I made a comic

Hi! I made a comic if anyone’s interested.

It’s a fantasy where a manifestation of calamity comes every hundred years to destroy the world but is always stopped by a legendary hero. This time however the calamity arrived early and the hero didn’t. Now begins a race against time to get a hold of the hero before the world is destroyed.

The story has decent diversity and some trigger warnings regarding mild gore and character death, though it’s drawn in black and white with a simplistic style so I don’t know how triggering that would be. Also there’s a panel of a cat being hurt, but it survives.

Pinned Post end of the immortal comic my own stuff self promotion text

Prologue

It’s just a short introduction. A girl fell down a hole in the ground and it was later revealed that the hole was caused by a giant metal hand. No one knows what it is going on.

sleeping giants the themi files sylvain neuvel book reading liveblog text my thoughts

The next book I’ll be reading is Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel. It’s the first book in the The Themis Files trilogy. As I understand it is a sci-fi mystery book about finding metal bodyparts in the earth. The story is presented in a kind of “case file” format ´, however since every file is only a few pages long at most I will instead write down my thoughts after every “part” of the story instead (there are five parts + prologue and epilogue).

Also I’m reading the Swedish translation.

sleeping giants sylvain neuvel the themis files book reading liveblog text my thoughts

Book review: Simon Thorn and the Wolf’s Den by Aimée Carter

Book review:
Simon Thorn and the Wolf’s Den
by Aimée Carter

Liveblog of the book.

Short review:
It would probably have been a favorite book of mine when I was twelve years old,

Long review:
The book is about a twelve years old kid named Simon who lives a pretty isolated life and can talk to animals. One day his life is forever changed when he learns several family secrets and goes on a ‘quest to save his mom. A

The characters in the book are relatively flat. It could be because it’s the first book in the series and character development is planned for later books while the first one focus on the setting. B

It’s an interesting world but despite the majority of the book explaining, showing, or presenting the world it still ends up feeling a bit surface level. Perhaps it’s because the animals presented in the story fall under stereotypes which makes the world based on them lacking a bit of nuance. B

The writing fits well for the intended audience, at least the Swedish translation. The text doesn’t speak down to the audience but it’s quite an easy read for adults. B

Rating: B+

simon thorn and the wolf's den animox aimee carter book reading liveblog book review text my thoughts

Chapter 26

The final chapter of the book is pretty somber and focuses on Simon’s grief over losing Darryl and his determination to protect what’s left of his family. However the final scene reveals that he too can transform into a wolf and I’m not sure what to say. I just praised the book for not making the protagonist the most special of them all, but then it pulls a twist and makes him one anyway? It’s a bit annoying.

simon thorn and the wolf's den animox aimee carter book reading liveblog text my thoughts

Chapter 25

Simon is an eagle and just an eagle while Nolan is able to transform into any animal. I like this choice. A lot of stories focus on making the protagonist the most special character so it’s nice to read one where they’re not. This does not mean that Simon isn’t special, he’s the heir to the bird realm after all. But it will be interesting to see his and Nolan’s dynamic now, particularly since it’s now clear that both Orion and their grandmother (did they ever say her name?) wants to kill Nolan and Simon has promised to protect him.

Orion and the birds fled, Malcom took over as leader of the mammals and sent their grandmother away. So both Orion and the grandmother can/are potential threats in later books.

Simon reconcile with Winter. She apologizes and while Simon can’t forgive her betrayal he does still consider her a friend and she promises to help him in the future.

simon thorn and the wolf’s den animox aimee carter book reading liveblog text my thoughts

Chapter 24

Pot twist, Simon turned into an eagle!

It is still possible he could turn out to be the ruler of beasts and able to turn into any animal, but I think I would prefer that he only can transform into one animal. I do like that a pigeon was the one who thought him

Turns out the other animal leaders didn’t trust the mammals enough/or at least the grandmother so they gave her fake pieces to the silver staff. Meaning it doesn’t work when Orion tries to use it. Sadly that doesn’t prevent him from killing Darryl. I didn’t think anyone would actually die in this story but it does make sense that the father figure was the one to die. But I wish we could have seen him interact with Simon a bit more. He spent most of the story off screen.

Orion escapes with the malfunctioning staff. I guess that will be the plot in the rest of the series.

simon thorn and the wolf’s den animox aimee carter book reading liveblog my thoughts text

Chapter 23

Orion’s evil, I knew it!

