okay man so. me and Warrior Cats. has anyone heard of Chicken Smoothie? it's like this virtual pet website and when I was about eleven it was my favorite thing. thing was, there was this whole forum section, which my parents had absolutely forbidden me to go on because it could have adults. le gasp. anyway me being me even if eleven I went on it anyway, specifically the RP section. and even though technically people under thirteen weren't supposed to be able to post in the forums, apparently a lot of other people had also lied about their ages, because let me tell you, the average writing on there read like a ten-year-old's. anyway I tried desperately regardless to find some sort of Warriors RP thread that had people who could actually RP. I started my own Clan (aka thread). but to no avail. no one was as dedicated as I was. it was tragic. (I also had a cat fursona with wings don't look at me.) my friend (who was actually lowkey shitty tbh but that's a story for another time) who had first bullied me into reading the books and I also LARPed Warriors-type stuff a lot. we were very fond of having our characters get captured by humans and locked up and forced to have kits?? in retrospect that is pretty weird. tw: noncon? anyway yes. Warriors was my shit. okay someone has already said this but yeah, that was like a companion book. illustrated by Keith Thompson, btw. MASTERFUL SEGUE!!! another book series illustrated by Keith Thompson was the Leviathan series, which is. well. I have already infodumped about it elsewhere on Kintsugi, but it's wonderful. if you haven't read it, I made my parents read it and they both liked it, and also Roach recced it a while back, so despite the fact it's YA I am well assured that adults like it too, so you should go read it at once. anyway, I imprinted like a duckling on one of the protagonists, Deryn Sharp. in retrospect this was basically a ginormous crush, but I loved her so much. I wanted to be her. I'm pretty sure if I had been exposed to the Tumblr fictionkin community at the time, I would've said I was kin of her. incidentally she was disguising herself as a boy to serve in the military throughout the course of the series. geez, past Eso, I wonder why you were so fond of that idea??? anyway I was so fond of this series I started writing fanfiction of it before I knew was fanfiction was. it was a Novel. it was Art. it was a continuation from the end of the series. shortly thereafter I discovered ff.net and began posting it there. the Leviathan fandom is tiny, and I can demurely say it caused quite a stir. I got the author of the longest and frankly the best fic in the fandom to be my beta. anyway I got about 75k into this masterpiece before I gave up on it, and I still have an outline of the rest of it sitting around somewhere. it's still the sixth longest Leviathan fic on ff.net, and I gotta say, it is pretty decent for something written by a seventh grader, if you ignore the author's notes and the OC. links available upon request. yeah, he was a djinn! man that magic system was so cool. also, I'm like 85% sure I shipped him and Nathaniel. whoops. pedophilia? Young Wizards is the shit. I still regret I only read like five of them (the first one, the one where Nina went to Ireland, the one where Nina's mom had cancer, the one with the whales, and the one where Dairine had her Ordeal). I should probably hunt some other ones down sometime. also I was so obsessed with Artemis Fowl. I had a crush on him. I wrote self-insert Eso/Artemis fanfic in my head. and in an apparently completely non-conflicting way, I also really, really shipped Artemis and Holly. for this reason The Atlantis Complex and The Time Paradox were probably my favorites. and yeah, the last one was weird and also disappointing. man I loved the Inheritance Cycle so much. I thought it was, like, the Pinnacle of Literature. also I was at the point in my life when I just really, really loved dragons. anything with a dragon in it, I would read. which was a lot of books. and then I tried to re-read Eragon a couple of years later and went, "??? I thought this was good writing??" which, yeah. not to shit on your fave or anything, but I think Christopher Paolini was like sixteen when he published Eragon, and it shows. says the sixteen-year-old. to my recollection it took two or three books before it got really weird, but yeah. there was resurrection?? there were sentient polar bears??? in retrospect this was slightly predictable from the first couple of books; anything that insists every dragon's name has to start with G is a little strange to begin with. I just wanted little clay dragons, man. and @Starcrossedsky same with the "read because it had a dragon on the cover," though. I was insatiable. and around the time of my reading that series I was enrolled in a class at a clay studio, and guess what I did? tried to make my own clay dragons. needless to say the results are pretty amusing once I get past the embarrassment. another kids' series that I remember really liking was Fablehaven. did anyone read that? it didn't even have all that weird of an ending. also Ender's Game, although I don't know that that's a kids' book, exactly. man, I should go through my old bookshelves and see what I can find. I read a lot.
