#nix reads animorphs

[thenixkat]

Yet again dingdongs decide to @ me to argue about Cassie b/c even tho Animorphs narrators are all unreliable for some reason they believe what the characters say over their actions.

Sympathetic, empathetic, and nice characters don’t deliberately endanger people so they can save them later. Or endanger people/escalate conflicts just because. Or refuse to give a damn about people suffering and only care after finding out that animals would be negatively effected by the conflict. or that it’s perfectly reasonable to try and keep their friends from killing a slave owner to save a person that slave owner is actively harming b/c they decided to try and debate that slave owner into being an abolitionist. Or just being fucking ableist to the nth degree.

#nix meows #animorphs #cassie animorphs #lmao instead of trying to debate me cause yall can't read #why not just block me and you won't see my opinions?

[duckprintspress]

Five “Top Fives” with Adrian Harley!

We sat down with Adrian Harley, author of Many Drops Make a Stream, their debut sapphic fantasy novel (pre-orders are open now!), so we could learn about five of their favorite things in five categories!

Read on to learn some more about Adrian—who knows, maybe you share some favorites!

Five favorite queer books

The Locked Tomb series, by Tamsyn Muir

Rust in the Root, by Justina Ireland

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, by Akwaeke Emezi

Delilah Green Doesn’t Care, by Ashley Herring Blake

The Teixcalaan Series, by Arkady Martine

Five places you love to write

Here’s where I admit that I am very boring and write in one of two places: 

My favorite chair inside the house

Out on my porch

But someday I’ll change that! To round out the list, three places I plan to write:

The cafe attached to the bookstore downtown

Overlooks on the Blue Ridge Parkway

The forest park near my house

Five writerly goals you have

I’d love to write an epic high fantasy someday—one of those sprawling epics that goes for 500,000 words at least.

I want to publish more books in the same universe as the Droplet series. I have a few drafted and many, many more plotted.

I would like my readers to be inspired to write fanfic. If my fiction ever gets requested at Yuletide, I’ll know I’ve made it. If my fiction ever gets too big for Yuletide, I don’t even know what I’ll do.

I’d like to write faster! Ideally, I’d like more hours in the day, but given the impossibility of time travel, I’ll settle for more words per fixed 24-hour day.

I would like to always incorporate weird animal facts in some way.

Five works that inspired you to write Many Drops Make a Stream

The Animorphs series, by K. A. Applegate

Leverage (TV series)

The original Abhorsen trilogy, by Garth Nix

Thief of Shadows, by Elizabeth Hoyt, was the most direct inspiration. The romance channel in my slack group kept calling this book Regency Batman, and we’d discuss shifter romances, so the logical mashup of Shifter Batman popped into my head.

Following on that, I think my fifth spot has to be the entire shifter romance genre, for making me go, “but why would you have them turn into just one animal?? You could have every animal! Why limit yourself?” This is before I realized I was nonbinary.

Five ideas you have for future books starring Droplet

One of the first things in my notes for Book 2 was “BABY HEIST.” I’ll let you all guess what that means.

Azera starts [Many Drops Make a Stream] having been jilted by her rich fiancée. At some point, that rich fiancée is going to need Azera’s help…

Droplet’s old organization has been scattered across the world, but many of them are still working to take down the rich and powerful. An old friend will show back up in future books.

There will be at least one murder mystery.

Business people will learn more about shapeshifterkind, and nobody will be happy about this.

Thanks for your time, Adrian!!! And, dear person reading these awesome fave fives, don’t forget to check out the book!

#duck prints press #adrian harley

[aemoglobin]

i feel like i made this list before but here it is again in case you, like me, forgor some of the best book series i read as a kid

deltora quest

redwall

secrets/wizards of droon (or something. literally just talked to my gf about this and i can't remember the name of it. anyways)

animorphs

earthseed (preteen but it still counts)

keys to the kingdom

honestly everything garth nix ever wrote for kids/ya?? literally. i love that man's writing

children of the red king (this one should have been the one to get big in the 00s/10s, is2g i will wait forever for a movie or show or graphic novel adaptation or SOMETHING...)

juniper

enchanted forest chronicles

dragonriders of pern (not a kid's book series and probably should not have been reading this at 11yo but whatever. dragons...)

chronicles of prydain (i don't remember how it's spelled. black cauldron movie's source material. eilonwy my favorite disney princess)

chronicles of narnia (i will not lie to you i still am very obsessed w this series i just never talk about it bc the fandom is largely Like That)

there was a series of post-canon/extended universe books about leia and han's youngest son learning to be jedi and i wish i fucking remember what the title of it was bc it was SO MUCH FUN. every day i miss jacen and jaina and anakin jr

picking the most formative series: narnia + redwall + pern + earthseed + animorphs + abhorsen have shaped everything i enjoy in media to this day, elements & concepts i enjoy using in my own writing or have just uh stolen for my personal use, and what i consider my personal peak nostalgic literature. for a given value of 'peak'.

#rose idol chatter #rose writes lists

[ponyoisms]

what reading the locked tomb reminds me of is reading book series as a child! it feels like reading artemis fowl or gregor the overlander or the pendragon series or those garth nix books or the animorphs or secrets of droon or even maximum ride. something about the writing and world building idk

#mine #tlt

[shrikeseams]

Tagged by @nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui and @skyeventide in technically different question games, but they’re like 90% the same so I’m smooshing them together.

1. Three ships? Feeling pretty ship ambivalent lately. Let’s go with Maedhros/Fingon, Legolas/Gimli, and. Uh. Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, but specifically comics ‘verse. 

2. First ever ship? I think Legolas/Gimli, UNLESS we’re counting canonical relationships. In which case it’s either Rachel/Tobias from Animorphs, or Aerin/Tor from The Hero and the Crown. 

