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borrowedtimeandspace · 20 days

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Say You Love Me Too

AU: The Donna Trilogy | If I Could Turn Back Time

Note: This one kept getting longer on me, but I wanted to make sure I did these two justice. Here's hoping I have.

~~~

“Thirty days.”

Orrick’s words cut through the dusty air inside the walls of the cottage.

He and Zepheera hardly said a thing to one another since their talk over tea that afternoon. Nothing quite as meaningful, anyway. Her sudden return put a damper on his big plan to leave it all behind, and he hadn't accounted for dinner. Reckoned he'd borrow something nonperishable on his way out, just enough to sustain him on the journey between human houses. He'd steadily (albeit slowly) eaten through everything in their stores so that pests wouldn't find it and gather, ever since he decided what he would do if Zepheera didn't come back.

Now she had come back, and he didn't have anything in.

She was quick to offer to come with him on the borrowing trip, a standard food raid that he could easily do on his own. Still, with her penchant for vanishing, there was no way Orrick was leaving Zepheera out of his sight. So he agreed, and they silently traversed the darkened pathways under the floorboards and within the walls, all the way up to the humans’ pantry.

Despite their time apart, they fell into the rhythm of borrowing together right away. One kept watch while the other worked on subtly gathering food in a way that wouldn't be easily noticed, and they traded off these roles silently and smoothly. It was easy work for seasoned professionals, especially with most of the giant folk out of the house at that hour.

It was still odd for them both, how natural it all felt. Like nothing had changed, even though that couldn't be farther from the truth.

Orrick meant to emphasize that as he tossed the two words over his shoulder on their way back from a successful run.

Zepheera was quiet for the first few seconds afterward. “What?” she asked, though he noticed in her tone that she didn't sound like she'd misheard.

“How long you've been gone,” Orrick confirmed. He sent her a quick backward glance, though he was only able to make out her general shape in the darkness. “You asked, and it's only right I answer your question since you answered mine. It's been a month.”

His gaze lingered on her silhouette when he heard the slightest stutter in her steps, but she kept pace. He turned back to face the front once he felt assured that they weren't going to be separated again, and continued leading the way home.

It didn't sound like much, saying it aloud. One month. Some of Orrick’s most detailed sketches took him a few weeks to feel satisfied with the results. Zepheera’d knitted jumpers in that amount of time as well. Neither of those tasks had ultimately felt like they'd taken an incredibly long time in the past.

When it came to waiting to see if your spouse would return home, unsure of why they left or if they were even alive… Then, a month felt like an eternity.

Zepheera seemed to understand that, because she fell completely silent. It wasn't until well after they'd climbed down below the floorboards that she managed to whisper, “I'm sorry…”

“You've said that,” Orrick pointed out as they reached the main entrance to the home.

The door was a lid they'd repurposed from an old tin. The hinges were intact to use like a proper door, swinging inward with a firm push and unable to do so in the other direction. To keep pests and strangers out, they'd installed a couple of small hooks to either side of it on the inside, onto which they could drop a sturdy bar (usually a pencil) that would hold the door in place.

Orrick let the door swing inward and once again glanced back at Zepheera. In this space under the floor, a little more light was able to slip between the cracks. Now the shadows couldn't hide the flush of contained emotion in her cheekbones, the way she could barely maintain eye contact with Orrick for more than a second before her gaze lowered in shame.

The way that, though he wasn't barring the way inside, she simply stood behind Orrick. Almost waiting to be invited into the home they'd built together.

“You still haven't explained why you needed that answer. Why, of all things, that was the mystery to you.” Orrick's tone stayed even and calm, not wanting to come off as accusatory. She hadn't gone into any detail, but he knew that something had happened to Zepheera since he'd seen her last. Something that changed her.

Zepheera took a deep breath in and out, though Orrick noticed the slightest hitch, like a second small inhale before she let it slowly out. As she did so, her gaze met his and stayed this time.

“I told you, it's a long story,” she said, though to Orrick it didn't sound like an excuse. Zepheera wasn't dodging his question. No, she was simply warning him that the answer to it was far from simple.

Orrick slowly nodded in understanding. Then, with just as much care, he reached out a hand toward Zepheera, who blinked at it before looking back up at him.

“Tell it, then,” he invited.

In the dimness, Orrick thought he caught the briefest glimpse of a smile flashing across Zepheera's lips before she lifted a trembling hand to take his.

Learning that Zepheera couldn't age, while unexpected, wasn't too difficult for Orrick to accept. She had always been an unusual one, able to recover from injuries incredibly quickly compared to the average borrower. She took that in stride, and so did Orrick.

They crossed the threshold together.

~~~

When it came to time travel, however…

It wasn't the easiest topic to simplify for a borrower, let alone one who had lived his entire life in the 20th century. Space travel was only just becoming a more prominent reality for humans, and even that felt very far away and foreign to the smaller folk, who had no such ambitions. And apparently, Zepheera had taken part in that as well!

