[sticky entry] Sticky: About

Jul. 28th, 2023 10:56 pm
x003: The silhouette of electricity pylons against a dusky evening sky. (dusky)
I'm Adrian (she/her). I'm in my late twenties and from the UK.

If you want to add me, go ahead--no introduction necessary--however you're equally welcome to introduce yourself on this post first, where all comments are screened.

Things I'm into: writing--both fanfic and original fiction, photography, travel, coffee, my cat, music (mostly pop!!), video games, tattoos
Things I post about publicly: general life stuff, stuff I'm reading/writing, music I like, games I'm playing
Things I post about on access-only: more personal life stuff, original fiction excerpts, my job
AO3: [archiveofourown.org profile] doomedblade

Content, access, interaction )
x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Default)
OKAY. OKAY. Wow. Christ.

I posted my last update in MAY. and then my grandpa was diagnosed with terminal cancer the week after. He died in the summer. (Please, no condolences; he was an awful person, but it was very stressful as he was horrible to all the carers who then refused to take care of him as he was still cognisant, so my mum and I had to become his carers. He degraded very quickly.)

Then I bought a house and had a lot of associated stress there. (Whoever designed the way you buy a house in England deserves to receive an egregious amount of violence.) I wrote a lot of fanfic as my tried and true coping mechanism. Anyway I'm back and I'm saying it very loudly to make it true!!!

I hope everyone has been well! Happy festive season! (and please, 2026, be kind!!!!!)
x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Default)
It's amazing how sometimes you can feel the seasonal depression lift off you like a stormcloud, huh????
x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Default)
Delighted to announce after my last post at the beginning of the year; now we're in month three??? that the writing is BACK.

I basically spent all of the second half of last year Not Writing, and then got hit by the double-whammy of Busy Life + seasonal depression at the latter end of 2024. Yikes. But I've posted two fics--a Metaphor: Refantazio one for a good fandom friend who has recently joined DW (yay!), and a Chainsaw Man yuri that I wrote in a fugue state last weekend--and I also updated a longfic. Thank god for that.

Now my next goal is to ramp myself up to writing original fiction, which is both the hardest and the most rewarding. :') I've asked some friends to bully me about it weekly which they're happily undertaking--I reckon the accountability will help.

--

Mar. 3rd, 2025 08:42 pm
x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Default)
Alice McDermott’s Writing Mantra: “Ah, Fuck Em.”
Readers, readers of fiction especially, are wonderful, generous, necessary people, the best people, really, but they can also be, well, annoying.

So say it gently when a dear reader asks you, “Why is your story so sad?” Or “Was your story supposed to be funny?” Or, “Did you intend to put that clever pivotal detail in there or did it just happen?” Say it with only the slightest exasperation when an eager reader suggests that your work would find a wider audience if your stories were, well, less complicated.

Ah, fuck ‘em.
x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (main)
I've not been writing very much recently, which is very annoying. I've been doing all the prescribed things to break out of it (I'm reading, trying to go on daily walks, socialising, doing other things) and yet the words still aren't emerging. I sit in front of the Word doc and wait for words to arrive and... none do. I've tried writing the world's iddiest fic to no avail. I'm absolutely sick of it. :') I'm just going to wait it out and hope it returns after Worldcon next month.

But in better news: I got my fill for fandom5k and was kind of very crossing my fingers that I'd get one of the original work prompts, and my author wrote me 15k of robot yuri. I've never been so delighted.

And, also, I got a physical copy of my first short story sale! It looks so cute all tucked inside its book... when it arrived from the US I had to sit at it and admire the art very deeply, haha. I have another short story coming out in a collection later this month. It's not that deep, but now when you look up my real name on Amazon or Goodreads, they've both autogenerated a page for me/my writing, which is wild.

A Visit!

Jun. 26th, 2024 10:37 pm
x003: The silhouette of electricity pylons against a dusky evening sky. (dusky)
My friend Wren came to stay last week! They came over from Florida and brought me a whole host of dreadful merch including a t-shirt that says ORLANDO in the style of the Monster energy drink logo. It's foul and also utterly incredible. I am wearing it right now.

It was so good to see them. Last time I saw them in-person they were very tenuously "straight", but are now out as queer, and are queer-presenting with a long-term girlfriend, and have tattoos, and overall just seem much happier in themselves and with their life. I'm sooo fucking happy for them!!!!!

