#quotidian reads | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

quotidian-oblivion · 11 months

Text

Book recs!! ✨

Hi! So a bit ago, I met a lovely amazing anon on ao3 (who is a BLESSING compared to the other mean anons commenting out there, thanks Kat, you make mine and im pretty sure other author's days too). So we got into talking about books and I offered to make a list for her and post it on tumblr so other people too can scrounge through so here we are lmao.

I gathered this list from the personal notes I had made to myself to add these books to my bookshelf when i move out and also from another list i made for my little siblings because no way are they gonna not read the good stuff I found. It's like a rite of passage now.

Just a note: I don't read romance. But since books don't have the very convenient tags we get on ao3, I end up getting to romance-y parts. The only romance books I have read are middle school level romance lmao XD Nothing except kisses and stuff lol.

Let's go!

The Maze Runner series

Maze Runner

I love this book. This series. Ngl, one of the first books where I felt that heart-clenching feeling of hurt. Love the characters, the world-building was in the fandom for a brief while and I love the plot too. Better than the movie plot anyway XD

Mare Runner: Scorch Trials

Second book in the series, also very good. Literally an adventure. So many twists and turns. Once more, the characterization is also amazing!

Maze Runner: Death Cure

Third and last book in the series as a main. Heartbreaking. Did shed tears. Page 250 still kills me. O u ch.

The Fever Code

Also in the same series and OUCH. It's the characters before the whole drama happened and they're kids and higehrfwb 😭 No kidding I was squealing and nearly threw the book multiple times out of excitement. It solved a couple plotlines too. I adored it. Plus, it gave me some closure from the many many (inevitable) deaths.

Crank Palace

It's a novella, but clears the mysterious gap that was in the third book. Plus, it gives much much more closure but I'm still crying so do what you will with that information. I love the new "OC"s here too.

Trials of Apollo

The Hidden Oracle The Dark Prophecy The Burning Maze The Tyrant's Tomb The Tower of Nero

Listen- listen- I know this is kinda obvious and you might be asking "where's the rest of the pjo series?" but that's a given. My personal favorites are the pjo, hoo and toa series, but toa somehow spoke to me more because the main relationship wasn't a romantic one like all the other teen books I read. I also adore Apollo/Lester's character development? Like, at first he was this carefree god, then at the end of the series, he transformed into a person who cared so much and so deeply and was willing to die for others. That is peak character development and if I hadn't read toa, I would still be blundering around and confused with my multi-chap fics as to how characters actually develop. Because you can see that journey so clearly in toa.

Jinx series

Jinx: The Wizard's Apprentice Jinx's Magic Jinx's Fire

I love this series so much??? I am a sucker for fantasy novels and this was so so good. I love the storyline and-

AND I ESPECIALLY LOVE THE FOUND FAMILY ASPECT HERE. THIS. IS LITERALLY RELUCTANT MENTOR-FATHER AND HYPER AND KEEN MENTEE-SON. AHHH.

Anyway, this was my first found family novel. I loved the whole storyline too, this was also the series where I was first introduced to the concept of whump (without knowing what whump actually was).

The Mapmaker Chronicles

Race To The End Of The World Prisoner Of The Black Hawk Breath Of The Dragon

These were also some of the first whump books I read. And I especially loved this because the plot was it. A smartass scrawny boy who accidentally turned into a hero? Hmmm, I wonder who that reminds me of. (Tim Drake. It reminds of Tim Drake)

But the characters are also special to my heart. There is minimal romance in here. Any romance is to move the plot forward.

Also a mentor-mentee relationship here. Not so much found family to the heart seeing as the main character already has family back home, but the whole crew definitely is a family of their own. I especially adore Ash! Ahhh! She's lovely and amazing. Oh and Zain- *sighs* he is the perfect mentor figure to scrawny li'l Quinn. And the hateable characters are so perfectly hateable!! The author truly is talented at stories.

Although the second book could do with more whump

Nevermoor series

Nevermoor

This book was described in the reviews as "Harry Potter meets Alice in Wonderland" and it stayed true to its description. It had beautiful and amazing characters, and an evil-mentor & reluctant hero-mentee relationship (though not at first) and I am a sucker for that. Also, I just love the character herself. Morrigan is a very good and fleshed out character and I will love her forever.

Wundersmith

We explore more of the evil-mentor & reluctant hero-mentee relationship. But Jupiter, Morrigan's actual caretaker, is the PERFECT uncle/caretaker for her and he's so protective of her and i just-

*sobs* I stan.

Hollowpox

Here we discover some of that delicious power upgrades. I also love all the friends! HAWTHORNE IS MY FAVORITE AND WILL ALWAYS BE I LOVE HIM. Stunning characters here 💫 Also some wise comparison of the different isms and phobias (as in homophobia, racism etc.) here in terms of fantasy.

The Mysterious Benedict Society series

The Mysterious Benedict Society The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Perilous Journey The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Prisoner's Dilemma The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Riddle of Ages

This... was one of the first mystery books I had ever read (my actual first was Sherlock Holmes cuz I found it on my grandparents' bookshelf and read it cuz I had read every other book they owned which wasn't a lot). I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline. It was calm and just- a bunch of kids going on a perilous journey to solve a mystery to save the city. Those kind of vibes. But the vibes were so good. So enjoyable. Every time I hear about this series, I just sigh in contempt.

There are very, very interesting characters here too. The characters are what made the story so good. All of them have unique quirks which they use to crack clues and form conclusions and dive into actions. Such good characters. 10/10, honestly.