Zepheera hardly claimed to be an expert on the matter, but she explained it to the best of her understanding. Though she had clearly prepared something that would be easiest for him to swallow, it was an intense shift in Orrick's worldview.

He was still processing it all hours later, lying in bed and staring up at the underside of the floorboards that were their ceiling. Thoughts swirled in his head in so many circles that his eyes traced them as though they were visible in the darkness of night.

At the time, he understood just enough of what she told him to be able to nod along with it. Now, hours later, all attempts to let it actually sink in kept him awake.

What struck him the most in the moment was that Zepheera had traveled with humans.

It wasn't that it was more strange than the time travel, really, but it was one of the cardinal rules drilled into every borrower's head from the moment they were born. Never be seen or heard. Human beings were powerful simply by the nature of their being, well over a dozen times the size of a borrower more often than not. Even the weakest human could do the strongest borrower great harm with hardly any effort.

Whether a given human would treat the smaller folk that way was beside the point. They all had to be considered capable of such things by every borrower as a matter of caution.

Zepheera insisted that these humans were of a good sort. Well, one of them was actually not human, but was “close enough to practically count,” which was another notion Orrick was still grappling with. The Doctor, the non-human one was called. He'd saved Zepheera from a bad situation, and that was all she could say on the matter.

She went distressingly quiet when Orrick tried to ask about it.

Most of the time spent between making and eating dinner was filled with Zepheera’s stories about this Doctor and the human woman Donna Noble. How the unnamed terrible thing that happened affected her intensely, and her companions helped her recover from it. How they inspired Zepheera to take on a more active role in bettering the lives of others where- and whenever they went.

Orrick could tell they had been close, and the way Zepheera talked made it seem like this was a rarity for her. And he could see glimpses of the heartbreak in her eyes as she told him about how she was separated from them.

With a deep sigh, Orrick brought up both hands to rub at his eyes. He was making himself dizzy trying to understand time as something non-linear, but it was so intertwined with everything Zepheera had told him about her life.

The Doctor had a machine, she said, a vehicle of some sort that allowed them to go wherever they wanted at any time. She'd described it as something quite fantastical, far bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside. It could disappear from one time and place, and reappear in another.

And even with all its magics, it still rendered the Doctor helpless to find Zepheera when she was lost. This was apparently due to the nature of said separation, her being somehow flung through time to the past, well before Zepheera's own birth.

“Wait, so…” Orrick had piped up at that point. “If you were in the past, and knew about things that hadn't happened yet…why didn't you try to change them?”

Zepheera had blinked at the question, one of Orrick’s few interruptions to her story. He wasn't casting judgment on her, and the sadness that crept back in behind her eyes told him she understood exactly what he meant.

“It's…quite complicated, being in the past. Especially your own past. Time can be rewritten, yes, but the effects of that are impossible to predict.” At that, her gaze lowered to her wringing hands. “And everything that happened to me… everything I've done… It made me the person I am today. Made me better. If I tried to change even one line of my own history, then the me I am now wouldn't exist anymore. Or worse. I couldn't risk that.”

Zepheera glanced back at him then. “Do you understand?” she’d ventured to ask.

Orrick had listened to every word, but that was the point where it all started to scramble in his head. Just like he would do later in bed remembering the feeling, he buried his face in his hands. “I regret asking…”

Back in the present, the sound of quickened breathing to Orrick’s left caught his attention. He let his hands run down his face as he turned to look at Zepheera's deeply sleeping form beside him.

There really was no place for her to sleep other than the bed they used to share. She tried to insist she had something in her travel pack that she could set up, but Orrick couldn't let her just sleep on the floor. Even after everything…it didn't feel right.

It wasn't like it was before. Orrick lay flat as a board on his side, while Zepheera had started out curled with her back to him on the other. A solid inch of their makeshift mattress was left cold between them, a significant distance when the tallest between them couldn't quite claim five inches in height. Though Orrick had been too overcome with his thoughts to move, Zepheera had long since fallen asleep and began stirring more than he ever remembered her doing in the past.

He gently rolled to his side to face her. She'd writhed enough to end up lying on her back. It was dim, but not dark enough to hide the sweat on her twisted brow. The grimace on her lips as she sucked in air between clenched teeth. How one hand clutched the covers and the one nearest Orrick, tossed up near her ear, twitched as though grasping at something that wasn't there.

Before he could think twice about it, Orrick slid a hand up to gently wrap around Zepheera's and give it a squeeze.

He understood then just how much pain Zepheera had kept to herself. From what he could tell, she had been truthful with everything she'd shared, and yet she'd glossed over the darker aspects before they could sink in. Now, it seemed like she couldn't hide it as easily in her sleep. Or hide from it.

Zepheera's hand automatically clung to Orrick’s. He froze, caught up in the feeling of her grip twitching in his; a feeling that gradually calmed down. After some time, he noticed a change in the rhythm of Zepheera's breathing and saw her shadowy shape turn his way.

