Needles & Nilbogs

 Spoilers abound! Thoughts are unfiltered and spoilers everywhere.  I LOVED THIS ONE SINGLE-HANDEDLY GOT ME BACK INTO THE FANDOM BRAIN

Aka, I’m desperate for more city spies fans. 1. Found family with problems who try to do better and fix those problems In the Murderbot Diaries, Dr. Mensah and the rest of PreservationAux are Murderbot's found family. They purchase it, but because they don't have the opportunity to talk things over, things go badly and it runs away. But by Exit Strategy, they're trying to treat it better --- Pin-Lee sneaks it stuff to help it run away, Mensah explicitly tells it she handled things very badly, all the humans make sure it has time now to make its own decisions.  In the same way, all of the City Spies screw up in their attempt to become a family. From the beginning, Mother handles Charlotte badly and doesn't tell the others. Then he and Brooklyn don't tell the others about a project, and Sydney gets jealous of Brooklyn, and they have to handle so much emotional drama beyond just the stuff with Mother's family. (By the way, it's really hard to provide spoiler fr...

 Warning, spoilers for City of the Dead ahead! I GOT THE BOOK AND I LOVE IT. So I wrote down all my reactions and now here they are, by page number so you can avoid spoilers. No explanations no nothing. Back blurb: I am DESPERATE to know what's going on here PLEASE Page 7: Hi Kat, I love you. Page 23: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA OMG I LOVE THEM P27: Garfield is giving me magpie vibes P33: oh, Rio. Oh, Rio.  P38: awww, Kat, stop pretending you don't have feelings. Also AAAAAAAAA SIBLING LOVE and aaa this is something mb would say P49: Brooklyn's birthday is November 20th dang it this has already ruined one fic P54: HEY WHERE ARE MONTY AND MOTHER (also AAAAAAA SIBLINGS) P58: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA P64: AUTISTIC KAT REAL P69: definitely undiagnosed autism there kat my girl P74: oh, Brooklyn. Oh, child.  P77: six years since team!  P79: oooooh P80: well, guess we know when the book is set lol (post... 2017 I think) P84: IF SHE ISNT TALKING ABOUT CLEMMIE ILL EAT MY COPY O...

 I haven’t decided if I’m ever going to actually post the city spies soulmate au that’s been rattling around in my brain since (*checks draft creation date*) February of last year (technically: 2/16/22, 9:19 AM, hah), but I want the book 1 outline out of my drafts before book 4 comes out (THREE DAYS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA), so this is a proposed outline for a city spies fic that has about 1/2 of book 1 written, all of book 1 planned out, and a loose outline for books 2 and 3.  This was the original idea: It's the one where whatever you write on your body appears on theirs in the same spot, starting at age 10, and it's just the person who completes you whether it's romantic or platonic; also, fate guarantees that it's someone you will have contact with even if that comes from finding out you're soulmates, you're always going to meet in person at least a bit. Often have mannerisms in common. Rio and Brooklyn get closer platonically through their notes while fighting in...

 TWO WEEKS TILL RELEASE DAY AAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! Things we know now: IT’S A KAT BOOK THIS IS NOT A DRILL WE ARE GETTING KATHMANDU GIBBS-MONTGOMERY PERSPECTIVE AND I AM HERE FOR IT. (Also does this mean book 5 will be Rio POV????!!!!) Also, looking at a summary and a pre-reader’s review: ARE WE GETTING A NEW SPY?????? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! I can’t wait!!  ( All of my fics that are post-canon or nebulously so are going to need tags to say when they were released, won’t they. Not excited about that part.)

 Like I said the other day , I want to talk about my writing more because there’s a lot that I want to say that I don’t want to put in authors notes (usually cause I think of stuff in the shower and then don’t remember to edit it in when I’m at my computer later), but there’s also no better place to put it. Also this is an official threat (not in a violent way) that if you ask me a question about something I wrote I will answer, and answer in depth.  So this is about my latest fic, once and for all , which is a city spies and murderbot crossover, and it’s basically an excuse to do a roleswap but across universes and also to drag in multiverse shenanigans in general (one of my favorite things). Go read it, right now it’s pretty short, and while this isn’t spoilery for the fic, it doesn’t really make sense without that context. And I had this idea in the shower last night and absolutely have to talk about it somewhere at some point   This… *drumroll*… is backstory.  ...

