Stephanie, "a patch of bioluminescent sea stuff". Chronomancer and Daver extraordinaire. Easily beloved. Apparently needs to fix the broken code of this layout.
I maintain a romantic view of piracy. My primary hobby is being an enthusiast of the world. Lover of Middle Earth, Dorian Pavus and Becky Lynch. Probably cooler than you, but forgets this often.
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║not a spoiler free blog║
she/they • ADHD • Black Lives Matter
okay you know what, while I’m complaining about things on the internet: the way people generally handle book recs on this site is…..bad.
Do you KNOW how many posts ostensibly serving as “rec lists” I’ve seen that are basically just….representation checklists? “Here’s a list of books with LGBT protagonists!” “Here’s a list of books by Black authors!”
[id: “Ah, great! What is it.” gif.]
You gonna tell me what any of these twenty books are, like, about?
The format is a) annoying b) unhelpful and c) doing an active disservice to books you’re clearly trying to get other people to read, but rather more importantly…
d) Reducing the entire concept of literally any book not by white authors about cishet white protagonists down to “basically interchangeable, right?” is not nearly as progressive as you seem to think it is. And yes, many of the book recs are a little more specific–”Here’s a list of fantasy books by Black authors!” “Here’s a list of sci-fi books with trans characters!” but you are all still badly missing the point of a RECOMMENDATION post.
I am ALL FOR making big long lists of great, diverse book recs! But for god’s sake–y’all have GOT to start actually reccing the BOOK instead of the only information provided being “Has a lesbian protagonist!!!” That is not a book rec. It’s just not. It doesn’t tell me ANYTHING I need to know! The very, very best book rec posts I’ve ever seen deign to include things like major trigger warnings, and even that I’ve only seen like, twice.
Please, for the love of god, if you’re making a book rec list, actually rec the BOOKS and not just whatever #representation they have. That means, at the VERY LEAST, including the:
Genre.
GENRE.
What the book is like, about.
The TONE.
If at all possible, the narrative style.
Please note that by “genre” I don’t just mean “But Jo, I did include the genre! I said this was a list of fantasy novels!” That’s nice.
Lord of the Rings is fantasy. So is Percy Jackson. What genre is the fucking book.
Genre: Is it high fantasy? Portal fantasy? Modern mythology? Is it military sci-fi? Is it hard sci-fi, heavy on technical details? Within the sci-fi or fantasy genre–is it a coming-of-age story? Is it a mystery? Is it a political thriller? A gunslinging adventure? A survival story? A magic-academy setting?
Seriously, Are You Planning To Tell Me What The Book You’re Ostensibly Recommending To Me Is, Like, About? I’m not asking for spoilers. Lord of the Rings is about a young man named Frodo Baggins, the gently-raised nephew and heir of a respected gentleman farmer in the quiet fantasy-British-countryside. When his uncle mysteriously announces that he’s leaving and then disappears at his own birthday party, events are set in motion that leave the rather naive young Frodo in possession of a powerful, deadly artifact–and the Dark Lord who created it has already sent his most powerful servants to reclaim it.
Boom. Done. Tell me SOMETHING that actually helps me decide whether this is something that I might want to look more into. Are the characters thirty or thirteen? Are they members of ruling houses, or farmers, or space smugglers, or pirates, or Navy officers, or what?
The TONE OF THE BOOK dear CHRIST. I have seen, on actual book rec lists, incredibly hard-hitting, grim, brutal novels presented next to generally-lighthearted, PG modern fantasy. And that’s great! Different things appeal to different people, and tone and genre and content do not dictate one another. But like, tone-wise–is this Star Trek: TOS, or Battlestar Galactica? Is this Return of the Jedi, or Revenge of the Sith? Is this mystery a noir novel, or a Scooby Doo episode?
I need to know that to know whether I’m interested! If I go in looking for a serious, high-concept, flowery medieval fantasy and you give me Discworld, I’m going to come away unsatisfied even if I would otherwise love Discworld.
Narrative Style: If there’s something interesting about the way the story is told, and you’re trying to pique the interest of a crowd of strangers…maybe like, mention that! Share an excerpt of a particularly representative line, preferably from early in the book!
I saw Gideon the Ninth on SO MANY rec posts and was never interested in the slightest…because it was never presented as more than “Lesbian necromancers in space! What more could you want?!” Well, some fucking information about anything else in the book, for one. My partner got it and started quoting me non-spoiler segments, and the writing style was so DELIGHTFUL, and Gideon’s narration and perspective so much fun, that I devoured the entire book in like three hours.
