#//know nothing about brawl stars but this is very funny ty

[swagtastic-bougie-pompadour]

Howdy cowpokes!

Are you sick of weak cactus? Do you wish you could have cactus in Siberian winter, or even a nuclear winter?

Then you're in luck little doggy. Our cactus are made in special soil with the best humane growth vitamins, so they have the sharpest... how you say- uh- teeth!

These cactus practically takes care of themselves, it's almost like a little man is living inside.

But do not look inside for little man.

Never look inside for little man.

We have all grades too! Our cactus are perfect for weddings, birthdays, funerals, themeparks, funerals, and more.

So mosey on down to Cowboy Ivan Cactus Patch! Come pick a cactus before they pick you.

Well howdy to you too! I appreciate your "rooting tooting" attitude, but I do have a clarifying question: what the heck is a Siberia?

If you're looking for any more living cacti, you could always come down to Paldea too! We've got Cacnea and Cacturne, and they're great companions, even though they've got a habit of staring you down and waiting for you to show your weak point!

I'll keep you in mind if we should ever need any... graduation cacti, though. Thank you for your inquiry!

[fullsunalicia]

ooh idk if requests are open, but if they are could you write a sort of spin off to the tale older than time for jaemin??? bECAUSE YES SON OF EROS FALLING IN LOVE AND HIM NOT SEEING IT COMING?? yes pls,,,,oh and if you ever plan on making it a series with all the dreamies as demigods i will literally worship you and set up a temple for you !! you write so well !!

love and war - NJM

maybe the fates mixed something up when they tied the red string of the daughter of ares to eros’ son instead of aphrodite’s, but jaemin wasn’t complaining. after all, it was love at first sight, and eros is the next-best thing, right?

son of eros!jaemin x daughter of ares!y/n

hello my love! yes, they’re open, so request away as much as you’d like! thank you for this one, i hope you will enjoy it 🤍 also, that sounds really intriguing! for you, i will go ahead and try to write a greek mythology au for every dreamie 🤍 but i’ll have to say that no matter how many temples you build for me, i’ll build dozens more for you! thank you so much for your kind words bubs 🥺

Jaemin was used to playing matchmaker.

Not once did the students on campus flock to the children of Aphrodite when they needed help with love, even though Jaehyun was literally right there. They trusted Eros and his genes, because everyone knew the story of Psyche and wished to find a love like theirs.

Sure, he bended the rules a little bit when he helped Jeno... but what the Fates don’t know, shouldn’t bother them, right?

Little does Jaemin know that they’ve decided to take Na Jaemin’s love life into their very own hands. Somewhere in Greece, up high on a mountain, Cloto, Lachesis and Atropos are having the time of their lifes tying little (y/n)’s red string to Jaemin’s. Not even his father can hinder them, because Jaemin knowingly broke the rules.

They’d like to see how Jaemin would manage with the ill-tempered, hot-headed (y/n), demi-goddess, Ares’ pride and joy.

After all, you’ve never fallen in love.

❀ ❀ ❀

There’s a reason why your knuckles are split open nearly every week.

One look at the you and everyone determines that you must be really weak. Frail, pushed aside almost too easily. You hide it well, because the second they under-estimate you, they’re already dead. (l/n) (y/n) looks nothing like her elder siblings, but you pack quite the punch. It’s the golden, godly blood flowing in your veins that throws in that extra swing, just the amount of strength needed to break someone’s jaw. That’s a blessing only the children of Ares possess - there is not a single fight they ever lose, or at least lose immediately. They were born to conquer, fight and win, meant to be leaders, warriors and protectors.

So when some assholes on campus make your best friend Yuqi uncomfortable, you’re the first to start the brawl. It’s really not your fault those jerks couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. If a girl says no several times and they still can’t accept it, they’ll just have to sort it out with your fists.

You’re not like your father. You don’t actively search for fights, even though there’s nothing that makes you feel more alive than a well-delivered kick or the satisfying feeling of bones cracking beneath your grip. You inherited the love for a good fight, but not the stupidity to look for it at every corner. There’s a hot temper boiling beneath your skin, but you keep it in check pretty well. Unless of course someone bothers Yuqi. That’s something different entirely and you welcome that particular red haze every time it comes.

“Please, please stop hurting yourself for me,” Yuqi begs you as she holds your bandaged hands tightly in her own. You see no reason in putting band-aids on them, but your best friend can’t live with herself if she can’t atleast treat your wounds, so you let her do her thing every time. “I wish you’d just let someone else do it. You know it’s not possible to win every time, (y/n), you’re a daughter of Ares, not the god themself.”

“I warned them not to touch you.” The shrug of your shoulders only upsets Yuqi more. “That was their own fault. I’m not standing aside to someone bothering and harrassing you like that. Not until someone else does it for me, like a future boy- or girlfriend.”

“I’m straight.”

“You’re lying to yourself.”

Yuqi laughs, pink blush settling on her cheeks. You’re only joking, but you know she ponders over that thought, her beautiful mind wrapping itself around the fact that Yuqi was still discovering herself. Her wisdom shone through every thing she said, and she was a good match to you as a daughter of Athene. She was the brains, you the some-what muscle. Even though your parents couldn’t stand each other, Yuqi and you loved each other like sisters.

The girl reaches out to brush your hair out of your sight, then she interlocks your fingers and pulls you forward. Weirdly, you adore skinship. The feeling of a warm body beneath your touch, living, breathing. Not in the violent way. In the sense of finding something and using as an anchor. A heartbeat did so much more than telling yourself to calm down. A smile, a heartfelt spoken sentence. You were as easily to calm down as any other demigod, even though it takes a little bit more than others.

You crave touch. Meaning. Or as they said in Mulan - a guy worth fighting for, even though you’ve never fallen in love.