The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict

This is part of the Benedict society universe, but it takes place years before the main events. It has adventures of the leader of the group in the main series as a kid. This book has a special mention because the storyline was different to the style of the main series and it had tropes. Just- the friend and the character itself and- dnfhbevbiluw

Okay, I admit, Benedict here does remind me of Tim (my fav character in DC). Like y'know smol Tim with the camera? Those kind of vibes. Very strong vibes. I read this way before I discovered Tim even existed so maybe this book plays a part in my favorites?

Jessica Brody books

The fact that I put the actual author's name here should tell you something.

Addie Bell's Shortcut To Growing Up

This book... brought me to tears. This was the second book that prompted salt water to slip out of my tear ducts. It was a strange feeling. Cuz I was not used to crying for books and movies and shows.

The plot just hit hard. A 12-year-old Addie magically time-travels to when she's 16 and experiences life as a teenager. The plot gives more than you expect. There are boys, yes, but that is a side plot, not a main plot. Which is why I love the book so much. Addie wants to be one of the "girly" girls who talks about boys and stuff and goes to parties like her older sister, but then as she lives the life of a teenager more and more, she realizes just how much she lost. Friendships, family, her personality, her interests, herself.

The part that made me cry was her missing her sister. Cuz, well, I'm an older sister. And my sister who is the oldest after me has the same age difference as Addie and her older sister. It wasn't just her missing her sister in that scene, it was everything crashing down on her that moved me to tears. Amazing book. If anything, I recommend you either read this or 'Better You Than Me' if nothing in this list goes towards your liking.

Better You Than Me

This was the first book that made me cry. It has two characters, one in middle school, the other who is an actress, swap bodies. So the typical middle school kid gets to live as a famous actress, and the famous actress gets to live as a typical middle school kid. Of course, neither of them end up liking their new life very much, but that only teaches them two important messages: appreciation and communication. God, I learnt so much from this book. I was like 13 or something when I read it and it resonated within me enough to make me cry. I adore this. SO much.

I Speak Boy

I actually have a library-borrowed copy with me right now XD It's about a middle school girl, Emmy, being very confused with the opposite gender. (Very much hetero, no homo despite it being published in 2021). But, once again, the reason I love this book isn't cuz of the romance (though it is kinda satisfactory but also a bit cliché). It's how the main character realizes that boys aren't everything. Just like in 'Addie Bell's Shortcut To Growing Up'. It's a lot about friendship.

The reason why I like these books by Jessica Brody (I haven't read the others yet) is because of the Bechdel Test factor in it.

S. K. Ali books

Again you have another author's name. This time, it's Muslim fiction!

Love From A To Z

The first Muslim fiction book I've ever read. And yes, it is a romance book. But it does not have any touchy-touchy stuff (except in the Epilogue and a couple dream scenes, very vague though and only kissing). As in, the main characters follow mainstream Sunni procedures and do not touch each other as they're not married. Which just leaves room for a ton of emotional romance.

I adore this simply because I'm a Muslim Hijabi myself and I am very much biased.

It deals with so many aspects of romance though, like personality first, lust last, and whether they are the right fit or not and whether they actually like each other or the idea of each other and how families play into this and online hate and emotion control and of course, the marvels and oddities of life. It is packed with so much. And when I finished the book, I had a good long cry. This is the first book that made me cry the longest. Because- because I was starved for representation! And this book did it so well! I just- love this so much.

The author has published a sequel, Love from Mecca to Medina, I have yet to read it because I'm waiting for it to be in a library. I prefer physical copy books.

Once Upon An Eid

Okay, this is very Muslim-based, but if you treat it like Muslim Christmas, everything becomes clear XD Also, Ali wrote only one story here. This book is actually a collection of stories by different Muslim authors. And each story is so special. Many people don't really know how Muslims celebrate Eid or why it's so special (besides spiritual reasons) and what it looks like. This paints an accurate picture. And it contains most, if not all, types of Muslims celebrating Eid. Sunni, Shia, refugee, African, American, revert/convert, South Asian etc. So really diverse.

Saints and Misfits Misfit In Love

Very much love-centred, but also has very vague mentions of sexual assault/rape/non-con. Yes, in a Muslim community. It exists. A lot actually. But it's hidden and hushed down. Disgustingly.

But the first book addresses it and how a Muslim girl battles it. She's in love with a white boy, yes, but she doesn't give in to her white boy desires. Neither does she fall to a non-white boy, at least not fully.

Which is why I recommend that if you're reading the first book, you definitely, definitely read the second one along with it. Because I felt even though the ending of the first book was satisfactory, it wasn't satisfactory to me. But the second book was! Because at the end of the second book, Janna (the main character), comes to the conclusion that boys aren't everything. And even though there is a very perfect boy that fancies her and she fancies him too, she takes a breath and says that she isn't too focused on that. And I adore that. But she only comes to that conclusion after falling in love with many, many, many boys. I did get a bit uncomfy cuz romance just in general makes me uncomfy, its a personal thing, but I kept reading it cuz... Muslim fiction! Anyway, good book series. But I like Love From A To Z better.

Now, those are... a lot of books. And a lot of me talking. And there are still so many more. So I'm just gonna go through some quick filtering and put the titles and authors of the other books here in dot points.

