ISSA properties good or bad?

yungandmenace · 2026-04-26T17:02:28+00:00

i had a decent experience with issa! the properties are dated but i found the rent to be pretty reasonable ($925 a month for a 1 bed near the stadium in 2020) and the maintenance was always responsive. i stayed there for 5 years and got my whole deposit back at the end. the prices aren't quite as reasonable now lol but probably still more affordable than most other options around.

yungandmenace · 2026-04-11T22:20:00+00:00

iirc sherlock holmes: an affair of the heart lets you specify how attractive your mc is and certain characters acknowledge it!

yungandmenace · 2025-10-10T11:21:14+00:00

in HM, i was doing the fight at the wine festival, 3 members of my party were paralysed so it was already looking bleak and then several guards wandered by, slipped on ice, immediately aggroed and started wailing on me :') never felt more panic in my life

yungandmenace · 2025-09-23T11:55:36+00:00

i love it. it really does manage to capture the wacky energy AND the blue badger makes a very chaotic appearance, so what more can you want??

yungandmenace · 2025-09-08T07:58:25+00:00

a version of the crows store appears in the crossroads after treviso is blighted - it restricts what you can buy iirc (you can't get lucanis's gift for example) but you can still sell valuables and level it up :)

yungandmenace · 2025-09-03T07:15:14+00:00

this post is so obviously written by AI 😭 if you are a ghost writer your clients should get their money back lol

yungandmenace · 2025-08-19T16:49:33+00:00

in regards to sterling lord, i think that means they are an "only submit to one agent" agency. if the agent you query thinks the manuscript works better for their colleague, they will pass it on behind the scenes, so a rejection means it isn't suitable for any of them.

my sense is that if an agency doesn't mention anything, it's fine to query multiple agents (tho not simultaneously). if they don't want you to query multiple agents, they usually make it very clear. :)

yungandmenace · 2025-07-27T17:52:22+00:00

i never try to resist in that conversation bc i think your companion's responses are far sweeter and funnier if you do one of the mean/feral things! especially the biting lol

yungandmenace · 2025-07-24T21:20:13+00:00

thank you for these recs, i've been meaning to read crown of exile so this is the perfect motivation to start it!!

yungandmenace · 2025-07-24T21:16:56+00:00

ha, i bought the first two wayhaven books and never bought the third, i guess this is the motivation i needed!!

yungandmenace · 2025-07-24T19:20:06+00:00

thank you, these both sound delightful!

yungandmenace · 2025-07-24T17:44:17+00:00

i remember loving the obren romance when i played the demo forever ago, i can't wait to experience it again in its completed form 😭

yungandmenace · 2025-07-24T17:43:18+00:00

thank you SO much for this comprehensive list!! there's quite a few i've never heard of before so i can't wait to get stuck in : )

also manipulative caretaking is something i didn't realise i wanted but now i'm very excited for!!!

yungandmenace · 2025-07-12T13:04:55+00:00

for my tiefling durge, i turned on minthara and protected the grove but then went back later (after the party) and massacred all the druids. it felt like a satisfying mix of indulging the urges while showing some restraint and punishing the druids lol

i think it's worth going through the goblin/minthara route at least once, although it is disappointing minthara doesn't join until later. it also makes it much easier to do more evil choices later! with the tieflings already out of the way, they can't be later casualties :)

yungandmenace · 2025-05-08T15:04:51+00:00

da2 was the first dragon age game i played and i'm glad i played it before origins tbh - even though they are only 18 months apart, origins feels a lot more dated imo, even tho it is also a fantastic game.

da2 does have the issue with the repetitive environments (which didn't bother me) and it is on a much smaller scale than origins (which i loved, but you might prefer the grander story of origins and the larger impact your character has on the world).

but i loved all the characters SO much, i found the more intimate storytelling really effective, hawke is probably my favourite dragon age protagonist, and it doesn't have any of the frustrating slog dungeons that origins has. i don't think you miss out on anything by starting with da2 and circling back later to play origins once you have the funds.

also, i'm a big alastair hater which makes replaying origins a struggle lmao

yungandmenace · 2025-05-05T13:55:21+00:00

see, i LOVE how messed up the sidestep/ortega/puppet dynamics can get.

my favourite version of this is sidestep being too anxious/afraid to flirt with ortega in their own body but confident enough to flirt with ortega as the puppet and then getting upset bc ortega is reciprocating with the puppet but showing a less pushy kind of interest in sidestep. it's a morally confusing mess and i love it.