3. Last song? Something Dessa or Hozier, I’m sure. The last track I played on my ipod was an old episode of Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap, though.

4. Last movie? ...I think it was Dune on TV in like, October. Which is kinda embarrassing.

5. Currently reading? All re-reads, but I’m working my way through the Abhorsen books (Garth Nix), T Kingfisher’s paladin romance series, and Lymond Chronicles.

6. Currently watching? The latest video from The Closet Historian. She’s drafting a hood!

7. Currently consuming? Hot chocolate, both spiked and spiced.

8. Currently craving? All the goldwork thread and cord and bullion. My etsy cart is a wild overestimate of what I can actually afford.

9. Current obsession? My goofy feanorian patch jacket project. So sewing, both outerwear and fiddly little embroidered/sequined/beaded things.

Tagging @cuarthol, @tanoraqui, @inactivemainblog, @twofoursixohjuan, and anyone else who thinks this looks fun!

#Trying again #accidentally deleted round 1 #Really hitting home that like 95% of my media consumption these days is either passive background noise or fanfic

[feotakahari]

Books you read when you were eight, but don’t remember because they’re not Animorphs:

(This doesn’t count those of you who were eight in 1980.)

Fear Street: Goosebumps with gore. The best ones didn’t have monsters, just humans being terrible to each other. The Fier family’s backstory was weird and unnecessary.

Christopher Pike: low-quality Fear Street. I liked the one where the main characters mistook Pan for Satan.

Graveyard School: Goosebumps with an ongoing plot. I liked how it had evil and it had monsters, and the monsters were afraid of the evil too.

Eerie, Indiana: okay, was trying to be Goosebumps just a thing back then?

Replica: main character was a supergenius. Author had no idea how to write a supergenius.

The Nine Lives of Chloe King: Mary Sue garbage with sexy catgirls. Broke my developing young brain when Chloe speculated about how many breasts a fully transformed catgirl has.

Violet Eyes: people called this Mary Sue garbage, but I thought it was pretty good at giving its programmed-to-be-perfect characters actual weaknesses.

Jane Yolen: did anyone else notice the TF fetish?

Pete Hautman: the most insightful writer here. Or sometimes Chris Crutcher. It varied.

John Bellairs: the most compulsively readable writer here.

Garth Nix: really wanted to be the best writer here.

Samurai Girl: everyone forgot about this by the time book 3 came out, and I have no idea why.

The Unicorn Chronicles: everyone forgot about this because book 3 took nine years to come out.

Scorpion Shards: every major character in this series is either scum or dies, and the worst scumbag is the one whose androgynous aesthetic I actually like.

Sweet Valley High: my generation’s Millie the Model. I only read this when the author got bored and ripped off Fear Street for four books.

Extreme Zone: how many different evil conspiracies can one series have?

2099: Fear the Year: I never read these, but “don’t get too attached to them. They won’t live long” is pretty metal as far as series taglines go.

T-witches: I never even watched Charmed, and I still got the impression this was a Charmed ripoff. Terrible, terrible title.

Fire-us: I liked the part where they tried to recreate the Ten Commandments and came up with “just say no to drugs.”

Valdemar: I only read the one about the guy who burns to death because he wants to fuck a horse.

What do you remember from when you were bored and eight?

[obligatorycoffee]

Ack I've joined the essay train. More under the cut~

---------

As it stands now, I fit into two categories under the alterhuman umbrella: otherkind and otherhearted. The details get a little wishy-washy with labels around my otherkin identity...draconic, dragonkin, dragonkind, theriomythic, what-have-you, but the general gist is I'm a dragon, and that's that. I'm also domestic cat-hearted, cheetah-hearted, and Andalite-hearted. I enjoy these creatures, but I'm not them.

But, how do I know?

First of all, I suppose it's not possible to ever really know for sure. Our experiences are subjective and open to interpretation, and even those who've contemplated their identities for years can see them change or need reevaluation in the light of new information. Even so, at this point I can say with fair certainty that I'm a dragon, and not a cat, or a cheetah, or an Andalite.

I've loved cats for as long as I can remember, and begged my parents relentlessly for a kitten even before I was in kindergarten. I gained an intense obsession with cheetahs around that time too, and used to run around the house pretending to be one. I drew house cats and cheetahs incessantly on scraps of computer paper, alongside my innumerable dragon sketches. My mom, being allergic to cats, nixed the idea of getting me a cat at first, but a stray tuxedo kitten showed up at her work, and in the absence of an allergic reaction, she caved and brought the kitten home for a trial run as a pet. The cat ended up staying with us for 18 years. Oh how I loved that cat. I'd sit on the floor next to her and eat dry cereal from a bowl while she ate her kibble, I'd follow her around, nap with her, brush her, and dress her up to my heart's desire. I'd meow and hiss, I'd sharpen my fingernails to be more cat-like, and I convinced my parents to buy me tickets to the Cats musical, where I dressed up as my tuxedo cat for the show. I know cat body language exceptionally well, and can usually figure out pretty quickly what a cat wants or how it's feeling, and I've picked up lifelong feline mannerisms from being around cats since my childhood.

But, I'm not a cat.

Cats feel like family, and I'm thrilled to meet new cats, hang out with my cats, or look at cute art of cats. I will probably own cats for as long as I live. But they're little creatures I surround myself with that move and act in a way I've never felt a pull toward at an identity level.

I grew up reading K.A. Applegate's Animorphs series, and instantly fell in love with her blue centaur aliens, the Andalites. They were weird and funny, and had kickass scythe tails to boot. I'd run around on the playground with my friends at recess, and we'd pretend we were Andalites or other characters from the books. As I grew up, I never quite forgot about Andalites, and came to the abrupt realization recently that I'm probably Andalite-hearted. I was falling asleep one night and the realization that I really vibed with Andalites struck me out of nowhere. They feel familiar and interesting, and somehow important to me. I enjoy the fact that they exist, and I get a kick out of their species design, and they're just darn cool. The last time I read an Animorphs book was in middle school, but I've been thinking about Andalites ever since.

