#no i did not buy it this whole entire collection is $500+ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

leiawritesstories · 9 months

Note

How about from the firsts list "first time defending them"?

CUUUUUTE thanks for asking!!

500 followers celebration prompt fills

Word count: 650

Warnings: dumb high school bullies, swearing, mild angst?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As she walked out of the classroom, Aelin slipped her earbuds in, tucked her head down, and focused on her footsteps, trying to drown out the soft whispers that followed her everywhere she went. Have you heard what she did? I knooowwww, it's so shady! Ugh, I just know she buys her followers, the dirty--

Enough.

She knew the nasty words were just rumors, just a bunch of stupid high school kids who didn't know what they were talking about, but they hurt all the same. And she knew she could never stop them; nothing she said would change the whispers. If anything, speaking up would only make people believe their wild, disgusting lies even more.

No words she spoke would ever convince the student population of Orynth High that Aelin Galathynius was anything other than a desperate attention-seeker whose stupid little TikTok was probably only followed by bots and creepy old pervs. She had that damn account as a way to escape her reality, but it had turned out to invade her whole entire life.

"Hey look, it's Aelinnnnnnn," snickered Chaol Westfall, a particularly chauvinist member of the football team. He was convinced that his quarterback status made him the king of Orynth High, despite the fact that he'd never come close to winning any kind of championship. "Gonna do a trend for us, Aelinnnnnnn?" He stretched out the syllables of her name, mimicking her TikTok username.

Aelin rolled her eyes, so beyond done with Chaol's bullshit, and was half a second away from snarking an insult or ten when another guy's voice cut in.

"You're just jealous that her little trends get a million times more views and likes than your shitty photos of your flabs, Westfailure," Rowan Whitethorn scoffed. "Y'know, steroids don't do shit when you don't actually hit the gym."

Chaol's face turned a surprisingly vivid shade of crimson. "How about I hit you, asshat?" he snapped.

Rowan set his backpack casually on the floor, rolled his neck, and cracked his knuckles. "Bring it on, Little Miss I-Lost-My-Virginity-To-A-Sock." Most of the people in the classroom, including Aelin, snickered, eagerly watching the drama unfold.

"Fuck you," Chaol grunted.

"You wish," Rowan smirked.

Snarling wordlessly, Chaol reared back and punched Rowan right in the stomach, just in time for the teacher to walk in and watch the quarterback punch the captain of the hockey team.

"Westfall!" the teacher yelled, breaking up the fight as soon as it started. "Leave. Now."

"B-but-but sir, he started it!" Chaol protested, stunned.

Mr. Vaughan, who happened to be one of the football coaches, folded his arms across his chest and glared flatly at Chaol. "Get your ass out of my classroom, Westfall. You're lucky if you're allowed to show your face at practice for the next two weeks." His glare only intensified when Chaol tried to protest. "Get. Out."

Biting his tongue, Chaol collected his backpack and hauled ass from the classroom. The class settled down, slowly dispersing back into their seats.

Aelin sat down in the seat across the aisle from Rowan and flashed him a grateful smile. "Thanks," she murmured. "You didn't have to do that."

"Yeah I did," he returned. "No jackass gets to talk to a girl like that."

"Chivalry? In this day and age?" Aelin mock-gasped. "And here I thought they said chivalry was dead."

"Maybe, but decency isn't." Rowan flashed her a boyish grin. "Oh, and I may or may not have asked one of my buddies to film that. He says it's already going viral."

Aelin had to clamp her hands over her mouth to smother her laughter. "Shit, I love that! I'll duet it to my account so it never dies."

