corv

@corvidcall.bsky.social

126 Followers 243 Following

they/he | not a minor | described by friends and lovers as "appropriate" | #1 orzhov boy

A female moose with two baby moose, eating fruit from a tree
Margaret of York's portrait, used on her wikipedia page. She has a big fat head
A 4 star review of The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi: "Oh, this was a fun one. My mom recommended it to me, and appropriately, she was also the person who recommended I read The Murderbot Diaries, which this book very clearly wants to be. Or, at least, it wants to be sitting next to it on the same bookshelf. It’s also a fun sci-fi adventure about a funny genderless underdog saving a diverse group of scientists. And it does a great job! It’s a delightful book! It took me a bit to get really absorbed into it, but that might be somewhat my fault — I’ve spent months reading primarily Classics, so the very modern and reference-heavy dialogue was a little off-putting to me at first, but once I got used to it, I was invested in the characters and wanted to see the story through. Now, this book IS stuck in a dryer, wiggling its little tuchus around, saying “Oh, nooo, don’t make a movie of me~” But you know what else did that? Jurassic Park. And are you gonna tell me you DON’T like Jurassic Park? Don't lie to me. You're reading a review of The Kaiju Preservation Society. I KNOW you do."
A 4 star review for The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux: "I read this for the first time when I was in middle school, because I was very into the musical. As I recall, my main takeaway was: Christine has terrible taste. I could fix him. And now I’m 30, and after rereading it, my thinking is: I could still fix him. But I think maybe I’m the one with bad taste. Although, I’m at least old enough now to recognize that the Persian is the real hottie in this book. Love that guy."
Furnance Ancona from Fallen London
ddlovato: GET A JOB ddlovato: STAY AWAY FROM HER
a 3 star review for A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall "The idea of a regency romance that uses the social upheaval of the Napoleonic wars to tell a lovely romance with a trans lead is one of those ideas that seems so perfect and obvious that you’re surprised you haven’t already seen it a million times before. And this is a good one! I really like Viola as a protagonist, and I’ve always said the sexiest quality a fictional man can have is suicidal ideation, so Gracewood’s already dreamy as far as I’m concerned. The supporting cast are all delightful, and the writing overall is charming and funny, but never so funny it makes the romance insincere. Unfortunately, I think the great denouement at the end of the novel leaves quite a bit to be desired. Without wishing to spoil anything, the villain’s introduction is so abrupt and obvious and his actions so entirely devoid of motivation (beyond what essentially amounts to the narrative shrugging and going “idk he’s the Joker i guess?”) that they’re frustrating to behold, and kind of soured my enjoyment of the book a little. It really feels like 75 pages of an entirely different and worse book were snuck into my very enjoyable and grounded romance novel, and it makes me wonder if it was some publisher mandate that the book contain at least one swordfight. While I can suspend my disbelief for a lot (I simply cannot believe that Gracewood has been pegged before, but fine, I’ll allow it), I draw the line at sword-canes."
A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall
5 star review of The Left Hand of Darkness "I read it almost exactly a decade ago for school and thought it was really good, and rereading it for the first time since, I thought it was incredible. It’s so good that I struggle to think of anything to say about it. I mean, what CAN you say about The Left Hand of Darkness? It’s… it’s the Left Hand of Darkness. It’s incredibly famous. People already know it’s good. It’s not like people are still reading and discussing and caring about this book more than 50 years after it was published because it was just okay. The world of Gethen feels robust and grounded. Yes, obviously, much is said about the strange alien gender of its denizens, but it’s the fact that we also get insight into their foods, clothes, religion, government, stories, daily schedules, that makes it feel like a real place that people live. When I finished the book, I was almost annoyed to see how everyone brought up the Gethenian’s sex first and foremost, because, like Genly, by the time the story was over, it all felt so irrelevant. Or, more accurately, it was so natural and mundane that it almost felt weird to be drawing attention to it. There is one particular moment in the book that I can’t stop thinking about- near the end, while Genly and Estraven are travelling across the ice, Estraven asks Genly what women are like, and Genly can’t give an adequate answer. He can barely even remember himself and gets frustrated trying, saying he’s practically forgotten. Nusuth. It is no matter."