But I'm not an Andalite.

Nothing about their species fits with my experiences as nonhuman, and while I get a warm sense of familiarity when I think about them or interact with media involving them, that sense of familiarity doesn't extend to descriptions of their customs or planet. They'd make a darn cool linktype though, now that I think about it.

A handful of years ago, I spent hundreds of hours researching and writing about an odd seabird called a streaked shearwater. It's a member of the tube-nosed seabirds (of which albatrosses are also members), and likes to nest in burrows on hills above the ocean. It's an excellent flyer, and it can travel immense distances with speed and incredible grace. A couple months into my studies, I had a vision of myself as a shearwater, with white wings spread out to the night sky. I don't typically imagine myself as other animals, so when I had this vision, the intensity startled me, and I began to question if this was a theriotype. I'd spent a month or so doing fieldwork in a shearwater colony, and during my time there, I always felt a longing to leap out from the cliffs and fly over the ocean, and greatly enjoyed crawling around in the dirt and leaves to check on the birds incubating eggs in their burrows. Maybe there was more to that enjoyment than I thought.

Yet, when I imagined myself as a shearwater, flying over cliffs out to the ocean, I was not the bird itself; I was present in its body, but numb and unaware of what the bird's body was doing. I wasn't present mentally in its movements or senses. It was almost as if I were tagging along with the animal itself or hitching a ride, so to speak. Upon further exploration of what I imagined feeling like a shearwater should feel like, from a physical standpoint, I found it unnatural and almost horrifying to imagine my feet moulded into the adorably flappy webbed feet of a seabird, or to have a bristle of feathers sticking out as a tail. The bill felt like a deformed mask, the wings wrong, and the squat duck-like body felt ungainly. The thought of soaring on the night wind was enticing, but beyond that, it was uncomfortable and felt like nothing more than a cameo.

But what happens when the cameo shifts do feel right?

On and off for a few years, I'd have envisage shifts or phantom shifts of tufted cat ears overlaying where my human ears are. They were long and tan, and not really of any feline species I'm aware of, but close enough to a lynx that'd I'd probably describe them as such. I could imagine them flattening or perking up, depending on the situation and my mood. They'd come and go, and weren't really triggered by anything as far as I could tell. Their frequency followed a similar pattern to my draconic shifts...some weeks frequent, with some long periods of complete absence. They've since vanished, and I haven't noticed them around for a good couple years now. I can't say I miss them, but honestly, they were kind of fun, and they never felt particularly wrong, unlike my jaunt in a shearwater's body. However, I never felt an attachment to them identity-wise, and despite sticking around for a good few years, I never felt anything more associated with the shifts beyond some cat ears pasted on my human head (worth noting, my draconic shifts and cat ear shifts never overlapped! No cat-eared dragons here). I don't know where they came from and I don't know where they went. I'm not a lynx, and they were simply a cameo.

Perhaps I'm wrong about all these things, and I'm a draconic, feline, Andalite polykin, but exploring how differently I experience my draconity versus feline, cheetah, and Andalite-heartedness, I'm extremely inclined to believe these are a collection of different identities and cameo shifts. My identity isn't pulled toward shearwaters or lynx like it is toward my variety of western dragon or toward the idea of surrounding myself with cats, cheetahs, and Andalites. They all have distinct feelings, as hard as they are to put into words.

#pretty sure I started writing this four years ago and just today found the doc with the main ideas jotted down #whoops #someday I'll finish my WIPs #thoughts #essays #by me #otherkin #otherkind #otherhearted

[theuntamednarrator]

Oh wow I am so late with this but @carolyncaves​ tagged me to list 10 favourite characters from 10 different things so this is that (long overdue) list, in no particular order:

1. Daja - Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce (honestly it’s a toss up on pretty much every Tamora Pierce main character but Daja was such a badass I love her)

2. Sabriel - Abhorsen series by Garth Nix

3. Pippin - Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (cheerful plucky relief character who makes a meaningful contribution without the war and everything they go through making them dark are my weakness okay?)

4. Cassie - Animorphs by K A Applegate (actually a toss up between her and Ax, I really loved those books. Still do as a matter of fact)

5. Haruhi - Ouran High School Host Club (one of the first animes I watched, and still a favourite. She was so dry I wanted to be her)

6. Spencer Reid - Criminal Minds (I gave up watching after season 10 but in those early seasons he was so earnest and that hair was a look)

7. The Ninth Doctor - Doctor Who

8. Polgara the Sorceress - The Belgariad/The Mallorean (one of the first fantasy series I read after Lord of the Rings. I loved that she was allowed to be motherly and also a badass)

9. L - Death Note (honestly the hardest one for this list but I had to include Death Note and he probably is my favourite though what I really love is the relationship he and Light have)

10. Lyra Belacqua - His Dark Materials (again, probably could have picked any of the characters and Serafina Pekkala is probably up there now that I’ve grown up a bit but when I first read them I wanted to be Lyra so badly. Mostly I think because I wanted a Pan of my own)

I tried for a mix of current and long time faves. There are almost certainly ones that I’m forgetting but these are the shows/books that I never get tired of. I don’t know if this is revealing or not? Possibly so but there you go.

@trensu and @drwcn you guys want to have a go? Since you very kindly tagged me last ^_^

#tag! #thanks for the tag! #carolyncaves #theuntamednarration

[retrauxpunk]

Asks: 50, 72, 80, 81 !

Twoo! fun!