London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd (my first novel, Kat knows about this lol)

Skyfire series by Michael Adams

NERDS series by Michael Buckley (it's an acronym that stands for National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society. It's weird but I laughed a lot so)

Murder Most Unladylike series by Robin Stevens

Mallory Towers series by Enid Blyton

Naughtiest Girl In The School series by Enid Blyton

Scarlet and Ivy series by Sophie Cleverly (fuck- I forgot to add this to the main list, but this book is hella hella good and I recommend it very much)

Bounce by Megan Shull (life lessons in here)

Sick Bay by Nova Weetman

The Adventurer's Guild series by Zack Loran Clark and Nick Eliopulos

Luck Uglies series by Paul Durham ("DADDY ISSUES!" screams Quo. "I love this book because I have daddy issues among other issues and that is all.")

Time Hunters by Chris Blake (it is very much a children's book, not even middle school, but I read it because it has an intriguing storyline and interesting historical facts that had me raising my hand in every history lesson)

There are no classic books here because that will need its own separate post.

And that's it! Thank you very much!

27 notes · View notes

artcalledcinema · 6 months

Text

My Telegram To Sheriff Billick friend Wellsworth headshot! S3/11 Saving money 0.35cents Spend more Well over $3.75 To Sheriff Billick we regret to inform you [stop] circumstances convey to interrupt your campaigning [stop] murder at the mine [stop] Wellsworth headshot Demisewood [stop] Just a wanting to read the telegraph I’m left with my own thoughts Add vulgarity here __________! How much does that cost?

0 notes

marcogiovenale · 2 years

Text

poetitaly 2015, michele zaffarano legge da "todestrieb"

poetitaly 2015, michele zaffarano legge da “todestrieb”

Lettura al Teatro Palladium (Roma), 2015, in occasione di PoetItaly. Da Todestrieb (Arcipelago, 2015) e dall’inedito Piccole estinzioni quotidiane.

youtube

View On WordPress

#Arcipelago #lettura #Michele Zaffarano #Piccole estinzioni quotidiane #reading #scritture di ricerca #Simone Carella #Teatro Palladium #Todestrieb #video #Youtube

0 notes

familyabolisher · 8 months

Text

haphazard assortment of thoughts on the unwanted guest:

firstly, it really does have to be said—crazy good, probably my favourite of all the tlt short pieces, and i say that as someone who lost my mind over as yet unsent for like a week. excellent conceit and excellent execution, just a really gorgeous piece of writing. the play format of course reminds me of what abigail says to harrow in htn—that the river bubble is a ‘play [she’s] directing’—the inside of one’s head as a stage in which other actors can intervene & whereby mileage can be gotten out of Symbolism as immediately “real,” tangible presences that the kind of realist baggage that a more quotidian prose form would usher in would probably falter in accomplishing. it’s a lot!! i think even if i wasn’t already a tazmuir writing style defender (contra the insistence that she’s yknow homestuck fanfiction serial numbers filed off hack) then this would have had me floored anyway.

the play format also works in the way that muir’s general dexterity in form and willingness to really make use of craft as a technical space where discourse can be generated always works—i’m talking about the ‘fanfictiony’ voice in gtn which manages to say something both about fanfiction and about the text itself, the use of the dramatis personae as a space where atmosphere can be established and plot points hinted towards (thus blurring the lines between what is and is not diegesis), the drastic shifts in style between different close thirds, the shifting from third- to second- to epistolary first-person, the use of poetry both diegetic and not (the noniad, the epigraph poems…), the mimicry of the ‘voice’ of the king james bible in the nona epilogue—she never stays in one place for too long and she never seems to stick to one central style or form, and it really works in her favour. insofar as tlt as a whole is a very ‘patchwork’ kind of work, building itself up from its big big index of references and intertexts and memes with hugely variant levels of ‘prestige’ or legitimacy attached to them, the ‘patchwork’ use of form really works in muir’s favour. however i am also fuming because i was right in the middle of writing a tlt fic which jumps into a play format two-thirds of the way through and now my idea doesn’t look ORIGINAL but ANYWAY—

& i really do need to flag my good friend vee’s mercy/augustine fic, which makes use of a similar conceit and pulls it off masterfully—i am deeply jealous of vee’s talent and i think the unwanted guest makes this piece (from 2021!) shine even more, if anything.

i am DYING to see where muir is going with the use of hamlet, of all things—dulcie quoting it to palamedes immediately catapulted my mind back to abigail’s reference to ‘that undiscovered country’ in htn. obviously muir likes to drop contemporary (or contemporarily canonical) references and turns of phrase all over the place, but the attention drawn to the quote as diegetically referential (“I like that. Is it from something?” / “Yes. It’s complicated.”) has me wondering about a) the survival of ‘pre-res’ literatures ~over the river and like WHY and b) what a thematic interlocking of tlt and hamlet can do, here…….real aveheads remember cytherea ophelia theory where i tried to use ophelia as a point of reference for teasing out some arguments about cytherea and death and aesthetics and white femininity and whatnot. all of which is to say i need to sit with this hamlet reading a lot more but i love it, i am so here for it.

