Jay Rambles - Tumblr Posts
Has anybody else read The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu, because I'm honestly surprised its not more popular.
Its got such a great spin on the chosen one trope, where the chosen one is a boy who is kinda useless and very spoiled from the fact that nobody is going to question or hurt the Important and Powerful chosen one. Somehow though, he is still a very likeable character and its easy to sympathise with him in the later parts of the books.
So he's very much a whiny looser at the start, and it takes Taishi, an elderly grandmaster war artist who is very grumpy about leaving retirement to make him...not that. She was such a great character, simultaneously grumpy and sharp tongued, but a softy underneath it all.
Thats not even mentioning the other POV characters who are also amazing, cool, badass, and flawed, and also show that there is no good and evil sides in war.
For a book about a young male chosen one there are so many badass older women while the male characters are all way less cool and competent (said with the greatest affection). So, would highly recommend giving it a read!
Today I learnt that men used to store things in their codpieces, kind of like how women today store things in their bras???
So I'm reading The Cloisters by Katy Hays, and I knew it was dark academia going in but hooo boy I did not expect it to be this accurate. And I'm only like 1/5 of the way through.
The elitism; always feeling like you're not enough, trying to replicate the people you see as 'better' than you.
Feeling like you need to become a certain 'type' of person to belong
The amount of reverence given to your 'academic superiors'
The instability of academia- having opportunities taken away with no warning
The in-group out-group social structures where everybody has their own little niches and the nervousness of being outside those and the difficulty of getting in
The exploitation of passion and love of learning for the goals of professors and institutions
Like damn. The book is really good but it is stressing me out.
Back on my Solavellan bullshit.
With the new baldurs gate update coming out next week, the temptation to replay my first character, Slate, is strong. Despite the fact I haven't finished my other....uh....three runs I have going.......
Just finished reading The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett and one of the many things I loved about this book was the way that it represented neurodivergency. I don't think I've ever read another book which has explored that to this depth (granted I haven't really gone out of my way to do this).
Like, Din having dyslexia was really influential to the plot and his character arc, but also wasn't like the only thing he was struggling with. And I loved seeing Ana being just...well very Ana, aka very autistic coded.
The moment at the end of the book (spoilers I guess) where there is just a beautiful moment of neurodivergent solidarity between the two. How Ana tells him that she chose him BECAUSE of his neurodivergency, and how she saw it as a strength. How she believes that the empire needs to be able to work for all of them. Low key made me emotional.
Anyway, would highly recommend the book. Its a fun murder mystery fantasy book with leviathans, spontaneous eruption of trees from the body (not a euphemism), and two very neurodivergent detectives with a very funny and endearing dynamic.
Forever going to be annoyed at our society's obsession with the pushup as a marker of strength. Like, um yeah, I find a full pushup hard because I'm bench pressing like 55kg. Fuck you I'm not going to feel bad about going onto my knees or doing an even easier version