50. Favourite colour to wear?

black! and red

72. Are you a shipper? List your otps, if so

the only pairing for which i actually consider myself a shipper is Richard Hendricks x Jared Dunn from Silicon Valley HBO ... that’s the only real OTP haha but some other fictional pairs that i enjoy (just not to the same rabid fervour) include: zutara, (come to think of it i actually tend to enjoy all canon romances in scott westerfeld’s books, he writes them very well/enjoyably), scarecrow/fox from matthew reilly’s books because like COME ON RIGHT how can you not. oh and jim and pam from the office are great. also dinfoyle is great and i enjoy hallfoyle too :)

80. What video games have you played? Which one’s your favourite?

hahha yikes get ready for a very sparse list: Animal Crossing New Horizons is my current favourite ... other things I’ve played include: Untitled Goose Game, Overcooked, Beat Saber (on Oculus VR it’s incredible i love this too) ... and that’s about it for the ones that most people would consider video games lol. also: Tetris (classic), Snow Brothers (played on a 1991 console), N (flash game, it’s great), SUPER MARIO (the 90s version)

81. Your favourite books (manga also counts)

alright strap in, here they are in no particular order, i recommend these to EVERYONE

the following by Scottt Westerfeld: Uglies trilogy (Uglies, Pretties, Specials); So Yesterday; Peeps (followed by The Last Days); Impostors (after reading Uglies trilogy); Shatter City (after reading Impostors)

Ice Station by Matthew Reilly

the following by VE Schwab: A Darker Shade of Magic (and presumably the other two in that trilogy but i’ve not read them yet); Vicious (followed by its sequel Vengeful)

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

So Super Starry followed by So Super Stylish by Rose Wilkins

Animorphs series by KA Applegate

Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski (this is a non-fiction sex therapy book primarily aimed at cis women, like, it’s not a Favourite book for enjoyment but it’s been quite impactful/good from a sexual/mental health standpoint so i recommend this to all cis women friends haha)

Old Kingdom/Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix: Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

The Rook by Daniel O’Malley (followed by Stiletto)

Born A Crime by Trevor Noah (best autobiography I’ve ever read)

ok thank you for these they are great <3

asks, because why not

#please keep sending me more so i can use them to procrastinate/take breaks while i pack up the kitchen #for moving house this weekend #hhhhh #asks because why not #anon #asks

[stoppit-keepout]

top 5 favorite childhood books/series!!

I think there were probably just 5 series that I regularly read (and loooved), so I will happily share them here!

Animorphs: fuck yeah

Harry Potter: no matter what JK Rowling does these days, she cannot take away how much I loved the books as a kid!! I LOVED THEM.

Redwall: 50% wanted to be an otter with a sword, 50% wanted to be a squirrel wielding a longbow, 100% was on board for animal adventures

The Babysitters’ Club: hey. obviously.

Tamora Pierce books: fuckin ALL OF THEM but especially the Circle of Magic books, once they had come out

Old Kingdom books (Garth Nix): I know it’s not a series-series, but I reread these iiiinfinite times, so I’m gonna count ‘em. :)

#thanks for playing! #formal-leatherjacket #another hyphen friend :) #formalleatherjacket #god i wanna read YA forever sometimes

[asktheghosthost]

Have you seen the books that they have for the Haunted Mansion? It’s called, “Tales From the Haunted Mansion” and it has two books that I know of so far. :)

I'll answer this out of character, since I've been meaning to talk about these for a while anyway.

I enjoy this series, and wish more people would give it a chance. The first one, admittedly, is a bit rough. The author works on an R. L. Stine TV series, and it shows. It feels like a Goosebumps book, down to the archetypes of the kids and the ending. No spoilers, but there is a sort of double twist, which makes me roll my eyes in a "Oh, you scamp!" way.

There is a lot to talk about when it comes to the first book, because I feel like a bunch of things changed in the editing process. At least, that's how it reads to me. The reason I even want to bring that up is because many fans gave up after the first book, and I'd like to explain why I kept with it in hopes that people will give the other two a chance.

When Disney first advertised the series, it was said that the Ghost Host would narrate the stories, and the hitchhiking ghosts would be interrupting along the way. The stories would be about the various spirits in the mansion. (Not too far off from the SLG Haunted Mansion comics of the early 2000s.)

But what happened is we got a plot revolving around this group of generic kids, with the librarian/ Ghost Host telling them stories starring them. There were no hitchhikers causing mischief, and no other characters, (aside from GH), we're already familiar with, aside from some name drops or brief visual cameos. This caused a lot of annoyance with fans.

But the interruption gag is still there. Why do I bring this up? Okay, while Amicus is telling the story, occasionally italic font shows a remark, which is supposed to indicate he's interrupting the normal flow to make a joke. In the first book, this is really awkward, more so than in the latter two. I think the problem is that the narration in the first is far more casual, so that when the interruptions happen, they're in the same tone. It's pointless. Why would Amicus interrupt himself? It doesn't read like omniscient third person; it reads like he's talking. I have a theory that it was originally the HHGs interrupting him, but this idea got nixed, and a lot had to be scrapped and edited, maybe shortly before publication. I also wonder if the kids didn't originally play as big of a role, but the publishers wanted something more general than fan- focused to bring in casual readers. The next two books are chock full of references, not only to the ride, but to Imagineers and other Disney properties. It's written by a fan, aimed at fans. The first collection of stories feels far more like a typical horror anthology. This is all just my speculation, but the vibe of the first book is so different that I can't help but ponder all this.

My "this wasn't how it was originally planned" theory is what made me stick with the series. I figured they changed things to better appeal to kids who aren't familiar with the ride, (stars kids, less Mansion-specific stuff), and would dive into the original concept with subsequent books.

