Collin > Recent Status Updates

I don't know how messed up it is that I keep thinking about it while reading this book, which is about real people doing serious work, but also, reading about saboteurs wrecking Nazi railways and blowing up munitions buildings really takes me back to watching Hogan's Heroes for hours on end.

performative rage on my part because unfortunately it WAS the GotG 2 scene that made the "The Chain" click for me and I wish I'd got it earlier, or at least that OFMD had been the spark point, but we are who we are.

"'The Chain' has also frequently been used, [...] in movie and TV soundtracks: in The Americans; The Handmaid's Tale; I, Tonya; Fresh Off the Boat; The Kitchen." [also cites F1 and Guardians of the Galaxy 2.]

NO OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH MENTION? oh this is an injustice I shan't soon forget

starting to feel very The Exorcist in here, esp. with the recurring images of Bartolome falling to his death.

"She caught his kiss between her teeth and returned it stripped of chastity."

this is a really good line and it sucks that it's happening to a couple I couldn't care less about

"If someone had asked her weeks ago which would be more shocking to her, the fact that her sleepwalking was driven by demonic forces or that she would be sent into a girlish fluster by a rough-hewn peninsular with a sordid history...
Well."

ANNOYED SIIGHHHHHHH

Elias gets attacked by possessed!Alba and when he finally gets in a good position to defend himself, he gets horny because she's wearing a nightgown and that's what lets her get the upper hand again? die. Elias deserves to die. put him out of his horndog misery.

i can't get attached to the morally gray priest again i should know better i should remember that this never works out for me but he's one of only two (2) interesting characters in this book and Elias's narration is so petulant that I'm starting not to like him anyway aaaaaggghhhhh the priest got me AGAIN

"'I know you don't like me - whether by nature of my friendship with Carlos or your feelings about the Church. You lived under the rule of the Grand Turk. I can't imagine that experience endears you to a strange priest in a foreign land.'
'Indeed, no.'
A weak smile. A glint of amusement in those pale eyes; a shade of gratitude, perhaps, for the honesty. 'Nevertheless,' Bartolome said, 'I am here.'"

I don't think it's unreasonable for me to pick up a book labeled Horror about demonic possession and then expect for some Horrific things to happen before, say, halfway through the book, but I GUESS it'll take longer than that for anything more supernatural than A Voice In The Mine and some sleepwalking to happen. because screw me, I guess.

I love this book, I think it's amazing, and it's also a HUGE book and I don't begrudge it its occasional typos, but whatever happened where Mak's name is misspelled "Mike" is the funniest typo I think I've EVER seen. This high fantasy book with so many wild and inventive fantasy names, and then... MIKE. I wonder if that was a rogue spell-check error or a voice-to-text slip.

"She was one girl, lost in time. She'd been sent by a trickster god of fickle nature, who was as forthcoming as a sealed clam."

girl they literally laid out the entire plan in explicit, exacting terms to you the first time you asked. they have been right there foxsplaining every step you take and doing everything in their power to be Good And Helpful about YOUR test. what are you TALKING ABOUT

"Authoritative Ren had even remarked one time that often, it seemed, [T'sidaan the Fox's] tricks were born from a heart too huge to weather well the injustices of the world."

sorry but what an intensely boring take on trickster gods. who on earth comes to a trickster god story looking for them to be the unalloyed Perfect Hero? where is the charm in this? make peace with tricksters being assholes or die by my blade

"'I know what guns do,' I say. 'I'm wondering what plans you had for it inside a base where a puncture in the wall can kill everybody inside of ten minutes.'" yeah so it's almost like you'd want to make sure every discrete part of the base would be isolatable from the rest in case of catastrophic accident. like a faulty robot. or your nutjob commander bringing a HANDGUN to MARS.

"Other than the depressurization annex, the lab is the only part of Citadel that has its own door that closes with the same airtight seal." that... doesn't sound right to me? I would think being able to seal off any damaged portion of a base station on Mars would be in the top ten priorities of any station design, on accounts of accidents EXACTLY like this one. is this part of the horror or is it bad writing

"Sex is where everything goes wrong, apparently." big ace mood

Katherine Addison gave a blurb for this book, which makes a lot of sense to me, because I feel like it's a very effective cross between The Goblin Emperor and some Discworld books.

“‘I was studying,’ I retort. ‘I lost track of the time.’
I know it’s the wrong thing to say a split second before a single brow lifts, smooth and sharp as her measured words. ‘You lost track. Of the time. In a /clock tower/.’”

bad mom alert but that’s very funny and she’s not wrong that Mina is an idiot

Alistair and Gavin having a flustered hands-brushing moment while going for the same improvised torture implement is some PEAK toxic yaoi, I’ll give it to them.

“Something bad was about to happen. My wife was being clever again.”

look, it’s not the kind of book I like to read often, but I get the appeal with lines like this. I 100% get it.

“For instance, when Greta complained that the convenience store at the marina charged five dollars for a gallon of milk, I winced because the kid there always charged me ten dollars. I’d thought that seemed like a lot, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the little pimply teenager just threw out a number to see if I’d pay.”

how much could a banana cost Michael ten dollars

I genuinely hate how this book handles Esteban. It's judgmental, hypocritical, condescending... again, his greatest crime is 1) breaking up with a conwoman who had been sleeping with him under false pretenses and 2) being kind of rude and awkward sometimes. It's just such a bad faith characterization/villainization.

Ruthi is a bad conwoman, too. She gets made one tiny bit and then drops the whole plan and supervillain monologues her entire plan at Sol? Just because she has some dirt on Sol, too? Why not just tweak the lie and keep the con going? I’m also not a huge fan about how both sisters get into physical relationships with their marks - I don’t know if it’s assault but it IS a violation, and it’s a squick for me.

If anyone spoke to me about my brother the way Ruthi is speaking about Esteban to Sol, I would never in 1,000 years consider them a valid romantic prospect. I don’t want this romance to work out, I want Sol to tell Esteban what’s going on and get tf out. I’m not even particularly compelled by sibling relationships in fiction but I’m more invested in the Sol & Esteban story than any romance so far.