Heyo! I was tagged by the awesome Ally and the wonderful Koko for the New Discoveries Challenge! This is a really awesome one, so let’s g...

Heyo! I was tagged by the awesome Ally and the wonderful Koko for the New Discoveries Challenge! This is a really awesome one, so let’s go ahead and get down to busienss. :)

Ze Rules

1. Share the picture above in your post and link back to the person who tagged you.

2. Share at least one blog you've recently discovered. (Try to say something about each blog)

3. Share at least one blog you'd describe as a new favorite.

4. Share at least one blog  you'd describe as an old favorite.

5. Tag however many people you like.

New Discoveries:

His Little Elephant: Koko is seriously awesome. She has brilliant taste in music (as you can see from her Britt Nicole post), and is quite proficient in the use of gifs. Plus, she’s shared some funny and fascinating insights on writing and reading, and she leaves the bestest ever comments.

Fairly Recent Favorites

Random Fandom Fanatics: So I might be a bit biased about these two, since they’re basically my best friends in real life, but I’m telling you, their blog is pretty cool. Rebecca posts about characters and does reviews (plus, I’m writing a novel with her!) and Kathryn shares her vastly interesting and remarkably random ideas about the world.

The Scribbling Sprite: Ally’s another one who leaves totally awesome comments: they’re always really sweet and thoughtful. Plus, she does a plethora of amazing book reviews. Seriously, it’s thanks to Ally that I will never ever ever ever ever ever ever finish my TBR. Well, I guess the blame isn't totally hers, but it is mostly. 

Besides the book reviews, she does some other reading- and writing-related posts, like her Writer Struggles and her Quotables, which are just as fun and amazing as her book reviews.

Paper Fury: Cait is super funny and so quirky it’s amazing, lol. I love her posts so much, and her reviews are so thorough and thoughtful. Plus, you gotta love that heading. “Read, Write, Rule World.” That speaks to me on a spiritual level, ya’ll. ;)

The Curiosity Collections: Bailey’s really cool, guys. She blogs mostly about books, but my favorite one from her is a writing post, where she gave a little pep talk I desperately needed at the time. Seriously, if you’re in a writing slump or something, check her out now.

Actually, check her out even if you’re not. Because she’s awesome.

Old Favorites:

Sometimes I’m a Story: I’m pretty sure Heather was the first follower I ever had, and her blog was probably one of the first I ever followed. And for good reason; she’s incredible: funny, well-read, and while we don’t always agree on certain things (*cough* I really love HG and Heroes of Olympus *cough*), she always has a very thought-provoking way of presenting her point of view. I like to think, and as Heather shines her unique perspective, I find myself doing that a lot of it. :)

To the Barricade: I swear, Aimee might be the funniest person I’ve ever met--online and in real life. She is also very, very good with gifs, and she has this really vibrant personality that just shines through every word on her blog. She also likes to discuss her unique perspective on books and writing, but she makes you laugh so hard, you don’t even realize you’re thinking until later.

Plus, her characters are so amazing and I know that without even having read her book.
So yeah. She's really awesome.

Life, Literature, and Coffee: What more do you need besides that title? Oh fine, if you want a little more convincing: Mariella does some pretty cool book reviews, but she’s also an author herself, having just self-published her book, Dissonance. I’ve read it and it’s super good, so you should totally check it out and follow her blog for updates on the sequel. (Which I really need. Now. Right now.)

***

Well, that’s it for this post! Thanks for tagging me, Ally and Koko! I tag everybody mentioned above and anyone else who’d like to do this!

See you all tomorrow for the final post of Tag Week!

Not exactly a tag today, but this is a cool prompt I really wanted to do, so I figured, “Hey, it's close enough!” Prompt:   ...

Not exactly a tag today, but this is a cool prompt I really wanted to do, so I figured, “Hey, it's close enough!”

Prompt: 

Pick any character (or several characters) you've created or read about and place them in either a) the midst of a well- known historical event or b) in the setting of a popular dystopia.  