Book two does exactly that. We still have a new character that helps drive the introduction of each haunt's story, but he's far more interesting than the kids. This poor guy is a skeptic seeking a genuine psychic so he can contact his dead sister. So he hears about Madame Leota, and that's what brings him to the Mansion. Not only is this my favorite of the "wrap around" stories, it also has my favorites in the whole collection thus far. Even the snarky interruptions flow better. There is one story in this book though that feels tacked on at the end. Again, no spoilers, but it's incredibly bleak, and involves an abused girl who's room is overrun with roaches. It's so different in tone and has no connection to anything in the Mansion, which makes me wonder if it's something the author had sitting around, so he tossed it in. That one story is my only quibble about the second volume. It stuck out as bizarre.

Anyway, book three. Book three tops the first one for me. Again, some great short stories here. My favorite is the origin of the breathing, bulging door. The author gave this one creepy sight gag a full backstory, and it's awesome. The wrap around, a tale of an untrustworthy delivery crew, isn't bad, but the repeated use of threes and a visual cameo of the hitchhikers made me think they were finally going to have a role. In fact, the advertisement for the book says it's going to be about them. Maybe if I hadn't read that advertisement, I wouldn't have been let down by only getting a brief cameo. I feel it's unfair to blame the author for that, so I tried not to be disappointed in the book itself. If anything, read it for the door story and the one about the mummy. There's a great joke in the mummy's story where it's clearly setting up for a cliche plot point, and then totally switches course in one of the biggest "screw you, reader!" moments I've ever seen in a YA book. I thought it was hilarious.

Some pros:

Amicus Arcane. He's a fantastic representation of the Ghost Host. I hope we eventually get his backstory. He's delightfully snarky, but is serious about his duties and protective of his home.

Really dig the illustrations. I like the crosshatch style.

Most of the stories are good. And even the ones I didn't love, I didn't hate them. A few simply didn't appeal as much to me. Mainly this was in the first collection, because I wasn't invested in the kid characters.

There's this idea that the mansion changes how it appears, depending on the viewer. That's a cool concept. It allows both WDW and DL's to get some love, while emphasizing the supernatural aspect of it.

Con/Pro: The horror moments. I'm adding this more as a warning. Sometimes these books are totally fine for 9-10 year olds... and then a kid gets torn apart by zombies. Or a head is completely spun around on a corpse. The scares are surprisingly graphic for a series published by Disney. For me, this isn't a complaint. It makes me cackle. *But* I'm an adult with a sick sense of humor. I'm not in the group this is aimed at. I also read the Scary Stories and Animorphs series as a kid, so I have a high tolerance for this sort of thing to begin with. If you're not sure if your child/ sibling/ niece, nephew, etc, can handle it, skim it for yourself first. This isn't Saw levels, but they can be disturbing moments for younger readers. Use your discretion.

I know I was vague at times, but I don't want to give away a lot. These books have been such a pleasant surprise for me. I've also forgotten parts, and I didn't want to be inaccurate. Any other questions, let me know. I can pull the books off my shelf.

#asktheghosthost #anonymous #ask #ooc #myrr writes a literary review #hm books

[thenixkat]

someone really @ed me and said that Cassie isn't sympathetic to slave owners citing the book in which she sits in the woods and would rather gaslight the yeerk holding a little girl with a broken leg hostage and then later try to convince the yeerk to maybe not be a slaveowner instead of helping the girl being enslaved. 

and then deliberately endangering the enslaved little girl b/c Cassie doesn't want her friends to kill the slaveowner even tho she argues that they'd most likely just starve the yeerk to death instead of hurting the girl (of course now that she made sure her friends knew that the girl knew to much to be left alive she actively fucked that little girl over)

b/c and pls understand, Cassie doesn’t really care about enslaved people. Cassie as a character cares most about being the moral one regardless of what she has to do and who she has to hurt to keep that status. This is shown across multiple books in the series from beginning to end.

#nix meows #animorphs #cassie animorphs #i have literally read these books recently I know what happens in them

[aroworlds]

I’ve been re-reading, as an adult, the Animorphs books. While there are definite mentions of Cassie and Jake, and Rachel and Tobias, experiencing romantic attraction to each other, romance and crushes are generally treated as side references, so much less important to the story and to the characters than the war. This is why I read spec fic--outside of the paranormal genre, general/mainstream fantasy and SF is far less concerned with spending page time on experiences of romance. It’s more usually something that happens at the end, if the author wishes to signify a happy ending. Not free of amatonormativity, sadly, but less invested in depicting romantic relationships.

This, and talking about how I find myself as an aro through media, makes me think of the books I read as a kid and teenager.

It may not be possible to separate my autism from this, but well into my teens, I was reading middle-grade books. Most kids read about book characters aged older than they are; I was usually reading about book characters aged younger than I was. I went straight from children’s literature, as a teenager too old for it, to adult spec fic, as a teenager often a little too inexperienced for some of the more adult works I picked up at the library. (I had odd stops with Tamora Pierce and Garth Nix, but other than that I skipped the YA section entirely.) I went from books that were less concerned about romantic relationships and more concerned with adventures and school and friendships to books that were less concerned about romantic relationships and more concerned with adventures and magic.

As an adult, I still find it far more interesting to read middle-grade fantasy than I do paranormal romance. The characters have little in common with my experiences now--in fact, they had little in common with my experiences then, since these books depicted neurotypical kids of the sort I have never been--but it was and is more engaging to step into a world that isn’t focused so heavily on experiences I don’t have or the assumption that I must naturally relate to them. The Chronicles of Narnia or The Circle of Magic or The Hobbit--they’re a wonderland for an aro who wants to go on quests and experience magic without getting too tangled up in a story about two characters (most often cis and heterosexual) falling in romantic love. Adult fantasy, especially early fantasy in imitation of Tolkien, opens up those options even further.

(Unfortunately, adult fantasy that is low or no romance often requires me to read about the experiences of abled, allistic cishet men. Sometimes abled, allistic cishet women, but overwhelmingly cis men. Aro-friendly fiction that depicts my other experiences of marginalisation in a protagonist is pretty thin on the ground.)