She was awake. He couldn't explain how he knew that, but he did.

If she looked at him, he was only vaguely aware of it in his peripheral vision. He stared at their joined hands as his thumb gently traced along her palm, as though the new questions he had would be answered there.

“How long have you been gone?”

Zepheera stayed quiet a moment, recognizing the repeated phrasing. Now Orrick understood exactly why she'd asked, and that her own answer was not straightforward and very different from the one he gave. He waited while she momentarily pondered the answer.

“I think…” she whispered, “between when I left and when I met the Doctor, and then how long ago I was sent back in time… almost two hundred years.”

Orrick’s gaze snapped up to meet hers, something in him clenching to hear such a number.

“And…in all that time, did you…” Orrick hesitated; it suddenly felt quite silly to ask, but he'd already started. “Was there ever anyone else?”

Either the darkness was playing tricks on him, or Orrick caught the tiniest sparkle of hope in Zepheera's eyes. It was gone in a flash, and she slowly shook her head no.

Orrick scoffed at himself for forgetting. “Right. ‘Course, it wouldn't change anything, would it? You'd still be worried about outliving them and–”

“Nobody was you,” Zepheera emphasized.

His breath caught in his chest, along with any more words.

Outside of his control, the hand holding Zepheera's pulled it closer. It stopped a hair's breadth from his lips, and with the slightest pause, he angled his wrist to instead place the back of her hand against his cheek.

Orrick's eyes squeezed shut as he basked in the warmth of her skin. So many times since her return, he'd avoided such intimate contact with Zepheera. Like there was some wall between them after what happened, a line that he couldn't be sure was safe to cross. For his own sake or for hers. Over the past few hours, she'd chipped away at that wall with her honesty and openness about her completely mad life, and he could feel his resolve crumbling.

There was only one thing Orrick needed to hear to make it real.

“Do you still love me?” he breathed.

Zepheera's grip went slack in his hand and twisted its way out of it. Before Orrick could fear the worst, he felt her hand gently slide in to hold his cheek. His eyes shot open just as her thumb tenderly brushed away his tears.

With her own eyes welling up, glinting in the barest light that made it into the room, Zepheera spoke with more conviction than he'd heard yet.

“I never stopped.”

Orrick kissed her. The barrier shattered.

His wife was home.

#sfw gt #sfw g/t #gt writing #g/t writing #The Donna Trilogy #If I Could Turn Back Time #borrowed time and space #the borrowers #borrower OC #Zepheera #Orrick #doctor who crossover

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nope-nora · 1 year

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your-fav-furby · 1 month

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I’ve known much darker times, I didn’t cover the protest live at the hatchetfield kennel. I am donna daggit. Or something like that.

#starkid #hatchetfield #nerdy prudes must die #the hatchetfield trilogy #nmpd #donna daggit

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coldturkeysandwich · 5 months

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Donna Summer’s discography 🪐

#she has the prettiest discography #donna summer #70s #80s #love to love you baby #a love trilogy #four seasons of love #once upon a time #bad girls #she works hard for the money #spotify #music

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lonesometownradio · 15 days

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#prelude to love #could it be magic #donna summer #donna summer: a love trilogy

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allgirlsareprincesses · 2 years

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Reblog with your favorite "cinematic" novel: the one where you can see every scene play out in your head with perfect clarity and rhythm, and you know if they ever filmed it, it could never measure up to the version you've imagined.

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aroaessidhe · 7 months

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2023 reads / storygraph

Alebrijes

MG/YA Latine scifi/fantasy

Set in a small city in the barren wasteland of earth, where the Pocatelan elite oppress the Cascabel, forcing them to work for nothing but so-called protection from the spirits and wyrms outside their ‘safe’ city

a 13yo pickpocket and his sister try to survive, but when she’s caught stealing a strawberry, he takes the fall, to be exiled

but his exile involves his consciousness being put inside an ancient drone and sent into the wilderness - where he discovers all is not what it seems, and he might be able to save everyone from his city with the truth

#Alebrijes #Donna Barba Higuera #aroaessidhe 2023 reads #takes a little bit to get into but ooh #I really enjoyed this!!#actually it makes me so nostalgic for a certain kind of fantasy i read as a tween…#like william nicholsons trilogies; city of ember even? the darklands trilogy…a lot of uk/nz/aus YA climate fiction vibes #ALSO THE EPILOGUE!!! i recommend reading the authors other book the last cuentista. for no connected reason at all

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kse22chili · 2 months

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Fedeltà

Now what truly makes me curious is what’s behind those beautiful brown eyes…

It is really hard for me to understand his intentions. Sometimes he’s cold and crude with me but there are also times when he is calm, soft and he even initiates affection towards me. Because of this, exactly I am dubious of his actions.

As in, do you love me or do you not love me?

