#and i know how the novella ends but girl. i was NOT built to read in ye old lithuanian

[a-chaotic-dumbass]

reading marti and i cannot follow this plot for tbe life of me

#bless katre i feel horrid for her #and i know how the novella ends but girl. i was NOT built to read in ye old lithuanian #the improv i had to do when presenting her father in law bc i understood NOTHING😭😭 #at some point i got so confused that i forgor who married who #chaos reads #žemaitė is like. so Important to the whole book smuggling but girl i cant in good faith say that im havijg a swell time

[pleuvoire]

2023 books i liked recap because why not

top faves, new entries on the all-timers shelf:

piranesi is like a sweet spot of novels made for me i swear. aesthetically beautiful (as far as mental images go), themes of wonder at the beauty of the world, a slowly unfurling mystery, a simple plot but with vibrant beauty and meaning layered on top. It's Good

giovanni's room also has a very simple plot that is so overlaid with soaring passionate emotion i swear it feels like an opera in book form. timeless classic. it's good idk what to tell you

oh man ancillary justice is such good sci-fi. when you start out reading it you're like this is rather dry but it pulls you in so hard. the worldbuilding! the themes of identity! breq is such a good character!

not quite all-timer shelf but still really good

fish swimming in dappled sunlight is ultimately a story about stories and memory and constructed narratives and the reliability thereof. it takes place over a single night and mostly just consists of characters sitting around talking, but manages to pull some crazy twists on you regardless. love the prose style too

i'm glad my mom died lives up to the acclaim. mccurdy has a real talent for narrative voice, effortlessly inhabiting the viewpoint of her younger self at various ages. balances humor and tragedy with frank candor. i sound like a review pull quote here so i'll stop

infect your friends and loved ones is actually a novella so pretty short! it's by the author of detransition baby and has definitely gotten me interested in reading that. really vivid meditation on trans womanhood and transmisogyny that bounces between post-apocalypse and pre-apocalypse settings. pdf here

less stand-out but i still liked it

what are you are looking for is in the library is a nice little series of loosely connected vignettes about people who are stuck at some point in their life and find inspiration at the library. all the staff at my library job wanted to read it so the hold list was a mile long lol. has inspiring themes about always being able to find a way forward when you're in a rut and the power of community and stuff

a people's history of heaven is about the life and times of a group of girls living in a slum in bangalore, india. i liked how it interwove different people's life stories together and used lots of vivid detail and i like how the trans girl's story was written. some aspects were hit or miss for me but it was still nice

temple alley summer is a kids' book but i like kids' books so that's fine. it's about a boy who sees a ghost and the next day she's a student at his school and everyone seems to already know her but him and it turns out this is because his house was built on top of a mystical temple. i like the meditations on life and death and the simple heartwarmingness. it takes a long unexpected detour in the second half which threw me for a loop but ended up working for the story

stuff i started reading but didn't finish and i swear i'm going to try to get to it this year

to shape a dragon's breath is pretty long so i didn't get that far in before i had to return it to the library but i really liked what i read. the worldbuilding is really interesting and the narrative voice feels fresh and unique and deftly avoids the samey YA mold that tends to grate on me. and it's got commentary on colonialism! definitely check this one out

i got halfway through radium girls which is an accomplishment for me since it's long. rare nonfiction entry on this list. goes into insanely meticulous historical detail complete with fiction-style descriptions and embellishments of the girls' lives which just makes it more tragic

i own a copy of the haunting of hajji hotak but it's seriously harrowing stuff so i had to take breaks. it's good man. but whew it does not shy away from the realities of living under war and occupation. death to america

ok that's everything i think seeya next year

#rosemary reads

[taravangianlistenstothebeachboys]

15 to 17

end-of-year book ask game

15. Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them?

I honestly don't know how many books I read this year won awards. I know The Shadow of the Torturer won a bunch of sci-fi awards, and I did really love it—though I enjoyed it more as a part of the larger Book of the New Sun series than I did as a standalone work.

16. What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?

I don't have the hater's temperament. Most things that are popular I'll enjoy, most things that aren't popular I'll enjoy. The closest I had to something being "overhyped" for me was not getting a lot out of The Duino Elegies, if you can count "my brother really likes them and was telling me about them positively" as something being over-hyped. I can't even hold it against Rilke, I don't think I was really coming to those poems on his terms.

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

I've been perpetually trying to get through the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings for a while now. Sade doesn't have the most gripping prose and I'm unable to get much thematic depth outside the unending, overwhelming excess of lurid grotesquery he spends countless pages dryly relating. Look, I'm from Vegas, I'm all for unending overwhelming excesses of lurid grotesquery, but it hasn't really built up to anything meaningful for me yet. Which is dissapointing, considering how much I liked Salò.

That said, I also read his novella Incest, and was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying the little thing. The characters were arch and simple, but that just made me more surprised by the quirks of their characterization. Take this passage about the mother, who had just discovered her daughter had been groomed into a sexual relationship with her husband:

The unhappy Mme de Franval could no longer take refuge in her illusions; not a single one remained for her to indulge in; it was all too clear that the heart of her husband — the most precious thing in her whole life — had been stolen from her.... And by whom? By the girl who owed her the most respect.... and who had just spoken to her with such insolence!

This character is supposed to be a paragon of virtue, and she reacts to this all by claiming her daughter stole her husband? That her daughter wronged her? Not that her husband wronged their daughter horribly, not that she wronged her daughter by letting her be isolated from all but him for years.... And she says her daughter owes her respect? She had no hand in raising her, is she supposed to be owed respect for bringing her into this world? Incredible. I love reading about how the structure of role expectations and power dynamics in families is irreparably fucked.

#leo says #incest cw

[i--antimony]

back to your regularly scheduled tuesdayposts

book review edition

listening: im on episode 52 of twilight mirage now! final stretch!!

reading: hooo boy. so. i read 'every heart a doorway' yesterday. not gonna lie! i'm bummed! i thought it was bad! i've been marinating on it overnight and i want to put some thoughts down about it. i saw some folks on goodreads changing their reviews after a few days to be a higher rating because they'd "judged it as a novel, not a novella" and no offense but i think that is stupid. yes, a novella can be approached with different expectations than a novel, but i still expect it to have, like...character arcs?? a Beginning Middle and End???

it felt like it was trying very hard to have Representation and Feminism, yet fell into the trap of "only a certain amount of pretty is ok, if you're Too Pretty you must have a bad personality to make up for it or be otherwise evil" (seraphina) and had a character (angela i think) say "i'm transphobic" and there is zero resolution with that! it is never brought up again! she goes "i think you're a fake man" kade goes "fuck you" and that's it!! then the climax of the book happens! it's totally irrelevant and served no purpose! we don't even know who angela is!!!! it means nothing!!! really bizarre! this isn't even touching the Quirky Token Asian who gets murdered almost immediately. 

in general i think the scale of characters was a little weird. there are about 40 students in this house but it felt very amorphous, especially for the type of story i thought it was trying to tell; i think i would have preferred a smaller cast where we got to learn everyone's names and general vibes at least instead of just "blue haired girl". this isn't a huge problem i just thought it made the setting feel a bit strange. the few characters we got to see named and have motivations were really two dimensional. i don't think this is a problem of it being a YA book, i think it was just too rushed to actually flesh out anyone beyond the most general strokes.

i think the most natural-feeling and fleshed out was kade, i liked him a lot. nancy felt...not like a character, she felt like a collection of Facts. it's nice to see asexual rep, don't get me wrong, but she basically felt like an empty shell of a character. not that any of the other characters felt especially fleshed out, but they all at least has allusions to Character Arcs In The Past, with whole adventures in each of their respective fairytale lands; nancy didn't even have an adventure it seems like!! like she just Stood There A Lot!

and apparently standing Very Still is a superpower, which leads me to my next complaint - why the hell do these kids have magic in the real world still? christopher taking out his little bone flute and reanimating lorelei's skeleton made me put the book down for a minute and take a lap. why! the stuff like standing very still, or lorelei's really good eyesight i could excuse; fully Reanimating The Dead is very silly. maybe i'm missing something but it doesn't seem to serve any purpose. the book would have been missing nothing if that whole skeleton scene was cut. similarly with the aging-backwards therapist, was clearly built entirely for the "oooooh how quirky she looks 8 but she acts like an adult!" factor. it served no purpose. she could have been a normal adult woman. her suspicion of nancy was really silly too. basically magic continuing to exist in the "real world" served no narrative purpose and felt out of place with the message i thought the book was trying to have. and speaking of message:

i think this book's biggest crime is not having a cohesive message. i started this book thinking it would be about loss, grief, and coming to terms with a life you didn't think you'd have. those are all really good messages for a YA book! not that there is a "correct" ending for a story like this but just sending nancy back to her fantasy land was completely antithetical to the book saying "sometimes you just need to move on a little, you can still keep your hope but you have to live your life as well". no offense to mcguire but that ending felt like her choosing an "unexpected" ending just for the sake of it, not to serve any narrative purpose. then again nancy was kinda not a character so it doesn't make the worst sense to just get her out of the way a little. i found myself feeling more bad for nancy's parents than anything else. yes they don't understand, and probably didn't understand her for a while even before she went through her door, but they clearly were so worried about her and nancy really didn't seem to have any good will towards them for it. all teenagers feel misunderstood! all i can think about is these two well-meaning parents grieving for literally the rest of their lives lol. like listen. i get it. i was That Kid. i wanted something like that so badly. but i would have at least hesitated. i know it's just a YA novel but it really rubbed me the wrong way.

in terms of narrative, i definitely saw the twist coming, basically from the point where jill vanished for a little bit following the first murder, which is fine! i'm a little confused on the logistics of it, like her and jack shared a room and the timeline makes it seem like jack would definitely have had to notice earlier. doesn't really matter either way. i would have loved a little more drama around the murders - maybe being suspicious of lundy or even eleanor? especially when lundy was weirdly in kade's room after the first murder. the main characters seemed strangely apathetic to it all, no drive to investigate or search for clues like you'd expect in a YA novel. it's fine. i did really like mcguire's prose, though, she has some nice sentences in there.

idk tl;dr i had high expectations because i saw a lot of people talking this book up a lot but it really did nothing for me except make me a little sad for nancy's parents which i don't think was the intended result. 2/5 stars for me :(

watching: a bunch of mina le mostly

making: i finished carving out my watch block, i haven't done a test print yet but i'm going to try and do that this week! i'm almost done with my tank top knitting project too, i'm on the last strap now.

misc: it's been like a month since i tuesdayposted! hello everyone! i got a really really bad stomach bug when i was in korea but other than that my travels went well! i had a minor breakdown last week when i was puppysitting by myself bc of how sleep deprived i was! but i'm better now! things feel like they're moving veerrrrrryyyy slowly with my research but that's just how it is with that i guess. being home for the summer has been really nice but i do miss having my own space and independence.

#tuesdayposting

[monster-bait]

Hi, I see lots of people asking about stories of yours that you've taken down for publishing and it made me wonder. Do you have a place where people can read synopsis (plural??) of upcoming books/books that have been taken down? I saw the teaser for Sweet Berries at the end of your Farm book, but I don't know the one coming in 2022 I don't think and I wanna get hyped! (Have read Sweet Berries stories, but the book is gonna be bomb)

I don't have a synopsis landing page, but my website is about to get an overhaul, so that might be changing!

In the meantime, here's the tentative order of things:

Parties, GW book 2- Several months after a weekend girls' trip, suburban elves Lurielle, Ris, and Silva are still affected by their experiences at the resort and the orcs they met there.

Lurielle discovers that being in a multi-species relationship has its challenges: meeting Khash's family, introducing him to hers, and facing the harsh realities that lie ahead if they stay together. A lifetime together or a lifetime apart - she must decide if she can bear the heartache the future holds.

