Very excellent book if you can handle a bit of existential dread. Includes one of my favorite depictions of FTL horror in fiction so far. Took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that faction is called the Parthenon because they reproduce via parthenogenesis. And of course it wouldn’t be a Tchaikovsky book without a sentient swarm of bugs in there somewhere. Five stars, highly recommend.

Andrew Joseph White has knocked it out of the park (again) with Compound Fracture. Miles is written so authentically as an autistic trans teenager, and seeing events from his perspective brings the reader right into the story. After he comes out to his parents, their relationship gets messy and complicated in a way that's almost painfully real. The town of Twist Creek and the people in it seem genuine, with all the dimension and nuance that are often lacking in depictions of Appalachia. This extends to the sheriff and others on his side, which adds to the gravity of the long-running feud dividing the town. Miles' inner turmoil feels realistic as he suddenly finds himself in the middle of the conflict and has some hard choices to make, on top of grappling with his identity and typical teenage struggles.

This joins the list of "books I wish existed when I was a teen" along with White's other work, and I'm sure there are plenty of teens now who need this story. I hope they find it.

this one is a wild ride once it gets going. a storm rolls into Olivia's small town one summer night, but instead of thunder and lightning this storm brings monsters and otherworldly phenomena. to reach her best friend, Sunflower, and escape, she must navigate the new dangers of familiar streets to uncover the truth behind the storm and all it has wrought

finished the audiobook of The Lying Game by Ruth Ware last night! i loved how the story moved back and forth between past and present, laying out pieces of the puzzle with each shift. the setting, an estuary on the coast of England, gave the book a strong sense of place and acted as a stage for the drama to unwind. highly recommend this one

Let's unearth this blog with a great murder mystery. Multiple character perspectives combined with the shift between Before and After will have you guessing the whole time. Add a remote Scottish Highlands setting and masterful pacing, this is a must-read (or listen, the audiobook is stellar)

finished No Gods for Drowning! what a wild ride that last third was

one finished, one in progress

“I think Christopher’s translations are generally adequate. But he made one mistake which is worth describing because it was deliberate and because it illustrates a fundamental difference in outlook between the translator and his author. “Polly Peachum’s Song” tells how Polly behaved to her suitors before she met the right one, Macheath. In each verse, a boat is mentioned. Polly and one of the suitors get into it. In the first two verses, the boat is cast loose from the shore, and Polly adds, “But that was as far as things could go.” In the third and last verse, however, the boat is “tied to the shore,” when she has got into it with Macheath. Christopher found this incomprehensible, because he took it for granted that the proper poetic metaphor for sexual surrender would be the casting loose of the boat. So, quite arbitrarily, disregarding the meaning of the German text, he transposed the lines and had the boat tied up in the first two verses, only to be cast loose in the last verse when Polly is possessed by Macheath. No one protested. The book appeared with Christopher’s version of the poem. It was only when Christopher met Brecht for the first time, in California about six years later, that he had his misunderstanding corrected. Brecht told him mildly, with the unemphatic bluntness which was so characteristic of him: ‘A boat has to be tied up before you can fuck in it’”

— Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind I doubt I will ever read a funnier anecdote than this one. 

the fucking owen wilson “woww” will never not be funny to me

One thing that interests me about where Caleb is emotionally in the twoshot is that while we haven’t got confirmation either way yet (I think), it’s entirely possible that this is before he goes with Essek to Aeor and destroys the T-Dock.

It’s definitely vague - Liam describes Caleb keeping in touch with Essek ‘the first six months to a year’, seemingly with the intention of going to Aeor with him in some point during that time. Matt doesn’t specify when exactly Essek leaves Vurmas, either. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that Liam was picturing the Aeor date trip happening something like six to twelve months after the end of Campaign 2.

If that’s the case, then there’s a good chance that Mighty Nein Reunited happens before that time. And that’s… really interesting. Because if that’s true, the Caleb who’s giving a lecture on Transmutation magic, and the why of how you use it, is a Caleb facing up to the idea that soon he’s going to have to make a decision about whether he’ll use that magic to save his parents. It’s a Caleb who’s really strongly considering the whys behind his desire to do that. It’s  a Caleb thinking hard about what his decision will be, and thinking about what will happen if he decides against it.

It’s a Caleb who is slowly, slowly, easing himself into the life he could have - as a teacher, the thing he always wanted to become. A Caleb who is perhaps starting to realise I can have a future, with my friends around me, shaping these bright young minds. And yet it’s a Caleb who hasn’t quite brought himself to take the teaching job yet - not for himself, not for Beau, who wants a man on the inside.

Because this is a Caleb who has not yet taken the decision to destroy the T-Dock, and as long as that’s the case, Caleb has not committed to this future he’s building. Because when Caleb destroys the Dock, he is forgiving himself. He is stepping away from that awful, aching desire to Undo the Bad Thing, because that’s the only way he can think of to exist after what he did. Destroying the ability to amend his past is  Caleb committing to his future.

It’s entirely possible that Caleb in the twoshot is still carrying a book of letters to his parents in his book holsters. Caleb has not quite yet opened himself to that grief yet, has not truly allowed himself to mourn Una and Leofric.

And it’s so wonderful to me to imagine that it’s after all this - after seeing Uk’otoa threaten again and seeing such clear evidence that happiness is hard, and complicated, and sometimes living still hurts, but your friends will pull together anyway to get you through it - that’s when he takes Essek to Aeor, and they turn towards the future. Caleb lets the grief in, and begins the long, slow, tricky journey of processing and mourning and healing.

And maybe after that, Caleb thinks about that teaching position and thinks, yes. I’m ready now.

Sick beat, dude. Absolutely diseased beat, bro. That beat is a plague that will devour the Earth. None shall remain. (Whispering) None shall remain.

It's Trans Awareness Week, and though own voices has become kind of an avoided phrase of late, I'm proud to have trans folk like me Arcadia, Monique, and Alto out in the world, facing horrors and beyond 🖤

(and also happy now having a phone that can make this emoji 🏳️‍⚧️😄)

in case twitter goes down, i want you all to have this from andrew

Had fun making an alternate NOPE movie poster concept!

finished Just Like Home last month, highly recommend it!

one finished, one in progress