I didn’t have words back then. I didn’t know why I had so little interest in the YA section (which was even more heavily romance-focused then than it is now). I didn’t know why I did the strange thing of continuing to prefer books that were deemed too young for me or why I hated so many of the age-appropriate books I read for my high-school English classes (which so often depicted crushes and dating). I didn’t know why I went straight to adult fiction without reading the books I was supposed to read first. I didn’t know why I didn’t follow the same path my fellow students did.

Now I know I am aro, it makes sense. At the time and for so many years afterwards? I just felt babyish. Immature. Weird. Wrong.

Even as an adult, I find reading Animorphs better than books about adults like me, and I’m wondering if I’m the only aro who feels this way.

(My experiences may not correspond well to those of allistic aro-specs, too, so I think it’s important to say that this conversation takes place in the context of my being an aro autistic.)

#not media #discussion post #aro experience discussions #mod chatter #mod k.a. #aromanticism #text #personal #long post #very long post #aromanticism and autism

[bookclub4m]

Episode 142 - Sequels and 2022: The Year of Book Two

This episode we’re talking about 2022: The Year of Book Two! (And sequels!) We discuss why we read (or don’t read) sequels, favourite book twos, reading series out of order, and more! Plus: Shocking reveals that don’t leave an impact because we’ve forgotten who the character is...

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

2022: Year of Book Two

Book 2 challenge on Storygraph

Goodreads shelf (use “2022 Year Of Book 2”)

Twitter hashtag: #2022BookTwo

Instagram hashtag: #2022YearOfBook2

Media We Mentioned

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman (The Invisible Library #1)

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (The Kingkiller Chronicle #1)

Goosebumps by R.L. Stine (Wikipedia)

Animorphs by Katherine Applegate (Wikipedia)

Sweet Valley High by Francine Pascal (Wikipedia)

Hogfather by Terry Prachett (Discworld #20)

Doki Doki Literature Club!

Cover Her Face by P.D. James

Featuring Adam Dalgliesh

Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane (Young Wizards #2)

Info about New Millennium updates of the books

Lirael by Garth Nix (Old Kingdom #2)

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente (Fairyland #2)

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games #2)

Insurgent by Veronica Roth (Divergent #2)

A Million Suns by Beth Revis (Across the Universe #2)

Prodigy by Marie Lu (Legend #2)

Witch Baby by Francesca Lia Block (Weetzie Bat #2)

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

The City We Became by N.K. Jemison (Great Cities #1)

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

(This used to say it was book one of the “Leningrad Diptych,” but that finally got removed as the second book doesn’t exist.)

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (Wayfarers #2)

Searching for Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede (Enchanted Forest Chronicles #2)

Startide Rising by David Brin (The Uplift Saga #2)

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (The Locked Tomb #2)

The Thousand Eyes by A.K. Larkwood (The Serpent Gates #2)

Supernova by C.A. Higgins (Lightless #2)

Authority by Jeff VanderMeer (Southern Reach #2)

How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter by Sherwin B. Nuland

How We Live by Sherwin B. Nuland

Short Circuit (1986 film) (Wikipedia)

Links, Articles, and Things

Sequel Rights: A Review of Locus Reviews

“The absolute gall of any reviewer to start with the second book in a series and then complain that they don’t understand what’s going on, as though this is somehow the fault of the text!”

Desert Island Discworld - Diane Duane and Jingo

Episode 058 - The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

12 Weird Fiction books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors to help our listeners diversify their readers’ advisory. All of the lists can be found here.

Hell Screen by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

The Houseguest and Other Stories by Amparo Dávila

The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany

Darker Than Night by Owl Goingback

Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

The Famished Road by Ben Okri

Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar

Also check out our booklist of 12 New Weird books by BIPOC authors!

Give us feedback!

Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, February 1st when we’ll be talking about Amish Romance!

Then on Tuesday, February 15th we’ll be discussing “What is a book?”

#episodes #book2 #2022

[words-writ-in-starlight]

thank you so much omg Name of the Wind is SO FRUSTRATING, I tried reading it and just did NOT like the protagonist or the writing style or ANYTHING, and people KEEP RECOMMENDING IT TO ME

mhmhmhMHMHM you have come to the RIGHT PLACE

Okay, so first, a disclaimer: I read Name of the Wind four and a bit years ago and, despite my usually excellent memory for plots and characters, retained exactly jack and shit of the whole thing except for the arguments I wrote in my head about my frustration.  But like...I’ve been holding onto those for a long time, so just.  Sit tight and listen to me complain for a minute, I deserve this.

First and foremost, it’s pitched as this revolutionary take on...something, and if my life and the lives of everyone I love depended on it, I couldn’t tell you what it’s supposed to revolutionize.  It’s not even a particularly well-executed piece on Magic Has A Price, which is what I usually hear about (what with the very academic, scientific take on magic), the fucking early Dresden Files are better at that.  (Shit y’all, remember Toby Daye, the series I haven’t shut up about?  Magic Has A Price masterpiece right there.)  I mean, goddamn, @Patrick Rothfuss, I’m really sorry, but you’re never going to do Magic Is A Science better than Fullmetal Alchemist, which basically invented equivalent exchange, so just put that one to bed.  For actual revolutionary takes on various genres, I’d suggest Imperial Radch (scifi), The Wrath and the Dawn (fairy tale retelling), Stormdancer (steampunk/fantasy), Sunshine (paranormal urban), and Kencyrath Chronicles (epic fantasy).