When Ris returns to the resort on a whim, an unexpected encounter with a slightly familiar face upends this elf's desire to be a free as the wind. Ainsley is simultaneously everything and nothing that she's looking for - smart and sexy and completely unattached . . . but how long can they "keep things casual?"

Silva struggles to juggle the expectations of her family and seeing Tate in secret until she becomes tangled in her web of lies, necessitating a choice - following the carefully mapped life of privilege her family has planned for her in their Elvish community . . . or throwing it all away to follow her heart, for a man with his own heart full of secrets.

Parties is a multi-POV story, following all three girls through a succession of soirees, each one winding their separate story lines - and the work friends - tighter together.

Sweet Berries - Grace has a job she loves, a community she adores, and plenty of friends . . . but her lack of bedroom action has left this event planner too horny to think. When one ill-advised night at the bar leads to her giving an exhibitionistic show to an unknown presence outside her bedroom window, she thinks she’d hit a new low. When her voyeur turns out to be a nebbishly charming mothman, Grace needs to decide if she can trust her body — and her heart — with this garnet-eyed stranger before he flys out of her life for good.

Sweet Berries is a monster/human romance novella featuring high heat and a lot of heart, with a guaranteed HEA. It is the second book in the Cambric Creek Romance series, and can be read as a standalone. CWs: human/nonhuman romance, nonhuman anatomy, size difference, exhibitionism

Pride - Don’t ever go into the forest alone, gorza, there are strangers there who will take you away.

She had grown up in the shadow of the forest, with the story of the boy who’d disappeared into its black confines having been passed down in her clan for generations. She never imagined the story’s subject might be real.

Nineteen, rebellious, and queer; trapped in a marriage she never wanted, Elshona wishes that she too could disappear from her life, never to be seen again. When she meets a sharp-toothed stranger in a pub, whose past bears more than just a passing resemblance to the tale she’s known all her life, she does the one thing she was taught not to do: follows him into the night, out the door and away from her family and all she knows, all the way across the sea.

Pride is a Girls Weekend side-story about Tate and Elshona: how they meet, their shared connection, and the pain of not being accepted and leaving home behind. It's a story of queer acceptance, chosen family, and the ties that bind us, for better or worse. CW: ALL the emotions

Moon Blooded Breeding Clinic - Returning to Cambric Creek is the last thing Lowell Hemming wants to do, but when his career as a photographer is put on hold, he’s not left with much of a choice. Suffocating under the weight of the Hemming family name and the confines of his small hometown, the monthly full moon is the only time he doesn’t feel trapped. When an intriguing flyer requesting healthy male werewolves catches his eye, he finds himself calling Moon Blooded Breeding Clinic, signing up as a donor for their catalog.

From the outside, recently divorced Moriah has everything - except the one thing she wants: a child of her own. Desperation pushes her to contact a very unconventional clinic with an unparalleled success rate . . . all she needs to do is align her reproductive cycle to the full moon and pick a werewolf from a catalog with whom to mate.

Moon Blooded Breeding Clinic will feature a high heat slow burn that examines real-world issues through the unique lens of Cambric Creek. CW: knotting, breeding, werewolf/human relationship.

Changes, GW book 3 - hahahaha, nope. Not yet!

Wheel of the Year - Ousted from her coven, hurting for clients, and struggling to keep her aging family home, socially awkward witch Ladybug is at the end of her rope. When she rents the attic bedroom to a silent, unsmiling drider, she thinks her life might be on the right track to improve; when she lets him into her bed, it will never be the same.

Wheel of the Year is a series of short vignettes, centered around the witch's sabbaths. CW: arachnophobia, spider anatomy, biological aphrodisiac, HUGE size difference, non-human/human romance.

Beneath the Linden Trees 1 - In a time of war and kings, the orcs of clan Duh’lar have secured the mountains for their own, and if adopting the customs of men is the only way to keep it, they will do what they must. Peace and prosperity follow, but when war comes to the Easterlands, the Lord of Linden Hall must decide if the orcs will honor their treaties.

Beneath the Linden Trees follows tree orcs and the women they love, and how the decisions of one affects the lives of the others:

Aurelie is a well-bred human Lady from the Easterlands, promised in marriage to the youngest son of the orc lord, sent away from her father's keep to her new home at Linden Hall. To her shock, her betrothed is warm and kind, well-spoken and indulgent . . . but after several weeks in residence in her new home, she has still not laid eyes on Tilianus, the orc she is to marry.

Lisette and Gelgrah, a witch destined for the stake and the orc who rescues her, have built their home at the base of the mountain, far from Linden Hall. When war comes to the mountains, Lisette realizes their little family is at risk of being torn apart.

Eh'lazar is an acolyte at the temple of the moon, learning the ancients arts from the high priestess, Eonar, before he is cast out for dabbling in darker magics. Hardening his heart, he cultivates a reputation as a powerful necromancer, capable of raising an army of the dead . . . but when war comes to the mountains, he must choose between cementing his power and the elf he once loved.

Beneath the Linden Trees will be a three-part series (for now) that should be read as a series. CW: typical period-era violence, human/non-human romance, size differences

Rosemary & Time - She had always known the way through the wood, until the day the wood changed.

When Thorn follows a light into the forest, the world she thought she knew falls away. Memories and lives already lived shift and dance in her head, obliterating reality and leaving her at the mercy of the fae to whom she is forever bound. Jack of the lanterns is the last person she ought to trust, but as she is thrust into the world of the high courts, he is all she has.

Surviving the treacherous Court of Autumn's capricious Queen and her deadly consort are only the start of Thorn's journey through the wood, and she must decide if she is willing to play their game forever . . . or free herself from her captor, the man she has loved for several lifetimes.

Rosemary & Time is a topsy-turvy journey through the world of the fae, where magic and memory weave a confusing tapestry, and where nothing is ever what it seems. It is a standalone story, but is connected to Girls Weekend, and recommended for the richest reading if both worlds. CW: it's the fae, baby. All the content warnings.

Reunions, GW book 4 - I promised happy endings for all my babies, and after a lot of suffering, this is the book in which they finally get it.

That's what I have planned for now!

#monsterbait publishes #authorblr #writeblr #authors of tumblr #exophilia #monster romance #monster boyfriend #monster lover #orcs #fae #cambric creek wolf pack

[noahstayed]

hope to read more of CandB soon. How will Breaking Dawn be rewritten, I wonder? Maybe it wouldn’t exactly be Breaking Dawn, but somewhat? Bella’s transformation and some of her vampire life will be covered? How will her transformation happen? I’ve been reading a lot of agnsty stories lately so I’m half expecting something horrible to happen to force her to be turned, possibly early, or for Bella to get attacked by another vampire and turned accidentally (a Leftover) without her family knowing -

- maybe she’s turned on the reservation and Alice can’t foresee it? Cause it seems like a bit of a waste to have all this build up to Bella’s transformation and then just not have it happen, you know. I hope we get to see more of Bad Mom Renée. At the wedding?? Idk, just like that Bella’s neglectful childhood is being explored. Speaking of, does Charlie know about it?

- I’ve also noticed that Bella has felt dissatisfaction about her appearance. Could that be addressed/ discussed?

Bella being transformed randomly by some stranger would defeat the narrative of choice SoG had built when it comes to Bella's life as well as the themes of Power and Agency she gains within the realm of Super Natural. So no, Bella will be changed when and how she wants it to happen on her terms. Earthshine is probably the last book taking place in Forks for this series BTW. If i do a Breaking Dawn/Vampire Change story then she'll be older and just having finished her first 4 years of college.

Regarding Bella changing within this series...You have to remember that SoG might be very meticulously written but at the end of the day its my version of self indulgent schlock. Really its the way it is because my idea of self indulgent word soup is for a series to be very layered and thought through. So I don't see why it would be unsatisfying leaving her change to happen at the end of it all. So long as it happens. I really have no need to see her as a Vampire in this series.

Any 'build up' to her transforming is just the narrative reminding you this is her CHOICE and she's making it and you can plan for things in the future when you're young and still want them later in life. Now, Bad Mom Renee™! We'll see more of her! This series is FAR from over and I have her own Novella planned where Bella emotionally stabs her with a rusty knife! So don't worry about that. Charlie's knowledge of Bella's childhood is interesting. He likely knows SOME but not all, and he's also a shit dad so if he did hear it all he'd likely think it wasn't as bad as Bella makes out. I mean, this is a man who his Teenage Daughter felt the need to cook, clean, and take care of the house for and he never flinched. Which means he's contributed to her parentification in some ways. I like to say that this series and canon isn't possible if Bella didn't have horrible Parents, and its true. Charlie really wouldn't be her champion when it came to that part of her life. Bella's dissatisfaction with her appearance is constantly addressed by Carlisle's compliments to her and will be faced head on in the Renee story. Many teen girls go through body issues and while Bella's are a major problem, its something that can only really be dealt with over time and through the gain of confidence. Thanks for such an interesting series of asks! Some of this I've already answered but I've change my thoughts on some things in particular!

#anonymous #sound of grey series #bella x carlisle #carlisle x bella #bellisle #noahstayed writes #long post #asked and answered

[courtofwingsandruin]

Does anyone else ever think how we know that originally, Lucien and Nesta were supposed to end up together, not Cassian and Nesta? And how that means that this bond between Lucien and Elain probably was a very sudden idea SJM had when writing ACOMAF out?

She decided to change it because this relationship wouldn’t work. I’m not gonna lie that this is slightly perplexing to me. Lucien, especially ACOTAR-era Lucien, probably could’ve gotten along with Nesta quite well. I know SJM knows her characters better than us, but I just can’t see why they wouldn’t work, y’know?

And now, with the whole 3 brothers/3 sisters thing...I’m wondering if that’s part of the reason why. If SJM realized she wanted Lucien to have some connection to one of the three (a mating bond, rather than a romantic relationship), but doesn’t get with them. Because in the end, she had these two Bat Bois sitting right here who would work with them just as well, if not better, than Lucien could with either of them—and it would give her a future story to tell with the three brothers/three sisters and Koschei storyline.

I feel this can be reinforced by the fact that SJM has been planning Elain’s specifically but also Nesta’s story since ACOMAF. She made a lot of decisions while writing ACOMAF and began preparing things for the future books she wanted to write. Choosing not to have Nesta and Lucien get together, instead the tension between Cassian and Nesta the moment they meet. The way Elain and Azriel seem to click and focus on each other the moment they meet, too (if you reread that first meeting I promise you’ll see it. Elain specifically looks to Azriel, not her newly-fae sister, not the High Lord, not the much louder Illyrian right next to Az—not even Nesta. She looks to Azriel every single time when she was unsure, and he’s constantly reassuring her that she’s good to speak up and try). I don’t think that was a coincidence.

Not to mention that if she was planning for Elain and Lucien to be together, she would’ve most definitely given them at least one romantic coded moment together. The closest thing I’ve seen is when Lucien is leaving once and Elain nearly steps down the stairs to say something to him but he’s already gone. And honestly, I blame that completely on the bond. We know they can feel each other’s emotions, Rhys and Feyre can feel each other’s even with their mental shields up (or are supposed to be able to at least)—and we see that Lucien had “longing and sadness” in his eyes just before he disappeared there, which was when Elain almost stepped down. Then Lucien had winnowed away, and she walked away without any other care (likely because the farther away he was the less strong the pull of the mating bond, so she couldn’t feel him as strongly then). This is chapter 34 of ACOWAR. This is the only scene we see that seems like it has slight potential of Elucien in canon.