They arrived Wednesday around noon. That evening we went to ASDA (it was a toss up between that and Tesco being the most aggressively Bri ish supermarket) where they bought lots of snacks. We then went out to a nearby food hall for dinner; they got a massive bowl of egg fried rice and I got vegan corn dogs. We were literally discussing British culture just as a bunch of morris dancers arrived, which was hilarious timing tbh. We watched them as the sun set and chatted about fandom as they've been getting into writing fic, so I introduced them to fic exchanges and the Exchanges After Dark/Yuletide servers, which they seemed pretty excited about.

They had booked a tattoo in Manchester centre on Thursday, so we headed in relatively early. I left them to get their tattoo and went to Social Refuge (the LGBT+ bookshop in Ancoats), where I impulse-bought The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie because Imperial Radch is still on my mind (SEIVARDEN <33333) and A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine and also reserved a copy of Translation State by Leckie. I asked if they had a copy of Stone Butch Blues in, which I read in uni and would like to re-read and own a copy of, but they literally run out the moment they get stock in, lol. Maybe next time. I try not to buy new books, except independent bookstores + the biggest LGBT bookstore in Europe is a pretty good sell.


I then killed time: sat for a while in the bookstore's coffee shop and messaged my friends and had a very yummy pistachio blondie. It was a pretty nice day; warm and bright without being too hot. After I'd had my little drink, I headed off to buy matcha powder, which has been on my list for a while. I looove matcha, but when it's like £4.50 for one matcha vs. £20 for a tub of the powder (and a litre of oat milk is like £2) it seems silly not to buy it to make it at home. I got some birthday cake matcha on the recommendation of the staff, which actually turned out to be a good shout; it's vanilla-y without being overpowering, and is good either with or without sugar. Still expensive, mind, but I've already made more drinks with it than I buy in a coffee shop!

I collected Wren from the tattoo parlour--they got a really lovely tattoo of Laika the space dog--and we then went to Bundobust, which is an Indian veggie/vegan restaurant. The food was really good (AND I GOT A MANGO LASSI!!!)--but my favourite was actually the hibiscus cider! Hibiscus is a pretty uncommon flavour in the UK, but with the heat it was really sharp and refreshing without being cloying. We decided to skedaddle, though, due to the fact England was playing someone or other in the footy which they were playing on the nearby TVs.

We then caught a tram for the sake of catching a tram, lmao. I personally lowkey love the tram because I grew up in nowhere England with zero public transport, so any public transport is fundamentally endearing to me. We got off at Piccadilly Gardens and wandered down Canal Street in the late afternoon sun before catching the train back to my flat.

We snacked for dinner--leftover pizza. We did some tarot readings just for fun. They showed me a few episodes of Gamechanger, which I think is fun but not fun enough for me to subscribe to, and we headed to bed pretty early (despite it being the solstice!) because they left very early the next morning to get back to Heathrow in time for their flight.

Aliveish?

Jun. 13th, 2024 10:30 pm
x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Default)
I have been hanging around, but I realised I haven't posted in a month and realised I should probably get on that, hahah.

First and most importantly: I finally managed to get into the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie after bouncing off the first book several times, and oh my GOOOOD I'm so glad I stuck with it. They're SUCH incredible books; I am so disgustingly eager to get into Translation State this weekend. It's the sort of sci-fi I absolutely aspire to write and am still VERY far away from!!

I wrote a RDR2 pining!John / zombie!Arthur fic for my friend. I'm also currently writing a fandom5k fic that's very iddy; I'm excited to work on it this weekend, and I have another fic for another exchange that will be revealed soon, I hope!

Finally, my friend Wren from my US stint is visiting next week! I haven't seen them in five years, so I'm soooo excited to see them.

x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Lae'zel)
My friend Hanna and I went to see a recording of Andrew Scott's single-man interpretation of Vanya (by Chekov). (Good news: I didn't knock over anyone's popcorn in the cinema this time.) This adaptation was called Uncle Vanya and we went because she's a thirsty bisexual and I never go to enough theatre--and I've never seen a Chekov play before.

