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a-duck-with-a-book · 3 years

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REVIEW // The Mask of Mirrors (Rook & Rose #1) by M. A. Carrick

★★★★☆

🌟 HIDDEN GEM 🌟

I have a few conflicting feelings regarding this novel, although I found it to be overwhelmingly well-written, with beautiful prose and next-level world building. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: give me a map and a timeline and I will love your book. I decided to divide my review into what I loved, what rubbed me the wrong way, and what I remained on the fence about. (I’ve noticed I spent quite a bit of space detailed my dislikes, so I want to emphasize that I really enjoyed this book and that I this is one of the most well-written novels I have read this year.)

// image: official cover art //

Loved ♡

Scroll through the reviews and you will see that this book has received plenty of praise, and rightfully so. I’m a sucker for world-building, but I think even those who usually skim the lore and history lessons in novels will appreciate the efforts the authors went to in order to create the world around the protagonists. By the time I finished I found that I had learned more from one book than I had from reading some other full series. They are able to fit so much without relying on info dumps, allowing the book to truly come to life.

Secondly, I appreciated that the world was casually LGBTQ+ friendly. It has always bothered me when authors go to the trouble of creating a fantasy world just to make it… homophobic. There are a variety of LGBTQ+ characters, and while the authors ensure that their sexuality or gender identity is canon, they avoid using these same characteristics as plot points.

Also, look at the cover art.

Some spoilers ahead-be wary of SPOILER warnings!

Disliked :(

I’m not a massive fan of using multiple POV’s, and one of the main reasons I am apprehensive of them is that authors sometimes fail to balance the time the readers spend with each protagonist. This happens to an extreme degree in Mask of Mirrors. We spend 90% of the time seeing the story through Ren’s perspective, 5% through Grey, and 5% through Vargo. And yes, these are obviously just estimates, and YES, we also get a couple passages from other characters, but the point stands! I wish we had spent more time developing Grey’s storyline, as both his and Vargo’s character arcs felt rushed and underdeveloped. [SPOILER] After finishing the book, I see why it was useful to show both their POV’s less often in order to leave the ending a surprise for the reader, but I think it would have been much more emotionally impactful if we had been able to follow their stories and get to know them better through more POV’s. [SPOILER END] I wish the authors had either eliminated their passages altogether or inserted more from their perspective-in their current state, they make the book feel unbalanced.

Finally, I think Ren benefits a bit too much from plot armor. I don’t dislike her per se, but I did get annoyed from time to time when everything conveniently went her way. Especially at the beginning, so many puzzle pieces consistently come together for the sake of her storyline, and this just took me out of the story. It is only about halfway through the book that we see her begin to face actual consequences, although I would argue that she gets away with a LOT near the end of the book as well. This apparent invulnerability and extraordinarily good luck made her a bit hard to relate to and like, at least for me. At one point she also gets so angry with a couple other characters for lying abut who one of them was… but like… isn’t that her entire plot line… that she’s pretending to be someone else? It was just too difficult in that moment to sympathize with her anger when she was able to get off without any repercussions after her own con. When people did discover that she was lying about her identity, they forgave her almost immediately. [SPOILER] Leato and Giuna both seem to be angry and hurt, but almost immediately Leato gets over it and then is in no position to make charges against her (going back to the convenient chain of events for Ren’s con to work) and Giuna never really does anything about it. If anything, she also seems to get over really quickly, and it is never truly a problem for Ren that Giuna found out. If anything, Giuna ends up helping her even more than she did before she learned of her true identity. [SPOILER END] The stakes were set so high for this con but we never really saw any lasting consequences. There was no reason for me to be anxious about Ren’s fate because it never felt like she was in any real danger.

[SPOILER?] My last issue, but the one that made me the most upset: why does the two-faced villain always have to be the bisexual character? One of the authors very kindly answered my question on Goodreads when I brought up this issue, (here is the link to that conversation) and while I can see why they made this decision, in the current climate of the abundance of this "betrayer" arc for bisexual character I simply didn't enjoy it. Again, this is a personal issue and since one of the authors is bi herself I am certainly not trying to call them out or anything like that. :) [SPOILER END]

Unsure?