However, we have many, many scenes to support Elain and Azriel. Their friendship started in ACOMAF, was seen throughout ACOWAR, throughout ACOFAS, and even though we don’t see them even in the same room together but three or so times in ACOSF, there is some kind of tension between them every time (Azriel’s clear protectiveness of Elain when his shadows gathered in the corners to strike, the clear liking of each other when Elain looked away from Azriel’s smile, Nesta noticing a charged look going between them). As well as the many scenes where Azriel and usually Cassian discuss Elain and Azriel’s protectiveness comes back up. As a disclaimer, I don’t like that Azriel is also supporting not allowing Elain to go on these missions and try to prove herself. But every single other couple in the books is protective of each other. Cassian didn’t want Nesta to even let go of his hand to get the harp. Rhys had multiple occasions where he was angry and protective over Feyre doing something dangerous—when instead of going to the townhouse she fought in the streets of Velaris, when she went to find the Suriel during the war. Saying “oh but they’re mates” ignores the fact that it’s said most all males are possessive and protective like this in their world, regardless if it’s a mating bond or family or love. And it also ignores the very plausible theory of Azriel being Elain’s second and/or true mate. I won’t get into that right now though.

And then, of course, the bonus chapter proved that Elain and Azriel’s feeling definitely are not just platonic, and they both have a lot going on behind the scenes. I won’t get into the chapter much because I have plenty of other posts on my blog where I or someone else dissected and discussed it. But they definitely have both romantic and sexual interest in each other.

I truly, truly don’t see why SJM would set that up over the course of three novels and one novella to suddenly not put them together. Especially knowing that she’s said she doesn’t like couples that were built up over long periods of time (4 books is a very long time) and then don’t end up together. I don’t think she introduced Gwyn to be a romantic interest—I do think she included Gwyn in his extra chapter to confuse us and cause panic and chaos, sure, SJM is like that, remember when we first met Emerie? And then Emerie turned out to have no connection to Cassian other than him being her mentor/trainer and she being Nesta’s friend? I don’t think Gwyn will have any actual potential as a romantic partner. This also parallels Cassian and Nesta’s story—with them both mentioning another girl pre-getting together and (likely) nothing actually comes of it. She does parallel things a lot, and I don’t think she did this on accident.

To round this out, I’d like to bring us back to Lucien and Nesta. If she originally had them together, I think there can definitely be an implication there that she had considered them working some. And Cassian and ACOTAR-era Lucien are similar, as well as...well, Nesta and Vassa. The firebird and the silver flames. A human Queen and the Queen of Queens. Vassa has shown a great backbone, will openly bicker with people (we hear about her and Jurian fighting a lot), she’s just this woman who seems like she could be similar enough to Nesta to warrant the idea that Nesta/Lucien could’ve possibly worked if Nesta was a little more like Vassa or Lucien was a little more like Cassian.

I also want to clarify that I’m not against the Elain and Lucien ship, nor am I against Gwyn and Azriel. I actually ship Elain and Lucien—just not as much as I ship Elain and Azriel, because I’m 99.9% certain that Elriel will be endgame (always leave room for error). And once the next book is out and this whole mess has cleared up, I could definitely get behind Gwyn and Azriel as a non-canon sorta-crack ship. I read about pairings that completely disregard canon all the time (Feycien is hardcore slept on). But I can’t find myself supporting Gwyn and Azriel right now, not while this ship war is happening, because I feel right now is the time to actually look at canon and focus on what’s obviously there—not what, to me, is more of just a fun little ship that could work in theory and fanfics and that’s about it.

And that’s all. End rant. I’m so sorry if you actually read all this. This stuff has been on loop in my head for days and I had to word vomit again.

#acotar #acosf #a court of silver flames #elain archeron #a court of thorns and roses #azriel #elriel #acomaf #acowar #pro elriel #i’m not tagging this as anti anything bc i’m not anti any of the ships #the other ships are cute! i like it theory! not seeing it in canon #vassa x lucien #it’s not really about them but i am supporting it some in this? #and it seems like the only safe ship other than elriel to mention? #i don’t want to make anyone mad by tagging this wrong

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

When the Weight Comes Down - 8 - End

Warnings: non-consent sex (series); intercourse, oral

This is dark! (biker) Steve and explicit. 18+ only.

Series Synopsis: Your father’s a drunk, your mother a recluse, and you’re just another small town girl in Birch.

Sister series to Smalltown Bringdown

Note: It was fun sharing this series with you guys. As for the next week, I don’t have anything done, just a bunch of bits and pieces I need to put together for other series and possible one shots. So, I’ll take Monday off at least and figure out what the hell I’m doing. 

Thanks to everyone for their patience and feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 Let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

Chapter Eight: It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken

And find somewhere to go Go somewhere we're needed Find somewhere to grow Grow somewhere we're needed

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

The main floor had a large kitchen and a dining room and a second room on the other side of the entryway. The entire place seemed untouched and barely lived in. Curious. And it was much nicer than your parents’ house, but most were. 

Upstairs there were several more rooms along with a couple bathrooms and closets. You could guess that it was a recently renovated farmhouse, the skeleton built for a large family who had once worked the land. It seemed much too big for just Steve. And you.

That thought was still sinking in. You didn’t believe Steve. Truly didn’t. This was all just a ploy that you weren’t in on. It felt like everything he’d done was just another trick but you couldn’t guess how. You couldn’t complain either. He was generous despite his brusque demeanour and you hadn’t exactly suffered from his kindness.

He lingered behind you as you walked down the long hallway. You glanced at the framed pictures of trees and seascapes. Steve’s footsteps trailed you and he came up beside you to look at a painting of a barren winter forest.

“We can change the pictures, the curtains, the carpet…” He said. “I never did much. I just needed a place to sleep.”

“I’m not stupid,” You said suddenly, surprising even yourself. “I know what you want.”

“Well, doll, I haven’t exactly been subtle.” He scoffed. “So… tell me what I want?”

You hesitated. There was no way to say it without sounding silly.

“S-sex,” You forced out. 

He smirked and reached to run his thumb down the frame of the picture. He slowly turned to you as he planted his hand on the wall. He loomed over you.

“Sex,” He repeated with a chuckle. “And what is it exactly I want from you? What we did last night? Or maybe I want to just bend you over…” He was amused at how you squirmed. “Or maybe I want it all.”

“And you would hurt me if I didn’t?” You asked.

“If? There is no if, doll,” He purred as he tickled your neck. “We know that you’re going to go in there…” He nodded to the door just feet away, “And and what you’re going to do. What we’re going to do.”

You stared at him and took a breath. You shivered and shook your head.

“You go in that room,” He lowered his voice as he played with the strap of your dress, “And wait for me.”

“Wait?” You shook your head.

“I’ll be a few minutes.” He squeezed your shoulder. “More than enough time for you to get ready for me.”

He kissed your forehead and his hand fell from your shoulder. He tilted his head as he watched you. Numbly, you turned and looked at the pale walls as you measured your steps to the door. You turned back as you grasped the knob and Steve stood as he had. He urged you on with a nod and you opened the door.

You stepped inside and shut the door with a click. You looked around the bedroom, the melding hues of the afternoon and evening streamed in between the dark curtains. The large bed stood between a set of weathered nightstands and looked cozy despite its dark blankets.

There were traces of Steve all around, unlike the rest of the house. A tee shirt hung over the lip of the hamper and a towel draped from the back of the armchair. You’d never really thought of how or where Steve lived. In your head, he existed in perpetual foreboding; floated in a nether until he could appear to rein over you.

You walked around the room and peeked out the window. It was at least twice the size of your bedroom and the scent of vinegar and bleach didn’t seep in under the door. You spun back and faced the room. You thought of those dumb harlequin novellas you’d read as a curious teen, the flowery language, and cheesy notions of romance. This wasn’t that.

You went to the bed and sat on the end. You watched the door. An impatience that you scorned. You should be dreading him not expecting him. You clasped your hands together and trembled. You were more nervous than you’d ever been.

The door opened and you looked up. Steve entered and let the door hang open carelessly. He held your eye as he neared and brought his hands up on either side of your face.

“Good girl,” He praised.

You shifted, uncomfortable, and his hands fell. They trailed down your arms and crawled over your waist. He lowered himself to his knees before you as his hands rested on your thighs. He peered up at you, his blue eyes darkened and dilated.

He pulled on your knees and you fought for a moment before he wrenched them apart. He quickly drew himself between your legs and his fingers danced along your skirt. He lifted it slowly and hummed at your nakedness.

“You listened,” He said. “Good girl.”

You looked away, ashamed. He rubbed your thighs and slipped his hands up to your hips as your dress bunched up.

“Relax,” He coaxed. “Lay back, doll.”

“What are you--” Your legs squeezed him as you tried to close them.

“Shh,” He gripped your hips. “Just… listen.”

You took a deep breath and shakily leaned back on your elbows. You fell back completely as one of his hands slid further up your stomach. His fingers stretched along your stomach as his other hand crept along your pelvis.

He shifted between your legs and you were stunned by the warm of his breath along your thigh. He kissed the tender flesh and you flinched. He grabbed your leg and kept you from trying to draw them together. Another kiss and you gasped. You lifted yourself up on his elbows and he pulled back.

“Down,” He commanded.

Your lips parted but your voice was gone. You fell flat and he continued on, his beard tickled the inside of your thighs. He gave a nip and you cried out. He did it again, harder, and you clawed the duvet beneath you. He left a trail of kisses and bites until his warmth reached your pelvis.

His nose tickled along your vee and you gasped. He kept one hand on your thigh as his cool tongue flicked over your folds. You tensed and he squeezed your leg. He delved deeper and your hand flew down without thinking. He slapped your hand away and kept on. The sensation he sent through you was both frightening and intoxicating.

His tongue explored you carefully but grew more fervent. He lapped at you hungrily and swirled around your clit. Your back arched and you grasped at the blankets. Your legs bent against the end of the bed as he grabbed your skirt and balled the fabric in his fist.

Your heart beat furiously as your breath hitched. You writhed against him and closed your eyes as you lost yourself in the rapture. Everything around you faded away; the distant farmhouse, the club, Birch… It was all gone. It was nothing. There was only that feeling.

You whined and slapped the mattress as your core bloomed. The sudden wave of pleasure that washed over you was suffocating. As you moaned, your voice didn’t sound like your own. Your body felt disjointed; like you were watching yourself squirm and squeal in delight.

Steve urged you on with his mouth as he didn’t let up. You came again. You were dizzy and breathless as he forced you over the line over and over. You were weak and sensitive when he finally slowed and sat back on his heels. Your grip slackened on the blankets and you reached down to push your skirt over your exposed pelvis.

“Ah,” He grabbed your wrists as he stood. “We’re not even close to done.”

He pulled you up so that you were sitting on the end of the bed. He let you go and stepped back. His gaze didn’t waver as he pulled his tee shirt over his head. You glanced down at your red dress, the skirt gathered at your waist.

“Keep that on,” He growled. “And look at me.”

Your eyes flitted up and he undid his jeans. Your cheeks burned. You recalled the sight of him the night before. You’d never seen a man entirely naked and here he was undressing before you. So brazen and bold that he seemed to splendour in it. You couldn’t look away, but you weren’t sure it had anything to do with his order.

When he was completely bare before you, your lips formed an o. His muscles were firm along his stomach, arms, and thighs. His flesh was carved with strength. His shoulders were broad and he seemed even bigger as he stood before you in his purest form.

He stepped towards the bed and it felt like you were slapped out of your trance. You kicked your legs back and he lunged forward. You crawled backwards on your hands and feet awkwardly as you tried to evade him. He caught your ankles and dragged you back to him as he lifted his knees up onto the bed.

“Let’s not do that,” He warned as he parted your legs and moved between them.

You blinked as his cock bobbed at the edge of your vision. You tried to focus on his chest, on the sheer power corded along his shoulders. He grabbed your wrists and pinned them to the mattress as he bent over you. You could feel every ounce of strength in his grip.

He kissed you. He was desperate; impatient. He dragged his lips from your and brushed down your cheek. He nuzzled your neck and nibbled the delicate skin. He closed his lips around his teeth and sucked. You cried out at the intricate pressure. You struggled, or tried to. He parted with a ‘pop’.