of course ‘kissing or feeding, we can’t be sure’ calls to mind ‘how meat loves meat,’ alecto biting harrow’s mouth by way of a kiss…and the general thematic throughline of, you know, certain practices of love as practices of consumption, naberius later being figured as the ‘meat’ in question contains echoes of this eroticism which ofc guides the contours of the necromancer/cavalier dynamic, eroticism as a currency of power, we know all of this stuff because it’s all over the text but i am just thumbs-upping it from the sidelines

the coffins had me thinking of utena’s black rose arc, which is a fun link to make considering the equivalent moment in the main body of nona is also referencing utena, ie. with the ‘rules’ of the duel being that cam has to get the handkerchief out of ianthe’s pocket as kind of an equivalent to skewering the rose. i feel like the tlt/utena overlap is pretty self-explanatory but it’s just fun to see the fingerprints all over lol

i think a lot of this was treading old ground thematically (erotics of consumption, dog motifs, we’ve seen it already!) but i will say that i did Yell Out Loud over ‘who's she got dawdling behind her but that creature—tugging visibly at her leash like an overeager dog.’ reminded of the other memorable use of ‘leash’—’even the devil bent for god to put a leash around her neck’—and, of course, the endless parade of commonalities between gideon & alecto. anyway there’s not really anything in this line that we didn’t already know about gid as a character, thematically speaking, but i point it out because it inflicted +100 psychic damage when i read it. gideon as a ‘creature’ is particularly slimy, & sort of puts me in mind of ianthe's tendency to talk about what appears to us as 'butch masculinity' (as opposed to the more effete masculinity of augustine or even babs) with a notably derogatory slant (the 'hurtful threats of sexual violence' line comes to mind); i don't know that i have much to say about it here specifically but it's an interesting one that i think informs the kirianthe dynamic pretty heavily (especially when held up against, like, harrianthe ... ianthe has a kind of respect for whatever harrow's gay and stupid gender is Doing (at least insofar as she can mould it to her own desires; i'm thinking of the dios apate forcefemme scene lol) in ways that i don't think she has for kiriona? but this is v off-topic, lol).

i have never been especially taken by dulcie as a character but i think this may finally have forced me to fold and admit that she’s great. her haters!!! her agonies!!! camilla would have to cook!! the balance between levity and sincerity was really well-managed. & i love the double meaning of “unwanted guest” as both palamedes intruding on ianthe’s mind palace and naberius setting up shop inside of her.

i need a week to sit with where this idea of the consumed soul as being literally ‘digested’ such that it can begin to ‘inhabit,’ however immaterially, the host body, or like to alter the characteristics of the host body such that to carry out such a consumption is to kind of kill yourself as well, slots in with lolita theory. or like, i need alecto right now. i am however reminded of chew, a short story that muir wrote in 2013, which also plays with these ideas of sexual assault as a forcing of a part of yourself meaningfully ‘into’ another person, and cannibalism as the reenactment of such a process, figured in the story as kind of a reclamation or at least an assertion of permanence—“I was always going to be in the ground with him in me,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure, that’s all. I just wanted to make sure.”—which the unwanted guest seems to kind of, play with in reverse? i don’t know, but i’m interested—as ever—in where muir wants to take these ideas of rape and consumption and absorption that she’s got in her hands.

i keep returning to…i hesitate to say ‘parallels’ because i think that imposes a narrative onus that i’m not actually that convinced by, but these, like, commonalities between babs and gideon. gideon is played off against so many people (cristabel, loveday, alecto being the big ones) that it feels kind of inane to add another person to the pile, but like…they’re the two who get got in canaan house, they’re both ironically ‘false’ cavaliers and expressions of the ‘truest’ or most paradigmatic form that cavalierhood ‘can’/’should’ take, they both have unconventionally gendered names (‘babs’ is a shortened form of ‘barbara,’ it is a typically feminine name imo) and (by our standards) somewhat unconventional genders (gideon is butch, babs effete)—and of course the unwanted guest places a lot of emphasis on the coercive ‘making’ of cavalierhood (the reference to babs being ‘fixed’ were he to have a disability! ianthe’s glib ‘society really is to blame’ comment—ironic, obviously, but not wholly untrue) not dissimilar to the emphasis that gtn puts on cytherea moulding gideon into the state she comes to be in at the end. babs and gideon as the two possessed corpses in nona, obviously. two wildly diverse but ultimately converging trajectories! a dialectical tension between their fundamental ‘opposition’ (as by-the-book cavalier vs whatever gideon is doing) and their fundamental ‘sameness’ whereby the dialectic is resolved in their mutual deaths. also just, of course, continuing the throughline that muir has had going for a while now, of gender/gendering as a set of coercive enforcements loyal to a hegemonic structuring of the world.

that’s all i’ve got, i think. just. really good everyone say thank you tazmuir

#.txt #tlt #the unwanted guest spoilers #this was originally bullet points but tumblr's formatting is bad and i can't be bothered editing to improve the flow here. so.#rape cw

273 notes · View notes

merakiui · 3 months

Note

I love stepson!Floyd so much. Your ideas and headcanons are so good. 😭😭😭

Here's a headcanon about the other slippery eel, stepson!Jade, that I wanted to share with you: for the time that you've known him, Jade has drugged you 3 times.

The first time was because he genuinely wanted to get rid of you.

His dislike for you, though well-hidden, was just as strong as Floyd's. He wanted you gone. Instead of Floyd's violent tantrums and hateful words, however, he turned to quiet yet drastic measures: poisoning your quotidian beverage. A schemer from childhood, he even had the perfect timing. He committed the crime a few hours before your girl's night out, so it would seem as though someone at the party did it to you. His father would even scold you and tell you it's time you stopped partying; you have a family now, after all!

Jade offered kind wishes and gentle smiles the whole time you were on bedrest, but there was something about the way he looked down at you from beside your bed that genuinely terrified you. The look in his eye vanished just as quickly as it came, and you knew, and Jade knew that you knew, that he was the one behind your ailment.

It remained a silent secret between you. How could you accuse your husband's sweet, quiet child of such a heinous act? No one would believe it was him. Floyd? Maybe. Afterall, Floyd was the one who screamed at you and said he wished you would just die just two days ago. But Jade? No way. He'd never do something like that. It's Jade.