HAHAHA oh man I remember Chicken Smoothie, yeah. I avoided the forums there for the most part (for pretty much the same reasons--parents wouldn't let me go on Forums because there might be Scary Adult Predators there. This also extended to the Neopets forums though, so obviously I kind of completely disregarded that rule. Especially since it continued until after I was graduated from high school, what the hell) ANYWAYS. Yeah oh my god. I got lucky in finding the guild I did, which was surprisingly literate, but good god. There were SO MANY awful writers out there. Dude, though, my guild had at least three different Major Plots where cats were captured and forced to have kits. None of them involved humans, though, just other cats. Usually Rogues or Other Groups of Cats. Maybe it's a Thing for Warriors RPers, idfk. ...... though that doesn't seem all that weird to me, considering that we had some really... interesting people show up, one of which Spoiler: tw gore and some really twisted stuff had a mother cat get eaten by her own kits. I don't remember if they ate their way out of the womb (unrealistic but w/e, it's not like reality factored into this at ALL) or if they were, like, drinking milk and just decided "HEY I'M GONNA JUST START EATING" and the mom cat just... let it happen... I think in some sort of weird "awww look how cute they're eating me, I am such a good mom giving nutrition to my kits" it still kinda freaks me out tbh
@esotericPrognosticator Don't worry, small em ALSO wrote em/artemis fic in their head. did anyone here read the spiderwick chronicles?
You should! Future books have an autistic wizard and snarky female Lone Power! Though do get the New Millennial editions
If you reread/continue reading warriors plz talk to me about warriors it is so rare to find people that actually likes the later series I am in an eternal hell of wanting to talk to warriors with problem who understand what I'm eating and also aren't tumblr-judgey Most people who stopped in power of three because the series got more fantasy ish, cats started getting magic powers and constantly interacting with heaven and hell. I didn't stop till halfway through the fourth series, even then I caught up again when the last of the fourth series came out cause it was supposed to be the last book And then they said noooo it's the last of that timeline! We're making a fifth series that takes place in he past!!! And I screamed and caught up again. And now I am caught up with all but some guide books and side e-books because those are usually not as well written or very relevant and they just started the sixth series, which, lol, continues the original timeline. They will never stop A note about Survivors, the dog series! Last I checked none of the authors/editors that worked on Warriors are working on Survivors, Harpercollins just wanted to use the same pen name since same talking animal feral survival theme. Haven't read any myself, can't say whether they're good or not! Once I have access to a library again I might check them out My irl friends and I had our own private guild for our warrior cats oc clans. They were Super Original dude. The clan we were in was called WillowClan, bordered by StreamClan and MountainClan and FireClan Ok FireClan was sorta weird but. Yeah. But my favorite thing that came out of my 11 year old mind was the BloodClan stand-in, a group of thug cats who lived in the desert next to the forest (shh) called Stabby Pack. They had Tortured Names like ghostsoul and goreheart.
my ban was very solid until at least the end of middle school, and I doubt my parents would have been psyched about me being on forums freshman year of high school, but I went away to school, so I could totally get away with it. such a #rebel. you're telling me. I mean, at that point, I could type about 15 words per minute, but at least they were correctly-spelled and reasonably-grammatical words. good god. if it is a Thing, what does it show about Warriors RPers as a group, I wonder? :U also yeah if someone in one of my RP threads had decided to dump that shit on me while I was twelve or whatever, I would definitely still be freaked out. I am almost 100% sure I either participated in or founded clans called WillowClan, MountainClan, and FireClan. just goes to show the proliferation of creativity in the young minds of our generation.
tbh I almost feel like we should make a split-off thread for Warriors Nostalgia because man I could talk for days
oh nah i only stopped b/c i don't have a very good attention span and remembering things that happened in the last book for months at a time (the amount of time i had to wait for new ones to come out) was downright impossible for me. the next series sounds RADICAL and i would have loved it. i'll try to catch up eventually.
Probably fitting that it'd be my thread https://kintsugi.seebs.net/threads/one-thousand-talking-cats-warrior-cats-thread.3606/ (I can't figure out how to hyperlink on mobile sry)
OK SO I am trying to remember the name of a book trilogy and failing. It was like... ok it was set in pseudo-fantasy Egypt. The main girl character was a child priestess of the major religion, which worshiped a rain goddess and a sun god and the sun god literally incarnated on Earth as the king. And the old king died and the girl character found the new king, who was like 9, except by then an Evil Military Dude and his girlfriend one of the priestesses had set up some other kid as their king? And just before the climax the girl priestess gets kicked out of the priesthood and thrown into the old king's pyramid to die (it doesn't work.) And then in the third book they all go on an adventure to the underworld? eta: I just remembered that there is a thief character and in the second book I think they go looking for a magic pond or something that grants wishes?
