"Bloodmoon Huntress" by Nicole Andelfinger

 Bloodmoon Huntress is the second graphic novel based on the Netflix show "The Dragon Prince." I wrote about the first one in this post. What's also really exciting is around the time the new book came out, the show finally announced that the fourth season would be coming out in November! Huzzah!

This book is different from the first graphic novel, instead of taking place after season 3 ended and being a continuation of the story, it takes place much earlier. Rayla is a moonshadow elf who is one of the main characters in the tv show. Here she is shown as a child who is living with her adoptive fathers for the first time after her parents leave to guard a dragon. It gives a lot of insight into Rayla's relationship with her dads, as well as why she started training to become an assassin.

The book opens with Rayla being mad at her parents for leaving her. If they want to serve the greater good, she reasons, then they should stay with her and not cause her pain. They leave anyways though, and Rayla is left with Runaan and Ethari. Ethari is much more of a homebody and typically watches Rayla, but she's curious where Runaan goes since they won't tell her. She eventually learns that he is an assassin, and is confused why he'd kill for a living instead of staying with Ethari.

The bloodmoon is coming up soon, it's a time of the year when there's a huge festival that no one is allowed to leave. Rayla is suspicious as there clearly is some danger being hidden. She then runs into a lost elf in the woods whose family was kidnapped by a moonshadow elf who wants to kill them and drain their blood. Rayla tries to get help, but no one believes her. So she runs off on her own. Rayla faces off with the mysterious elf, and gets herself pushed into a river in the process. Ethari and Runaan find her then, having realized that she ran off and that she was right. The two of them drive off the blood-sucking elf and they all head home safe. 

Rayla says she understands now, sort of, why some people feel called to protect not just themselves but strangers as well. She asks Runaan to train her to become an assassin as well.

The book is great because we don't know much about Rayla's childhood and background. Seeing her deal with losing her parents makes you understand much more about her relationship with her surrogate parents, Runaan and Ethari. And watching her decide to become an assassin is an incredible arc. It makes a lot of sense to me with events that then transpire in the show.

Rayla ends up failing as an assassin, she ends up not being able to kill. It's literally the first thing that happens in the show and it sets off a chain of events. But as we learn in this book, I don't think she actually wants to become an assassin. I think she mostly wants to follow Runaan, get trained by him and spend time with him and be like him. The fact that she fails later makes sense because Rayla at the end of this story seems to understand why people will put their lives towards service to something larger. I don't think she understands the ramifications of making that choice for herself.

I quite liked this book, it's a quick read but it's what I needed to get excited for season 4 of "The Dragon Prince!" I can't wait until November!

This Is Beautiful: The Ending of Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers

I'm sure I'm going to write sooooo much more about this game but I need to put this out here right now. The ending of this game is so freaking good. It's incredible. SPOILERS AHEAD!

The ending as you approach it seems to be a showdown between you and the rival team's manager. But everyone keeps pointing out that some facts just aren't adding up. It not-so-subtly hints that something is going to go awry. But then you get to the final fight and you end up sucked into the real big bad of the series, Polybius. A game that sucks you in and makes you confront your worst demons. 

And the cheater is revealed to not be the manager, but your rival! A character that you designed at the very beginning and I figured was a throw away character. I literally spent 0 time talking to my rival this run through because I didn't care haha. His Iris (a sentient phone app AI, basically a character in her own right) has become corrupted and has been cheating on his behalf. It's up to you to show them the error of their ways, and confront your own weaknesses in the process.

There's some changes that are made based on the choices that you make. I didn't romance my rival this round so I wonder if that would change it. And I accidentally encouraged my Iris to break the law and cause chaos a lot so that impacted the ending as well (whoops). But in the end I was so pleased. Between this game and the first one, I don't know how much longer these writers can keep forcing me to rethink the power of a story. But I am very eager to see them continue to try.

I'll certainly write more, probably once I go through all of the different endings, romances, etc. I'm very excited to quarter up and continue!

"Elatsoe" by Darcie Little Badger

 This book has been on my list for a while now. It's a book written by and about an indigenous asexual. That alone puts it in a class all by itself, I can't think of any other books about an indigenous asexual, let alone by one. (Although if I'm wrong please do correct me as I'd like to read it.)