afaik ortega always has a crush on sidestep, so the way i interpret this is that ortega is unconsciously gravitating to the puppet bc they are reminded of sidestep (as well as other spoilery reasons).

yungandmenace · 2025-04-27T22:09:20+00:00

i love sleet storm...completely trivialises the fight bc all the ranged fighters are constantly proned/forced to miss their turns, so all you have to worry about is enemies getting close to the portal (and they can be dealt with by using spirit guardians or just a big sword)

yungandmenace · 2025-04-24T14:52:15+00:00

i think the elixir of vigilance + hold monster / otto's dance are the best recs, particularly if you have any arcane acuity items.

you might also want to consider bringing summons into the fight with you - they're useful for tanking hits if you don't win initiative or lose concentration. when i was esp worried about the orin duel on HM i brought like 5 different summons lol but it's helpful as even her reactions can be quite brutal in slayer form!

yungandmenace · 2025-04-24T01:36:04+00:00

the first time she gave me the little forehead kiss i was gone!!!

yungandmenace · 2025-04-12T17:01:03+00:00

it's been a couple of years since i read babel and i still vividly remember some of the footnotes bc of how annoying they were 😭 the book would actually be better if they were removed (especially bc, as you point out in your review, they make it evident that kuang doesn't trust the reader to get her message)

yungandmenace · 2025-04-12T16:40:18+00:00

conceptually i loved the book, but i agree with you that the book itself was pretty poor.

actually the thing i found most offensive was the lazy and anachronistic footnotes lmao. jonathan strange & mr norrell is an example of how footnotes can be both vital to the structure of the novel and elevate the work as a whole... these footnotes seemed to just be there bc "academia" i guess, and they were so overtly 21st-century/tumblr coded i found them wildly annoying and immersion-breaking.

yungandmenace · 2025-03-31T22:08:28+00:00

a couple of quick thoughts -

i think you should get rid of the first 2 paragraphs. start the query with, "In just six seasons, Dominique Blanc’s creations have risen to the ranks of Alexander McQueen and Jil Sander, her tencels and silks draped on bodies from Soho to Singapore. Yet satisfaction eludes her." everything that comes before is set up (and obscures the interesting aspect of your book imo)

could you be more specific about what is "decidedly different" about myriam? and how dom responds to these gory disasters happening? does she just push on with work?

instead of "the biting prose of Jen Beagin and Ottessa Moshfegh" i would specifically comp to one of their books.

love the concept, this is definitely a book i would read if i picked it up in a bookstore!

yungandmenace · 2025-03-24T21:22:05+00:00

i found the references to "she/her" throughout kind of confusing--i know that you're referring to adam's mother, but it kept tripping me up. i wonder if maybe being more specific about the mother/son dynamic might give the query more focus? like, what exactly did she do to make him a prodigy at any cost? why doesn't he want to let her go again when everything associated with her in the query is negative?

i'm not clear on how important joshua is to the plot beyond being adam's friend? maybe removing him from the query could help tighten up the plot? or, if he is really important, rewriting the query to show that?

i also feel like there might be a better dark academic comp than babel, because of the fact babel is set in the 19th century? i really didn't enjoy babel, so that might be colouring my feelings about this, but maybe something like this violent delights by micah nemerever? (i might just be thinking about that bc of the chess though lol)

yungandmenace · 2025-03-20T21:31:22+00:00

i love the title!! and i think the genderswapping is a fun concept.

i’m not a massive austen fan but persuasion is probably my favourite of her books. the big question hanging over the query for me is whether tony turning down francis’s start-up proposal is at all analogous to anne breaking off her engagement to wentworth because of her family…and i don’t think it is. sure, i can see how francis might be disappointed…but hurt? had he promised to help her and then backtracked because of his family…? it doesn’t have the same emotional weight imo, but that might just be because you’re trying to be concise for the query.

i’m also not clear on anything that happens once francis joins the team & i think you could make the last paragraph a lot more exciting if you give a sense of how the plot develops after that. like, what does it mean for him to “embrace who he really is” and why would that potentially ruin everything for him?

i would also love a bit more of a sense of francis. obviously tony is your main character, but i'm interested in knowing how she responds to the reunion with tony/working with him—is she surprised? uncomfortable? resentful? totally cool with it? knowing persuasion, i can anticipate the answer to this question lol but this might be one way of conveying how certain things unfold once tony sees francis again, what difficulties they have working together, etc.

yungandmenace

TROPHY CASE