“What--”

“Gotta make sure they know you’re mine,” He purred as his nose tickled your throat.

He released your wrists as he dropped down onto an elbow and his other hand crept between your bodies. He pushed the straps of your dress down your shoulders until your arms were trapped in it. He cupped your tit and then the other. He moved back to take a nipple in his mouth. He toyed with your roughly and you whimpered at the pluck it sent through your core.

His fingers dug into your hip as he squeezed tighter. You could tell he was holding back, just barely. You were thankful yet terrified. His restraint could not last.

“Touch me,” He whispered against you as he moved over you.

His lips crashed into yours and you murmured into his mouth. You felt around blindly and he grabbed your hand with his. He devoured you as he guided your hand around his cock. You didn’t need any encouragement as you feared what would happen if you tried to retreat now. He shuddered as your hand slid up and down his length. 

His hand flew up and grasped your head as he kissed you deeper. He moaned and parted for just a moment before he kissed you again. As you stroked him, he shifted so that his tip rubbed against your sensitive clit. You twitched and he pushed down so that every glide of your hand had him sending ripples through your core.

He eased himself down until he slid along your folds. He prodded at your cunt and ripped your hand from between you. He pulled his lips from yours and held himself up on his elbow as he felt between your legs. His eyes bore into yours as a wrinkle marred his forehead.

“You ready, doll?” He asked as he pressed himself against your entrance.

You gasped. You were terrified. He pushed in just a little and you whined. “N-no!”

He ignored you and pushed further in. You could feel yourself stretching around him. You felt an unnatural fullness as he inched deeper and deeper. You gritted your teeth. The pressure was peculiar but not painful. Your breaths came sharply and you clawed at his sides helplessly.

He pulled back just a little and you let out a sigh. 

“Steve,” You pleaded. 

He pushed back in and your voice fizzled. This time he sank to his limit. His body kept yours in place and he kissed your cheek as he began to thrust slowly. He smelled like leather and sweat. You could taste tears though you hadn’t felt them fall.

“Doll,” He hummed and inhaled the scent of your hair. “Oh, fuck, so good.”

“P-please,” You stuttered.

“Doesn’t that feel good?” He kept his motion steady; even but teasing.

“I don’t… know,” You bent your legs so that he was cradled between them. You felt an intense tickle and moaned.

“That’s it, just do what you feel,” He cooed.

His pelvis rubbed against your clit. You felt the same tension winding within you. The fabric of your dress scratched between your bodies. 

Steve pushed himself up. He impaled you as he sat back and gripped your hips. You grabbed onto his wrists as he sped up. You cried out as he slammed into you. Hard. He jolted your entire body and the bed shook beneath you. The clap of your flesh bounced around the room as you squeezed his wrists in a silent plea.

“Hurts,” You gulped out. “Slow… slow.”

His hand came down on your chest and he stretched his fingers across you. He had you pinned as he leaned his weight into you. He didn’t seem to hear you, or perhaps he chose not to, and his groans added to the lurid cacophony. His thrusts grew sharper and more deliberate. 

And you felt the tension break suddenly. You slapped his arm as you came again and your hands grasped his thick thighs as you tried to hold him to you. He bent over you and snaked his arm beneath you. He lifted you in a single motion and bounced you against him.

“Again,” He urged. “Again.”

You rocked against him as the thrill began to wane but quickly rose again as the friction mounted between you. You untangled your arms from the straps and slung them over his shoulders. He grasped the dress and twisted until it was tight around you. He used it to guide you as your body acted in a lusted haze.

When you came again, your voice crackled and you threw your head back. Steve held you up and kept your body moving against him, one hand knotted in your dress and the other on your ass.

“Oh, oh,” He rasped. “Doll, I’m almost there.”

“Wha--” You struggled to understand anything as your mind was little more than stars. “What…” Your heart dropped but the buzz still radiated through you. “N-n-no.” 

He grunted and fell onto you. He crushed you against the mattress as his thrusts turned spasmodic. He groaned and you felt the heat seep into you as you wriggled beneath him. He held himself deep within you and slumped heavily over your body. His breath was trapped along the crook of your neck as he stilled.

You were silent as you stared at the ceiling. As you felt his weight over you. His body was a prison. Reality trickled along your spine as your sweat cooled and you lightly tapped his arm.

“Doll?” He breathed and nuzzled your cheek.

“Steve…” You quavered. “Steve… I’m not on… I’m not on anything.”

He lifted his head and looked down at you. He rocked his hips and you quivered.

“That’s alright, doll,” He purred. “I’ll take care of you.”

💀

#Steve Rogers #dark steve rogers #dark!steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #dark steve rogers x reader #dark!steve rogers x reader #series #fic #au #biker!steve rogers #biker au #biker!au #dark fic #dark!fic #when the weight comes down #marvel #mcu #captain america

[taebaesworld]

The Art Of Love | 1

Pairing :Kim Taehyung x reader

Genra : Romance, Young adult.

Author Note :

This is a novella kind of a story. I hope you guys enjoy reading this.

Comment share love.

STORY

I walk up the stairs of my dorm campus. The building is quite old obviously the university is old and quite prestigious.

It's all new for me, a new university, a new city hell it's even a new country. I feel a little nauseated. Not even a single known face. As I near the dorm room my thoughts become blurred by the adrenaline. I am the first one to arrive. I am sharing this room with three more people. The common room is quite huge. There's one door at the other end of the hall thad closes and another arch way that leads towards a door and one more archway on the left hand. The archway leads to the kitchen and the two doors two our rooms.

I see my name written on a thin rectangular paper on the door that's after the archway and I enter the room.

The room is spacious if you know how to manage the space and one thing that growing up in india teaches you is makeing the most of the smallest spaces.

On the farthest corner near the window Is a bed and the other one is somewhere a little towards the door. There are two desk one on the foot of the bed near the window and other one is in the middle. There are two dresser adjacent to each other on the door wall in the middle of the room. I guess we have to rearrange the room so I do, at least my part.

I first arrange the dresser which is surprisingly light to the dark corner for which I had to move the bed a little next to the dresser and directly under the window I place my desk and on the other dark corner I place the bed. Then I arranged all my belongings which were not much cause I figured I'd go shopping once I am settled.

Then I moved the other desk below the other window on the adjacent wall on the other corner and left the bed and dresser as they are.

I went to the common room and saw a girl with bright green eyes, dark hairs standing there.

"Hi." I started " I am Y/N L/N."

She gives me huge smile. "Hi Y/N" she says in a posh accent and I can easily see that she is British by the way she said my name. "I am Annette Pitt. But call me Anni."

I in return nod with a smile that matches hers. Suddenly the door opens with a huge bang and a girl, her hairs colored purple on the ends, tattooed arms, enters.

"Yo peeps. Meet your new roommate Alexandera Rose Sanderson." -"Thats a mouth full"- Anni whispers- "A.K.A Loxi".

"She is a handful." I play fully say. "I m so liking it."

Alexandera smirks at me. She makes her way to the door direct in the corner and smiles widely.

"Which one of you has the pleasure to share this with me." She says and me both laugh

"Me your highness." Anni says.

"See you in a bit. Toodles."

"Okay she is the most inconsistent person I've ever met." I announced

"Well you haven't met the girl next door then I assume. " Anni says

I shrugged In answer.

All three of us sat in a circle and talked about ourselves for hour. Alexa is from Virginia which 4 hours drive from here. She has 3 brothers all older she hasn't decided on her major yet which I think is not surprising at all. Anni on the other hand is majoring in sociology. She is from a small town near London and her mom was american and studied here.

I am majoring in Studio Arts. And I am form a small town in south india.

My roommate has still not arrived. Its almost noon so we order lunch which was pizza. As soon as we finished pizza a small timid girl arrived her hair were neatly tied up in a french braid she looked asian but with her a little girls entered with a man who both look quite american. "Hi um..." she hesitated for a moment "I am Harumi Jo smith."

We all introduce ourselves and her dad and her sister help's her move in and so do we.

She went down to say down to both.

"Let's go shop for our dorm." Alexa suggests.

"Mumm..." Anni says

"Okay." I say "I was gonna do shopping any way. ..come on anni it will be fun."

"Plus I have a car we can go in." Alexa adds.

"Fine" Anni sighs out.

We all make our way out after closing up and getting everything we need. We met Harumi on the way and she agreed to join us too.

After shopping and getting everything we need and many things we didn't, we found a place to have dinner, which was a maxican restaurant right down the alley from the campus.

We ordered and started talking when a loud group of boys. Around our age enter. There were six of them and all them were quite good looking. As they came closer I could see them even better. One of them caught my eyes. He had blonde hairs blue eyes and was built quite well.

One of the guys catches the eye of alexa and his eyes widen "Lexi" he says and Lexi smiles wide "Brady." She sequels

"You finally decided to join huh." The Brady guys says and alexa nods but shrugged.

"Well these are my mates, this is." He points at a guy who looked asian I notice 3 out of them did. "Park jimin."

"Hey" he says with a little nod and a wave.

"This is " he pointed at the blonde guy "James Brown."

"Hello." James says with a flirty smile. I know his type play boy

"This one." He points at another of asian guy quite tall dark hair he was quite beautiful I mean I cant explained how he looked he had intense eyes and tight jaw but relaxed and open posture "Kim taehyung."

He just nods softly with a smile.

Then Brady points at the guy next to this kim guy and say "this is Kim Namjoon."

"Hi." He says with a nod

And then he points at the guy to his right "this is John miller."

Then Alexa introduced us girls and by the time food had arrived. And they ordered.

"See you in classes if we do." Alexa says as we leave.

PART 2 

#fiction #writers #writers on tumblr #taehyung bios #taehyung x y/n #taehyung x you #taehyung x reader #kim taehyung #musicians #lovebts #lovestory #park jimin #jimin bios #jimin soft bios #namjoon packs #kim namjoon

[teriwrites]

2020 Writing Wrap-Up

Something that I do every year on the 1st is go back through absolutely everything I’ve written throughout the previous year and compile it into one massive word document. Everything from outlining notes to unfinished short stories to my NaNo project wind up in that file, where I like to read back and reflect on what I’ve gotten done through the year. 

Every year, I end up having written more than I expected, and this year was no different! 

Total for 2020: 203,119!

This is the first recorded year (I think it’s year 4 that I’ve done this for?) in which I’ve cracked 200K! It’s also the first year I’ve ever actually followed through on my resolution to share some of my writing online! So as rough as 2020 has been, I still somehow managed to break some personal records in writing. Which probably has everything to do with the fact that I joined this community earlier this year, and it’s been incredibly encouraging and supportive!

I also branched out a bit more this year in a few ways. I worked on some poetry and prose, which is not something I’ve put a lot of time into before so tends to be a challenge. It’s nothing that I’ll be posting anytime soon, but it was fun to work on in the moment, which is especially important in such a wild year as 2020.

One snag that I definitely hit was the fact that I have a lot more unfinished work than most years. A majority of the short stories I started working on never got finished. But I can’t even be too upset about that, because I totally loved being able to read back on even the fragmented pieces I ended up with. And while I do think a large part of that (for me) is discipline over inspiration, I’m willing to accept that, sometimes, things will remain unfinished. And it’s okay to stop working on them. 

My overall focus shifted a bit this year, too, which was interesting. I worked more on longer things than most years - started out the year by finishing my first draft of Castle on the Hill, continued making some edits and reworking its outline, did a large part of Beneath Alder Creek’s first draft in November. Right now, I’m working on what I expect to be a novella by the time I’m done with it. It’s a big contrast to the usual, short and snappy short stories that fill most of my previous wrap-up files. But I still definitely write those sometimes, and it’s nice to be able to try stretching and testing my own boundaries. 

This is the part of my wrap-up where I go ham throwing in some of my favorite out-of-context quotes from a variety of different things I’ve worked on. Some of them might be familiar, a lot probably won’t. I’m going to post it beneath the thing so this doesn’t become even more absurdly long!