Needless to say, Chaol Westfall became the face of every Orynth High meme for the next two years. Aelin called it comeuppance. And a little help from her good friend the internet.

~~~

TAGS:

@live-the-fangirl-life

@superspiritfestival

@thegreyj

@wordsafterhours

@elentiyawhitethorn

@morganofthewildfire

@backtobl4ck

@rowanaelinn

@house-of-galathynius

@tomtenadia

@julemmaes

@swankii-art-teacher

@charlizeed

@booknerdproblems

@chronicchthonic14

@earthtolinds

@goddess-aelin

@sweet-but-stormy

@clea-nightingale

@autumnbabylon

@darling-im-the-queen-of-hell

@llyncooljones

@silentquartz

#my writing #quick drabble #answered prompt #leia's 500 followers thing #aelin galathynius #rowan whitethorn #rowan x aelin #rowaelin #rowaelin fanfic #rowaelin fanfiction #throne of glass fanfic #throne of glass fanfiction #high school au

53 notes · View notes

blazehedgehog · 8 months

Note

Thoughts on One Piece?

I've told this story, but since Tumblr search is so awful, I'll tell it again.

The short of it is: I really wanted to get into One Piece. When One Piece started, pirates weren't really a subject you saw a whole lot of in anime. I thought Oda's art style was fresh and cool, too.

I did not like dealing with fansubs. They were kind of difficult to acquire (relatively), and at the time, I had a router that would absolutely crap its pants if I left a torrent running (it would have a firmware crash and all internet traffic would die until you power cycled the device). So the Kaizoku stuff was right out for me from the start.

I forget which came first, the 4Kids dub or Viz launching American Shonen Jump with their version One Piece. I think the 4Kids dub was first, because I remember being angry at Viz for adopting "Zolo" instead of "Zoro." Either way, I was angry about the 4Kids dub, but I was lucky enough to pick up the entire first 12 months of Shonen Jump, and figured that's where I'd start with One Piece.

Didn't have the money to keep buying new Jumps past that first year, so I figured I'd have to slum it with scanlations at least. I believe I left off in the back half of Baratie, and the only scanlations I could find from that part of the manga were like, truly awful quality. I have described them as "third generation Yahoo Groups quality scans." They were dark, blurry, heavily compressed, and the dialog was barely a step above an automated machine translation. I almost wish I could find them again, because it was nasty.

Around this time I think Funimation announced they wrestled the rights to One Piece away from the decaying hands of 4Kids, so I was happy to wait for that. We subscribed to Netflix in those days, the original DVD-by-mail service, so I'd rent each new set as they came out. Got all the way up through Baratie, up through Arlong Park, up to where they visit and prepare to leave Loguetown.

I think by the time the DVDs hit the fifth set, I ran into a problem: physical rental locations like Blockbuster had hard rental deadlines. You had to bring the disc (or tape) back in a day or two. Netflix, famously, had no rental deadlines. Keep things as long as you like.

While I had no trouble getting 1-4, some clown got set 5 before I could, and sat on it. For over a year. I complained to Netflix, and Netflix just shrugged at me.

Within a year or two of that, Funimation officially launched a One Piece website, like my memory is saying it was onepiece.com or something (which it isn't, that's a clothing store), but the point was they were announcing they were going to simulcast subs of the anime, for free, on this site. They were also adding dub episodes to this site, again, to stream for free. Back then, this was pretty unprecedented. Hulu was only a few years old at this point.

I figured: wow! Now's my chance! Go to check the website and...

The free episodes ended at the exact same point I left off at with the Netflix DVDs. Episode 53. It went from Dub Episode 53 straight to Sub Episode 230, which is where the simulcast began. Looking at Funimation's current site, this is what they consider "Season 1."

So I earmarked it. "Maybe I can finish it some day."

Some day never came. One Piece is over 1000 chapters (100 volumes) and 1000 episodes. There is over 430 hours of One Piece available to watch. The manga is so big people have talked about it taking up an entire shelving unit. I even saw photos once of somebody who had their shelf break because their One Piece collection was so heavy.

It took me over a year to read 16 volumes of the original Dragon Ball. There are almost ten times as many volumes of One Piece.

I have given up. I will never read it. Never watch it. Never see it. It's great that it's this amazing thing, truly this long journey, but even at 500 chapters it would have been too much.

Even if I wanted to, it's grown to be such a thing that when something happens in the anime or the manga, there are instantly spoilers for it all over the entire internet. 107 volumes of that is pretty disheartening.

I know about One Pace. One Pace is still too long. Some of those videos are over 20 hours. For a single video. And One Pace still has gaps in their coverage anyway.

It's just not happening.

#questions #Anonymous #one piece #anime #manga #funimation #viz #4kids #ichiro oda

5 notes · View notes

aemoglobin · 1 year

Text

watched half of a manga collection organizing video and got overwhelmed with resentment towards the past!me who decided it was a great idea to let some ungrateful kids have pretty much her entire manga and shonen jump collection

like i gave up two boxes of manga and magazines to my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s stepsisters because they were in their manga phase. i didn’t even get a ‘thank you’ card.

on one hand i DID need to downsize, and a lot of those series i wasn’t reading or enjoyed having, so i was glad to see them gone so i could start over. on the other hand oh my god i want my naruto manga and my shonen jump magazines back soooooo badly. on a third hand i really hope those girls treasured what i gave them because it represented hundreds of dollars and years of investment lol. on my fourth hand there was no way i could have kept all of those manga volumes AND moved out from CA to WI......so it was better to have given them to some kids who would enjoy them even if that enjoyment was momentary. like it was that, or i would have donated the entire collection to a local library.

so now i have only one box of manga that hasn’t been unpacked in years, and it’s most of the series i DID enjoy enough to keep + the BL volumes i obviously wasn’t going to give to a 12yo lmfao. i have some of these out on my bookshelf but it’s not Enough room for the whole collection i still have.

i am taking it slower with collecting manga now. putting more thought into the series i want to buy, etc. the thing that stops me from preordering every series i like is the fact i have nowhere to put any more volumes unless i buy more shelves, and i don’t want to do that because if i end up moving again any time in the next 5 years it’s gonna be THE biggest pain to get everything packed and transported. i don’t know how people with 500+ volume collections do it. maybe they’re homeowners. who knows!

#rose idol chatter

2 notes · View notes

stories-from-peter · 2 months

Text

A Trip To India

I had the opportunity to travel to India on business. It was an interesting and exciting trip in spite of Air Canada losing my baggage on the way to India and then again when I returned home.

I found some time to take a few pictures early in the morning before work. I also had one Sunday to do some touring around the city of Hyderabad. The people I was working with kindly gave me and Max, one of my colleagues from Kodak, a car and chauffeur for the day.