I would tell anyone thinking of picking this book up to prepare for a steep learning curve. You are thrown into a world with different terms and lore, and since the POV characters are already familiar with them (none of the “remote village boy who is ignorant of the ways of the world” here) it can be very confusing to keep up with the avalanche of names and politics and history. It speaks to the deep world-building which I appreciate, but, at the same time, it was definitely difficult to get through the first half of the book. I don’t see this as a negative because, again, with world-building this intricate, it is necessary for the reader to put some effort into learning the background, and I think the authors did as good a job handling this conundrum as they could.

Lastly, I have a very personal issue that I do not count against the book-I love Giuna, and I really wish we had gotten more time with her to explore her character. She feels very reactive in this novel, only there to serve as plot fodder or build up other character’s arcs and personalities, but I can sense that she could be so much more. I hope to see more of her in future books!

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rosefyrefyre · 6 years

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Sorry to give you negativity here, I really enjoy your fics and the time you put into such thoughtful stories. I just think in unhinged, if Katniss was truly dealing with that kind of trauma where she can't even look at Darius's uniform without having a reaction then she would do absolutely anything to not be forced to repeat the tramatic event. She wouldn't be thinking she didn't want to hurt Darius, she would take his offer or a counter offer.

(2) I get that you want her in a tough spot but there’s a miss here. I too have suffered a traumatic experience and in that moment of panic, thinking it could happen again I would do ANYTHING not to have to put myself in a similar situation ever again.

(3) She needs time to heal but she wouldn’t actually start healing fully until she was taken out of the potential situation again. She would be defensive, On high alert and overly paranoid for Prim and herself. I’m sorry I’m bringing this up, I don’t mean to be annoying, i just think you miss a few elements of trauma. Thank you for your time.

One of these messages came through not anon, but out of respect for what the intent was, we’ve removed the name and simply replied to the anon.

Thank you for your critical review of Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged. We understand this couldn’t have been easy for you as a survivor of sexual abuse.

Trigger warning: behind the cut there is a lot of discussion of sexual assault and trauma. If you don’t feel comfortable reading, please do not.

So this is where I, Rose, need to level with you. I have no experience with this. That being said, I’ve shared the ask with FanficAllergy, who does, but doesn’t have a tumblr. So what you’re about to read is her response.

So, each person reacts to trauma and stress differently. Katniss’s reactions to things are how I reacted when this happened to me. Here’s a little backstory. When I was fourteen, the first guy I officially dated stalked me and attempted to rape me. The only reason he didn’t succeed in raping me was because I got a lucky kick in. (I was later raped by a different boyfriend [I woke up to him having sex with me - which he thought was sexy and I really disagreed because I didn’t consent to that ahead of time], but that circumstance was very different and not nearly as violent or traumatic. By that point, I had coping mechanisms. And I was in a different place socially.)

Mike was popular. I wasn’t. Mike had power in the school. I didn’t. When I informed the school of what happened, the school social worker asked me “Why don’t you like Mike? Don’t you think he’s cute?”

Mike was Donaldson. Mike’s violence escalated to the point where his parents had him committed because he was harming himself and harming others. I was blamed for that by the popular kids at school. Even after he was committed, his stalking didn’t cease. He’d call me regularly from the center, leaving voicemails, including “I used to love you. I wanted to marry you. But now I don’t want to do that. I just want to fuck you.”

About a month after Mike’s commitment, he escaped from the private center for troubled people he was confined at. This place was on the other end of town. I remember being woken up by the cops banging on our door to tell us that Mike had escaped. Apparently he’d made threats against me. When they caught him, he was less than a block from my house.

