The Smashing & Dashing 2018 Book Tag by Paper Fury

Why do I always do things like this to myself. I have to look back over all the books I've read this year and decide on my answers to these questions? Like that's 142 books. I mean obviously I don't have to, I could just leave it, but I'm not going to. Also it makes me realise how much I've actually forgotten about books I read at the beginning of the year.

1. Most Relatable Character

I reread Geekerella this year and I just can't get over how well-done the geek aspect of this book was? Like I can see Starfield as a series I am into. Many of the geek parts I recognise as conversations I have with my friends. I loved how Elle used Starfield sometimes as a way to escape from her life, which is similar to why I have many of my geeky interests.

2. Most Pure Animal Companion
Why does it feel like I didn't read enough with animals in it. In 2019, let's give all YA protagonists a pet. I reread The Hate U Give this year and Brickz is the cutest pitbull softy ever, so I'm counting him.

3. Fiercest Fighter

I read Reflection, which is a Disney movie based Mulan retelling, and she keeps all her awesome traits, but she develops them even further battling her way through the literal underworld!

4. Am Surprised That I Loved You??

Oh my word The DUFF. I thought the book would be on the shallower side of YA, and I watched the movie which did nothing to disprove this. But the book was awesome and it was such good friendships, and a message on how everyone can feel like the DUFF at times and it addressed girl-hate and it looked at the bad things about sex without making the book sex-negative and I don't know how I'm going to convince more people to read this book.

5. Best Sassmaster
Willowdean from Puddin' (and in her novel Dumplin' which I didn't reread this year but I did watch the movie so I'm including it) sassy Willowdean is best Willowdean.

6. Best Antihero
I'm giving this to Adina from You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone (is she an antiheroic archtype?) She's not always nice, or even well-intentioned, but seeing things from her POV really does help to understand her thinking.

7. The Best Friends Of All
I'm going for Simon's crew from Simon vs. and Leah on the Offbeat, who will stick together through thick and thin.

8. Best Villain To HATE
The Faceless Man/Martin Chorley from Rivers of London. If you want a villain who you can read about people having epic WIZARD duels with and not feel bad for the villain at all, this is the series for that.

9. Award For Best vs Worst YA Parents
Worst: the Mom from Starfish. She was abusive towards her daughter, and it was in the very way that gets underneath the skin over time.
Best: Desi's Dad from I Believe in a Thing Called Love. They have a great relationship, and bond even more over K-dramas. Desi tries not to worry her Dad, and her Dad will listen to her.

10. Ship Of All Ships In 2018

I don't ship like I did in my teens, but my favourite bookish couple from this year would be LeahXAbby!

11. Most Precious Must Be Protected
Tovah my word Tovah needs to be protected from her sister's bad decisions.

12. Honestly Surprised You’re Still Alive
Amani and literally everyone from the Rebel of the Sands series. I always wonder how YA groups of friends can wade into the middle of a huge war with little or no training and with the most dangerous people hell-bent on killing them and come out mostly alive.

13. Award For Making The Worst Decisions

Well, isn't a hallmark of YA characters that they make bad decisions? But Reagan from Open Road Summer is basically a whole bundle of bad decisions.

14. Most In Need Of A Nap

ME.

15. Want To Read More About You

Hmm hmm can I have a Piglettes spin-off that makes Astrid the main character? She seemed more level-headed that Mireille and I'd love to hear more about her video games.

Subs vs. Dubs (is a matter of personal opinion)

Subs (short for subtitles) and dubs are two of the main ways that foreign media are produced for different markets. Foreign dubbing is when a company will get voice actors to rerecord lines in a different language. Subs generally keep the original dialogue and place titles under the screen. One industry where this particularly comes to the forefront is anime, that is, animated films and TV shows from Japan.

People often tend to have very strong feelings on which ones they prefer, to the point of insulting people who prefer the other method. I feel that this is not only counterproductive, but can have some ableist undertones.

