The dog!

Me at this point in the CS timeline:

Hi!!! Did u know one of my characters is a time traveller who joined the time travelling agency he works for on the condition they let him go back in time and kill his parents, thus ensuring he met his two best friends as a child? His code name is H, and his friends (who go by M and Em because they thought it was funny) are also time travellers but they're ILLEGAL time travellers using it for piracy and crimes. Their time machine is always about to break and for some reason H is the person in need of *the most* emergency repairs in the entire agency? He gets better results than anyone else, so they don't mind too much

(proceeds to not talk about this WIP for years again)

MY DEAR PARIS NO I DID NOT! As someone who has a best friend with the same name, I support Em&M wholeheartedly in their time traveling piracy. Please consider me your no.1 fan for this wip and please shout about it more i beg of you

Current impression: why am I emotional about long-dead whalers

got it 

!!!!! 

keeper of the lost cities is a book series by shannon messenger. i highly recommend it. it’s a kids’ series, but it does get kinda dark, especially in the later books. 

unfortunately, it doesn’t do well in the regard of representation of disabled/queer characters or characters of color (there are characters of color, but not too many, which really sucks) and EVERYONE has blue eyes except for the main character. like, it’s an actual plot point.

that said, it’s a great story with lots of humor and character types, as well as queer and neurodivergent coding. as well as this, one of the main characters has verbally/emotionally abusive parents, and it shows how that affects him and how he personally uses humor to cope. 

it revolves around a girl named sophie foster, who is a telepath. she’s lived most of her life protecting the secret because humans would either call her crazy or experiment on her (or both). but one day, she finds out she’s an elf. most of the elves have powers similar to hers (telepathy), like controlling water or turning invisible. 

there are two rebel groups, though; sophie is the product of genetic engineering and experimenting to create someone who could potentially be powerful enough to change a corrupted, seemingly utopian world. and it’s unclear which rebel group is the good guys vs the bad guys. all they know is that one of them, the one who created her, is called the black swan. 

it’s a really good book series with realistic characters, action, and humor! 

my main criticisms are for lack of representation of queer characters, disabled characters, and characters of color. it really sucks, because the majority of the characters are white (of the main group of characters, only a few are poc; tam, linh, wylie, and maruca. you don’t meet two of them until book 4, and the other 2 aren’t as relevant until book 8.), and all but one have blue eyes which is a major flaw and not okay.