As one glance at the book cover will tell you, Chemistry is a parody of Twilight, but with zombies this time instead of vampires. Or at least, that’s how it started out — as the author notes in her Goodreads profile, she set out to write a book that was the exact opposite of Twilight, and the characters took on a life (er…undeath, in some cases) of their own. What is on its surface a goofy satire of Twilight that plays for laughs is in actuality a book with more depth, heart, and well-rounded characters than I’ve chanced across in quite some time.

Our heroine is Stella Blunt, a tall, curvy, brash, and supremely confident junior in high school. After Stella’s mom gets her dream job, Stella is forced to move across the country (Canada, in particular) with her parents, to Vancouver, British Columbia. To Stella, the move might as well be the end of the world — to say she doesn’t make friends easily is a vast understatement, and she dreads trying to fit somewhere into an unknown social sphere. At first, it’s just as bad as she fears — the students at her new school bully her relentlessly from the start (not that she puts up with it in the slightest, but this doesn’t even seem to slow them down). But then, she comes across Howard Mullins (known by all as Howie) in her chemistry class, and life as she knows it changes still further.

As soon as Stella sits down beside Howie, he can’t keep his eyes off her. His relentless yet unassuming adoration intrigues Stella, and she forms a tentative, curious friendship with him. She discovers that he is unfailingly sweet, if a little slow when he hasn’t eaten in a while, and full of an old-fashioned charm the likes of which she’s never seen. His pallid complexion, monotone voice, and lurching gait confuse her at first, so she does some research — and finds out that Howie, along with his father, brother, and sister, are all zombies. They eat brains (from animals only, of course) and inject themselves with formaldehyde on the reg in order to stay functioning/semi-normal, and to keep the virus from progressing or making them contagious. Naturally, Stella finds this beyond strange, but by the time she finds out, she’s gotten to know Howie well enough to know that he’s a rare gem, virus or no virus — and that she’s crushing on him, hard. Love quickly blossoms between them — but will it be enough to carry them through all the dangers and difficulties that lie ahead?

As I mentioned, this book is indeed a parody of Twilight, but to limit it to that would do it a disservice. More than just a feminist response to Twilight, Chemistry is a compelling feminist work that can stand on its own two feet. Thus, to my thinking, reading Twilight before reading Chemistry is only necessary for deriving maximum enjoyment from the jokes throughout the book — certainly not for enjoying the book as a whole. Not only does the story take every potentially questionable part of Twilight and stand it on its head, as well as elegantly fill in every plot hole that tripped up Twilight, its characters understand what feminism really is (i.e., what true equity, agency, and respect really mean) — and it manages to communicate this without sounding preachy, which was refreshing as all get-out.

Beyond this, the characters in this book are just fantastic. I believe we’ve noted in past reviews that there seems to be a trend among a lot of fiction these days where the protagonist of the story is totally flat and uninteresting, while being surrounded by loads of great side characters, all of whose stories we’d much rather read than the main character’s. So much of the time (especially with stuff that’s written in first-person POV), the protagonist is nothing more than a benign lens through which to view the story happening around them. That’s definitely the case for the material Chemistry is inspired by, and it’s something I’ve run into more times than I care to count. Because of this, finding a protagonist who actually feels like a real, multi-faceted, actually interesting human being in a book that I expected to be all goofiness and absurdity, well — it blew my tiny little mind, you guys.

And Stella, magnificent as she is, isn’t the only great character in this story. Howie is an absolute delight (beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world, too pure), and is the kind of sweet, respectful, capable male protagonist I want to see way more of. Almost all of the side characters have a compelling persona and backstory, everybody’s motivations feel well-founded and understandable, and the majority of them go through some level of believable character development.

As much as I could continue gushing about this book for ages, I do have a couple of critiques — the most prominent one, for me, was the way Stella’s new classmates take to brutally bullying her right away. Like, they are instantly peppering her with fat jokes and mean, snide comments. Now, it’s been a little while since I was in high school, so maybe the memory is slightly less seared onto my brain, but it seemed a little implausible coming from students who didn’t know Stella or have any sort of history with her. I’ll grant you that kids can sometimes be jerkwads for no reason, and for the purposes of this story, it worked okay, but it felt like a lot to swallow at some points. This behavior is partially explained by the fact that Stella draws attention not so much because she’s tall and plus-size, but more so because of the sheer force of her personality (which is considerable). Basically, her peers are threatened by her way of owning whatever room she walks into, so they lash out at her. This goes some distance toward explaining why Stella’s classmates are so hostile, but it still felt over-the-top to me at times.

Another thing I noticed is that the reader is sometimes asked to suspend disbelief just a smidge too far, or sometimes a moment goes a step past the point of no return in terms of cheesiness. These moments are few, and easily forgivable in the larger scheme of the plot, but there were a couple of points where it was enough to give me pause and pull me back out of the story a bit. But then I reminded myself I was reading satire, and that it all serves the larger purpose, and I dove back in to the amazingness.

Lastly — and this isn’t a flaw so much as a heads up — the content often veers toward the very mature (swear words and sex talk and violence, oh my!) — I didn’t find it too much to swallow, but some readers might, and it was enough that I’d be hesitant to call this book a straight-up Young Adult novel, even though it’s billed as such. I would maybe recommend it to a mature 17- or 18-year-old, but that’s a pretty hard maybe. Basically, use your judgement–if this sort of stuff tends to be a bit much for you, approach with caution.

