#but yeah i thought maybe listening to audiobooks would be fun

[flops]

also painful ear today yeah it was super bad like needle pricking painful bad but i took ibuprofen and it has been fine since than so fingers crossed ?

#it still feels weird but idk i just.. i. tired ! #Also wanted to make a seperate post for this but too many updates already for today but #i found a good site to p.rate audiobooks and thats so nice #bc usually i like to watch youtube videos when im crocheting or #play g.nshin story quests (lmfao im still not done with the s.umeru quest why sooo long 😭) #but yeah i thought maybe listening to audiobooks would be fun #its better than podcats for sure im kind of sick of podcasts these days idk why #any wAys #so many things to do before chr.istmas too #like washing my hair doing my nails doing something with my eyebrows (😭😭😭) cleaning up wrapping gifts decorating the tree (boo)

[miracle-falcon]

I’m seeing Hamilton stuff on my dashboard, and it’s reminding me of a big regret I have. See, back in 2016, I won cheap front row tickets to see Hamilton’s original cast twice. But the second time wasn’t as cut and dry, and involved me denying someone else.

The first time, my now wife and I just won the $10 tickets from the online lottery. We were living in NYC, so we had plenty of opportunities. We actually won the tickets the day they got their Tony nominations! We hadn’t listened to the soundtrack, and by the third song we were looking at each other asking “is this the best musical we’ve ever seen?” Naturally, we got super into it. I looked up all the Hamilton things. I planned a day trip all around the city, going to different important places related to Hamilton (his grave, his house, and the scene of the crime that led to him and Burr sharing a case). I listened to Chernow’s audiobook. I was ENTHUSED.

A few weeks later, I needed to get something looked at by Apple tech support. I went into Manhattan, and it was a Wednesday - they had the live Ham4Ham going on, I figured I’d drop by myself. Nice time, fun stuff! And then they started drawing winners, and an older woman next to me was also alone. She turned to me, and said, “hey, if you win, take me, and if I win, I’ll take you!” Sure, okay, right? I said yeah! Chances are super low, but why not double them? Well, then the woman won! So I was going to see Hamilton a SECOND TIME with the original cast! Front row! Super pumped! So the woman leaned in and asked, “hey, can you give me $100 for this?” I mean. Yeah. Kinda bad to ask after the fact, but at this point, Hamilton was at PEAK popularity and tickets were going upwards of $1000. I’m not sure the lady was even aware of this, but yeah. I’d pay $100 for front row, “I could pet Hercules Mulligan if I reached out just a bit” seats. I told her yes. And then I fucked up.

As we formed the line to grab the tickets, a young woman and her dad walked up to the lady. They looked to me like they were probably tourists. And apparently, she’d made the same deal with them. They were excited. The young woman, clearly also enthusiastic, thought she’d just scored her ticket. And then the woman who had won the tickets gestured to me and said “well, he said he’d pay me.”

What.

Guys, I froze. Fight and flight both completely failed to kick in and I went full deer in the headlights. I’d already had my chance to see the show, this was probably this girl’s one shot, pun not intended when I wrote it but fuck it it’s staying in. But guys. I wanted it bad. And I hesitated at doing the right thing. I didn’t immediately volunteer my ticket. And the young woman and her dad, giving me dirty looks, decided not to get into a bidding war, and quickly departed. The whole interaction probably lasted 30 seconds.

Once we were out of the line, I looked around. Maybe the girl was still around and I could give her my ticket? No, she wasn’t. I was kicking myself pretty hard for not acting when I should have. From there, I had to stick with the woman who had won the tickets until the show, so we had a quick cheap lunch together, where someone commented on how expensive Hamilton tickets were, and her price went up to $200. I said sure. I wasn’t going to say no at this point - but I was feeling awful. When we made our way back to the theater, I kept looking around to try to find the would-be ticket winners. I was very confident I would be able to recognize them - they’ve faded from my memory now, but at that moment, they were just SEARED into my mind. But no such luck. They had fully moved on. And so I got to see Hamilton, on Broadway, with the original cast, in the front row, for the second time. The woman who’d won the tickets was surprised that I knew the songs, which… surprised me?

And it was great! I felt terrible the entire time, but I mean, it’s a great show! I couldn’t, and still can’t, believe I got to see the show twice that way. At the time, I don’t think I even fully appreciated how lucky this was - I knew it was, of course, but the magnitude didn’t really dawn on me until I started getting reactions from people. I’ve heard a lot of incredulous shouts of “TWICE?!” since then. But when I tell my anecdote of unbelievable Broadway luck, I typically leave out the part where I unintentionally swooped in and stole something from someone else.

I know it doesn’t count for much, but I’d love to be able to tell that young woman that I’m sorry. She had no way to know either that this was my SECOND TIME. It’s 8 years on, and no one follows this dead tumblr of mine, but if somehow this reaches your eyes, I think you’ll know who you were. And I should have done better.

#hamilton #alexander hamilton #broadway #musical #ham4all #ham4ham #lin manuel miranda #i don’t know what tags people use

[0809wrld]

20:00

☆ sub!hongjoong x (hard)dom!reader

☆ 1118

☆ phone sex, “long” distance relationship, dialogue heavy

☆ (extreme) degradation, name calling, dirty talk, reader addressed as Mommy, mention of free use type of situation, implied aftercare

Your evening began with you lounging on the couch, halfway through an audiobook before you get a text notification—the ding snapping you out of the novel.

Hongjoong: call?

You: yeah, give me a sec

Hongjoong, your sweet boyfriend who can’t go one night without a phone call with you. You two attending different universities didn’t faze either of you, but it did leave for some lonely nights. Nights where Hongjoong just wants to call and hear your voice, hear about your day, and maybe do some other… things. You can’t complain, though. You miss him just as much as he misses you, and you appreciate having such a caring, attentive boyfriend. You finish the current chapter of the book before texting him back.

You: ready!!!

Your phone rings almost immediately after hitting send, you wonder if his eyes had been glued to his phone, waiting for you.

Hi, baby, you answer with a singsong tone.

Hey, how was your day?

You and Hongjoong go back and forth, asking and answering about your days. What was for breakfast? Someone almost ran you over with the campus scooters? Are your exams soon? How is your roommate never there? Casual conversations that you two can have over and over again, until Hongjoong asks the question.

Can… can you do the thing? He sounds so shy that you can hear the blush you know he has. You know what the thing is, but acting like you don’t is most of the fun. You can’t recall how many times you two have done this, at some point you thought Hongjoong would get tired of the shy act and drop it, but it seems to be part of the fun for him as well.

What thing, Hongjoong?

You know what I’m talking about. Please?

I really don’t, I’m not a mind reader sweetheart. You’re gonna have to tell me. You hear his whine from your phones speaker. Hongjoong usually likes to draw this out, working the both of you up. It especially helps you fall into the role anyway, it’s difficult to make the switch where you can give Hongjoong what he craves. After some more back and forth, Hongjoong caves.

Please be mean to me mommy?

Poor Hongjoong, he already sounds gone.

Oh, I see why it was so hard for you to ask. So pathetic, asking me to be mean to you.

You can hear his breath hitch.

You better not be touching yourself, Hongjoong. Sometimes you surprise yourself with how cold you can sound.

He answers frantically. No! No, I’m not mommy. I promise. Didn’t say I can touch.

That’s right. Maybe you aren’t so stupid, hm?

Despite how much you know Hongjoong loves this (and how much you love it too, if how wet you are is any indication), there’s always something nagging in the back of your mind that says you’re always going too far. Hongjoong never safewords, he’s never had any reason to.

You know, I never thought there were people who liked being degraded. I definitely never thought one of those depraved people would be my boyfriend. You definitely don’t seem to be the type. I wonder how many other freaks see us together and think I’m the one who’s in this position. Imagine how your friends would react to knowing this is how their Hongjoong gets off.

Fuck…

I wonder what my friends would think of you, knowing this. They’d probably think you’re a depraved pervert, but they wouldn’t be wrong.

Mommy, stop—

Stop why? You like the thought of my friends image of you changing? The Hongjoong they knew before, so polite and confident. They’d know it’s just a facade then, your true place being under me. A dumb slut whose only thoughts are when he’ll come next.

You let it fall silent, wanting to listen to what your ears can pick up from Hongjoong. You speak after a moment.

Hongjoong. The way you call his name demands attention. Touch yourself, but I swear to god if you cum, you will be afraid to see me.

F-fuck mommy, I’m sorry… thank you.

Dumb thing, what are you even apologizing for.

I-I don’t know—

Do you know anything, Hongjoong?

No answer. Tsk. You decide to play with your previous idea some more.

My friends would probably like to treat you like the dog you are—

Mommy, stop, stop gonna cum, need to stop please—

Already? He must be extra sensitive today.

Then stop, that would make sense, right? Do you really need me to think for you?

You wait, wait to hear his breathing even out. As I was saying, they would love to tease you. They can be meaner than me, Joongie, so you’d be in for a treat. They definitely wouldn’t show mercy and let you touch yourself like I do. Probably would keep you on the edge for so long you pass out.

Ah…

Or, see how far they can push you with just their words. Imagine their faces when you cum in your pants, untouched, from being treated poorly. They’d truly understand how pathetic and desperate you are. At that point, they’d send you back to me, disgusted with the mess you made of yourself.

Yeah, yeah… I’m…

You wait patiently to see if he’ll finish without any encouragement, nothing.

What is it, Joongie? You soften your voice. It feels like the right moment to start wrapping this up, you’re feeling drowsy and want to make sure Hongjoong is well taken care of after this.

‘M disgusting, f-fucking gross, dirty, I’m, I’m— He stutters through the whole sentence, only stopping when you cut him off.

You’re all those things baby, and you’re mine. Love how dirty my angel is. You hear whimpers and huffs from his end. Are you touching yourself?

No mommy, I’m not. Just too much, so much. So close, mommy, need it.

Oh baby, I know. Mommy wants you to cum, okay? Be a good boy and cum for me angel.

You hear muffled moans and whimpers, followed by heavy breathing. When it sounds like he’s caught his breath, you speak.

Good job baby, did so well for me. So proud of you, Joongie. Everything was okay?

