them. Looking back, he probably received a commission for every client he referred. But right off the bat, the experience with Paychex was a nightmare and this is what happened:The BeginningFirst off Paychex wanted to charge a $200 “set-up” fee. After I complained that other operators like Gusto don’t do this excessive setup fee, they graciously “waived it” as if they did me a favor. When it came time to set up my account, someone called my cellphone and asked for my information to fill out the starting paperwork. I thought this was annoying and prone to error because I had to repeat myself several times on the phone to get the numbers correct and it took forever with bad cell reception.They sent me a copy of the paperwork to review, and it was a super unprofessional looking PDF that was crooked and hard to read because it was a bad scan of a copy of a copy. Definitely not something you’d expect from a large national corporation charging 60+ bucks a months.Not surprisingly, something DID go wrong and my PHONE NUMBER was put as my BANK ACCOUNT number. I caught the error and had to contact them to fix it. They also spelled my business address wrong. Then, when setting up my California Employer Profile, they spelled my address wrong again despite my correction, propagating it onto official time sensitive mailings from the state. See email proof below.Email acknowledging errorThe Paychex representative apologizes and sends me a screenshot of the CA website saying “REVIEW and SUBMIT” with the address STILL WRONG, shockingly. When I email her to tell her about this, she LIES, fixes it secretly and shows me a screenshot and saying they had it correct from the beginning. She obviously thinks I’m a moron because her first screenshot says REVIEW AND SUBMIT. See proof below:Still wrong after submittingPaychex employee covering up and lying to meAfter all this nonsense, I complain to the manager they finally agree to give me my first month free as a courtesy. A month passes.The nightmare that followed has to do with a systematic nickel and diming tactic they use to extract money from you. Firstly, the online app is a complete mess and convoluted, forcing you to be reliant on their human representatives. I’m sorry I don’t have a screenshot of this, but you’ll have to take my word for it because I don’t have access anymore because I quit. They have a hodgepodge of confusing apps mixed together with no unifying login. To do payroll, a human representative ends up calling you every month to go over your payroll. Once I had a really busy day and they called and I couldn’t pick up the phone. We somehow didn’t connect over the following week and they had the AUDACITY to charge me a late fee of $49. This brings us to the subject of fees:In addition to the base rate, Paychex has a ton of fees for things that Gusto provides for free (see photo)Paychex Crazy extra feesThey charge $81.71 just to make you a W2 for end of year taxes! Imagine that in the 21st century, where computers automate every calculation. Insane. I have TWO employees. ME and my bro. They charge $3.50 just to add a new employee. Can you say nickel and diming? And what’s up with all the decimal points and crazy pricing?What the hell is a MANUAL PROCESSING FEE of $4.95? They don’t even send me invoices in the mail. It’s PAPERLESS, so what’s manual about it? Is this the fee that they charge me when someone idiot representative calls me every month? Actually it’s not, that stupid/error prone service is free surprisingly. The “manual processing fee” is a fee they charge if you want to approve every payroll and don’t give them permission to automatically deduct everything from your bank account. Can you imagine the nightmare if I allowed them to take whatever they want? See the fees above and understand why you can never trust them to bill you fairly. They will charge you $20 just to EMAIL you your quarterly reports as DELIVERY/HANDLING. This is a completely automated software process and they want to make it look like they’re actually preparing documents for you BY HAND so they can charge you.Paychex is a company that thrives on complexity and your fear of it. They want to take everything out themselves and keep everything obscure so you’re afraid to take control of your own payroll. They want you to think it’s the cost of doing business. They want you to think it’s hard. They want you to think that your time is better spent running your business. That may be true, but you can be in control and not waste time too. It’s possible, just not with Paychex as you will see.I just cant retype all the billing errors and back and forth, it’s too painful and this post is getting long. But I will leave a few example emails detailing their systemic billing issues and pain they put me through. They refunded most of the fees ultimately, but at great cost to my time and mental sanity. I was able to quit, but months later they send me a HANDWRITTEN envelope with a bill in it. I complained about it and they apologized. See here:Still sending me bills after I quitPaychex apologizing for their crazy disorganized billingEventually after much complaining I was able to quit around 3/2018. But, they kept sending me bills in my email because their system refuses to remove me from their client list, despite me telling them to remove me over 5 times. I was still receiving bills up to 11/2018. See proof below as well as their apology. Would you trust a company that cant even accomplish a simple thing like that?Trying to quit Attempt #1, still sending me billsTrying to quit Attempt #2, still sending me billsTrying to quit Attempt #3, still sending me billsThe good (Moving to Gusto):When I started Gusto it was a godsend. I didn’t deal with anyone. You put in a few parameters like your state’s SUI and ETT rates etc, and you don’t talk to anyone. You can easily google the correct information and the CA state also sends this info to you. Payroll isn’t that hard. They have email responders that respond within 24 hours. I haven’t tried calling, everything was straightforward so I didn’t need to. Many basic functions like paid time off etc are built in and free. Here’s an example of Gusto’s billing plan screen. Compare it to paychex’s crazy invoice above:Gusto's simple billingAnd here is gusto’s clean interface.Gusto - Nice organized payrollGusto - Nice interfaceNeed I say more? Go with Gusto, you wont regret it.

#/r/smallbusiness #reddit

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