Despite these things, though, I pretty much enjoyed every minute of this book. The powerful combination of fantastic characters I wish I could befriend in real life, a ton of refreshing themes, and a pace that doesn’t let up, this book was exactly what I wanted to read right now, and nearly impossible to put down. It had so many of the tropes and themes I want to see more of, like the soft action boy (listen, I know this is barely a thing, but I’m trying to make it a thing, so there), the BBW, great platonic friendships, and some really great, non-token-y representation. Basically, it did a lot of the things I love to see a story doing, and beyond that, it was a straight up blast, and I already kinda want to re-read it (and I definitely want to do fan art of it).

After finishing Chemistry, I was beyond stoked to find that History, the second book in the series, is out now too, and I promptly devoured it as well (I may do a separate review of it later, but I’m still deciding…with the way it plays out, it’d be a challenge to review it without dropping some major spoilers, and I am morally opposed to spoilers). There’s a third book, Biology, in the works as well, but Chemistry just came out in 2016, and History in December of 2017 (fresh as fresh gets, y’all!), so needless to say, it’ll be awhile. And I shall be waiting with bated breath until it’s out!

Love or hate Twilight, would you read Chemistry? If you’ve read it, what did you like and/or dislike about it? What popular book would you love to see someone do a parody of?

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I didn’t know a ton about this novel before reading it, beyond the fact that it was near-future sci-fi, and that you can’t go more than a couple of sentences without hitting an 80s reference. What I didn’t know, however, was that this story takes the concept of virtual reality technology to its logical conclusion in a really satisfying and unique way, and that it, like so many sci-fi novels, is eerily prescient in terms of the ideas it deals with.

Ready Player One is set in the year 2045, and centers around a young man by the name of Wade Watts (so named because his father thought it sounded like a superhero’s alter-ego). Born into a world where poverty, drudgery, and misery are the prevailing winds (for his family even more than most), Wade escapes his harsh reality the way everyone around him does — by spending most of his waking hours logged in to the virtual reality platform known as the Oasis. When Wade was about 15, the mastermind behind the Oasis, James Halliday, passed away — but not before leaving a video clue letting the world know that he’d hidden an extremely hard-to-find easter egg somewhere in the Oasis. The first to find that egg, he tells them, will become the heir to his multibillion-dollar fortune, and will gain ultimate control over the Oasis itself. For Wade, who came from nothing, this chance at untold wealth is irresistible. So he joins the legions of others like himself in the search for the egg, under the guise of his Oasis avatar, Parzival. He learns every possible detail about Halliday’s life and absorbs as much of the 80s content Halliday so dearly loved as he can possibly stuff into his brain, in hopes of finding the secret that will unlock the series of gates that will finally lead him to the ultimate prize.

I have to admit — as this book began, I soon started to doubt all the hype I’d heard about the story. And let me tell you, there had been a lot (which may have been part of the problem). The book begins with infodump — a lot of infodump. Like, we’re talking most of the first six chapters’ worth. There were stretches where it was so tedious it was almost physically painful (hyperbole, you say? Just barely, trust me) — this was somewhat by virtue of the fact that, when listening to the story via audiobook, we weren’t able to just skim over the lists upon lists of information Wade offers when describing what, among Halliday’s repertoire, he has studied. But regardless, it felt excessive to say the least.

Thankfully, the infodump mostly subsided after the first few chapters, and that’s when things really got going. Once the setup has passed, the pacing takes off, and it doesn’t let up until the end. As you go along, it’s hard not to find Wade’s/Parzival’s obsession with all things Halliday/1980s to be infectious, and as the tension mounts, all you want to do is keep reading (or listening, in our case) to find out what’s going to happen next. Wade makes a lot of realistic decisions, both in-game and out — he’s almost preternaturally smart, to be sure, but it’s sometimes his downfall, and when he becomes too confident in his abilities and in his (staggeringly vast) knowledge of 80s canon, he’s often confronted with his humanness, as that last key bit of knowledge or foresight eludes him, and something just barely slips through his grasp (whether it be the latest clue, something happening in the real world, or one of his few but important relationships). It’s these moments that make the story both believable and compelling, and make us root for Wade/Parzival as he fights to win the prize against all odds.

One of the main things that stood out to me about this story (aside from the infodump) is how cinematic it feels. Part of this was due to listening to the story on audiobook, but a lot of it was because of Cline’s way with words. No matter what was happening in the story, I felt like I could visualize everything, vividly and easily, every step of the way. Strangely enough, it’s this aspect combined with the infodump portions that lead me to believe that the movie adaptation of the book (due out in March 2018), is going to be amazing. In fact, I think there’s a chance it could even better than the book itself. And book purist that I am, I can assure you that I don’t say such a thing lightly. My prediction is that the movie version will be able to quickly show many of the aspects of the story that the book took so much time to explain, just by virtue of being a different medium. And along with that, since the story has such a visual quality even in book form, I think it’s going to be dynamite when it’s translated to the screen. And the trailers we’ve seen so far have done nothing to diminish either of these notions, in my mind. Suffice it to say, I have high hopes for the movie, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

The other aspect that makes this story successful, as I see it, was its ability to look into the future with a keen eye — or at least one version of the future. The world of RPO has fallen into disrepair and decrepitude, mostly because everyone is so caught up in virtual society that they can’t be bothered to maintain the real one. Everything is run by corporations (most of them evil), and the number one concern on everyone’s mind is the next time they can log in to the Oasis, real-world responsibilities be damned. As I mentioned, this is taking the idea of addictive technology to its logical conclusion, and this naturally introduces some elements that feel pretty farfetched. Nevertheless, when our own world is seeing technology encroach into our lives to exponential degrees, the very concept of RPO feels like a wakeup call. Like similar cautionary tales in the world of sci-fi, it’s hard not to see it as a sign that we’re at a crossroads, and that how we move forward from here will determine whether our world starts to look more and more like Wade’s.