Yeah, everything was really, really good. Thank you…

There it is again, you know there’s something being left unsaid. You don’t want to probe Hongjoong, but you don’t think you’d be able to sleep not knowing what it is.

Is there something else you wanna say?

Yeah, uhm… he laughs, nervous and lighthearted. What you were saying… you know about cumming untouched and stuff,

‘And stuff’. You laugh to yourself at how shy he is after this.

I did it… came untouched.

Take a shot for every time you read Mommy

a/n: aftercare did take place 🫶🏽 I didn’t know if everyone would consider this hard and extreme (I do 🤨) so that’s why it’s tagged like that. “Long” distance i mean you can decide how far the schools are ❤️❤️. Thank you for reading please lmk if I need to add tags!! And maybe rb if you liked this 👉🏽👈🏽🥺?

#ateez smut #ateez x reader #hongjoong x reader #hongjoong smut #jj:hongjoong #100

[the-forest-library]

August 2022 Reads

Half a Soul - Olivia Atwater

The Lord Sorcier - Olivia Atwater

The Latch Key - Olivia Atwater

My Imaginary Mary - Cynthia Hand

Inheritance - Katharine McGee

Trick - Natalia Faster

The Fixer Upper - Lauren Forsythe

Thank You for Listening - Julia Whelan

Where It All Lands - Jennie Wexler

Would You Rather - Allison Ashley

Mad About You - Mhairi McFarlane

Seatmate - Cara Bastone

Just Haven’t Met You Yet - Sophie Cousins

Luck and Last Resorts - Sarah Grunder Ruiz

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches - Sangu Bandanna

When a Scot Ties the Knot - Tessa Dare

So Happy for You - Celia Laskey

Mika in Real Life - Emiko Jean

Misrule - Heather Walter

Alias Emma - Ava Glass

The Turn of the Key - Ruth Ware

On a Sunbeam - Tillie Walden

A Career in Books - Kate Gavino

Cornbread & Poppy - Matthew Cordell

I’m Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy

Nothing Like I Imagined - Mindy Kaling

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone - Lori Gottlieb

Vagina Obscura - Rachel E. Gross

Reasons to Stay Alive - Matt Haig

No Cure for Being Human - Kate Bowler

Crying in the Bathroom - Erika L. Sanchez

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter - Scaachi Koul

I Might Regret This - Abbi Jacobson

You’ll Grow Out of It - Jessi Klein

How Are You, Really? - Jenna Kutcher

Rough Draft - Katy Tur

The Social Anxiety Cure - Frank Steven

All That She Carried - Tiya Miles

The Lazy Genius Kitchen - Kendra Apache

Bold = Highly Recommend Italics = Worth It Crossed out = Nope

Thoughts:

Julia Whelan is an audiobook narrator who became an author, and her second book (which she narrates), Thank You for Listening, features a fun and heartfelt plot about the world of audiobooks. It’s super-meta and a good time. 

Best discovery of the month is Olivia Atwater (thank you @freckles-and-books for recommending her books!). I don’t normally like fae stories, but Half a Soul was just delightful. 

Since my life this year has been a quagmire of weird medical mysteries, it seems that all I do is stay home and listen to audiobooks. And, yeah, I’ve been getting through a lot of them. I increased my Goodreads Goal to 350. 

Goodreads Goal: 272/350

2017 Reads | 2018 Reads | 2019 Reads | 2020 Reads | 2021 Reads |

2022 Reads

#2022 reads #book reviews #book recommendations #books #booklr #bookish #reading #bibliophile

[westanthewaterman]

More Than A Fantasy - Engineer!Mark x GN!Captain 1/2

Rating: NSFW

Word count: 1400+

Contents: top engineer, bottom Captain, slight choking, hair pulling, unsafe sex

Summary: Ever since the Captain had set foot on the Invincible II, Mark has had a recurring fantasy that they are more than happy to help him fulfill. A.k.a. He fucks the Captain over the Main Console

AO3 - Masterlist - Two

Mark swears he’s been paying attention to what the Captain is saying, seriously. He’s listening to every word, really truly. Just…don’t ask him to repeat any of them. 

Okay, so maybe he’s distracted. Maybe he’s very distracted. Mark swears on his life that he had been listening in the beginning, but then the Captain had leaned over the Main Console, giving him a great view of their…assets and how was he supposed to keep up after that?

Since he and the Captain had become whatever they were, and honestly maybe even before that, Mark has had a single recurring thought, a guilty fantasy he can’t get out of his head. 

He wants to fuck them over the Main Console. 

Mark knows it’s crass and probably violates a million Board rules, but hey, the Board is in an entirely different galaxy now, so who really cares what a bunch of stuffy old farts have to say about proper ship protocol? Besides, the only person who could write him up for violating ship rules is the Captain and he doubts they’d care very much about giving him demerits for an infraction if he’s f-

“Mark?” The Captain peers over their shoulder at him. “Are you listening?”

He snaps to attention. “Y-Yes, Captain! Of course, I am.”

They squint their eyes, looking him up and down. “You seem distracted.”

“No, no, not at all. I’m hanging off every word you’re saying!”

“Really? Because I didn’t think a discussion on poetry audiobooks would be so…engaging.”

His shoulders slump and Mark’s eyes drop to the floor. 

“I might be a bit distracted.”

“A bit?”

“Okay, a lot. I’m sorry, Captain, I was trying to pay attention, really. My mind is just somewhere else today.”

“Oh? And where would that be?”

Blush settles across his cheeks and he shakes his head. 

“N-Nowhere important.”

“Really? So you haven’t been staring at my ass for the last ten minutes, thinking about bending me over the Main Console?”

“Wha-”

The Captain snickers. “Mark, you are not subtle at all.”

Mark hangs his head. “Sorry Captain, I know it’s inappropriate, I-I just can’t help it.”

“C’mere.”

They hold their hand out and Mark trudges over, refusing to meet their eyes. 

“Are you gonna give me demerits?”

“No, I’m gonna give you something better.”

The Captain presses a button on the console in front of them and the door to the Bridge closes with a woosh. Mark turns to look at the door curiously before they pull him down by the collar of his jumpsuit, smashing their lips together. He moans in surprise, hands shooting down to grip the console on either side of them. When they pull away, Mark looks at them with wide eyes.

“Captain?”

They cradle his face in their hands. “If you want to do it, we can.”

“B-But it’s still work hours!”

“Come on, we gotta break the rules every once in a while. Life needs a bit of madness.”

“Well…are you sure? I mean, you’re usually the one on top.”

“It’s fun to switch it up sometimes.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” He tilts his head, thinking for a moment. “Can I be a little rough with you?”

“I encourage it.”

As soon as the words have left their mouth it’s like a switch (ha) has been flicked, Mark gets a dark look in his eyes, one they’ve never seen before. It makes the hair on the back of their neck stand and lights a fire in their gut. The Captains wonders what they have just unleashed. 

Mark pulls them in for another kiss, one hand anchoring itself on their waist and the other tangling in their hair. They grunt when he tugs on the strands, white-knuckling the front of his jumpsuit. His tongue traces over their bottom lip before he scrapes over it with his teeth. 

Mark pulls away from their lips and presses open mouthed kisses down the column of their throat, tongue teasing against their skin. Once he gets to the junction between neck and shoulder, he sucks a dark mark into the skin there, laving his tongue over it to sooth the sting. 

“Mark,” they gasp. 

He smirks. “Yes, Captain?”

Mark’s puppy dog eyes are a contrast to the hand that has slid up to the zipper at the front of the Captain’s suit. 

“W-What has gotten into you?”

He shrugs, slowly dragging the zipper down to their waist and pushing the suit off their shoulders. Mark slides his hand down the front of their suit and his eyes flicker up to theirs. 

“Don’t tell me you don’t like it, I can feel that you do.”

The Captain doesn’t get the chance to answer. Mark’s fingers slip between their legs, stroking over heated, sensitive skin. They lean back on their elbows against the Main Console, watching where his hand disappears beneath their clothes. 

“I wasn’t sure you’d want to do this.” He licks his lips, watching the way their chest rises and falls with heavy breathes. He pushes his fingers further down, slipping two inside them slowly. 

They buck their hips up into his hand. “F-Fuck, why’s that?”

“Well, you’re the Captain. You’re supposed to be all about rules and protocol. But here you are, letting me fuck you open with my fingers on the Bridge.”

The Captain moans helplessly, grabbing the front of his jumpsuit and pulling him down for a rough kiss. They yank his zipper down and reach into his suit, wrapping their hand around his cock. 

Mark pulls away, not opening his eyes, letting himself get lost in the pleasure their slow strokes give him. Eventually, he pulls their hand off him and spins them around. Mark presses his palm between their shoulderblades and forces them over the console. 

He tugs their suit down over their hips, just enough to give him easy access to where he wants to be. 

“Fuck, you look better than I could’ve imagined, Captain.”

They squirm under his gaze, peering up at him over their shoulder. 

“Mark, please.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll give you what you want.”

Mark wraps his hand around his cock, giving it a few lazy strokes before pressing it against their entrance. He pushes in slowly, making them both groan. 

“Ooh Captain, you feel so good like this.”

The Captain presses their forehead against the cool glass of the console, fingers gripping the edge for dear life. 

“M-Move, please.”

“With pleasure.”

He pulls his hips back until just the head of his cock is still inside them before slamming his hips foreward. He sets a brutal pace, fucking into them with abandon. One of Mark’s hands slides up and gets a handful of their hair, yanking their head back. 

“You look good like this, Captain. Maybe we should do this more often.”

“Mark, fuck, don’t stop.”

“I don’t plan to.”

There’s a wicked smirk on his face as his free hand slips around to their front, rubbing over their sensitive skin and sending sparks shooting behind their eyes. 

The Captain has given up trying to hold back their moans and Mark snickers.

“Careful now. Just because the door’s locked doesn’t mean someone won’t hear us. It is still work hours, after all.”

The hand in his hair reaches down to wrap loosely around their throat, not applying enough pressure to cut off their oxygen but enough to keep them quiet. 

“M-Mark, I’m gonna…” 

“Already? Oh Captain you must be really enjoying this. Go on, cum for me. Cum on my cock.”