The second time was out of pure curiosity.

Between him and Floyd, Jade was the one to warm up to you first. Much sooner than his brother, in fact. During their fights, he was quick to remind Floyd that he spent more time with you, knew you better, loved you longer, loved you more.

He started calling you Mama shortly after the first dose of poison he fed you. The sole purpose of that was to give you a fright; he loved the way you twitched when he would ask, “Don't you think Papa is taking a while to get home, Mama?” He could see the gears turning inside of your head as you tried to read his words, as you tried to decipher their true meaning. He wondered how long it would take before you snapped and called him a creepy little bastard or something. You never did. In fact, you seemed to double down on your kindness towards him and Floyd. Perhaps it was the realization that you never would that made him interested in you, and with time, said interest could only develop into a twisted, ugly type of love.

It was that interest and curiosity that made him wonder if you would be stupid enough to let him drug you again. He was not covert about his intentions in the slightest. He had been quietly following you around the house for about two weeks (especially when you were in the kitchen) before the day that he offered to cook for you and Floyd. He had so many "valid and logical" reasons. “Papa won't be coming home tonight, so it's just the three of us.” “You've been working hard all day; you should rest.” “Let me do something nice to make up for it.”

He settled on something simple: sandwiches. His and Floyd's were vastly different from yours, however. He sat and watched as you stared at the dish he had lovingly placed in front of you. Would this push you over the edge? Would you toss it out, yelling at him and calling him weird?

You ate it. You ate it, thanked him, and went straight to bed, knowing that your vision would blur and your dinner would come back up very soon.

Halfway through the night, Jade crawled into your bed to feed you medication and water, calling you stupidly cute and cutely stupid. In the years to come, Jade would realise that stupid wasn't the word that he wanted. Had he the sense that he has now, he would have settled on “intentionally foolish.” You knew what he was doing, and accepted it, not out of a silly fear of losing your husband, but because he was your creepy child, your family whom you chose to love and trust, just the way he is.

The third time was an event for which Jade has felt not a shred of remorse.

Jade is all grown up now. Jade loved you first, but it was Floyd whose love first diverted from acceptable, platonic, familial love. In fact, until their early twenties, Jade frequently teased Floyd about his little crush on you. Now though, as a grown man, he sees that Floyd was onto something. He now wishes that he had joined his brother in getting his hands on you.

The strangest thing about the visit is that Jade came alone. Floyd often comes without Jade, but you can't remember the last time Jade visited home without Floyd racing him to get through your door first. You don't worry yourself with what he did to shake his brother for the day.

You don't know that Jade has been there since this morning, quietly switching between rooms and moving in and out of the house. Or maybe you do, and choose to pretend that you don't when you open the front door and let your son all but crush you. He's huge, much larger than his father, and his strength matches his Floyd's.

Like you do with Floyd on an almost biweekly basis, you try to reason with Jade. For a brief moment, you think you've gotten through to him. He's always been so level-headed and logical. But then he offers to fetch you some of the soup you've had simmering on the stove for the past few hours. "It’s been cooking for a while, and you haven't had lunch yet, have you?" He watches you eat, and you know, and he knows that you know, but you eat anyway. The next thing you know, he's pretty much forcing you onto the couch, insisting that you, “get some rest, Mama, I'll tidy the house for you.”

As expected, you're soon sleepily calling out for Jade, your loyal, reliable, logical, level-headed Jade, who you've chosen to trust and love, just the way he is.

AAAAAA OMG THIS IS SO GOOD!!!!!! OTL the silent resignation and gradual acceptance that he's weird, but he's still your (step)son... falling into the motherly role because when you chose to marry Mr. Leech you were signing up to love his sons as well. Even if you're not related by blood, there's still this familial attachment you feel for them no matter how cruel they treated you when they were children. orz orz waaaa it's so yummy. Jade trying to kill you in the most cruelly calculated way ever. T_T and then going on to use the same method twice more, only it's not coming from a place of malice but now curiosity. Him wanting to see how far he can push you, and when it becomes clear that you're not going to budge because you care about him he uses this to his advantage.

Jade keeping you under the soothing thumb of drugs just so he can take care of you regardless of whether or not you want that. And you just let it happen because that's who he is. He's always been that strange, creepy child with his morbid interests and odd behaviors. You're just so used to it, and it doesn't truly bother you anymore. Maybe it never did. Between Floyd's capricious temperament and Jade's devilish scheming, there's no room for disapproval. That's just who the both of them are, and they're immensely stubborn. It's pointless to deny them of what they want when they'll inevitably get it sooner or later. You know this and so do they, but it doesn't stop you from trying.

And in your weak, loopy, drug-induced state, home alone with no one to call for but him, Jade has his mama all to himself. :)

#twisted chit chat #tw: stepcest #tw: drugging #meraki faves #SO FAVE IMMENSE FAVE THE MOST FAVE #he's so creepy T_T i love him

114 notes · View notes

wiinttrr · 1 year

Text

▫️she said it’s her first time..i think she might’ve lied

A/N:ngl i just got high yesterday and wrote this

⁀➷ warnings: very smutty but no actual intercourse

⁀➷ if you a minor theres no reason why you should be reading this <3

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫

It’s exactly 8:40PM when you’re resting your head on pedri’s chest,his hand playing with your hair daintily,your attention drifting from the movie he had invited you over to watch as you fix your vision on the view displayed from the floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse.

