#mark look

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1 How many books did you read this year?

155!

2 Did you reread anything? What?

One book, that I reread with you on the roadtrip :D No regrets rereading Wingmen though

I did also reread the murderbot books twice though. They slap so hard

3 What were your top five books of the year?

The Generals by Thomas E. Ricks

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch

6 Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

I wanted to finish The Sleepwalkers before the end of the year, but I've been trying to focus on finishing a fic so I won't finish it today probably - it will be the first book of the year then!

10 What was your favorite new release of the year?

I really liked the Incandescent by Emily Tesh!

17 Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

I knew I would probably like the Murderbot books, but I REALLY liked the Murderbot books!!

24 Did you DNF anything? Why?

Nope :) I finish everything that I pick up

25 What reading goals do you have for next year?

Probably over 100 books again, get through everyone's recs, and try to read more than 40 books from the tbr? try not to let the new releases grab me... we shall see

2. Did you reread anything? What?

Answered here!

3. What were your top five books of the year?

Invictus: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation by John Carlin

Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two by Allan Bérubé

Evolution's Rainbow by Joan Roughgarden

A Higher Call by Adam Makos

Wingmen by Ensan Case

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

Adam Makos! As above, top 5 books of the year, and he has a lot of others that I haven't read but I've put on my to read because they look really good!

15. Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them?

The Anxious Generation which was nominated for Goodreads awards, but it wasn't even good. Also Edenglassie which apparently was nominated for the Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) for Small Publishers' Adult Book and Nominee for Audiobook of the Year (2024), The Stella Prize Nominee for Longlist (2024), Some Desperate Glory which won Hugo Award for Best Novel (2024), Locus Award Nominee for First Novel (2024), The In-Between which was nominated for Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) Nominee for Literary Fiction (2024), Yellowface which won/nominated for British Book Award for Fiction (2024), Audie Award Nominee for Fiction (2024), and Doppelganger which was nominated Writers' Prize Nominee for Nonfiction (2024), and won Women's Prize for Non-Fiction (2024).

16. What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?

Answered here!

End of year book ask meme

How many books did you read this year?

So far, currently 47! But I still have a few I want to get through in the next few weeks, so let's see if I can top 50.

2. Did you reread anything? What?

Nope! Everything's new this year

3. What were your top five books of the year?

All the Living and All the Dead by Hayley Campbell

Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe by Serhii Plokhy

Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard

Brothers in War and Peace: Constand and Abraham Viljoen and the Birth of the New South Africa by Dennis Cruywagen

8. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

I already answered 7, so answering 8 instead.

Yes! My goodreads goal was 45 books, and I have read 47 books so far this year :)

12. Any books that disappointed you?

LOL well some of the Quarterly Essays were, uh, interesting to say the least. But besides those, probably Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker just because it quoted a lot of out of date statistics and understandings of the brain that I, who is not exactly keeping up with this community, still knew were wrong, so it sort of made me distrust the entire book.

22. What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book?

I finished a few books in one day this year (not counting the essays because they are short). The Regeneration series, Citizen Soldiers: The US Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, I'm Glad My Mom Died, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Our Time: Breaking the Silence of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands are all books that I finished in the same day that I started them.

24. Did you DNF anything? Why?

Nope! I'm reading a book I haven't finished yet, but I plan to do so by the end of the year. If I start something, then I finish it.

25. What reading goals do you have for next year?

oh hi mark

2. least favorite fic you wrote this year

lmaooo can't believe you're making me tell on myself like this... I GUESS my sorikai week piece, since I wanted to expand it out to an actual workcount but instead didn't and just posted 300 words on the day 😔 idk I just wasn't feeling it for that one even though I think it had a lot of potential

11. fandom you enjoyed writing for the most this year

I think I would be lying if I said anything other than star wars LOL. Me innocently saying 'hey mando s2 just finished, maybe I should check that out' like last christmas really put me in the hole for this year... I have joined the mainstream lads in the star wars obssession

14. a fic you didn’t expect to write

All of the codywan fics!! me at the beginning of the year... innocent and without any knowledge of what star wars would bring down upon me...

17. fics you’ll continue next year

My codywan on tatooine series!! I have posted 4 fics but I have another 9 planned so uh... yeah. I'm trying to get part 5 up before the end of the year though, and I have part 6 already written, so like it's not loads of new content I have to write for that series? ....haha, yeah right

19. any new fics to start next year

I answered this one before but I can post it again here!

I have a super large amount of wips at the moment, so I really want to finish those before starting anything new. But at the same time, I have a lot of wips right now because I didn’t hesitate to start things that I wanted to finish, if that makes sense? So there’s not really any pending ideas rattling around in my head. I guess maybe I’ll say the next part of my KH re:write series, since I have part 1 posted, have started part 2, but part 3 and 4 are the ones that I’m super excited to get my teeth into.

24. favorite fic you read this year

mark my beloved <3

💖 What do you like most about your own writing?

I get to make up my own everything!! Put it all on the page, what I want. Feels good, feels organic. Esp all that sweet trans rep, like oh there's not enough in my current fandom? Time to change that with my own two hands, very sexy of me

😐 What embarrasses you most about your own writing?

Sometimes I think that people will be able to look at my writing and just go 👀👀👀👀 oh okay so they're THAT type of person... idk I think a lot of what I think and feel as a person can be seen through my writing, esp fics that I put a lot of my own fears/wants into, so I guess I can get a lil embarrassed that I'm putting all that out there for anyone to see.