With that in mind, Rebecca and I decided to an HG fanfic featuring our characters from Becoming Brave. If you haven’t read the first part of the fanfic, you can check it out over on Rebecca’s blog, Random Fandom Fanatics and then continue with this bit here. :)

Fedora

You’d think getting reaped would be the worst part. It wasn’t.

The worst part was that I got reaped with Carmen, my adopted sister. She was decent under most circumstances, but put her in something life-threatening, and she crumbled like those cookies that somehow have to do with the suckiness of life.

Her parents came to see us off, which only made her sobbing fits worse, and the keening wails didn’t stop, not the whole train ride to the capitol. Only once we actually got there and it seemed she must’ve completely dehydrated herself did her waterworks finally quit.

“Do you... do you think we could win, Fedora?” she asked me just before bed that first night in the capitol. We, she said, like there was an option where we could both come out on top.

I thought about telling her the truth; I thought about telling her a lie. In the end, I decided she might as well learn now: “No, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t give it all we’ve got.”

***

And she did. All through training, all through the Games, down to the moment I ditched her so I wouldn’t have to kill her myself, I’m sure down to the late-night moment the cannon boomed and I saw her picture in the sky.

I ripped at some grass, but didn’t let my pain spread any farther. I had to conserve my energy and give winning all I had.

***

They found me the next morning, the Pembroke brothers. I still don’t know why they didn’t kill me immediately. Especially considering that I certainly tried to kill one of them.

I’d gone to a stream to refill my water bottle and bumped into the younger brother as I turned to leave. We both froze for a moment and then he lurched away from me as I lunged towards him, fingers scrabbling for my only weapon.

“Vil!” the boy screeched, somehow making himself heard over our massive amount of splashing.

Vil--?

Shoot. His brother.

I lunged again--this time to get away--only to have something crash into my middle and send me flying back into the stream. An arm wound around my neck, but before he could pin me in place, I threw my elbow back, clobbering him in the face. I then shot forwards, my movements a mixture of wild lurching, splashing, and tripping.

When I felt like I had enough distance between us, I pivoted, using the loose pebbles on the streambed to turn, knees slightly bent and arms out so I wouldn’t lose my balance, and looked my opponent over. Average height, average build, not particularly muscular. But he looked determined and ready to kill.

I stared him down, prepared as he was. My eyes darted to the other one, but he seemed like he’d just... stopped where he was, frozen and watching us.

Well, that would make him easier to take care of.

The not-useless brother and I had taken our next steps towards each other, when the coward boy’s voice rang over us, “Vil!”

Vil whipped around to look at his brother, but I didn’t take the opportunity to jump him--because just then a knife flew between us, inches from me, a centimeter from him, exactly where Vil’s face had been a second before.

We sprang back from each other, causing another round of splashing, and turned to face the group of five that had come through the trees on the opposite bank while our backs were turned. They were all stocky and muscular, carrying several weapons each, with stupid sadistic grins plastered across their faces.

Careers.

Vil shot me a look I interpreted to mean, “We’ll finish this when we’re other people aren’t trying to kill us.” I gave him a quick nod to show I understood, and just like that, we rushed out of the water and turned to face our mutual enemies: me with a self-made slingshot and a sack of sharp rocks, and Vil with the first thing he saw on the bank, which happened to be a half-branch that had broken off a tree.

We were badly outnumbered, but we managed to hold them off until Vil’s brother had unfrozen and run out of range, then we charged forward with his club and my homemade slingshot. Not the best battle plan ever, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do if you’d rather not die immediately.

I think that, at first, the careers were too shocked to react since we had the courage (or the insanity, depends on your view of life) to actually charge them. But as Vil whacked one in the head with the large end of his club and I clocked another with a sharp shard of rock, surprise cost those two their lives and the remaining were shaken awake from their slumber. They watched us warily as we danced backwards, their assortment of knives versus a glorified stick and a sack of pebbles.

As if reading my thoughts, Vil shot me a quick smirk. “You know,” he said, “I always loved underdog stories.”

And with that, he swung his stick and I shot a volley of stones, all while retreating since we could no longer handle close combat. We were going to be beaten, I could tell. There was no way our crude weapons could stand against their Capitol-provided knives.

Then I had an idea.