Your eyes get drowsy and you start to zone out,you were bored out of anticipation,impatiently waiting for him to initiate what has been simmering in your mind for days,dirty filthy and sinful imaginations of pedri manhandling you into various positions while pounding into you was all you could ponder over,you were suffering a brainrot.

You soon exit your imagination immediately as you feel his arm envelope your smaller frame,stirring you gingerly while lowering his head to meet you at face level,"you okay there?"he says in a humorous tone while raising an eyebrow,you grin faintly as a retort to his words although in your innermost thoughts it was at his complete cluelessness to your wildly lewd infiltrated mind.

This is how you were summed up by people throughout your life,they always saw you as wholesome and untainted by immorality, especially that of a sexual nature..it confused you quite a bit and had you thinking for a span attempting to apprehend what about you gave them that impression because it surely wasn’t a facade you were upholding or a make-believe,and even though their view was far off the mark it didn’t trouble you at all,not even a little bit in fact you loved it,and soon started utilising it to your own benefit.

The innocent aura granted you quotidian advantages,and the greatest one by a mile is the sneakiness,people rarely doubted you even when you were lying straight to their faces,the pure spirit made you trustworthy and had people lowering their guards around you.

Additionally,the sole thought of having a guy entirely fooled and unaware of your true essence turned you on immensely,deceiving them into thinking that you’re just so chaste and untouched when you weren’t had you feeling so sly and it aroused you to the fullest.

Ultimately and to your desire,what you were yearning full finally started to come into being,the cuddling soon escalated into a make-out sesh,his arms are locked behind your back,pulling your chests flush together,minimizing any space between,giving you the contact that you were craving oh so bad..he slips his tongue into your mouth,tilting his head to deepen the kiss even further,your own greeted his pleasantly,tangling and pushing against it in content.

Placing his pointer finger under your chin, pedri slowly pulls back,though not releasing his hold on you,hazy eyes gazing intently into each other,"so pretty.."he murmurs against your lips,a slight smirk adorning his face before hoisting you up on his lap,situating the both of you into an even more intimate position,just to trail one hand up by your side till it cupped the back of your neck,pulling your lips together once more.

This time,his kisses were slow and rhythmic..they were brief,sweet short kisses,ones that made you part after each one,ones that made you so eager for the next,they felt so satisfying and fulfilling yet had you on pins and needles yearning for more.

The atmosphere was getting promptly more sexual,pedri was placing mellow pecks just beneath your jaw,his hand moving to grab the back of your thigh,urging it upwards,while the other massaged and kneaded at your ass,your clothed core occasionally brushing against his hard on.

“tell me baby..what was the farthest you ever went”,he abruptly stoped his movements to ask you,winding down..he too thinks you’ve never fucked before,you love it.

“what we did right now”you reply shortly after,with a coy laced voice,batting your pretty lashes at him so sweetly evoking a low hum from him,pedri looked at you trough lidded lust infatuated eyes,everything about you had him so pent up.

“so nothing..not even fingered?“another question followed up,he sounded so alluring,his eyes fixated on you while one of his hands caressed your thigh delicately,”only with my own..”

471 notes · View notes

drdemonprince · 15 days

Note

Hello! Are you considering posting your top surgery chronicles to Substack? I am having a bilateral mastectomy with no nipple grafts this Wednesday and would appreciate reading about your experience. Thanks!

I had hoped to save them for republication at the one-year mark, but I don't wanna leave you hanging! Here you go with the free-to-read links!

57 notes · View notes

harukadrawsthings · 13 days

Text

URGENT COMMISSIONS

My phone is tearing apart and because it's an indispensable quotidian item I had to order a new one. However because I continue jobless this was quite a stretchy investment to do, so I urgently need to compensate most of the costs as possible (400€ in fact).

Above is a summary of what I manage to do and I provide more details through the private chat where I can provide PDF files of the TOS and the base prices. If you're not able to commission me, there's two other ways to help:

Ko-Fi donations (I accept multiples of 5€ in that platform)

Reblogging for exposure

It's been really rough on my end as I keep sending CVs and getting rejected so any help counts. Thank you very much for reading in advance!

#art #commissions #commissions open #artists on tumblr #digital art #traditional art #illustration #drawing #avatars #icons #harukadrawsthings #watercolours #2024 #ocs #others ocs

41 notes · View notes

easternmind · 1 year

Photo

- Lessons in Japanese Game Design #3 -

Aside from what is easily one of the most stylish presentations in a videogame from the 1990s, one of Front Mission 3′s truly remarkable features consists of an in-game internet browser running within a simulated operating system. Expanding on the concept first rehearsed by Squaresoft in the second entry of the series, this massive component of the game can be accessed during breaks between missions, offering the player access to a number of pages for government entities, enterprises or other institutions. Access to additional websites is permitted as the game progresses.

This inventive solution offers unparalleled insight into the fictional universe of the game, in that it paints a very granular image of a futuristic society, its economy, geopolitical environment and zeitgeist. The information contained in these pages comes in the form of of bulletin boards, institutional updates, press releases, top secret data volumes, or the occasionally amusing curiosity. The user interface itself permits some degree of customisation, such as the option to disable the startup animation - itself a gorgeous visual relic that one hardly tires of watching - or changing the wallpaper pattern. Certain websites will also provide the option to download content, including images which can be set as said wallpaper. Other resources require secure access via the insertion of a password. Moreover, the player will have access to an email inbox to both read and send messages as may be relevant to advance onto the next stage.