I don’t want to continue living like this anymore; loving you while I’m trying to understand what’s worth doing and what not. I’m in a conflicting position with insecurities that I never had before but finally you had the urge to make me have them. It’s outrageous to think that I love you but at the same time I hate you. And I’m not particularly talking about that kind of hate that engulfs your very being and claims your soul, plaguing it with negative faith. No, I’m talking about that moment where one’s behaviour is so beautifully wrong, making you infatuated to it in a way that brings you to respectfully hate that person. But make no mistake, dear readers, hating that person doesn’t mean that I’m not burning with a raging fire within my heart and mind, roasting those little rational thoughts that have been remaining in my tiny skull, instead I am suffering in misery while stopping this hate towards this person, because it’s paradoxically sweet of him to have that demeanour with me.

I’m the one to blame. Because I never ceased to live without him in my routine. As in I dived into his lifestyles and matched my own rhythms to his, sacrificing my freedom and empowerment. Isn’t this such a cruel world?

Perfect cruel rational world. That seeks to confine us into narrow roles and expectations, and we defy those limitations. At least that’s what a normal person seeks to proceeding.

Instead, I am doing the opposite. Aren’t I ashamed of my own actions and ambitions? I seek to have a love life and I search for it in every single corner of the streets I walk through. But, I’m absolutely not embarrassed of my intentions, I am exhausted of all the limitations imposed upon me by an outdated script of delusional MEN of an old fashioned world. Now, I come from a quite antique century too, but I never seek to follow these outdated “laws”…

But he is the man of his times, the one that lives in danger and commands his inferiors, putting them to submission and protecting his dear ones.

I am one of his dear ones. His first priority. He has proven it to me. Several times. And I’m not talking about something that happened some years ago… No, I’m talking about two days ago;

We were seated in the back seats of our car, the driver could not particularly listen to our conversation, but we were having a small quarrel about something that had no means to whatsoever… But he was getting angry, not at me but he had been bothered by several affairs that day and he had no patience whatsoever to deal with tiny little stupid issues that I created in the moment just because I wanted a bit of his attention…

He raised his voice at me. He had never done it before.

And at that moment, I turned my head and looked out of the window. He stopped his sentence. And stopped talking.

When we arrived home, I waited for him to open my door and I got out the car. With my head raised, I was headed to the door. He followed behind me. Stayed behind me. Never dared to say something to me.

Once inside our room, I closed the door and only said one word “Out”.

The next morning I woke up, did my usual routine and headed to my kitchen to have breakfast. I saw that he had already prepared breakfast for me. And then, he had went to meet his men.

After that I had gone out for a stroll in my garden.

I had thought I had been all alone. But there was a presence behind me. That person put their hand to my mouth and blocked my arms, locking them behind my back. I didn’t fight.

My husband came. Out of nowhere. He was there. And he shot that other man in the middle of his forehead.

Unbothered, I turned around and got back to clean my hands in the bathroom. He comes behind me too. He cleans his hands after me and he dries them.

I feel his hard and big arms gripping my waist and hugging me to himself. And I melted in his sculpted body. I turned my head to his head and softly pecked him to his lips…

You see? How could I ever hate him? He is my sweet, perfect, dangerous Salvatore.

My only boss and my husband.

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llycaons · 1 year

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I hate when a sequel takes the things that were beloved and successful about the original and messes with them enough to ruin them, retroactively poisoning the original of all the enjoyment it gave its fans. im talking like...turning beloved characters into shitty parents, making popular couples get a divorce or break up, giving characters who have already been through a lot and should be able to relax an even worse situation to deal with, characters’ kids turning antagonists, etc. like it’s just sad to watch the original knowing that it won’t last you know. and it’s frustrating to watch sequels pick apart high points of the original just to manufacture interest instead of preserving and enhancing them and going down a more interesting and more difficult road

#sorry I tried to watch the second mamma mia and donna is DEAD? I can't do this #im sure the second movie is good and its not like it did any of these or even ruined the first one #some of the the third star wars trilogy did...some of it pjo did...some of it the icemark series did...#none of you will EVER be the shrek saga #itsv did it welll though. they knew what they were doing #cor.txt

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denimbex1986 · 4 months

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'Given the number of high-wattage films garnering multiple nominations at the BAFTAs this year, the rationing of awards was always likely unpredictable on the night. And so it proved, meaning that The Zone of Interest and Poor Things had already nibbled away at Oppenheimer’s chances of a decent sweep before the Best Director award came round. With Poor Things director Yorgo Lanthimos inexplicably left out of the race, a category snub this year for Christopher Nolan would absolutely have sent a signal to the British-American director.

Luckily, the fates were smiling, and Nolan finally got his hands on that BAFTA. By any metric, a win is a long time overdue for this artist, whose films attracted a cult audience out of the gate and who then swiftly monetized that formula — smart, character-based genre pieces — for the mainstream. But for a crew craft awards and an acting award for the late Heath Ledger, BAFTA largely ignored his Batman trilogy and even The Prestige (2006), the cerebral sci-fi he made in between.