The book opens with Ellie (full name: Elatsoe) playing fetch with her ghost dog. Her family has the knowledge of how to communicate with ghosts and can call them back. However when Ellie's cousin Trevor dies, she comes face to face with the rule that no human ghosts can be brought back as human ghosts are violent and not themselves as they were in life. When Trevor dies, Ellie receives a message from him saying that he was murdered and that she has to protect his wife and child. The book then turns into a murder mystery as Ellie and her best friend Jay try to hunt down and prove that the killer did it.

On the way, they discover that the murder is a prominent doctor in a nearby town who is close with vampires in the area. On the night that the murderer is set to hold a fancy gathering for the town, Trevor's son wakes his ghost up. Trevor's ghost heads to the party as well to wreck his vengeance on the town. Ellie and Jay and company have to get there and stop him, plus prove that the doctor killed Trevor.

The coolest part of the book is the world. It's more or less an alternate reality where magic is a fundamental part of life. Having ghost dogs is still uncommon, but Jay is a child of Oberon (the fairy king from "A Midsummer Night's Dream") and can create light. Vampires exist and have entire industries around providing them with artificial blood. There's a branch of government for regulating the magic. It's really cool how she integrates it into contemporary society. 

And then there's the dogs. Ellie's whole family is really into having dogs, there are plenty of legends about her Six-Great-Grandmother and her protective pack of ghost dogs. Dogs and their loyalty factor heavily into the book, and as a fellow dog lover, that resonated quite strongly with me.

Ok so the asexual things, what's nice about this book is that the fact that Ellie is asexual is dropped so casually into the book. There's some references to how she doesn't date and doesn't understand romantic relationships, but the word "asexual" is actually used about halfway though. It's great that we can have books like this that don't have to explain fully what asexuality is and can have a character just exist as asexual.

And the indigenous aspect is wonderful. The book is steeped in Lipan Apache culture, most explicitly in the funeral rites for Trevor. Details like how people can't know the location of the body and things like that become plot points in the mystery. There's also plenty of stories about Six-Great-Grandmother that get into how the indigenous tribes were forced off of their land. There's even a curse that Ellie's mother puts on a vampire saying that he is not welcome on their land. It positions indigenous people as a kind of superhero while on their land, which is quite cool.

I adored this book, and I remember reading a while back that Darcie Little Badger has another book out now! I hope that I can get my hands on it soon.

This Is Beautiful: Dogsitting

 I love taking care of other people's pets, I don't know why but this is just so fun for me. I think it's a combination of the change of scenery with staying in someone else's place and getting to hang out with animals that you don't have to deal with all the time. 

This past weekend I was taking care of my boss's two elderly dogs. They're both very sweet and this was my second time taking care of them so I was already familiar with their routine. I just love spending time with other people's animals and becoming friends with the pets, there's something really rewarding in that for me.

Plus there's the pool and all that, it was a lovely weekend so I did have a nice time hanging out outside with the puppies. A lovely time had all around!

The Logistics of Mentoring High School Students

 I imagine that I'll eventually have more to say about the actual mentoring aspect of it, but this right here is a bit of a rant about how difficult it is to mentor high school students in a scientific research setting. I've been participating in the inaugural year of a program doing exactly that at my university, and it has been a bit of a nightmare, even for me as someone not in charge of the program, with paperwork.

High schoolers are really limited by what they can do in a laboratory setting. I believe these rules are designed to prevent them from doing much of anything except watching, but that isn't explicitly said anywhere. You aren't supposed to let them handle any chemicals, including ethanol, so that cuts down the experiments. And they can't handle anything that is a biosafety level 2 or above. Which mostly means that they cannot handle anything from humans, although other animals can be fair game. So you have to keep all of this in mind when designing experiments.

Once you get past all that, there's also the paperwork of getting permission for them to be in lab. I'm not familiar with the details, but I do know that there were several hoops to go through. Not to mention that multiple forms are flat out incorrect about the information that they ask for, I know one of them states that they require an individual's tax id but what they actually need is your social security number. This set back the student in my lab, we had to have multiple meetings about it before it could be sorted so that he could get paid for his work.

What has really been affecting my day-to-day though is the level of supervision required for mentoring a high schooler. They aren't supposed to go anywhere alone so I have to chaperone him from place to place and keep an eye on him in the lab. Which for the most part is fine, it's not like I'm going anywhere, but it does change the feel a bit. Usually you're expected to do independent research, and like it says, work independently. I worry that my student isn't having that experience because he isn't allowed to work independently. I'm encouraging him to work on his own when he feels comfortable, but technically I don't think I'm supposed to even be doing that much.