It’s like lightening a fuse. White light explodes behind their eyes and the Captain cries his name as they tense around him. Mark groans, the thrusting of his hips getting sloppy the closer he gets. He digs his fingers into their hips, slamming them back onto him. A few more thrusts and he stills, cumming inside them with a low, drawn-out groan. 

The room is quiet as the two catch their breath. Mark wraps his arms around their waist and presses his forehead to the center of their back. 

“You okay?”

The Captain nods. “More than okay.”

“Good. I’m sorry, I got a little carried away.”

“It was perfect, Mark, really.”

He pulls out of them slowly and turns them to press a gentle kiss to their lips. 

“Thank you for letting me do this.”

“Of course.” 

The Captain smiles and there’s something in their eyes, something dangerous. They reach up and pat the side of the face. 

“And don’t worry, I’ll get my turn next time.”

#engineer!mark x gn!captain #engineer!mark x reader #ego x reader #engineer!mark x reader smut #west writes #nsft #engineer egghead #engineer!mark x captain

[torotornottorot]

Books read in 2023:

The secret life of bees (Jan 6) 4/5 (probably would have enjoyed it more when I was younger. Great overall but still the mammy stereotype. Don’t like it when poc women are portrayed as ~divine creatures~ we are just normal people and we just wanted to treated like normal people. Nothing more, nothing less. Too flowery and cliche at parts but still good overall.) 

I’m glad my mom died (Jan 15) 5/5 (funny and thrilling. Reading this would probably help a lot of people with toxic parents think through their own trauma) 

Evil Under the Sun (Jan 17) 4/5 (simple and entertaining. Not a masterwork of literature but satisfying nonetheless. A bit slow to get started but great overall) 

The hunting party (Feb 4) 4/5 (found hard to get into it/get invested because of unlikeable cast of characters but stil high rating for unexpected ending. I was bored a few times in the beginning and middle parts but it really picked up in the end and made up for it. Would make a great movie) 

Sparkling cyanide (audiobook) (Feb 20) 3/5 (good to listen to while doing other work around the house. Probably not worth it to take separate time out to read) 

Last bus to Woodstock (Feb 24) 3/5 (hated the main detective and how he went about the investigation eg. relying on instinct and chance discoveries. But the side characters were super interesting and the ending was unexpected. Would have liked it better if inspector Lewis was the main character. No decent female characters. Only wh*res or the "shrill wife." But the crime itself was interesting and I liked the writing style). 

And then there were none (audiobook) (Feb 26) 5/5 (Omg. I was in thrall throughout. My favorite Agatha Christie book I’ve read so far. I actually thought there had to be a supernatural explanation lol) 

The dark remains (feb 26) 3/5 (not bad. Just boring. Can tell it was written by a dude. Not one interesting character despite being set in the gang world. Very cliche type of noir) 

The Falls (Ian Rankin) (March 1) 4/5 (great buildup but disappointing payoff. Loved the concept of the quizmaster. Very likable the main detectives and very interesting plot. Sustains you throughout despite being so long. But yeah. Didn’t quite like the solution to the murder) 

Wire in the blood (March 22) 5/5 (excellent. Gory but excellent. What a plot!) 

The distant echo (March 30) 5/5 (omg. If someone asks me what’s your favorite crime fiction book I’d say this one! Very suspenseful and unpredictable loved it loved it loved it!!!!) 

The Guest List (April 13) 6/5 (this surpasses the distant echo. This actually made me feel things. The amount of gasps I gusped could have powered the state of Texas for a year. Absolutely loved it. ) 

East of Eden (May 15) 100/5 (what kind of genius do you have to be to write such a book?  

In Cold Blood 4/5 (May 30) maybe bc I already knew the story, I kinda had to force myself to finish this 

Macbeth 5/5 (June 14) iconic 

Northanger Abby by Val Mcdermid 4/5 (June 17) fun modern retelling. Expected a crime and twist but it was faithful to the original. Enjoyed reading. 

Gone girl 6/5 (June 24) omg her mind. Will definitely read more by her. Wish I hadn’t seen the movie before so I could have been fully surprised. Liked the ending. 

The Pearl (5/5) (July 3) not a page turner but a good depiction of reality. Very sad. 

Age of Vice 3/5 (July 7) great beginning but I didn’t like the ending. I think the author tried to put too many stories and perspectives in one. That whole bit of Sunil was unnecessary? It just slowed the story down at such a crusial moment. And Sunny’s backstory with Vicky too. I don’t think it was necessary to have an unbelievably tragic backstory for every character and he already had his deal with his dad. Some things are never clarified like what happened to his mom, his true relationship with Vicky. Why Ajay agreed. Ajay turns out of be such a loser in the end. Maybe it’s “realistic” but lots of things that happen in this book are not realistic so I don’t know why only the ending has to be realistic. I wish I could have followed Ajay’s journey to a good ending. 

Milk fed 2/5 (August 12) only read bc of booktok. Good seeds here and there. didn't realy like it.

The club (5/5) (august 19) excellent, gripping. A bit longer than it needed to be though. 

The grownup Gillian Flynn (4/5) (October 19) great short story. Great writing. So engaging. Perfect length for getting back into reading 

Emma by charlotte Brontë and another lady (5/5) (Nov 2) love. Mr. Ellin needs to be played by Simon Baker in a movie. 

A room of one’s own by Virginia Woolf (Nov 11) (1000/5). This has been on my to read list for ages. I see quotes from this everywhere and every time I’m astounded by how she just she gets it and knows exactly what to say to express it perfectly. The essay was everything I imagined it would be. Forever grateful to that Destiel fanfic for introducing me to this. 

Villette (4/5) (Dec 29) lovely 

Girl, interrupted (5/5) (Dec 31) made me ponder about a lot of things. Her youth was really kind of stolen from her. Made to freeze just like that painting. what is the right thing to do? What is helping and what is hurting? What does “crazy” even mean? I think I tend to be very judgemental about this kind of stuff. But this book made me realize that people are people even if you do not understand why they act a certain way. They feel the same as me. 

#books #english literature

[djservo]

hiii it’s that time again! september wrap up and october tbr? do you go in for a particular vibe in the autumn/winter 🙇🏽‍♀️

IMO 🫂☕️📖 idk what came over me last month (especially since i was out of town/had nonstop plans for the past 2 weeks) but i got thru a lot more than i thought i would so i'm gonna put it undercut 💆‍♀️

black hole by charles burns

LOVED!! really cool body horror/concept - i really wanna try n incorporate a graphic novel every month bc i've enjoyed myself each time 🃏 u already know that i watched it follows the night of finishing this & it was simply the perfect wine n cheese pairing 🍷🧀

shoplifting from american apparel by tao lin

stupid and soulless LOL i went down the rabbit hole of alt-lit (like Theoretically) awhile ago & i guess this was my first real dip into it & it sucked ass but what else did i expect from a genre chock-full of pretentious pseudo-intellectual assholes from peak blogging era 🙄 IF i'm brave enough to sit thru sterile & self-important ramblings of alt-lit again, i'm sticking solely to women writers only ❌☝️

a carnival of snackery by david sedaris

his entries about identity/politics/the pandemic come off a little out-of-touch in a way i'm sure would put someone off completely if it was their first sedaris, but i was still struck by unexpected tenderness/introspection amongst the occasionally glib and smart ass sections - though admittedly, all of which are what got me to love & become a loyal reader of sedaris in the first place

happy go-lucky by david sedaris

i listened to an audiobook of this bc i'd never done that for his essays before & im so glad i did!! it's such a different & even more fulfilling experience to hear his voice/inflections/impressions and generally with essays/memoirs it feels more intimate, kinda like a friend recounting thoughts n memories to you. i need to revisit past essays, but i have an inkling that he's getting a little softer in age - particularly with how he talks about his partner (hugh) like i literally had to go back in book and reread an essay because i couldn't believe he'd gotten so sappy with no punchline 🥲

crush by richard siken

quintessential tumblr poetry moment... don't know what i could possibly say/add about this as it's already been beaten and gutted to death for years on here, but it definitely holds up beyond the more popular n quoted passages interspersed with like. gifs from supernatural or whatever else LOL

high school by tegan & sara quin

so cleverly done with each chapter alternating between them - for some moments i did wish i could've read the other twin's perspective, but i understand it'd probably be too repetitive. clea duvall is the perfect fit to direct this so i'm excited to see how things translate in the show!

the agony of eros by byung-chul han

i devour any ponderings on eros/desire/love/etc so this + a lover's discourse + symposium + a blunt... yeah

sigh, gone by phuc tran

probably wouldn't have finished this if i hadn't switched to the audiobook like halfway thru. kinda uncompelling and pretentious, maybe bc i didn't know of/necessarily care abt the author enough to justify delving into a memoir. i did love/resonate with the bit about his attempts to relate to immigrant parents, i just wish he'd reflected more on his own assimilation / muddled cultural ties rather than straining to connect everything to classic literature (which is kind of ironic now that i think abt it)

never be alone again by lina abascal

laughable... could've (should've) easily been a vice article or better yet a vice documentary (that way the interviews/references would've actually flowed nicely) but instead there are these clunky kitschy buzzfeed ass 'your bloghouse song according to your zodiac sign XD' chapters in between.... but whatever i had fun & gave it to a coworker who's equally & damnably nostalgic for this era 😐

natural causes by barbara ehrenreich

listened to the audiobook - morbid but necessary food for thought abt the wellness industry, moreso how 'wellness' has become so misconstrued to the point of infiltrating our basic understandings of life & death. healthcare myths we've been brainwashed to believe/never question, examinations of intrusive procedures/"cures" that do more harm than good - a little all-over-the-place, but listening to it made it absorb easier i think

corpus christi by terrence mcnally

learned about this play semi-recently thru a documentary (same name) about a theater putting on this play & the actors' experiences with religion/sexuality, THEN coincidentally came across david sedaris mentioning terrence mcnally in a carnival of snackery which was obvi a sign 📡 beautiful & heartbreaking in the way any/all religion&sexuality intersections hit - would love to see this live

+ 3 more since then but i'll save those for our october round-up (bc this is already so annoyingly long) :-)

i'd like to think i'm more drawn to fiction as the weather gets colder n i want something cozy, but i have a few theory books i really wanna sink my teeth into so we'll see how these last few months go 🤨

at the moment i'm reading the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde by robert louis stevenson & also checked out bath haus by pj vernon and the cabin at the end of the world by paul g tremblay (my sister and i saw barbarian in theaters & they showed this trailer & we were like 'omg let's read this together??' despite both of us not being big readers of horror or caring much about m. night shyamalan movies anymore LOL but i'm excited!) - so i suppose i'm doing a horror thing BUT it's also filipinx american history month so i'd like to incorporate that too! i finished up a jessica hagedorn book on my recent trip back home and i'm gonna try to squeeze in another, but i'll be out of town again the end of this month (🛌💤) so to switch up the tone i think i'm gonna take along global divas: filipino gay men in the diaspora by martin f. manalansan iv 🧳📚

#i feel like i watched a lot of movies this month too & i simply don't know how i made the time!! #this was such a bitch to type out on my phone my God don't let me do that again #asks #c speak #cheesehair #reads

[joe-moi]

didn’t go anon

So honestly… I did enjoy it. i’m not sure it’s for everyone, but I thought it was pretty good. He is the narrator of most of the book so that kind of makes it fun because you get a look into his mind. And I wouldn’t say it’s like scary or like so much a thriller it’s kind of like, it was going to be made into a movie either way. It’s not the best book I’ve ever read, but it’s also not the worst book I’ve ever read.

