The majority of the owner-writers of Cards Against Humanity wanted to put the n-word into the game. After their one black staff member, Nicolas Carter, asked Max Temkin, founder of Cards Against Humanity about the reasons behind each person saying ‘yes’ to doing so, and how it happened, Temkin told the head writers to fire him.
CAH head staff escalated things by contacting Carter’s family, threatening ‘disciplinary action’ and to fire Carter, then a staff member helped get Carter wrongly institutionalized, where he faced heavy racism.
Pictures are from unknown sources, I just googled them. I did make these utterly effortless icons myself though.
Feel free to use them, don’t like, sell them or anything though.
so i'm not A Fan of the Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit movies (i do like them, they're just not something i think about a lot) but one thing that's always stood out to me is the amount of physical affection in them: the kisses for the dead, Frodo kissing Sam's head, Thorin and Kili sharing a forehead touch. These moments always stood out to me as both normal and yet profound moments. Normal because it's perhaps a common thing to do & no one makes a Big Deal of it; profound because they're clearly having a personal moment of deep connection. But to me they're also profound because it seems so normalized within their society/societies/world and yet these moments clearly mean a lot of them
If you like sci-fi space operas with good world-building, characters that you genuinely enjoy, multiple awesome alien species, and an ever-expanding world, The Tradepoint Saga by J.J. Blacklocke is a series you will probably enjoy!
The first book in The Tradepoint Saga is Refuge, available now on Amazon!
Nine hundred Vennans undertake a cultural exchange to Tradepoint, a space station where aliens from different worlds meet to do business. A young and gyfted Speaker, Gredin, is translator and diplomat for the happy occasion.
But a horrific vision shatters her first night’s sleep on Tradepoint. Venna, their homeworld, has been destroyed. Now the safety of the delegation, the only Vennans left in all of time and space, rests on Gredin’s young shoulders.
Stunned and grieving, she navigates trade wars and political prejudice, bartering with other races—some friendly, some neutral, some outright hostile—for what her people need to survive. And the cost of failure is the unthinkable.
Extinction.
My rating: 4⭐
Page count: 528
If you’re looking for a character-focused space opera with a slow-burn plot, this would be the one for you. The story started off somewhat slow and gathered momentum as it went, the climax being both expected yet not happening as expected. The story mainly follows Gredin after she has a vision of her people’s planet having been destroyed and her having to navigate politics, trade wars, higher ups who refuse to believe her, and deal with her own grief over losing both her home and her world’s version of her soulmate. This book is a bit of a character study, and I really enjoyed it.
The first paragraph intrigued me about the protagonist’s race and their objective there. I wasn’t immediately hooked but my overall curiosity paid off because it became more and more interesting as I read on. There are no humans whatsoever in this book (and maybe the series?), which was refreshing. The world-building is well done, especially in regards to the ways and inner workings of Tradepoint. The main characters, Gredin especially, felt like real people, even the asshole Vennan that was Gredin’s superior. Their emotions and feelings came across so vividly; they all had their own motivations, goals, and hopes, and reacted to the news of their world being destroyed in different ways.
The different races were all very interesting: they all had their own customs, ways of communicating, race-specific tics. They were all described as being very different, despite the author not really describing any of them in much detail. I was suprised that there were so few races actually at Tradepoint (the station), considering it’s the place for races to make mass trades with each other. I found each of them interesting, though the knowledge of each of them limited to that of the characters that had points of view in the book. The interactions between the different species were cool to see, the side characters from these species helping to flesh out the world.
Not a lot truly happens in this story, but what does happen is not at all boring but almost captivating (if you like politics). The problems are often complicated and some are carefully walked and talked through, while others are dismissed only to come back worse than ever. The solutions are never morally black and white, and often take a lot to pull off; that was what really drew me in. I just had to know what happened, how they pulled it off, what the repercussions were. I was never disappointed.
The problem of there being different species who don’t speak the same language but needing a shared one to communicate is solved by the Tradetalk language. Due to some races not knowing it very well, when it’s used in the story, it’s oversimplified (ex: “You no talk. You talk one more, you go out. You not come back in”). Although it’s off-putting at first, it’s easy to get used to. It doesn’t take away from the seriousness and gravity of the situations it’s used in, either, which one would think would be very hard to do. I felt it really added another layer of complexity to the world of Refuge but it also was rather realistic. Language is complex and takes a long time to learn and the complexities of it can be forgotten or hard to memorize, so it makes sense that Tradetalk is oversimplified.
The story is a mix of point of views from different important characters, though Gredin is clearly the protagonist and has the most chapters. She is clearly overwhelmed by grief, though her grief isn’t solely focused on herself, but her people as well, how they’re going to survive. The change from her going from grieving to becoming the saviour her people need her to be was very sudden. Her main focus became her people and their survival, but she rarely reflected on herself and how the Power had changed her so significantly for the rest of the book. I liked her character a little less; I wanted to know how she felt about it— then again, she wasn’t really ‘feeling’ much of anything.
There’s not a lot of description of the five senses. Rather, the book is composed mostly of exposition and the inner thoughts of the characters. The author also wrote in such a way that a lot of explanation was left out in terms of the purpose of some things or what they are in general (like the Vennans’ hlao). Some of these things were explained at the very end of the book or not at all. That aside, I enjoyed the author’s writing style, which felt almost effortless. I never felt lost or confused; I always knew exactly what was happening. The world developed gradually, rather than all at once.
The complexities of the Vennan race’s customs and culture were really interesting and I’m looking forward to reading the free prequel (which can be found on the author’s blog) to learn more. The different Houses for each gyft type were cool but proved to have not been the best of choices in regards to survivability. I think Gredin realized this near the end. I think, however, that this will change in the next book, considering the choice of one of the main characters.
Overall, this was a good book that I really enjoyed, which was a surprise since I’m not one for politics or character study-type books. I’m looking forward to the sequel, Aftershock!
Interested in Refuge? You can buy it now on Amazon!
edit: this is blowing UUUUUUUp shit i only expected like maybe 3 notes on this fuck OKAY, CREDIT: i got the photos from @swearwolfcola’s live-tweets of campaign 1 episode 102 he’s great guys check him out
so Lunaris Games blocked me after I brought up the racism in their game When the Night Comes on their kickstarter tweet & hid my replies on their tweet....
don’t fucking back/buy this game or their other game
in case anyone was hesitating about reading Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames, here’s the perfect reason why.
literally nothing in that tweet is an exaggeration. that’s a bare-bones description of what happens in that scene, to the T. also it’s Character B is the main character, the bard of the group, and a lesbian, and Character A is a bisexual, goth summoner.
This book is fantastic, 5/5, and I’m saying that as someone who’s super picky about her books and only buys ones that I’m definitely going to read over and over again, and i bought this one as soon as I finished reading my library copy
it’s a stand-alone, but the it’s set in the same world as its predecessor, Kings of the Wyld