Oh and writing smut fics. That wouldn't be so bad, however people who will remain unnamed who I know in real life follow my ao3 account and thus can see them all, I close my eyes I do not think about it 🙈

👀 Do you have any WIPs that you would never let see the light of day? If yes, what are they about?

LOL literally too many to list!! I think my wips fall into 2 categories, one of which is 'yeah I would post this if I ever finish it. I won't tho' and 'I would burn alive in the sunlight if anyone other than me ever saw this!!'

A fic from category 1 is all my ideas for FFXV longfic, I have like 30k or so written but um I don't think I will ever finish them rip. An example from category 2 is like 90% of my smut fics lmao

💻 Do you do research for your fics? What’s the deepest dive you’ve done?

Honestlyyy not really?? Like I'll look up fandompedia entries for names of people/places to make sure I've gotten them right, but if I'm writing fic about something I'm usually obssessed with it so all the details will be in the brain already <3 I usually write canon or canon divergent only, so that means I don't need a lot of AU details usually. The most recent 'research' I've done is when I was trying to make sense of the military structure in Star Wars... spent like half a day writing it all up before throwing canon out the window and making my own shit up. Literally whoever was writing that canon is nuts NONE of that shit made any sense

✨ Choose three adjectives to complement your own writing.

Deep, flowing, emotional

5. Something you enjoyed about lockdown? 

I got to work from home instead of commuting ~25 hours a week so that slapped honestly

6. What bothered you most about lockdown?

Could see the fam or my friends for a while :( which sucked but you know, all doing our bit ect

7. Which change, e.g. home office, would you like to keep once it´s all over? 

HOME OFFICE PLEASE... but also everyone washing their hands all the time, and also not shaking hands with people, and the mass sanitisation of all public places, also people on the train keeping their distance... basically I am begging everyone to be clean

9. On a scale of 1 (not at all) to 10 (completely), how well do you stick to government´s rules? Explain.

I guess 10?? There weren’t really many rules in place for me to break, and when they did restrict numbers I did stay at home and didn’t go to any gatherings

10. Favorite lockdown activity? 

Staying up past 10pm on a weekday because I don’t have to get up early to go to work in the city

11. How did the lockdown affect your work/education? 

Went 100% work from home with was lit honestly. I think it did affect my team socialisation ect since I moved to a new team at the start of the year, but we all still got along pretty well so overall I’m calling it a win

12. Any new hobbies you tried out during lockdown? 

Lmao does getting platinum trophies on ps4 games count... otherwise I feel like I didn’t pick up anything else

13. Any new subscriptions you made due to lockdown? 

Was kind of tempted to get dis/ney plus but then I just streamed the mandalorian instead lmao even though finding a site to watch it was a lil annoying

14. Anything new you tried to learn during lockdown? 

I started genshin impact so I’m learning how to play that ig?? Idk does learning my new job(s) count 

15. Any old hobbies you took up again during lockdown?

Lmao no, I hardly keep up with my current hobbies to start up old ones again

26. Dumbest impulse buy?

I did buy the physical full bundle of the sor/ikai zine despite probably only needing the digital version lmao. Idk I’m not really a buyer and most of my spending that wasn’t bills related was donations this year, which I don’t regret

47. Something you did during lockdown that you´ve been putting off for way too long?

Uhh finally started writing limerance again in October, which I had been putting off for the whole of this year for some reason... still need to put a lot of work into it before it’s finished though

100. Was this ask game better or worse than 2020?

15. Favourite class for battle?

Bow knight or dark knight - bow knight has SUCH good range with a bow and dark knight has dark magic and cavalry class, and looks cool af 

20. Best OST?

Already answered!

34. Hardest chapter?

8. Who is your least favorite character?

Roxas! He has the best storyline, really driven home across the entire series, and that funky little kid has my two favourite keyblades as well! Love him so much <3

24. How did you react to KH2 Atlantica?

dsdfgdsf what a question... I was like, probably 8 the first time I played KH2, so I think I probably just accepted it. It wasn’t until I started interacting with other fans and I figured out that everyone disliked Atlantica in KH2 and I thought about it critically and went... yeah... why is it like that... who decided that...

32. Why are Sora's shoes so big?

Look if I ever meet Nomura in person this is the one question I’ll ask him, just for you, okay? Otherwise I think this is just a mystery we will never get to the bottom to. 

40. Do you wish you could meet anyone?

Already answered!

56. When does Kingdom Hearts stop being about Sora?

I mean if we’re going literally with this question, then BBS. He’s not really in that game and it has a clear storyline without him! In a more meta way, honestly after DDS was released and Nomura got FF15 taken off him and Sora went from being his favourite character to being his least favourite character. I really do think that entire thing was behind why KH3 was so disjointed and terrible, Nomura gave up on it and Sora both, and it became about Nomura instead :(

64. Are Roxas and Ventus going to meet?

XD I suppose this question list was made before KH3 came out... Sure they met, but they didn’t even talk to each other! Very lame! I hope that in the future we get a little more interaction between them. Otherwise me and my sneaky writer hands might have to fix that... 

80. When was the last time you re-watched that scene that made you cry?

Already answered!

88. Explain the whole concept of time traveling to me?

ASDFGDF mark you are not even up to the time travelling in KH. Yes, there is time travel. Basically you can only time travel to an ‘anchor’ point, which is yourself, in your own natural timeline. No I am not going any deeper into it because this is just how I think of it. 

94. If Roxas meets Lea in KH3, how would he feel?