Overall, despite the pitfalls along the way, I found Ready Player One to be a satisfying, exhilarating read. As I mentioned, once things start moving with this story, they don’t stop, and the heights and depths to which the story takes the reader are well worth the wait. I’d recommend this book to any sci-fi fan, 80s afficionado, or pop-culture geek. After powering through the rough beginning, I found the payoff to be as good as I hoped, and if this book sounds up your alley, I think you will, too.

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As Peder mentioned, this con is growing, and it felt even more established this year. And since I was familiar with the con this time, I found myself a lot less intimidated by the prospect of playing new RPGs with strangers than I was during our first year. Overall, I had a great time, and really enjoyed getting to try out some great new systems! Here are a few of my highlights:

Highlight #1: Trying out the Cypher System. I loved all of the new systems we got the chance to try (and it was a

treat to play in sessions run by the system creators themselves–thanks again, Colin and Pete!), but my favorite new system this year was Cypher. You can either play in the cyberpunky vampire/werewolf/magi/alien/technozombie-inhabited setting Peder mentioned in his AcadeCon post, or in a far-future setting that takes place after eight versions of Earth have risen and fallen, with you as a denizen of the ninth. Both are the sort of settings that kick my imagination into overdrive, and it’s so much fun to explore worlds like that and envision the kind of stories that could happen in them. I’m hoping we’ll be able to add the system components to our collection and run a game based on it soon!

Highlight #2: Seeing friends from last year. It was so much fun seeing some the great people we’d met last year, and getting to know them a bit better. Con friendships are great that way — when you see each other the next time around, it’s pretty easy to just kind of pick up where you left off. It was great having a few people we knew we could grab for a random board game session or hang-out time, and it was so much fun to hear about what they’ve been up to with their own websites and podcasts. Who knows…maybe we’ll even convince a few of them to guest-post for us in the future!

Highlight #3: Taking things slower this time. As we’ve mentioned, we planned a really full schedule for ourselves during our first AcadeCon stint, and ended up running ourselves pretty ragged by Sunday. This year, we were older and wiser; we limited ourselves to just a couple of scheduled events per day, and left plenty of open time that we could fill up later or leave open as we chose. This made for a much more relaxing time, which let us really enjoy the events we did choose to partake in.

Highlight #4: Checking out new places. Last year, we did a little bit of exploring in the downtown area, and this year, we got to discover even more. We had a ton of fun trying the beer and hanging out with some con friends at Warped Wing brewery, and got the chance to stop at the Destihl restaurant and brewery on the way home as well (it wouldn’t be one of our trips without a couple of brewery stops!). It was nice to feel more familiar with the area as a whole, and great to get the chance to check out some new spots as well.

It was another successful year at AcadeCon, and I’m glad we were able to go again! I’m once again feeling inspired to try out even more new systems, and to see how we can integrate the new ones we played into our current gaming groups. Expect more content on that front in the future!

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5. Marrying Mr. Darcy

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Let’s be honest — a good portion of my love for this game stems from my pre-existing love for all things Austen. But I happen to know from first-hand experience playing this game with non-Jane Austen fans that you don’t have to be into the source material to get a ton of enjoyment from it. The game allows for up to eight players, and you play as the ladies of Pride & Prejudice (or Emma, if you have the expansion). You are competing to (what else?) attract the attention of the eligible men of P&P, in hopes of securing an advantageous marriage. To do so, you collect cards with different types of points, such as charm, wit, and beauty. Different suitors value different things, naturally, so you’ll have to get the right combination to be attractive to the bachelor of your choice.

You can angle for any of the gents you like — however, true to canon, some matches are more advantageous than others. For example, Lizzy naturally receives the most points by pairing off with Mr. Darcy, but if she gets stuck with Mr. Collins, she’ll only get a few points. And if you don’t play your cards right (literally), your character could end up as an old maid, and you’ll have to roll the dice in hopes of getting the least dismal fate that comes with that result.

This game is quick to play through, the turns go around the table pretty fast, and it has that mix of strategy and luck that I find crucial to a good game-playing experience. Add to that the fact that the theme is one of my favorite worlds of fiction, and you’ve got a game fit for any sporting young lady or gentleman.

4. Splendor

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This lovely game first drew me to it for primarily aesthetic reasons — and no wonder. It’s an absolutely gorgeous game, with the painterly artwork on the playing cards and pieces, the satisfying weight and sheen of the gem chips (think poker chips, but with jewels on them), and the general historical feel. It’d be delightful to play just for tactile reasons alone, but the gameplay experience is well worth it, too.

The premise of the game is that you and your fellow players are gem collectors, doing business sometime around the Elizabethan era (judging by the costuming of the characters in the artwork). The object is to invest in smaller jewels in order to buy more and more precious ones, thereby becoming the wealthiest gem collector in the land. The first to 21 victory points is the winner — at first, the gems don’t cost much, and it’s easy to pocket several of them quickly. However, the gems in the early stages don’t have high point values, so in order to afford the higher-value gems and beat your fellow players to 21, you’ll have to do a lot of clever maneuvering.

Splendor also features the optimal (in my opinion) strategy/luck combo that Marrying Mr. Darcy has; it feels accessible and easy to pick up, while still being challenging enough to keep me thinking. It never feels beyond me in terms of strategy; I’m generally able to plan far enough ahead to be a real contender in the game, which I have to admit is pretty rare for me. This is one of those games I want to start playing again as soon as I finish a round — and if you know me, you’ll know that that’s about the highest praise I can give to a board game. It’s one I know I’ll keep coming back to again and again!

