#claro3

[etirabys]

fondly remembering every adult I met through fandom who talked to me online when I was at teen & helped me grow up

[etirabys]

nianeyna replied to your post: aw man remember ‘harry potter is the boy who lived...

one day I’ll finish reading the sacrifices arc….. maybe

claro3 replied to your post: aw man remember ‘harry potter is the boy who lived...

wait wait what is this

the sacrifices arc? I don’t recommend it. It’s a series of seven novel-length fics written by Lightning on the Wave. It’s... magnificent, astonishing, breathtaking, and okay fine maybe you should read it once. I talk about it in the same way I would talk about a great pyramid: “hey, look at that! it exists!”, but I wouldn’t recommend anyone climb it. It’s overwrought and full of narrative-emotional redundancies – characters repeat the same growth arc or the same conflict over and over again. I wanted to strangle everyone once I was on the fifth iteration of the same interpersonal conflict. It’s far from unrealistic, especially for the recovering-from-trauma/brainwashing and trying-to-convince-your-family-not-to-abuse-you stuff, but it made me want to scream. Some characters have emotional journeys that would be maximally compelling in a trilogy, but alas, they aren’t in one.

I think all the romances were weak, I had the same ‘nod impatiently and skim’ reaction to the main ship (harry/draco) as well as various auxiliary ships that I do to boring het romances on TV shows.

It has an immense, convincing cast of OCs, an intricate political / magical / culture system, ‘good pacing but at 0.7x speed’, great twists. tldr = I think its flaws are overwhelming, but the good parts are good.

wait I haven’t told you what this series is actually about. um. James and Lily are alive. They have twin boys – Connor, the mediocre favored son known to all as the Boy Who Lived, and Harry, the real BWL who’s much more magically talented and has been groomed by Lily and Dumbledore as his brother’s bodyguard and protector since childhood. He’s supposed to be the unobtrusive shield, but plans go awry when he gets sorted into Slytherin (rather than into Gryffindor like his brother) and his intelligence and capabilities attract attention from his peers – and his peers’ parents. He plays an increasingly major role as diplomat and warrior as the war starts grinding into life again after the decade-long lull. 

[etirabys]

claro3 replied to your photoset: @fuck-planets (from c.s. friedman’s this alien...

Please please please tell me in excruciating detail why you didn’t like this book

done!

– Jamisia as a character has very little agency and is therefore boring to follow... with the superpower of EXTREMELY BORINGLY RENDERED, OVERLY LITERAL MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES (god, it was like reading Naruto fanfic) which are only tenuously connected to the transportation problem Jamisia was engineered to solve

– i’m getting real burned out on the tiresome descriptions of generic hot women in scifi and the effect they have on men – I feel insulted on behalf of everyone involved.

– Jamisia bringing out a hypersexual personality fragment to seduce various men so she can survive, in particular, for me falls in a weird valley between “this is uncomfortable to read” and “this is a kink” and just evokes apathy, which is – how did you do that, cs friedman

– I did like the neurodiverse programmer character! he’s good! Unfortunately all of the characters are so generic that I’m not going to remember anything about him in two days

– the chapter preludes which are excerpts from various in-universe books are badly done. they all sound the same, don’t sound like actual book excerpts, and the information they do provide about the universe is either redundant or irrelevant

– the “plot related words to actual complexity of plot” ratio is way too high – the actual mechanics of who did what and betrayed whom are disappointingly simple. also, the plot, in general, is bad

[vertigoambrosia]

claro3 liked your post “ugh i’m doing that thing again where i have tickets to a movie...”

happy birthday and i’m sorry i can’t come to the potluck either

[takadasaiko]

claro3 responded to So I have to wonder....: Doesn’t Red have a demonstrated ability to set aside his moral code when he deems something else more valuable, in this case hiring the best to guard Liz, even if the best was trained by someone he detests?

That’s certainly possible. He does have a tendency to set pretty much everything aside if he thinks it’ll keep Liz safe.

[nicky36]

claro3 replied to your photo:50 Shades of Eggs

what… what — what is this?

They were making designs using tape. That was not the final product.

[heyitsmeshaunna]

claro3 replied to your post: me:I only play weirdo cheap Steam game...

ok but some of the weird cheap steam games turn out to be surprisingly interesting

YES I have like 18 hours clocked in I Am Bread no regrets

[elialys]

happy birthday! :)

Thank you!! :D