i once got anxiety when i was about to finish warcross bc i was practically obsessed with it and knew i would question everything once i finished 🤪

hehe.. richter and alucard >>>: )

hope you dont mind more asks!

i dont mind ^^ talking in any manner happens to be a favourite activity of mine

first of all, richter! richter is really cool. hes one of the characters who doesnt require too much digging and extrapolation to see the inherent depth in, and its good depth! im sure thats why hes so popular, aside from being in sotn. the way he really encapsulates the negative effects of the belmont legacy on its participants is incredibly interesting, as is the way that in taking the belmonts out of the cycle, it only got worse for everyone else. hes not one of my favourite belmonts, but there are no belmonts i dont like, so hes cool! also his va slaps both rondo and sotn-wise theyre good they fit him i like them. i hope he got to go home to annette with maria and they lived happily ever after :>

and of course, the man himself, alucard

the way i interpret alucard is probably kind of weird? for me hes a 1470s character first and foremost, despite obviously having more attached to him in sotn. im just really biased there tbh i love castlevania iii castlevania iii is my jam. but the most interesting phase of alucards character is, to me, in the sorrow duology. because the common consensus i see is that he kind of has some character development by then but the thing is just

hes kind of really shitty in sorrow? he went through negative character development. i probably sound like a madman but once you start to read into the scripts and the implications there... its a lot so i wont go into it, maybe some other day, but yeah. i like arikado, hes a hot garbage fire who resembles mathias more and more every day ^^ we stan a manipulative king who gets his ass kicked by dmitrii blinov of all people (my probably strange read on the sorrow duology is also why i prefer the meh ending of sotn; it makes more sense for what he does in the sorrow games if he never got that help from maria)

on the alucard side of things its also obvious why hes so popular! classic tragic hero, he struggles with his identity as half human and half monster, his self loathing is poignant and everpresent, and he continually attempts to stay true to his mother's wishes and oppose the cruelty of his father through whatever means necessary (until he gets to the point in the 2030s where the ends start justifying the means). alucard is very cool.

my takes on him are probably a little bit unusual though :p so ill say just incase that im definitely not trying to say that theyre the end all be all of canon and interpretations or anything! just having a little fun with it in the blending direction

canon is fake everyone is fine

so true!!!

tbh im not even talking about this from a "im a fan attached to these characters" standpoint, its moreso from a writing/narrative point of view

since what we see at the end of sdra2/in omakes isnt even bittersweet or hopeful, like nearly all of the surviving characters are unhappy with like no signs of it ever getting better

narratively, the staple of danganronpa-esque pieces and other tragic, darker works is usually the at least teeny tiny glimpse of potential improvement of the situation

even if now everything is awful and horrible, we shouldnt stay in the sadness forever as life isnt 100% bad or 100% good

i mean, even in completely abysmal settings like the one in projectmoon games (giant continentlike city divided by districts ruled by megacorporations where masses of people die on daily basis) its never shown that the cycle is doomed to continue forever

and if the story that makes you care about the characters ends with (nearly) everyone who survives (out of like 90% of the initial cast) remaining in the abyss of grief and suffering, it simply leaves the audience dissatisfied

of course a skillful writer can make that kind of thing compelling however it doesnt seem to be the case in the dra duology not only because of the ending but also because of various plot points that only really exist for shock value for the most part

it all adds up to an experience that, if you think about for too long, has more and more sort of pointless tidbits show up that after analysis mostly serve to shove "interesting" plot twists that in reality dont make much sense

while yes i understand that at least with dra linuj was quite young and didnt have much insight when it comes to satisfying storytelling, it doesnt really make the result any less frustrating

hi can!! what's the last book you read (or the one you're currently reading)? and how did/do you like it?

for me it's small gods from the discworld series (my first terry pratchett book apart from good omens), i finished it yesterday and it was fantastic, so much better than i expected!! would love to hear about what you've been reading :)

Hi Henry!!!

Oooh I'm currently reading "River of Teeth" by Sarah Gailey! It's a short novel/novella (part of a duology) i was recommended by a good friend, about queer cowboys (gender neutral) but WITH A TWIST

See....in the real world in the 20th century, America tried to import Hippos as a major livestock. This didnt pan out BUT the author reimagines a world in the 1800s where hippos basically replace horses and cows, and our motley crew of multinational gayass rangers are on a HEIST (kind of). I only have a few chapters late since I haven't been making time to read after work during the week lately but my main opinion is ITS FUCKING COOOOOOL. it's been such a quick read, I'm really enthralled and attached to the characters, and I already have the second ebook loaded on my device! I'm really thankful to my friend for recommending it to me!!

(Last book i read before this was the graphic novel "The Accursed Vampire" by Madeline McGrane - it was SO cute and fun!!)

Omg I love that you enjoyed Small Gods!!! I should pick that up sometime! Are you planning to read Discworld in any particular order or are u doing the time honoured tradition of picking up whichever one strikes ur fancy whenever? I love Pratchett's sense of humour so much so im glad it's connecting with u too!

ohh i also loved the hoo series from rick!!! was soo good! except my dog ruined my house of hades copy in the original covers so im down a book💔💔

i dont usually read series either well... long ones! i prefer duologies or something short tbh but id rec the wrath and the dawn duology, the tigers curse series! my second series after i finished pjo! hmmm and i started caraval nd the first book is amazing i just havent had chance to get the other two yet!

i loved the heroes of olympus too! i read them as they were coming out and it was so fun, i remember being devastated when it ended. i tried reading the trials of apollo series, which is rick's most recent one, but i can't get past the beginning of the second book, i just can't seem to get attached to those new characters

and i'm sorry your dog ruined your book :( this is like your dog ate your homework, but worse

caraval is definitely in my tbr! i love the concept and i'm really curious to read it, i finished "a good girl's guide to murder" this week and i know that it's part of a trilogy, i can't wait to read those sequels as well

send asks, make your local writer’s night better

King of Scars

⭐⭐⭐; me at any given moment in the second half of the book: leigh.......*sobbing* please........where are we

Oh?? 👌😉😏

incredible set-up! the first half was SO exciting and fun. every set-up was brimming with piping hot takes. court intrigue, power couple vibes, sneaking around / keeping up appearances interspersed with real feelings - bardugo set out a real feast of a story, that’s for sure

non-powered protagonist / POV in a magical setting. it’s one of my favourite tropes (i can pinpoint the origin of this preference back to one specific book in my childhood favourites)

badass women! need i say more

political intrigue (especially with the backdrop of a magical setting!)