I actually got a couple of people in my actual life to read it after I did because I wanted to know if they also liked it, or if I only liked it because of the fact that I was imagining Joe Keery the whole time. And my mom read it and she also really enjoyed it , and she like couldn’t explain why she liked it, but she was like yeah it was just a good book.

I am curious to see what other people think about this though. Because I feel like there is part of me that maybe liked it for reasons that other people wouldn’t necessarily like it for.

My advice would be if you have Spotify premium listen to it. Don’t actually buy it just listen to the audiobook on Spotify if it’s there. And if you’re in the states get Libby because that’s free and I know it’s on Libby. And if you do have to buy it, buy it secondhand. All of my secondhand bookstores had it. That’s where I got it.

#🛼answers #anonymous asks #jk #☕️ 🎂

[fairydustedtheory]

hey Audrey! happy to see you back on my dash even with rwrb posts. I just saw your tags about the book club sort of event and it reminded me of all the events you blessed us with. i miss those days! hope you're doing better

Hey Nonny!

Yeah it me, disappearing for months and then coming back to reblog all the Red White and Royal Blue content. The movie made me feel things and I think it will go down in history as being a small step in me getting a little better, or at the very least as having given me a small bubble of air in the rest of what's been suffocating me.

Watched the movie several times, i won't divulge how many because uhhhh nope Been reminded once again about how I'm most probably on the gray-ace spectrum because seeing people thirsting over some of the scenes was again one of these times where i don't see things that way. to each their own. Went back to the book (though in audiobook form because i'm not there yet that i can actually ~read~ stuff, but hey the narrator of the audiobook is nice) Actually opened ao3 and listened to a podfic which was the one step i was trying to take for a while without having that one last push to do it. i am once again feeling very grateful for podficcers' art and their existence. It was nice to fill my head with things i actually enjoy instead of just numbing my brain with mindless reddit stories on youtube just to shut my thoughts.

For the rest, real life is impending doom, mental health is suffering and i'm barely hanging on by a very small thread. Basically... sort of drowning while i try to keep my daughter afloat. fun times all around.

Yeahhh the book club idea was a nice one, would have loved to make it happen back in the day but well. I haven't been around to check but i'm sure there are tons of events to keep fandom busy and happy. maybe one day i'll have the heart to check what's been done while i was away.

xoxo

#life update #personal

[idontknowiknow]

whenever i do the dishes after dinner and listen to a podcast i feel a lot like my dad

#if i do the dishes at another time of day the feeling is much less strong #also this is one of those things that for me is really specific to my dad but i know absolutely that million of people would do #i don't even listen to the same podcast #i did try the news quiz for a little while but there happened to be a transphobic joke on like the third ep i listened to #and i KNOW that the content isn't all that #and in fact usually isn't #like i heard it when dad was doing the dishes and it sounded fun! #anyway #yeah #maybe i'll do an audiobook sometime #although whenever i end up on this train of thought re dad dishes and podcasts in the evening #i remember talking to him when he had his back injury and a ton of time off work #and how he was like 'it's weird having so much time? i feel much less pressure to get everything in and make sure i'm wasting no time #i don't even listen to podcasts while i do things in the kitchen all the time like i used to always do' #i wonder if he resumed it again #i feel like he didn't but now there's bias in that i don't live there anymore #so when i'm visiting it's probably at least a little like guests are over #day in the #about my dad

[rimouskis]

okay quiet late-night grumpiness:

going to games with other people is genuinely so much better than going to games alone, but my friend said something to me that kind of caught me off-guard.

so they handed out those ads for the sid audiobook at tonight's game, yeah? on the escalator up, my friend asked me if I would listen to it, and I said I had and that I loved it. she hadn't realized it was out in full yet and I told her I'd really enjoyed listening to the whole thing and how I genuinely thought it was a really good piece of audio media, and she was like, "wow, I'm pleasantly surprised it doesn't suck."

and I was like, aha, oh, really?

she sort of played it as a "well, sid's not very charismatic" thing, and I was like... no, he's... good in the audiobook, he's clearly comfortable and gives some pretty good soundbites. like I compared it to the sp*ttin' ch*clets interview where he was VERY comfortable around his old teammates. she seemed receptive to it but it definitely lingered on my mind for a while.

this friend is what I'd call an ex-fandomer. she doesn't participate or keep up with fandom anymore, and she never was a content creator (which is definitely fine, and she's a very dear friend). but it's been something we've both noticed and sort of talked around... that fandom is a big part of my life and not part of hers anymore.

most of the time it doesn't matter, and sometimes it tips "in my favor" (she envies that I have a creative outlet, that's been something she misses a lot), but sometimes I get the distinct impression that she's forcibly tried to grow herself out of fandom (as a thing she felt she had to do/should do as a person who was growing older/becoming a professional/getting into serious relationships/whatever other "adultification" process she felt was personally necessary).

and I don't know if it's me projecting my own insecurities onto the situation or if I'm accurately reading it, but I've sometimes gotten the tinge of... you know, the "I'm too mature/too old to care about that stuff anymore" attitude. she definitely doesn't care about hockey as much as she used to, which is fine, sincerely. and she DOES still like it, and it's a fun thing we can connect over, and she's never once shamed me about how I spend my time.

but sometimes it's like, oh, here's a reminder that you're in a subculture that she decided to leave. and I think a lot about that these days, especially when talking to coworkers and nonhockey friends. I spend a lot of my time and mental space and creative energy in fandom pursuits, and because of the nature of them I can reveal some things (I'm a hockey fan!) but not others (I'm out here writing RPF about it!)

idk I think I just need the pandemic to end so I can go join some rec sports leagues and start rock climbing or whatever the other chickadees are into so I can build out my "socially acceptable" hobbies a bit more and stop putting too many eggs in one basket. also I'm sad that my friend left fandom before I really blossomed in it and really (imo) started getting the most out of my experience here. but: maybe I can look at this as an opportunity to find other ways to enrich our connection that make me a more well-rounded person and give us even more things to have in common

#pisces szn is already unbearable lol #someone: [twitches] #me: how can I wildly misinterpret this and make it an emotional problem I need to worry about/solve

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Into The Unknown, Part 6

First

Previous

Marinette woke up because of a whack to the face. So that was fun.

She blinked her eyes open and was met with a scowling, squirming baby.

She sighed and considered letting the baby squirm for a little so she could get another few minutes of sleep…

Oh. Right. He cried in the morning. An unfortunate thing to forget about.

She grumbled a quiet “fuck” as Damian started screaming.

“Tim, your turn.”

Tim grumbled incoherently and attempted to disappear in the plush mattress.

She considered kicking him to wake him up but decided against it. She was feeling nice that morning.

(Also, she figured that kicking a half-awake vigilante might end badly for her.)

She shrugged Tim’s arm off and then tumbled out of bed, baby securely wrapped in her arms. She laid flat on the ground, baby raised in the air above her like a less cute version of That One Scene from The Lion King. She squinted up at the screaming child, struggling to get her brain to function, and then sighed.

“Right, let’s get you all changed, huh? Clean diaper? Pretty new clothes? Will that calm you down?”

She really didn’t know why she was talking to him, she doubted the kid really understood what she was saying, but his wailing was starting to die down a little. She hoped it was because she was using her nice voice and not because he was straining his vocal cords.

She smoothed out his hair and then pushed herself to her feet.

After she had changed the kid’s diaper, she spread all of his clothes out on the floor in a loose circle (it kind of looked like an egg, but at least an attempt was made).

She set the baby down in the middle of the egg and stepped back.

He looked up at her, confused.

She motioned to the clothes. “Go ahead. Yakhtar.”

There was a few minutes where the baby continued looking at her, clearly expecting something but she had no clue what.

Then, finally, he looked around at the clothes.

He crawled over to a yellow shirt with a cartoon bee on it that she had paired with some black and white striped leggings and slapped it a few times. He babbled angrily at her.

… did that mean he wanted it or that it was out of the running?

… she was going to assume that he wanted it.

She picked up him with one arm and the outfit with the other -- something made very difficult by the fact that Damian was now slapping his little fists against her shoulder in an attempt to be let down -- and then started the process of getting the kid into the clothes.

“You know, he probably would have been fine with anything you picked.”

She glanced up from where she was trying to shove Damian’s pudgy little baby arm into a sleeve. Tim was sitting up in bed, legs crossed criss-cross applesauce and head propped on his hand. An amused smile played at his lips.

She rolled her eyes and looked back down at Damian so she could complete her grueling task. “Probably. But I’d just keep dressing him up in red and black and, apparently, he doesn’t want that.”

“Don’t know why. Red and black are objectively the best colors.”

“Totally,” she said.

Damian babbled angrily some more and attempted to punch her arm. She tried not to show on her face just how much it had hurt.

“I guess yellow is pretty okay,” Tim said, grinning.

“Eh. Yellow is like… the fifth best color. Green is where it’s at.”