While all of this was going on, two other guys came into my life. Nick and Bill. Nick was like Darius; he too was a popular kid in school. He even was on the shortlist for Homecoming court. He had power. He wanted to date me. Nick and Mike looked a lot alike. Both were track athletes. Nick was considered cute. Nick was also part of the drama club. Bill? He was sweet and patient and kind. He was part of the nerd trust. Everybody liked him, but he wasn’t really popular or unpopular. Bill was stocky. Overweight. Both of them wanted to date me. Both of them, in their own way, liked me/loved me.

While all of this was going on, I could barely stand to be touched. I couldn’t handle anybody coming up behind me - I still don’t do well with it. I feared the sound of the telephone, because every call (just like in Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged, every knock of the door) was my stalker until proven otherwise. It didn’t stop after Mike was sent away out of state. It didn’t stop after I ran into him just three years ago at my church, right around the time when we started writing Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged. Mike still haunts me, but I refuse to let him dictate my life and my feelings.

I’ve often stated Katniss is me, and for those people who know me well, they agree. But Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged Katniss? She is me. Her reactions to Darius’s uniforms were my reactions to Nick and his expectations of dating, which were more in line with what Darius expected. He wanted to kiss me. I wasn’t ready for that. He wanted to fool around. He let it be known that sex was on the table. Nick was a sweet guy, but he took the lead in the relationship like Darius did. If I had met Nick before I met Mike, this would be a very different story. And in a very real way, Nick saved me, just like Darius saved Katniss. In order to escape from Mike before he got committed, I weirdly ended up involved in the drama club. As I mentioned before, Nick was part of the drama club. Nick rallied the drama club seniors and juniors into protecting me. They gave me rides home from school, they looked out for me in between classes, they made Mike go away and didn’t let him follow me. As a random note, one of the people who helped protect me was the guy who went on to write American Pie. So the people from American Pie? The guys and girls you see them partying with and doing stuff with? Those were the kids who were, at the same time, protecting me, a low unpopular freshman, from my stalker. Much like the other Peacekeepers that Darius rallies to protect Katniss.

But back to Katniss and Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged. Her reactions to Peeta were my reactions to Bill. It’s thanks to Bill that I didn’t die, and I’m not using hyperbole. It’s thanks to Bill that I had the strength to let Nick down while still remaining a friend. And we did remain friends, all the way up until he graduated. I still think of Nick with a smile on my face.

I completely agree with you that Katniss needs time to heal. Bill gave me that time, while at the same time letting me know that I was desirable and wanted, but also safe with him. He let me set the pace of our relationship, and let me tell you, I burned hot and cold with him. For about a year and a half, until he graduated, I burned hot and cold with Bill, and if circumstances had been different, Bill and I could have ended up together. Long distance relationships suck, yo. Especially when you’re sixteen and living in the early 90s.

I didn’t have a choice about putting myself back into a similar situation ever again. Where my attempted rape took place was literally only a couple of houses away from my own home. My high school was one giant trigger. There was the stairway where Mike cornered me and one of my friends had to physically extricate me from his grasp. There were the lockers that people used to throw other kids into me at. There were the classrooms that Mike used to hang out in, waiting, coming closer and closer just to catch a glimpse of me. Changing schools wasn’t an option, not in this location. So I had to learn how to deal. I had to learn how to survive.

I understand your point about being hypervigilant, and Katniss certainly is. If you’re not seeing that, it’s because for me to describe what it’s like to be hypervigilant is actually traumatic. Because I have to relive what it’s like to go through that in order to describe it. And I don’t think any fanfic is worth my mental health. So I’m doing my best.

One thing about Katniss and myself is that both of us have the extreme ability to compartmentalize our life. When we’re in the middle of a crisis - which Katniss is right now, do not think otherwise, what with her mother and the food situation - what both Katniss and I do is we focus on the immediate, on what’s needed to survive the next minute, the next hour, the next day. And then after will we allow ourselves to break down. Katniss has not had the opportunity to break down. I didn’t fully break down until I was out of high school, because high school was essentially one giant crisis for me that I couldn’t escape. Every time I reached out for help - to my psychologist, to the school - I got told that Mike, and then later the bullies that made my life miserable, were more important than I was. I lived essentially on high alert and in trauma until I graduated. Let’s just say that my freshman year of college was a complete and utter disaster.