Some of the ~highlights~ of 2020:

First Thoughts in the Morning: wow the sexual tension between me and the alarm clock right now. Later Reflection: wtf? (a literal note on my notes app that I included because I Cannot remember writing any of this and it made me laugh)

Edriele’s gaze trailed down to the woman’s armor, and her stomach twisted. “Where did you find your attire?” The woman glanced down in surprise, as though she’d forgotten she was wearing it. “It was fitted to me when I gained my ranking. I suppose it draws attention, but after my confrontation at… you mean to ask me whether I’m impersonating a Knight!” “The thought had crossed my mind,” the Sister replied dryly. (novella WIP)

“Do you need to make a stop at your house before we head to the chapel?” Leslie asked as they started off. “What for?” Winnie asked. Leslie looked pointedly at the tip of her galoshes poking out from beneath her dress. With another roll of her eyes, Winnie sighed. “Oh, I suppose so.” (Beneath Alder Creek)

When the third meeting for the Society of the Hidden Immortal Tribe was called for the decade, I knew heads would roll. Gathering the entire society together took months. Everything had to be hush-hush; that was the entire point of spreading ourselves out. Plus, every time a letter arrived in the mail, it was a reminder of the idiot who had decided we needed a name change. Everybody agreed that being deemed the ‘S.H.I.T.’ was humiliating, but nobody could agree on a better title, so it had remained the same for nearly a full century. That was the problem with living forever. You always had more time to make decisions, and, in the end, nothing ever got done. (S.H.I.T.)

When she leaves, I’m not sure I remember a word of what she’s said. But as the stresses of the semester wash back in, and my mind clears like being pulled out of a dream, I suddenly understand how one could crash upon the rocks without realizing they’d ever changed their course. (A Modern Siren)

When Georg arrived later, he found Klaus leaning forwards onto the table, staring vacuously at one of his textbooks. "Studying hard?" he taunted as he approached and dropped into the seat Ingrid had been occupying. "I talked with Ingrid," Klaus explained. Georg's eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise, but he quickly recovered and looked pointedly at Klaus' posture. "Go that well, then?" "She said I'm arrogant and completely self-involved and that I never take what a girl says into account whenever I'm on a date." With a haunted gleam in his eye, Klaus stared up at his friend. "I think she's right." "Well then it's a good thing somebody pointed it out," Georg offered, and he turned to his work. (Castle on the Hill)

Takemoto Hana rested a hand over her face. She couldn’t see the swirling of darkness over her head, but she heard the whine behind its words. With a wry smile, she asked, ‘Do you not know how to brew tea?’ ‘Of course I know how to brew tea!’ The dark spirit’s voice boomed with a defensive defiance that rang false in the funny little woman’s ears.  (The Funny Little Woman)

“None of us want to be here right now,” Edgar called out to the hall. “None of us want to go back through the handbook and listen to the steps of proper etiquette in immortality. But it seems that, once again, it’s necessary.” “Dammit, Dave,” muttered the man next to me. I said nothing, but I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. Dave was… how do I describe Dave? To call him an idiot would be underestimating his craftiness. To call him a genius, I’d have to ignore all of his dumb antics. Cruel was too strong. Misguided was too innocent. Mischievous fit best, but even that fell short. Dave was a trickster god, if ever one existed. (S.H.I.T.)

Ridiculous, he told me with a self-conscious laugh of someone who didn't expect to be believed. I smiled, but I didn't join in. (The Little Roads)

“Hey, where did Alina go?” Lorelai asked. Zoe shrugged, but Jaiden cleared his throat. “I think you crossed one of her boundaries, Lo. She specifically asked not to involve her girlfriend in this, and then you did anyways. I know we needed the help, but friendships have to be built on mutual trust, my dude. You should’ve at least let her know your plan before you went behind her back.” The two women stopped and shared a look. “Hey, Jaiden,” Zoe asked. “Do you know the capital of Canada?” He shook his head. “I dunno, Ontario?” “Amazing.” (Mirror, Mirror)

"We had a bet going over whether you'd make it in time," Hans told him. "Did you win or lose?" Josef replied. Hans flipped a 5-Deutsche Mark coin over to Peter, who grinned as he pocketed it. "I'm glad you have so much faith in me." Josef's voice dripped with sarcasm. (Castle on the Hill)

Taliesin reached over his head and grabbed at one of the low-hanging bows, picking leaves from it. “I’m not sure.” Winnie stopped. “What do you mean?” “I mean that I don’t know.” (Beneath Alder Creek)

While she attended to these, the man beside her began to stir. Ella could see him out of the corner of her eye, attempting to push himself up into a sitting position. ‘You may want to lie back down,’ she told him, scrubbing uselessly at her skirt. The man continued to sit up anyways, pressing a hand against the side of his face. ‘Am I killed?’ ‘No, but your savior may be.’ Ella threw her skirt back to the ground. ‘When the Madame sees the state of me, I’ll be spending my future afternoons off making a new dress out of the fabric scraps.’ A frown crossed the man’s face as he considered her words, followed by a scowl of understanding. ‘You work for them. The bourgeoisie.’ (Cinderella)

Ingrid took the seat and began digging through her bag for a book. As she did so, she explained, "There were no other tables open in the building - even in the quiet section upstairs - so I figured that I would just ask the first person I recognized if I could sit with them, and well... here we are." "Don't worry about it," Georg answered when Klaus found himself dumbstruck again. "Just ignore the oaf, he'll leave you alone." Ingrid shot a grin at Georg, and Klaus suddenly wondered whether it was a good idea to have the two of them sit together. (Castle on the Hill)

Up ahead, I could see the glass walls of the bus stop. Usually, I waited for the bus leaning against the metal frame of the stop, leaving the seats inside open for children on their way to school. But the seats were empty now. I still avoided them. (Flo’s Magical Emporium: The Pandemic)

Now, I ask that you do not feel too much self-pity. For as easy an error as it may be to mistake a visiting aristocrat’s son for the hired help, the true talent in such a display causing his immediate departure lies within you alone. And to think that the meeting was the work of your father’s tenuous sway over the court! Well, I am sure the time away will do him some good, lest you begin to consider that you’ve ruined his position as well as your prospects. (Dearly Detested,)

Edgar was at the front of the lecture hall, and standing beside him was Dave, smirking as though at some private joke that only he was in on. He was wearing sunglasses, despite the dim lighting of the room, probably because he thought he looked cool. I rolled my eyes. What a tool. (S.H.I.T.)

 The work is different now. Countryside pathways winding through the forest lie forgotten for years without the familiar steps of a traveler. Off beaten paths in the city are never unknown for long, and sometimes streets that were once crossed by thousands a day fall back into obscurity. (The Little Roads)

“How much time will you give me to think on it?” she asked suspiciously, wrapping her arms around herself as though afraid they’d reach out to him if not kept in check. “You have all the time in the world,” the golden man said. “The boy’s, however, runs out with every passing second.” He extended his hand. (Beneath Alder Creek)

You ever met a rich person? Not comfortably wealthy. Not ‘my Uncle Kenny is a lawyer’ rich. Not even ‘widow answering the door to her manor on a hill dressed in fine silk’ rich. No, I mean proper, so-much-money-you-literally-can’t-spend-it-fast-enough rich. They say it isn’t worth Bill Gates’ time to pick up a $100 bill off the floor because he’ll have earned more in the time it takes to grab it. That kind of rich. They seem to be bred for times like these. Their houses are a source of endless entertainment – movie theaters, bowling alleys, personal gyms with a view of the sprawling landscape they overlook like cruel dictators. There’s no need for them to leave during a pandemic; they have access to the equivalent of a luxury resort most families have to save up month to visit. Necessities can be stockpiled in one of the useless extra spaces in the house. I mean, I once had to hide out in a luggage room for a contract. That’s right. An entire room dedicated to holding luggage, bigger than some of the apartments I’ve rented. I thought their residential labyrinths were my greatest source of grief. But social distancing? I’m one bad contract away from retirement. (Bounty Hunter During a Pandemic)

Shaking his head, Detlef pulled a new sheet from his notebook. “Look, I’m just saying, if we can get the satire right, we can be a modern Jonathan Swift.” “I don’t want to be a modern Jonathan Swift, I want to be a student actually passing his debate course!” Peter snapped. (Castle on the Hill)

Moonlight illuminated the German’s fair hair and pale skin, the effect more malevolent apparition than man. (Face on the Other Side of a Dark Window)

Back then, he’d been known for commissioning the exact same portrait of himself every hundred years, hanging them in a hallway in his manor and trying to pass them off as his line of ancestors to any of the locals. It had been a far less skeptical age, and Dave had earned himself a small band of worshipers before Jeff Goldblum himself had been forced to intervene. (S.H.I.T.)

Clara stood before the board of advisors assisting with her thesis. She was one, very intense paper away from her M.A., and she wasn’t about to risk it all by being too proud to ask for help. When she’d made the appointment to meet with them, she expected a series of questions surrounding her topic. Instead, they’d opened by offering her a job. “You want me to steal from the school?” Dr. Pye wrinkled her nose at the suggestion. Next to her, Dr. Pritchard said, “Don’t think of it as theft, dear. It’s merely redistribution.” Clara hadn’t amassed tens of thousands of dollars in debt to be lectured on the definition of robbery. “Either way, it involves me sneaking into the Chemistry department and taking a huge risk to get you some new toys to play with.” (Origins: The Ghost)

“Why is undermining Pryderi so important to Queen Ceridwen that she would risk breaking a timeless alliance just to dismantle them?” Her stomach twisted into a knot, protesting against the answer. “There are few members of the Dusk Court that we know by title.” A shadow passed over Enid’s expression. “The Lord of the Undernell is second only to the Queen.” “Great deeds build the reputation of one in their own court. Cruelty builds it in both.” Taliesin buckled under Winnie’s weight as she suddenly leaned against him. (Beneath Alder Creek)

“Why are all my friends so quick to endanger themselves?” I muttered as I packed up Midas’ crate. Natalie swiveled around from the candy aisle. “So you’re finally willing to admit that we’re friends?” “Save it.” (Flo’s Magical Emporium: The Pandemic)

#writeblr #writing #my writing #writers of tumblr #teriwrites #writing wrap-up 2020 #my wips #I forgot just how much I missed my boys from CotH until I was reading through it #wow I would die for those funky little dudes #also feel free to ask about anything for some extra context since I've never talked about half of these projects #anyways that's all folks

[nikethestatue]

Do you think Az is going to get his own book? I see people saying that he'll have his own, that Elain will have her own, that Lucien will have his own, and then maybe a novella?

Hello!

No, I personally don't think that Az will have his own book. He is still a secondary character, just like Cassian. His story would be told in conjunction with an Archeron sister's tale, who is the primary character. Regardless of ship preferences, and whoever will end up with who, his story will be built into the Elain story. They may diverge at the end, they may come together, but he won't get his own book. At least not at this junction. If SJM wants to expand the universe later on, who knows what will happen.

Right now, she is dealing with the 3 sisters and their given Fae/Cauldron powers and how the three used-to-be-human girls are affecting the state of the world, the state of Prythian, etc. The men that they end up with play a big part, but they are always sidekicks.

If Rhys and even Rowan didn't get their own books, Azriel, much as I love him, won't either.

(Also, I don't claim to know anything, therefore, it's my opinion. SJM will decide what she wants to do at the end)

PS Would love to see "Batboys, the Early Years' novella, with stories about how they grew up, how they destroyed a whole village and the remnants of their families, the story of public nudity, itchy loincloth, Rhys's sister, sexual awakenings. Maybe a proper orgy at last, with Helion thrown in the mix, in Hewn City. Stuff everyone wants to read.