Personally, I prefer TV shows and movies which are dubbed into English. The reason for this is because I find it hard to concentrate on one thing at a time. On my laptop, I can often be looking at a different tab while listening to Netflix. Sometimes in my living room, I'll wander into the kitchen and start looking for food. I normally like to keep the show running while I do this, so I am often still listening to it if I'm not exactly watching. Even sitting still, if I'm particularly tired, I may close my eyes and just listen to the dialogue, something which is obviously harder without an English dub. I have also heard from someone with dyslexia, who couldn't always read subtitles as quickly as they were placed on screen.

However, subtitles are the only way for some people to pick up the dialogue, for example, those who are deaf or hard of hearing. In this day and age, there should be no reason for a sub option not to be included in recorded media. There is also an argument for those learning a new language, who may appreciate having their first language there to guide them.

There are, of course, exceptions. I have watched and enjoyed films with subtitles. I have secondary school level German knowledge, and watched Goodbye, Lenin with subtitles. However, they are the exceptions that prove the rule, as it is normally during them that I realised my mind tended to wander easily while watching films.

All this said, at the end of the day, it is all a matter of personal opinion. A perfect world would have all media available with subs and dubs in all languages, so that people can choose, but sometimes that's not feasible with media storage space and fiscal cost. My conclusion, however, is that we should stop lauding one method over the other and slating people who prefer a different approach.

A Review of Piglettes

Piglettes is a book by Clementine Beauvais, translated by Clementine Beauvais. Mireille, Astrid and Hakima have been voted the ugliest girls in school on a Facebook page. The girls make friends, and find themselves cycling around the French countryside on a trip to Paris.

I think overall, this reads a little younger than some YA, but I wouldn't recommend it to a younger set because of some of the topics covered. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.

Translated YA needs to have a day. I want more books where I read about countries written by someone from that country that I can read in English. My poorly remembered school French did help me with pronunciation of some of the words here, but I wouldn't be able to read the whole book. I also feel like sometimes with translations, some of the nuance gets lost, but this one was translated by Beauvais herself.

Mireille is flawed, and it's fantastic to see flawed main characters in YA. She's not always nice. She's funny, but she sometimes doesn't think through what she's going to say. She's also so flippant that it's hard to know when she is joking. Having to deal with the comments she gets seems to have given her a thick skin and a laughing personality. I'd say immature, but thinking of how I was at 15... I don't think she's that far off.

I also loved Astrid, who likes video games! I can count on one hand the amount of YA I've read with a major female character who plays video games. Beauvais uses fictional examples of games, but they are ones I could see working as real games. Airport Manager reminded me of a game I used to have, called Airline Tycoon, and I could see Kitchen Rush as a game on Steam - she also discusses a farming game, and those have always been popular and not just through Facebook.

Hakima was definitely interesting. She's younger than a lot of main characters in YA, but the age when some people start reading YA is about 12. It would be good, at that age, to read about a character going through the same problems you are having, such as first period. I got mine on a school trip to France, so I know all about the bad timing of first periods. And shout-out to this book for discussing periods, too.

The whole idea of the contest left a bad taste in my mouth. I mean, I feel like it was probably meant to, but it also wasn't dealt with? The school proved completely useless at doing anything about it. The best you can do is lecture the student, and not suspend him? I'm sorry, and even if it takes place on the internet, it involves the school. Tell his parents, who I'm sure didn't raise their son to act like this. The only person who seems against it is Mireille's mother - even a media article took both sides of the story. Why not get the students to report it, en masse to Facebook? I'm sure some would join in a protest, or even if it was just Mireille, Astrid and Hakima, it must violate terms of service. (right? right?)

Also, I can see the logic behind their parents allowing them to cycle to Paris. They were accompanied by Hakima's brother Kadar, who is 26 and a war hero. It's also a good experience for them, with already planned stops along the way. My parents let me take train trips alone at 16, and some children are sailing across the world at that age.

So I didn't like Mireille referring to a war-torn Middle Eastern nation as 'Problemistan' - it groups all the countries out there, with their own unique cultures and histories, under one stroke. They are all different, and not all of them have problems of the type she was referring to. There are also a few comments about lesbians that were incorrect, but they do make sense coming from 15-year olds with a limited view of the world.

