#this is the best one i've found

[jacquelinemerritt]

Thanksgiving Films You Forgot: The Ice Storm

Originally posted November 16th, 2015

It’s November, and because it’s the most thankful time of the year, I’m taking a look at the Thanksgiving films you either didn’t see, or forgot existed. This week, I’m looking at The Ice Storm, which was directed by Ang Lee and stars an ensemble cast of Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Henry Czerny, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, and Adam Hann-Byrd.

The Ice Storm takes a very deliberate approach to its story; it’s a character drama at its heart, and Ang Lee takes his time progressing through the story. The first half of the film focuses on the few days before Thanksgiving, and follows two major stories: Kevin Kline’s affair with Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci’s relationship with Adam Hann-Byrd and his younger brother Elijah Wood.

Kline’s affair is a fairly simple story; he and Joan Allen are married, and he’s seeking sexual satisfaction with his neighbor Henry Czerny’s wife, Sigourney Weaver. Lee shows us that this simple arrangement isn’t quite what we might predict however, when Kline begins babbling to Weaver about his problems at work.

It would seem he’s seeking emotional fulfillment more than sexual fulfillment, and Weaver refuses to reciprocate his outpouring of emotions, telling him that if she wanted to hear about his problems, she’d just go speak to her husband. Later on, she abandons him, leaving him in his boxers with free reign over his house, sending the message that she’s not even interested in him sexually any longer.

The relationship between Christina Ricci and Adam Hann-Byrd is a complex one as well. They’re both fourteen year olds, going through the beginnings of puberty, and they’ve begun to experiment sexually, keeping this hidden from their parents. Ricci’s character is particularly sexual, and steps out of the bounds of their relationship to show herself off to Elijah Wood, Hann-Byrd’s younger brother.

Wood’s character, though tangentially interested in sex, is actually repulsed by Ricci’s exhibitionism, and responds appropriately, calling for help and getting his mother, Weaver, to kick Ricci out. When Hann-Byrd discovers this, he’s slightly dismayed, but as soon as Ricci exhibits sexual interest in him again, he forgets his concerns, and the two of them begin to experiment in his parents’ basement.

The second half of the film focuses on Thanksgiving night, which follows Kline and his wife Joan Allen as they attend a cocktail party, Ricci as she sneaks off to spend the night with Wood. At this point in the film, the stories begin to parallel one another, with each exploring themes of sexuality and personal connection in different but similar ways.

At this point in the film, Joan Allen has discovered that Kline is having an affair with Weaver, and their relationship has taken a significant toll as a result. This toll is intensified when they arrive to the cocktail party to discover that it is a “key party,” or a party wherein the men leave their keys in a bowl for the women to select from at random to determine who they will be going home with. Allen and Kline quickly get into an argument about this, with Allen eventually deciding to let Klein do whatever he wants, and throwing his keys into the bowl for him.

At the end of the night, when the women all select the keys, Allen chooses near the end after her husband has passed out drunk, and decides to go home with Czerny. They attempt to have sex, but Czerny is deterred, lacking the confidence to move forward, despite the fact that Weaver left early on with another man. Where Allen is ready to surrender to her physicality, Czerny refuses, letting his need for honest emotional connection supersede his desire for sex.

While her parents are away at the cocktail party, Ricci sneaks off to meet Elijah Wood at his house, and upon arrival discovers that his brother has left to go to an abandoned swimming pool in the forest. She and Wood decide to go up to his bedroom and lie in his bed together naked, but once they’ve stripped down, they don’t engage sexually. Instead, they talk, and lie in bed together, reveling in an honest emotional connection. It’s a very sweet and innocent moment, and it reveals that Ricci’s hypersexuality is a tool she uses; it scared off Wood, but not Hann-Byrd, and through this, she was able to determine that Wood was genuinely interested in her.

The parallels between these storylines are most clear when examining the way sex is used as a tool by these characters. Weaver most clearly uses sex as a tool, and she does so for no other reason than her own sexual pleasure, rejecting the intimacy of sex altogether. Ricci uses sex as a tool to test people, but she also uses it as a way to gain acceptance.

When she finds someone who isn’t interested in her for sex alone however, she recognizes her need for intimacy, and embraces a moment of non-sexuality. Finally, Allen, at the end of the film, attempts to use sex as a tool of revenge, wanting to sleep with Czerny only to upset her husband. But Czerny ultimately isn’t interested, desiring only the intimacy that comes alongside sex, and wanting to keep that intimacy between him and his wife.

Finally, Kline himself uses sex as a tool to gain intimacy; he sleeps with Weaver in order to try and have an emotional connection with her, and he spirals out of control when he doesn’t get that connection from her, ending up making a fool of himself at the cocktail party when Weaver leaves with someone other than him.