3. Sushi Go! Party

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I was introduced to this game a few months ago, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I was going to love it. Yet again, the exterior of the game is what first drew me in — the artwork features little cartoony sushi characters that are just so cute that it hurts. Beyond the surface, though, this game has almost everything I love most about my favorite board games — that luck/strategy sweet spot, a really fun theme, great artwork, and fast-paced gameplay.

I’ve only ever played the party version of this game, so I can’t speak to the original, but I can highly recommend this amped-up version. In the party game, you have a board with slots for the different sushi tiles, which you can switch out to either create one of the combos given in the rule book, or devise one of your own. These tiles show which cards are in play, which the players will combine in hopes of amassing the most points. SG!P is a deck-building game, with a card-passing mechanic similar to the one in Seven Wonders. As the card hands go by, you’ll have to choose wisely in order to gain the most points (and avoid losing any) when the totals are tallied up.

As I mentioned, this game is a delight in just about every way — it’s great for smaller groups and larger ones, and can be a great warm-up or cool-down game, or just a fun one to pull out when you feel like something snappy but still low-key. It has that addictive quality I mentioned with Splendor, and so much variety and possibility that I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it (or of looking at those adorable sushi faces!).

I have to say — the only real downside (though maybe it’s an upside, depending on your perspective), is that this game makes me crave sushi like nobody’s business!

2. Lord of the Rings: The Board Game

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From the title alone, I think it’s pretty obvious why I love this game. A board game modeled after my favorite fictional world of all time? Yes, please! Better yet, it’s cooperative, my favorite style of board game. I find that working together to win against the board rather than trying to beat your fellow players is a much more enjoyable gaming experience for me — it means that even if the game gets serious or tense, the players rarely take it out on each other, and that since all players are involved the whole time, nobody’s sitting around getting bored as they wait for their turn to come around again.

In the LOTR game, you play as one of five hobbits (the four from the Fellowship, with the addition of Fatty Bolger, a character from the books who didn’t make it into the movies). Your goal, naturally, is to travel through Middle Earth to Mordor, on the quest to destroy the One Ring. You’ll travel through Bag End, Rivendell, Lothlorien, and a couple of other spots to gather supplies, and you’ll move on to play through multiple scenarios staged on several separate boards — Moria, Helm’s Deep, Shelob’s Lair, and Mordor, in the base game; you may have others if you choose to pick up certain expansions. As you go, you must succeed in a series of events to keep moving, and to keep the eye of Sauron from spotting you before you get to Mount Doom.

Though I love this game dearly, it is almost punishingly difficult to win, with several ways to go down and only one narrow path to success. Many a gaming session has ended with us getting overtaken by Sauron, spelling the end for our characters (and turning Middle Earth into a land of subjugation and despair…*cries*). But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to re-set the board and try again every time that happens. I love everything about this game — the fact that it came out before the movies and is based only on the books (and features Alan Lee’s glorious artwork), its cooperative nature, the excruciatingly high stakes that manage to be serious and exciting at the same time, the mechanics of the game, and just the undeniable feeling that you’ve somehow been transported to Middle Earth and are now personally responsible for saving it. It’s a heart-pounding, exhilarating gameplay experience, and it’s one I plan to engage in many, many more times.

1. Pandemic/Pandemic Legacy

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It’s a close call between Pandemic (and its legacy spinoff, Pandemic Legacy) and the LOTR game when it comes to my top pick, but at least for now, Pandemic wins the day. It was my first foray into the world of cooperative gaming, and there was no looking back. Finally, I’d found my type of game — the type I could enjoy playing no matter what. Put simply, it’s one of the first games that showed me just how amazing board gaming could be, taking what I thought I knew about gaming from playing the tired old classics, and completely re-forming my perspective. Suddenly, board games were a world I not only could engage with, but wanted to.

Dramatics aside, Pandemic is widely recognized among gamer circles as one of the best co-op games out there. It’s been around longer than a lot of other currently popular co-op games, and it’s no wonder that it’s stood the test of time. The object of the game is simple — keep four deadly viruses from spreading across the world for long enough to totally obliterate them, thereby saving humanity. You play as a range of different medical, tactical, and scientific specialists (such as the medic, the dispatcher, or the researcher), and you must work together to keep the diseases at bay until you can cure them and clear them out.

Pandemic is a little more strategy-heavy than some of my other choices, but because of the cooperative aspect, I can bring whatever I’ve got to the table, and even if I’m not at the top of my game, I know the other players will fill in whatever gaps I can’t bridge.

Like LOTR, Pandemic is a super challenging game — there are many ways the world can be lost to disease, and only one way to save it. But due to the pacing and tight, well-laid out mechanics, it remains a ton of fun to play no matter how many times you’ve lost. This extends to the legacy version of the game, as well. In that version, you play through 12 “months” and increasingly difficult and complex scenarios, trying to beat back the diseases under narrowing odds. You’ll almost certainly make some grave mistakes and have your best plans go awry as you play through, but that doesn’t make it any less compelling and satisfying to play. I’ll definitely be returning to the base game for many more replays, and can’t wait to see what future version of the legacy game have in store.

So there you have it — my all-time (so far, at least) favorite board games. To close out, some honorable mentions: Five Tribes, Castle Panic, Ticket to Ride, Quirkle, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Dead of Winter, and Phase 10.

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Since my to-be-watched list of anime series is still really long, there’s a chance that at least some of the spots on my top 5 list will change as time goes on — but for now, here are my five favorite series!