Tim made a face. “Ew. Green?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not allowed to talk about what looks good. You had a completely brown suit for ages. Terrible, isn’t that right, Dami?”

Damian clearly had no idea what was going on, he was busy trying to help Marinette pull his pants up (he was accidentally pushing them down but it was the thought that counts… she was pretty sure, at least), but he nodded decisively.

Marinette turned her head away from Tim and Damian, lips pressed together thinly to keep her laughter under control, before she turned back and finished the kid’s outfit.

“See, Tim, even the baby agrees.”

Tim scoffed. “He agrees with everything you say.”

“Because I’m always right.” She leaned forward to nuzzle her nose against Damian’s with a bright smile. “I can already tell you’re going to be the best kid. Isn’t that right?”

Damian giggled.

~

Tim held the baby as they checked out at 10:55. Usually, he would try to be earlier, but… baby.

Yeah. That was all he needed to say about that.

(If you want to know: Damian had finally managed to succeed in his attempts to fall from a high place, effectively scaring the shit out of both of the teens who were taking care of him. They’d checked him over for any injuries -- it was more difficult than usual, they couldn’t tell him to clench and unclench his fists to make sure they weren’t broken. When they were sure he was okay they took a few moments to hug him and assure themselves that it was fine and that babies were flexible for this exact reason… unfortunately, this ended with the kid learning that falling from high places=hugs and was now, somehow, even more determined to do it.)

Marinette turned to him with a smile.

“Do you want to get the car or do you want to get the baby’s carseat?”

Tim thought for a minute before sighing. “Would you make fun of me if I picked out a stupid-looking carseat?”

“Absolutely.”

He rolled his eyes and handed off the baby like he was a baton in a very weird relay race. “No thanks. I’ll get the car.”

She grinned. “Probably a good idea. Right, see you.”

“Get some baby formula while you’re out.”

Marinette looked down at the kid, eyes wide. “Still?” Then she shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

He tossed the bag of diapers and stuff to her and, with that, they started off in separate directions.

He picked up a rental car from Enterprise. They offered the ability to pay a little extra to leave the car at another location. He doubted that that was in place for things like moving across the country but he wasn’t about to complain.

But, when he picked up Marinette and Damian outside the door and caught sight of the carseat she’d gotten, he absolutely would complain.

“Spiderman?” He said.

“Technically, he’s ArachnidKid, here.”

He raised an unimpressed eyebrow at her.

She had the decency to look a little sheepish. “He screamed every time I tried to choose anything else.”

Tim sighed and knocked his head against the top of the steering wheel a few times before turning around.

“I’ll deal with the kid while you figure out the thing.”

… or, at least, that was the intention. It turns out that baby carseats are… difficult. They’d pulled into a spot and gave Damian his stuffed cow and a phone to distract him and they’d gotten to work. There were two adults and two magical beings trying to figure it out and not a single one of them had any idea what they were doing. The instructions made absolutely no sense, they may as well have been written in Greek -- except they all knew how to speak and read Greek because of magic. But this shit? Illegible. It was like the written version of baby language. No one knows what was going on, he was beginning to think that the people trying to give them instructions didn’t even know. Tikki was puzzling over the instructions despite this, Marinette was having a breakdown, Tim wanted to be back in his world so he could punch someone, Kaalki was in the process of being eaten by Damian. It was chaos.

~

They were on the road. Marinette lazed in the passenger seat, feet up on the dashboard as she half-listened to the audiobook Tim had put on -- something about a kid who stole lightning or something (she didn’t see the big deal, it wasn’t like it was hard or anything). Tikki and Kaalki were using her headphones to listen to music. Damian had fallen asleep and was now peacefully sucking on one of the horns of the cow plush.

(He’d, apparently, dubbed the plush ‘Cow’. It was a fitting name, she supposed.)

Tim glanced over at her. “If we get in a crash you’re going to fly through the windshield.”

She lifted the cheap heart-shaped sunglasses she’d bought on impulse while waiting for Tim to show up out of boredom. Just so he could see how unimpressed she was.

“Maybe you should drive well so I don’t have to worry.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. She saw the speedometer drop a bit regardless.

~

They stopped for food pretty soon after they started on the road. Funny how quickly a day could go by, it was already noon.

They ended up at Carl's Sr., because that was what they had found first.

He bounced Damian on one knee absently. The kid wasn’t thirsty, it seemed, so they were just trying to keep him entertained while they ate. He didn’t know why they bothered, the kid was currently entertaining himself with nothing but a rubber duck.

Marinette nibbled the last of her sandwich. “I wonder if he can have fries.”

“Fy!” Said Damian, who had apparently learned that ‘he’ usually meant him.

“Well, he’s convinced me,” she said.

Tim rolled his eyes. “The book I read said that if you give him regular food he’ll realize ours is better and won’t go back to the baby stuff.”

“Good for him if he stops eating it. I got curious and tried it, it sucks.”

He shrugged a little. “He only needs to keep eating it for, I think, another year…?”

“Two whole years of that stuff? That’s evil. I’m giving him a fry.”

“Fy!” Said Damian again, this time slapping the table to punctuate the word.

Tim sighed and pulled out his phone to check that that was allowed. Apparently, despite the fact that kids can breast feed up to two years (or even longer), they can start with ‘table foods’ around a year. That made exactly zero sense to him but okay.

“... I guess that’s fine,” he said, eventually.

Marinette beamed and tore off a piece of her fry for Damian.

The baby was enlightened.

~

Despite the fact that they’d originally agreed to split the driving evenly, with long shifts so they could go straight to Gotham without any major setbacks, Marinette ended up doing most of it.

It turns out that Tim got car sick.

She didn’t say anything about it. He seemed embarrassed enough as it was, especially since Marinette and Damian were wholly unaffected.

It was… fine. She used the extra stops to get coffee each time. And, whenever it came time to feed or change Damian, she glared Tim into submission. It may not be entirely his fault that his stomach was protesting the car ride but it inconvenienced her so fuck him.

… she did feel a little bad, though, so she always held his hair out of his face and made sure to give him water so he was fully hydrated.

~

They arrived in Gotham and collapsed in the hotel bed pretty much the moment they could. They’d done hygiene stuff, of course, neither of them were eager to lay in their filth for the night after an almost day-long drive (there had been a lot of stops)… but once they had bathed and brushed their teeth? And cleaned up Damian? Straight to bed.

Tim had finished up first since his showers were quicker and he rested an arm around Damian to make sure he wouldn’t leave. He needn’t have worried, Damian was apparently just as happy as they were that they were in an actual bed again because he was in dreamland almost the second he’d touched it.

He closed his eyes and relaxed.

The bed dipped a little as Marinette crawled in and he let go of the kid so she could wrap around him per usual.

Tim hesitated here. He’d wrapped an arm around them before, sure, but that was different. That had mostly been a thing he’d done in his sleep.

After a few moments, Marinette sighed and scooted closer, tangling her legs with his.

He flushed red. “Uh?”

“It happens every night anyways, I’m resigned to my fate.”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or frown.

She opened her eyes a little and smiled. “Relax. Chat Noir is super touch starved, I’m used to platonically cuddling with people.”

He relaxed a little and hesitantly rested an arm around the pair.

Marinette nuzzled her face into Damian’s hair and closed her eyes again.

He smiled at the scene and started to close his eyes… but then Kaalki caught his gaze.

He gave a small puff of laughter.

“You know, I just remembered something.”

Marinette hummed to say she was listening.

“My power is the ability to create portals.”

