Well Fuck Balin

Well fuck Balin

This is one of my favorite lines! It makes me smile every time

thoughts with spoilers for murderbot 6

Reasons "Well fuck Balin" is a great line

JollyBaby going "nah Balin is a manager" and MB being like "wait Balin doesn't lift heavy things because it's a manager? UGH" is just funny and relatable

It's also MEMORABLE

This means that later on, when we learn more about Balin, I'm not like "uh whomst the fuck?"

(I have a so-so memory and frequently struggle to keep track of different characters' names)

AND it's important that we remember Balin

I seriously think this one line is just... really incredible from a "how does the story fit together" point of view.

It's memorable, but it doesn't draw too much attention to itself. It's short and unobtrusive.

It's memorable because it's funny. It's not obvious like a character, I dunno, ominously standing in the shadows with its eyes/indicator lights turning red.

It helps the story function. Imagine how much worse the story would function if Balin was completely unmemorable.

And that's why "Well fuck Balin" is one of my favorite murderbot lines of all time.

Yes I just finished this one! I hope lots of people read it and it develops a thriving fandom. It DOES feel like a very tumblr-friendly work

If Found, Return to Hell by Em X. Liu

Loved, loved this fantasy novella! The protagonist works a soul-sucking corporate job at the call centre of One Wizard, redirecting customers whose spells have gone wrong. When they unexpectedly get to investigate a call, of course it turns out to be less routine than it seems...

The story uses Chinese mythology in a modern-with-magic setting: talismans, Courts of Hell, spirit possession...all the good stuff. It's set in a nameless city in China (I think).

Don't get put off by the second-person narrative ("you"). It's not gimmicky and you soon stop noticing. I think the author used it to avoid gendering the protagonist. They're nonbinary themself, and a number of characters have non-typical genders.

Despite the beginning, the book's tone is ultimately warm and hopeful. It's about opening yourself to caring for others, and the rewards that come from that.

Really, this book is so Tumblr: gender is irrelevant, love is real, found families support each other, and everything you learned from watching The Untamed et al. will come come to good use.

Artemis Fowl and That One Time Opal Koboi Went Full Disney Villain

Ah yes, the book that explores the aftermath of trying to mind-wipe Artemis Fowl and the consequences of assuming that just because your archnemesis is in a coma, they're not plotting their revenge. It's no secret that we stan Opal Koboi in this house, but uhhh...not gonna lie, she makes that REALLY DIFFICULT in the early chapters of this book. Let's talk Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception.

*As per usual with sequels and books that aren't the first in the series, spoilers abound below the break.*

Opal Koboi being hated by her entire engineering class in college--Foaly included--is most easily and canonically chalked up to systemic fairy sexism. I'm not here to dispute that charge, because there was absolutely airy sexism involved, but I submit to you, dear reader, that the fact that Opal had matered cleansing comas by age 14 and could literally study in her sleep might have also had something to do with it. Although if it had, Foaly might not have been so lackadaisical about letting Opal rot in the J. Argon clinic.

Let's just take a minute to appreciate that cloning herself and plotting a breakout from a stupid secure mental health facility with ADDED LEP SECURITY is the BACKUP plan. Because hot damn honey, replacing yourself with a clone requires a level of planning that is like, fourth-level chess master with a flair for the dramatic--and we'll get back to that flair for the dramatic in a second, because it is fully on display for every single one of Opal's three main plots in this book.

Her first main plan is to get revenge on Holly and Root for disrupting her plan to become Empress of Haven by framing Holly for Root's murder by tricking Holly into taking a practically impossible shot to disarm an explosive device that was strapped to the Commander's chest and broadcasting video but not audio of the whole event to the LEP. Like, Opal. My girl. That is simultaneously brutal and dramatic of you.

And the thing about the entire scene is that it's really, really damn well written. I got this book on release day, and bawled all the way through this and I think the next couple of chapters. The extra cruel thing that Opal did here was choose a murder weapon that there was precisely ZERO hope of coming back from. Holly may have managed a four-minute healing for Butler in the last book, but as (I'm pretty sure) Foaly says, "magic doesn't work on melted slop." The bomb Opal strapped to Root's chest doesn't just kill him, it collapses the chute tunnel behind Holly as she makes a desperate bid to escape in time to rescue Artemis from another bomb. There was no way to bring Root back from this, and because Opal is a high-drama nemesis, Root is of course suffering the whole way down. The bomb is strapped to his chest using octo-bonds, and Opal spends the entire scene remotely tightening them, slowly crushing Root's chest while Holly stands six feet away to stop the proximity sensor from blowing them both to kingdom come. Root's death is brutal, painful, and Holly spends the entire rest of the book mourning him. It is HEARTBREAKING for a middle grade death scene, and really hella extra for a middle grade villain.