5. Kamisama Kiss

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This series is one I’ve gotten into more recently — I’ve been watching through it casually when I have some spare time and am in the mood for something lighthearted. It’s a romantic comedy about a girl named Nanami who, through a bizarre chain of events, ends up becoming the Earth deity of a nearby shrine, taking over the post from the former deity, who has gotten tired of the job. A fox demon named Tomoe, a resident of the shrine, becomes her familiar, and is bound to her by — you guessed it — a kiss. Nanami’s feelings for Tomoe quickly grow into something more than gratitude and respect, but can a romance between a human and a fox demon ever work? Well…I’m still waiting to find out!

As I’ve said before when describing this series to friends, it’s like someone took all the best parts of Inuyasha and Fruits Basket and fused them together into a fun new anime that’s reminiscent of both of these, but that is still very much its own story. This series is an absolute delight for so many reasons — it reminds me of the series I loved when I first started watching anime, it has lovable characters whose interactions with each other are by turns hilarious and heartwarming, and it has just enough conflict to keep things interesting while still having plenty of fun, fluffy scenes to enjoy. I can’t wait to see the rest!

4. The Devil is a Part-Timer

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This is another recent watch for me, and one of two on my list that overlaps with Peder’s choices. We watched this one during the depths of last winter, when I was craving something goofy and fun to get me out of my annual February funk. It did the trick perfectly, let me tell you. I won’t go into the summary much, as Peder has already done the honors, but suffice it to say that as this series starts off, it behaves as though it’s going to be a high-stakes, high-concept fantasy piece, and then does a total heel-turn, becoming a silly slice-of-life story about an incarnation of the devil who’s stuck in our dimension and has to make a living as a part-time manager of a burger joint. Bizarre and hilarious doesn’t even begin to cover it, my friends.

My favorite parts of this show are when Sado (the devil) and his right-hand-man-turned-roommate are trying to figure out the ins and outs of everyday life in our dimension. They may look like normal humans, but just knowing that you’re watching two beings from a fantastical world try to set a budget for their meager income and deal with their overly eccentric landlady takes the absurd hilarity to new heights. It’s one of my favorite fish-out-of-water stories, and was exactly the kind of lighthearted fun I needed at the time I watched it.

3. Ouran High School Host Club

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This was one of the first anime to become a favorite of mine. It follows the story of Haruhi, a scholarship student at the elite Ouran High School. Early on in the story, she’s mistaken for a boy due to her androgynous appearance and clothing — not wanting to deal with the hassle of setting the record straight, she decides to just go with it. The members of the Ouran High School Host Club (a sort of flirty high society club that primarily caters to young women) take Haruhi under their wing, and before long, she’s the most sought-after member of the host club.

The premise of this show is pretty farfetched, and it takes at least a base knowledge of some aspects of Japanese culture to really get what’s going on in the story, but once you’re on board, you’re bound to have a great time watching this series. In my opinion, it’s shojo (anime aimed at teenage girl viewers) at its finest and most delightfully over-the-top, and watching it feels like reading a really fun yet really weird contemporary young adult novel. It’s a series I enjoy from start to finish, and one I’ll most likely end up returning to again and again.

2. Inuyasha

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When I was a fledgling anime fan, this is one of the first few series I really got into, and was also one of the first I watched all the way through (not too shabby, seeing as there’s over 160 episodes!). The story focuses on Kagome, a teenage girl who falls down the well in the shrine her family tends, only to be transported through time to feudal-era Japan. There, she meets a rough-and-tumble young dog demon named Inuyasha. He leads her through all sorts of adventures and scrapes as they fight off the other demons who are trying to get their hands on the shards of the Shikon no Tama, a sacred jewel that’s rumored to give great power to any demon who wields it.

This is one of those series with a premise that’s really hard to explain when talking about it, but which is really easy to get into when watching it. There are a lot of different opinions about this series — some (like me) find it really enjoyable and rewarding to watch, while others see it as too mainstream and formulaic. While it does fall into the monster-of-the-week rut fairly often, I love it anyway, and I can’t get enough of the great characters it’s filled with, or the unique settings and plot lines that set it apart from other anime I’ve seen. Regardless of others’ thoughts on this series, it’ll always have a special place in my heart.

1. Steins;Gate

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Soon after I started watching this series, I knew it was going to end up ranked among the very best anime I’ve ever seen. By the time we reached the end of it, it was my new favorite. As with my #4 choice, I won’t go into great detail with this one, since we’ve already talked about Steins;Gate quite a bit on this blog, but I can’t close out this list without talking about just how truly great this anime is. As we’ve noted before, the story of Steins;Gate focuses on the concept of time travel, testing the limits and possibilities therein, and finding out just how far-reaching and dire the consequences of messing around with it can be.

As we’ve mentioned before, Steins;Gate seems to almost transcend its own medium — more than being a great anime, it’s just a great story, period. The characters are masterfully rendered and feel so believably human, the themes the series focuses on are weighty and important, and the plot is (for the most part) tightly woven and emotionally satisfying. I can’t say I’ll rewatch this one often, as it’s pretty heavy (despite some humorous elements), but I know I’ll revisit it again someday. And regardless of how many times I do or don’t rewatch it, it’s a story I know is going to stick with me, no matter what.

To close–some honorable mentions: Bleach (so good, but so fraught), Soul Eater (just a good, solid anime with a great premise), Naruto (I loved it for a while, but it caused even more mixed feelings for me than Bleach did), Cowboy Bebop (space opera at its best), The Daily Lives of High School Boys (I’ve only watched a few episodes, but have absolutely loved what I’ve seen so far), Haibane Renmei (the definition of short and sweet anime), Little Witch Academia (just adorable and delightful in every way), and Fairy Tail (another I haven’t gotten far with, but am really looking forward to watching more of).