“... god fucking damn it.”

~~~~~

Next

@nathleigh @peachmuses @unoriginalmess @hammalammadamdam @astrynyx @laurcad123 @927roses-and-stuff

#kaalki: i just wanted to see what it was like to drive in a car :( #into the unknown #maribat #timari #timinette #shutterbug #timmari #tim drake #red robin #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug

[bangtanfancamp]

∴ summary: After spending a gloomy afternoon  trying to get out of your own head alone , you finally seek out your boyfriend for help

∴ masterlist

∴ one shot

∴ pairing: Kim Namjoon x reader

∴ word count: 2k

∴ rating: pg-13

∴ genre: soft angst, comfort, established relationship

∴ warnings: oc is struggling with something akin to depression, it’s alluded to but not explicitly stated

∴ author’s note: this is incredibly self indulgent and was written in one go. I’ll edit later. I’d rather have it here to share sooner in case anyone needs it as much as me.

─────────────────────

“Joonie, what are you doing? Are you busy?” Your voice comes out small as you peak around the corner into his office, sweater pawed knuckles sneaking around the edge of the door frame.

He doesn’t look up at first. Perhaps you really were too quiet. Or maybe he’s just that immersed in his book. It’s not a cover you’ve seen before so it very well may be the latter. You know how he is when he has a new thing to get lost in. Ever your astronaut adrift, exploring the moons just beyond whatever new world he’s found.

He looks so at home now. Cozy in his den of words and letters. Perfectly domestic amidst lofty thoughts and paragraphs. His skin is mostly bare today, his coordinated tank top and shorts exposing a golden expanse of toned arms, long legs . They’re folded up and crossed, a little boy lost in wonder as he sits on his futon.

His hair is a warm chestnut this week, fringe too long around the lashes but too short to pull back. The way it refuses to cooperate when he brushes it out of his eyes, trickling silkily, stubbornly back into place, exactly where it wants to be, makes you want to chuckle.

He still hasn’t noticed you’re there. Too far gone in whatever his newest philosophy is to notice the way you study the dip of his furrowed brow, how it juxtaposes against the relief of his shadowed dimples, smiling even as he frowns. He finds so much pleasure in being studious— just for fun. No matter how much concentration it takes. You’ve always admired that about him. Admired everything about him really.

Clearing your throat, though you hate to interrupt him, you try again. 

“Joonie?”

 Somehow it’s even quieter than before, and as he turns another reverent page, you know you’ll have to physically intervene to interrupt him. You sigh. You hate to break the spell. He loves days like this—with the rain trickling down the window’s glass casting shadows on his focused face— he’s so happy to read when it rains.

He leans forward then without looking up to take a sip of his Earl grey, bumbling when the steam unexpectedly fogs his glasses. He laughs at himself, folding his book so it splays across the seat to mark his place and removing his glasses. It’s the first time he’s looked up. He spots you then, his face splitting into the smoothest “there’s my girl” smile you’ve ever seen.

“Hey… how long have you been standing there?” His voices comes low, warm, soothes something in you that desperately needs rest.

“Long enough to see you blind yourself with tea, it seems.” You try to smile back, but it’s a weak, floppy thing. Your cheeks can’t seem to commit so it falls a bit too flat. His brows pinch when he sees it. Something’s amiss.

“Hey… are you okay?” His inscrutable eyes analyze you, and you let him. Too tired to resist or put up a fight.

“It’s not my day, joonie.” Your voice is pitiful, even to your own ears. You’d normally wince at sounding like this in front of anyone else. But honestly, it’s okay. It’s Namjoon you’re with. You don’t have to play games or hide things. Not here. Not with him.

“Yeah?” His eyes catch yours as his palms rub the tops of his thighs. It’s an invitation. You know the gesture by now.

“Yeah… again. There have been so many of these lately,” you say, crossing the room to him, his arms unfolding to welcome you into them. “They come too often and stay too long. They’re terrible house guests. I’m tired of them, joon. I can’t seem to get rid of them.”

You’re scooped against him now, head on the space between his neck and his chest, fingers twisted into his tank top, bum in his lap, knees tucked up til you’re as small as you can get. There’s a broad palm of his on your back, fingertips on his other hand traveling the length of your arm in tender caresses as his cheek rests atop your head.

“Maybe we should start charging them rent. I bet even they can’t afford to pay that in this economy.” He offers the idea solemnly, fully committed to carrying out the metaphor that your mental health really is just an unfortunate airbnb plagued with hideously mannered squatters.

“You know, I love that about you, Joon.”

“My inability to pay rent?”

You nuzzle a sappy no into the heat of his neck,” dummy, your very real ability to never minimize things that are hard to me.”

The dip of his chest as he exhales is oddly soothing. It makes you feel like you’re being rocked and god if you don’t need to be cradled right now. “Things  have been really hard lately, haven’t they?” He wonders aloud.

“It isn’t just my perception?” You look up, eyes entirely too pitiful, too round to belong to a functioning adult. No, Namjoon’s heart goes soft as he realizes he’s looking at the eyes of a very scared four year old you. The haunted gaze of an innocent girl who never got told everything would be alright. Even without knowing any more than that, it makes him want to cry.

“No, my sweet girl, it’s not.” Closing his eyes, he presses somber lips to your forehead, scooping you close to shield you— from the world, from yourself, from all the insidious things that took root in you so long ago you’re not even sure how they got in. His wide hands grip you tighter, a feeble attempt to help hold you altogether.

It’s silent then. A few beats of quiet, only disrupted by the clumsy clatter of irreverent raindrops on glass. His caress stays steady against your soft sleeves, his languid fingers perpetually in motion as he attempts to soothe the wounds that sit just beneath your skin.

You look up at him again, unsure what you’ll find. 

You almost cry when you see the gentleness in his eyes. No judgment anywhere within them. Just something kind that stretches into the lines his eyes carve as he smiles. How you itch to gently peel his horn rimmed glasses off the tip of his button nose and kiss it. Bless him.

God, you don’t know why he’s so nice to you, but you’re so glad that he is. The smile you give back to him is wobbly, trembly, poorly constructed— but so so sincere that it makes your sad eyes shine. He bumps your nose with his, burying himself against your forehead as you cocoon into him.

You want to ask him what he’s reading, listen intently to him as he tells you all about it, but you know you can’t. You can’t decipher anything today. It all feels too heavy. You can’t carry the weight of anything new with hands already full. At this point, you’ve lived in this soft hoodie of his , the one you stole after his tour two years back because it smelled like him, for the past 3 days. You don’t even have the energy to change. With that kind of retention rate, seems there’s no point in asking your brilliant professor to explain anything.

Still, it’s always so nice to hear his voice. Especially with your ear to his chest like this. 

So you ask anyway.

“Will you read to me, Joonie? Life always feels better when you’re reading.” You press your face deep into the copper of his neck, an open mouthed kiss placed against his pulse.

“It’s all kind of theoretical,” he chuckles. He’s bashful. If holding you weren’t occupying his hands, you know they’d be nervously fiddling with the back of his neck. A nerdy boy with a too big brain hesitant to share his discoveries.

“Is it good though? You’ve already read Jung to me, and I stayed awake through that. I think I deserve more credit.” You poke his throat with your nose. You’re not genuinely affronted, it’s just nice to remind him you're competent too. Sometimes.

His sweet chuckle then is earthy and rich, all dark molasses. “True. You actually gave pretty good feedback for that too. Fine. Didn’t mean to underestimate you. Just… bear with me if it feels odd? I haven't read it before. I can’t vouch for it all yet.”

“Fine by me. I’m just here for the cuddles and my Kim Namjoon audiobook.”

He can feel your smile against his skin. It makes him press you just that extra little bit tighter against him, exhaling soft through his nose when he feels you return the gesture.

Scooping up his paperback, he adjusts his glasses where they’ve slipped down his nose, clearing his throat to project like the narrator he claims he’s not but loves to be. He’s quiet for a few more beats. You can hear pages rustling as you sink against his skin. You imagine he must be trying to find where he was when you interrupted, or perhaps searching for a passage that seems apropos. Which he chooses, you don’t know, but you can feel when he settles, just before his caramel voice sweetens the thin air of the room.

“It's the same with the wound in our hearts,” he begins. “ We need to give them our attention so that they can heal. Otherwise the wounds continue to cause us pain. Sometimes for a very long time. We're all going to get hurt. But here's the trick - they also serve an amazing purpose. 

When our hearts are wounded that's when they open. We grow through pain. We grow through difficult situations. That's why you have to embrace each and every difficult thing in your life.”

You aren’t sure when your eyes opened, not sure when they began to glaze over or when you started to cry. But you did. And you are. The salty things dripping down against Namjoon’s silken skin. Your sweatered knuckles try to knock them away, but to no avail. Your cheeks are still a wet mess and now his collarbone is too.

“Joon, what is this? What are you reading?”

“Oh… um, it’s— terribly long title but— Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart. Isn't that a mouthful?” his laugh is self deprecating, small, but still the most beautiful sound.

God, you hate how sensitive and soft you are right now. You don’t want to be sitting here at 4pm in your boyfriend’s lap crying over a paragraph in a book you've never even heard of before, but here you are.

“ is that… what the whole book is about ?”

“You know, I don’t know. I haven’t read it all yet. Jackson recommended it, I’m just now getting to it. Why - do you not like it? I can put this down. Read you something else if this is too heavy. You always like the poetry. I can grab that one anthology you like.”

You can feel as he starts to shuffle beneath you, eager to track down new reading material for you, afraid he’s scared you off, when the fluttering weight of your palm tethers him to his spot.

“No, stay. Keep reading. I want to hear the rest.”

You can practically hear him smile. Relieved. Can feel his dimples manifest without even trying. He kisses your hair, tilts your chin up to kiss you too. The complexity of bergamot and black tea making his supple lips even more bewitching than normal. The window in the corner is cracked open, the humidity it leaks in making your skin sticky as you lean against him.

He’s lovely like this. The rain soaked air mixing with his natural scent, a broad hand on your chin, warm thumb beneath your lip as you mold pliant into his kiss. He ends it with a peck to your lips, a tap of his nose to your nose, before hoisting you so close against him you just may fuse together.

And he reads. He reads until he’s exhausted. Til the rain has stopped, and you’ve drifted to rest pressed against the skin of his chest.

He folds the book shut once your breathing has stilled, his thumb marking the page as he tips you both to lay down sideways. As he extends his pinprick tingling legs for the first time in ages, you hoist yourself around him in your sleep like a koala, and he chuckles. That’s usually his move.

He kisses your hair then, traipsing fingers tenderly through the escaped bits of it that brush across your cheeks. He wonders if you know how madly in love with you he is. How often he’s wondered what he’d do without you. Today, like most days lately, your light was dim, but still kelvins brighter than anyone else’s.

He sends a silent thank you to whatever deity arranged things in such a way that he can hold you to his chest like this as the daylight saving’s darkness floods his studio office. You seemed so sad today, but he knows it won’t last forever. It’ll pass. It always does. He’ll just hold you until it does. And then some.

#btswritersguild #bangtanscenery #btswritersclub #btswriterscollective #kim namjoon fic #Namjoon angst #Namjoon comfort #Namjoon fluff #namjoon x reader #namjoon x y/n #rm x reader #rm x oc #rm angst #rm comfort #rm fluff #bts drabble #bts fic #bts one shot #kim namjoon fanfiction #my writing #bangtanfancampfics #my celestial husband #joonie #BTS fanfiction