Make-believe computer front-ends in video games were no novelty by the year 1999. Several sci-fi adventure, role-playing or action games allowed access to often very believable GUIs for the purpose of, for instance, retrieving precious clues or, say, disabling security locks. Aside from Front Mission 2, Final Fantasy VIII fans will likely remember the exciting Balamb Garden Network terminal. Kowloon's Gate's unforgettable Kownloonet terminals gave access to an email inbox, an all-important database and various other quotidian curiosities that helped fleshing out its mystic sci-fi narrative. The Japanese were privileged to have a complete version of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere with access to an in-game encyclopedia the player could browse, as well as additional story elements told through email exchanges between the characters.

That same year, the western Tactical RPG sensation from the West, Jagged Alliance 2, dabbled in this idea. Only three short years later, CyberConnect2′s singular .hack series was designed around the idea of a MMORPG that plays offline, allowing for countless interactions with non-playable characters which simulate messaging formats of the era. Other notable examples include the 2chan boards in Steins;Gate or, inescapably, the passionate love letter to web 1.0 that is Hypnospace Outlaw.

Generally, all of the aforementioned titles are either entirely dedicated on a similar concept, or merely resorted to it as a secondary, amusing distraction. Front Mission 3 pioneered the use of this device as a storytelling technique. No other game of the time, at least to my knowledge, had dedicated so much of its resources to producing a credible replica of design and functionality of the internet as it once existed.

#front mission 3 #squaresoft #the internet #lessons in japanese game design #storytelling #operating systems within games #internet within games

157 notes · View notes

olderthannetfic · 8 months

Note

Honestly I suspect a lot of the fanfic-filed-off books that get big, even when they are mundane, work because they do involve some degree of "worldbuilding" in the sense of establishing an elaborate setting. Like I haven't read Love Hypothesis, but it's about science grad students right? That likely requires a lot of explanation of how the world of grad school, science research, etc. works since your average reader is not part of that world. That's just another kind of "worldbuilding."

Oh yes.

It doesn't need to be fantasy for it to be worldbuilding. If you made your boy band chefs or your space wizards grad students or any sort of person in a particular milieu with its own culture and rules, a good author will establish how this world works.

It's not just literal explanation either. Sometimes, you need to know how the science works, but sometimes, all you need is to understand the general vibe of the lab and the social dynamics of coworkers. It's often more sense of place rather than rules-based worldbuilding.

A lot of people talk about how Gilmore Girls gave them a sense of place that lots of media in real-ish settings doesn't. I never watched, but it looks like an autumn-themed blog on tumblr or something. Even if your "real world" setting works in quotidian ways, there are still things to establish.

The danger is when someone is writing a super generic coffee shop AU, does not establish much about the vibe of the coffee shop, and is also now missing the part where the space wizards wanted to kill each other in canon and that added spice to the otherwise conflictless fic AU because every fic reader knew it.

There's plenty of pro media that operates like a fandom coffee shop AU, but it bothers to establish more, and it has a plot with a conflict. Think Empire Records with its overall plot about saving the record store and its ensemble with the usual grab bag of ensemble character interpersonal problems.

A person can convert fic into original and have it go great. Many people don't end up doing a very good job unless the fic already spent a lot of time establishing original things.

74 notes · View notes

mammutblog · 9 months

Note

???!! i need to know more.

hello i can’t say too much about it bc i’m still at an early stage of writing! i tagged that under this post bc one of the more common questions i receive is “how do you know this album isn’t made for male pleasure?" I can't say I know for sure, but my belief can stand if the two statements “women were notoriously oppressed during this period of chinese history” (which they were) and “women have a lot of agency within the gender and class system, and built relationships with one another” can co-exist, which i think they can. we often live contradictory lives ourselves and i think people back then did too! the images themselves also tell us a lot about who the intended audience may be, especially if you put it against other similar objects from its time. Anyway! onto the p0rn itself:

if you go to the boston mfa website -> collections -> collections search and then search “secret spring” you’ll find 12 eighteenth century album leaves that depict various scenes of girls hanging out, playing chess, reading porn, buying dildos, doing some fruit sex and more

it’s not unusual for there to be depictions of female sexual intercouse in late imperial chinese p0rnographt but the male gaze-y-ness of them are quite present, such as very lavishly decorated backdrops, an emphasis on penetration, and sometimes the presence of a male viewer/participant

my vibes is that these albums (cr. james cahill for writing about this in the first place) is that the secret spring album centers around a quotidian nature of pleasure and an indulgence in everyday life. if you look closely at the backdrop for example, it feels like a very lived-in space, with tea cups and chess pieces lying around, beds unmade, furniture moved about etc

scenes of pleasure and nudity also seem to be shrouded with a sense of causality and comfort, there is no sense that the women are attempting to seduce or purposefully arouse the viewer, nor do the nudity and sexual acts read as foreplay to phallic penetration.

there is actually a lot of documentation, though not as much as male homosexuality, of women (mostly upper class) exchanging love letters, composing erotic poetry about courtesans, and sponsoring singing girls for entertainment. what i am trying to figure out right now is how to understand these expressions of love, friendship, pleasure and sexual desire without putting contemporary labels on them because it wouldn’t actually help us to better understand relationships between women at the time, anyway i wanted to make this really short but that’s what you get for asking me a question about my research, okay bye!

#ask

80 notes · View notes

quotidian-oblivion · 7 months

Text

Damian, for Halloween, would dress up as either Superboy (Jon) or another one of his friends (like Colin or Maps) cuz they're underrated and he wants everyone to know that they exist and are awesome and calls people "uncultured" and "an embarrassment to the intelligent society" if they don't recognize his friends' costumes.