Orion was the one who killed Simon’s dad and now he has the completed silver staff and is planning to kill the rest of the family, except for whoever is his heir (probably Nolan). Simon tries to destroy the staff by throwing it off the building. He does a lot of reckless stuff climbing up there I never would be able too. My fear of heights squirmed as they struggled on the roof. However despite this I’m not sure I would give Orion the staff. He’s already proven to be a liar, why would that change now? So him letting go of Simon wasn’t a surprise.

Also I want to feel bad for Winter since she did a lot to help Orion only for him to reject her as soon as he heard she was a snake, but she did use and betray Simon so my well of sympathy is a bit dry right now.

simon thorn and the wolf’s den animox my thoughts book reading liveblog text aimee carter

Chapter 22

Malcom is on Simon’s side and helps them out. However the rest of the flock is still following the grandmother. And when they make it to the birds’ territory it’s already too late. They walked right into an ambush by the wolves.

simon thorn and the wolf’s den aimee carter animox book reading liveblog text my thoughts

Chapter 21

With the help of Ariana and then Jam, Simon is able to get to where his mom and Darryl are being held. But when they get there his mom is already gone and Darryl is badly beaten by birds. See? Another reason to distrust Orion.

Also, Jam doesn’t have any friends because he is a ”nerd” who wears glasses and likes Lord of the Rings. Can we please stop with this trope? I know this story isn’t exactly new but I’m pretty sure the nerd trope was old even when it first came out.

simon thorn and the wolf’s den animox aimee carter book reading liveblog text my thoughts

Chapter 20

It’s not confirmed Nolan’s been taken, he’s just disappeared.

The grandmother realizes that the pieces are gone and Simon is at fault. However before she can do something Ariana poisons her and then they flee.

simon thorn and the wolf’s den animox aimee carter book reading liveblog text my thoughts

dandunn portaltowhateverland

monemin

Everyone told me testosterone would make me angrier. My family has a habit of attributing any anger I feel these days to the testosterone. I didn't feel any angrier, but my mother would still tell me that no, I am angrier now, and testosterone did make me angrier and *she* could tell.

A week or two ago, I got my proof to the contrary. I'd been having a difficult day, woke up late, and had to rush out the door, ran into minor inconvenience after minor inconvenience, and then the straw broke the camel's back.

I wrote out the kind of angry vindictive seething text message I used to write constantly. I didn't send it, of course, I copied it out and pasted it in the folder of my notes where I put all my rage venting.

And then I thought.

Huh, it's been a little while since I did that. And I checked the time and dates on my previous notes. The last one was a few days before I started testosterone.

And scrolling back, I noticed that they were *constant* at least one a week for *years* I used to get so angry that I would get the serious urge to say cruel hurtful things to or about people I cared about on a near-daily basis. I didn't realize how big of a problem it was until all of a sudden I hadn't gotten that angry in Eleven Months. Nearly a YEAR.

And then I realized in my rush to get out the door in the morning, I hadn't taken my T shot. My testosterone was the lowest it's been since August.

All of a sudden, I had demonstrable proof that testosterone really did make me less angry. That all that "you may not think you're any angrier but you are" was bullshit.

I feel like I should be angrier about this than I am. I know how angry I used to get. About everything. I just felt it again for the first time in a while. For once, it would feel justified to be that angry. But I'm not. I'm not mad. I'm just... disappointed, I guess.

strangecolorexpert

Society says it. People believe it. Science disagrees. To be clear we probably need an expert because there is a shit-ton of biased science research when it comes to “males are like this, females are like that” which as we know is society induced bullshit.

Testosterone does not induce aggression, study shows

New scientific evidence refutes the preconception that testosterone causes aggressive, egocentric, and risky behavior. A study with more tha

ScienceDaily

certifiedsexed

Certified Sex Ed Post!

findingfeather

I am genuinely also fascinated by the emerging link of testosterone with status-related behaviours, because human hindbrain-status-interactions are so complicated and socially mediated . . . so that like yeah, sometimes it will be correlated with aggressive behaviours, if that's what status-preservation/acquisition looks like in the context the person is in.

But status is massively socially mediated, an interaction of a tangle of factors (gender, age, relationship and even just those three words are themselves massive generalizations because there are hundreds of different ways that they can express within the further context . . . ) so to some extent if testosterone is correlating with aggression, it's because the social milieu has linked aggression and status.

(This is discussed in the article linked above, btw! An example of why reading the citation is worthwhile, and illuminating.)

Hi

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

I made a comic

Book review: Simon Thorn and the Wolf’s Den by Aimée Carter

Book review: Simon Thorn and the Wolf’s Den by Aimée Carter

Book review:
Simon Thorn and the Wolf’s Den
by Aimée Carter