Ang Lee’s exploration of intimacy in this film is brilliant and subtle, showing the many ways people use sex to gain intimacy. The only real “complaint” I have about this film is that its setting around Thanksgiving is mostly incidental; this story could have happened at any point in the year, and its themes don’t line up with the themes of family and appreciation that are inherent to Thanksgiving. Still, ‘The Ice Storm’ is an excellent film, and you likely won’t find a more interesting film to watch this Thanksgiving (assuming you also require it be set around Thanksgiving).

#the ice storm #film criticism #ang lee #kevin kline #joan allen #sigourney weaver #henry czerny #christina ricci #elijah wood #adam hann-byrn #i think this is probably the strongest piece i wrote for the odyssey #the ice storm is a dense text layered with meaning #and is a fantastic exploration of intimacy #and i think i do a decent job elucidating those themes #if you are looking for a movie set at thanksgiving to watch #this is the best one i've found #and its exploration of intimacy actually does fit the setting of thanksgiving very well

[stargirl230]

thanks for the light

I was just trying to figure out how procreate works but then the op brainworms got to me and 35 hours later here we are! can you tell I miss home-cooked meals :')

(no reposts; reblogs appreciated)

#my art #artists on tumblr #fanart #one piece #opla #zosan #blackleg sanji #op sanji #roronoa zoro #nami #usopp #monkey d. luffy #i was like wow procreate is so cool for letting me check time spent on each canvas...35 HRS and 22 MINUTES???? #tbf it's spread out over 3 weeks BUT STILL #guys...the file name for this is nakama.png and im so emotional about it #something something comfort food and family and this is what love looks like and now im sobbing #im so predictable it's the found family that gets me every time #and the scene where they all announced their dreams with a foot on the barrel?? i swear i teared up a little #also this is lowkey the most complicated thing i've ever made im so proud #nothing but the best for these strawhats <3

[essektheylyss]

You know what's hilarious, if Ludinus was indeed a young man being traumatized by the end of the Calamity. Deirta Thelyss is almost certainly older than he is.

This is not relevant but I think Essek should bring this up, just to be a bitch about it.

#for the purposes of showing my work: a beacon was found by leylas kryn 1200 years ago. #she was considered enough of a cultural leader or influence to convince people to follow her ergo likely an adult of some standing. #the other umavi of the ruling dens (aka deirta and abrianna) are suggested to have been around at the time as well #ludinus would be at most 1000 years old. they're all like. at LEAST 1400 mentally if not physically. #and that's the LOW estimate #as always how long was the calamity. are the umavi actually pre-calamity. that would be SO funny to me. #(pre-calamity and pre-divergence are different for the record.) #ludinus da'leth ain't SHIT #leylas kryn escaped lolth lived through the calamity and has gone through seven rebirths. ludinus WISHES #if ANYONE deserves to have beef with lolth it's leylas kryn for the record. I mean she does. canonically. BUT HERS IS MOST VALID #anyway as always the dynasty best country <3 #if there are 99 ludinus haters I'm one of them if there's one it's me if there are none I've left this earth etc etc #he's just SO fun to hate and I do not respect him in the slightest nor do I think he deserves respect or validation. #I think he should get fucking sucked into a dark star and never be heard from again xoxo :3 #cr spoilers #essek thelyss

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

First and Last appearances of Poorly-Drawn-MDZS Season 1!

#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #not tagging them all here cause these are just comic excerpts #left out a quite a few characters cause they either didn't show up enough OR their first/last is a poor representation #the 'omg its Hanguang Jun' call back was intentional B*) #Surprised that no one pointed it out but now *I* can! Bursting into the scene fabulously is how LWJ starts and ends season 1! #Jin Ling has the least dramatic glow up (honestly I have been finding him harder and harder to draw) but he *does* have a moral glow up #I think *this* comparison is the one I feel best emphasizes my journey on this blog. #thank you to everyone who started following and cheering me on. Especially those who've been here since the very start #That said - no matter when you found this blog; It means a lot to me B*) #that's it for the reflective meta posting: season 2 starts back in July. I've gonna take this week to catch up on asks!

[dorothygale]

i made some more banners bc i love the funny ones but i thought it would be nice to have more simple options as well. so of course they're eras themed

#taylor swift #swifties #dni banner #swiftie banners #blabs #*taylor #i didn't use the real font for speak now bc it's like impossible to read lmao #obviously debut isn't the title font either but it's the font that was used for the back cover tracklist etc #sadly lover is not a font at all but that's the best similar one i've found #50 #100 #500 #1k #mine* #banners

[becca-e-barnes]

Ok but what about submissive!dbf!bucky with a praise kink? Maybe one found accidentally? In the drabble where the reader wanted to say he was beautiful, what if she does and he just moans?? What if the word the reader is looking for is pretty? Imagine calling an older man pretty and he nearly finishes just from that?

Back to my current favourite, submissive!dbf!bucky bc I can't get enough of him rn, I have so much I want to talk about

Because ohhhh, I love the thought of him being so totally obsessed with going down on you, to the point that he'd almost do anything just for a taste of you.