@sardonic-sprite

129 notes · View notes

anniekoh · 3 months

Text

my mother tape-records my laugh to mail bubblewrapped back home my mother records me singing Ye shabe mahtab mah miad to khab I am singing the moon will come one night and take me away side street by side street sitting on a pilled suburban carpet or picking blue felt off the hand-me-down couch the displaced whatnots I practice the work of worms how much I can wear away with no one watching two generations ago my blood moved through borders according to grazing seasons then a lifeline of planes planes fly so close to my head filled with bomblets and disappeared men scaffolding sprouts nooses sagging with my dead I burn my finger on the broiler and smell trenches

Drone, by Solmaz Sharif, in the poetry collection Look. First published in Blackbird.

Her first poetry collection, Look

In her 2016 debut collection, Look, Sharif—who was born in Istanbul to Iranian parents and grew up in the United States—refused American civil rituals of polite consensus and exposed the ways state violence takes place in and through language. Reappropriating terms from the Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, where ordinary English is redefined in service of statecraft, Sharif mapped empire’s brutal trespasses. These words appear in the poems in capital letters, simultaneously disrupting and constructing scenes—often intimate and domestic. In the title poem, for example, the DoD’s definition of “look” (“a period during which a mine circuit is receptive of an influence”) jostles the ordinary one: “Let me LOOK at you. // Let me LOOK at you in a light that takes years to get here.” As the eerie convergence between the militarized and the quotidian agitates the language, any pretense of neutral description falls away. Reading these poems, it is impossible to sustain the fiction of a relationship—including a readership—wholly bracketed from the world empire has made.

Solmaz Sharif wrestles with the ways that acclaim can become an imperial enclosure; I once heard her say, “I try to write poems that make it impossible to applaud afterward.” Reaching toward forms of relation that are not fully apprehensible from life in the metropole, her work rejects the embrace of any we for whom sharing is an uncomplicated act.

#poetry #solmaz sharif

27 notes · View notes

familyabolisher · 1 year

Text

> there exists an arbitrary social distinction between ‘STEM’ and ‘humanities’ which (put crudely) invests greater intellectual merit in STEM as a category of learning more directly involved with positivism and empirical deductions & with a greater capacity for describing an ‘objective’ reality, as opposed to ‘humanities’ as a subject area with less deference to positivism and more deference to subjectivity and fewer obvious methodological paradigms

> this objective/subjective binary gets translated into what is effectively a ‘facts vs feelings’ distinction

> this distinction rests on about a hundred different incorrect premises (that positivism is the most intellectually rigorous exercise and that the conclusions it arrives at are describing a prediscursive reality and that little or no subjectivity is ever imposed on scientific conclusions; that the study of literature, art, history, philosophy, theology, music, etc., can be collapsed into a ‘vibes-based’ approach and don’t themselves rely on methodologies, specific epistemological branches, specialised terminology, &c. &c.; that the study of literature, art, history, philosophy, theology, music, etc. and also the study of mathematics, biology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, computer science, psychology, etc. can be grouped into two distinct categories with no overlap and that have nothing to say to one another; that we should be giving discursive weight to the idea that ‘intellectualism’ is a measurable property and a laudable one, and that this is not the discourse of eugenics; this list goes on for a while)

> somehow, rather than challenging these hundred different incorrect premises in any serious way, there exists a significant chunk of humanities students (most often students of literature) who reify the idea that their subject is essentially based on ‘vibes’ and intuition, such that really anyone should be able to do them; they defend the intellectual merit of their subject through the suggestion that ‘STEM people’ who lack their fluency in literary studies are in fact not as ‘intelligent’ as they imagine themselves to be

> this is largely reacting to a cultural phenomenon of ‘STEM people,’ empowered by the widespread perception of their subject as being more intellectually challenging and socially worthwhile than humanities, deriding the study of humanities subjects either as being ‘easy’ or as not being worth the effort in the first place; or both

> nevertheless, it sucks

> suggesting that ‘STEM people’ (or, more broadly, ‘everyone’!) ought to have a fluency in literature (and that their not having this is somehow of concern in a vague sense; implicitly a moral failing) ignores several key facts, including: that a study of literature is as predicated on access to particular time and resources as is a study of, say, biology; that lit studies are as capable of political conservatism as any other discipline and that political conservatism can easily come from practices of ‘critical thinking’ which apply literary methodologies to reach reactionary conclusions; that, just as a study of biology requires the acquisition of knowledge beyond the quotidian and/or intuitive, so too does a study of literature

> it is good to develop critical reading skills and to be able to read broadly and confidently, as these are useful tools for navigating and politically articulating the world around you; it’s bad and also just weird and boring to ignore the contingencies that the development of those skills rest upon in favour of trying to one-up your perceived academic rivals; it’s also weird and boring to be extremely put out that someone is more interested in astrophysics or microbiology than they are in the history of the novel

> all education in all forms is stratified by access contingencies; if you see the critical faculties that you imagine only a humanities education to be able to give you as morally necessary skills, why aren’t you focused on challenging those contingencies?

> none of this would be a problem if we removed the access barriers to all branches of education that capitalist intellectual production demands we keep in place; all of this is essentially a slapfight between a lot of people who have been fortunate enough to gain access to higher education and have internalised the social impetus to disregard + disdain those who didn’t

> all of you are so fucking annoying

#.txt

984 notes · View notes