Honestly, if there's one thing I can say about it is that Andrew Scott can act. He plays all of the roles within the play and convinced me that he was every single one of them; I almost could see them interacting, even though it was obviously just him moving around the stage and putting on different affects (different accents, different body language, different tells). I think, unfortunately, the nature of the adaptation itself let it down in that all of it felt quite shallow both thematically and in terms of characterisation included. I think by wanting to do justice to all possible Chekov themes (ecological destruction AND poverty in the countryside AND middle age malaise AND dramatic artists/teachers/creatives, to name a few), it didn't commit to any of them and spread itself too thin. The ending--which I have no doubt can be very moving--felt especially off-note and dissonant as we hadn't had the thematic build up beforehand, nor the investment in the characters to really feel their sorrow.

There were, however, some bits that made me laugh out loud, and it was super interesting to watch--and with what he's given, I think Andrew Scott did a really good job. I've seen a good amount of live theatre, but I've never seen a one-person play done where one person plays many roles. (I have seen the stage version of Fleabag, but that's more a monologue.)

x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Default)
The reasons I've been so AWOL can be summarised as Persona 3 Reload, Hades II, writing--so here's the obligatory Hades II thoughts post. HUGE spoilers ahead.

[Spoilers ahead] )

Anyway, I'm super excited for the first patch, and it's clearly not that bad as I've very happily sunk 20 hours in, haha. It also runs beautifully on both my PC and Steam Deck, which is sooo nice... I think it really proves that games don't need to be in 4K UHD show the pores on everyone's faces to be SUPER fun.
x003: The silhouette of electricity pylons against a dusky evening sky. (dusky)

I read SO much in April for me, largely without meaning to--because I downloaded Libby, hahah. Comments below titles I have thoughts about.

 
System Collapse by Martha Wells

[Re-read] Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Siren Queen by Nghi VoI saw a lot of hype around this both from more lit-genre and genre-genre fic circles, and I can totally see why... for me personally, it didn't scratch either itch--admittedly not that I read much lit fic, hahaha, even though I absolutely should. It definitely suffered from too much telling over showing, which I realise is to try and emphasise the fairytale-ish nature of the book, but didn't mean I enjoyed it! I also expected more from the magic for a magical realism book, but it was never really explored? Which was fine; just disappointing.

[Re-read] All Systems Red by Martha Wells I loved this book when I first read it, but now having read the rest of the series, it's super clear that Wells was developing Murderbot's voice. Also, I think the plot on this one is just kind of weak in comparison to the others? But that's fine; it does what it needs to very successfully.

Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden
I really wanted to like this... but it just didn't hit in the way I wanted it to, I guess. It's a murder-mystery from the perspective of an AI/robot whose previous chassis was destroyed and its associated memories lost. The protag uses neopronouns, which took me an embarrassingly long time to not bounce right off from, and the plot was kind of predictable? Idk. I just feel like the character voice wasn't that strong, so I didn't really connect with zir.

Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner

City of Bones by Martha Wells

Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. PolkAgain: this should have been so up my alley: an urban fantasy set in 1940s Chicago with lesbians--that's also a novella!!! However, again, I couldn't quite connect with the protagonist. It's a rare case where I think the book should've been longer rather than shorter; I think because it was so compact, a lot of worldbuilding and relationship building was lost in the process.

The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei This is another of those genre-fiction-with-Notions books. The only way I can describe it is 'deeply OK'. The protagonist--despite being in an understandably stressful situation!--was a little too whiny for me to ever like her. While there was a decent attempt at a gut-punch ending, too, because everyone felt so milquetoast it didn't connect and just left me feeling like the personification of the thumbs up emoji, hahaha.

x003: The silhouette of electricity pylons against a dusky evening sky. (dusky)
I keep thinking I should do more of these--and then I actually have very little progress to report on, so they sort of get infinitely kicked down the road... Once a week would be a plan, though! Maybe on a day when I regularly have no social events, hahha.

ANYWAY.

Original fiction
I restarted the Eldritch Weather Corpse short story on the advice of my friend, and it's already like a million times better; the protagonist has so much more personality, and I'm so much more sure what I want to say in the story, which is fantastic. It requires more braincells than I've had of late with my somewhat deranged social schedule, but I'm hoping with the bank holiday this weekend I get some dedicated time to work on it.

Twin Faces... basically hasn't moved? According to Word, I last opened it on April 6th... Yeesh.

Fanfic
I finished + posted a short Mass Effect genfic about Tali and Jack, largely because it's really nice to just get something out of the gate and write something that's beautifully low-pressure. I also haven't written for Mass Effect in literal years, so it's felt bizarrely refreshing to go back to it.