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5. The American Girls Premiere

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Okay, guys, you’re gonna have to bear with me on this one. I got this game back in the height of my obsession with American Girl dolls and books (an obsession which…may or may not still exist in some form) — it was among the first of the PC games I really loved, right up there with Oregon Trail II and other such goofy educational games I played ad nauseum in the late 90s/early 2000s. But what the heck was an American Girl-themed computer game like, you might ask? Basically, it was a platform for creating plays starring the American Girl protagonists and the side characters that populated their book series. You would pick your backdrop — say, Kirsten’s farm or Josefina’s sala (living room). Then you could add set pieces like furniture or toys (most of which seemed prone to glitching so that you were constantly having characters walking through chairs and other such nonsense). Next, you picked the characters you wanted in your play. You could tell them where to move and what action to take — digital stage directions, if you will, limited though the selection may have been.

And then came the best part — adding the dialogue. Now, if you were one of those fancy people who had a newfangled microphone setup for your desktop PC (an unimaginable luxury to 13-year-old me), you could record your voice to create the dialogue for your play. But for the rest of us peons, there was the computer-generated voice option — think Stephen Hawking’s speaking computer, but with pitch issues and abysmal pronunciation.

Sound terrible? Believe me, it was not. For me, the true fun of this game came not from creating cute little stories for the characters, but from setting the stage, plugging in dialogue, picking a voice and pitch that came halfway near an approximation of what you wanted, and then listening to the computer absolutely mangle the dialogue you typed in. Oh man…it was great, you guys. The amount of hours I and my friends spent trying to finagle our pixel-y characters into moving where we wanted and devising weird phonetic permutations for our dialogue to force the computerized voices to bend to our will was honestly impressive. There are inside jokes that were created by this process that I still think about and giggle over sometimes.

In short, I loved this game for so many reasons that I’m sure the game creators did not intend — the weird memories and dorky jokes this game spawned were worth the price of admission alone.

4. Super Smash Brothers: Melee

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This is a game I’ve probably spent more time playing than any other (not as much as my brother, who I’m pretty sure earned each and every trophy, but still). This was one of the first ones my brother and I got with our GameCube, and it was always the first one we pulled out when friends were over, or when we just had a free afternoon. I eventually stopped playing it one-on-one with my brother — one can only get sent flying into the backdrop so many times, you know? — but I remember many happy hours of whaling on dear friends with cutesy Nintendo characters, and I get super nostalgic on the rare occasion I pick this game up again.

I’ve played the Wii version of the game as well, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, but Melee remains my favorite (mostly for nostalgia-related reasons; let’s be honest). It was perfect for so many things — hanging out with friends, playing around with it on your own, tournaments at youth group lock-ins, you name it; playing this game was always a good time, no matter how badly I got trounced.

3. Super Mario Galaxy

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One of the reasons I love this game is because it was the first console game I ever played all the way through, and that sense of accomplishment alone makes me remember it with fondness. There are so many more reasons to love SMG, though; it’s arguably one of the best Mario-centric games out there, both technically and story-wise. It’s got wonderful atmospheric music, gorgeous settings, some really unique gaming mechanics, and one of the more heartfelt storylines of the Mario games.

My favorite aspect of this game is the way it plays with gravity effects as Mario travels around from planet to planet. Sometimes he’s jogging around on a tiny planet that’s almost small enough to fit within the screen; other times, he’s slinging between planets and asteroids using special jumping-off points; still others, he’s activating things that change the way gravity affects him on the current plane. It all just feels so innovative and fun, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it before or since. In terms of overall feel and approachable gameplay experience, this game is one of the best as far as I’m concerned; it’s just delightful in every way.

2. Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

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Though I’ve never met a Zelda game I didn’t like (aside from some side-eye in Majora’s Mask‘s general direction), this one stands out from the others for me. It has a great premise, with Link as a denizen of a village in the sky, where everyone gets around by riding on the backs of giant, colorful birds. There’s the usual setup — Link and Zelda are close friends, Zelda is stolen away by a mysterious, nefarious entity, Link must rise up to achieve his true calling as a warrior and go out into the unknown world to save Zelda, picking up new weapons and learning new skills along the way.

But though the game follows the usual formula for the LoZ series, it feels fresher this time around. It includes many of the things that have always made the series great, but it has a lot of new stuff, too — in particular, it has some great new mechanics that really enhance the gameplay. Unlike many Wii games, it uses the Wii remote to advantage, making it an integral part of the way Link’s sword works and the different powers it has. And then there’s the flying aspect — I’ll admit it took me a while to get the hang of it, but once I did, maneuvering Link’s bird around Skyloft became a highlight of gameplay for me. And though some of the weapons Link acquires are the same as those from other LoZ iterations, there are several new ones that are totally different than anything from the preceding titles, and it’s a ton of fun to monkey around with them and test the limits of what they can do.

Overall, this game is a great blend of the familiar aspects that make this series great, and some clever new elements that make the game feel fresh and exciting to play through.

1. Dragon Age: Origins

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This game is honestly the video game I’ve been looking for all these years but had never found until now. I love fantasy RPGs in theory, but they all seem to either have something missing, or have some annoying aspect that I can’t get past. Not so with Dragon Age: Origins — it sounds dumb and sappy to say it’s the video game of my dreams, but you know…it really is. It’s got cool settings that are detailed but nonetheless don’t feel too difficult to navigate. It has amazing characters with complex personalities that you can actually get to know, and with whom your character can have a variety of different relationships, from coldly professional to hostile to warm and friendly to romantic, making the characters and the interactions between them feel  true-to-life. It has a decent fighting mechanic that you can use to hone your characters’ skills in whatever way you like (or even set it on super-easy mode so you can focus on the story, like I’ve done). And best of all, it has a compelling story that gives every gaming session a great sense of depth, and makes it so that you feel like you’re accomplishing something important and weighty every time you play. There’s honestly nothing I would change about this game, and I’ve loved every minute of it that I’ve played so far.

