The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

  04/24/2018       Act      6 Comments

This book by Becky Chambers is basically Futurama, from the semi-serious, semi-silly tone to the plotlines themselves, several of which were Futurama plotlines at one point. If you like Futurama, you’ll likely enjoy this.

It’s biggest flaws were a) the overuse of ZOMGQUIRKY!!!1one characters, b) the author’s biology failures, and c) the jarringly preachy tone it could take. Personally, I found the wordbuilding issues too distracting and thought the author handled her own cast poorly, but I can see why people like it.

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   Books      ,

Dresden Files Grave Peril Ch28

  04/23/2018       Farla      31 Comments

When last we left off, Susan appeared, had Harry insist she was being dumb, then saved Harry’s stupid dumb ass by sacrificing a bunch of her memories. Now she doesn’t know who he is! On the one hand, that means she’s forgotten she knows the guy, which will make convincing her to leave harder. On the other hand, it means she’s forgotten she knows the guy is always like “everything is super dangerous and you can’t be involved for reasons I can’t explain and which will turn out to be kind of bullshit later”, which will make convincing her to leave easier.

Harry proceeds to do a bad job of explaining anything to her, but a better job of explaining anything to her than he was just doing, so it’s still kind of a wash. (more…)

   3. Grave Peril, Books, Dresden Files     

[14] The Other Pokereviews, Part 101

  04/21/2018       St. Elmo's Fire      81 Comments

As an experiment, I used a variation of Enki’s disclaimer paragraph in these reviews to see if it had any effect. During this period, some trolls also reviewed (nearly) every story telling everyone to block me, so I’ve noted stories I was blocked on to gauge their success.

Story content was unfortunately unremarkable. There is a decent novelization of the RSE opening, and a multi-trainer intrigue thing that might turn out interesting but I don’t know because it spent the first several thousand words on pointless backstory.

Anime count: 2

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   Fanfiction, Pokemon Fanfic, Reviews     

Dresden Files Grave Peril Ch27

  04/19/2018       Farla      32 Comments

Right, so.

When last we left off, Harry had decided to go to the vampire party because the nightmare ghosty has some third party buffing it and he’s decided that the only possible place for such a person would be the vampire party. He then proceeds to aggro everyone in the place repeatedly for no reason,  guzzles drugged wine in front of them, and says his true name twice to a dragon while getting mad at it for thinking it’s stronger than him merely because it actually is. Also, still no followup on the drugged starving sick cursed child Harry let get taken by vampires, because Harry doesn’t care. At the end we discover that this entire time, he somehow missed that Susan was at the party because her outfit slightly resembled a vampire one, and Harry realizes that since he already said Michael was his plus-one, Susan does not have invite protection. (She also doesn’t have invite protection because she forged the invite, because Harry’s stupidity is catching.)

Someone else has also just noticed! Or more likely, been tapping their foot this whole time waiting for Harry to notice so they could jump in and pretend to just notice. I’m sorry he takes forever, evil monster. It must be so frustrating to be a villain in these books. (more…)

   3. Grave Peril, Books, Dresden Files     

Hellbound

  04/18/2018       St. Elmo's Fire      18 Comments

My experience with this game can be pretty aptly summed up as “pleasantly surprised”. The game’s official description implies it to be a tedious 2edgy4me thing about how God is evil and high school students need to use the power of SATAN to beat him!!! What I actually found was a surprisingly well-done story about mental illness and self-actualization. The tone of the overall plot is still extremely tongue-in-cheek, but when real issues come up it addresses them with astounding sensitivity and depth. The characters initially appear to be one-dimensional archetypes, but they are eventually revealed to come from places of deep pain and trauma, and their loyalty to one another is truly genuine and inspiring.

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   RPGmaker, RPGs, Video Games      ,

[43] The Other Pokereviews, Part 100

  04/14/2018       St. Elmo's Fire      9 Comments

100th post! It is extra long in celebration, compiling all the reviews it took to get me caught up in early April after Enki’s reviews. As is to be expected this batch has a wider variety than normal, yet I could not find many notable stories. There is, however, a decent fic towards the end that actually seems to be engaging with the legendaries as nature gods.

Anime count: 7

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   Fanfiction, Pokemon Fanfic, Reviews     

Connie Willis

  04/13/2018       Act      2 Comments

I’ve been writing a few angryposts tearing apart recs I didn’t like and I feel kind of bad, so you’ll get in exchange two authors recced to me that have quickly become two of my favorite writers of all-time. Today, in part one of a two-part SQUEE series, Connie Willis! She is a true master.

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   Books, Recommendations      , , , , ,

The Other Pokeauthors, Part 99

  04/12/2018       St. Elmo's Fire      Add Comment

“Not to mention the amounts of YOUR FanFiction’s that have flaws and even contain language in the summary? Talk about my summaries not having any detail, you need to look at the large variety of yours. Literally one of them only has a few words that doesn’t tell the reader a thing!” This was followed by absolutely no clarification, naturally.

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   Author Responses, Fanfiction, Pokemon Author Replies     

Honey vs Vinegar Reviewing

  04/11/2018       Farla      4 Comments

So, in the interests of data, someone decided they’d review for a while nicely. While there were originally plans to try to match our standard reviews as closely as possible, that didn’t really pan out, but it’s still useful in a broader sense.

Also it shows that either this level of politeness is safe or people are just way chiller these days, because so far they’ve had zero screaming at them! So if you ever wanted to hand out crit but were holding off because of that, now might be a good time to jump in. (more…)

Pokemon Fanfic, Reviews
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