I started to shrink behind Vil. He didn’t have time to look back at me, but I could hear the anger in his tone as I edged out of fighting range. “What are you doing?”

“Knock out their weapons!” I replied, hoping the careers wouldn’t hear me and that if they did, they wouldn’t get what my actual plan was.

“Ah.” Understanding overtook his tone, and he started swinging again, this time, not trying to connect with bodies, but with weapons alone. Once the District One boy’s knife was sent flying from his hands, and he was nursing a hurt fist, I stepped out from behind Vil and shot a quick two stones at the career boy’s face.

And then we were exactly even.

Vil nodded at me, and we repeated that strategy with the next; but by the time we came down to the last, a District Two girl, she’d caught on and was avoiding Vil, going for me or attempting cheap shots at him instead of taking his club head on. True, there was only one of her and two of us, but her weapons were far sharper and far more precise.

And I was out of ideas.

A knife flew out of the trees. It glanced off the guard strapped to the District Two girl’s arm, but it distracted her long enough for Vil and I to dispatch her together. We whirled around to see who had saved us this time--and saw none other than Vil’s useless younger brother, frozen behind us again, looking like someone ought to restart his heart or something.

“Cec...” Vil trailed off, “how did you...” He stopped as we both remembered the knife thrown at Vil when this whole fight against the careers began.

As Vil ran up to make sure his brother was okay (and didn’t have permanent brain damage from being in shock), I assessed the younger Pembroke. So he’d thrown a knife and distracted our opponent long enough for us to not die. Maybe he wasn’t entirely useless after all.

Only, you know, mostly useless.

After a moment, Vil turned back to me. The companionship that had been in his eyes earlier was gone; he now watched me with the wariness that came from knowing better than to trust someone, but still offering them the benefit of the doubt.

He approached me, and I knew with one swing of that club, he could take me out.

Instead, he held out his right hand. “Viliam Pembroke.”

“Fedora.” I shook, ignoring his raised eyebrows and the questions I knew he wanted to ask about my name. “You’re not going to kill me?”

“Not yet.” He smirked. “Fortunately for you, we make too good of a team for that.”

***

So what’d you think? Hope you guys are enjoying the story!

If I’m not mistaken, Rebecca intends to post the whole story on her blog, so you could check it regularly (or follow her, wink wink) for updates on that. Also, it’ll go up on my fanfiction.net and her wattpad. Hope to see you all over there!

Hey guys! Next up, the amazing Ally from the Scribbling Sprite tagged me to do the Unpopular Opinions Tag. I have a lot of strange opinion...

Hey guys! Next up, the amazing Ally from the Scribbling Sprite tagged me to do the Unpopular Opinions Tag. I have a lot of strange opinions and out-there ideas, so I think this is going to be fun. :D

1. A Popular Book/Series You Didn’t Like.

Please don’t kill me. It’s just that... I was expecting a dystopian with awesomeness and action and explosions and cool characters... and I got Jonas, a world of mundane people, the almost-but-not-quite interesting Giver, and an all-around rather boring experience.

2. A Popular Book/Series Everyone Hates But You Love

Okay, so this one may not be entirely true since a lot of people do like Twilight. However it seems like the entirety of the “True Literary Community” despises the very mention of the series.

Ooh you like Twilight?

giphy.com

If I'm being honest, I'm very much a part of that community; there are a lot of things about Twilight that I strongly dislike now.

But see, that one section of Breaking Dawn that's in Jacob's pov is actually pretty awesome. I loved seeing his inner struggles, and just how far he was willing to go because of his love for Bella (a love that was certainly misguided, but oh well, that’s another post for another time). Anyways. If the whole series was about him and done from his pov, I'd probably adore it.

3. A Love Triangle That Didn’t End Like You Wanted It To

Hehe, here I am talking about Twilight again. I'm not gonna linger here because seriously, I could turn this into a full-on blog series. Suffice it to say, the only thing Edward has that Jacob doesn't is money; in areas of personality, sense of humor, and all-around coolness as a character, Jacob has Edward way beat.

Not to mention that wonderful “Hotter Than You” line that I couldn’t find a gif of. *sobs mentally, because one can do that online when one would never do such in real life*

Anyway.