Opal's plan for revenge on Artemis is a bit less moustache-twirling, but not by much. She has clocked that Artemis is really into art theft since his mind wipe, so she gets to The Fairy Thief before he does and plants a bio-bomb tracker in the painting tube that will activate once the tube is opened. So her plan was for Artemis to die in a moment of ironic triumph while Holly looked on. Because oh yeah, Holly bails on the explosion in the Haven chute just barely in time on the hope and prayer of saving Artemis. Unfortunately, Holly gets to the hotel just in time to see the bomb go off. Artemis is fine because Butler is just that damn good, but Holly is having arguably the worst day if her life.

As she collapses to the roof of the hotel trying to process the fact that three of the most important people in her life have just been murdered in front of her--and the niggling worry that the sweet spot might not have been real and she might have just flat-out killed Root herself--who shows up to gloat? Opal goddamn Koboi. In tow Opal has a second bio-bomb for Holly that she barely escapes by containing it with her helmet. As a bonus side effect, Ark Sool and everyone in the lower elements thinks Holly is dead now, because all her vitals flattened simultaneously as the bomb fried her helmet. So now Foaly is also having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

And in a brief sidebar: Opal might be a dramatical cats villain, but we love her. We DO NOT love Ark Sool, because his ass made Foaly go over the footage of Root's death with a fine tooth comb to try to prove Holly's guilt, and even Foaly almost breaks because he literally has to slow-mo through the footage of Root being blown to hell multiple times. Like, Foaly just has PTSD now. That's just a thing that Ark Sool casually did to the centaur who is almost single-hoofedly standing between humans and the People. NICE GOING, ASSHOLE. We hate Ark Sool.

Now, Opal's track record for successful plans in this book seems to have begun and ended with cloning herself and having the Brill twins break her out of the Argon Clinic, because her revenge plan is 1 for 3, and her backup revenge plan just gets WILD. On discovering that Holly and Artemis suvived, Opal captures them and drops them in a defunct theme park that was human wonders of the world themed and is currently overrun by trolls. And the really wild thing is that Opal had to have either done this before or else has the best freaking team in the world, because the exits are newly blocked and there are little screens with gloats on them scattered throughout the whole park. Holly and Artemis do escape, but it would have definitely easier if the LEP hadn't mind-wiped Artemis, because he was definitely not working with a full deck and kept trying to just *wait out the delusion* instead of actively running from trolls with a taste for human flesh. None of that is ideal, but thanks once again to Butler and Mulch, Artemis and Holly live to foil Opal's big main plan.

The TLDR on this plan is to throw humans and fairies into a massive war by exposing the fairies when they try to sneakily scupper a human attempt to mine the mantle for power. This involves a lot of warheads and phsyics and attempts to direct a metric ton of molten metal eating through the earth's crust. For being the objectively highest stakes plot, the book doesn't spend a whole lot of time on this, and I can't blame them. Opal going full vengeful dramatic villain is WAY more interesting. Unfortunately, Holly and Artemis do manage to thwart Opal, who has the meltdown of all meltdowns right before she spends a week as a human child on a farm--for complicated reason that I cannot be bothered to explain here, because Opal Koboi is objectively too fantastic and dramatic to deserve that...except for how she kind does deserve that for what she did to Commander Root.

Ark Sool probably also deserves it, because he doesn't let Holly attend Root's funeral, and proceeds to bury her in internal affairs investigations. We really, REALLY hate Ark Sool.

So overall, this book really marks a turning point/new beginning for Artemis and Pals, and this book is where Opal Koboi arguably shines brightest because our girl is UNHINGED and we love to watch it happen. Even if we do start watching it through tears.

obsessed with the era of historical fashion between the 1860s and 1870s where aniline dyes kept being invented. you can find some absolute fucking eyesores of dresses that were only made that way because “acid magenta” was invented last month and it was trendy.

like this iconic gown:

or this one from the 1870s in aniline purple and aniline black:

or a trendy yellow and black gown from c. 1865, perhaps?

feel free to reblog with additional eyesores (affectionate) that i might have missed

This is doing something to my brain

There was nothing here dazzling enough to describe as magic. The spell was in the obsession, the relentless intensity.

From Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi, translated by David Boyd and Lucy North

Book shelf clean out: Bruce Coville

I loved these two series.

The Magic Shop books were fantasy about kids getting magical creatures they had to care for. It was my introduction to "little magical shop that wasnt there yesterday." I so badly wanted to be Jeremy and have my own dragon ^_^ there was another in this series too but I must have just borrowed it from the library.

The Aliens Ate My Homework series was sci fi. It was about a kid who gets pulled into adventures with some nonhuman aliens. Among other concepts, it talked a out how the worst thing you could be was cruel. It talked about the importance of finding a code of conduct that worked for you. It had cool aliens with cool alien jobs, including a Mr Snout who could mentally bond with people. There were relationships I didnt really understand (not in a sexual way just like they were aliens!). There was a guy who has modules that his friends click into and iut of his brain to give him different uhhh behavior patterns. There is a funny height joke. There was a talking plant who went by Phil O Dendron. The family characters (mom and siblings) come back during the series and clearly have been doing some character growth offscreen.