Since Inception (2010) and Dunkirk (2017), and with the notable exception of Interstellar (2014), Nolan has twice garnered the three crucial nominations in his field — Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay — to no avail. The recent award of a BFI Followship almost seemed like a brave effort to correct that oversight, and sent a slightly worrying signal that, even with 13 nominations for Oppenheimer, he might yet go home empty-handed.

Nolan turned a blind eye to all this baggage and accepted his award graciously — unlike his long-term colleague Michael Caine, who famously brought up his years “out in the cold” at the 2000 ceremony — and reminisced about being taken to the Royal Festival Hall by his parents as a child “to make me have some culture”.

As well as his cast and crew, Nolan thanked Universal’s Donna Langley for “letting us or take on something quite dark and seeing the potential in that”.

“And on that note,” he continued, “I do just want to say that our film ends on a dramatically necessary note of despair. But in the real world, there are all kinds of individuals and organizations who have fought long and hard to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world. And since 1967, they’ve done it by almost 90%. Of late, that’s since gone the wrong way. And so in accepting this award, I do just want to acknowledge their efforts and point out that they show the necessity and the potential of efforts for peace.”'

#Christopher Nolan #Universal #Donna Langley #Oppenheimer #BAFTAs #Poor Things #The Zone of Interest #Heath Ledger #The Dark Knight Trilogy #The Prestige #Inception #Dunkirk #Interstellar #BFI Fellowship #Michael Caine

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fandom · 6 months

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Books

Huge congrats to The Iliad. It's only taken 3,000 years. This list is brought to you by Tor Publishing Group, which you're probably familiar with, given what tops the list this year.

The Locked Tomb series +3 by Tamsyn Muir

The Percy Jackson & the Olympians series -1 by Rick Riordan

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

The Six of Crows duology +3 by Leigh Bardugo

Dracula -3 by Bram Stoker

The Warrior Cats series -1 by Erin Hunter

A Song of Ice and Fire -1 by George R. R. Martin

The All for the Game series by Nora Sakavic

The Discworld series +7 by Terry Pratchett

A Court of Thorns and Roses series +3 by Sarah J. Maas

The Silmarillion -1 by J. R. R. Tolkien

Pride And Prejudice -3 by Jane Austen

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Raven Cycle series +3 by Maggie Stiefvater

The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan & Mark Oshiro

The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice

Wings Of Fire +9 by Tui T. Sutherland

The Secret History -7 by Donna Tartt

The Trials of Apollo series -4 by Rick Riordan

The Iliad +10 by Homer

The Odyssey +24 by Homer

The Folk in the Air series -8 by Holly Black

The Animorphs series +5 by K. A. Applegate

The Stormlight Archive +8 by Brandon Sanderson

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Moby Dick +24 by Herman Melville

1984 +6 by George Orwell

Fables by Bill Willingham

The Diaries of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka

The Song of Achilles -10 by Madeline Miller

The Last Hours series by Cassandra Clare

The Simon Snow series -10 by Rainbow Rowell

The Throne of Glass series +13 by Sarah J. Maas

Nimona by ND Stevenson

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard +6 by Rick Riordan

The Bell Jar -15 by Sylvia Plath

The Dreamer trilogy +6 by Maggie Stiefvater

The Shadowhunter Chronicles -15 by Cassandra Clare

The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

Captive Prince -1 by C. S. Pacat

The Twilight Saga -7 by Stephanie Meyer

The Sandman by Neil Gaiman

The Deltora Quest series by Jennifer Rowe

Romeo and Juliet -8 by William Shakespeare

The Far Side by Gary Larson

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde +2 by Robert Lewis Stevenson

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

The Picture of Dorian Gray -31 by Oscar Wilde

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

The number in italics indicates how many spots a title moved up or down from the previous year. Bolded titles weren’t on the list last year.

#year in review #books #tumblr2023

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borrowedtimeandspace · 13 days

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Of Borrowing and Cat Burglary