4. A Popular Genre You Hardly Read

Funnily enough, I almost didn’t have an answer for this. I mean, I read everything: contemporary, dystopian, fantasy, mystery, sci-fi, historical... You name it, I've probably read a book in it. The only one I can think of is maybe romance. I don't generally read books where the romance is the main conflict. To me, it's just not strong enough on it's own to be the driving force of a novel. Makes a great secondary plot, though.

5. A Popular/Beloved Character You Dislike

I couldn't think of a character who was super-popular that I strictly disliked (well, cept Ed and Bell, but I already picked on Twilight this post). I mean, there are some I don't adore like other people do (Harry Potter, for instance), however, I don't strictly dislike them.

So I went with this girl instead.

Not sure if she counts since I don't know how popular this book is, but I seriously wanted to cause Kira injury upon multiple occasions. She was just such a know-it-all, and she totally slighted the obviously-right boy for the sake of a love triangle. If not for her, I'd probably continue the series, but I just... I can't. I just can't stand her.

Gosh, that was mean. I’m sorry, guys. I’m a jerk when stories make me angry.

6. A Popular Author You Can't Seem To Get Into

Lauren Oliver. I tried Delirium, honest I did. But I just wasn't feeling it. It was okay, but not brilliant or anything, and not good enough to make me want to read the rest of the series

7. A Popular Trope You're Tired of Reading

HEHEHEE, I have quite a few of these. ;) I'll just name three, though:

1. Two Boy and One Girl Love Triangles: it was cool for a while people, but seriously? Enough is enough already.
2. Insta-Love: I'mma just be real with you, okay? Insta-Love is Insta-Lust. You cannot fall in love with someone in an instant because in order to fully and truly love someone, you must know them. Unless you are a mind reader, you cannot instantly know someone just by looking at them. I'm sorry, but it's just true. Now that immediate attraction of hormones bouncing around in the brain can certainly turn into true love, but it just... it can't start out that way.
3. Incredibly Gorgeous Love Interests: I like a hot guy as much as the next girl, but I also like the adorable, everyday, gawky kids who haven't quite grown into their own bodies and may even *gasp* have a few pimples. It's okay to not look like a god, guys. There is only one after all.

8. A Popular Series You Have No Interest In Reading

I couldn’t think of a series, so I went with a book instead.

It's a teenage cancer story. Sadly, someone is going to die, therefore I am either going to love the characters and feel immense pain when the doomed one breathes his/her final, or I'm going to detach from the beginning and be painfully bored all the way through. Just not a great use of my time.

9. A Show/Movie Adaption You Liked Better Than The Book

WHAT IS THIS BLASPHEMY???!!

Haha, j/k j/k. I actually have one for this.

I loved this movie so much I watched it twice in one week, and then reviewed it somewhere on this blog. After that, I decided to read the book because that kind of awesomeness could not have come solely from Hollywood.

Except that... it kinda did. The book was just too... blech to me. There was so much brutally and just plain wrong in it, plus I swear those characters were all clinically insane. It just left me with a strong feeling of disgust, with the story and the world in general. *shrugs* Unfortunately, I just couldn't enjoy it.

10. A Popular Style of Covers That You Can't Stand

No, there aren't any pictures for these. If I hated it, why would I put pictures up on my blog?

That said, if a cover has a couple kissing or partially unclothed people on it, I am very not likely to pick it up. Mostly because covers are supposed to give you an idea of what's in the book, so if kissing and shirtless people are plastered all over the front, I can be fairly sure that I'll find a lot more on the inside. And like I said above, I enjoy romance, but these covers generally signify that the romance is the main part of the plot and, for me, that just doesn't work.

***

Well, there you go, my unpopular opinions! Hope you all don't hate me now, lol

I tag Rebecca and Kathryn, Koko, and Aimee, because I think they'll all have some pretty awesome answers.

So what did you think about this tag? Agree with me? Disagree? Have any unpopular opinions to share? Comment me!

And seriously, if your opinion differs from mine, please let me know. I'd love to politely debate with you (though there may be caps involved).

See you in the comments section!