We spent an hour or two at a Hindu temple which did not permit cameras, cell phones or shoes. It was made entirely of white marble except for a very tall pole that was covered in gold. The temple included some carved panels depicting other religions which included some quotes from the sacred texts of each.

We toured a museum which contained the collection of just one person. The collection was contained in 20 or more rooms with each room devoted to a different subject. One room was filled with collections of toy soldiers that dated back several centuries. The other rooms had collections of various ancient artifacts from clothing to weapons.

The most interesting place for me was Charminar. Completed in 1591, Charminar is Hyderabad's most famous landmark and takes its name from the Mosque of the Four Minarets. Charminar is flanked by arches on all 4 sides, each arch with a main road running through it. Each minaret is almost 50 meters high and the mosque is 20 meters long on each side.

When we reached Charminar we were besieged by beggars as soon as we got out of the car. A little boy came by and chased the beggars away and told us not to give them anything. He asked where I was from. When I told him I came from Canada he said "Canada, hockey!". He asked if I could speak French and we chatted briefly in that language before he switched to Spanish, German, and then Italian. He lost me after the French but he did take the time to teach me how to say "I have no money" in Hindi. He told me his name was John, he was 8 years old, and worked at the market every Sunday selling cheap pearl necklaces. He told me his father had a bad heart and wasn't able to work. He said he had a younger brother who wasn't old enough to work there yet. I thought John wasn't old enough to work anywhere.

John stayed with us the whole time we were in the market at Charminar. I asked him where I could buy a bag so I could carry all the items I bought in India back home with me. He introduced me to a bag seller he knew. I picked out a Samsonite duffel bag and asked how much it cost. The vendor told me 500 rupees, which is about $11. Before I could agree on the price John whispered to me not to pay more than 300 rupees. After a bit of haggling we settled on 300. Once I had the bag in my possession John said it was too bad I wasn't Indian because I could have had it for 100 rupees.

There was one beggar girl who was quite pretty and I wanted to get a picture of her. She followed us around the market and asked me for money almost non-stop. Each time I raised the camera to my eye she turned away. I offered 20 rupees in exchange for a picture but she refused each time I asked. She didn't notice that I was taking pictures of her the whole time. I held the camera up to my chest with one hand and pressed the shutter release with my thumb. I didn't know if any of the shots were worth keeping so I still wanted a picture with her standing still so I could compose it properly. Eventually she figured out I wasn't going to give her anything until I got the picture I wanted. I got a few shots of her looking right at the camera. One of them looks just like one I saw in National Geographic many years ago.

Before we left the market I told John I would like to give him something for helping us. He wouldn't accept my offer of 200 rupees but he did accept 100 for a small pearl necklace. I insisted on giving him something for his kindness and help. He finally agreed to accept some Canadian money as a souvenir. I gave him a Canadian $5 bill. I thought he probably would accept something with a small number on it.

Hyderabad makes Vancouver look like a ghost town. I could not believe the masses of humanity jammed into every part of the city. Officially the population of Hyderabad is 9 million but our hosts told us the area around the city has about 60 million people. The local newspaper that we were working for has a circulation of 11 million and a readership of 44 million. One thing that is very noticeable is the absence of women. The vast majority of people on the street or working in the shops and restaurants are men and boys. I assume the women and girls are working at home.

It is a pity that more women are not visible because they are exceptionally beautiful, especially when wearing the traditional sari. Saris are still the most popular clothing for women with a few of the younger ones wearing jeans. I can't imagine more beautiful, elegant, or feminine attire than a sari. They come in a wide variety of styles, usually in bright colors, often with patterned stitching or brocade. In North America it would be like seeing most of the women wearing evening gowns.

When our work in Hyderabad was done our hosts flew us to Visakhapatnam on the Bay of Bengal to set up another newspaper printing plant. We stayed at a very nice hotel they own called the Dolphin. The hotel takes its name from a local geographical feature called the Dolphin Nose. The city is very similar to Vancouver in size and geography. The population is about 2 million and the city is sandwiched between mountains and the ocean. There is a natural harbour there which is the main reason for the city existing in that location.

Our guide for the trip to Visakhapatnam was Mahender who arranged for us to have a tour of the city including the beach. I made sure to get my feet wet in the Bay of Bengal. There is about 60km of beach along the bay but very little development. The entire length of beach that we saw was mostly deserted. Most of the land beside the beach seems to be used for grazing or not used at all.

I walked around Visakhapatnam every morning taking pictures. The market area is spread over a large area with each street devoted to a different commodity. One street has only coconuts for sale, the next only lemons, another has bamboo, others have wood or fish and several streets have only bananas.

Everywhere you go in India you see the famous sacred cows. In most places they are not very common but in Visakhapatnam I came into close contact with them every morning. On one of the banana streets I had to dodge several of them heading in the opposite direction. I was walking down a narrow path between the piles of bananas when I noticed a set of horns attached to large black beast coming toward me. I was hoping I didn't get snagged on a horn by accident and squeezed myself against a pile of bananas. Luckily I was able to get a couple of shots of the cattle as they passed by. The sacred cows are free to wander wherever they please. I saw them in busy intersections and standing in the middle of a crowd at a bus stop.

I was happy to discover the people of India are as camera friendly as the people in the Philippines. I had many of them ask me to take pictures of them or their friends and I always obliged. The mini-taxi drivers always want me to take pictures. Most people take it as a compliment when I take a picture of them. I took some pictures of a family buying a snack from a street vendor. The father actually stepped back so I could get a better shot of his wife and daughter. In North America people seem to feel taking a picture is an invasion. I have almost given up on photographing people at home unless they are friends or relatives.

I had one last adventure before leaving India. Mohan, one of our gracious hosts, took me and my colleague Max shopping for the third time on the way to the airport. Max and I bought some handicrafts at a store that looked more like an art gallery. Mohan's colleague, Mahender, met us at a sweet shop and bought us some candy to take back and share with the folks back home. After we left the sweet shop Mahender took Max and me to the airport.