If you want people to read the books you recommend, you have to tell us things about them.
Everyone knows the Grim Reaper, the personification of Death. You are the supernatural personification of the other certainty in life: Taxes
Gods are not
born of belief. That is a fallacy. Gods are shaped by belief, altered by it,
even strengthened by it, but it does not make them. Belief creates, but what it
creates is not gods but… personifications, perhaps.
Death is the
first and the oldest of us. When people learned to fear death, to see not only
a cessation of life but a destruction of being, Death came into existence.
Death, my
gentle brother, is an answer to the deepest longing of the human heart. “I am
afraid. I do not want to die alone.” That thought was felt before it could be spoken,
before speech was conceived. Humans longed for a comforting presence, when they
died, not chill oblivion. Death offers it, and leads them on.
I, too,
predate speech – Speech, or Language, is a flitting, fickle creature, born of
the desire to communicate, mercurial and yet constant, like the air itself. But
I am not like her. I have had many names, but what I am does not change.
Fairness,
perhaps, was my first name. Long before sounds became words, the thought of
fairness existed. It is not fair. It should be fair. I came into being
the first time a hungry member of a troop was fed by one who had hunted well,
the first time a weaker hunter was robbed by a strong one.
Friendship is Magic style cartoon show starring a cast of minified classic Dungeons & Dragons beasties.
The tiny beholder who comes off as a desperate people-pleaser because her sense of self-worth is based entirely on the utility of her bewildering assortment of oddly specific eye-rays.
The owlbear cub who isn’t sure whether she’s a bird or a mammal, played exactly like a low key gender identity crisis.
The miniature mimic with a debilitating case of imposter syndrome who eventually learns that it’s okay to be different things to different people as long as they all come from the heart.
James Patterson books are an invasive species humans brought into library shelf environments because we wanted fast-reproducing, easily-digestible food. But at the time, we didn’t know as much about their natural airport environment, which has very few available nutrients. This environment greatly favours the genericalist species like Patterson, so there’s very little bibliodiversity compared to the more specialized library or bookstore environment. This means that each species in an airport has an enormously expanded niche compared to just about anywhere else books can thrive - in their natural habitat, Patterson books may be one of only 3 or 4 species competing for available nutrients. In these low-density, low-nutrient environments, Patterson books occupy vast swathes of territory without bothering other species. This history makes it extremely easy for them to outcompete the more specialized inhabitants of the library shelf, who have often been carefully selected to fill ultraspecific subgenre niches.
Left unweeded, Patterson books will expand their territory over multiple book bays, crowding out or even straight-up eliminating space for competitors and sending contributor-author runners out to other shelves. Contained to a single, planned set of shelves and kept strictly pruned, Patterson books can contribute to a healthy ecosystem. But many curators don’t know or don’t care to do the planning and maintenance, leading to the nightmare of overcrowding and loss of circulation.
it’s not so much that Venus’s tectonic plates are locked, it’s more that it never had them in the first place!
which is a major surprise, actually, because Venus is the most Earth-like of the other planets in our solar system.
surprise?
“what,” you may say, flailing in consternation, “about Mars?? why are we trying to colonize Mars if Venus is more Earth-like???”
and it’s a good question! Venus IS technically more Earth-like in the sense that it’s right next door, is a solid 80% the size of Earth, and has both a working atmosphere and a liquid mantle composed of molten rock, BUT- it’s also important to note that Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system and it rains boiling sulfuric acid at almost all times! our first probes to the damn place actually melted. MELTED.
this is what Hell looks like.
BUT ANYWAY so Venus is the planet in our solar system that’s the MOST physically similar to Earth, our dear mother who does not rain boiling sulfuric acid on our heads hardly at all ever, so it’s kind of a shock that its geology is COMPLETELY FUCKING DIFFERENT.
see, Earth’s outer crust is broken up into a series of mind-breakingly-massive tectonic plates that sort of skid around on top of the liquid mantle, slowly drifting in different directions driven by Earth’s rotation and bonking into each other randomly like a 300-million-year-long Pinball tournament!
but on Venus, the entire outer crust is a single solid piece sitting on top of the liquid mantle, like the peel of an orange.
though not as good for you. because of the whole Boiling Acid thing.
and contrary to what you might think, this actually makes Venus a VERY VIOLENT place! the outer crust twists and deforms slightly as the liquid mantle spins under it, like a water balloon being flung repeatedly against a wall by a small child, but all of that force can’t really be dispersed because the crust is a single solid piece of rigid rock!
so what happens is that this force builds and builds and BUILDS until Venus can’t take the strain anymore and has a very volcanic tantrum about it.
unlike the rest of the solar system, the surface of Venus is made of relatively new and entirely volcanic rock- because the entire planet is basically having a planet-wide eruption event at all times, with multiple huge volcanos just spewing gigantic amounts of liquid rock everywhere like it’s their damn job, to the point where Venus is just getting resurfaced like a McDonalds parking lot every epoch or so.
aren’t you glad Earth doesn’t do this? I am SO glad Earth doesn’t do this.