I also submitted my Albether fic to [community profile] wipbigbang, which will be an absolutely required kick up the arse to get it finished. The finish line is definitely in sight; it's currently 30k, and I reckon it'll be like 40k when finished. Fucking love both reading and writing a novella.

Other longfic WIPs that are hanging over my head are Shuake daemons (sent to a friend to beta, which should get me motivated again); Zhongtao Pacific Rim (which I just need the fucking brainpower to write); and Huzhongxiao 2, The Sequel, which I think is gonna be like 12k or something but I just, again, need the time and energy to write. :'D

Random snippet:
Admission made, Goro tilts his chin haughtily. “And?” he says, elegant even with the heavy bags under his eyes. “What do you think?”

He doesn’t want platitudes, doesn’t want pity. He wants to be lambasted, but Akira doesn’t want to do that either. He breathes in, tastes the coffee on the air; says, carefully, “I think that must have been very difficult.”

Goro blinks. Then he laughs. “How very sanctimonious of you.”

“Not really,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “You’re resourceful. If there had been any better way, I think you would’ve done that instead.”

“Maybe,” Goro says vaguely. “Maybe not. Maybe I just wanted to hurt him.” His lips are a little pursed. Maybe he regrets his admission now he hasn’t gotten the attack he clearly feels he deserves. If he does: good. Akira refuses to be the rope Goro hangs himself with.

Betaing
I've finally managed to Bother some people into letting me beta!

Betaing a gorey story (lmao @ the pun) )

I am also betaing another friend's HSR Aventurine/Ratio/Sunday fic. His writing is so beautiful and he has this insane talent to be able to nail a character down and summarise them with this real precision in a single sentence, which always leaves me in awe. I was able to give more structural support on this one, though, which makes me feel way more like I'm improving rather than my friends indulging me by letting me crit their work, hahahah.

Notes
[community profile] getyourwordsout  has been seriously such a lifesaver. I'm not active in the community (even though I definitely should be, because everyone seems super friendly) but external pressure is INSANELY motivating.

Woes

Apr. 12th, 2024 10:36 pm
x003: Shadowheart from the videogame Baldur's Gate 3 (Shadowheart)
Someone gave me really good and valuable advice on the giant floating corpse short story--and I think it means I'm gonna have to start from scratch, which is not what I wanna do, but she's right!!! It's always so painful having something really close to the finish line and then having to begin it again...

WIP Shaming

Apr. 9th, 2024 08:10 pm
x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Lae'zel)
Posting this publicly to shame myself into finishing at least a couple of the writing WIPs I have going at the moment. :') I'll update the post when I've completed some, and I'm not allowed to start any more until I'm under five WIPs!!!!!!!

Fic:
  • Shuake daemons
  • Hu Tao/Xiao/Zhongli 2
  • Albether American Gods
  • Zhongtao Pacific Rim
  • Mass Effect Jack&Tali
  • Mass Effect Shakarian (for genprompt_bingo teehee)
  • Siren Queen lesbians

Original fiction:
  • Twin Faces
  • Evil floating corpse (rewrite the ending)
x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Default)
I'm taking part in [community profile] genprompt_bingo , and I just want to post my card here so I don't forget it!

Read more... )

x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Default)
I read five books this month, which after my godawful February feels like I made up for it a little. Thoughts below each title.


Sex Criminals Volume 1 by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky I love a comic, and this one has a pretty hilarious concept: time freezes when the protagonists orgasm, and so they decide to have sex and rob a bank in that period of frozen time, and then get chased down by frozen time cops who can presumably also freeze time when they orgasm? The art was OK--nothing incredible--BUT the dialogue for the female protagonist was so Written By A Dude... I picked it up for £2 off ebay so I'm not mad, but it did kind of ruin the vibe a little.

Rosewater by Tade Thompson
I liked the concepts: afrofuturism--which I read an incredibly small amount of; fungi aliens that already invaded Earth and we're just catching up--but the execution kind of sucked mainly because all the protagonist could think about was his penis/getting his penis into a vagina/orgasming/sex/fucking/hot women/misogyny. Also, I realise sparse prose is 'in' in genre fiction at the moment, but the sentences in Rosewater were so short and so blunt they made my teeth ache.

Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
I read this for the book club I won't be able to attend, LMAO. I found it was like... OK. The premise was pretty interesting, and it was well-written, but honestly the stand out for me was Kissen's anger. It's so rare to find angry female protagonists who are mean and bitchy. I think Some Desperate Glory executed it better, but it was interesting to read. All the plot beats, however, were pretty predictable; someone on a Discord server I'm in pointed out it was short for epic fantasy at 300-ish pages, which is also true... I think I just don't really 'get' epic fantasy very much.

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca (TW BODY HORROR/INSECTS)
The first short story about the woman purposefully getting a tapeworm to be 'pregnant' with her abusive online girlfriend got me in a gut-punch because JESUS what a fucking concept, but I wasn't wowed or anything; it just made me Very Uncomfy (and was therefore successful as a piece of horror fiction).

The latter two stories in the collection did a thing I think a lot of horror writers do where they write a bunch of Unsettling Events and there's no, like, culmination or point to the narrative? So the whole thing rings very hollow, and I wasn't sure what the 'point' was.

Also, LaRocca's prose was... not great. I could buy into the epistolary nature of the first story because having been terminally online for a solid ~15 years now (which I know is small change) I have witnessed and known people with very particular writing quirks, but in his actual prose, it was bad rather than characterising.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
I picked this one up on Libby before it got the Hugo nomination, and OH MY GOD. I haven't read anything that made me go so !!!! in a long time. I don't think it's perfect, BUT I really enjoyed it and proceeded to devour it. Prose was easy to read--no speedbumps anywhere in the novel, which is especially impressive. YISO WAS SUCH A BABE. Kyr was terrible and her redemption arc was super characterising and well-written.

It was also brave enough to address fascism, and racism, and eugenics, and grooming, and xenophobia, and homophobia, and while I don't think it hit it out of the park every time, it did a pretty good job most of the time. I also think it did a really stellar iteration of 'humans are space orcs' without being twee or camp. Delightful. The best thing I've read so far this year.

x003: Shadowheart from the videogame Baldur's Gate 3 (Shadowheart)
I bought Hollow Knight aages ago, and then didn't play it--and then when I bought my Steam Deck did get around to playing it, and then dropped it... basically I picked it back up over my week off and found it SUPER fun. I always have the self-perception I don't enjoy difficult games, but that's clearly not true, because Hollow Knight had me hooked. I 110%'d it--got the radiance ending, too--and then gave up on the circus and fighting arena expansions. My one critique is the critique I have of so many contemporary videogames: there's too much to do! So much, in fact, that it makes me bored.

After finishing Hollow Knight, I then played Rain World (another game found in the depths of my library), and while I found Hollow Knight rewardingly hard, Rain World is just... punishing. The art style, however, is beautiful, and I love my little slugcat. I think I just need to pick it up again and get back into the loop of finding new places, as that's what generally gets me hooked.

I then bought Inscryption and blasted through it last weekend. Man, was that a disappointment. I found the first third super fun; I'm in the rare percentage of human being that really enjoys a roguelike deckbuilder game, and the whole 'sacrifice your units to put down better units' worked super well.
Spoilers for InscryptionI just found the meta-narrative suuuuper cringe. The first act with Leshy and the cabin and being killed by camera? Fantastic. The rest? Meh. There are far too many games that are interested in talking about what games are like and far fewer games that actually have meaningful insight on them; Inscryption firmly fell in the latter category. I didn't care for 'discovering' what was happening in the real world through the (poorly acted, not that I'm an actor either) video clips, and I also feel the developer's strength lay in the horror/creepy deckbuilder; the second act (an 8-bit RPG deckbuilder) was significantly jankier and less fun--and I broke the game by levelling the ouroboros card up infinitely--and the third act lacked the aesthetic or stakes of the first.

But with my thirst for deckbuilders not yet sated, I bought Balatro as well and OH BOY IS THAT SCRATCHING THE ITCH. I spent so much time in RDR2 playing poker (badly); this fulfils exactly the same need for me. I've been playing it on double speed (a setting in the menu--thank god) while listening to podcasts and watching documentaries and it's. SO fun. If you want a videogame that turns your brain clean off, Balatro's the one.
x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Default)
I've been seeing some very nice writing progress posts floating around my reading page, so I thought I'd join the crew and give some updates myself!

Original fiction
I have two short stories in the works: one about twins, and another about giant floating corpse. The former is still Very a draft and every time I open the doc I seem to find some miraculous way to carve off another couple hundred words despite it being Very unfinished; the former is finished apart from the ending, which I'm finding super dissatisfying and need to rewrite, but can't work out how to resolve in a way that feels satisfactory? It's an unhappy ending, which is my favourite, but at the moment feels too slap-bang and comes out of nowhere.