Max and I started repacking our bags inside the airport to try and fit all the things we bought into the limited space in our bags. I had to be very careful packing some delicate carvings and jewelry. As we were busy packing a very large military man carrying a machine gun walked up to us. He said "Who is Mr. Peter?" I guessed he meant me and we marched out of the airport together. I was relieved to see Mahender in the crowd, waving a package and saying we left it on the seat of the car. I asked Mahender NOT to send a man with a gun next time.

#India #sacred cows #sari

0 notes

studioet · 1 year

Text

Sounds of the Studio - The Vinyl Sessions

I was born in the 1970's and discovered music properly in the 1980's. The music format of choice for the general populous was vinyl, but in time that became displaced by tapes (thanks largely to the walkman), and then CD's. Then for a long period of time CD's dominated and people dumped their vinyl collections in favour of the "purer sounding" CD.

The internet launched, Apple created iTunes and the MP3 was created, and Napster and piracy went into overdrive with no barrier to distribution. And while people were not prepared to pay for music, they would pay (or at least accept hearing the odd advert) for convenience and so in the late noughties the streaming services came into existence and within a short decade ha dcompletely turned the music industry on it's head once again.

However, music and the music experience had along the way become commoditised and somehow less valuable. Along with immediacy and the algorithims, the investment in time, and the emotional attachment to music had become diluted.

But then something strange started to happen. Vinyl sales started to grow. People had begun to realise that the detahcment from the music came from the format of delivery and wanted to reconnect with music like they used to. And whole sales are still dwarfed by the hayday of the 70's and 80's, Vinyl sales have overtaken where they were at the tail end of the 1980's when the CD revolution had really begun.

Why this brief (and perhaps slightly inaccurate) history lesson? Well despite working for the big green streaming machine for 7.5 years and having a wonderful experience working there, I recently too found myself identifying my detachment from music. I've come to learn that my relationship with music has become far less deep and invested than it used to be. I think it's because I finally have a place where, away from the maddening crowd of the bustling home life, I have this sanctuary and the opportunity to once again bask in music.

I have my original Arcam 7R amp from the 1990's and have reclaimed my Denon-835 CD Player from my parents who no longer use their stereo, but as much as I enjoyed listening to CD's again, there was something missing that I couldn't quite put my finger on (at least until I heard what it was I wasn't hearting) and started to research turntables.

Purchasing turntables is a risky affair because if you're not careful you can either blow the budget entirely on the initial purchase, or you can end up in a never-ending cycle of upgrades which just blows your budget over time instead.

So I set myself a ballpark budget of "up to" £500 and started my research which honestly whittled the chpice down to 2 turntables. The Rega Planer 2 and the Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Evo.

Reading the reviews it felt like the Rega got better reviews when it came to sound quality, but there were significantly more stories of the turntable breaking and requiring fixing that really stood out, so product quality was a concern for me.

Additionally, the need to change the drive belt to switch from 33 to 45 seemed like a hassle I wanted to avoid, especially as I did plan to be buying a few singles as part of my collection.

The Rega also came with a lower spec cartridge which would mean an upgrade was on the card sooner rather than later, whereas the Pro-Ject came with the Omron Red cartridge which seemd, from the reviews, to be a perfect starter cartridge that might have more life then the unit that came on the Rega deck.

The final straw was the fact that the Pro-Ject deck comes in many different colours and finished (matt and gloss) and since I was keen for the deck to stand out a little, I felt myself leaning to the Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Evo in Satin Blue.

The deck was a breeze to put together (even for a luddite like me) as I was able to follow the clearly laid out illustrations, and it really looks the part.

The first vinyl I bought was "Is this the life we really want" by Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd fame. What was immediately apparent was the breadth and depth of the musical soundscape that the vinyl offered over the streaming service, and even over the CD.

Putting the album on all 3 sources and then switching between the sources on the amp was really eye ear opening. The vinyl sounds lush and it breathes and immerses you in a way that streaming or the CD simply don't.

In this video I start with Vinyl, more to CD and then finally onto the streaming service. It's certainly clear to me in reality. Not sure how this transposes through my mobile phone recording but here we go anyway.

This isn't a review of that album as I'll be reviwing the albums and singles I buy on vinyl and reviewing them seperately.

Anyhow, I’m now firmly committed to the vinyl world and really enjoying rediscovering how music can make me feel.

#vinyljunkie #vinyl records #vinylcommunity #music #vinyl #vinylove #vinyllover #pro ject #turntable

0 notes

karliahs · 3 years

Note

hello! this is over 500 words, i hope you don't mind. i just like this whole part so much i couldn't cut it XD if it is a bother just cut from the end until it's 500. love you!

Tim had always noticed people, collected little details about them in his head whether he intended to or not, but he thinks his observations used to be about happier things, though it’s hard to remember exactly how he was, how he felt, before - it wasn’t the kind of thing he ever tried to memorise, the kind of thing he ever thought he could lose. Now he finds himself taking note of the coworker who comes back from their lunch break with faint puffy red marks around their eyes, or the older guy who checks his phone with something like dread in his eyes. Danny would have called it his older brother instincts (but what good did those instincts do him? ).

Tim blinks back to the present, realising he’s been pushing a napkin over the same spot of floor for a while now. Jon offers him a hand up, though he braces himself on the bar with his other hand before he does. Tim takes care not to let Jon take too much of his weight as he’s hauled back up.

“Ah, thank you. And apologies, again,” Jon murmurs, gesturing awkwardly at Tim’s lightly-beered clothes.

“Happens to everyone,” Tim says easily. Jon still looks lightly anguished, and Tim silently wishes this could have happened to someone else, someone with the confidence to laugh it off. “I’m always convinced I’m going to drop something when I go in the silent study bit of the library,” Tim offers.

“Ah...that worry hadn’t actually occurred to me,” Jon replies, solemn enough that Tim can’t really tell if he’s joking.

Tim finger-guns. “Any other anxieties I can stir up while you’re over here?”

“I’m quite capable of stoking my own neuroses, thank you.”

Jon glances over his shoulder at the tables the rest of the department are occupying, perhaps doing the same thing as Tim and trying to psyche himself up for some more hollow smalltalk. Tim notes that his jacket seems slightly large on him, but in a way that kind of works. The collar of his shirt is slightly out of place beneath it. There’s a lump forming in Tim’s throat, even though nothing is happening - nothing but standing close to someone, noticing the little signs that they’re real and alive entirely independent from him. He’s aware, as he always is, of the hollow pit in his stomach, pain ebbing and flowing but never gone, new flares thrown off from a familiar wound, now pulsing with a kind of loneliness. All this, just from standing close to someone and trying to make them feel better about a mistake that didn’t matter.