(much, anyway)
uh anyway that’s why we’re trying to colonize Mars instead, and why plate tectonics are a GOOD thing! thanks for coming to my TED talk bye
earth kinda attempted to do this once (google ‘siberian traps’) and it caused the biggest extinction event in its history. so that was fun.
This extinction event, also colloquially called the Great Dying, affected all life on Earth, and is estimated to have killed about 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species living at the time.[11][12][13] Some of the disastrous events that impacted the Earth continued to repeat themselves on Earth five to six million years after the initial extinction occurred.[14] Over time a small portion of the life that survived the extinction was able to repopulate and expand starting with low trophic levels (local communities) until the higher trophic levels (large habitats) were able to be re-established.[14] Calculations of sea water temperature from δ18O measurements indicate that at the peak of the extinction, the Earth underwent lethally hot global warming, in which equatorial ocean temperatures exceeded 40 °C (104 °F).[15] It took roughly eight to nine million years for any diverse ecosystem to be re-established; however, new classes of animals were established after the extinction that did not exist beforehand.[14]
Yikes!
note that it wasn’t the lava that made everything so hot, it was the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses spewed out by the volcanoes.
also, The Great Dying is the most metal name of any science fact ever.
The line about “Templars suffering” comes up often in Inquisition. And I think it’s actually an underrated issue in pro mage circles. Templars are in fact suffering. Often they are recruited from the most vulnerable: orphans and cast offs and poor boys looking to move up in the world. They’re forced to develop a lyrium addiction to keep them in line. They’re often brainwashed by the Chantry as much as many mages are. Seekers are made Tranquil without their knowledge or consent (albeit they are cured).
The issue is that it’s actually not a contradiction to say that Templars are oppressors and yet still suffer under systemic oppression. It’s the same thing as acknowledging that patriarchy hurts men as well as woman.
The issue is that literally everything Templars suffer is a direct result of anti-mage prejudice. They are recruited and brainwashed at a young age because the Chantry knows this will make them perfect weapons who are less likely to empathize with their charges, as they’ve been taught from childhood to treat them like walking bombs. They are forced to develop lyrium addictions because the Chantry knows it needs magic to stop magic, and yet is too afraid of magic itself to let them have full control of their abilities (or help them recover in the event that they want to leave). As for Templar deaths at the hands of mages, again, if you don’t lock people prone to demon possession in a high stress environment where they are forced to encounter at least one demon, chances are good nobody is getting demon possessed, and no one is getting murdered by an abomination.
Take a look at non-circle mages. Morrigan has not only never become an abomination, the only Templars she has killed are ones who came with the intent to take her and her mother from their home: their deaths could have been avoided completely if they’d just left them alone. Dalish mages have developed cures for their abominations all on their own. More often than not all Templars do is stir up trouble with them. Solas dips in and out of the fade all he wants, has long lasting friendships with spirits, and yet surprisingly the absence of Templars has not resulted in any mass murder sprees on his part.
Meanwhile, harrowing OFTEN results in the creation of abominations. The incident at Kinloch Hold took place entirely under Templar supervision. And most (if not all) of the demonic activity happening in Kirkwall was the direct result of mages feeling hopeless or backed into a corner by the threat of Templar violence. Templars died, yes, but they should never have been sent in this manner in the first place.
Templar suffering is a Chantry created problem. If people like Cassandra and Cullen really do want to protect Templars, then they of all people should be advocating for a HEAVILY reformed circle, if not their abolishment altogether. In a world where the Chantry doesn’t fear magic, there is no need to keep Templars on a lyrium leash. There is no need to allow abusive employers (and yes, while the abuse Templars suffered under Meredith is minimal compared to mage suffering, it is still present and it still resulted in death) to rise to the top because “well, their methods are effective at least!”. Demonic possession would drop down to next to nothing if they stopped forcing mages to face demons under threat of death if they take too long, and if they felt less likely in general like they were prisoners.
In short, if you want to stop Templar suffering, you have to create a system that doesn’t require suffering. Of anyone.