[thekingofwinterblog]

An Easy Step

Steps and Stones

<Chapter 3 --- Here --- Chapter 5>

---

"That was SOOO cool!"

Marcy's voice was absolutely ecstatic, and as she watched her make the usual fist pumps, Sasha mused that Marcy's love for fantasy stuff hadn't really changed.

"Like… "You sent him to the sky to die, assassin… But the winds and skies are mine. I claim them, as I now claim your Life!" Ugh, so good!"

Sasha grinned, as on the screen the ending sequence of the Stormlight Archive played out, accompanied by its rocking Sabaton-like music.

"Well, if you think Kaladin was cool there, then next episode…" "Don't spoil it!"

Sasha grinned even more at that.

"Anyway, the next episode is as far as Anne has gotten sooo…"

Both girls looked up at a clock that Sasha had on the wall.

"Eh, it's fine, she should be here in about… 20-40 Minutes? We can wait, no problem."

Then, she began lightly patting her knees while looking around, all while wearing that cute, and energetic smile of hers. Man, that took her back.

"Man, I CAN'T believe I NEVER so much as heard about The Stormlight Archives before!"

"Eh, the Anime is pretty new. It hasn't even reached the halfway point yet."

"Yeah but… Like, these books have been around since 2010! You'd have thought I'd have at least heard about them by now, especially given how many fantasy stories I go through every year! But no I hadn't even HEARD of this setting before, and to think there's EVEN MORE stories in this setting than just the Stormlight Archive!" She squeed as she finished.

Sasha chuckled as she took another sip of Fanta.

Yeah, there were a lot of areas Marcy had changed, but the enthusiastic love she had for fantasy was not one of them.

As it turned out though, it was WAY more fun when it was Sasha who introduced it to her than the other way around.

It wasn't like Sasha had ever hated Fantasy stories on principle… She just didn't have a love of the genre in and out of itself like Marcy did.

Both then and now, she had plenty of stories she liked and loved that were fantasy stories… The thing though, was that in the old days, she had never really talked about them with Marcy. At all. 

She hadn't cared to do so.

To her, Marcy had seemed happy enough with their arrangement of Sasha and Anne tagging along with every single bit of fantasy stuff Marcy wanted to do, so why shake the boat? Marcy always went along with what she wanted to do, so shouldn't she, a good friend, return that by going along with Marcy's interests, playing the unenthusiastic dungeon master for a party of two, watching her movies, and listening to her go on and on about stuff she read and watched?

Even if it did not bring her any joy to do so, that was just part of being a friend.

With a bit more perspective and wisdom, it was so easy to see how both of them had been worse off by that line of thinking.

Marcy had felt like Sasha only humored her and her interest, and Sasha had just gotten so bored by Marcy's interests that she'd never thought that maybe they could have compromised and found some common ground that would have made them both happier.

"Yeah, well if you want more animated stuff, don't get your hopes up. Only The Stormlight Archives have gotten an Anime so far. And it's not even halfway done yet."

"Aw, man… I was hoping we could go through all of it together, and then I could go read the books."

"If you want, I could give you the Audiobooks. They're pretty good, though the guy who narrates the male characters is WAY better than his partner. The woman has no range when she does male voices. It can get really silly when you compare the same characters. Like Dalinar will have this deep, powerful masculine voice in one chapter… And then the next he has this attempt at a suave, calm, and collected tone in the next."

"Oh, ummm…" 

Marcy scratched the back of her head nervously. 

"Thanks but… I kinda meant I didn't wanna be spoiled by the text before I see the anime. If I read it all, then… Well, I can't really share a blind watch trough with Anne."

Sasha blinked. Then slowly nodded.

"Huh… Yeah, okay... You know… I haven't really gotten to do that with Anne yet. Not since high school anyway... Just go into a series together blind, and watch everything together."

It seemed like such a simple thing, that she simply had assumed she and Anne had done it at some point. But no, they hadn't. Not since high school.

Mostly their shared series lately had one of them introducing the other, then them binging it. That wasn't bad, but… Well, there was something special about watching something together with someone where neither knew how it would go. 

"Oh… Well, you guys have only been dating for a couple of months. Give it time."

Right. A couple of months. That reminder immediately put a damper on her mood.

After a bit too long of silence in the room, she finally asked something she had mulled over in the back of her head for about a week now. Ever since her and Anne's talk.

"...Hey, Mar-Mar? There's something I've been meaning to ask you..."

The black-haired girl turned to look at her, still wearing her usual, energetic smile.

"Yeah Sash?"

"Back in middle school… Before Amphibia… Did you think Anne… Had feelings for me?"

Marcy froze.

"Um… Kinda? Why do you ask?"

Kinda. So yes then.

"Well, because… Because she told me she did. A week ago."

Marcy blinked, then, rather than remain in that energetic pose, she instead turned, now sitting on the sofa cross-legged, and turned towards Sasha with a more… Worried? Concerned? Well, it was a much more melancholic look that the one she had just sported.

"Oh... Well… I thought so. I mean, I didn't KNOW if she did like you like that, but… I kinda assumed."

She then continued with: "I mean, it's not like she was completely blatant about it. Like… She wasn't you." like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"So… You did know how I felt about her then."

"...Sash, you signed up for the cheerleaders the day after Anne joined the basketball team, and the first time after practice, you sat down across from her while posing in uniform, and after discussing you guys training for a bit, you said…"

Marcy paused for a bit while she furrowed her brow, then continued.

"Actually I don't remember exactly what you said, but… Like it was sooo obvious that you were trying to pick her up with a line about jocks and cheerleaders being a really good romantic match."

"God… I remember that… And she just stared at me in shock. Like… I really thought I'd nailed it… Then she turned to the guys' basketball team, and then back to me, and just said "Um… If you say so Sash…" God that was humiliating…"

Marcy did not laugh, which Sasha felt very grateful for.

"Well… I did say that I wasn't sure… Like there were so many moments where it was so painfully obvious that you were into her, and she never responded to those… But then, on the other hand, there were these times where she'd just... Look at you while you weren't looking, and then there were times when we were alone and she'd just talk about you like… Well like a schoolgirl in love. Which… I guess that's what she was."

So… She really had seen it then. The way Sasha had not.

"So, I guess she was just really, really dense then…"

The memories of their first meeting in Amphibia came to mind. She'd been even more forward with that carriage, than that time with the cheerleader pickup line. And Anne hadn't picked up at it at all.

"Seems that way. To be honest Sash… Back when I moved away, I kinda assumed you two would hook up like… A year after I left, at most… Maybe two."

"Well… That's not a bad guess… If I had just had the guts to ask her back then, that's probably when I'd done it… But… Well…"

She waved her hand to the side.

"I just didn't think she was into me, you know? Like… Like you said, there were SO many times where I thought I made it perfectly clear what I felt about her, and she just… Never seemed to get it. Or wanted to respond one way or another…"

She remembered the feeling so, so vividly.

"Like… I eventually began to think she just… Wasn't into me you know. Or… That she wasn't into girls in general. That's one of the reasons I was just…"

She paused.

"Yes?"

She sighed.

"Well, to be honest, I was really afraid to just ask her. Just… Go over there, and put an end to it, one way or another. Like I should have done from the start…"

Marcy put her hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, don't feel bad. It worked out for you guys, in the end, not all romances do you know..."

Sasha expected from the way Marcy spoke that final bit, that she was going to follow up on that, but she instead just gave her that supporting smile, with those eyes Sasha still couldn't read entirely.

"Well… I guess you're right… I just… Well, I feel like I could have avoided so much heartache if I hadn't just assumed, and gone over and asked her back then. And after we graduated High School? I had this stupid idea that reconnecting with her would be this incredibly hard thing. Like… An immovable boulder."

"Then you tried to move it and it was like… A small stone instead?"

Sasha smiled.

"Personal experience?"

Marcy kept her hands supportingly on Sasha's shoulder, and her smile didn't fade, but her eyes went downwards.

"Yeah… Well… I've told you about Sigrid, right?"

"You… Might have mentioned her once or twice. Or twenty-four."

"Yeah… Well, I met her back then after we moved, back when my parents made sure I didn't have any contact with you guys."

Right. That period.

Sasha, Anne, and Marcy had originally been planning on making sure they kept in touch after middle school, even after Marcy moved.

They lived in the age of cellphones and video chats after all.

Marcy's parents had made damn sure that wasn't gonna happen though.

They had confiscated her phone, taken hard control over her pc, put hard limitations on what sorts of social media she was allowed to use, and frankly had gone to enough measures that Sasha was pretty sure they would easily have gotten into a real hot mess with child services if anyone had learned what they were doing.

All of it in the name of KILLING Marcy's relationship with Sasha and Anne, who they blamed 100% for Marcy running away.

She supposed that was a much, much easier thing to do than to accept your little girl had run away from home of her own choice and was responsible for setting in motion a chain of events that had ultimately led to a quarter of Los Angeles in rubble from an alien invasion.

Admittingly, even taking the extreme end result of her running away out of the equation… Sasha probably had been the perfect scapegoat to lay all of it on. The bossy, mean girl who had always gotten their precious Marcy into trouble, who they had never really liked to begin with.

It was not hard to imagine that despite Marcy's words, they truly believed that Anne and Sasha had been the real driving force behind what had happened, and Marcy had just been following her lead.

They had thus gone about removing what they saw as the toxic influence of Anne and Sasha from their Baby's life with EXTREME prejudice.

Whatever their reasoning, and motivations, it had had the same result. Their contact with Marcy between their 14th to their 18th years had been… Limited. Not completely cut off(Marcy had made other friends from who she could borrow PCs from at school) but sharply limited.

"The first few months I just… Well, I tried to just fit in, to varying degrees of success. Then she came into my life, and just… Well, I was really, really lonely, and she came in and just swept me off my feet like it was nothing."

Marcy's expression turned from that look Sasha wasn't able to quite define, into how Sasha had always imagined Marcy would look like if she was in love. Absolutely adorable.

"She made me feel like… I was everything."

God, she knew that feeling. That wonderful warmth.

"It was absolutely amazing… Well… For about 8 months."

Her face turned into a grimace.

"You remember the throne room in Newtopia? And how… Anne screamed at you? It was like that."

Ouch.

"That bad huh?"

"Yeah… Okay, so there wasn't a coup or anything like that, and nobody got physically hurt, and… Well… I hurt her Sash. BADLY."

Sasha blinked, the admission that it was Marcy who screwed up taking her completely aback.

"And after all of it… Well, I thought it was over. That I'd completely blown it. We spent two months where we both were on the verge of crying when we saw each other. It was absolutely miserable, like… Oh my gosh, it was awful, I was alone, no one to talk to, and like… I'd stand by the entrance to school each morning telling myself that THIS time I'd call out to her and apologize… And then I'd see her, and I'd just… Not do it."

It was… Weird hearing sweet and lovable Marcy talk about her screwing up like this, of her fucking up her own relationship, but… Well, she really shouldn't be such a surprise. Sasha knew better than most that Marcy was not better than herself in that regard. She was fully capable of hurting those who loved her.