AU: The Donna Trilogy | If I Could Turn Back Time

Note: Checking back in with Doc...

~~~

San Helios, 2009 (in Earth terms)

“No, nonono, you're short on cash, you rob a bank.” The Doctor thoughtfully turned over the ancient, ornate gold cup in his hands. “Stealing this… That's a lifestyle.”

“I take it you disapprove?” said Lady Christina de Souza over the comm in his ear. Her tone carried not an ounce of care about his opinion.

“Absolutely,” he asserted. Brown eyes slid back toward the cup, gaze softening as his thoughts turned inward. “To this scale, at least…”

The Doctor felt his hold on the cup begin to slip as he lost focus, and he brought his attention back just enough to carefully return it to Christina’s bag. As he did, words came to his lips unprompted.

“Had a friend- another friend, not the one that called me ‘Spaceman’.” His hands folded together and he ran a thumb over the opposite palm, ignoring the curious chittering of the Tritovore keeping watch. “Had a similar way of life, I suppose. Only that was for survival, not a thrill. She took things she needed, things that no one would even notice were missing, that didn't have any real value. At least to the ones she took them from. Plenty valuable to her.”

“Sounds boring…”

“Not if you knew who she took things from.”

Despite jumping in to defend his friend in her absence, the Doctor realized right away that he probably shouldn't have said anything to begin with. Borrowers like Zepheera were meant to stay hidden and unknown by humans, who didn't often take too kindly to their things being nicked. Even little things.

The Doctor had been around humanity for long enough to know that there were plenty of people on Earth who weren't monstrous enough to mistreat their inches-tall sister species. Then again, some were, and one could never be too careful.

Zepheera knew that much firsthand.

“She had a lot more to worry about than jail time and fines, let's just say,” he concluded, trying to put the matter to rest.

Christina hummed thoughtfully. “I might've liked to meet her. I bet she's got quite the story.”

“Yeah.” The Doctor gave a sniff and glanced over his shoulder at Christina's descent rig. “She might've liked your winch.”

“Excellent taste, too!”

For the second time, the look in the Doctor's eyes grew distant. In a desperate grasp at something different to talk about, anything to derail from the painful topic he'd brought up himself, one thought bubbled up. It came forward softly, an admittance that he didn't realize Christina might like until after it was already on its way out.

“And you know… that little blue box… I stole it. From my own people.”

“Good boy,” said Christina with an audible smile. “You were right. We make quite the team…”

~~~

“We're made for each other, you said so yourself! The perfect team.”

Back on Earth, the Doctor stood like a stone in front of his TARDIS, staring down at Lady Christina de Souza without seeing her. Her words, insistently advocating for her deserved spot aboard his ship, affected him as much as a breeze against an ancient tree.

It was nothing he hadn't heard before. Words like hers might have moved him in the past, but he had to stand firm this time. He'd already given her his answer.

No.

Only two of Christina's words made it through the icy wall the Doctor had suddenly built between them.

“Why not?”

The Doctor could see the defeat in her eyes, asking him only for a reason that she was being left behind. Left to face the consequences of all her thievery, unavoidable now that the police had them surrounded. He couldn't give her what she wanted. She ought to know why.

“People have traveled with me, and I've lost them,” he stated bluntly. “Lost them all. Never again.”

He watched as she gave a surprised blink, but then her clever wheels turned. Behind those piercing blue eyes, she quickly began to piece together what little he'd opened up to her about. The friends he had that weren't around anymore. Probably guessing why that was, based on what she, the Doctor, and the other bus passengers had been through.

Lost in those thoughts, Christina was too distracted to resist her imminent arrest. The Doctor stepped back to lean against his TARDIS and out of the eager detective's way.

Something about seeing Christina being led away in cuffs struck a chord with him.

Then Carmen, the woman from the bus with some sort of percipient tendencies, called out to wish him well. At first, he smiled and welcomed the distraction from the twist of discomfort inside him.

Until her well-wishes took a turn for the ominous, sounding an awful lot like a warning for his death and something dark on the horizon.

He will knock four times…

Suddenly the Doctor was in need of a distraction from his distraction. He chose the lesser of two discomforts and glanced around the corner of his box to watch Christina being led to the police car down the street. He could picture what came next. Christina would be jailed, perhaps put on trial, and likely end up in prison for all the things she stole.

And before he could stop it, the mental image of Christina in a jail cell shifted in his mind’s eye. Thick walls of concrete and steel turned to sturdy acrylic, any humane amenities disappeared, and barred doors became solid and clear to fully display the woman in captivity.

Only it wasn't Christina anymore. This was the past, not the future, and yet it was all he could think of as he watched her being taken away.

Before he could think better of it, the Doctor fished his sonic out from his breast pocket and used it to undo the cuffs around Christina’s wrists. Nobody noticed but her, and they locked eyes and shared a knowing look.

It hadn't been very long since the Doctor freed a woman similar in spirit to Christina from captivity. Seeing her slip away and make a break for the flying bus loosened the cold grip of that terrible feeling. He let her run on by and ultimately fly off into the night sky, and he knew she would be okay in the end.

He only wished he could say the same for Zepheera.

#doctor who crossover #doctor who g/t #the borrowers crossover #the borrowers #borrower OC #Zepheera #The Donna Trilogy #If I Could Turn Back Time #borrowed time and space

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coollovebibliophilethings · 2 years

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Santa in a Kilt by Donna Kauffman

Title: Santa in a KiltAuthor: Donna KauffmanSeries: Hot Scot Trilogy #3In: Unwrapped (Erin McCarthy, Donna Kauffman & Kate Angell)Rating Out of 5: 5 (I will read this again and again and again)My Bookshelves: Christmas, Contemporary, Contemporary romance, Scottish romancePace: FastFormat: eBook, NovellaYear: 2011 The title of this novella is incredibly misleading, since there’s absolutely no…

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#Christmas #Contemporary #Contemporary romance #Donna Kauffman #Hot Scot Trilogy #Unwrapped

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the-modern-typewriter · 9 months

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Can I ask for your book recommendations / your favourite reads?