Among a bunch of other books I read as a child there's two Brazilian books that stand out and they were really amazing - they were written by different authors but they what they had in common was a blend of fantasy, history and sociopolitical commentary which was really clever. One I can't remember the name, EDIT: it is O Vampiro Que Descobriu o Brasil (The Vampire Who Discovered Brazil) by Ivan Jaf. It was about a Portuguese man who sails on the first ships to arrive to Brazil (in Pedro Álvares Cabral's voyage) and just the night before he leaves he is bitten by a vampire. He therefore becomes the first vampire in Brazil, and, being immortal, gets to witness all of Brazilian history - the urbanization, changing costumes, the incompetent governments, the oppression of the poor, general historical fuckups. Oh yeah, also, since, in this book, vampirization crystallizes you exactly as you were when you were bitten, he becomes a vampire who deals with chronic pain - from a stubbed toe, of all things, which he got a mere seconds before being bitten. Another was called As Batalhas do Castelo (The Castle's Battles) and this one was just freaking brilliant. It was set in Medieval Europe but with no specified location, and it told the story of a court jester who gets awarded a Duchy by the dying king who he cheered up for years. The other nobles deride him and send him to this abandoned old ruin of a castle, surrounded by barren land, isolated and in desrepair, with a "court" made up of criminals, disabled people, beggers and lowly servants. But basically, the Jester-Duke is a very wise man and he and his mockup court end up establishing a free society as equals, facing a lot of problems and challenges and overcoming them via working together and protecting one another. It blew little me away because the conflict was mainly social and interpersonal: how to work together, how to cleverly solve problems that arise, and how to resist an oppressive status quo that makes all these people outcasts. Also, the author is a Socialist and, though the book is not propaganda and is in fact very critical, he used some narrative techniques from soviet propaganda film: the hero of the story is an entire society, not an individual character, and its villain is an oppressive system, not an individual character. As an 11-yo or something, I had never been exposed to narratives like that and it fascinated me.
I'm reading pendragon for the first time cause I never read it when I was younger. I'm on book seven and I'm not too happy about what's going on
Did anyone else read the Ranger's Apprentice series?? It's super fun and cute ;w; i'm re-reading/catching up on and off right now and it's just. ahh. i love it. it's really cute but still has enough intrigue to suck you in but is also an easy read and has exactly my type of snark humor. and it's literally just all my badass medieval person goals i had as a kid. 100% influences my choice of character class in all rpging
I read one, I think? At one point I had read most of the books in my tiny island's library's YA section. I don't think they ever got the sequels (this happened a lot and was incredibly frustrating. We were on an island, there was only the one bookstore and it was expensive.) Some favorites: Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass (especially TtLG) Artemis Fowl Early stuff by Eva Ibbotson (Island of the Aunts, Which Witch, etc.) Firebringer/The Sight Young Wizards (a new one came out recently. I want to read it.) Dark is Rising pentalogy Anything by Diana Wynne Jones (I'm still so sad that she passed away) Watership Down The Big Book About the Human Body (started my descent into Biology Hell) A Wrinkle in Time/Wind in the Door/Swiftly Tilting Planet a series of books with a mouse watchmaker/repairer main character? I think they were published by a pretty small publisher out of Portland, OR Enchanted Forest Chronicles I know there're more, but these are the ones that sprang to mind. (And a bunch of them might not count as nostalgia because I still read/reread them regularly :b )
I used to have all the rhymes from the dark is rising memorized Also, wrinkle in time etc are SO GOOD and I need to reread them asap
This isn't nostalgia, but I am trying to also remember the name of a YA urban fantasy type book. In it, the main character dies early on and gets some kind of job after death helping people, I guess. And there's all these weird cool powers that people get - like, there's one dude who can pull out his teeth (they grow back) and each one can grant a person a wish (but one wish per person). The main character girl has the power to peel off her skin (and hang it up in one piece) and be a rad skeleton lady who can make NEW skins out of all kinds of things, like fire or water or feathers. I stopped reading it midway through because the guy you think is going to be the villain totally is the villain and also an awful representation of OCD or autism or something. As I recall, though, it had a pretty good percentage of POC - I think both the main girl and the wish granter dude were Latin@? So yeah.
Accidentally nostalgia-barfed at Husband about Narnia yesterday. I'm at a weird level of nostalgia where I loved the books but I don't want to reread them because I know the heavy-handed Christian allegories will just make me angry. REDWAAAAAAAAALLLLL Basically anything Mercedes Lackey wrote. Enchanted Forest because Cimorene was a BOSS And then a bunch of shit way out of my age level. I didn't read all the Fun kid books because I was kinda elitist and proud that I could read at a college level in Elementary school, therefore that's basically all I did. Which resulted in me trying to read Moby Dick at the age of 11 at Girl Scout Camp. Also it was much easier to smuggle Adult books home for pleasure reading because then my mother couldn't get mad at me for ~~Getting Lost In A Fantasy World~~ and reading all the time when her friends would be all impressed at her 10yo buried in a tome thicker than her hands. I was, however, allowed to read The Babysitter's Club.
yesss, Dealing With Dragons is still one of my favorite books, but I dug in my heels rather than read any of the sequels because I loved that Cimorene DIDN'T go hook up and have babies with some deserving guy and that's apparently exactly what happens later :I Speaking of the Babysitter's Club, those have popped up recently in the form of popular graphic novels illustrated by Raina Telgemeier which are actually quite nice :> I'll probably go on more about my favorite older books later but it are work time now :V
