Shoutout To Charlie Single Handedly Ruing The 'all Arranged Marriages Work Out In Brandon Sanderson Works'

halloween turtle 🎃

Hi! I saw you were taking art requests about The Will of the Many, so hear me out: Vis falling from the window at Villa Telimus 😌

But seriously, something cute with Aequa, Callidus and Vis would be nice. I really love their friendship 💕

Thanks! ☺

Themst. Thank you for the request! This was so fun! I need to draw more art but alas...no time. Yet!

Mina's Matchbox || Yōko Ogawa ★★★★★ Started: 12.02.2025 Finished: 23.02.2025 In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome, foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens, and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German grandmother, and her dashing, charming uncle who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. Having read and loved two of Yoko Ogawa's other novels - "The Memory Police" and "The Professor and the Housekeeper", I was very excited about Mina's Matchbox, but I just couldn't get to it in 2024, when the translation came out. I do regret not reading this beautifully haunting book earlier, but you know what they say - better late than never! I really enjoy Ogawa's character studies, and Mina's Matchbox definitely doesn't disappoint with it's ensemble cast of characters, none brighter than the titular Mina - a sickly young girl that collects matchboxes and lives vicariously through the stories she writes about the illustrations on their covers. A quiet, understated, yet powerful coming of age story, Mina's Matchbox was an absolute pleasure to read!

String || Paul Tobin (Author), Sara Colella (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer), Carlos Javier Olivares (illustrator) ★★★★★ Started: 20.02.2025 Finished: 20.02.2025 Thank you to NetGalley and Mad Cave Studios for providing me with an ARC and giving me the opportunity to share my honest review. This vibrantly illustrated graphic novel follows Yoon-Sook Namgung, a 25-year-old Korean-American woman with the unique ability to see two types of “strings” connecting various people: one blue, stretching between intimate partners, the other —dark black— connecting murderers and their victims. She puts her abilities to good use by aiding the police in solving homicide cases, and earns a living by using the blue strings to help people expose their cheating partners. All is good, until one day she discovers a black string connected to herself, and she's set in a race against time to uncover her would be murderer. The story is fast-paced and engaging throughout, and we see Yoon in her element, solving her open cases in an attempt to prevent her murder. I enjoyed seeing her interact with her clients and the suspects in their cases - none of them felt one-dimensional or cartoonish, and it made for a truly compelling story. The easy-going banter between Yoon and Luke, the police officer she were consulting, in particular, was a highlight. Another strength of "String" is the artwork - the entire graphic novel is illustrated in full, vivid color, that only enhances the story - excellent work by Carlos Javier Olivares and Sara Colella! That being said, the graphic novel does include quite a bit of violence and one particular graphic sex panel, so it might not be suitable for a younger audience.

Trail therapy

dgsc

blood over bright haven by m.l. wang

because good people can turn desperate when the horrors are upon them—especially people whose culture of plenty has left them with no systems to cope with scarcity or cataclysm. good people will turn monstrous when it’s down to their survival or someone else’s.

The Penelopiad || Margaret Atwood ★★★★★ Started: 28.07.2024 Finished: 29.07.2024 In Homer's account in The Odyssey, Penelope—wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy—is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a salutary lesson through the ages. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan War after the abduction of Helen, Penelope manages, in the face of scandalous rumors, to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son, and keep over a hundred suitors at bay, simultaneously. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters, and sleeping with goddesses, he kills her suitors and—curiously—twelve of her maids. In a splendid contemporary twist to the ancient story, Margaret Atwood has chosen to give the telling of it to Penelope and to her twelve hanged maids, asking: "What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to?" In Atwood's dazzling, playful retelling, the story becomes as wise and compassionate as it is haunting, and as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing. With wit and verve, drawing on the story-telling and poetic talent for which she herself is renowned, she gives Penelope new life and reality—and sets out to provide an answer to an ancient mystery. What a singularly brilliant exploration of Penelope, as she sees herself and as she is in turn seen by the twelve hanged maids. Atwood hasn't contented herself with depicting Penelope as the singular archetype of the faithful wife, but rather sought to illuminate the woman behind the myth. The writing, of course, is beyond reproach, and the approach to Penelope and the maidens as deities of their own matriarchal cult was a real highlight. And at only about two hundred pages, "The Penelopiad" is the very definition of "small but mighty" - I read it in a day and have been thinking about it ever since.