And maybe he'd seen you in a pretty little dress at a get-together at your house. Maybe a birthday party or something. You had both been keeping up appearances, pretending nothing is going on between you because he's your father's best friend but he'd taken the risk and approached you, leaning over and whispering in your ear. "Next time I get you alone, I'm going to lick from your ankle to your cunt." That's all he says, his hand rests on your lower back and you barely feel the heat of it through your dress before it's gone again. God, you hope that's a promise.

Of course it is. As soon as he gets a chance to sneak away from everyone else the two of you are tiptoeing up the stairs to your bedroom. After a fierce few minutes of intensely making out, he's laid you gently onto the bed, pushing the skirt of your dress out of the way. He doesn't waste a second, his lips on the inside of your ankle, humming contently as he kisses his way up the expanse of bare skin.

For a man who's kissed every inch of your body, he never seems to get tired of it. His slight scruff scratches your skin and it's lovely to be reminded of how intensely he's worshipping your body.

"You look. So. Fucking. Breathtaking." The words are muffled against your skin, his lips trailing hungry kisses up to your knee. One of his hands holds your leg, keeping you still while the other slips higher under your skirt.

You brace yourself for the groan you know he's going to grace you with and when it comes, it doesn't disappoint. The fingertips of his index and pointer finger trail lazily across your bare sex, gliding easily thanks to the evidence of your arousal.

"No panties?" His fingers keep teasing you, trailing from your fluttering entrance to your clit and back again, giving himself time to decide where he wants to start.

"I took them off after you told me your plan and so far you've let me down." If this were any other night, he'd probably tell you to watch your mouth before he fills it but tonight is not that night. Tonight he's desperate to taste you; to walk back down those stairs, look you in the eyes for the rest of the evening, knowing he made you cum against his mouth and no one else in the room can tell. Then jerk off to the memory tonight when he's back in his own bed.

He wastes no more time after that, flattening his tongue against your ankle and purposefully trailing it up your leg to your knee, then on up your thigh. At the same time, he eases his two fingers inside you, curling them against the soft, velvety wall of your cunt.

You hold the skirt of your dress out of the way so you can see him latch his mouth onto your clit, sucking gently and flicking his tongue while he curls his fingers inside you.

This is fucking magical. You know his mouth is flooded with the taste of you, your fingers tangled in his hair to keep his mouth pressed against you. "Fuck, that's perfect." It's the only way to describe the sensation of his mouth and fingers working you in tandem.

He's lost in it. His eyes are closed in concentration, determined to give you what you need. He needs to please you and it's not a need you've instilled in him. It's one he's always had.

"You're so pretty, do you know that?" It's bouncing around in your head and you feel like you need to say it.

He groans against your sex and you don't think anything of it until he mumbles "Please don't call me that. Not right now." His fingers work you faster but your hazy, pleasure addled brain still manages to ask him why.

" 'Cause sweetheart, I don't want to cum in these trousers. I don't have a change of clothes. Didn't even know I was into that." He sounds smaller, almost pleading with you, palming his cock through his dark jeans.

"But you're gorgeous, Buck. You have no idea how pretty you are with your head between my legs." The moan he emits is so rewarding you swear you could get off on that alone, never mind his renewed need to make you finish quickly before you get him to a point of desperation.

#asks answered <3 #anon #becca writes spice #dbf!bucky #dad's best friend!bucky #sub!dbf!bucky #sub!bucky #this brings 'touch tank' by Quinnie to mind #I wrote a piece for work this week and I'm stupidly excited for it to be printed #it was just like 400 words for a brochure #but it's the very top of the first page on that brochure #so it's the first thing people will read #I really like the tone it sets #I have the coolest outfit for the event I'm presenting at this week #I've got a black jumpsuit that's off one shoulder #AND IT'S GOT A LITTLE CAPE ATTACHED #it's so pretty #just a shame my hairdresser can't take me until next week 😭 #and on the house search I've found another one I like so I've got my good vibes back

[kirby-the-gorb]

#kirby #daily kirby #my art #digital #hal laboratory #nintendo #(edit: it's been found thank you! original tags preserved below) #I cannot for the life of me find one specific reaction image and its source post #the one where the person is coming to in a hospital bed after a surgery #and they try to eat their own fist #and get stopped #and make big wibbly confused crying faces #it's smooth line images interspersed with text #does anyone have it? #cuz that '🥺???' was me most of the day and I wanted the image so I could convey it #but I Couldn't Find It #and neither my wife nor my best friend have any idea what image I'm talking about #so they can't help #(my partner isn't very online so there's no point asking them lol) #do any of y'all have it pls #I want the original post but I can't even find the standalone reaction image which should be enough to find the post #I've found one iteration of someone drawing their oc in the meme format and that's as far as I got even with as much as I remember about it #favorites

[hood-ex]

Me when I start to write a negative post but then remember I'm supposed to be more conscious of my words, thoughts, and actions so that I can maintain a positive and loving disposition:

The New Teen Titans (Vol. 2) #32

#admittedly i'm still not the best when it comes to tt lmao #but from now on i'm trying to be more... sigh... loving... #turning my negative thoughts into positive ones has been funny though #and i've found myself laughing more bc of it so yeehaw

[positivelyapunovexponent-good]

Once I come up with a killer band name all I'll need to do is actually learn how to sing or play an instrument!

