Mir > Recent Status Updates

Why was Kiyomi even introduced?

Being a pragmatist, I'm wondering if the other werewolves would be able to tell if a couple had done the claiming earlier (since they heal so quickly the bite would vanish). They could just repeat the steps in public later?

Ayumu was about to out himself to his bestie but then a really popular girl asked him for a date so he said yes. I suspect a lot of teens would do the same, although I don't think I've seen this reflected too often in YA (especially fantasy).

Yeah, this is pretty much how enthusiastic I felt about Chicago.

He’d have to eventually; he knew that. Maybe he’d just spent too much time among humans and their modesty. He didn’t know where it came from

I like this. I think it totally makes sense that supernatural creatures would feel this kind of socio-cultural disjunction between their endo-culture and the broader society in which they lived, similar to being part of an immigrant family.

Yeah, if you're investigating Something Weird and a person wants to tell you about some weirdness they observed, you should probably listen even if the person seems like a dweeb.

The street is impassably filled with a horde of infected mutant townspeople, lurching and oozing green pus from sores. This ought to be scary but feels lazy, because I've seen more or less the same scene in so many horror films and books, and the heroes always escape, even though it seems they are doomed. As the book's only half over, I'm sure the MC won't die. And if someone else dies, I don't care.

"Avoid" does not take the preposition "from" -- argh, who edited this?

Not a single boat on the lake either, which strikes me as strange

There's a 40 foot whirlpool with a tentacle monster, why the heck would people be boating?!

How did Dillon get hired as a Monster Hunter, anyway?

Our Hero has gone on his (first ever?) date with a burlesque dancer, and she calls him Dill. Now I am picturing him as the star of this ridiculous film I watched years ago, called "Dill Scallion."

Talking to an attractive woman is more scary than fighting monsters.

Yep, this is a man writing for men, all right.

(Pro tip, boys: you are more likely to get repeat business if you don't drool into your client's cleavage at the first meeting.)

'Predetermined' can mean 'chosen' rather than 'fated'.

Ayumu has taken a firm stance on protecting the week, even if he has no connection to them. I really like how he has progressed.

Abduction Again by Janis Butler Holmes

This is an excellent short poem, no waste.

I don't know much about coonhounds, but I have known people with breeds that were prone to running off, and their dogs would not have sprinted away if they dropped the leash due to falling down hurt.

Kardia by Donna Laemmlen is very original.
It would make a fun paired reading with Kelly Thompson's "Heart in a Box".

I thought Doebereiner's balance of gritty grimness (poverty, bad neighborhoods with poor infrastructure, shitty low-wage jobs, employers who give no shits if you miss the last bus because they keep you late or if you're assaulted walking home) with supernatural threat worked really well.

Wait, Hillyer is a scholar of folklore/mythology? He seems so unimaginative.

"Chop toad" is apparently pork in Yorkshire pudding.
Not as horrible as the name sounds.

Ghosts are demons that inhabit the vapor released by the dead bodies of people and animals.

Never heard this definition of a ghost before.

I really liked the opening set-up, but feel it has been dragging for a while now. There better be some payoff re: the mysterious Board to make this worth while.

Exploring the ominous castle alone by night, the photographer stumbles upon a looming statue of a fanged, winged monster, wrapped in vines.
"My God! What terrible taste," he remarks.

The irresistibleness of things which neither threaten nor jeer nor defy, but arrange themselves in mass-formations that pass and pass and keep on passing.
So, by the damned, I mean the excluded.
But by the excluded I mean that which will some day by the excluding.
Or everything that is, won't be.
And everything that isn't, will be--
But, of course, will be that which won't be--

This seems good, if maybe not what I'm in the mood for.

...he knew that if he remained, if they didn't have him already, the darkling, star-ridden massebots would solve his mysteries, totes, and sly conditionings and come to snatch him away, pulling, pulling, grabbing at sight and mind, close obsidian in the hot afternoon.

I don't know what that means.
I guess to be expected from a story titled "The Ichneumon and the Dormeuse"?

Um, this battle scene is ridiculous. Both the ott cinematic way it plays out, and the fact that it occurs at all.

So, we started with the military officer's POV and the first several chapters alternated between him and System Six. But now we haven't heard from or about him since the fight 30 pages ago. Was he not one of the main characters?

Wait, this chapter is from the alien's POV? Then how did it know about Area 51 or what the brass were thinking.

Jennifer Lesser says this is "Madness".
I say it's Cthulhu.

Pleased to see the fabulous Galen Dara.