Sunbird

I would like some opinions... Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series was recently recommended to me, and I've heard good things about it, but I also read a review that said the relationship between the two MCs (F'lar and Lessa, I believe) was abusive. That has made me a little wary, so I was wondering if any of y'all have read it and can give me some more details.

@Oversleep Yeah, even for a comics character Jean Grey dies more often than average. As for characters that have never died.... Well, there are some characters who specifically have the power of immortality, so I suppose one of them may have avoided dying or being killed. Or of course there are more newly created characters who just haven't had a chance to die yet. XD

@Oversleep I believe it's more than just "Jean Grey died," although that does happen A LOT. The full extent of the cliche is more like "Character X is dead. Just kidding, no they're not!" Or "Hey look, they resurrected!" Also @Quiver I find your summary of Xorn highly amusing.

@Renoux That does sound interesting! I'm having a hard time finding it on GoodReads or Amazon, though; could you tell me the author? @I_am_a_Stick I wasn't a big fan of The 5th Wave either, although I got further into the series before realizing that I didn't actually like any of the "protagonists."

@Oversleep STORMS, yes! Most of the time I'm listening to my own music and don't want to interrupt it for a news video. When someone tells me to do something that I JUST did and that I have never needed to be reminded about before. When the car seatbelt locks and refuses to let me lean forward and then proceeds to lock in progressively more restrictive positions so that eventually I have to unbuckle completely if I want to continue breathing.

@Mestiv I have no answer to your tornado question. A few years back my dad had a job offer that would've required us to move to Oklahoma, which is part of Tornado Alley, so my mom spent some time online looking at homes for sale in the area, and like NONE of them had basements. This trend totally baffled us both, since underground is the best place to weather a tornado.

@TwiLyghtSansSparkles Ditto what Delightful said! I can totally imagine Melody analyzing the vending machine to death. XD

@Quiver The Jean Grey/Phoenix Force swap is one comic storyline I have read in its original comic form, so I'm happy to say I know exactly what you are talking about there. I never really watched the 90s animated series, though, so I don't know if that arc was incorporated into the show and if so, how much they deviated from the comics.

@Delightful Right. Pasta is full of carbs, which is why I chose that picture to meme on the mistype of "hermit crab." Maybe it's not as funny as I thought.

Sparks, I can't stop laughing! One of my friends on Facebook posted, "Hey [family members]! Why can't we have a puppy instead of a hermit carb?" And so I made this. (Sorry for hugeness! Not sure how to shrink it down.)

Yellowstone

This is soooo me. Like, all the time. Credit for this awesome Lift fanart to which I shamelessly added a caption goes to Tumblr artist The Conch:

I don't know if I would call it "Sanderson-esque," but one of my longtime favorite series is Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy. It's got all the snark of Alcatraz and plenty of mysteries to keep you guessing. Two other series with pretty awesome magic systems IMO are the Beyonders Trilogy and the Five Kingdoms series by Brandon Mull. They're usually classified as MG or YA fantasy, but I'm 21 and I love them all the same.

<-- is a Mormon. <-- knows basically nothing about coffee, tea, or wine. So this conversation has been very educational for me.

Sinks in public bathrooms that don't allow you to control the water temperature. What am I supposed to do if I value cleanliness, but don't want to scald off the skin on my hands?? When I close an ad in my email, only for it to open itself again 30 seconds later while I'm trying to compose a reply. People who clip their nails at work. There are some activities that should not happen in an office environment, and this is one of them.

Several different small things made me happy today: This morning I saw a covey of about 7 quail running around in my neighborhood. THEY'RE SO CUTE. I managed to find a parking spot--despite there being waaaay too many people trying to park--because my tiny car can fit into spots that larger cars have to pass up. One of my coworkers said she thought my T-shirt was cute. The weather was not as fiendishly hot today as it has been most of the summer. In the afternoon the wind was gusting pretty hard, and I saw several crows surfing the wind and looking like they were having a lot of fun in the process.

@Morzathoth Coraline creeped me out so bad I warn everyone who asks me away from it, but being that you're the Eldritch god of the Shard, it might be right up your alley. I haven't read Neverwhere, but I highly recommend The Dresden Files. My two favorites from that series are Dead Beat and Skin Game.

@The Invested Beard Oh yeah that's probably who it is.

@Orlion Determined Whaaaat? Jealous! I keep trying to find an opportunity to meet her but nothing's worked out yet. I was super annoyed when I realized we'd both been at one of Brandon's signings in Orem without knowing it until afterward.

I was suspicious of the authenticity of the cheese but not 100% sure of its fakeness, so I looked it up. Wikipedia calls it a "processed cheese product." So...not really real cheese, I guess. Which makes sense, since blocks of cheese from the supermarket have to be refrigerated and can-cheese doesn't. Although I haven't eaten it in quite a while, I seem to remember that it tastes basically like cheddar cheese, but it has a little bit more of a pungent flavor that kind of makes it taste fake. Plus the consistency is closer to that of icing than regular cheese, because it has to be able to squirt out of the can's nozzle. I don't know how you would get easy cheese mixed up with ice cream, since I've never seen ice cream in a spray can before. (You can, however, buy whipped cream in a spray can. Is that what you were thinking of?)

Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George?

Ditto. Why do you ask, @Slowswift? Ok, something else random I want to talk about. Found this poster of minimalist X-Men on Facebook, and I'm a tad bit confused about two of their identities. I can name most of them, no problem. Top row: Wolverine, Cyclops, Colossus, Beast, Gambit, Psylocke, Iceman. Bottom row: Nightcrawler, Phoenix, Jubilee, Rogue, Storm, Jean Grey?, Professor Xavier. My confusion stems from the presence of both Jean Grey and Phoenix, since Jean Grey is the person most commonly associated with the Phoenix Force and the green costume shown on this graphic. I'm aware that Rachel Summers has also used the codename Phoenix, though, so I'm thinking the X-Man between Nightcrawler and Jubilee is probably her. @Quiver, you're the comics afficionado here; what do you think?

It's true. I don't personally like the spray-can cheese, but lots of people go crazy for it. It's convenient to put on crackers, especially if you're on a road trip, but there are people who just spray it directly into their mouths. I think those people are weird, but then again, I've been known to eat peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon, so it's kind of a case of the pot calling the kettle black here... XD

Ok so people who have visited Germany have told me that Germans (and other Europeans, for that matter) don't eat nearly as much peanut butter as the average American. For those of you who live in Europe, what are your thoughts on peanut butter?

@Renoux Who says being 100% obsessed can't be a cool thing? I had a cool encounter on Friday. I was walking to my job on BYU Provo campus and there were tons of new graduates in their caps and gowns taking photos with their families on the grass and sidewalks. I realized that I recognized one of the dads, and as I approached I called, "J Scott Savage?" And he looked around and said, "Yes?" And I was like, "I'm Kayla; I won your riddle contest on Facebook." And he got this really happy look on his face and it made me super happy too. (For those who don't know, J Scott Savage is a popular MG author who bears an uncanny resemblance to both James Dashner and Rick Riordan.)