While 15 to 26 isn't an age difference in a romance I would normally like to read about, here I think it works. The major reason for that is because it isn't really a romance - Mireille's feelings towards Kadar aren't anything more than a schoolgirl crush. It also develops into a sibling-ish relationship, and one thing I feel YA needs more of is male/female friendships.

It's far more food-focused than I expected, although I don't know why I didn't expect that from a book set in France! Mireille's grandparents run a two Michelin starred restaurant, and they sell sausages on the trip. There's also descriptions of French pastries and cheeses, and my mouth was watering. Read with snacks, is all I can say.

In conclusion - yay for translations and food, boo to ugliness contests. Would recommend to fans of France and especially food. Definitely a summer read, being set in summer and involving a trip.

How Choice-based Video Games Helped Me Politically and as a Person

I like my video games to have stories. It doesn't have to be a big story built into the game itself - I can craft an epic story around my Pokémon games, and the plot has barely changed from the eight badges, Elite Four, champion route. However, I especially love it when games give me the chance to make choices for myself.

 - Spoiler warning, particularly for the plot of the Mass Effect trilogy

Mass Effect. Dragon Age. Countless VN's. Fallout. Skyrim. All games with some element of dialogue choices to them. I can influence a part of the story. My favourite thing is being able to define my character's personality - I tend to make good characters who nonetheless snark at party members and NPCs. If the game gives me a personal reason to dislike someone, then I like to play that up - picking revenge-focused options when available. On the whole, though, my characters are good, ones who would try anything to broker peace between two tribes rather than let either side die. They ask questions before shooting - but still shoot if necessary.

In Mass Effect 3, there are large parts of the game where you can help refugees on the Citadel. Whether that is by talking to them, reuniting families, or getting supplies, it feels good. It wasn't hard to help them - taking a small detour to pick something up and take it back. In real life, I understand this might be harder - the game doesn't account for time spent travelling and fuel costs on the Normandy, for instance. But it felt good to be helping people.

Dragon Age 3 has a different mechanic that is worth mentioning - the War Table. On it, you would receive events, but instead of going yourself to sort it out, you would delegate some of your forces to go in your place. Your three advisers would discuss whether to do it by military force, espionage or diplomacy. Pick well, because you could make the wrong choice. And it showed the direct result of your actions, not just on the people you helped, but on the people imvolved. I've never felt worse than when I lost considerable numbers of my army when I could have picked the diplomatic option.

Also in Mass Effect, you encounter a political party wanting your endorsement, whose entire platform is "Earth First." You can choose to endorse them or not, and if you don't, you manage to counteract every one of their points. If you have the party member who was most, shall we say, sceptical about including aliens on a military ship, she will also stand up against them.

After a few playthroughs in Mass Effect when I punched the reporter Khalisah Al-Jilani, it stopped feeling so satisfying. If you refute her points calmly, you come off better and endear yourself to the general public. Not to mention the implications of a trained military soldier punching a member of the public not feeling right to me.

Throughout Mass Effect (I love this game and therefore have a lot of thoughts about it) there are decisions that I struggle with, to this day. There is one woman apprehensive about giving her unborn baby gene therapy to cure the gene that lead to his father's early death, as there are possible complications. I can never decide if it's a woman's right to choose in this case, or if she comes off similar to anti-vaccination movements nowadays, since a lot of her information comes from extranet articles. However, you don't make the choice for her, just advise her one way or another.

In Mass Effect 2 this time, you are forced to work for Cerberus, an explicitly human supremacist organisation. I hated everything about this. It made no sense for my Shepard to turn around and go right back to the Alliance. I did this, as soon as I got to the Citadel. I sort of play it like my Shepard is their gathering intel on Cerberus for the Alliance, but I believe that everyone who calls you out for working with them is in the right. I wouldn't be happy if I found out someone I knew was working for a terrorist organisation.

And there's the decision at the end of Mass Effect - do you save three of the most important politicians in the galaxy at the cost of many others, or let them die? The ones who die go down as heroes, but that's little consolation to the families devastated by it. Are three lives really worth that many others? I tend to know ahead of time what choices I will make for the story I am telling on that playthrough, so I don't struggle with the choice exactly, but I find it hard to press the button. However, the two things I'll never do is support an all-human council or place Udina on it.