I've done posts like this before, so for something a little different even though I'm probably still recommending the same books every time haha, have my favourite few books that I've read every year since 2017.

2017

A Darker Shade of Magic series by V.E Schwab

If We Were Villains by M.L Rio

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

2018

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

2019

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Things We Say In The Dark by Kirsty Logan

2020

Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire (part of her Wayward Children series, but a lot of them have a standalone novella vibe to them).

2021

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue by V.E Schwab

A Spindle Splintered by Alix. E Harrow

These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever

2022

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

Dark Rise by C.S Pascat

Honourable mention to the podcast, The Magnus Archives, which I listened to instead of audiobooks for a significant chunk of the year and really enjoyed overall.

2023 (so far!)

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

Once Upon a Broken Heart trilogy by Stephanie Garber

Yellowface by R.F Kuang

In The Lives of Puppets by T.J Klune

The Wicker King by K.C Ancrum

Honourable pre-2017 mentions go to...

The Secret History by Donna Tart, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

#books #reading #book rec #book recs #book recommendations #book recommendation

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txttletale · 1 month

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(Other than the really weird bit about "Male presenting Doctor") what were your thoughts about the specials?

pretty mixed bag, pretty messy, but good overall. i think they were very obviously a nostalgia trip for people around my age lol and it worked! i loved seeing tennant and tate back onscreen together, their chemistry hasn't aged a bit, and honestly just watching doctor who that wasn't written by chris chibnall was a breath of fresh air. they weren't boring, like seasons 11 and 12 were, and they didn't go too far off the other end into nonsense like flux did. characters want things again! the show can let itself just be silly! i was literally cheering out loud when donna and the doctor were just saying random scifi gobbledegook at each other for like a solid several minutes during the star beast.

the structure of the specials kind of baffles me. i love wild blue yonder--i think it's definitively the best of the specials as a standalone, it's absolutely fantastic, creepy and atmospheric and bringing things around to RTD's strength, which is well-written characters interacting with each other and letting good actors just act. but at the same time i dont understand why it exists? it feels like...idk. imagine if you watched the star wars original trilogy but instead of the empire strikes back the middle film was just a feature length film about luke and han surviving on an ice planet with no reference to anything that happens in the last film except the two characters' relationship. and then the next film was still return of the jedi, unchanged. it felt like that

i liked all the weird campy silliness of the star beast and the giggle, and they were both very fun! neil patrick harris gave a fantastic performance, there are a lot of very memorable sequences from the giggle, but it's very very all over the place. so many threads get kind of picked up and go nowhere. the toymaker's haunted house dimension goes nowhere. RTD's eyerolling social media commetnary goes nowhere (thank god tbh but yknow im illustrating something here). even the toymaker kind of goes nowhere, after ncuti gatwa shows up he's bascially an afterthought who loses by dropping a ball. obvious parallels to david tennant's first episode with that ball scene could be made, but just... aren't. it feels like load-bearing sectikons of the plot and themes were cut out to make room for a backdoor pilot for the stupid fucking UNIT spinoff

oh and it goes without saying i fucking hate all the UNIT wank in the star beast and the giggle. i hope space nine eleven 2 happens to their stupid fucking avengers tower i cannot stand kate stewart who is constantly a murderous bonehead (in the giggle alone she gets two pepole killed by not listening to the doctor and assuming that this teleporting godlike entity could be restrainted by Two Guys) who is both in and out of universe just a boring nepo baby with no merit of her own

um. i still dont know what happened with the regeneration. i think the implication is that when david tennant dies hell time travel back to become ncuti gatwa inside himself--at least the rehab dialogue seems to make that implication. but it's not really explained or explored? baffling. i do think that fourteen getting to settle down and live a peaceful life with his friends is cute.

oh yeah and the ask said other than that but goddd there was some good stuff in the star beast and honestly with the state of the UK media i will take any perspective on trans people that includes baseline human erespect but some of those lines made me cringe so bad. anyway overall i am cautiously optimistic for the future of the show--oh ncuti was fucking great did i mention that i instantly bnought him as the doctor he owned the scene, the moment he was there it was clear he was the protagonist, and i liked the church on ruby road well enough too--i am cautiously optimistic but i worry that a big UNIT-shaped tumor will devour huge chunks of it and it'll be annoying. also russel t davies is like 60 and i just dont want to hear what he has to say about twitter so im not looking forward to dot and bubble

#ask #doctor who

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baambastic · 3 months

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Woo Be Upon Ye:

Medieval fantasy TimKon AU where Kon is a half-dragon prince of the realm who elevates commoner Tim to the Royal Guard on a whim. Also has Bart as an apprentice mage, Donna and Cassie as Themiscyran ambassadors, many of Tim’s school friends as Royal Guards, Wildcat as a mentor, the Daily Planet staff as the royal council, and more! Planned as part one of a four-part series.