(Honestly this thought exercise is actually a really fun coping mechanism for rejection of any sort I highly recommend it)

#credit to my friends for some of these suggestions #also earnestly if I do end up needing to take a gap year after this year I do want to learn bass guitar #I've wanted to since high school #also Kaeyleighh graph is probably my favorite since my undergrad thesis is on Caley graphs so #the idea of using a Mormon-esque style spelling of Caley is inordinately funny to me for some reason #Two Directions Going the Same Way is what my brother and his best friend wanted to call the band they dreamed of starting in middle school #I've always earnestly found that one really funny #polls #graduate school Jeremiad

[sherlock-is-ace]

Bill Masters as a character generates four distinct reactions within me:

Jesus Christ, he's a piece of shit I want him murdered.

Omg nooo, you poor babie ily, come here

Pathetic wet cardboard of a man

Damn he's so gorgeous

And i think they're all very correct

#he might be my favorite character ever #he's just SO COMPLEX i adore him #this show has some of the best characters i've seen om tv in general #libby my beloved #betty my wife #even gini who I don't particularly love but gotta admit FANTASTIC character #so many strong women too!! and very well written imo #also michael sheen has said bill masters is one of he hardest characters he has ever played #but gotta say he did an incredible job (as always) you couldn't tell he found him difficult to play #ajfmshfnjsf #THE MICROEXPRESSIONS #god this man will me the death of me #angel talks #mos #masters of sex #michael sheen

[yayforocs]

I Have Once Again Been Consumed By A Fic (Redstone and Skulk by @silverskye13

#redstone and skulk #the demon #tanguish #helsknight #evil beezuma #don't mind the repost tumblr just. wasn't showing the original post anywhere for me???? #i'm worried it might've eaten it???; sO HERE WE GO TRYING AGAIN #the demon is only half done and honestly i drew all of him that i was really wanting to draw anyway so he's staying like that dklsghs #and that was his face and then just kinda like his build mOSTLY!!! BC!!!! #i found it interesting that as i was reading the bit he was in that i was imagining him like #Not Human At AllTM and went 'huh. i mean that's prolly not how he's supposed to be' #but thought it neat enough to put down to paper kinda what i was picturing :VVVV and what i was picturing was Big Dragon Demon #aLSo eb!!!! i've now seen like op's art of eb and have also realized how wack my brain's image of eb was #but i love things like that!!! where the reader's brain pictures differently!!!! so i drew eb too :VVVV #also i cannot resist A Creachure and my vision of eb definitely falls into that category for me #and so does tanguish!!!! the boy!!!! best boy!!! and then ofc i had to!! helsknight!!! he!!!!! #anyway i love them all sm they're just Really Hecking Neat To Me #(also ngl i think that tanguish running is like. one of my favorite poses i've drawn ever???) #(v happy with that i think it certainly is atl my favorite sketch on the page)

[onyourstageleft]

#dan and phil #weed #besties i am so high rn i am losing it #i took like one too many bong hits #started playing flight rising on the desktop computer bc it loads so much faster than my chromebook #opened youtube to have something on the second monitor #found dan and phil's fuckin lofi album??? #lost my absolute shit about it #went to post about it from tumblr mobile but wanted to make this meme to do it justice so pulled up a meme editor on my desktop #(the meme editor had so many advanced text options since when have meme editors come this far??) #anyway made the meme realized my phone is at super low battery so decided to just log on to tumblr to post it directly from the desktop #even though i'm nearly exclusively a mobile user now and have been for years #so i have to log in to tumblr and now i'm experiencing making a post from the desktop site while still pretty blitzed #is it firefox that allows me to edit the tags after i've typed them or is that a desktop thing now #oh shit do i have any extensions on #depending on what imported from chrome when i changed my browser like six months ago this may be some sort of extension #whatever it is im okay with it this is great #i'm having such a good time right now genuinely #also watched chappell roan's hot to go music video for the first time during an interlude in the whole meme making process #there is currently a restoration video playing in the other tab that's been going for 10 minutes while i've been making this post #this is me living my best life honestly #i need at least one person to acknowledge the journey of tags on this post if only so i know I'm not alone in knowing my experience

[evilkitten3]

But listen, if Izuna had said yes to Hashirama's help after he was injured and he still died, would Madara rampage like in canon? Would he still chase the infinite tsukyomi?

the thing is, hashirama never offered to help izuna. i'm actually not sure he could have - the hiraishingiri pretty much cut through him like butter. moreover, while madara himself lauds hashirama's medical prowess, we actually know very little about his capabilities with medical ninjutsu. he could heal wounds without any hand seals, that's mostly all we know.