[sarcasmisakindofmagic]

And I, seeking safe harbour, found it between the pages of a book

Pairing: Santiago Garcia x fem!reader

Word count: 2,200

Warnings: Tom prefers the movie to the book. one (1) swear word. This is a yearning sort of fluff.

A/N: This is unbeta’d so please forgive any typos 

It started, as so many things did for Santiago Garcia, in a bookshop.

The bookshop of his childhood had been haphazard and dusty, second hand books piled high above his head; unending towers of adventures waiting for him to read. They had been browning at the edges, marginalia scrawled in a rainbow of colours in thousands of different hands - previous readers accompanying him on his journey and adding wry remarks to the story. 

His abuela had taken him there every Wednesday after school. It had just been the two of them, the cousins relegated to helping abuelo on the farm, but Santi as the baby could help abuela with the town errands. She always got him one book to add to his collection.

Le Morte d’Arthur was a favourite, the binding long since giving up the ghost. Pages held together by string and Santi turning each page with a gentle caress, weighting down each pile with carefully selected rocks - flat, nothing to tear the paper.

Santi had gone back to the bookshop once after Abuela died. The day before he was due to leave town to hit bootcamp. He handed a fresh copy of Le Morte d’Arthur to the volunteer behind the desk, complete with scrawled annotations and inscription.

There hadn’t been many bookshops on the tours he’d taken, occasional lingering moments of perusing the shelves. Frankie knew to leave him alone with the potential stories, a quiet nod and he’d be off to stake out a quiet spot. The whole team would find him later, passively guarding enough space for them to guard each other’s backs. Tom never got the message always hovering, making comments about how he always preferred the movies anyway, Santiago stopped looking for bookshops with him around. Will and Benny usually came as a pair. Benny burning off energy, as Will followed more placidly. Ironically it had been Benny who understood the most, Will losing himself to music more easily than the written word.

“Books, man, I could do that anywhere. It’s active, y’know? Music just happens to you, but i can lose myself in a book.” Benny had told him once, dropping a Du Maurier novel in his lap with a sly grin and only offering a shrug when anybody asked where he’s got an english copy in the middle of bumfuck nowhere redacted.

On the long flights where Benny literally couldn’t sleep, and Santi had too many possibilities running through his head, they’d swap books, making little notes and hiding dicks in the centre folds so they’d get bigger as the book opened.

Half their friendship had been little doodles of dicks, drawn at the most heartfelt and profound moments of classics. Oddly it completely summed Benny up.

The local bookshop was a hidden gem. After Colombia he hadn’t sought out the written word for so long the impulse to go in surprised him enough that he was inside before he’d really thought about it. The shelves inside were crammed full, small hand-painted signs letting him know the genre in which he found himself. There was no military precision to be found here, plenty of space to get lost and find a gem no one had wanted to read in years. The ghost abuela murmured approvingly in his ear, old advice echoing ‘Books need readers, nieto, always find a story that has taken someone on the journey before.’

Occasionally, there would be little stacks of books as new orders came in, the shelves too full to make room for the new arrivals. Regulars moved round them, or paused to run the pad of one finger down the spines, a momentary introduction to a potential new companion.

Hidden around a corner was a tiny café area, only enough to seat maybe ten people, it wasn’t advertised outside - Santiago had never seen every seat taken, though he certainly recognised the regulars by now.

There was the local Rabbi who would tuck himself in the corner with a hot tea and write, occasionally muttering under his breath in Hebrew as he wrestled his sermon into existence. Two students, who were not dating but should be, occupied the table with book wedged under the leg to make it stop wobbling. They were always in contact with one another, limbs seeking the other’s warmth. They didn’t have a schedule but were never in before noon and had only once been spotted on a Thursday. 

A young mum who sat by herself on Saturday mornings and absorbed the quiet, she’d once fallen asleep, resting her head on the shelves. Santiago had woken her at her usual departure time, to flustered thank yous, ‘her twins were at ballet classes and her husband was away-’. She’d been out the store and earshot before she’d finished speaking but a little plate with a huge slab of shortcake had been waiting for him the Saturday after, with ‘Thank you’ iced across the top. There had also been a card with a little boy and girl dancing ballet together impressively drawn in crayon, with capitalised signatures.

Santiago had it in a frame at his house and refused to explain it to anyone that asked beyond a bland, “It’s a thank you card.” 

Only Will had taken more than a beat to move on, absorbing the bright colours and wobbly letters. The clap on Santi’s shoulder and soft look had been enough. Will had never needed words to get a point across, but a gesture like the card? Will understood that well enough.

The boys all knew about you, heard stories about the book shop owner who could make Pope blush with a well timed smile and look in her eye. 

Abuela would have liked her, was the way he explained it to Frankie, blaming the hushed tones on the baby cradled in his arms, rather than the strength of his crush. Little Nina was as placid as her daddy and slept like a rock from day one, Santiago could have yelled his love to heavens and she would only have huffed a little and snuggled closer.

Frankie had only cuffed him on the back of the head and asked if he would pick up some Spanish children’s books for Nina. Santiago didn’t need the excuse to go in there, but he grabbed it with both hands anyway.

You’d been delighted to help, piling his arms high with options before whittling it back down again, selecting tough to rip cardboard and silly rhymes over the school year novellas.

“I’ll pick those up once she’s grown a bit.” He promised, eyeing the reject pile guiltily. “If she takes after her godfather she’ll have her own library soon enough.”

“I was the same,” you laughed, stacking the books neatly by age group and sub-genre, “I used to drive my mother spare reading the book the same day we’d bought it.” “Would you like to go to dinner?” Santiago asked impulsively, talking over the end of your sentence, flushing a little at how abruptly he’d blurted it out. “I’d like to hear about your favourite books.” Your smile made his stomach flip, as you nodded fumbling with the book in your hands.

“I’d like that.” You agreed warmly. “I have quite a few favourites though, it might take more than one.”

Will met you first; in the bookshop without Santi’s supervision. There had been a break in at the shop and Will only lived five minutes away, rushing to calm you down as Santi drove like a madman to get to you.

The shop was in shambles, shelves torn down and books strewn everywhere. Loose leaves littered the floor, glass shards gleaming cruelly in the glaring streetlights. Will had wrapped you up in his jacket, careful of the bruises and nasty gash on your leg, lifting you off the floor and out onto the sidewalk.

He didn’t leave your side until Santiago arrived, waiting until Santi had you in his arms before heading back into the shop to check out what needed fixing.

Frankie met the shop before he met you. His house had the biggest yard, opening out into the woods without anything fencing him in. Will commandeered the space, Frankie happily helping out with the book repairs. His hands had never shaken under pressure, always sure on the controls of the choppers. He learnt the art of bookbinding quickly enough, humming along to Will’s playlists, the two quietest members of the team content to let the music fill the quiet for them.

The first time Frankie met you was when he and Will showed you the shop. The shelves Will had built, now firmly fixed to the wall and floor - they’d prop up the walls before anybody toppled them again. The undamaged books were separated from Frankie’s repairs, in case they weren’t up to your standards. He was pulled into a hug before he could summon up an apology for the amateur job. A stream of thank yous echoing in his ear as you hugged Will just as tightly.

Santiago was smiling, bringing him into hug with a quiet cabron. He always knew when Frankie was overthinking something. You pulled Santi away, demanding Will give a tour of the new, improved shop. Happily calling for Frankie to keep up, you needed to know everything he’d done too.

Benny volunteered to stay at the shop during the day, doing the heavy lifting while your bruises faded. Santiago worked from home but couldn’t help hovering in the shop, too concerned for you and too distracted by all the books he hadn’t got a chance to read.

Somehow this had turned into Benny painting little murals on any spare wall space and the edges of the shelves.

“Have you always painted?” You asked curiously,

Benny shrugged, scratching his chin and leaving tracks of paint over the stubble.

“Pops always had Will out back helping with the farm, he learned the woodworking with him. I helped momma round the house until I was old enough to help paint the stuff they built together.” He broke off to gently shoo Hades away from the paints, the shop cat meowing plaintively at his curiosity being denied.

“Come here puss, you don’t need a paint job.” You coaxed, clicking your fingers to entice him up onto the counter. There was no way your bruises were going to let you bend down to pick him up.

“Anyway, momma was an art teacher she taught me the basics, after that,” he flushed, “a friend helped me practice.”

You had to bite down on your cheek to keep from smiling or asking anymore questions. Benny’s friend sounded interesting but his expression screamed please-don’t-ask-questions.

“My mum could knit anything.” You said instead, finally convincing Hades to have a cuddle and scritching under his chin. “I tried to copy her one summer, ended up having to be cut free from all the wool.”

Benny laughed, all the tension leaving his shoulders at the image of you all snared up like a kitten.

“Me and Will used to track footprints through the house all the time, ‘til we did it with whitewash after painting the barn. Momma had us camped outside for a month before she let us back in.” Benny said sheepishly, a smudged green handprint marking the back of his neck as he confessed. “Pops snuck us in for showers, said he felt bad we’d got punished for chores.”

Hades leapt out of your arms, startled by your laughter. 

“God, I dropped a whole bowl of tomato soup on a cream carpet? Does that count?” You wheezed, leaning back against the shelves to try and stretch out the bruising seeing if the new position would help. Benny winced in sympathy

“Sorry. I’ll try to be less hilarious.” He quipped dryly. “And no, not unless you camped out for a month.”

The decision to marry you was the easiest one Santiago ever made. How on earth to actually ask you to marry him, turned out to be a harder thing to pin down. The ring went on half the trips you made for a year: down to Hawai’i on a group holiday, camping up in the mountains and even the near weekly hikes you took on Mondays, shutting shop up and leaving the town far behind.

It was an old copy of The Princess Bride that eventually spurred him into action. Santi was helping with organising the basement which was full of donations and books to be shipped out across the county.

Golding’s novel hit him square in the chest, the achingly familiar cover making Santiago’s throat tighten. Abuela had loved this book, taking great pleasure in dramatically clearing her throat to read it to him when he was sick. The grandpa in the story was replaced with Abuela as she told him the tale of true love: Inigo Montoya switching between Spanish and English and easily as he switched his sword hand.

He’d long been enamoured with pirates and fighting evil kings, but The Princess Bride had been the book to remind him to find something to fight for. Perhaps he’d been clinging to the doomed romance of Le Morte d’Arthur for too long.

“The Princess Bride? Santiago, this is true love - you think this happens every day?” You quoted easily, pressing a kiss to his cheek as you passed.

Santiago sent up a garbled prayer of thanks to Abuela, she always knew what he needed before he did anyway.

And so, Santiago Garcia asked the love of his life to marry him on a rainy Thursday in a bookshop. And it was perfect.

‘But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.’ -William Golding, The Princess Bride.

#santiago garcia #santiago pope garcia #triple frontier #frankie catfish morales #frankie morales #santiago garcia x reader #santiago garcia x you #oddly introspective drabble #i love books #so Pope loves books #the princess bride #william golding #le morte d'arthur #Ella wrote a thing #not quite fluff

[thisblogisalsoboundforglory]

WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING LATELY

Kage Baker’s Company Series

In the Garden of Iden

Sky Coyote

Mendoza in Hollywood

The Graveyard Game

The Life of the World to Come

The Children of the Company

The Machine's Child

The Sons of Heaven

The Empress of Mars

Not Less than Gods

Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea

Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers

Gods and Pawns

In the Company of Thieves

Ø  Science Fiction written by a woman with Asperger’s. Wildly uneven. Main protagonist is female, but there are lots of POV characters, male and female.

Ø  Big ideas.

Ø  Lots of adventure, some action.

Ø   Small doses of humor.

 Neil Gaiman

Good Omens (with Sir Terry Pratchett)

Neverwhere

Stardust

American Gods

Anansi Boys

The Graveyard Book

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Ø  Neil’s books are a road trip with Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and a baggie full of sativa.