“I...might go out for a smoke,” Jon murmurs eventually.

And here’s where Tim could say sure, wave him off and go back to moping, buy everyone an obligatory round, flex his meaningless chat muscles and be home by half 9. “Mind if I join you?” he asks instead, and to his surprise Jon nods immediately, as if he’d been hoping Tim would say that.

They duck outside to find dark clouds have given way to an anticlimactic drizzle. They stay close to the pub, shielded from the rain by the slight overhang of the roof. Jon fumbles with a lighter and Tim finds his gaze drifting over the rain-slick streets. It’s been a while since he’s been...anywhere, really, other than work and his flat. Longer than he can remember since he was outside in the never-quite-dark of the city.

Despite himself, Tim finds himself admiring the buildings across the way, modern painted shop-fronts on the ground floor giving way to weathered brick and occasional stone carvings above. It was the first thing he’d loved about London, how you only had to look up to catch a glimpse of its history, and it almost wounds him all over again, that that love isn’t gone too. It would be easier if he was just one thing, all the way lost. It would be easier if he didn’t still love the world that killed Danny.

Jon lights his cigarette, and silently holds the lighter out to Tim. Tim shakes his head, and Jon doesn’t question him about why he’s come out here if he doesn’t smoke. Doesn’t press about the way Tim must be looking; he knows he’s never had much of a poker face. Danny tried to teach him poker, on a visit home from uni; Tim left for six weeks and came back to playing cards and strategy guides everywhere - his brother, who never sit still even in his own head -

“Where were you, before this?” Jon asks. Tim wouldn’t have pegged him for a smoker, but he looks immediately more relaxed with a cigarette in his hands. Nice hands, too. It would be easier, if he didn’t-

“Publishing,” Tim answers, before he can drift again. He wants to say more, to make sure this undemanding presence isn’t going to leave his side, but his throat is still tight. “You?”

Jon frowns, as if debating something to himself, then gives a tiny rueful smile. “Tesco.”

Tim grins. “Was it a haunted Tesco?”

“Only by customers,” Jon replies, dry as bone.

from: please leave a light on when you go

HELLO, this is 1000 years late and for that i apologise!! i absolutely do not mind that it is over 500 words. tbh i'd do these for whole fics if enough people were interested!

i think i've talked about my tim just genuinely loving people in general feelings in another one of these answers, but it continues to be true. makes sense to be for a character demonstrated to be both smart and gregarious. i also wanted to muse on how formative traumatic events both change us and don't - tim still cares about the people around him, but now he's unconciously looking for pain

i am not immune to older brother tim feelings...i am especially not immune to them being directed at jon...

part of the reason pre-series jontim is so fun is thinking about what would draw these two together. one answer is that i imagine jon as someone who would want/need a particular kind of consideration from those he's friends with, and i imagine tim as someone who's very good about noticing what people need and working around it without it being a huge thing

i was surprised that dyspraxic jon is not already a tag! or even just 'dyspraxia' does not seem to be a tag. i've read a lot of good fic involving various mobility issues for jon and this is a hc that i think makes sense (and that i hope i portrayed sensitively)

apparently the only tims i write are just regularly dissociating. i have no justification for this except that grief is really good at displacing you from time and also it's a convenient narrative device for dipping in and out of internal monologue

“Ah, thank you. And apologies, again,” Jon murmurs, gesturing awkwardly at Tim’s lightly-beered clothes.

“Ah...that worry hadn’t actually occurred to me,” Jon replies, solemn enough that Tim can’t really tell if he’s joking.

Tim finger-guns. “Any other anxieties I can stir up while you’re over here?”

“I’m quite capable of stoking my own neuroses, thank you.”

lifting tim's fear here directly from my uni days. quiet libraries...so good at making me feel like i'm about to start emitting 1000 noises (i now work in a library but it's not a quiet one so we're mostly good)

jon who is jokes in a v specific deadpan way that a lot of people don't get...a good headcanon

trying to inject the right amount of slightly awkward formality into jon's dialogue is hard but fun...that last sentence i think i thought about a lot even though it's a short/simple thought. gotta make it sound like a short/simple Jon thought

another reason they would like each other right off the bat - banter

jon in big jacket...as the kids say, hot jon rights

i've also talked about this in another one of these but man. the little details that make it feel real that someone is there close to you. when you are lonely the reality of other people right there just out of your reach suddenly drives home

"a mistake that didn't matter" tim is always thinking about the mistakes that did matter :(

“I...might go out for a smoke,” Jon murmurs eventually.

i think jon here is like i think i am enjoying talking to this person but on some level would be relieved to stop, so i will take a punt as to whether or not he is also a smoker and let fate decide. luckily for him tim is not a smoker but he does crave human connection

mostly my reaction when i have had to be in london is some level of :/ but maybe i do think fondly of some of it. cities at night...the weird mash up and modern & ancient in uk buildings that i always took for granted until i didn't. also hello architechture-buff tim

rereading this it's just very obvious to me that i wrote this during lockdown...like oh imagine going to a place and seeing a person. magical. effervescent

i do love them huddling close to keep out of the rain here...thematically appropriate, it is sad battered people against the world time, and also circumstance bringing you literally close to someone and having that change/spark something

the last line distresses me, the person who wrote it. i don't know if i have much to add to it really. sometimes the most painful part of living through something is waking up the next day and finding that you are still alive and a real person capable of being touched by the world

tim blames both himself and the world for killing danny. sure hope that blame and hatred doesn't rise up and send him into a spiral of self-destruction some day. would be a real bummer if that happened and ultimately led to his death via clown murder explosion

“Publishing,” Tim answers, before he can drift again. He wants to say more, to make sure this undemanding presence isn’t going to leave his side, but his throat is still tight. “You?”

Jon frowns, as if debating something to himself, then gives a tiny rueful smile. “Tesco.”

Tim grins. “Was it a haunted Tesco?”

“Only by customers,” Jon replies, dry as bone.

thank you for choosing this passage because now i have noticed/will edit the last sentence in the first paragraph, which is missing a word and does not scan right (should be 'who could never sit still even in his own head')

'Nice hands, too. It would be easier, if he didn’t-' hot. jon. rights. also connecting the 'maybe it would be easier if i wasn't still alive and real and capable of feeling' thing to noticing, appreciating, wondering if he wants something with jon