here are hashirama's words immediately after izuna is injured:

「マダラ・・・お前はオレには勝てない・・・もう・・・終わりにしよう・・・忍最強のうちはと千手が組めば・・・国も我々と見合う他の忍一族を見つけられなくなる・・・いずれ争いも沈静化していく」

"madara... you can't beat me... let's end it already. if the strongest shinobi, the uchiha and the senju, form an alliance... the country won't be able to find another shinobi clan able to counterbalance us... the conflict will eventually calm down"

he doesn't acknowledge izuna at all. whether he intended an offer of medical aid to be implied or not, it's never addressed. a bunch of people have claimed that this makes hashirama a jerk, and while i definitely get that viewpoint, i do think offering to help izuna without being absolutely certain he was capable of doing so would've been a terrible move, politically speaking. madara might have known that hashirama isn't the sort of man who would do something like this, but the rest of the uchiha clan would have no reason not to assume that hashirama didn't just take advantage of madara's kindness/trust/desperation/whatever to ensure that izuna died while potentially leaving room for madara to feel indebted to him for trying in spite of all the reasons he had not to bother.

hell, the clan might even come to the conclusion that madara intended for izuna to die so he could get his eyes, given what ended up happening in canon, so his fallout with them might actually happen even faster (and without the uchiha ever joining konoha at all, although without madara around to counter hashirama, i have no idea if/how the uchiha would manage against the senju from there)

all that aside, if hashirama had indeed offered help and izuna had agreed to take the risk and died anyway and the uchiha clan trusted that that was what had actually happened, i think pretty much everything else would've proceeded according to canon.

there's definitely plenty of fun possibilities to play around with concerning madara's path in life, but tbh i personally believe that without a massive deviation from canon, he would've eventually become who he became. hashirama definitely fucked up here and there, but i honestly don't think there was anything he could've personally done alone that would've changed madara's fate short of killing him back when they were kids, which he was never going to do. he was always doomed.

#naruto #naruto shippuden #uchiha madara #senju hashirama #uchiha izuna #meta #also madara's trust issues would probably have gotten even weirder if that had happened lol #don't get me wrong i love what if madara didn't become a villain aus as much as anybody #but i've never seen one that could have plausibly taken place in the canon universe #even the very best ones #often the biggest difference is black zetsu suddenly deciding to show up and act like a stupid cartoon villain lol #like i've seen maybe one fic where it didn't do that and even then its influence on madara was much more direct than in canon #black zetsu was really fucking good at its job y'all. and it found/helped create the perfect guy for its plan #oh yeah one last thing: i want the naruto fandom to consider the implications of healing izuna against his will #like i know it's fiction ok i get that. and i know in this particular idea izuna agrees and i know the concept seems silly at first #but guys medical ethics is really REALLY important

[dawnthefluffyduck]

Happy 1st anniversary to Looking Glasses by @ferronickel :) (edit; whoops forgot to remove the space in the tag, sorry i know you've already seen it haha)

#super exciting day :D #every single page in looking glasses is a work of art #if i'm remembering the order of events right #i found about looking glasses bc you visited my blog around the time i first started posting #and i freaked out and was super happy so i checked yours out too #and lo and behold there was a gem of a comic to be found there #thanks for the support you've given me with my art since then :) best wishes for the rest of looking glasses! #also #christ on a stick how the hell do you handle all of those dark fountain swirlies #i always thought they were cool as hell but i have a newfound appreciation for them now that i've tried it myself #this is a bit messy but i didn't wanna overwork it #i'm still learning digital painting so i was guessing my whole way through this haha #was very fun to draw ^-^ #couldnt decide what exactly i wanted to draw for this so i drew ralsei in one of my favorite scenes #ralsei #deltarune #looking glasses #first time I've used the queue feature #got it set for 10:30 when I normally wake up so it better work or I'll gut tumblr and sell its entrails in a flea market #update; it did not in fact work #rip tumblr

[becca-e-barnes]

any chance you could write stepdad!steve catching you sneak back in from a party?

Pleaseeeeee 🤤 This is a lil short one but I might give it a second part

"What time do you call this?" You knew you were fucked when the taxi dropped you home and the light in your kitchen illuminated the drive way. Your mum made a habit of turning it off every night and you were only getting away with this if everyone was asleep.

It was well past the time your mum and stepdad usually went to bed. Hell, it was well past the time you usually went to bed yourself. You didn't often stay up to 2:37am and you absolutely never stayed out that late. Despite the fact you're in your 20's, your new stepdad had set the rule that you were to be home by 1am every night. No exceptions. Asshole.

It usually wasn't hard to follow his rules. No boys in your bedroom. Don't stay out late. Fill up the fuel you use in the car. Nothing really out of the ordinary. But then again, he kept telling you that you weren't the rule breaking type anyway.

"Sorry, I lost track of time." You did your best to avoid looking at your stepfather while you lied through your teeth. You'd known damn well what time it was and you'd had every intention of staying out until the lights in the club came back on. You just didn't think you'd get caught.