Lastly, we must have some honorable mentions! They are: Animal Crossing (the first console game I really loved–it tends to get boring/repetitive pretty fast, but it still has a special place in my heart) Mario Kart: Double Dash (mainly by virtue of time spent playing it, honestly), Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Wario World, Cooking Mama (Gameboy DS version), Oregon Trail II (man did I used to be so impressed by those graphics…), and Virgil Reality (a science-themed video game complete with a goofy protagonist who sang silly songs about science, a couple of which I can still sing most of to this day).

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Making my choices for this list was no easier than for the first two, and at the same time it was different — for instance, it was a little easier to identify my all-time faves (most of which I’ve watched upwards of 20 times apiece…no wonder there’s still so much on my to-be-watched list). However, as I was thinking through my list, I felt that there are a lot of titles that hold kind of an equal ranking in terms of how much I like them, so there are a ton of films on my honorable mentions list, most of which it was really painful to keep out of the top 5. In other words, get ready for an honorable mention list at the end of this post that will no doubt be far too long…at least you’ll get lots of recs that way, am I right?

So with that caveat in place, here are my top 5 favorite films of all time!

5. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

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I’ll never forget seeing the trailer for this movie in theaters when I was about 14 and thinking, “Wow, that movie looks super creepy! I’m never watching that one…” Little did I know that I’d work up the courage to do so soon after the movie came out, or that I would instantly become obsessed with it! That obsession has never really let up in the intervening 14 years (yes, you read that right; I’ve been watching this movie for fully half my life. Does that make me feel old? Yes…yes it does). I’m still not tired of the amazing soundtrack, Will and Elizabeth’s adorable awkwardness, the sweeping scenery, or the gloriousness that is Captain Jack Sparrow.

I will say that I think the first POTC film is by far the strongest — while I enjoy all the others to varying degrees, sometimes I find myself wishing they’d just left well enough alone after the first one. However, this film and its descendants remain some of my favorites to watch when I want the perfect kicking-back movie in the summertime, or just when I want a little adventure.

4. Beauty and the Beast

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This one had to make it on to the list even if for no other reason than the fact that I’ve loved it since I was literally 3 years old (which was right about the time it was first released — yes, I am old; we’ve established this). This is one of the first movies I have clear memories seeing (along with Dumbo, 2-year-old me’s favorite), and though my feelings toward it and the things I get out of watching it have changed as I’ve grown up, it always has been and always will be among my all-time favorites.

I don’t know for sure what 3-year-old Kristen loved about it, other than the smart and pretty princess and the beautiful castle she roamed, but I do know that, then and afterward, this movie has always resonated with me. Whether it’s the beauty of two total outcasts finding safety and love with each other, the wonderful fantasy elements, the amazing music that is among the best of the best to this day, or just that awesome library that I wished Beast had given to me instead of Belle, there’s been something great to take away with every one of my dozens of re-watchings.

3. Star Wars (original trilogy)

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These films, in all their campy, goofy, haphazard glory, were my first real introduction to the world of sci-fi, and there was no turning back from that point on. I first saw the original Star Wars films when I was about 10, and let me tell you, they blew my tiny little mind. I quickly became obsessed with them, and learned all I could about the films themselves, the characters, and the extended universe. I checked out all the Star Wars-related books I could get my hands on from the library (which, granted, was not many given the fact that I grew up in a small town, but I did the best with what I had). While I may have forgotten a lot of the SW trivia I once knew, the memories of how the movies first made me feel have stayed, and I get to revisit them at least in some small measure every time I re-watch these movies. I love them for their sense of adventure, their unforgettable characters, the way the special effects still manage to mostly hold up after all these years, and for the never-stale message that even someone insignificant can become something great.

2. Pride and Prejudice (2005 version)

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Quite simply, this movie swept me off my feet like a cheesy romance hero. But cheesy this film is not — to this day, I still consider it to be one of the most beautiful pieces of art (cinematic or otherwise) I’ve had the good fortune to run across, and it doesn’t feel over-the-top to say that it changed something about my mental aesthetic, and about the way I interpret romantic (and Romantic) media.

There are those purists out there who will deem that ranking the 2005 version of P&P over the 1995 version is nothing short of blasphemy. They’re welcome to think that, but I have to respectfully disagree. I’ll grant that the ’95 version is far closer to the book both in terms of tone and content, and that it’s a better look at the follies of high society as represented in Austen’s work. Nonetheless, the ’05 version is just beyond gorgeous, both in terms of the loving (yet still often scathing) way it paints its characters, to the pitch-perfect settings, to the way it gets to the real heart of the varied, fraught, and somehow beautiful relationships between the characters that inhabit the stories. Call me a hopelessly romantic teenager if you want, but to quote dearest Darcy, it bewitched me body and soul, you guys. There’s no topping that.

1. Lord of the Rings trilogy

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Let’s face it — there was no way this one wasn’t going at the top of the list. These films are still the best book-to-film adaptations I’ve ever seen, before or since, and I don’t anticipate they’ll get bumped from that position anytime soon.

These movies brought the books to life for me in the best way — though they may not be perfect adaptations (and I know all about the schools of thought on this; believe me), to me they capture the true heart of the stories themselves. They communicate the same truth, the same love, the same moments of clarity and conviction. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all that’s needed for a truly great adaptation, regardless of the surrounding details. Just like with the books, I can call up images and quotes and feelings from the films to find peace when I’m troubled — I couldn’t ask for anything greater from a film than that.