So if we’re not showing the trauma, it’s because I, FanficAllergy as one of the authors, can only show so much before I can’t deal with it. And that’s the way it’s going to be.

Rose mentioned this as we were typing this up, but in a very real way, I use fanfic as a form of therapy. Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged is my therapy for running into Mike again at my church and essentially being forced to relive everything that happened to me in high school. I’ve written other fics that are essentially therapy for when something bad happens. A good example is The Parting Glass, which was me dealing with the very sudden death of one my longtime friends, Big Danny T.

I really appreciate that you like our works, and I really appreciate you having the bravery to speak up. But on this instance, I am going to put my foot down. This is a fanfic. This is something I do for fun. For free. I don’t owe anyone my trauma, and no one has the right to expect me to go through and relive what was essentially the worst time in my life beyond which I’m willing to share. And that includes my emotions and reactions of that time.

Thank you for understanding this, and I’m really sorry that my experience doesn’t jive with your experience. But it’s something my psychologist said: each person reacts to trauma differently. Each person’s emotions and reactions are going to be different. What one person goes through is not going to be what another person goes through. If you want to see this in action, I really recommend you check out I Am Evidence, an HBO documentary about the untested rape kits and how law enforcement treats rape victims. It might open your eyes.

Note from Rose: while I agree that Katniss will do a hell of a lot to avoid rape happening again, a hell of a lot isn’t anything. And while Darius can protect her from everyone else, the one person Darius can’t protect her from… is Darius. She’s seeing his similarities to Donaldson as much as his differences, and he’s making it clear he wants sex eventually. She’s not ready or willing. It has to be on her terms at this point. So she’s saying no. It’s the choice she has to make for her sanity and to be able to continue to function and not let herself die. It’s the choice FanficAllergy made with Nick - not to be with him, as nice as he was, because she couldn’t divorce herself from the similarities.

We hope our readers understand.

And we respectfully request that you not reblog this post. Thank you.

#Anonymous #fanfiction #fic as therapy #dbu #damaged broken and unhinged #katniss everdeen #katniss #tw: rape #trigger warning: rape #rape #do not reblog #don't reblog #please don't reblog

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takaraphoenix · 6 years

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Hi! I don't to sound annoying, but I think my last ask may have fallen into the void so here goes: do you have any tips for starting an AO3 account? Sorry if you got the last one and just didn't feel like answering

Oh no, sweetie. Not annoying at all!

And while I do usually not instantly get around to answering and the asks might lay around for a day or two... yeah, I don’t have any other ask from you, so, good you send it again ;)

Tips? Mh.

1. The Basics!

Let’s start with the most basic thing. Your name.

Is your name a “brand”? That is to say; do you already have a recognizable name? Do people know you from other sites? Tumblr, DeviantArt, Fanfiction.Net, Wattpad, other sites I don’t know?

Then maybe pick the same name, if available. People who already like you might recognize it! They will also have an easier time finding you.

Not to mention, the human brain can not remember that many names and if you make them remember that oh, your name on this site is XYZ and your name on another site is ABC but on the next site they can find you as A2C... that might be asking a bit too much of them.

So make it easy for people who like you to find you! ;)

But don’t make it too easy for people to find you.

That is to say; don’t put personal information on your profile. Don’t link to your facebook, best not put your real name on there. The internet is not exactly a safe place, there are bad people, there are creepy people and there are also dangerous people. So always stay safe.

Now that you got your name and a profile that, instead of leading to personal information best leads to your other accounts, such as tumblr, you’re all set to post your first fic!

2. Write a decent summary.

If you move to AO3 from a site like FFNet, you are used to a pathetically short character limit that doesn’t allow much freedom.