"Mhm." Steve's hum almost sounded convincing, pausing while he folded his arms, his navy blue pyjama top straining around his biceps. "You expect me to believe that? You're a bright girl, sweetheart. I know you can tell the time."

Damn your own body for betraying you like this. His praise makes your tummy flutter and you know it's so damn wrong.

"I know you want to be a good girl, don't you?" He pauses again, waiting for your response and he seems satisfied when you nod. "Always so well behaved for me. You know what? I'll let you pick your own punishment. Just this once." His eyes are trained on your face, watching for any sign of discomfort at the way things are progressing.

"Option 1. I confiscate your car keys." Fair enough but that would be really inconvenient. "Option 2. I confiscate your phone." Oh no, absolutely not. "Option 3. I confiscate that shitty little vibrator you keep in the drawer beside your bed."

How does he even know you have that? It's mortifying enough that he feels able to punish you but this is a step further than you were expecting.

"No need to be shy about it, honey. I get it. You've got needs. Nothing to be embarrassed about. And if it makes you feel better, I could show you how a real man should touch you. You'll forget that little plastic thing even exists."

Fuck, that's an offer you could only ever have dreamed of. In fact, it's painfully close to what you imagine while you're frantically rolling the vibrator in question over your own clit.

"If you'd rather lose your car keys or your phone, feel free. Choice is yours." Steve sounds awfully nonchalant for someone who's just made a proposal like that but there's no chance you're turning down his offer.

"Option 3." Your voice is barely a squeak and you almost think you've made the wrong decision when Steve raises an eyebrow.

"Good girl. Go get it."

#asks answered <3 #anon #becca writes spice #stepdad!Steve rogers #Steve rogers x reader smut #Steve rogers smut #tw: stepdad #tw: stepcest #a short one #because I've been writing my essay all day and I need to get back to it #I needed a break from it #I took some leave from work this week and now I don't want to go back tomorrow 😩 #I had the best time off #chilling in a hot tub #taking myself to nice restaurants #going on walks in a city I'm not familiar with #coffee shops with a good book #doing a lil bit of shopping #found a new MSc I think I'd LOVE

[moonlit-tulip]

What's your favorite ebook-compatible reading software? Firefox EPUBReader isn't great, but I'm not what, if anything, works better.

Very short answer: for EPUBs, on Windows I use and recommend the Calibre reader, and on iOS I use Marvin but it's dying and no longer downloadable so my fallback recommendation is the native Apple Books app; for PDFs, on Windows I use Sumatra, and on iOS I use GoodReader; for CBZs, I use CDisplayEx on Windows and YACReader on iOS; and I don't use other platforms very often, so I can't speak as authoritatively about those, although Calibre's reader is cross-platform for Windows/Mac/Linux, and YACReader for Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android, so they can serve as at least a minimum baseline of quality against which alternatives can be compared for those platforms.

Longer answer:

First off, I will say: yeah, Firefox EPUBReader isn't great. Neither, really, are most ebook readers. I have yet to find a single one that I'm fully satisfied with. I have an in-progress project to make one that I'm fully satisfied with, but it's been slow, probably isn't going to hit 1.0.0 release before next year at current rates, and isn't going to be actually definitively the best reader on the market for probably months or years post-release even assuming I succeed in my plans to keep up its development. So, for now, selection-of-ebook-readers tends to be very much a matter of choosing the best among a variety of imperfect options.

Formats-wise, there are a lot of ebook formats, but I'm going to collapse my answers down to focusing on just three, for simplicity. Namely: EPUB, PDF, and CBZ.

EPUB is the best representative of the general "reflowable-text ebook designed to display well on a wide variety of screens" genre. Other formats of similar nature exist—Kindle's MOBI and AZW3 formats, for instance (the latter of which is, in essence, just an EPUB in a proprietary Amazon wrapper)—but conversion between formats-in-this-broad-genre is generally pretty easy and not excessively lossy, so you're generally safe to convert to EPUB as needed if you've got different formats-in-this-genre and a reader that doesn't support those formats directly. (And it's rare for a program made by anyone other than Amazon to work for non-EPUB formats-in-this-genre and not for EPUBs.)

PDF is a pretty unique / distinctive format without any widely-used alternatives I'm aware of, unless you count AZW4 (which is a PDF in a proprietary Amazon wrapper). It's the best format I'm aware of for representations of books with rigid non-reflowable text-formatting, as with e.g. TTRPG rulebooks which do complicated things with their art-inserts and sidebars.

And CBZ serves here as a stand-in for the general category of "bunch of images in an archive file of some sort, ordered by filename", which is a common format for comics. CBZ is zip-based, CBR is RAR-based, CB7 is 7-zip-based, et cetera; but they're easy to convert between one another just by extracting one and then re-archiving it in one's preferred format, and CBZ is the most commonly distributed and the most commonly supported by readers, so it's the one I'm going to focus on.

