u/ComplainsInGay

I wasn’t really hesitant about reading this book at all. This is coming off of reading the Game Changer series by Rachel Reid. I’ve been hungry for more MM Romances and this book caught my eyes. Not only because of the cover but because of the premise.

1. The Story Telling | the way Brian writes is kind of how I think I write. The chapters bounce back and forth between two characters (Luke Barnes and Emmett Maguire). This reads like a high school summer romance. It’s kind of on the cheesier side, but it is cute in a way that makes you giddy when you get to the end of the story. It’s like if you made a gay Hillary Duff movie, but put it in a Theme Park. I’m not particularly mad at this.

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

>!In this story, Emmett wants to be a country singer and goes to a famous theme park in Tennessee - based off of Dollywood. Luke’s grandmother has ties with the country singer who made the park. Luke and Emmett run into each other and basically have a mostly closeted relationship.!<

2. The Characters | some of the characters are a little predictable (>!for instance the aunt’s boyfriend being sleazy - I’m not going to spoil much but he’s not a good guy!<) but I was very pleased with one of the twists in the book. Emmett is like the cute little guy. Luke is kind of like a football jock. Aunt Karen is the fun aunt. Vanessa is like the popular girl who used to date Luke. But all of the characters are pretty well written. Again a little on the cheesy side. It’s still good to see something that resonates with me.

3. The Inspiration and Representation | I live in Tennessee and this book really feels like a fun nod to almost everything Nashville and Tennessee offer when it comes to music and amusement. Although this is a gay MM romance between two seventeen-year-olds, this book didn’t showcase much more LGBTQIA+ romances. There is one twist in the book that REALLY caught me off guard, but it was very interesting to pick up on. There is good artistry representation. I also got really emotional with the Non-Closeted/Closeted relationship between Emmett and Luke. It reminds me of a lot of the actual dating scene in Nashville.

4. My Overall Thoughts | I probably would pick it up a second time to read it just to catch some things I didn’t get the first time. This feels like a comfort TV show where the couple will end up together and it feels great. The dynamic between the characters is fun and stressful, but you get the gist that even in a book that takes place in the Bible Belt, you can still get a good Non-Fictional-Fictional Fantasy that tugs at your heartstrings. I wish this book was written when I was younger so I didn’t feel alone when reading it.

4/5 stars!

Last night - while I was crocheting some granny squares - I was looking on YouTube and noticed CrunchyRoll had the full season of Yuri!!! On Ice for free for 30 days. I’ve never seen it before. The most Anime that I’ve seen is the following:
- Bleach
- Pokémon
- One Piece
- Studio Ghibli Films
- Attack On Titan
- Beastars
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Spider
- Delicious In Dungeon
- Castlevania
- (And Honorable Mention because it some people like to argue if it is or isn’t) Avatar the Last Airbender.

Well, I am also a HUGE fan of the Game Changer series by Rachel Reid - which got turned into the TV show Heated Rivalry… so I thought “Why not”. I finished the series in one night and I have to say this:

1. I do love the Kooky cut aways when they explain the backstory. Super cute.

2. Although it does get a little repetitive when it comes to the performance side, all of the routines were beautiful and well choreographed.

3. The representation - country wise - is great!

4. I got a little uncomfortable with the brother/sister skaters because they felt like a couple and not brother/sister.

5. I’m a little sad the movie didn’t get made and there wasn’t a season 2.

6. Although this was more “grounded in reality”, I felt like the triplet daughters were too much.

7. I love the references to food and the cultures behind the food. It makes me happy and want to watch Food Wars.

8. my final thought: COULD’VE BEEN GAYER.

Like, I know there are some LGBTQIA+ characters (and other shows for that matter), but I would’ve LOVED to see a gay relationship that was healthy, thriving, and flourishing in this series. (That’s a personal thought, but that’s what I kind of wanted to see in this show.)

Overall, great show. Something to put on in the background while I mindlessly crochet away, cook, or clean. And that opening theme is going to be stuck in my head for a while.

3.79/5 stars.

Will definitely watch again if I get the chance to.

Has anyone did any kind of idea to make a Treasure Planet type of themed area? How would you make it and what would be fun to use in the park to give it the Treasure Planet look?

(I ask because when I get a new laptop, I plan on making one myself)

My nap dream was a little out there.

I touring with a group, but I went to this Chinese restaurant, but it wasn’t like any restaurant I’ve been to. It felt like a level of experiences. Level 1 was you just had the food and left. Level 2 was meeting the masters of the food, they explain what they made your food with while you eat, you get to talk to them about nice experiences, then you leave.

I ended up in Level 3, Meet the Sensei, but he’s your personal Sensei who makes you learn before you can ever eat. This Sensei took me to this room where I had to learn how to play a flipping game with one hand. It was like a 1.5 foot by 1.5 foot board with green felt covering the top of the board with these series of items you had to flip in a certain sequence, but you could only use one hand. I had to play it twice because in the dream I ended up using both hands.