jon has definitely not told anyone else at the institute that he was in customer service before this. proud of him for this brief moment of trust. also between this and martin having told tim about his CV, i think people just look at tim and are like yeah here are my career-related secrets

i also just love imagining jon in customer service. and as someone who did not work in customer service at the time of writing this fic but now does, i mostly do not view customers as hauntings (library patrons are mostly chill) - unless it is 10 minutes until we close, in which case they are the absolute bane of my existence

#asks #anonymous #please leave a light on when you go #jontim #tma /#talking #no you cannot use a computer no you cannot start a long conversation about brexit we are CLOSING #long post

20 notes · View notes

a-mythical-lady · 3 years

Text

Books and me.

14 years ago

(Age: 7)

It was bedtime and maa had just made my bed when I heard the front door open. Papa was home from work and I could hear bhai running to see papa and tell him random stuff. I bet papa listened to everything, despite being tired. After that, he came to my room, "Look what I got you" he said, and extended a book to me. I was confused as he had never brought me a book before. It was a book called Panchatantra. A story of an old rishi who gives life lessons to his five shishyas at the gurukul through stories about nature and animals. I was excited about getting my first book and begrudgingly, maa let me stay up later than usual. That night, sprawled on my bed, I was entranced and fascinated by all the different stories and scenes and talking animals. The next morning, I woke up by myself and finished the entire book by noon.

The next thing I know, I'm collecting comics and storybooks and getting addicted to them. Piling up tinkle comics, Archie's and Amar Chitra Katha was my only goal. Every train journey to my native place involved dragging papa to the railway station bookstore and getting myself a comic book for the train ride. I begged my parents to subscribe to storybooks along with the daily morning newspaper, and they relented after a lot of coaxing. Then, every Monday morning I'd wait eagerly for the newspaper boy to deliver my weekly dose of happiness with books of chacha Choudary, chandamama, and champak. Soon, this became an obsession that even my parents started noticing. Maa began hiding my copies of storybooks during the exams and giving them back only after all my exams were done. I began pestering papa to get me more and more books every day. Sometimes he would get me a double digest edition of tinkle and I'd be ecstatic and over the moon. It's amazing how something so small and silly used to make me so happy. I'd re-read the same books once I'd gone through my entire stash of new books. Out of desperation, I'd read anything I could lay my hands on. In school, we used to get all our term textbooks a month before the reopening of a new academic year and my English textbooks fell prey to this obsession of mine. I'd know all the lessons and stories by heart before the school year started. I think that was one of the reasons for the nerd label I got in school. I even started reading stories from the Bible, borrowing storybooks from another girl in my neighborhood. Little did I know that this was only the beginning.

10 years ago

(Age: 11)

One fine summer afternoon, bhai was busy watching tv in the living room and maa and papa were at work. We had free rein on the tv as it was the summer holidays and I had free rein on my books. I was lazing around in my room and started searching the entire house for something new to read. And finally, I found a book among bhai's things. It was probably a gift. It wasn't a comic book or a usual storybook. This one was an actual book. A novel. And it had no pictures. I was skeptical but boredom got the best of me and I decided to read a few pages to pass the time. It was a hardy boys book, written by Franklin W Dixon. After reading a few pages, my 11-year-old brain almost exploded with fascination. The style of writing, the mystery, the suspense of the entire book drew me in completely and I knew then, this was a turning point in my life where books are concerned. I felt almost grown-up. And so I read the 200 page novel with wide eyes and a bursting heart in 3 hours, without even getting up to pee. I went and told bhai about the new book I read. He laughed it off. I told maa and papa when they came back from work. "That's good beta", they said. I was disappointed that they didn't feel the same exhilaration that I did. Papa still got my books whenever I asked him. For the second time, I found myself collecting and piling up books. All of the hardy boys and Nancy drew collections. Once again, I was entranced, trapped yet alive like never before in a whole new world.

After that, a multitude of options lay before me. I dived headfirst into reading mystery and moved onto classics written by Charles Dickens, The Bronté sisters, Mary Shelly, and even a dash of Shakespeare. I fell in love with David Copperfield, Oliver twist, treasure island, Jane Eyre and Frankenstein.

But eventually, buying books so often became a chore and at the pace I was reading, with one book hardly lasting a day, we couldn't afford to buy as many books. So, then one day, maa and I set out on a goose chase all over the city looking for libraries where I could borrow books from. At last, we found an old government library inside an even older building that looked almost haunted. And as we bravely stepped into the barely holding up building, we only found old uncles reading newspapers and gossiping. Thankfully, there was a rack of English fiction. Just one single rack. Although mildly disappointed, I was determined to make do with that. I got myself a membership plan and my reading palette had its first taste of Indian authors. That one rack had a fair collection of young adult books, standalone contemporary novels which sated my hunger for quite some time. While other people gushed over my habit of reading books, my parents were a little concerned. But as I started writing my own speeches in school, improved in my speaking skills, I'm sure they were convinced and over time, I think they accepted this obsession of mine. Or at the very least, were forced to.

6 years ago.

(Age: 15)

My love for reading only grew and now I had a book beside me during breakfast, lunch, and dinner which my parents barely tolerated. I even started planting a book in every corner of my house for easy access, under the coffee table, by my bed, on my study table. While kids my age sneaked mobile phones under their pillows, I sneaked in books to read.

After a few years, I finally met a kindred spirit with a shared love for reading. He was older than me and introduced me to books by Dan Brown. I listened with rapt attention to the plot of the book and I immediately knew that my days of reading hardy boys and young adult books were over. It's crazy how transitioning between genres and different types of books made me feel older and mature over the years. Few pages into the Da Vinci code and I fell, hook, line, and sinker. I finished the entire 500-page book in a day. Back then, I was pretty adamant about having my own copies of books and collecting them, which I guess stemmed from my childhood obsession with collecting comics. Soon, I'd exhausted the books at the old library and had no other option but to trade in my precious books for second-hand books at a wholesale book store very far away from home. Because they were at a secondhand rate, I could now afford more books and although the pages were worn out and yellowed, I was happy. The already folded pages, notes in the corners of some pages jotted down by the previous owner made me feel oddly connected and attached.

Present-day

(Age: 21)