With those prefaces out of the way, here are my comprehensive answers by (platform, format) pair:

Browser, EPUB

I'm unaware of any good currently-available browser-based readers for any of the big ebook formats. I've tried out EPUBReader for Firefox, as well as some other smaller Firefox-based reader extensions, and none of them have impressed me. I haven't tested any Chrome-based readers particularly extensively, but based on some superficial testing I don't have the sense that options are particularly great there either.

This state of affairs feels intuitively wrong to me. The browser is, in a significant sense, the natural home for EPUB-like reflowable-text ebooks, to a greater degree than it's the natural home for a great many of the other things people manage to warp it into being used for; after all, EPUBs are underlyingly made of HTML-file-trees. My own reader-in-progress will be browser-based. But nonetheless, for now, my advice for browser-based readers boils down to "don't use them unless you really need to".

If you do have to use one, EPUBReader is the best extension-based one I've encountered. I have yet to find a good non-extension-based website-based one, but am currently actively in the market for such a thing for slightly-high-context reasons I'll put in the tags.

Browser, PDF

Firefox and Chrome both have built-in PDF readers which are, like, basically functional and fine, even if not actively notably-good. I'm unaware of any browser-based PDF-reading options better than those two.

Browser, CBZ

If there exist any good options here, I'm not aware of them.

Windows, EPUB

Calibre's reader is, unfortunately, the best on the market right now. It doesn't have a very good scrolled display mode, which is a mark against it by my standards, and it's a bit slow to open books and has a general sense of background-clunkiness to its UI, but in terms of the quality with which it displays its content in paginated mode—including relatively-uncommon sorts of content that most readers get wrong, like vertical text—it's pretty unparalleled, and moreover it's got a generally wider range of features and UI-customization options than most readers offer. So overall it's my top recommendation on most axes, despite my issues with it.

There's also Sigil. I very emphatically don't actually recommend Sigil as a reader for most purposes—it's marketed as an EPUB editor, lacks various features one would want in a reader, and has a much higher-clutter UI than one would generally want in a reader—but its preview pane's display engine is even more powerful than Calibre's for certain purposes—it can successfully handle EPUBs which contain video content, for instance, which Calibre falls down on—so it can be a useful backup to have on hand for cases where Calibre's display-capabilities break down.

Windows, PDF

I use SumatraPDF and think it's pretty good. It's very much built for reading, rather than editing / formfilling / etc.; it's fast-to-launch, fast-to-load-pages, not too hard to configure to look nice on most PDFs, and generally lightweight in its UI.

When I need to do fancier things, I fall back on Adobe Reader, which is much more clunky on pretty much every axis for purposes of reading but which supports form-filling and suchlike pretty comprehensively.

(But I haven't explored this field in huge amounts of depth; plausibly there exist better options that I'm unaware of, particularly on the Adobe-reader-ish side of things. (I'd be a bit more surprised if there were something better than SumatraPDF within its niche, for Windows, and very interested in hearing about any such thing if it does exist.))

Windows, CBZ

My usual CBZ-reader for day-to-day use—which I also use for PDF-based comics, since it has various features which are better than SumatraPDF for the comic-reading use case in particular—is an ancient one called CDisplayEx which, despite its age, still manages to be a solid contender for best in its field; it's reasonably performant, it has most of the features I need (good handling of spreads, a toggle for left-to-right versus right-to-left reading, a good set of options for setting how the pages are fit into the monitor, the ability to force it forward by just one page when it's otherwise in two-page mode, et cetera), and in general it's a solid functional bit of software, at least by the standards of its field.

The reason I describe CDisplayEx as only "a solid contender for" best in its field, though, is: recently I had cause to try out YACReader, a reader I tried years ago on Windows and dismissed at the time, on Linux; and it was actually really good, like basically as good as CDisplayEx is on Windows. I haven't tried the more recent versions of YACReader on Windows directly, yet; but it seems pretty plausible that my issues with the older version are now resolved, that the modern Windows version is comparable to the Linux version, and therefore that it's on basically the same level as CDisplayEx quality-wise.

Mac, EPUB/PDF/CBZ

I don't use Mac often enough to have opinions here beyond "start with whatever cross-platform thing is good elsewhere, as a baseline, and go on from there". Don't settle for any EPUB reader on Mac worse than the Calibre one, since Calibre works on Mac. (I've heard vague good things about Apple's native one; maybe it's actually a viable option?) Don't settle for any CBZ reader on Mac worse than YACReader, since YACReader works on Mac. Et cetera. (For PDFs I don't have any advice on what to use even as baseline, unfortunately; for whatever reason, PDF readers, or at least the better ones, seem to tend not to be natively cross-platform.)

Linux, EPUB

For the most part, my advice is the same as Windows: just go with the Calibre reader (and maybe use Sigil as a backup for edge cases). However, if you, like me, prefer scrolled EPUB-reading over paginated EPUB-reading, I'd also suggest checking out Foliate; while it's less powerful than the Calibre reader overall, with fewer features and more propensity towards breaking in edge cases, it's basically functional for normal books lacking unusual/tricky formatting, and, unlike Calibre, it has an actually-good scrolled display mode.