Ø  Ideas are incidental. The Milieu’s in charge.

Ø  Adventure happens whether you like it or not.

Ø   Cosmic humor. The joke’s on us.

 Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel Series

Firewatch

Doomsday Book

To Say Nothing of the Dog (and the novel that inspired it – Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat)

Blackout/All Clear

Assorted:

The Last of the Winnebagos

Ø  Connie loves her historical research. Blackout/All Clear actually lasts as long as the Blitz, but anything in the Oxford Time Travel series is worth reading. Doomsday Book reads like prophecy in retrospect.

Ø  One idea: Hi! This is the human condition! How fucking amazing is that?!?

Ø  Gut-punch adventure with extra consequences. Background action.

Ø   I’d have to say that Doomsday Book is the funniest book about the black death I’ve ever read, which isn’t saying much. To Say Nothing of the Dog is classic farce, though. Girl’s got range.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash (After the apocalypse, the world will be ruled by Home-Owners Associations. Be afraid.)

Cryptonomicon

Anathem

Seveneves

Ø  Neal writes big, undisciplined, unfocused books that keep unfolding in your mind for months after you’ve read them. He’s a very guy-type writer, in spite of a female protagonist or two. Seveneves, be warned, starts out brilliant and devolves into extreme meh.

Ø  Big. Fucking. Ideas.

Ø  Battles, crashes, fistfights, parachute jumps, nuclear powered motorcycles and extreme gardening action. Is there an MPAA acronym for that?

Ø   Humor dry enough to be garnished with two green olives on a stick.

  Christopher Moore

Pine Cove Series:

Practical Demonkeeping

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror (Okay, yeah, Christmas. But Christmas with zombies, so that’s all right.)

Fluke (Not strictly Pine Cove, but in the same universe. Ever wonder why whales sing? They’re ordering Pastrami sandwiches. I’m not kidding.)

Death Merchant Chronicles:

A Dirty Job

Secondhand Souls (Best literary dogs this side of Jack London)

Coyote Blue (Kind of an outlier. Overlapping characters)

Shakespeare Series:

Fool

The Serpent of Venice

Shakespeare for Squirrels

Assorted:

Island of the Sequined Love Nun (Cargo cults with Pine Cove crossovers. I have a theory that the characters in this book are direct descendants of certain characters in Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.)

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (So I have a favorite first-century wonder rabbi. Who doesn’t?)

Sacre Bleu

Noir

Ø  Not for the squeamish, the easily offended, or those who can’t lovingly embrace the fact that the human species is pretty much a bunch of idiots snatching at moments of grace.

Ø  No big ideas whatever. Barely any half-baked notions.

Ø  Enthusiastic geek adventure. Action as a last resort.

Ø   Nonstop funny from beginning to end.

 Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London Series

Rivers of London

Moon Over Soho

Whispers Under Ground

Broken Homes

Foxglove Summer

The Hanging Tree

The Furthest Station

Lies Sleeping

The October Man

False Value

Tales From the Folly

Ø  Lean, self-deprecating police procedurals disguised as fantasy novels. Excellent writing.

Ø  These will not expand your mind. They might expand your Latin vocabulary.

Ø  Crisply described action, judiciously used. Whodunnit adventure. It’s all about good storytelling.

Ø  Generous servings of sly humor. Aaronovitch is a geek culture blueblood who drops so many inside jokes, there are websites devoted to indexing them.

  John Scalzi

Old Man’s War Series:

Old Man’s War

Questions for a Soldier

The Ghost Brigades

The Sagan Diary

The Last Colony

Zoe’s Tale

After the Coup

The Human Division

The End of All Things

Ø  Star Trek with realpolitik instead of optimism.

Ø  The Big Idea is that there’s nothing new under the sun. Nor over it.

Ø  Action-adventure final frontier saga with high stakes.

Ø  It’s funny when the characters are being funny, and precisely to the same degree that the character is funny.

Assorted:

The Dispatcher

Murder by Other Means

Redshirts (Star Trek, sideways, with occasional optimism)

Ø  Scalzi abandons (or skewers) his space-opera tendencies with these three little gems of speculative fiction. Scalzi’s gift is patience. He lets the scenario unfold like a striptease.

Ø  What-if thought experiments that jolt the brain like espresso shots.

Ø  Action/misadventure as necessary to accomplish the psychological special effects.

Ø  Redshirts is satire, so the humor is built-in, but it’s buried in the mix.

  David Wong/Jason Pargin

John Dies at the End

This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It

What the Hell Did I Just Read?

Ø  Pargin clearly starts his novels with a handful of arresting scenes and images, then looses the characters on an unsuspecting world to wander wither they will.

Ø  Ideas aren’t as big or obvious as Heinlein, but they are there to challenge all your assumptions in the same way that Heinlein’s were.

Ø  Classic action/adventure for anyone raised on Scooby-Doo.

Ø  Occasional gusts of humor in a climate that’s predominantly tongue-in-cheek.

 Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St. Mary’s Series

Just One Damned Thing After Another

The Very First Damned Thing

A Symphony of Echoes

When a Child is Born*

A Second Chance

Roman Holiday*

A Trail Through Time

Christmas Present*

No Time Like the Past

What Could Possible Go Wrong?

Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings*

Lies, Damned Lies and History

The Great St Mary’s Day Out*

My Name is Markham*

And the Rest is History

A Perfect Storm*

Christmas Past*

An Argumentation of Historians

The Battersea Barricades*

The Steam Pump Jump*

And Now for Something Completely Different*

Hope for the Best

When Did You Last See Your Father?*

Why Is Nothing Ever Simple*

Plan For The Worst

The Ordeal of the Haunted Room

Ø  The * denotes a short story or novella. Okay, try to imagine Indiana Jones as a smartassed redheaded woman with a time machine and a merry band of full contact historians. I love history, and I especially love history narrated by a woman who can kick T. Rex ass.

Ø  The ideas are toys, not themes. Soapy in spots.

Ø  Action! Adventure! More action! More adventure! Tea break. Action again!

Ø  Big, squishy dollops of snort-worthy stuff.

 Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell Series

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

A Monstrous Regiment of Women

A Letter of Mary

The Moor

Jerusalem

Justice Hall

The Game

Locked Rooms

The Language of Bees

The God of the Hive

Beekeeping for Beginners

Pirate King

Garment of Shadows

Dreaming Spies

The Marriage of Mary Russell

The Murder of Mary Russell

Mary Russell's War And Other Stories of Suspense

Island of the Mad

Riviera Gold

The Art of Detection (Strictly speaking, this is in the action!lesbian Detective Kate Martinelli series, but it crosses over to the Sherlock Holmes genre. If you’ve ever wondered how Holmes would deal with the transgendered, this is the book.)

Ø  Sherlock Holmes retires to Sussex, keeps bees, marries a nice Jewish girl who is smarter than he is and less than half his age and he’s mentored since she was fifteen in an extremely problematic power dynamic relationship that should repulse me but doesn’t, somehow, because this is the best Sherlock Holmes pastiche out there. Mary should have been a rabbi, but it is 1920, so she learns martial arts and becomes an international detective instead. Guest appearances by Conan Doyle, Kimball O’Hara, T.E. Lawrence, Cole Porter, and the Oxford Comma.

Ø  Nothing mind-expanding here, unless the levels of meta present in a fictional world that is about how the fictional world might not be as fictional as you thought come as a surprise to anyone in the era of tie-in books, films, tv, interactive social media and RPGs.

Ø  If these two geniuses can’t catch the bad guys with their dazzling brilliance, they will happily kick some ass. Adventure takes center stage and the action sequences are especially creative.

Ø  Amusement is afoot.

 Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next Series

The Eyre Affair

Lost in a Good Book

The Well of Lost Plots

Something Rotten

First Among Sequels

One of Our Thursdays is Missing

The Woman Who Died a Lot

Ø  In a world where Librarians are revered and Shakespeare is more popular than the Beatles, someone has to facilitate the weekly anger-management sessions for the characters of Wuthering Heights, if only to keep them from killing each other before the novel actually ends. That someone is Thursday Next – Literature Cop.

Ø  Mind-bending enough to give Noam Chomsky material for another hundred years.

Ø  Adventure aplenty. Action? Even the punctuation will try to kill you.

Ø  This is a frolicsome look at humorous situations filled with funny people. Pretty much a full house in the laugh department.

 Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series/City Watch Arc

Guards! Guards!

Men at Arms

Feet of Clay

Jingo

The Fifth Elephant

Night Watch

Thud!

Snuff

Raising Steam

Ø  If this were a game of CLUE, the answer would be Niccolo Machiavelli in Narnia with a Monty Python. Everything you think you know about books with dragons and trolls and dwarves and wizards is expertly ripped to shreds and reassembled as social satire that can save your soul, even if it turns out you don’t really have one. Do not be fooled by the Tolkien chassis – there’s a Vonnegut-class engine at work.

Ø  Caution: Ideas in the Mirror Universe May be Larger Than They Appear

Ø  The City Watch arc has plenty of thrilling action sequences. Some other of the fifty-million Discworld novels have less. Every one of them is nonstop adventure. Most of the adventure, however, takes the form of characters desperately trying to avoid thrilling action sequences.

Ø  Funny? Even though I’ve read every book in the series at least ten times, I still have to make sure I have cold packs on hand in case I laugh so hard I rupture something.

[sirspud]

Yet More Pokemon Parodies

I have written the ninth chapter of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Abridged! It contains drama! Romance! Battles! Everything you could ever ask for! Follow the links for the full story! Click the ‘Read More’ button for a short excerpt! It has been called ‘the next DragonBall Z Abridged’ by myself and myself only! Have I become famous on the internet yet? DO YOU LOVE ME NOW YOU UNGRATEFU

Fanfiction.Net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13615322/1/Pokemon-Diamond-and-Pearl-An-Abridged-Novella AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24725101/chapters/59766985

The city of Oreburgh was not, to put it lightly, a very pleasant city to look at. A light grey cloud hung over the place, soot decorated the buildings, pillars of smoke rose from the factories and energy stations that circled the cities, and to top it all off, there was barely a scrap of greenery in the city. Most of the land was dirt, sand and rock, with mountains to all sides but the south, to which laid a barren, rocky valley. It was a miracle that people were able to live in the land at all, and it was a mystery as to why they wanted to.

It had taken the gang an entire week to finally arrive in the so-called ‘City of Energy’. A week of hiking through the forest, mountains and through the caves of the Oreburgh Gate. To Ash and Brock, it was merely a leisurely walk. To Dawn, it had been a gruelling seven-day ordeal that had left her sore, exhausted and complaining. Finally, they had emerged from the mountains and into the rocky vale beyond, the mountainside city rising before them.

“Ahhh… Oreburgh City!” Dawn exclaimed as they got closer, looking around with her hands on her hips. “It looks just how I pictured it!”

The others looked around uncomfortably. Ash spoke up and asked, “Dark, dirty and unsafe?”

“Yup!” Dawn nodded. “Oreburgh is the only city in Sinnoh that still uses coal-fired power, and it’s notorious for having the worst pollution laws to go with it.” She swept her hand across, gesturing to the smog-covered metropolis. “Oreburgh is such an undesirable location, it was voted ‘Second Worst Place to Visit in Sinnoh’ by PokéChic magazine!”

“The whole city looks like a public health disaster!” Brock exclaimed. “What was the First Worst?”

“Neighbourly Town.” Dawn replied.

“Never heard of it.”

“Exactly.”

After stopping at a convenience store for a restock on supplies and facemasks, the gang immediately went for the Oreburgh Gym. The facility was on the edge of the city closest to the mountain, and was actually built into the rock itself. A set of sliding doors, embedded into the stone aside two jagged rocks, opened up to let them into a moderately-sized entrance room. The floor was made of industrial steel, and the walls were hewn from dark grey granite, leading towards a welcome desk. The room contained a bunch of display cases, each containing a fossil of some kind, and the walls held informative posters about the gym itself.