As I grew up and left my teenage years behind, life and boards got in my way and there were gaps when I couldn't read no matter how hard I tried. But once I found my way back to books. I knew what I was missing and knew that I would never stop reading again. I still read books by Dan Brown, Sydney Sheldon, and Nora Roberts. I found quite a few talented Indian authors. Books by Durjoy Dutta and Ravinder Singh made me fall in love with contemporary romance and light humor. I've moved on to reading books on my phone now. I miss turning pages of an actual book, but on the bright side, I get to read countless books anytime and anywhere I want. I've explored many genres over the years, murder and crime thrillers, romance, contemporary, dark fiction, and comedy, and read them accordingly when the mood strikes.

If there's one thing that has been a constant through my childhood, it has been books. Reading is a huge part of my life and very close to my heart. Words and writing mean so much to me. Books have been my solace, my safe place, my companions as I grew up, my fantasy land, and my hiding place all rolled into one. I've cried, loved, smiled, and laughed with books and I can't describe how utterly grateful I am to maa and papa for getting me my first book when I was just 7 and letting me explore my love for reading.

Although, there's one thing I'd like to admit. There's this one genre that I've never read - non-fiction and strangely, I'm still very skeptical about it. But you never know, over time I might come to like that as well!

MAJ

4 notes · View notes

notjanine · 3 years

Text

2020 in books!

the only kind of new year’s resolution i made as a naive baby last january was to try to read 40 books for the year. (i read 37 in 2019, for context.) well, with all of my commuting time eliminated and an increased need for immersive escapism, i ended up surpassing that goal three times over lmao (thanks library ebooks!)

idk how to summarize my year in books in a way that makes sense but

(f) = fiction, (nf) = nonfiction, (p) = poetry.

books that rewired my fucking brain:

braiding sweetgrass by robin wall kimmerer (nf)- GOD?!?!?! good. dr. k is right. ostensibly a book about plants, but actually a book about shut up and go outside. consumerism and capitalism are doing their damnedest to fuck you up, but you can just choose to value different things. take care of yourself by taking care of your environment. etc etc.

wasp by richard jones (nf)- lissen. when i got this book, my wasp-phobia was so severe that i had to put it away face down on a high shelf because there are wasps on the cover and i couldn’t bear to RISK even GLIMPSING them. now i am like... a wasp evangelist. (also due to the bugs 101 course on coursera it’s so good.)

wag by zazie todd (nf)- i have a dog, but i am NOT a Dog Person (i.e. i love my dog, but please keep yours away from me, thanks.) this book helped me understand my little guy better, plus it gives actionable tasks and activities to do with and for your pup! plus, y’know, learning about things you’re scared of helps to lessen that fear. i’d recommend this to anyone who has, wants, or regularly interacts with a dog.

a closed and common orbit by becky chambers (f)- is this series complete fluff? absolutely. am i fundamentally different after reading this one? maybe.

the best we could do by thi bui (nf)- this is so far outside of my personal experience but somehow still made me come to peace with my relationship with my mom?? and it’s barely even about that?? idk. this is probably objectively the best book i’ve read this year.

books that were just fun as hell:

mexican gothic by silvia moreno-garcia (f)- this book made me YELL out loud

death on the nile by agatha christie (f)- i grew up on agatha christie shows, but never actually read her before this year! she really was That Bitch. read this before the movie comes out

cosmoknights by hannah templer (f)- i read this in one sitting through the worst headache i’ve had in years. it is a goddamn DELIGHT. this book has everything: spaceships. mech suits. fighting the patriarchy. a perfect otp. fun art in bright colors with clean lines. onomatopoetic WAPs from before the song gave that hilarious context. 800 lesbians. this is an antidepressant in graphic novel form.

stiff by mary roach (nf)- ms. roach is like the 4th most represented author on my bookshelf because she 1. stays writing about shit i’m interested in and 2. manages to talk about gross and ridiculous things without resorting to sensationalism. it takes skill to write a hilarious book about corpses.

black sun by rebecca roanhorse (f)- excellent sexual tension between a horny siren pirate and a hot doomed... monk, kinda? set in the pre-columbian gulf of mexico with magic and shit.

cuisine chinoise by zao dao (? n/f)- this graphic novel about chinese food history/mythology is BEAUTIFUL.

the color of magic by terry pratchett (f)- you’d think a hardcore douglas adams stan would have gotten to this sooner, but no, i had to date a nerdy white boy to get here. it’s fun though! i’m not gonna read them all, but this one was good. bonus: contains one (1) great himbo.

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir (f)- like 500 pages of action and mystery and jokes and space necromancy. harrow the ninth gets a special mention bc it has a meme reference that took me out so hard i had to close the book, lie down, and groan for an entire minute before continuing.

other minds by peter godfrey-smith (nf)- i love octopuses. on one tma bonus ep, jonny sims says that if a creature can choose to do evil, then it’s a Person. octopuses are People. but anyway frfr this has an explanation of the evolution of consciousness that is cool af. (this one is much better than the other recent popsci octo book which i will not name out of politeness.)

the perfect predator by steffanie strathdee and thomas patterson (nf)- i read this bc my microbiology prof recommended it and it’s cool as heck! it’s got adventure, drama, mystery, Science-with-a-capital-S. i’m biased bc i’m a bit of a microbes nerd, but i had a blast with this. (but only bc we know going in that everything works out okay; if i hadn’t known that, i would have been TOO stressed!)

books that were a little less fun but still very readable:

my sister, the serial killer by oyinkan braithwaite (f)- i couldn’t find this as funny as other people bc i, too, have a beautiful sister who’s an insufferable narcissist, so it hits a little too close to home, but. it is a wild ride.

piranesi by susanna clarke (f)- idek what to say! i went into this one blind just bc it had a cool cover and title, so i guess i’d recommend that for other people too.

the sixth world series by rebecca roanhorse (f)- monster hunting! a post-apocalyptic take that doesn’t feel tired.

the shades of magic trilogy by v.e. schwab (f)- easy escapism. some ideas feel a little first draft-y, but idk, it’s also a pretty simple premise (which isn’t a bad thing). it’s a decent urban fantasy set in ~georgian?-era london. very actiony. suffers from a bit of i’m-not-like-other-girls disease, but i didn’t even notice until book two or three, so.

the only good indians by stephen graham jones (f)- starts off a little ??? (and reeks of being Written By A Man) but picks up. the pacing’s great and there’s just a super fucking cool monster.

robopocalypse by daniel h. wilson (f)- this reads like a tv miniseries so much that i can’t believe it isn’t one yet.

confessions of the fox by jordy rosenberg (f)- not my usual cup of tea, fiction-wise, but still compelling. a fresh take on the white-male-english-professor-self-insert? but not insufferable. gets weird!

spinning silver by naomi novik (f)- rumplestilstkin, but make it interesting! a great, richly-told fairy tale, but like, large scale. good to read on a cold day while you’re wrapped up in a blanket with some hot tea.

interior chinatown by charles yu (f)- compulsively readable. a couple things bugged me, but not enough to make me dislike it. a fun companion piece to how to live safely in a science fictional universe. i like this guy’s style.

