Els, she/her
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Hazeleyed-fay - Stuff (miscellaneous) - Tumblr Blog
rip to you guys but i love assembling ikea furniture its so fun its like legos
THIS! I hadn't been able to put it into words before this but one of the things I really like about RoL and particularly Peter's voice and how he narrates the stories is that he is consistently descriptive rather than cramming description into paragraphs right before something important happens.
Because Peter describes everything all the time but it doesn't get annoying because he generally uses precise, accessible imagery and keeps it short. Plus, his descriptions aren't one and done, if he encounters someone again, he describes them again in a new way, which fleshes them out as you read and reflects the actual human experience of getting to know someone.
Ben Aaronovitch really managed to plop us all inside Peter's brain, complete with his awareness of the world around him and his tendency toward stray thoughts and tangents.
Midnight Riot or, Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovich
I loved this one, but I have have absolutely not clue how to write about it.
So much *stuff* happens. I've written before about the world building first novel and the info dump story.
This is both of those things at once, yet not like them at all. While everything happens and keeps happening in rapid succession, it never feels long winded or overly descriptive.
Set (I think) in 2011 London, it opens with a murder. Our story is told by Peter Grant, a police constable, who despite a desire to be a great cop, is a tad too easily distracted. But he has an endlessly sharp hyperbolic sense of observation that is both accuate and very funny.
Low officers in the precinct hierarchy, Peter and Leslie (whom Peter has a hopeless crush on) are sent to guard the perimeter of the murder scene. It's a miserable winter morning and Leslie does a coffee run. While waiting, and musing on the inside and outs of police work, Peter is approached by a ghost who saw the whole murder take place.
With the line "just because you've gone mad doesn't mean you should stop acting like a policeman" Peter simply questions the ghost.
The next day he finds out that the higher uos have decided that he's going to be a desk jocky rather than doing anything interesting and he decides to go ghost hunting.
From there, he discovers that there is a secret department of the police that deals with all things supernatural and magical, and that he is to be an apprentice to the only cop in that department.
What follows is a story with anything you can think of. Magic, nature gods manifest as humans, spirits, and there are even mentions of mermaids and vampires.
And through out it all, Peter keeps up a steady stream of commentary. I don't think two lines go by without some sort of wisecracking, and I LOVE it.
There are a bunch more books and short stories in this series, and I have at least part of my list for this year's birthday book haul!
I’m a big fan of that post-laundry feeling when you’ve got all your A-list clothes back in the game.
🎃👻🎃🍁🍂It’s October folks that means it’s time to…..
get your fucking flu shots!! 🎃🎃🎃
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME????? WHATTT!! WHAT! WHAT WHAT? *breathes into bag*
I'm gonna barge in wayyyy late to this and offer a lil in-universe explanation for the result of rucka having apparently decided that google is for chumps
So the main thing is that the odds are pretty high that Booker's parents (and even Booker in his youth) were illiterate. They also might not have even spoken French at all because this was pre-revolution and France didn't really stamp out regional languages until even the 20th century in some places. Based on that, "Le Livre" could be a failed attempt at spelling something else. If that's an explanation that floats your boat, I'd put forward that their last name could've been something like "Lelievre" which is actually a pretty common name these days and translates to "the hare" which could be fun, imagery-wise. The other thing is that he might have had a totally separate legal name and now uses Le Livre as a common use name, which is a stretch but this is the guy who hangs out with "Joe Jones" and "Nicky Smith" so who knows if he did it on a dare or legit thought that it was a normal name
Anyway, fortunately for Greg, I guess, France then was not all that much like France now, so there's plenty of wiggle room for imagining the ways that Booker ended up with a very dumb surname in-universe.
hey french people
is “le Livre” actually a plausible surname or is like an appellation, like he’s a nerd so ppl call him “Sébastien the Book”
every time parker and hardison pretend to be a couple they show up, arms linked, in coordinated outfits with mental lists of the most obnoxious pet names they can think of. and I think that’s beautiful
I've been rewatching Leverage (because comfort, you know?), and I am now wondering just how many fedoras Nate owns? Like, does he have a space in his closet dedicated solely to fedoras just in case he needs one for a con?
honestly an impossible question to answer. he has infinite hats and i love him for it, every time he puts a hat on for a grift i KNOW it's going to be a good character i just. know it in my heart. this man just loves a hat
i see your "designated space in his closet for fedoras" and i raise you "nate ford's designated Fedora Closet, Just For His Fedoras,"
obsessed by the idea of nile accidentally posting a tik tok where in the background you can see Joe falling out of the window with a cartoonish sound of despair —he tripped on the cat—, and then having to explain that her friend has miraculously recovered and his husband assured her he's in good hands
Do you know how hard it is to live with a cat that has the intelligence level of literally like a 3 year old but the pure chaos of a high ranking demon?