Pikachu exhaled a breath that he had been holding for a while, since the store didn’t have facemasks for Pokémon. “(Finally.)” He groaned. “(I think that smoke shortened my lifespan by five years.)”

“I’ve never seen a proper gym battle before.” Dawn said excitedly, looking around the place. “This is gonna be so cool!”

“Oh yeah, gyms are awesome!” Ash confirmed. “Trust me, in ten minutes or so, you are going to be amazed!”

They strode up to the front desk, behind which was a bored-looking girl about the same age as Dawn, leaning on the desk with her hair tied back in a ponytail. “Welcome to the Oreburgh Gym. How can we help you today?” She asked in a monotone voice.

“Hi there!” Ash declared, confidently leaning over the desk. “I’m here to have a gym battle!”

“Mr. Castle is currently seeing another challenger.” She replied flatly.

“I’m here to watch a gym battle!”

The girl pointed down the corridor to the right with a pen she had been idly playing with. “Down the hall, turn left, big double doors at the end. Arena’s through there.”

“Huh. Bummer.” Dawn sighed wistfully as they made their way to the arena. “Guess we’ll have to wait.”

Ash shrugged. “It happens. At least we can watch a battle first, get a feel for what the gym leader’s like.”

“Mm.” Dawn hugged her arm nervously as they approached the doors into the arena. “Hey, Ash?”

“Yeah?” He turned to look at her.

“Uh…” Dawn chuckled awkwardly, a slight blush crawling up her cheeks. “I know it’s not, like… the greatest city to do this, but after-”

From beyond the arena doors, a frustrated voice cried, “Oh, for crying out- What?”

The three trainers paused. Dawn blinked, then frowned. “…Does that voice sound familiar to you guys?”

They looked at one another, then made their way forward.

The doors opened up to the top row of a set of bleachers facing a small, rectangular battlefield with rocks placed alongside the sand and dirt. On one side of the field was a tall, young man in a grey uniform with gleaming yellow bands, narrow glasses and a red miner’s helmet that hid a shock of burgundy hair. He stood there with his arms crossed and a collected smile on his face, as a small and circular rock-shaped Pokémon rolled its way before him.

Dawn looked at the other side of the battlefield, then snorted as she saw the unconscious form of a blue-and-white round shape that vaguely resembled a rabbit. “Jeez, this guy’s getting wrecked.”

Brock’s eyes widened as he saw the dark blue jacket and purple-grey hair of the Azumarill’s trainer. “Wait a second. That’s…”

Ash’s eyes narrowed. “Paul.”

#pokemon #Pokemon Diamond And Pearl #diamond and pearl #dp remakes #this has nothing to do with the dp remakes #but i'll be fucked if i'm not going to take advantage of the hype to trick people into reading my fanfic #Ash Ketchum #ash #dawn #brock #pikachu #paul #abridged #parody #roark #sinnoh #comedy #writing #fanfiction #please love me

[celiabowens]

2020 reads, summer tbr edition. The plan is to come back to this post as I read the books and probably dump my thoughts here, not sure yet lol

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: really liked it, although the narrative structure wasn’t quite my cup of tea. Still, Ocean Vuong’s prose is incredibly beautiful and raw. Overall, I’d still recommend it to everyone, even if non-linear narratives aren’t your thing, because Vuong’s prose is incredibly frank and yet stunning, and the way it captures memories and brief moments in time is absolutely incredible. The novel has so many layers, its complexity and nuance are truly outstanding. 

The Empire of Gold: really liked this one! It develops the political conflict that was built in the first two books very well. The build up is quite slow and I get why some people may have issues with the pace, but I really liked the different storylines and how they all came together. Also loved the romance so much. I wouldn’t have minded more space for female side characters though.

Provenance: this wasn’t a bad read, but not as good as I expected it to be either. It reads much like a comedy of manners mixed with interplanetary politics, which was fun, but not as in depth as I wished. The characters fell a bit flat (especially the secondary characters) and their relationships weren’t as developed as I had hoped. The world was very cool though, especially with how fleshed out it felt, even when it came to minimal details.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: i’m very conflicted about this. On one hand, I really did like it, the book is fast and compelling (and reads very much like a tv show). On the other hand, the ending felt like unnecessary drama and it ruined it just a little bit for me. Anyway, worth the hype.

Girl Serpent Thorn: sort of disappointing? It’s a nice YA fantasy, but the premise begged for a more complex and nuanced development. The characters weren’t particularly fleshed out and the plot was a bit too flimsy. The mythology and world building, mostly inspired by Persian folklore, were really interesting and the bisexual rep was nice as well. 

The Nickel Boys: I really don’t mesh well with Colson Whitehead’s writing style (it just sort of reads very essay-like? I’m more of a purple prose person and his books almost read like non-fiction in general), but I liked this much more than The Intuitionist. This is such a hopeless and cruel novel and it delivers one punch to the gut after another. The final twist was as brilliant as heartbreaking truly. Glad I read it, as hard as it was. 

Shorefall: I liked it as much as Foundryside, but I still think this series lacks the spark and the nuance The Divine Cities Trilogy had. It’s still a pretty complex fantasy series (and Bennett is a master of his craft for sure) and I liked the economical and political subplots so much, but the characters do very little for me. The f/f romance is super cute and the cast works well, but the characters aren’t as compelling on their own. Still, a solid read.

Realm of Ash: this was great! I really like how Tasha Suri creates so much tension between her characters (the slow burn, the yearning...) and the character development in general. I love how this book was mostly focused on the court, because the moral ambiguity and the intrigue really set it apart from its companion, in a good way. 

Salt Slow

Dune: DNFed this one at 40% (which is like, over 250 pages), because it was extremely boring and yet confusing. As much as I like modern science fiction, I think most of the classics may not be for me. 

The Once and Future King

Angels and Insects: DNFed this one, no regrets. I read Possession earlier this year and as tough as it was (it’s just really such a dense book), the painfully slow pace was worth it, because of how well crafted and complex it was. Angel and Insects contains two novella and the payoff wasn’t worth the boredom, so I just dropped it.

A Gentleman in Moscow: this was literally perfect until the ending. I just...found it overly bizarre and forced. The rest of the novel is, however, 100% worth the hype. It’s compelling and nuanced and such a good character study. Really loved the prose too.

The Impossible Girl: the premise was better than its execution, I guess. I feel like my biggest problem with this one was how flat the characters felt to me and how the plot was a little messy. The premise was great (crossdressing girl with two hearts working as a resurrectionist was interesting to say the least), and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the novel overall, because I did, just not as much as I thought. 

Notes on a Nervous Planet (if all the academic reading I need to do for thesis doesn’t end me first)

I actually don’t do too well with structured TBRs and I might read these in a month truthfully, so I don’t know how this experiment will go, but I guess I’ll see.

Stuff I’ve read out of the TBR: The Kindgom of Back by Marie Lu (I loved this one, would totally recommend checking it out), The Gameshouse by Claire North (the first novella is good, the rest was painful to read tbh), The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (well written, but I really just did not care at all for it).

#2020 reads #gio rambles #tbr #summer 2020 tbr #i only have to do thesis and academic reading so #i might actually fly through some of these

[brynwrites]

2019 READING RECAP: 

BOOKS I READ THIS YEAR AND LOVED.

I read 45 books in 2019. (Well, technically I listened to most of them as audio-books. Dyslexia was a pain in the ass this year and I gave it a whopping middle finger.) 

This is not a "Best Of" list. I didn't read all the books published in 2019, nor will all these books be from 2019 to begin with. They're just books I read this year and happened to enjoy. I hope some of you will enjoy them too.

Note: The little summaries in italics are written by me, not official blurbs. Click the links to see those!

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

This lovely slice-of-magical-life book tells the story of a sassy young man navigating a magical world and all the trials and romances it brings.

I fully recommend it to anyone who likes humorous mythology, beautiful deconstructions of social topics, snarky protagonists, and a romance with fantastic pinning and realistic relationships. This has a mlm endgame ship!

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

A biologist explores a dangerous piece of coastline contaminated by distinctly unnatural forces, which puts her relationship with her late husband into new light.

The slow revelation of and engulfment by the hauntingly peculiar yet breathe-taking world really hit me in the center of my soul. The Biologist felt incredibly real and personal, and by the end of the story, she seemed like a friend I knew and adored. Her relationship with her husband was one of the most stunning and accurate "romances" I've ever read.

Circe by Madeline Miller

A stunning showcase of the life of Circe, as seen from a new angle, highlighting both the flaws of humans and the beauty of mortality.

I've heard people describe this as a love letter to humanity and that's more accurate than anything I could write. Also I cried at the end.

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

A con woman with healing powers accidentally summons a djinn warrior and ends up whisked into a mythological world of elaborate politics.

This book gave me so many feels I don't know how to recover. Strap in for epic world building, suspenseful plot, wonderful (often morally grey) characters with complex biases.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The story of how a fictional Hollywood actress ends up marrying seven different men over the course of her life. Spoilers: She's in love with a woman.

This book portrays a stunning and realistic look at a queer woman's journey through Hollywood, with lovely takes on romance, sex, and sexuality, as well as a couple beautiful instances of queer non-traditional/polyamorous families. Endgame wlw!

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

With the god of the kingdom fading and the current ruler missing, the aid to the next ruler must meddle in the affairs of gods. But someone is watching him... and she's been around for a very, very long time.

The peculiar narrative choice of having a first person narrator speak of the main character in second person played well in the growing mystery, and the world building surrounding the gods was fantastic and unique, lending itself to the sort of story you read once in a lifetime. I would recommend this book for people who like unique and/or non-traditional story telling mechanisms, incredible world building, and thinking. The main character is a transman!

The Songbird's Refrain by Jillian Maria

When a girl who feels perpetually unseen is captured by a witch and forced to grow feathers, she must use her dreams to uncover the witch's motivations and escape.

This Young Adult book is a blast with a hint of creepy, a dose of suspense, and a nice dollop of fluffy romance. Overall, a wonderful fall read, with a heavy focus on healthy relationships, believing in one's self, and choosing love. The endgame is a wlw!

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

An episodic novella of the two most powerful time war opponents falling in love through letters exchanged in very particular ways.

This book made my eyes well and my throat catch and my mind linger over the pages with ecstasy and melancholy. It is lyrical and beautiful, with stunning world building built of metaphors. The endgame is a wlw!

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

Not your typical portal fantasy.

This was lovely. Everything from the slow beginnings ties beautifully back together in a fast paced second half. I ended up with so many feels about this dumb little wandering family.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

The new ambassador to the largest colonizing empire in the galaxy must uncover the reasons for her predecessor's demise, which would be a bit easier of only the artificial version of him embedded in her brain would help out.

This was such a fantastic ride. Stunning world building, great characters, politics that doesn't feel bogged down, a plot that's constantly moving forward. I totally recommend for anyone who likes science fiction, quirky friend groups, and the analysis of colonization. Endgame wlw!

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

Sometimes a family can be a nerdy dumb-ass with a sword, an arrogant snarky dumb-ass with a smirk, and their demon servant who nibbles on their live force and mothers them both to hell and back.

I had so much fun with this Young Adult book. The world building is lovely and the pacing keeps you on your toes without stressing you out and the main characters are fabulous. A good, solid read, with a beautiful ending. Also, I would die for Silas.

Some books I wanted to read in 2019 but didn't get around to:

The Fifth Season

The Priory of the Orange Tree

Jade City

Middlegame

Wilder Girls

Into the Drowning Deep

Rules for Vanishing

Which books did you guys enjoy this year? (Let me know so I can read them next year? ;)

#booklr #reading recap #Book Recommendations #book reccs #book list #lgbt books #(note that not all of these are lgbt BUT to my knowledge only Ten Thousand Doors and Circe don't have prominent lgbt characters)