Second, the main character is not likable.  There.  I said it.  I found Kvothe absolutely fucking insufferable in every way.  His “modern” self telling the story was, like, a little more tolerable, but for the majority of the novel he’s an arrogant twit too convinced of his own cleverness to drag his head out of his ass for long enough to actually get anything done.  It’s possible to do a very self-confident, clever character in a way that their arrogance is actually charming--King Arthur: Legend of the Sword comes to mind.  Shit, son, so does Roy Mustang, and half the other characters in FMA.  In books, I’d rec maybe Captive Prince (Laurent).  It’s important, if you’re doing that, to make sure that the character can actually put their money where their mouth is and do the thing they’re bragging about, or else make it a Learning Experience that sticks with them.  Kvothe ain’t that.  Kvothe is just completely baselessly sure that he’s going to be the best from the very beginning, despite evidence to the contrary, and I found it intolerably annoying.

Third, the universe is interesting, the magic is kind of a neat concept for all that it’s (from what I can tell) an Eragon bootleg, which is, of course, the child of LOTR and Star Wars almost exactly. But the writing style was like a fucking textbook.  I mean.  Goddamn.  Not exactly sweeping me away into the infinite Imagisphere with that.  And I’m not--my standards for evocative prose are not that high, the Animorphs books were written for thirteen-year-olds, but fuck me NotW was not remotely achieving it.  If you’re going to frontload that kind of technical jargon, you need to make it the point of the book, like The Martian, which is very up front about being a science ramble that enjoys what it’s doing, or else find a good balance like Sabriel, which is heavy on the technical angle of Abhorsen magic and glyphs and shit without sacrificing the characters.

Fourth, I dimly recall a girl who’s there for like a hot minute as a love interest?  I don’t think I remember any others?  So, you know...points off for that one.  It’s the 21st century.  Women, POC, the homosexual agenda, they should all be in there.  Thanks.

Fifth, the whole urban setup gets a lot of time and attention, but it’s just not...well done?  It’s just not.  It does not give a cohesive sense of place, nor an emotional connection to the people in that place.  Please, for the love of God, Jesus, and any other deities you want to throw in there, read the first book in the Kencyrath series, it is called God Stalk and it’s very good at this.  I’d also say Toby Daye, but that’s about a real place (San Francisco) rather than a fantasy setting, like NotW and God Stalk.

Sixth, and this is a writerly complaint, not an opinion, but: right, so, in the “modern” day when Kvothe is telling the story, some grand disaster is underway, right?  Am I making that up?  See, I’d never know if I was making it up, because it does not get a single goddamn mention in the main bulk of the novel.  That is a clear and evident sign that you need to critically reevaluate what part of the timeline is the main novel.  I’m not saying that your novel necessarily needs to be the worst day/month/week of your character’s life, but if you could have included the entire text of the novel in a page or two of emotionally laden dialogue or memories, you probably should have.  And don’t come at me with “Oh, Name of the Wind is the first in a series, things get underway later in the series” because if your FIRST BOOK does not grab me, I’m absolutely not giving you ANOTHER BOOK to get it done.  You want to set up some kind of heartwrenching Things Were Different Once arrangement?  Make me care about your characters and then drop bits of backstory as we go, or include a prologue, or get over your fear of flashbacks and use them judiciously. Crucially, give them a relationship to The Way Things Were and then use that relationship to make your reader upset for them.  Again, Toby Daye is a great example.  So is the Imperial Radch series by Anne Leckie.

Which brings me to seventh, which is that I am APPALLED that over the course of that entire goddamn book, there was not one single interpersonal relationship I ever came to give a damn about.  I think there was the girl, I think Kvothe might have had one (1) friend, I think there was a teacher?  And there was the kid Bast in the “modern” day, who I retained more of than literally anyone/anything else because he was the only person I gave a flying fuck about.  Again, I, the writer, am horrified about this, far more so than I, the reader.  The main thing that original content creators should take away from fanfic culture is that your readers will almost universally care more about the relationships between characters than anything else.  You are going to need a pretty balls-out crazy good universe and plot to smooth over a general lack of engaging relationships, and NotW just isn’t that good.  So, like, let that be a lesson.  I’m not recommending anything for this because this should be obvious.

EIGHTH, what...was the plot of the first book?  No, seriously, I was asking this when I finished it, too.  The only plot points I recall now are Kvothe deciding that he wanted to do The Magic, Kvothe conning his way into The School For The Magic (in, if I recall correctly, kind of a FMA ripoff?), something about a library for The Magic, a bunch of technical stuff about The Magic and Kvothe being an arrogant twit, and Kvothe getting whipped.  From what I remember, the entire book basically seemed to lead up to Kvothe getting whipped and ended shortly thereafter.  And, uh...how should I put this.  That’s.  Not a plot.  Again, that’s maybe a couple paragraphs of conversation between Kvothe and someone he cares about regarding the scars on his back, not an entire fucking novel.  Again, this should be obvious, I’m not recommending anything.

Anyway, TL;DR, NotW is ultimately a forgettable fantasy novel without anything in particular to distinguish it from a myriad of other unremarkably flawed fantasy novels, and I wouldn’t have any opinions on it whatsoever if people didn’t keep pitching it to me as the Second Coming of Tolkien, leGuin, McCaffrey, and fuck knows who else.  

