[ SECRET POST #3896 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3896 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



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02.
[Me Before You (film/novel)]


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03.
[Star Trek TOS]


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04.
[Persona 5]


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05.
[Andy Brennan and Lucy Moran from Twin Peaks]


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06.
[David Bowie, "The Man Who Fell to Earth"]


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07.
[Broadchurch]













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 35 secrets from Secret Submission Post #557.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

Official advertise your fandom-related event thread.

RULES FOR THIS:
1. NO images bigger than 600x600 in either direction (banners, et cetera).
2. ONE POST PER USER under this thread.
3. What IS allowed: roleplay advertisements, fandom comms, fandom events, things like that.
4. What is NOT allowed: anything for profit, any kind of fic/art commissions, seeking 1-on-1 RP, that kind of thing.

Review/Analysis of DS9's "The Changing Face of Evil"

[(Anonymous)]

The war heats up, the Cardassians strike back, and the Pah-Wraiths await their return. Certainly sounds like a lot of changes to me.

https://tv-366.blogspot.com/2017/09/day-168-ds9-changing-face-of-evil.html

[fscom]

Official clickables thread.

RULES FOR THIS:
1. NO huge images or columns of images that require scrolling, please.
2. ONE POST PER USER under in this thread.
3. If you're going to post, try to at least help the others.

[fscom]

General comments:

(If the thread contains spoilery/triggery content please warn/post as 2nd comment so it collapses!
Please collapse images, too!)

Star Wars

[(Anonymous)]

New Rebels trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtigV-biVGg

Leia, Princess of Alderaan / Phasma

[morieris]

Anyone reading them? I'll get to the latter in time but, of course, Claudia Gray's writing is always excellent for Leia.

Vent thread

[(Anonymous)]

^^^^^^

Washington Post again

[(Anonymous)]

Opinion piece - "Yes, antifa is the moral equivalent of neo-Nazis"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/yes-antifa-is-the-moral-equivalent-of-neo-nazis/2017/08/30/9a13b2f6-8d00-11e7-91d5-ab4e4bb76a3a_story.html

Is anyone else surprised to see this in WaPo?

AUs

[(Anonymous)]

What fandom do you think has the best AUs?

Which has the worst?

Do you like AUs? Do you hate them? Are you in a fandom you wish had more of them or fewer of them?

What's your favorite AU you've ever read?

What pairing/character do you love but never have the chance to talk about?

[(Anonymous)]

What pairing/character do you love but never have the chance to talk about? Either because no one else is really into them or there is no fandom or they just simply get eclipsed by other things.

What stupid fandom stuff have you seen lately?

[(Anonymous)]

Today I saw someone say that Amazing Spiderman was not continued because Sony are homophobes. https://beachdeath.tumblr.com/post/164938175208/beachdeath-re-last-gifset-i-mean-yes-and-good

It totally had nothing to do with the fact ASM did horribly at the box office. Or that Disney made a deal with Sony and they rebooted Spiderman to fit into the MCU. No...totally because Andrew Garfield mentioned it would be cool is Spiderman was bi.

What is the most expensive thing you've ever ruined accidentally?

[(Anonymous)]

^^^^^^^^^^

(frozen comment) Who needs to be kicked off F!S?

[(Anonymous)]

?

Who needs to be chained to their computer so they can never leave F!S?

[(Anonymous)]

?

What is something legal that should be illegal?

[(Anonymous)]

^^^^^^

Have you ever experienced anything that you thought was supernatural?

[(Anonymous)]

Aliens, ghosts, chupacabra, whatever.

What are your pet's names?

[(Anonymous)]

What do you actually call them?

God damn my pathetic human need for sleep.

[thewakokid]

I missed some juice! FUUUUUUCK.

Just logging my official opinion that that I did not need for that thread to be frozen. I'm quite happy if Case wants to unfreeze it. I can take it.

anti-abortion feminists = "pro-life"

[(Anonymous)]

every ideology with -ists is need a "subtexts" confirmation.

that goes to EVERY ideology.

is it weird a stranger care about someone's else personal wealth-being...
especially it is evolve with family and sex life questions....

[fscom]

Games thread!

Book club - August discussion post - So You Want to Be a Wizard

[diet_poison]

Hey guys! Time for our August discussion! I will post my thoughts in a reply! Feel free to chime in with any thoughts, questions, or responses that you have :)

Re: Book club - August discussion post - So You Want to Be a Wizard

[diet_poison]

So...unfortunately, I was not super impressed with this book. I still read it all because it was an easy read, though.

It was pretty clearly a kids’ book. It reads to me like it’s marketed towards the age group of the protag, so pre-teens or early teens. I’m not a huge fan of reading books in this style unless they’re either really really good, or nostalgia trips. Kids books aren't all terrible, and honestly I feel like I would have really enjoyed it if I'd been in middle school when I'd read it, but there was really nothing spectacular about it to me as an adult. It was mediocre and very, very tropey.

The characters were mostly boring. The main trio was all pretty boring. Joanne was boring and extremely typical. Nita's parents really pissed me off - seriously, that's how you respond to your kid getting bullied? I wanted to smack them. The only characters that really interested me were Tom and Carl; I liked the image of the typical suburban family with all the trappings, except they were both wizards and did wizardy stuff on the side. I liked their animals too. Also, is this a gay couple in a kids' book written in the 1980s? Really did not expect that, but cool!