Bernard Dowd vs. The World:

After hearing Tim’s many, many, many stories about his friends, Bernard realizes that almost all of Tim’s guy friends were hitting on Tim at multiple points. Failing to convince Tim of this, however, Bernard makes it his mission to obtain written testimonies from as many of said friends as he can to support his case. Such friends include Superboy, Danny Temple, Sebastian Ives, Lonnie Machin, and more.

Two for the Price of Them:

In this AU, Tim’s 100th cloning attempt is a success, and so clones of both Kon and Bart are created. Partway through the artificial aging process, however, an agent of N.O.W.H.E.R.E. (overhauled from the same metahuman-abduction organization from the New52) attacks. Tim is forced to go on the run and off the grid with the two clone babies.

The World Didn’t Stand Still:

When Kathy Branden plugs a Phantom Zone Crystal into her teleportal and visits the Phantom Zone, she comes back with a young Krytonian boy, Chris Kent, who claims to be the foster son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Effectively taking pre-boot Chris from after his debut story and transporting him into post-Rebirth continuity. Part of a planned trilogy of fics centered on Chris. Guaranteed that they will not end with Chris getting punted into the Phantom Zone for an unknown length of time.

The Dichotomy of Lor-Zod and Chris Kent:

In post-Infinite Frontiers continuity, Lor-Zod begins getting flashes of a life before his own, of a life where he was family to the loathsome Kal-El of the House of El. Lor’s father, Dru-Zod, convince Lor that his affliction must be the machinations of the Justice League’s Martian Manhunter, a psychic attack meant to weaken New Kandor for invasion. Along with Non as a chaperone, Lor-Zod goes on a quest to hunt the Martian Manhunter, though he’s really on the path to restoring his pre-boot history and identity, and all the internal conflict that comes from the contradictions between his two selves. Effectively how I would approach reconciling the current iteration of Lor-Zod with Chris Kent. Guest-starring Martian Manhunter and M’gann M’orzz.

The Cola Caper:

Upon hearing the devastating news that an embargo on the island nation of Santa Prisca will halt the distribution of Zesti Cola in the United States, Dick and Tim go on a mission to infiltrate Santa Prisca and abscond with as much Zesti as they can, and maybe even the secret recipe if they’re lucky.

Stray Little Tiger:

A Billy Batson-centric fic placed in a Stray!Tim Drake AU. Selina Kyle, on her way home from a caper, comes across a lightning-struck boy in an alley. Clearly homeless and in need of help, she decides to take the boy in until he’s healed, though the lightning seems to have severely damaged his vocal cords. She doesn’t know that this boy is Billy Batson, that he’s Captain Marvel, or that there’s something deeply wrong with the Rock of Eternity. This story is told mainly from Selina’s POV, with occasional sidetracks to Tim’s POV, but never Billy’s POV. Identity shenanigans, found family, magic problems, and more.

A Single Word Spoken:

A girl in the shape of a weapon is brought to Fawcett City, where she fulfills her purpose for the first and last time.

The girl who can no longer be a weapon hides from her wielder in an old subway and finds herself transported to a place of great magic.

There, the girl who wishes to be more than she was made to be finds a Wizard, who sees the girl for her heart and not for the blood staining her skin.

The Wizard teaches the girl a name.

Cassandra speaks her first word.

And in so doing, she speaks power.

Also featuring Cass navigating the anachronistic Fawcett City, befriending Billy Batson, codependency issues, an old man who’s also a Bengal tiger, ancient grudges, a different old man who’s barely qualified to give Cass life advice, and more.

Fake it For the Win:

While on a cruise, Tim and Kon decide to fake being married in order to compete on an onboard game show for married couples. When they actually win, though, they have no choice but to keep up the act for the rest of their trip. Fake dating to real dating, with a focus on comedy.

Crossroads of Fate and Eternity:

JLI-era fic with a couple of canon-divergent indulgences. Kent Nelson, helped by Khalid Nassour, decides to take Billy Batson under his wing as a student of the mystic arts. Magic lessons, Tower of Fate and Rock of Eternity shenanigans, Bromfield family stuff, an ancient entity and an ancient demon, philosophy, and other such tidbits.

A Little Ways Along the Family Tree:

When a villain travels through time to the future and accidentally takes Robin with him, Damian Wayne must team up with Mar’i and Jake Grayson to defeat the villain and return Damian to his proper time.

A High-Speed Romantic Tryst on an Open-Water Murder Shack:

When a couple of thugs steal a houseboat belonging to one of Tim’s marina neighbors while he and Bernard are hanging out, the two of them give chase in Tim’s own houseboat. Comedy, crack treated seriously.

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