Honorable mentions (presented without further comment for sake of space): The Princess Bride, Tangled, The Avengers (and other Marvel offerings), Howl’s Moving Castle, Tangled, North & South (BBC), The Holiday, Ever After, The Hunger Games, How to Train Your Dragon, Big Hero 6, Wall-E, V for Vendetta, A Knight’s Tale, The Count of Monte Cristo (Jim Caviezel version), The Fall, Treasure Planet

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And like Peder, I primarily watch TV when I want some escapist fun, and that comes in many different forms that are hard to even really compare. I mean, one day I might be in the mood for a fantastical show; another day I might want to watch sci-fi; and at another time, I might want to watch a few episodes of a drama. I enjoy all those (extremely different) things about equally; it just depends on what sort of mood I’m in.

All that is to say that the rankings in this list are somewhat arbitrary, and might change depending on the day you ask me. Regardless, these are the five TV series that rise to the top of my list:

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To finish things off, I have to include some honorable mentions that were *this* close to making it on the list: Pushing Daisies (an absolute delight that ended way too soon), Firefly (the best space cowboy show ever), Outlander (three words: ALL THE FEELS), Community (just stupid-hilarious), Silicon Valley (the most fun I’ve ever had being stressed out and having secondhand embarrassment), Bob’s Burgers (way better than it has any right to be), and Sherlock (smart, sexy, and absolutely legendary).

Do any of your favorites overlap with mine? What TV shows would make it into your top 5?

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As any book-lover knows, narrowing your favorites down to a small list is HARD. I think I’ve managed it, but just as Peder did, I’ve included a couple of series rather than just single books. I agree with his opinion that some series are just too good to separate out, and that it generally makes more sense to look at them as a single unit rather than individual books.

So without further ado–here are my top 5!

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Like Peder, I couldn’t quite narrow my list down to five — so, a few honorable mentions: Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Impossible by Nancy Werlin, Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen

So which of these have you read? Did you love them as much as I did? What are some other books you’ve read and loved?

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Many times in the past, I’ve felt silly for taking so long to get on board with a new fandom, especially when it seems everyone around me knows about all the cool new things before I’ve even heard of them (does this mean I know a lot of hipsters? Maybe). But the longer it’s gone on, the more I’ve realized that my tendency take my time is almost all pros, and very few cons. As I see it, the only real downside is that I’m much more at risk for seeing spoilers before I get around to watching/reading/playing the new thing and have to avoid certain corners of the internet if I don’t want to ruin it for myself (a pretty significant downside, considering my hatred of spoilers, but still). Well, that and the fact that I end up having to endure an endless refrain of “You haven’t seen/played/read it yet? What’s wrong with you?/do you live under a rock?/we can’t be friends anymore lol.” But as truly infuriating as those things are, they can’t overshadow the sweet, sweet benefits that come with waiting a while to try the next new thing.

First, there’s the fact that waiting until something’s been out for some time will ensure that you know about all the bugs in the system before you jump in. Did a new gaming console come out that you can’t afford right now or don’t feel like getting yet? By the time you get one, all the glitches will probably have been fixed (and it will likely cost less to boot). Is there a new anime series that looks interesting? If you wait to watch it, you’ll hear about how there are a bunch of filler episodes you can skip, or how there’s a story arc that’s not worth your time. Basically, this means that you can maximize your enjoyment of the new fandom while avoiding all the nonsense that the early adopters had to wade through. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets to skip all the crap. Trust.

Beyond that, there’s the matter of access. Say there’s a show everyone’s talking about — if you wait a while to watch it, even if it hasn’t been released a whole season at a time a la Netflix original series, then you can binge-watch it to your heart’s content. Or if a book series is already complete, you don’t have to wait ages for the next installment to come out while you sit in agonized suspense longing to find out what happens next; you can just read the books one right after the other if you want (gloating to your friends who started reading them right away is optional, but generally recommended). And perhaps best of all, when it comes time for you to find a copy of Cool New Thing X, you can buy a used one on the cheap, or borrow it from a friend who already has it. Call it laziness, call it delayed instant gratification, call it whatever you want — all I know is that I’m a huge fan of this approach, and I’ve never truly regretted taking it.

And then there’s the fact that as a Johnny-come-lately, geeking out with other people in the fandom is so much more satisfying. Like, for real, you guys. Whether you’re live-messaging your friends about the awesomeness that is Dragon Age (*cough* guilty *cough*), talking about which of your Game of Thrones fan theories came true, or discussing the topic of how the Harry Potter series is amazing despite its plethora of gaping plot holes, it’s gonna be a good time for everyone. As long as your friends aren’t too jaded and too-cool-for-school to squee with you about the new thing you’ve gotten into (which, if they are, y’all need to give them a talking to), you get the joy of experiencing how great a fandom is for the first time while having your friends go “I know, right?!” whenever you talk to them about what you love about it, and your friends get the opportunity to relive its amazingness, all while remembering what it was like when they fell in love with it. As I see it, it’s a win-win for everybody.

And so, my friends, you may disagree with these points, and you may think I’m a bit silly or lackadaisical for doing things this way — that’s just fine (in fact, I get it). But regardless of how silly or strange it may seem, this strategy totally works for me — and, I suspect, for a lot of you as well. And while there are certainly upsides and fun aspects about jumping on board with something right from the beginning, you can keep your ability to do that all for yourself — I’ll just be over here, enjoying the heck out of great fandoms in my own way. Several years later, that is.

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