The system of magic is interesting but not really developed with any detail, sadly. The way of describing it throughout the book was very purple-prosey which grated on me. The Big Magic Workings were also very vague. The specific powers behind them weren't really discussed, just a whole bunch of "and then they were swept up in this power and it worked!".

Some specific nitpicks -

It bothered me that the two most powerful objects in the universe (apparently) were just SO EASY for two kids to find and sneak in and get. Like there’s no way. Whatever their system of wizardry is, I didn’t love that two pre-teens were able to figure out as much as they did within a month or a week of starting. Also, I kind of hated how they did all that shit in one day without getting exhausted. Like it SAID they were exhausted, but they just kept going and going and then DIDN’T IMMEDIATELY CRASH WHEN THEY GOT HOME LIKE what. They didn’t even get fuzzy-headed. They just kept...going as they had early that morning.

Also: the constant capitalization of "sun". Why???

Some details I did like:
-the predator helicopter and the nest of copterlings
-the description of the Big Bad (though I still think it was silly that they faced down the Big Bad themselves, two kids, in the first short book) and his horse
-Fred's hiccups were kind of funny, especially the powder-blue Mercedes
-I really did like the big metal horse

I was disappointed that Nita and Kit didn’t go back and talk to Tom and Carl at the very end. That’s what I was really looking forward to - the two of them hearing the story of what had happened and their reactions. Maybe for some adult perspective? Maybe for some narrative unwinding and worldbuilding? I got kind of tired of the constant “AND THEN GREAT DARKNESS AND GREAT LIGHT” that went on for like, half the book. The worldbuilding was honestly very lackluster, it felt like it was made to be only just barely what it needed to be to support the plot. I remember going to finish it and thinking "well they'll go to Tom and Carl and we'll get some more explanations!" and then that didn't even come close to happening.

It wasn't the worst book I've read, but really nothing about it stood out. What did you think? Did anyone find it more compelling? If so, why? What were your thoughts on the characters and the system of magic in this book?

Re: Book club - August discussion post - So You Want to Be a Wizard

[(Anonymous)]

I read this book as a child and absolutely loved it, so it's hard for me to react to it in a way that isn't influenced by that. But reading it again, I still liked it, and it was easy to see why I loved it as a kid. The things it does well, it is really fantastic at.

For one thing, I found the characters really likable and relatable - looking back, some of them are relatable to an extent that seems forced, with how excessively bullied they are, but it worked for me as a kid. It was so easy when I was a kid to get drawn into caring about Nita or Kit. And Tom and Carl were very likabkle and wonderful, and Fred was fantastic, both as a concept and a character.

And all the stuff with magic and wizards - first of all, it's very clever. Second, it's very appealing and clever - especially the stuff with the initiation and how you become a wizard. When I was a kid, that was a much more appealing fantasy initiation process than Harry Potter's ever was. By simply noticing this book and saying the oath, you become a wizard. And then you're part of this secret world.

And something I noticed about the magic reading it again this time is how directly and immediately literate all the magic is. The way that Nita discovers magic is by haunting a library, skill at magic is basically a combination of bookishness and empathy, and the way that magic is depicted can so easily be read as a celebration of imagination and literacy and curiosity for kids. The idea that those things make you special and are important and good qualities is really powerful when you're a kid, and I think it's a good concept.

The last thing that I wanted to note about the book is how deeply empathetic it is. This is something that's present in the magic system as well which is one of the things that works about the magic system for me. But it really suffuses the whole book - a powerful sense of the virtue and importance of compassion and empathy and understanding. It's a deeply humane and loving book and that is something that influenced me a lot as a kid as well. It is a warm book.

Anyway those are just some scattershot thoughts, I didn't really plan this in advance so it's a bit all over the place. But I liked the book as a kid and I see a lot to like about it now, even if I can't really evaluate it fairly as to writing and stuff like that.

Re: Book club - August discussion post - So You Want to Be a Wizard

[(Anonymous)]

I was very underwhelmed by this and didn't finish. I tried to imagine reading it through my son's eyes when he was 8 and I think he would have found some of it interesting but mostly too unbelievable. Everything about how the adults responded to Nita being bullied was ridiculous. As a kid I would have laughed at the book and as an adult I'm amazed anyone thought that was worth publishing.

But the breaking point for me was when Nita and Kit met and then five minutes later performed a very complex spell. The spell itself was boring to read, the descriptions were all over the place and hard to follow, and the very premise was just too ridiculous for me. Perfect characters are boring. I expected a book about kids being introduced to magic, not a book about kids discovering that they're the most magically gifted wizards ever.

Re: Book club - August discussion post - So You Want to Be a Wizard

[(Anonymous)]

I need to reread this one. I don't remember how old I was when I first read it, but certainly at least in my mid teens, maybe late teens, and I still liked it enough to read several of the series.

One of the world building bits that comes up (probably in later books) is that the younger the wizard when they discover magic, the more powerful they are--and the longer they stay powerful. By the time wizards are done growing (physically), the amount of raw power they have access to will have dropped significantly, and they usually replace power with finesse by picking an area of study to specialize in. Human wizards are powerful for longer than most other species because they spend longer growing to physical maturity, and in a later book, they run into a whale wizard, one of the few other species with a long childhood.

My favorite of the series was High Wizardry, for one of the coolest takes on a computer I've ever seen--one that I feel sure must have been used by an adult sci-fi writer at some point, but I've never seen in any other books or media.