cannibalism by bill schutt (nf)- COOL. mostly covers the animal kingdom (fun), spends too much time on the donner party (less fun), ends with a SPICY take on prions that i cannot get out of my head!!!

buzz, sting, bite by anne sverdrup-thygeson (nf)- BUGS! broad but not overwhelming, neither dumbed down nor overly scientific, short enough to finish in a day or two. recommend this to literally everyone.

books that made me want to read everything else in the author’s ouevre:

the time invariance of snow by e. lily yu (f)- this FUCKS but it’s too short!!!

an unkindness of ghosts by rivers solomon (f)- okay this book is SO good and so well-written and interesting and blah blah blah all the good things, but... the whole time, i was just like?? why???? why is this what you’re choosing to write about??? (i did also read the deep and blood is another word for hunger after this one, and i did like them both, especially the latter, but i think they can do better! like i think they could write a perfect book and i am gonna be *eyes emoji* until then.)

the space between worlds by micaiah johnson (f)- a fine debut novel, but i want to see her do something a little more... idk, refined? i think she overreaches here, like it’s a little... idk looper? this is how you lose the time war? there’s a better comparison, but i can’t think of it, but you get the idea. and then halfway through it shifts gears to mad max. there’s something weird about one of the central relationships, like it’s not complex enough to take as long to resolve as it does. idk idk. there are just a lot of little nitpicky things. it’s not bad! but i think she can do better and i look forward to finding out.

postcolonial love poem by natalie diaz (p)- thinky! like i tried to read this before bed, but it’s not the sort of thing to parse out while you’re falling asleep, it requires more attention than that.

books that Learned Me Somethin:

smoke gets in your eyes by caitlin doughty (nf)- i am a self-professed death obsessed weirdo, fascinated by death and mourning, but i didn’t know all that much about what happens to a body between the dying and the funeral! this book isn’t big, but it covers a lot and doughty’s writing style is engaging and honest. it’s very memorable.

queer by meg-john barker and julia scheele (nf)- i’m gonna be totally honest and say Queer Theory is above my intellectual pay grade, but this book takes you by the hand and explains the basics.

vitamania by catherine price (nf)- LMAO my fellow americans, never take a supplement. this book is great and well-researched, but normal folks don’t need to read it, just listen to season two of the dream podcast, which definitely cribbed from this.

vegetable kingdom by bryant terry (nf)- this is a fine cookbook, my favorite of his that i’ve read so far. gets a special mention bc i had a religious experience just reading one of his kohlrabi recipes. absolutely gutted that i didn’t have an opportunity to try it this year, since the pandemic put the kibosh on all family bbqs.

the best american food writing 2020 edited by j. kenji lopez-alt (nf)- this really is just a great collection.

are prisons obsolete? by angela y. davis (nf)- yes.

i moved to los angeles to work in animation by natalie nourigat (nf)- before reading this, i had basically zero knowledge of how the animation industry works. now i know like three things.

the secret lives of bats by merlin tuttle (nf)- BATS! okay this book is more about the adventures of being a bat scientist than it actually is about bats, but there are bats in there. insectivorous bats basically shit glitter, you should know this.

books from valuable perspectives:

hood feminism by mikki kendall (nf)- a breakdown of who’s getting left out of feminist spaces, why that’s happening, and why it shouldn’t be happening.

all you can ever know by nicole chung (nf)- a (transracial) adoptee’s take on adoption and learning more about her birth family. the personal storytelling of this one really stuck with me.

motherhood so white by nefertiti austin (nf)- a single-mom-by-choice’s take on the foster system/adoption process. walks you through some things i always wondered about and some things i wouldn’t even have thought about.

this place by kateri akiwenzie-damm et al (? n/f)- i, like a lot of non- native americans, only know that history in broad strokes. getting this many highly specific stories in one dense and beautiful book felt like a lucky find. and taking that perspective into the future in the context of that history is v good.

empty by susan burton (nf)- eating disorder stories are important to me bc i care about food so much. this one is so relatable- not in its specificity, but rather its generality. it’s easy to empathize with her perspective because it’s like, Oh, i don’t have that exact problem, but i struggle with different problems in a very similar way. (feels like the opposite of roxane gay’s hunger, in a way.)

obit by victoria chang (p)- this exploration of grief is... woof.

short story collections are hard to evaluate bc you’ll never read one where every single story hits but i generally enjoyed these:

a thousand beginnings and endings edited by ellen oh and elsie chapman (f)

how long til black future month? by n.k. jemisin (f)

her body and other parties by carmen maria machado (f)

books i revisited:

the broken earth trilogy by n.k. jemisin (f)- i read the series backwards this time and like... i can’t really find any faults in these books, man. they’re just the best.

everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too by jomny sun (f... but is it really?)- half of this book’s sales are from me buying it for other people bc it’s the only way i know how to say i love you. i reread it every time just to make sure it still feels right and it always does.

other honorable mentions:

white is for witching by helen oyeyemi (f)- not to pit two bad bitches against each other, but this book does what akwaeke emezi’s freshwater was trying to do. it’s a little weird, a little haunted, a little of a lot of things. read this only in the dead of winter. (and with stephen rennicks’ score for the little stranger playing in the background.)

homie by danez smith (p)- there’s a lot going on here, but this just made me crack a smile a couple times in a way that no other book of poetry has ever done.

the murder of roger ackroyd and murder in mesopotamia by agatha christie (f)- That Bitch!

blues by nikki giovanni (p)- she sure has some Things To Say

the three-body problem by cixin liu (f)- interesting concepts, but... idk something’s missing? felt weirdly soulless to me. i’m probably not gonna read the sequels. but it did make some points!

the sisters of the winter wood by rena rossner (f)- i’m a slut for shapeshifting, okay. but this is a good fairy tale, it works!

parable of the sower by octavia butler (f)- i read this in march, when the pandemic was just kicking off and boy that was not the right time. def my least favorite of hers so far, but an octavia butler i don’t love is still better than a hell of a lot of other books. no idea when or if i’ll get to a good enough headspace for the sequel.

faves:

saturnino herrán by adriana zapett tapia (nf)- i got to learn new things about my mans and see some of his paintings i’ve never even seen online! GOSH.

on food and cooking by harold mcgee (nf)- yeah yeah, i’ve already mentioned this book half a dozen times on here this year, but i don’t care. this book lives off the shelf in my home bc i reference it like every other fucking day. this book is a part of me now.

#long post #final total for the year will be 120 by the end of the day!#and i had a pretty good hit rate. would probably recommend at least half #and only outright hated four

5 notes · View notes