Getting research experience early on is so crucial for knowing what you want to do and what path you want to take. Putting all of these restrictions on, making it harder to students to have fulfilling experiences, just makes these programs less likely to exist. I feel like schools with a vested interest in recruiting students should be making this process easier, not harder. I hope that this can change, that programs like the one I'm participating in will become more established and help more students, but I also know that change in academia is slow going when it happens. So we shall see where it goes from here.

This Is Beautiful: Finally Moving

 This weekend I finally moved out of my apartment and into the house that my partner owns and that I've been basically living in for the past year. So it was about time, haha. It's just really nice to be done with that, having all of my things in one place, and not worrying about it anymore.

We also got together with a bunch of friends for the move, and it was really nice to see all of them and get the help needed for the move. Friends are so great, you offer to feed them as exchange for help and they're down for anything!

So that's all for now, moving ended and I need a rest!

Leaving a Unhealthy Environment

 I finally pulled the plug and officially left an organization that became unhealthy and draining on my mental health this morning. I have been thinking about and planning this for months, but it still was nerve-wracking to finally do it. But it also feels good, like a weight has been lifted.

Without getting into specifics, I'm on the board for an organization that had an interpersonal issue within the org that could impact the safety of other members, and I don't think the other board members took it very seriously. I've been leaving our meetings and sobbing for a while now. I love the organization, I spent four years in it, but it got to the point where I had to leave for my mental health and physical safety.

I stuck around until this morning, and then sent a letter that I had drafted to the entire organization describing why I was leaving. I couldn't live with myself without telling people why I was leaving. So I did it, and likely caused some drama. I'd been sitting on the draft for weeks, I had multiple people look at it, but it's still a big thing to do to call out someone on their mistakes.

Even with all that prep work, I still sat there for a minute or two and looked at my message, wondering if this was a good idea. Which of course it was, I'd thought about it for long enough, but it's still hard to do. And then I sent it. So of course it's been flooding my thoughts all afternoon, did anyone read it, what did they think of it, etc. And of course it doesn't matter, I've left and therefore will not see the reaction or the fruits of my actions. Which is fine, I gave it my best shot, but doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about it.

While my partner and I were getting coffee, we ran into a friendly stranger, got to talking, and they offered to do a tarot reading for us. I got the eight of swords, indicating that I'm in the middle of a conflict and that I need to pull myself together and get myself out of this situation (or something like that, I'm not an expert on tarot). Which had a pretty clear meaning to me, you got yourself out of the organization physically now do it mentally.

And that's a good reminder that there's a lot of good from this decision. I don't have the weight of this org on me anymore, future decisions aren't my problem. I'll have more clarity and freedom going forward. Which is the whole reason I wanted to leave in the first place. Things are looking up, I just have to allow myself to see it that way.

This Is Beautiful: Working Out

 You know, I never really thought that I'd be writing a post about this. I mean I like moving as much as the next person, so not at all, but it's never something I look forward to. This week though has been so insanely busy that I haven't had time to get my regular yoga session in. And it's probably why I haven't been doing well lately, haha. I finally noticed that when I managed to squeeze one in and it felt like my whole head got out of a fog. Exercise feels good, and I wish that wasn't the case because it sucks but it does. And I probably should do it more often.

Shakespeare in the Arb 2022

 As of last week, that's a wrap on Shakespeare in the Arb! It was such an incredible experience. I loved being a part of it and I hope that I can do it again next year.

The community was really the best part of it (as with most experiences). I really enjoyed doing this with people that are part of the local community, students from undergrad, people who have done this for years, and those who just started this year. It was such a diverse group (relatively) and it was great to not be surrounded by solely undergrads. For once I wasn't the oldest person there! The group also clearly enjoyed doing social events and spending time together. We were all busy, but everyone made time to chat and get to know each other.

Then there's the method of doing environmental theater and moving through the arboretum throughout the play. I really loved this way of doing theater, I felt as though we were much closer to the location and got to see many really cool plants and animals. A black squirrel definitely stole one of the final scenes on closing night. A deer once jumped through very close to Titania's bower. You wouldn't get that anywhere else.

I am definitely looking forward to doing this again, if at all possible. I feel sure that I already made multiple new, strong friendships and I hope that I can keep that going into future years.