He then lead me down a hallway where one of the Masters showed me their style of cooking. I could only observe patiently. He then told me that I needed to be patient while with his pet panther. A large black cat comes behind me and lays next to me. His paws were as big as my head. He told me his name was Sabheer or something very close to that. The panther knew if I was impatient because it growled every time I moved.

Finally, when it came time to eat, he tells me that I surpassed a lot of customers who come to the restaurant. He shows me a man in this room who was a master swordsman who created sculptures. I was allowed to take a sculpture, but I was not allowed to take it with me.

I woke up when Sabheer almost attacks me.

The dream started off as a video game demo.

I started off as a shield carrier for this knight. We land in this village where there are talking animals that were neighbors, but the style was akin to what Baldur’s Gate and Fable looks like. The knight decided to play a trick on me and grabbed his blue shield from me to hide it. The knight starts making fun of me, telling me I have to wearing my “fetching gown” - a long white, linen dress that apparently you had to wear when looking for items. I had about 35 seconds to get it, but every time I completed a task, more minutes were added to the clock. I ended up helping a family of foxes cook a stew - they let me know the shield was by the family of Crows. The family of Crows needed help with a nest - they told me to look by the old bar. A family of owls told me they needed to make a nest. After helping them, I find the shield in one of their nests. They let me have it, only if I bring it back in the future. I show my knight and he begins to laugh in my face. The knight begins to tell me the only “real” people in this place were the humans. My illusion is shattered and the talking animals that were there, have vanished.

The dream comes to an end with me trying to save my video game mother from a spider bite. I had to get ahold of a woman, who happened to be a nurse. She cut out my mother’s bite, then stitched her up, leaving a weird scar on her leg. The woman then revealed herself to be a witch. She was hunting for a piece of flesh for centuries because she needed to “live forever” and spider bitten flesh was part of her ritual.

I then woke up.

I woke up from this strange nightmare. It was set up like a movie trailer.

It starts off with this straight couple. A muscular guy who got back from serving in the military and this girl who seemed innocent on the outside. When the guy comes home, he’s planning on proposing to the girl, but she gives this worried look like there is something wrong. She finds a ring on a desk, then starts to hear a rattling. She’s heard it ever since she cheated on the military guy. A few seconds later when the guy walks into the kitchen to propose, he sees her head get ripped off by the invisible entity.

Months later, after being released from jail, he gathered a group of people who noticed a lot of people dying after committing small crimes or doing something immoral, but no one knows where this being is… until this one girl was in this cherry blossom park and watched a lot of the falling blossoms cling to this entity. It looked like it could transform into whatever to gain speed. At one point it was looking like a man with an evil looking pharaoh headdress, razor sharp teeth, and very long arms and legs… then it transformed into some sort of dragon. The girl that noticed it tried to stop its path, but she got impelled by its claws, dying in front of everyone.

After another week of searching, the military guy decides that he was going to try a tactic of committing something “immoral” but he couldn’t bring himself to do so, since he was single and always abided by the law. Once he tried to help a man “cheat” on his wife so the entity could appear, but somehow the entity knew it was fake.

After another year, the military guy ends up getting a girlfriend, but as soon as he was about to propose to her, he heard the familiar rattling. The entity was in the house. He grabbed a bag of feathers to justify where it was. Once he found an inkling of the entity’s location, he spray painted it… seeing that the spray paint poisoned the alien, having it appear through sheer luck. He told his future fiancée that she needs to run to the hardware store, but it would be too late. He grabbed a knife and crowbar to start hacking at the creature, which he could see from his spray paint stripe. The creature tried running away and attacking the new fiancée, but in the end its head was pierced by the crowbar, revealing its entire body. It was a mangled man’s body that had the razor sharp teeth and wide alien eyes that peppered its body. It had appendages that looked like wings on its back and its skin was a dark iridescent brown.

The dream ends with the military guy dying from another entity. His head got bitten off and the rest of his body falling to the ground, causing the cycle to repeat itself.

I had a series of short dreams, but one stuck out to me, partly because I was knee deep in Breath of the Wild again.

So I was on a boat in the middle of what seemed like an Italian themed ride. The dome was covered in LED lights to look like starts, but it was large enough to house a fully functioning community. The Apartments in the place was about 8 stories high. But here’s where the Breath of the Wild comes in: there was a Bakkoblin (sp?) pirate that was coming in destroying the neighborhood by boat. I was trying to save a group of people from its attack… and well… to distract it, I tried to scream… and scream I did… PHYSICALLY. My body was trying to get me to scream outside of dreaming and all I did was make a whisper of a scream.

The scary part - there were multiple of them popping up like the goblins in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and let me tell you, I was freaking out. I love puppets, Zelda, and fun domed in rides, but this short dream felt like a nightmare because I couldn’t stop this creature from setting fire to my damn neighborhood!