4 star review for Sirena "This book was one of my spouse’s favorites growing up, and now that I've read it, I can really see why. The story centers around the titular Sirena, a mermaid who, like her sisters, will remain mortal until she gets a mortal man to fall in love with her. An opportunity for this arrives in the form of Philoctetes, who was injured by one of Hera’s serpents and has been abandoned on the once-inhabited isle of Lemnos. It's a good book! An easy read to be sure, but it IS a middle-grade novel, so that's to be expected. I was not really a mermaid girl, but I feel like, if you were, this book would be EVERYTHING. Sirena is so beautiful and tragic, and her love is so true (canonically stated to be the only TRUE love that any of the mermaids found). I also think back to when I was a little girl ages 12+, and I think the depiction of Sirena’s burgeoning sexuality would have made me feel very seen, back when I, too, was fascinated by men and afraid of men and I desired men but didn't even know what I'd do with one if I had one. I predicted the ending would be sad (any story where a character is immortal inevitably will be), but I got choked up at the end nonetheless. If you know any girls in middle school who like mermaids and love drama (so, basically any middle school girl), this would be perfect for them."
5 star review for The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare "It's funny how often I see people refer to this book as an exciting spy thriller, like a proto-James Bond, because that is absolutely not how I felt about it. Personally, I found it to be delightfully funny (Gabriel Syme is the weirdest man in the world and I love him), with some very heavy-handed but intriguing stuff to say about God. It's hard to say exactly what it's trying to SAY about God, but it's still fascinating and deeply enjoyable. It really does feel like what the subtitle says- a nightmare. Like GK Chesterton had a meltdown about the inherent pointlessness of life and the lack of meaning in suffering, and, struggling to square all that with his own Catholicism, put it all down in paper so he could get it away from himself. I usually just journal instead of writing all my fears into a novel, but y'know, that's why he's GK Chesterton and I'm not. Also, this book is extra funny when you know any anarchists in real life. I know that anarchists in Chesterton's time were a slightly more threatening presence (and that that his anarchists are more based off his own fears of nihilism than actual anarchist theory), but it's pretty amusing when he frames them as a terrifying, diabolical suicide cult, when every anarchist I know is too busy arguing with people on Twitter about whether cooking is leftist or bourgeois to go Paris to bomb the Czar and the President of France."
1 star review for Apparently Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers "It has been a long time since I have hated a book as much as I hate this one. A lot of that is probably because, on paper, it seemed so promising! A funny, queer fantasy romance where a himbo knight falls in love with an evil old sorcerer? Sign me up!! And the first few chapters were fun! For the first 50 pages or so, I thought I was going to really like the book. And then the book got really, really foul. So, on the cover and the back copy, it says Sir Cameron gets turned into a vulture. It's funny how little it bothers our hero, and I think this part is really fun. Sadly, it's astonishingly short-lived for something that's on the cover of the book, and also, I don't really enjoy anything in the book after this segment is over. After he's a vulture, Cameron convinces the sorcerer Merulo to transform him into a woman. While he was big and strong as a man, he's small and beautiful as a woman. And his boobs are HUGE! He keeps holding them! Because they're so big! Haha! Now that he's a woman, he cleans the castle! Cameron gets hit on by a gross man he’s not interested in, and reflects that this is how women must feel! Has Cameron ever made unwanted advances on a woman? Not really! He’s very gay! There was one time, near the beginning of the book, where he tried to seduce someone in an attempt to save his own life, but I don’t think the situations are at all comparable, despite Cameron’s self-reflection on it. “This must be how Glenda felt” girl, she-"
A 5 star review for The Traitor & The Wretch by Jasmine Walls and Rowan MacColl I backed this on Kickstarter, received my copy, and then promptly forgot about it for months until my spouse told me they had stayed up all night reading it in one go. I finally got around to reading it myself, and the only thing that kept me from doing the same was the fact that I was reading it out loud and my throat would get too sore. Did you know books could be good? Did you know it was still possible, in this day and age, to write characters with actual personalities, or stories where things actually happen? I didn’t think they’d still let you publish anything more substantial than… I don’t know, Legends and Lattes, but I guess that’s why this was done by an indie press. This book was so good, I’m struggling to think of anything at all to say about it. I enjoyed every minute I spent with it. I was angry when I was done, because I wanted to still be reading it. I have my complaints, but most of them are incredibly minor — it felt like Knell believed Percy would leave him longer than made any sense, and while it’s well-established why Percy hated the Prophesized Hero, I still felt like I didn’t understand why he he decided to betray him when and how he did — and none of them impacted the emotional beats that actually matter to the story. I loved the characters so much that, by time any of these really came up as a problem, I was more than willing to overlook them, especially considering they were so insignificant in the face of how much fun the rest of the book was. Anyway, Knell’s never done anything wrong in his life. I love him, even though he’s stinky.