I even left this really great comment for future me on the Word doc for the corpse one:

Image
Wow, past me! You're sooooo helpful!

Fanfic
I'm still writing more of the Hu Tao/Xiao/Zhongli sequel--the first is on AO3--which is especially funny considering I don't even play Genshin anymore and haven't since about 2022 at best.

I want to write more of my shuake daemons fic, but my motivation on that has kind of shrivelled up and died (again). I have too many WIPs. Sigh. I really need to focus and parse down what it is I wanna write.

I'd also love to take part in a sort of fandom event, but right now it seems to solely be exchanges, and I find exchanges super hit and miss. I am involved in GYWO, but only on the periphery despite loyally filling in that Excel sheer every day. I want a big bang, which would encourage me to clear off one of my 400,000 WIPs, but I can't seem to find any!!

Writing resources
This is primarily designed as a list for future me.
x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Default)
I read SO much in January, and then like two books in February, hahah. Determined to catch back up to my self-imposed goal!

I picked up a copy of the book I'm reading for this month's fantasy book club. (I'm more of a sci-fi/horror person myself, but the book club meets like 5 minutes away from my flat, and reading outside of my comfort zone is always a good thing.) It's Godkiller by Hannah Kaner. I'm about a third of the way through; I'm enjoying the disabled and fucking mean and queer protagonist, and the fact there are so many other disabled people in the book, and it's decently written, too. There was a poll in the Discord last night, though, as to when the next meeting's gonna be, and it looks like it's a Sunday I'm seeing a friend, so I won't even be able to discuss it at the meeting, hahahha! I also bought it off Vinted for cheap, and then fucked it up last night by sleeping with it in my bed and creasing one of the covers--so looks like I won't be able to resell it. Whoopsie!

I also finished Rosewater by Tade Thompson which I impulse-borrowed from the library because I don't read enough afrofuturism. The prose is very very sparse and short--I doubt there was a semi-colon or em dash in the whole book--and I know it's On Purpose, but the protagonist is so... yeesh... and nauseatingly sexist that it really put me off.

I'm also half-reading both Our Lady of the Artilects by Andrew Gillsmith, which I clearly misinterpreted, because I thought it was about robots making up their own religion (yummy, sign me up) and is actually about robots converting to Catholicism, which is not at all the same--and also Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer, which I find particularly amusing because it's written in 19th century Novel Prose--except for the prose including the dialogue, which reads like any other genre fiction novel. I know some folks have gotten pretty fannish about it, but I don't think I'll be one of them.

I also read Sex Criminals Vol 1, which is a comic by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky. (I refuse to use the phrase 'graphic novel' for 90% of comics, because I think it makes comics inaccessible--and also not all comics are graphic novels.) It was fine, but was clearly a dude imagining how women think and speak and sound--but I think the premise of being able to stop time by orgasming and then deciding to rob a bank with said frozen time is pretty fun. I'll probably read volume 2 if I can find it for cheap or at the library or something.
x003: Shadowheart from the videogame Baldur's Gate 3 (Shadowheart)
One of my things to do this year was read a load of books I had hanging around or wanted to read, so these're the books I've read. I'll probably periodically update this post. :-)

Read more... )
x003: A figure in shadow. Their eyes light up like flashlights. (Lae'zel)
I posted this review on Backloggd and turned off comments (because I'm scawed, lol), but thought I'd crosspost here in case anyone else has thoughts or agrees/disagrees; feel free to dump a comment if you have thoughts! :D

Red Dead Redemption 2, plays--often by itself with no input from the player--as a Shakespearean tragedy, haunted by the ghost of crunch, with far too many things to do for the sake of having things to do. The point of it all is cinematic realism--until, of course, it isn't.

Character writing, often so effusively praised, I found lacklustre; despite being one of the lynchpins of the narrative, Dutch's descent into despotism felt insincere as I never got the feeling he was a good leader to begin with, already prone to egoism and wild bouts of jealousy. Bar Arthur (who is fantastically written and acted) and John (significantly fleshed out from RDR1), the rest largely feel like archetypes; while they range from likeable to annoying, it's difficult to invest in or feel bad for them as the world they've constructed into collapses around them.

Read more... )
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