Your summary is your window into the fic. It’s supposed to be the hook. Nowadays, tags take over parts of that job too but in the end, the summary is the final sell.

It’s tricky to find a good balance between explaining your story in an intriguing way and not spilling all the beans. Because you don’t want to spoil the ending, you want them interested in reading more and not left with the feeling that they already know everything that’s going to happen.

The same as with the tags apply; include what you think is truly important. What do people need to know about this story before going into it? Think of it as a trailer to a movie. What’s the best pitch?

3. Tagging makes fandom life easier.

Tagging is the one important feature about AO3 that makes it so beautiful and special. And tagging seems to be the hardest task for authors.

There are those who undertag and those who overtag.

You don’t have to literally tag everything - like “kissing” and “hand holding” and the sexual orientation of every single character that will as much as be mentioned in the fic. If readers face a literal wall of tags, chances are they just won’t read it and skip the entire thing.

Undertagging isn’t good either though. If things are too vague, many might also feel like it’s not worth wasting time on checking it out because the risk of running into something they might dislike is too high.

My personal approach to it is to tag everything I see as relevant. Things that, if I see them tagged in a story, instantly make me click it. Like, if I write a story that is centered particularly around the angst and feels of a certain character; tag it. There might be people desperately looking for a fic that centers on that character’s emotional turmoil.

And be on the safe side with smut too. Tag what you’re doing; there might be certain things that are uncomfortable for readers and that they are trying to avoid. That can be as simple as the what, or even as the who does what. For example, if I see a tag for explicit content but the author did not bother tagging who tops and bottoms, I generally don’t even bother clicking on the fic anymore, because despite the fact how most authors claim that topping and bottoming has “nothing to do with the character”, 90% of fanfiction authors still have it hard-wired in their brains that fics are more bottom-centric, that the bottom is portrayed as the shyer one who needs to be fussed over and comforted while the top is the brash, brave one. So to avoid running into literal fuckery where the roles are reverse to how I view the characters, I just don’t even try anymore.

Which means that tagging top and bottom can a) cause people who are looking for specific fics with a specific character as either of those to find your fic and be happy about it and also that b) someone who doesn’t enjoy the order you enjoy not to run into something they dislike.

Which actually summarizes the way I apply tags anyway. Don’t tag everything, but tag everything you think someone might be looking for in a fic, or might be trying to avoid. It’s both a lure and a warning in once.

Also, trigger warnings. You plan on writing heavier subjects? Murder, self-harm, torture, abuse, rape? Definitely put it in the tags. There are people who might just be really squeamish about it and don’t like it, which should already be reason enough to warn, but there are also people who have a serious history with such issues and might be triggered by them. So if you tag such things, they might already be filtered out by having been blacklisted by the users and you might have just made some people’s lives a little easier.

Tag your pairings. Maybe best in order of importance; many might just look at the first listed pairing, used to authors sorting them by importance and thus dismissing the fourth, fifth or sixth ship you tag as just random side-pairing. So if you have a main-pairing, always tag it first.

Also include character tags. I was recently told that there are apparently actually people who filter by character tags. News to me, though I do check the character tags too to see if my faves are in it.

4. Use the features AO3 offers!

This starts with something as simple as the fact that AO3 sends you mails about Kudos and comments. It’s a great way to stay up to date with how much love your fics gain.

Now that we’re at it; comments. Reply to them, if you have the time. Those are people who are interested in your work, in something you evidently love enough to put it out there. Engaging with them is a brilliant feeling. Getting feedback on your things and getting to know what they expect of your work or want from it. Occasionally, it can even be very inspiring and give you an idea to include to your story that you hadn’t even thought about!

Another thing about comments however is that you can moderate them. It’s a feature I personally don’t use because I’m a veteran at this point and there’s nothing I haven’t seen in the comment section to I’m not that easily fazed.