A 2 star GoodReads review of Omens of Chaos. "Came to this book as a Magic the Gathering fan and a fan of Seannan McGuire, so I had pretty high hopes for it. I had no real love for Strixhaven specifically — given how I was over Harry Potter long before its author had her evil turn, I had not really been looking for a new wizard school to replace it — but I was certainly willing to be convinced. And the book started just fine! We met our main characters and got some fun glimpses of what their home planes were like, we got settled in at school, and I was tentatively hopeful that I would come to like these characters! And then nothing of any consequence happens for about 200 pages. It’s excruciating. Chapter after chapter of things that seem like they might lead to a plot, but instead fizzle out, or being reminded that our main character, End User License Agreement Blue is canny and manipulative while watching her make stupid decision after stupid decision, or hearing about more interesting things that happened while the characters were in class, but never actually seeing them in class, where we might have gotten more natural worldbuilding (instead of just the repetitive “wow, New Capenna and Fiora are similar but also different!” we get every time Eula and Segante are in a room together. I GET IT. THEY’RE BOTH ITALIAN!) or gotten to actually see how the characters differ from the people around them, instead of just being told it. Our group of inter-planar students experience a parodic level of bullying from their peers, which they inexplicably never tell anyone about. Look, I understand how stories work, so I know they shouldn’t trust their advisor. But at no point do I understand"
Maeve, Insidious Singer 2UU Legendary Creature — Siren 2U: Goad target creature. Whenever that creature attacks one of your opponents this turn, you draw a card. (A goaded creature attacks each combat if able and attacks a player other than you if able, until your next turn.) Her haunting tune drowns out the percussion of snapping masts. 3/4
marge Simpson "i just think they're neat" meme
buff fblthp
a frame from the Yu-Gi-Oh manga. Kaiba says "This cross I've carried... the cross of collectable card game defeat..."
A Spotify playlist named "Alpharael💖". It has two songs: "Congratulations, You Survived Your Suicide" by Sycamore Smith and "there is a rock in my house" by Brian David Gilbert
Shadowhearts: From The New World for the PlayStation 2
Pillage the Bog
Kirol isn’t trying to be an asshole. They’re a naturally stealthy person, and startle their hearing classmates often enough that it’s never really occurred to them that this might bother Abigale more than it does anyone else. In their vague defense, Abigale hasn’t told them explicitly. As a counter to that defense, they’d notice if they paid attention. Abigale dropped her shears into her basket beside the flowers and began moving her hands in sharp, declarative gestures, followed a beat later by the telepathic echo. Kirol, we’ve talked about this! You can’t sneak up on me! From Kirol’s POV, they obviously can. She hasn’t said “you shouldn’t,” and so they keep ignoring her complaints. Real younger sibling behavior, buddy. Maybe chill.
Couple No Fun Anymore After Having Kids Die
701.34a To proliferate means to choose any number of permanents and/or players that have a counter, then give each one additional counter of each kind that permanent or player already has.
Flubs, the Fool
Valgavoth
Three Bowls of Porridge
Yuma, Proud Protector
a 13 year old corvidcall, with their head in the mouth of a large dragon statue
Hearthhull, the Worldseed
A screenshot from SNL. Several characters in winter gear are saying "They both look nice!"
a year at most . . . we pretend to watch the hummingbirds
An image of Alpharael from Magic the Gathering. Overlaid is the text "Never kill yourself, because that shit kills you"
"You wear a wealth of metal," he says. "What did you do to earn it?" Haliya is in her armor again. She looks nonplussed. "I just survived, I suppose." Tezzeret beams. "A fine answer." Sami swallows. Tezzeret's interviews with new minions are always volatile. "You." The Metalman's attention turns to Alpharael. "Aether worshipper. Is it true?" Alpharael nods, as if he knows precisely what Tezzeret means. "All of it." "And you fled from it? Walked away from your school, your creed, your teachers?" "Well," Alpharael says, "I wanted to live a little longer." "Good!"
A screenshot from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney of Miles Edgeworth saying "Thanks to you, I am saddled with unnecessary... feelings." A pride flag is overlaid over the image
A foil Reflecting Pool in the Future Sight frame
a bathroom selfie of corv- a fat white person with long brown hair and glasses. They are showing a tasteful amount of cleavage