 If you’ve been paying any attention to me lately, you might have realized I got really into writing fanfic over the summer, and now I have an AO3 account under the name BWizard . It’s really fun and somewhat easy for me, and I’ve posted a lot, but I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about some of it in detail, and I’d like to.  I feel kind of nervous about that, honestly; I write a lot that’s intended for myself, and so while it’s fun and I’m happy with all of it (or at least everything that makes it to AO3), a lot of it has an intended audience of one person, me. (The murderbot stories about the mirror universe and high school au have an intended audience of maybe three people each, one of which is me. Just like this blog, with its four or five regular readers, including me, my dad, and a Russian spambot. [Hi spambot! Hope you enjoy leaving comments I delete instantly.]) So I do a lot of writing what I want to read and all, but that also means that I don’t get to talk abou...

Sorry it’s been a while, college apps and finals and whatever, blah blah blah, okay time to YELL EXCITEDLY ABOUT CITY SPIES AGAIN (spoilers ahead I’m not gonna mark anything except the big stuff). You can find my last round of yelling about book 4 here . Okay! So!! In the last few weeks we’ve gotten a lot of news about book 4, City of the Dead (CotD), and it’s all been absolutely fascinating. From Instagram, we have: slide 8 of this Instagram post   about Ponti’s year in review [slide 8 ID: a picture of Ponti’s computer screen with the prologue for book 4 partially visible and marked up], the book trailer  and the previous trailer  [video IDs: various pictures of Egypt intermixed with pictures of the city spies doing their thing], a p iece of trivia from November 4  [ID: a slide with a picture of an Egyptian boy and a pyramid, saying “100 years ago today, King Tut’s tomb was discovered by this 12-year old boy”], and the cover announcement which is what the fir...

 Today was the second day of school and I have opinions but mostly trip photos. And some from senior sunrise this morning, and a super amazing thing one of my best friends sent me for my birthday.  (Blogger turns photos sideways for some reason but) The City Spies, as drawn and painted by one of my besties!!! Isn’t it gorgeous? It’s a scene from book 1, and if it wasn’t late I’d find the exact page reference, but it’s amazing and gorgeous.  Drone on a model coaster  Beach sunset, seen through trees CA museum!  Went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, saw lots of kelp Asilomar at high tide — just as cool as at low tide More Asilomar  Beach sunset again! Meet Lilac Lavender, the purple tardigrade plush I got from the aquarium  Steinbeck museum had to have Steinbeck somewhere… CA museum again, this time the quilt Senior sunrise, spindle sunrise… take your pick! Birthday cake! Lilac in a tree at the campground Coals at night  More senior sunrise, without th...

The City Spies series by James Ponti is getting a new book sometime in February! It will be called City of the Dead, and it’ll be the fourth book. I shared these thoughts and predictions for it on my personal instagram on Monday, but this is a slightly more edited essay-format. ( Instagram announcement  for the curious; it has the cover and the name.) Fair warning: spoilers for City Spies, Golden Gate, and Forbidden City ahead. I will try to mark anything really terrible, but just read the books please. I want to talk about them with people, aaaahhh!  My initial hopes on reading the announcement were for a book about Rio or Kat, given the cover. Personally, I’m hoping for Rio because of the fanfic I’m working on that’s currently about him, Brooklyn, and their friendship, but I would also enjoy a book about Kat because she has a really interesting point of view, and I’d love to see more. The way each book has been focused on one kid so far means that there’s probably going to b...

Tuesday I got my preordered copy of a book I’ve been waiting for since forever!!!!! It’s the third book in the City Spies series by James Ponti, and it is just as good as the first two (maybe better. We’ll see). The really frustrating thing, though, is that there is literally no City Spies fanfiction. None. Go check, I’ll wait.  See, no fanfic (seriously, I google it regularly and can’t find anything). I’ve written some, but so far it’s only been for my sister, who also loves the City Spies. But since there isn’t any out there, and I’m now really excited to write city spies fanfic again, I’m going to put it here so that there’s something. Depending on what people think of these (and what I want to do) I may share more or I may not. These are links to google docs so that scrolling through won’t take forever, and my author’s notes are here too. I welcome comments on these and I hope that even if you haven’t read the books that you give them a try. Middle grade books can be amazing fo...