But if you are still new to not just AO3 but fanfiction in general and if you might write a ship the so-called antis deem “problematic” - which, at this point in time, can literally be any ship aside from canon no, wait, canon too - you might do yourself a favor there. Because fandom life can be beautiful but it can also be hell. There might be shitheads who come to your fic and say nasty, bad things about your pairing choice, your fanfiction, your writing, maybe even you yourself as a person because they’re trying to hurt you.

Don’t let it get to you.

But if you are more sensible about such things, then maybe moderating reviews can be a useful feature for you because it allows you to delete spam and flames without them ever showing up in the fic. You can always flag reviews as spam or delete them, even if you don’t use the feature, but you’ll have an ugly “scar” on your comment section that says [this review has been deleted].

One of the most handy features AO3 has - after the tagging - is in my eyes the series-feature. It allows you to bundle multiple fics together under one umbrella. Personally, I really hate when people post oneshot collections on AO3 as one fic and there’s tags for like 20 fandoms, 30 pairings and 60 kinks in that one fic and you as the reader have no way of telling which of the additional kinks would now relate to which pairing. The far easier and cleaner solution would be to post oneshots seperately, so people can easier tell what they individually are, and mark them as part of a series for that collection. It’s, of course, a matter for authors, but I’m not the only one who simply scrolls past such oneshot collections because I don’t have the patience to go through it just to notice all my kinks are tags that would belong to a shot I’m not interested in (not to mention the ones that already tagged the collection as including a pairing but 20 shots in that pairing has still not been written, or the ones that don’t include in the chapter title what pairing and fandom the individual shot is... and you’d literally have to seep through 30 chapters to find that one pairing in the collection that you’re interested in. Yeah no, I got better things to do with my time and close the whole thing).

So yeah, the series function makes it far easier to gather things you want to put under an umbrella but still make easy to navigate for your readers, which, always nice.

Another handy feature about AO3 is that you can put links into the fic. So if a character starts singing a song in the middle of the fic for romantic mood... Not everyone recognizes a song by its lyrics and it just doesn’t set the mood as well; how about just putting a link to a YouTube video over the first line that the character sings? Your readers can open it in another tab and let it set the mood for your fic.

5. Don’t let haters get to you!

I know I mentioned it above already, that you shouldn’t let shitheads get to you, but it’s important enough to earn its own separate point on the list.

Fandoms are filled with hatred and mean, nasty, selfish people who will do and say everything to keep their fandoms “pure” and thus attack people who ship or like things they themselves don’t like.

That can, at times, be really drowning and hard, so you need to focus on the good parts. If you’re a first-time writer, you might not yet have the connections, or you already do from tumblr and other sites, I don’t know, but let’s say you don’t. Then make them. A point of that is the above mentioned “interact with your readers” advise I gave you; the people happy about what you write are the good people and the kind of people in fandom that you want to associate with - so just do it. Do it, make friends, find people who you can gush to about this thing you both love.

If you already got those contacts from other sites? That’s great! But hey, never too late to make more friends and meet more fellow fans.

But those people are incredibly important if you want to participate in any fandom, because they are what reminds you that the fandom can be safe, sane and nice. That it can be a beautiful place and that it’s worth loving.

Because otherwise the hate from the other part of the fandom might get to you and it might even make you dislike the show/movie/book itself simply by association. I’m sorry that I’m sounding like such a downer here toward the end, but I’ve already seen it and gone through it myself, that if you fall into the deep end of negative fandoms, they can ruin everything for you. So it’s a piece of advise that is very dear and important for me to give - find the safe, sane and nice part of the fandom, claim it for yourself and enjoy it and don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t have the right to enjoy and love it.

And that’s it. That’s all I can think of, at least. I hope there was at least some useful stuff in it, but since I don’t know how experienced you are with fanfiction writing and posting, I figured I’d better be more thorough and more general about it. Better give too much advise than too little, I guess.

Now, one last thing: Enjoy writing and never forget to enjoy writing; never let it become a “task”, always love it, okay? ;)

#Fanfiction #Writing #Fanfiction Writing #Advise #or at least I tried #AO3 #thisblogisdeaderthanspacedaddy

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