There's a book series i keep getting adds for called "The Spirit Breather: Native Guardians" by a woman named Bekah Harris. The description on the add reads " Dive into the wondrous world of native american folklore with raven mockers, nunnehi immortals, magic, and prophecy." I have no idea if this woman is native but I'm pretty sure that still wouldn't make it chill. Just wanted y'all to 'oof' with me.
I have no idea what a raven mocker or nunnehi immortal is, but it sounds a bit too specific to qualify as 'native american' folklore. Unless it's like, a compilation of... I dunno, a bunch of different nations myths of guardian spirits?
Maybe she grew up in an area with a strong native population and picked up a lot? Idk if strong is the right word, im way overtired. Lots of white ladies leaving glowing reviews and "wow I love native myths!" in the comments, along with a few people who were like "why are you calling their culture/religion folklore" and "is Bekah native?" which I was pleased to see. Like, thank you, im not the only nit-picker. If there were harsher reviews they may have been removed? Not sure. Anyway. Oof. In terms of more non-fiction things I've enjoyed, Daughters of the Earth is pretty good. I haven't read it in a few years but I remember it being written pretty respectfully, it was mostly focused on lives of women in pre-colonial America and had quotes from actual women who were named, so that was cool. I read a lot of Tumblr and things on my phone so i never bookmarked any of those "novels written by poc" lists, which is regrettable but I'm sure I can Google some.
This doesn't go here but i don't think we have a proper thread I bought an anime season a while ago but I accidentally bought the English version, not subtitled. Cant watch those. Nope. And im not making an anime thread just to bitch about dubbing XD
Latest nightmare fuel; zombie apocalypse book, in which page time is devoted to the teenage Gary Stu rummaging through the underwear drawer of the presumably deceased teenage daughters of the empty household he's raiding for supplies. That's just creepy in so many ways.
Later on, there's a thoroughly bizarre scene in which the protagonist goes outside in winter wearing only a parka and sneakers, on the logic that he'll only be outside for a moment. I'd have thought he'd want to be dressed indoors too to save on generator fuel and firewood, but what do I know? He gets cornered by a big fat zombie, fends it off with a stick, gets his parka torn off so he's only wearing sneakers, slips in dogshit and falls, but rallies and clubs the zombie to death. The love interest, whose panties (stolen from the aforementioned dead people, the writer specified) keep being described, witnesses this and for... some ungodly reason tells him she absolutely must jump his bones right then. I'm wondering if the author has very specific fetishes or a very strange idea of what constitutes badassery.
Also, the characters in question are both underage, just for extra creep factor. Sixteen is legal in my location, but a retirement-age American writer going into raptures about which fancy lingerie stolen from dead people a sixteen-year-old girl is wearing today is just squicky beyond measure. Besides that, there are more useful things to steal during a zombie apocalypse!
There is a lot of "what" going on here. Can we return cp2077 as an entire concept? Scrap it so hard we don't even remember it.
That reminds me an awful lot of Lily's "Florenovia" stories in the webcomic Leftover Soup, except those were supposed to be ridiculous. ETA: like this.
Given that the original tabletop game was published in 1988 and the Japanese stock market bubble didn't burst until 1990, that's still more leeway than I'd be inclined to give it re: the Japan stuff.
In this book I'm reviewing the evil guy's boasts about how he's getting away with what he's doing are a mess. He's alternately emphasised how they do everything all cloak-and-dagger and kill anyone who might even be thinking of exposing them, how they have all the law enforcement ever in their pockets so it doesn't matter if his victim tells people (and no, he doesn't seem to be supposed to be bluffing), and that there's some weird provision written into the law allowing his family to get away with everything they do for Stu-ish reasons. All I can think of is this.
Desperately annoying thing; when the character who's obviously a self-insert is supposed to have a personality flaw (i.e. misogyny), but simultaneously the writer doesn't understand why that flaw is bad. This reviewer brought up a similar problem with early Dresden Files:
I’ve encountered similar issues more than once myself—the character has what is, according to all reason and reality, a personal flaw, but instead of the narrative portraying it as such, it’s treated as neutral at worst, and often even positive. And honestly that’s such a shame, because imo characters either overcoming their flaws or suffering consequences for them makes for much more interesting storytelling and characterization than the flaws not being acknowledged. Honestly it’s basically the core issue with most Sues, too—a lot of characters who get decried as Mary Sues (rightly or not) actually COULD be interesting characters if their flaws were acknowledged by the narrative (because frankly I’ve seen next to no characters who just Don’t Have Any Flaws; in my experience it’s usually that those flaws go unacknowledged, which...still has a pretty similar effect on the reader).
While I agree with the overall sentiment, I like to remind people that Harry was wrong in this case. It was a man and a woman team who were working together, but the man was the one who actually did the heart exploding spell.