No.. ❌🤢🤮

the author lost the thread SO HARD in the second....it really fell so flat after such a fantastic premise. im so disappointed 😭 i wanted so much and i got barely a crumb....please leigh, just another mouthful of that political intrigue....im begging ya......

im not that mad about the [spoilers] at the end of the story, but i am utterly befuddled by how it happened - and that’s not even taking into account how confused i am about the future direction of the story. bardugo, where? are? you? going?? it’s getting to the point i don’t fully trust she knows where she’ll end up either, and that’s dangerous

Nina’s story should have been a novella that came out before KoS. It would have been much more cohesive, and I could concentrate on Nina’s arc more on its own, and probably would’ve hyped up KoS that much more because of how these two stories are supposed to happen concurrently. Honestly, as interesting as Nina’s story was, I don’t have that much to say about it. It was good. I wish it was its own story. That’s about it.

Summary: Three years after the Ravkan Civil War, King Nikolai finds himself wrestling with an interesting problem. While his shrewd political machinations and barefaced charisma have kept Ravka from devolving into yet another conflict with one of its many enemies, he’s been losing ground in a battle with his own body as some uncontrollable curse repeatedly takes over his consciousness, causing him to wreck havoc across the nearby countryside night after night. After he nearly kills a child on one of his fun little jaunts as a giant bird-creature, he decides to take matters into his own hands and travel to a place of cleansing, which he hopes will be strong enough to purge the darkness. Things can only go downhill from there. (Oh yeah! And Nina is doing cool, sexy, creepy, important stuff somewhere else. That’s a thing too.)

Concept: 💭💭💭

I did not expect to pick up this book. I got into Six of Crows quite late, and I didn’t love the duology (it was good! i love inej. and everyone else is there too ig), so when I read the reviews (tbh I just listened to the KoS liveshow by the Papercut trio, but same thing) and they weren’t...that positive? i chalked it up to a cute cover i could admire from a distance whenever i visited a bookstore and moved on. But! Life moves in mysterious ways...and by mysterious I mean my friend listened to the audiobook and got me into it as well so we could share thoughts

Spoilers under the cut~

Execution: 💥💥💥💥 (first half) / 💥💥 (second half)

...And share thoughts we did! The first half of the book was *chef’s kiss* set-up so beautifully. I’ve never read the Grisha Trilogy, but I can feel that bardugo prefers to play fast and loose with her worldbuilding rules anyway, so there wasn’t much I couldn’t pick up using context clues. The characterization for two POVs I’d never read before, let alone even knew the backstory of beyond the vaguest inclination, was masterful! I immediately liked Nikolai and Zoya. Then we got to the second part, and I have never seen anything go downhill quite so effortlessly. More spectacularly? Yes. More quickly? Absolutely! Somehow, this was more like a slow slide into mediocrity, which was....worse. We just kept getting further and further away from the original intrigue, and setting up yet more moving pieces and unanswered questions, and, and - ! The book ended. I am so afraid that this has become a bigger beast than Bardugo can control, and that’s why she’s announcing a Six of Crows continuation - to pull it all together without admitting she may have lost the thread of this narrative.

Favourite Moment: while I loved where nina ended up at the end of the story (and i WISH we had had her story in a separate novella so i could fully appreciate the BDE), I think my favourite scene is when nikolai says to zoya ‘so what about that amplifier of yours that you were highly emotionally attached to’ and zoya not only tells him, but takes off her shirt to show him the scars without being directly asked. like damn! all he had to do was ask an unrelated question! shit! half the population of ravka would die to be as lucky as their king

Personal Enjoyment: ❤❤❤❤❤ (first half) / ❤❤ (second half)

I love it when a story hinges on two characters playing off of the other. There’s the banter, of course, but the real meat of this premise is always the character reveals and parallels you’re privy to, when you match two characters the audience has yet to learn more about against each other. It’s like...shadows and light! The interplay of similarities and differences! The intrigue of these characters reacting to any character reveals alongside the audience themselves in real-time! ‘Two sides of the same coin’-type narratives are always super fun, with or without shipping. And I think that’s the crux of the reason the second half of the book fell apart - despite being two out of three of the only humans stuck in that Other Place, and literally unable to go anywhere, Nikolai and Zoya simply....stopped talking to each other. And trusted two otherworldly god-like figures. Without question. 👀👀 HUH? HUH?? They’ve both been established to trust very few people - it took them three years to build themselves up to trusting each other, and they worked side-by-side to govern an entire country. But when it came down to the wire, you’re telling me they picked some random mythical dudes they had never believed existed? Make it make sense, Bardugo. They’re not even teenagers in-canon anymore, there’s no excuse for that kind of lapse in character consistency.

Favourite Character: i’m going to cheat and say that nikolai and zoya tie - their personalities were so compelling. if only they could have combined their two braincells to give me the fully realised character arc this book truly deserved :(( they could have had intertwined narrative parallels! the foil potential! cmon bardugo, am i gonna have to rewrite this book in my mind myself, or what?