A collection of the content I recommended here and why I recced them, plus some others:

Imperial Radch, Ann Leckie (unique scifi, excellent example of emotionally resonant flashbacks)

The Wrath and The Dawn, Renee Ahdieh (unique fairy tale retelling)

Stormdancer, Jay Kristoff (unique steampunk fantasy)

Sunshine, Robin McKinley (unique paranormal urban fantasy)

Kencyrath Chronicles, PC Hodgell (unique epic fantasy, well-executed fantasy cities and colleges)

Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa (magic with a price, scientific magic, charmingly arrogant characters) (manga or Brotherhood anime)

October Daye, Seanan McGuire (magic with a price, emotionally resonant memories/prologue, well-executed urban locale)

Captive Prince, CS Pacat (charmingly arrogant/engagingly arrogant characters, well-executed political scheming)

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, dir. Guy Ritchie (charmingly arrogant characters, concise worldbuilding)

The Martian, Andy Weir (technical frontloading without being unreadable)

Sabriel, Garth Nix (technical magic and worldbuilding without losing character engagement)

Source and Shield Series, Moira J. Moore (unique urban non-Earth fantasy, charmingly arrogant characters, emotionally resonant conversations about the past)

Temeraire Series, Naomi Novik (technical worldbuilding without being unreadable, having a fucking plot in each book even if your overall plot is extremely big-picture and doesn’t show up until later)

The Wicked + The Divine, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie (unique folklore retelling/urban fantasy, charmingly arrogant characters, having some fucking diversity)

#name of the wind bitching #writing #vernalseason #another episode of vagueblogging #SORT OF #i mean this is very explicitly me coming for patrick rothfuss' entire life #but if you look close enough you'll see me vagueblog about some other folks #book rec #kind of eventually at least #book unrec #i am SUPER SERIOUS about these complaints #the more i remember about this book the more conviction i have #but yeah anyway...uh...welcome to it #don't recommend name of the wind to me or you're just ASKING to hear me bitch #the rest of those books i've recommended (and the one movie and the comic series and the manga/anime) really are good for the things i've m #and obviously all of them have PLOTS and CHARACTER RELATIONSHIPS and INTERESTING WRITING STYLES #so like THAT'S WHAT I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE NAME OF THE WIND #GET FUCKED ROTHFUSS #IF YOUR PLOT IS SO UNMEMORABLE I CAN'T EVEN RETAIN THE MAJOR POINTS YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING WRONG #anonymous #asked and answered

[hermitknut]

So in the run up to Christmas I’m doing a count-down (well, a count-up). Twelve days of books! But just like the song, I’m going to increase the number of books each day, with a theme. I’ll link the previous posts on each new one, but if you’d like to follow along I’ll also be tagging them ‘hermitknut’s bookmas’.

On the Tenth Day of Christmas... animal friends.

Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee gives us Jules, who loses her sister, and a little fox that is born at just the right time. A smoothly written exploration of grief and the way people handle it, with a touch of magic thrown in.

Animorphs by K. A. Applegate... where do I even start? This series was absolutely life-changing for me. I started reading when I was six and am only finally getting to the end now, twenty years later. Jake, Cassie, Marco, Rachel, and Tobias are five kids who (along with their Andalite friend Ax) have the power to morph into different animals - in order to fight the Yeerk invasion. Hilarious, bizarre, vivid and emotional. 

A Pocketful of Crows by Joanne M. Harris is a blend between myth and revenge fantasy and I really enjoyed it. The nameless protagonist, a young woman with formidable magical power tied to the wildlife around her, falls in love with an ordinary human man. But he doesn’t, in the end, live up to it - and she turns on him. Some of the sequences are almost hypnotising.

Bête by Adam Roberts imagines that animal rights activists place AI tech inside animal skulls. In response, society kind of semi-collapses. Reminded me quite a bit of Atwood’s Oryx and Crake; it’s funny and sharp, but pretty grim too.

The House on Hummingbird Island by Sam Angus tells us Idie’s story. She inherits a house in the caribbean when she is twelve, and goes to live there - making a number of friends, animal and human - and figure out the mystery of her mother’s death. Interesting book, very good at portraying the setting.

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman is something I don’t want to spoil for anyone, as it’s one of the biggest new releases this year. But suffice to say: I didn’t think Pullman could pull off the quality of His Dark Materials again. But he has. I was swept away by this one, and I can’t wait for the next. 

The Boy, the Bird and the Coffin Maker by Matilda Woods is about a boy who escapes his abusive father with the help of bird, and hides out with a former toymaker (now a coffin maker) who lost his family. It’s magical in places and very fairytale-esque; charming.

Sabriel by Garth Nix is one of my favourite female-led fantasy stories. Sabriel’s father is the Abhorsen, a sort of reverse necromancer, and in his absence Sabriel has to step into his shoes. On the way she picks up the drily sarcastic Mogget, a talking cat who is almost certainly something much more sinister... if you’d only dare to take off his collar. Brilliant.

The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis is chronologically the first book in ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ and absolutely my favourites. The origin of Jarvis, Professor Digory as a child with his friend (who is excellent), the creation of Narnia - not to mention the talking horse, the cabby and his wife - I’ve always liked this one better than any of the others in the sequence.

Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb is finely tuned blend of the best of the slow, Tolkien-paced, heavy description type of fantasy with a more contemporary approach to character, action, and politics. Fitz, the illegitimate son of a prince is brought to grow up in the keep that his grandfather rules - after his father’s abdication. His position at court is a dangerous one, and made no safer by his training as an assassin. He also has a much maligned ability - the Wit - which allows him to communicate, to a degree, with animals. Hobb’s work is incredible.

Previously:

On the First Day of Christmas… my favourite book of all time.

On the Second Day of Christmas… books about people exploding.

On the Third Day of Christmas… the very biggest fans.

On the Fourth Day of Christmas… books about princesses.

On the Fifth Day of Christmas… memory is everything.

On the Sixth Day of Christmas… serial killers abound.

On the Seventh Day of Christmas… women growing wise.

On the Eighth Day of Christmas… dragons are people too.

On the Ninth Day of Christmas… the gods are among us.

#booklr #book review #la belle sauvage #philip pullman #book of dust #maybe a fox #kathi appelt #alison mcghee #animorphs #k a applegate #a pocketful of crows #joanne m harris #bete #adam roberts #the house on hummingbird island #sam angus #the boy the bird and the coffin maker #matilda woods #sabriel #the old kingdom #garth nix #the lion the witch and the wardrobe #chronicles of narnia #c s lewi #assassin's apprentice #robin hobb #realm of the elderlings #hermitknut's bookmas