Manhwa

Swoon

~ shawnaborman ~ 3 Comments

Hello, hello! How’s everyone doing? How are your holidays going? I’m just sitting here sipping peppermint mocha coffee and procrastinating writing this post. I don’t know why I have no motivation. It’s another number thingie, so it’s not like I have to think of a topic. I’m just lazy. This week’s pick is courtesy of the amazing Olive (a fellow Stonecoaster)! She chose number 6. I’ve done 13 (you can find the prompt list there), 7, 2, 8, 3, and 10. I’m down to 14, 11, and 1, so only a few more weeks (plus a couple of book reviews and a possible birthday post) before I have to think of things again. Ugh. Anyway, this week’s prompt is “Tell me which book had the most swoon-worthy romance.” Le sigh…

I’m going to be completely honest. Romance has never been high up on my lists of must haves for a good book. I don’t mind the whole romantic subplot thing. In fact, it’s usually expected in a lot of the genres I read, but it’s very rarely the point of the stories. I’m actually a bigger fan of the found family trope. Enemies to lovers is fun. Angsty doom and gloom personality vs. sunshine and glitter queen/king is nice too. But how do I pick? And it doesn’t help that I gravitate toward the psychopathic characters. In other words, I’m having a really hard time thinking of actual swoon-worthy romances that won’t get me weird looks. Books. I need to think of books, not manga/manhwa. This is hard.

I’m going to go with Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell as an example of a relatively healthy (from what I remember) budding relationship. Sure, there’s the conniving asshat that we all know isn’t the endgame romance interest and a bunch of missteps with the actual endgame dude that could be cleared up with a simple talk, but for a college first love thing, it has all the right warm and fuzzy moments. And when they finally get together… -chef’s kiss-. Plus the book sets up one of my favorite dysfunctional romances: Simon and Baz (from the Simon Snow books). I know I shouldn’t love them, but I do. They make me squee, which is as good as a swoon.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater is weirdly one of my favorite romantic subplots. Why? Because it’s barely there. You can feel the growth and changes in the relationship between Puck and Sean, but in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t important. Life is happening and things are kind of nuts and this subtle shift into love is there, but other stuff is taking priority over it and that’s fine. It’s more realistic to me than those stories where love overpowers everything else.

Don’t get me wrong, I do occasionally go looking for obvious romances, but it’s usually just fluffy gay stuff that gets all the d’awwwwwwwwwwwws. Or really dark stuff, like The Beast Must Die by Lee Hyeon-Sook. Yeah, I had to slip a manhwa in here. Sorry, not sorry. I’m not fond of the trope that brings the two main characters together (woman they both know kills herself because of bad things and they set out to avenge her), but all the murder is fun. Kang Moo is one of my favorite little psychopaths. I swoon over him. But yeah… it gets dark fast. Don’t read if you’re delicate.

So, since I’m not very well read when it comes to romance and romantic subplots, feel free to suggest books. Or manga/manhwa/webtoons. Whatever. Or just tell me what some of your favorite romantic tropes are. As always, feel free to share your comments or questions or whatever here or on my social media pages!

How I Avoided the Election

~ shawnaborman ~ Leave a comment

Howdy, howdy! It’s Tuesday November 3rd as I’m writing this and I have no idea how all of the election crap is going. I don’t particularly care either. We’re all screwed for the next four years no matter who gets in, so why waste time worrying? As you’re reading this, it’s the 4th or later, so you probably already know who won. If it was the ancient white dude you were rooting for, congrats! If it was the other ancient white dude, better luck next time. But as with all election years, I’ve spent my day avoiding politics as much as possible. Here’s how I did it this time.

AKA Americans insisting on voting Dem or Rep instead of voting for someone who might actually do things to benefit everyone.

1. I helped Dad uninstall a switch from SmartThings and connect the new switch when he got it in. He’s finally remodeling his room and my job in the process is to figure out the smart home aspects. I’ll post pictures of the room when he’s done, but it’s coming along nicely if I do say so myself.

2. I read some manhwa (Korean graphic novels/webtoons). Okay, so I was actually procrastinating on writing this post, but it also kept me away from election stuff too. No one wants to know what kind of BL (if you know what that is and want to squee over it with me, message me on one of my social media pages) I was reading, but a few of my favorites had updates, so it kept me amused for half an hour.

Shakespeare and Hathaway.

3. I watched BritBox with Dad. During breakfast/lunch (same meal), we watched an episode of Shakespeare and Hathaway. It’s a fun show and you should be watching it. For dinner, we’ll probably watch an episode of the Inspector Lynley Mysteries. It’s an okay show, but there are better mysteries out there. They keep changing his wife (not the character, just the actress), which is distracting. We’ll probably watch some stuff on Hulu too.

4. I scrolled through Facebook. Yes, I saw a bunch of people freaking out about election day stress, but I only stopped scrolling for cute memes and pictures of pretty people. I also made sure to stop before the main media coverage of the day started, so I could avoid all of the madness. I’ll scroll through it after a decision is made.

Terrifying.

5. I read and wrote this post and did some other things I needed to do. In other words, I adulted. This is not something I recommend, but it’s necessary and better than watching election crap.

I have no idea who’s ahead in the polls as I’m writing this. I’ll find out who wins later. For now, I’m going to go relax and avoid everything. If you avidly kept track of everything, I hope you didn’t stress yourself too much. If you just bided your time until everything was over, feel free to share what you got up to here or on my social media pages! I need new ideas for how to avoid the next election.