Linux, PDF

I have yet to find any options I'm fully satisfied with here, for the "fast launch and fast rendering and functional lightweight UI" niche that I use SumatraPDF for on Windows. Among the less-good-but-still-functional options I've tried out: SumatraPDF launched via Wine takes a while to start up, but once launched it has the usual nice SumatraPDF featureset. Zathura with the MuPDF backend is very pleasantly-fast, but has a somewhat-unintuitive keyboard-centric control scheme and is hard to configure. And qpdfview offers a nice general-purpose PDF-reading UI, including being quick to launch, but its rendering backend is slower than either Sumatra's or Zathura's so it's less good for paging quickly through large/heavy PDFs.

Linux, CBZ

YACReader, as mentioned previously in the Windows section, is pretty definitively the best option I've found here, and its Linux version is a solid ~equal to CDisplayEx's Windows version. Like CDisplayEx, it's also better than more traditional PDF readers for reading PDF-based comics.

iOS/iPadOS, EPUB

My current main reading app is Marvin. However, it hasn't been updated in years, and is no longer available on the app store, so I'm currently in the process of getting ready to migrate elsewhere in anticipation of Marvin's likely permanent breakage some time in the next few years. Thus I will omit detailed discussion of Marvin and instead discuss the various other at-least-vaguely-comparably-good options on the market.

For general-purpose reading, including scrolled reading if that's your thing, Apple's first-party Books app turns out to be surprisingly good. It's not the best in terms of customization of display-style, but it's basically solidly functional, moreso than the vast majority of the apps on the market.

For reading of books with vertical text in particular, meanwhile, I use Yomu, which is literally the only reader I've encountered to date on any platform which has what I'd consider to be a sensible and high-quality way of handling scrolled reading of vertical-text-containing books. While I don't recommend it for more general purposes, due to awkward handling of EPUBs' tables of contents (namely, kind of ignoring them and doing its own alternate table-of-contents thing it thinks is better), it is extremely good for that particular niche, as well as being more generally solid-aside-from-the-TOC-thing.

iOS/iPadOS, PDF

I use GoodReader. I don't know if it's the best in the market, but it's very solidly good enough for everything I've tried to do with it thus far. It's fast; its UI is good at getting out of my way, while still packing in all the features I want as options when I go looking for them (most frequently switching between two-page-with-front-cover and two-page-without-front-cover display for a given book); also in theory it has a bunch of fancy PDF-editing features for good measure, although in practice I never use those and can't comment on their quality. But, as a reader, it's very solidly good enough for me, and I wish I could get a reader like it for desktop.

iOS/iPadOS, CBZ

YACReader has an iOS version; following the death of my former favorite comic reader for iOS (ComicRack), it's very solidly the best option I'm aware of on the market. (And honestly would be pretty competitive even if ComicRack were still around.) I recommend it here as I do on Linux.

Android, EPUB/PDF/CBZ

It's been years since I've had an Android device, and accordingly have very little substantial advice here. (I'm expecting to move back to Android for my next phone-and-maybe-also-tablet, out of general preferring-open-hardware-and-software-when-practical feelings, but it'll plausibly be a while, because Apple is much better at long-lasting hardware and software than any Android manufacturers I'm aware of.) For EPUB, I recall Moon+ reader was the best option I could find back circa 2015ish, but that's long enough ago that plausibly things have changed substantially at this point. For CBZ, both YACReader and CDisplayEx have Android versions, although I haven't tried either and so can't comment on their quality. For PDF, you're on your own; I have no memories or insights there.

Conclusion

...and that's it. If there are other major platforms on which ebook-reader software can be chosen, I'm failing to think of them currently, and this is what I've got for all platforms I have managed to think of.

In the future... well, I hope my own reader-in-development (slated for 1.0.0 release as a Firefox extension with only EPUB support, with ambitions of eventually expanding to cover other platforms and other formats) will one day join this recommendation-pile, but it's currently not yet in anything resembling a recommendable form. And I hope that there are lots of good reader-development projects in progress that I currently don't know about; but, if there are, I currently don't know about them.

So, overall, this is all I've got! I hope it's helpful.

#Archive #Social #Ask #Ebooks #Infodump #the short summary of why i want to find a web-based epub reader is: #currently i'm learning to read japanese. #one of the natural next steps for me to take in the japanese-learning process is to start reading actual books. #i have some very useful browser extensions—yomichan and jpdbreader—which make reading japanese in-browser more convenient than elsewhere. #(jpdbreader in particular is probably the best training-wheels-ish japanese-reading tool i've found to date.) #however i can't use firefox extensions in non-firefox reader apps such as calibre #and browser security limits are such that i can't use them on other extensions' associated webpages either #thus i need to find a non-extension-based website i can get to display my japanese books so i can then read them with those extensions.