He’s learned to open the lazy Susan and won’t stop clawing open the flour and rolling in it like a little chinchilla
r.i.p. five hargreeves, he's not dead or anything i just think he could use a nap
fr tho he's been awake for like 2 weeks at this point not counting the few times he was unconscious (drunk, injured, etc) like bestie it might be easier to solve all these apocalypses if u had a fully functional brain, just saying
concept: past luke/alex who went on like 3 dates and then kinda just settled as friends without ever talking about it.
alex: my last relationship was pretty short actually
willie: that bad?
alex: no, just-- hhhhhhhooooh my god i never broke up with him
cue comedy as alex breaks up with luke who's conflicted between being supportive and razzing alex about it (spoiler: he manages both)
my tumblr year in review is so funny like,,,, i made 2 posts. this is number 3. more time went into telling me that there's nothing here than ive spent making posts 😂😂😂
So I cant find the post that initially got me thinking about this, but on the topic of Julie making Luke a better writer:
We see 2 Sunset Curve songs that Luke wrote pre-Julie. Now or Never and Bright. He edited Bright a little before he gave it to her, and we only hear it in full when she's performing it, but I think the core of it was basically unchanged. Now or Never and Bright are both good songs, they're fun to listen to and they're technically well done (by which I mean that the technical aspects are all well-executed). But they're also..... kinda generic?
Like not in a bad way necessarily, but the theme of both is kinda that "Life is awesome"/"I'm awesome"/"Don't underestimate me" teenagerness that's kinda default in a way -- music I wrote in my tween/teen years had the same vibes. And I kinda think that you end up with that vibe when you're feeling a lot but you don't really know how to express it in a way that will connect with other people. We know Luke was feeling a lot because we also see Unsaid Emily, which he wrote pre-Julie but notably not for Sunset Curve to perform. Unsaid Emily is for himself and his mom. Given the time to think about it, he knows what he wants to say and knows how to say it in his song. And Unsaid Emily turns out great, in that gutting, punch-to-the-heart way.
Basically, Luke pre-Julie had the potential to write great, emotional songs, but he shied away from writing those songs with the intention of performing them. For performances, he focused on less heavy themes with a broader, more general appeal, and on hyping up audiences and encouraging people. (btw we see echoes of this a bit too in the scene on the beach where the boys end up playing This Band Is Back -- Luke's trying to cheer them up, focus less on what they lost and more on what they still have as opposed to processing their grief because then there would be Emotions and our boy does not know what to do with sad people.)
Julie-and-Luke songs are a whole different breed to Luke's pre-Julie music. There are a lot of similarities, what with Luke, Reggie, and Alex's involvement, particularly in the level of energy. They're not writing slow ballads or swingy showtunes. It's still the same style of music, but the big difference to me is the amount of emotion and emotional nuance in Julie-era music.
Finally Free is also about breaking out of the mold -- but it's triumphant and celebratory and inwardly-focused where Bright was defiant, more about making your own mark than about being true to yourself.
Edge of Great is also about envisioning the road ahead -- but it's hopeful and about the faith and wonder at the future where Now or Never is an insistence that life isn't gonna stop you from doing what you want.
Pre-Julie, Luke's songs are pushing back against an undefined opposing force (and like, his parents on some level) but he doesn't really put any of his own feelings into them. He's angry, and the anger is where he's drawing from but it doesn't actually inspire him.
But with Julie? Julie's songs dig deeper into her feelings, and I think she writes them for herself more than for others (esp. compared to Luke's pre-Julie music). She doesn't shy away from grief or fear (Flying Solo, Stand Tall) but she always turns it around by the end of the song, makes the song about growth rather than about the sucky parts of life. Flying Solo is inspired by her fear of losing Flynn, but the song itself is an ode to friendship. Stand Tall has a definite basis in how Julie thought she wasn't going to be able to make music without her mom, but it reaches everybody else because it's ultimately about overcoming obstacles and loss.
(and not to make this too sappy, but julie's the reason that luke can connect with people in the end -- not because she makes him visible but because she shows him how to actually use his emotions in his music. luke helps julie get back on her feet after her mom's death, and julie convinces luke to wear his heart on his sleeve instead of trying to hide it every time it falls out of his pocket)
Just watched Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and oh wow was it gorgeous
Home just in time for A N T I Q U E S R O A D S H O W !
this is the only show, actually
“I don’t think it was clear whether you were allowed to move the bowls.” -Lolly Adefope
"fiddle dee dee" absolutely kills me every time I see it
You see! I told you! I told you I’m not hiding anything!
BBC Ghosts + Reductress Headlines (x)
he's makin a heart
1.01 | 2.16
The ultimate power move in a vampire/fairy rivalry would be the fairy inviting the vampire over for tea. The vampire has natural dominion over anyone who invites them into their home, the fairy has natural dominion over anyone who violates the laws of hospitality, and neither can refuse the appointment without showing weakness, so it’d just be a constant headgame of the vampire trying to manoueuvre the fairy into a position where the obligations of hospitality allow the vampire to eat them, and the fairy trying to trick the vampire into doing something that would allow the fairy to declare them a poor guest.