Neither of them were perfect.

She also understood what Marcy was trying to say though. Extremely well.

"Like your voice just… Stopped existing as you tried to speak up, and your legs turned to lead every time you tried to move and go talk to her?"

"Yeah… Like that. I tried every single day to talk to her, and I felt like… Well like that. I also felt like… Well like going over and talking to her was an impassable obstacle. Like this boulder that could not be budged. And when I finally did it? Well, I fully expected… I thought she would slap me across the face."

The smile returned.

"Instead, she hugged me, and we both just cried together in the snow. It wasn't entirely smooth sailing from there on, I mean, her parents now absolutely hated my guts, and that continued for a long time, but the big thing? The "boulder" I thought was so impossible? It turned out it was just a stone I could easily push rolling down the hill."

Their talk was at this point interrupted by the arrival of Anne Boonchuy, and all that her arrival entailed.

It took a bit of time to get settled, but as the three of them sat down to watch the penultimate episode of The Stormlight Archives Season 2, Sasha pondered on her and Marcy's talk.

It was a nice talk, and it did help Sasha understand Marcy more, and yes, she got what Marcy had been trying to say about the importance of not letting fear rule your actions… But the overall point, that she could have talked to Anne at any point, and swept Anne off her feet as Sigrid had with Marcy, still remained.

She still felt like… Well like she wasted so much of her life romantically speaking. She was ecstatic about where she was now… But she also KNEW that she could have avoided so much… The heartbreaks, the one-sided pining, watching Anne hook up with two guys who weren't her…

It could all have been avoided if she'd just gone over and talked to Anne back then.

---

As the three of them sat down to watch the big climax of the second season of what was quickly becoming Marcy's favorite anime of the last 4 years, Marcy couldn't help but have her eyes drawn over to glance at Anne and Sasha now and again.

The way Sasha had put her chin resting on Anne's shoulder, the way Anne sat comfortably in Sasha's lap in a way that spoke of not only familiarity but a total trust in the other, the way Sasha’s arms had closed firmly but gently, around Anne’s waist.

It wasn't like she was jealous. Her and Sigrid could be just as lovey-dovey(Though neither of them were near as big cuddle bugs as Sasha), but… Having just talked to Sasha about it, the sight brought out some melancholy in her.

Marcy understood Sasha. A lot. She understood what it was like to face a point in your relationship where you were absolutely stuck. Like you wanted to move forward. To do something. To make the hurt go away and not have to go home and cry in your room.

But it seemed so impossible, that you just didn't think you could do it.

She knew that… And she knew the feeling of relief of learning that said boulder just… Disappearing. Rolling away down the hill.

Yeah, she knew that feeling very well. The breakup and reconciliation with Sigrid had been the worst time, but she'd had several others over the years.

That part was something that she and Sasha shared, though the circumstances were different.

But there was also something they did not share.

Sigrid had not been the first time Marcy Wu had been in love. Not even the second.

And unlike Sasha with Anne, Marcy had not been wondering if the person she liked back had liked her or not.

She had known.

She had known from the moment she saw Sasha in that cheerleader outfit, trying to lay the moves on Anne, that Sasha had eyes for someone else.

And if she had not just figured it out staring at Sasha and Anne talking that day, feeling her mouth suddenly dry up, she certainly had figured it out as the months went by and Sasha kept trying to get Anne to get it.

Marcy had known, down to her soul, that Sasha did not look at her the way she looked at Anne. That she never would.

Sometimes the boulder was just a rock. A thing that once you gave it a push, it just tumbled downhill under the weight of its own momentum.

But sometimes, it was not. Sometimes it was just what it appeared to be. A mountain that you could not move or budge… And you would just have to learn to live with that fact.

That would have been bad enough… But there had also been another, big romantic problem Marcy had had to face in middle school.

Namely that Sasha wasn't the only person she'd been in love with. Nor had there been a separation of time between her and Anne.

She'd loved both of them, just as much as the other one, at the same time.

That… Would have complicated things immensely, even IF she hadn't had the complication that one of the girls she loved was in love with the other one.

And then there was Anne… Marcy had known that Sasha would not return her feelings. That she only had eyes for Anne. But as for Anne herself? She had not known. There were times when it had seemed like Anne returned all her affection… But then she would see the way Anne would look at Sasha…

The way she'd blush when Sasha looked cool or suave, the way she'd instantly cheer up the moment Sasha touched her, how the two of them would just… Click.

The way she did not do with Marcy.

She hadn't known that Anne had been in love with Sasha. But she had thought so. She'd suspected it, assumed it to be the case. But she hadn't known.

Not until today.

Marcy was not bitter. She wasn't sad, or angry that her best friends had hooked up.

She was happy for them.

Glad that it finally worked out for the two women she loved so much, who'd been pining for each other for years and years, and that they had finally managed to find joy and happiness together.

But… There was a melancholic feeling from finally getting the affirmation.

That Anne HAD always been in love with Sasha. To know it hadn't just been her imagination, her mind seeing things that weren't there.

She now knew.

Sasha and Anne… Even back then… Neither Sasha nor Anne had ever wanted what she did… And that hurt.

[deathsmallcaps]

@boopboopboopbadoop Ok I borrowed this off the internet

One of the great things about TErry Pratchett (Pterry) is that he explicitly didn’t care if you pirated his book. He believed it was wrong for you to do it for other authors, but by the time the internet became big, he was the kind of author that, anything he wrote, would be published. So, if you can’t find any of his books in your local library system, then you can pirate them. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any online versions of the Science of Discworld books.

But anyways! As you can see, the Science of Discworld books are in Red, and there is … long list of books you ‘ought’ to read beforehand. And I kind of agree with it? But one of the nice things about Discworld books is that they’re framed with enough starter information throughout the whole story, as well as a very welcoming vibe, that you can jump right in and still understand a decent amount of information.

So if you just had time to read 1 novel before starting the SoD books, I understand. School is busy AND you have a very cool job, music, plus a bunch of friends and a boyfriend. I didn’t read the books in order either, I just read the ones I could get my physical hands on first, then the illegal audiobooks on YouTube (the book Pyramids is still there! It’s fun and it’s a starter book)*, and then I discovered the wonderful world of pirating online books.

1 novel method: The Last Continent (TLC) is a good one to do it with. The Rincewind Chronicles are good, definitely, but in comparison to Pterry’s later books, they don’t shine as much. However, TLC is a later book, and it’s pretty funny and thoughtful, so it’s a nice one to jump in. I can answer any questions you have and/or write a short explanation of what went on before it.

3 novel method: Moving Pictures, Interesting Times, then TLC would probably work. The first two are, again, some of his more early works, but you’d get a pretty good idea of what’s going on and they’re funny. You would still need some intro info though, because Interesting Times is pretty involved with the first two Rincewind books (you COULD watch the movie for those two, but it’s not good.) I would also suggest reading Troll Bridge before Interesting Times, because it’s a bit of a character study of one of the important characters. You can actually listen to a legal reading of it by Levar Burton (I love him)**.

Fun and crazy method: if you only have time for a (long) Christmassy movie in Springtime (lol), watch Hogfather***. It showcases the science of belief, the wizards and the new wizards (stodgy old Professor types, academics with their heads up in the sky and no worries for money vs. No sleep Grad students), a damn good storyline and some killer quotes. It changes very few things from the novel and won’t need a ton of explanation to basically get. You can also watch the Going Postal movie, it’s fun and well done but less related.

Sensible direction: Read the Rincewind chronicles. Rincewind is a man where things happen to him, he doesn’t do anything. But it’s written funny I swear. He’s hapless. Just keep in mind it was written in 1983 and the author was much younger and less far-thinking, so a couple things haven’t aged perfectly.

For example, he shows feminism by having a barely clothed warrior woman who is sex positive in the first (maybe second?) book. Obviously, it was cool at the time but we’ve moved past it now, with a need for more nuance. He exhibits a lot of nuance and forethought in later books (I adore Monstrous Regiment, it’s basically a whole book about Mulans, lots of kicking pervs in the balls and questioning why women aren’t valued enough) but he was trying to break into a genre that catered to white male fantasy at the time. So I excuse his first books.

So yeah! I would love to hear your thoughts if you take any of these directions, and answer any questions! The wiki is very good but isn’t perfect, and while my memory may be a little fuzzy, I can certainly try to help. And maybe this summer I’ll finally collect and read all the Science of Discworld books!

*Pyramids Part 1 Part 2 These seem to be a different video than the one I’ve listened to over the years so idk the quality

** Levar Burton Reads Troll Bridge. It’s melancholy but has a hopeful ending. Listen at your own emotional risk (I didn’t cry but I was a little sad for a bit)

*** Hogfather And Going Postal Part 1 if you have time. I think they’re on Prime or Peacock if you have those though. I couldn’t find a good link for the second part ugh

#Discworld #personal opinion of reading order

[attrociteas]

muse profile. 

real name : james f. jones single or taken :   he’s still single who’s going to give him a kiss!  abilities or powers :  he is like a wickedly good pilot, knows every sci-fi movie & book reference that you could possibly come up with, and he is a good dancer  eye color : gray-blue hair color :   dirty blonde-ish family members : he’s Arthur’s son when it’s convenient, again, by mutual arrangement. maybe would consider Canada a sibling? I don’t know this yet. rainer is his second dad or his mom or something pets :  cute puppy rn named spock something they don’t like :  his failed engineering/robotics dreams, sputnik, not understanding twitter memes, the cats musical freaks him the hell out, “reading for fun,” when his fav sports teams lose, stock market crashes hobbies  /  activities : he is trying to set up a home lab to study fungi, don’t ask me how he does it (answer: he has a lot of money), being on social media,  watching scifi movies, listening to cringe music and sometimes playing cringe music (he taught himself electric guitar and he’s not half bad at it), making friends with everyone or trying to, listening to audiobooks and podcasts, collecting stamps and model cars, cursed interior designing (*cough* jurtains) ever hurt anyone before :  well he tries not to ever k.illed anyone before : yeah animals that represent them : a dog, like a golden retriever worst habits : staying up past dawn, reading alien conspiracy theories online (boy YOU’RE the alien ...), idealizing his own worldview/values/etc, biting his nails when he’s stressed, gets petty when confronted about things role models :  :( .... after late 19th century? arthur kind of lmao. i think he thought amelia earhart was incredible sexual orientation :   bi king bi king thoughts on marriage / kids : nah  someone they love :  good question approach to friendship :  it’s quite easy he wants to be friends with everyone 🥰 so beeee favourite drink :  an iced caramel macchiato  favourite place to spend time at :  he likes being in busy places, so big cities are his fav swim in the lake or the ocean :  lake their type :   he literally likes anyone who likes him camping or indoors :  camping! 

#( headcanons ) #guest muse / james #this one was harder! #but fun