They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Erin Michelle Sky and Steven Brown, the dynamic duo behind The Tales of Wendy series. The second installment, The Navigator, comes out tomorrow from Trash Dogs Media LLC!
What do Erin and Steven love when they’re not writing a rocking re-imagining of Peter Pan where Wendy joins Her Majesty’s army? Spoiler alert: an iconic game that blends first-person shooters with roleplay, corrupt superheroes who might be worse than the villains we love to hate, and a new installment in the Batman-verse that looks super promising AND has a female lead! Curious? Read on to learn more!
What are we geeking out about?
So! Many! Things!
First up? Borderlands 3. It just came out September 13. (Yeah, Friday the 13th. Because if you’re Borderlands 3, you don’t need luck.) But the best news about this brand new release is you can pick up the game pretty easily even if you’ve never played Borderlands before.
It’s a first-person shooter … no, scratch that. It’s an iconic lynchpin of the FPS gaming industry. The aesthetic is distinctive (even if you don’t know Borderlands, you’ve probably seen the cosplay), with its own unique blend of cartoon-style art and graphic violence. That in itself makes it worth playing at least somewhere in your FPS rotation, but, for us, we love the cooperative gameplay.
The combination of FPS and RPG sets this franchise apart, with mission-based team play in a shoot-to-kill world. The missions pit player teams against the computer rather than other players, in a typical RPG system of kill-based loot as well as quest-based rewards. As for changing your character, it’s more FPS than RPG. You collect new skins (and even faces) by playing the game, rather than building your own avatar from scratch.
That’s one place where we differ in our gaming preferences — Erin likes avatar builders, and Steven’s just as happy to take a prebuilt character and start playing. But we both love cooperative gameplay, so Borderlands 3 won us both over.
Second? The Boys on Amazon Prime. Haven’t seen it yet? It is dark. We’re talking can’t-see-your-own-hand-in-
In the first two minutes or so, we were both already stunned. What … just … happened? Did they really go there? From that moment on, our eyes were glued.
Why are dark stories so intriguing? Partly because epic disaster has always grabbed humanity’s attention. It’s different. It’s completely outside the day-to-day, and that makes it riveting. But it’s also because dark stories break the old modes of story-telling — in short, nobody has plot protection. We spent every single scene thinking, Someone’s going to die. That one, maybe. Or that one? It became a surprise if they didn’t die. That’s suspense. That’s suspense in spades.
One of our personal favorites is Karl Urban, who plays a very mortal hunter trying to take out the corrupt superheroes one by one. You might remember him as Bones in the rebooted Star Trek movies, but you won’t recognize him. The acting is brilliant, and we kept saying to each other, “I know him from somewhere.” But we finally had to look up his name in the cast to figure it out. He’s just that good.
The rest of the acting is equally phenomenal, and the writing remains legendary throughout the entire season. That said, the show should probably come with some trigger warnings. (Did we mention that it’s dark?) There’s a ton of violence. Graphic death. Extreme sexual harassment. But at least there weren’t any explicit rape scenes. Hopefully, they’ll continue to draw that line as the show continues. They’ve already started filming season 2 in Toronto, and we’ll be watching the moment it comes out.
Third? The CW’s Batwoman. The fall season television premieres are about to kick off, but we’re going to have to wait until October 6th to see this one. We … can’t … wait!*** According to an article in Variety, posted September 23, two new studies show this one leading the pack of new fall offerings — viewers are both aware of it and clamoring for it more than any other freshman fall premiere.
*** = Hey, Batwoman premiered last night! Did you watch? Share your thoughts below!
As a child, Steven Brown read anything he could get his hands on, sharing his favorite stories with his younger brothers and then acting them out, especially if this required sword fighting on horseback. When they ran out of books, he wrote his own, including his brothers as the main characters by sketching illustrations on magazine clippings.
Meanwhile, Erin Michelle Sky fell in love with llamas and with the books of Anne McCaffrey, whose Dragonriders of Pern series inspired her to become a writer. When she finally met Anne McCaffrey at a fantasy convention some two decades later, she wept uncontrollably throughout the entire affair. She does significantly better with llamas.
Together, they are Dragon Authors, writing science fiction and fantasy for teens and adults. Their short fiction has been published in the Hugo-nominated Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. The first volume of their newest series, Tales of the Wendy, was named by Goodreads as one of the hottest new YA series of 2018.
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Okay, so totally binged THE BOYS when it came out. I wrote a bit about it here, but in short, yeah, I’m in for season two.
I did watch Batwoman, and I enjoyed the pilot! I’m really surprised how quickly they delivered a particular reveal, and a bit relieved. Looking forward to seeing how all of this plays out, and I love Ruby Rose in the role!
[…] We’ve got a dazzling duo of guests for this week’s My Favorite Things — Erin Michelle Sky and Steven Brown! We’re celebrating the release of The Navigator, the follow-up novel to their Peter Pan re-imagining, The Wendy, now available from Trash Dogs Media! What geeky loves can you expect to look forward to? How about the latest first-person shooter/RPG extravaganza, corrupt superheroes for hire, and the newest caped crusader to grace the CW! There’s lots to love in this week’s MFT, so take a look! […]