Butterflies have never lived in your stomach, and you never get weak in the knees because of someone. Sure, you blush a good amount of times when you are complimented and hugged, but never once did that feeling expand into something romantic. It was ... disappointing.

Maybe you weren’t mean to fall in love. You’re only a pawn in the battleground your father laid out for you.

Across the room, Na Jaemin looks you in the face and feels his heart skip several beats.

❀ ❀ ❀

You’re perfect.

That’s the only word Jaemin’s head can offer as he looks at you, his heart seems to tremble in his chest at the sight of your pure smile. It’s not even directed at him, for fuck’s sake. But still, you are so lovely, and he almost stands up to walk over you. He’s Jaemin; if you’re born to break bones, he was born to flirt.

Almost. He decides against it, because of one single reason.

Jaemin has fallen in love several times. But he’s never met a soulmate before, and especially not his own. It’s different, the flower that begins to bloom in his heart for you, different from anything else in the world and only distinctive to children of love. Forget-me-nots, gardenias and cherry blossoms, they all settle in his heart, waiting for you to pluck them and make them yours. He doesn’t want anyone else to have them but you, and it didn’t matter if you are going to tear them apart or treasure them.

He had asked his father before, if soulmates were real. Not a very serious question, but nonetheless still spoken out of curiousity. Jaemin sees relationships like an outstander, able to change and fix, more than easy to manipulate. Love is unsure, it can never be caged. It’s meant to be free. Undeciding. Unraveling.

“They’re real,” Eros had responded. “Of course they are. There is a little truth in every myth. I don’t know if they’re really the people who were conjoined and cut apart by Zeus and his cowardice. But every once in a while, the Fates sit down and meddle with our business, for a relationship made in the stars. It’s not common, son. I haven’t seen them for a long time.”

And yet here you are.

He’s heard about you. That Ares girl, the one who’s so over-protective of a certain chinese business student.

He wonders if you attend NCT parties often.

❀ ❀ ❀

Yuqi doesn’t want you to go to parties. She says your temper explods too fast whenever you have a swig too much and she doesn’t know how to control an angry, intoxicated demigod. Everybody knows that whenever an Ares child is involved in a fight, someone ends up in the hospital. As a consequence, you are rarely offered a drink.

The only reason you attend parties is to watch your friends and/or play designated driver. That’s why you’re standing in this kitchen you’ve never been in clutching a glass of ice tea, and not the whiskey you’ve been eyeing across the table for half an hour now. It’s a shame, really. Drunk you is always so funny. People were denied of that show by Yuqi’s rule against getting drunk in public. Every fifteen minutes, she sends you a checking glance, and you’re still sober every time she does.

Na Jaemin is not. He’s not drunk, really, just buzzed, and that’s enough liquid courage he needs to approach you. The smile adorning his lips makes your stomach flip in an unknown way, and you let him approach you, curious of what he’s planning to do. “You’re not drinking,” he states inquisitively, free hand pointing at your alcohol-free cup. “Don’t like getting drunk?”

“Oh, I do. But I tend to beat people up when I do.” You sigh, crossing your arms in front of your chest, hoping that your silly heart would catch the drift and stop beating at multiple hundred miles an hour. He’s so stunning; This must be what Adonis had looked like, there’s no other explanation. The dazzling smile, the honest eyes that let you see every corner of his soul willingly. Not a single wall pulled up to protect himself. “But you seem to be having fun.”

“Only a little,” he laughs. That sound does wonders to your heart. You also wonder what the hell is going on with you. “But not too much, you know how we Eros children can get when the alcohol hits at once. Not a nice sight.”

“Can’t believe anything that has do with you not being a nice sight.”

The pick-up line is spoken with confidence, yet your cheeks heat up in an instant. Jaemin gauges your reaction, and his fingers twitch. He wants to cradle your face and take you up to his room to show you what else kind of sights he offers. And somehow at the same time, he kind of wants to squish your cheeks and run his fingers through your hair. Very conflicting. Jaemin tends to feel too much, too fast.

But with you, everything moves smoothly. Meant to be. Like the universe had mapped this out a long time ago.

“You’re cute,” he tells you, liking the way you shyly lower your gaze. He cannot possibly imagine you punching someone in the face, but he likes the fervor and passion he finds in your eyes. Love and war are very similar. It’s the first thing Jaemin was ever taught.

He tugs at your fingers, and you don’t stop him when he curls his pinky around yours. “Come on. Let’s do something fun.”

The house is stuffed with people who are trying to have a good time. Jaemin takes you deeper into it, leading you towards a group of people you recognize, but don’t actually know. Amazingly, they were playing billiard in their drunken state, and even though most of them have been drinking for a long time, they still hit their targets dead-on. You join them, and the entire night, Jaemin doesn’t move from your side. He wraps an arm around your shoulders and your waist every once in a while but other than that, he respects your boundaries and follows the game intently, pouting when he loses and grinning smugly when something goes his way.

Jaemin throwing his head back in laughter is the most ethereal thing you’ve ever seen in life. He sets off electric currents in your veins, the very same ones you chased every time you were fighting someone.

Is this what a crush feels like?

❀ ❀ ❀

Jaemin decides that the perfect way to wake up is next to your pretty face.

He’s aware of the fact how creepy this is. But he cannot take his eyes off you, unable to will his gaze away. Every curve and slope of your body is breathtaking. Your hands are resting beside your head, and even though he winces at the cuts that adorn the back of your hand, it just... fits you so well. Never ever in his life has Jaemin felt like this before. It’s just impossible, how you wrap him around your little finger just by looking into his direction. You’re the sun, and he’s the planet orbitting you.

Matchmakers aren’t usually made into a match. But he finds himself perfectly content at your feet, even though the feeling is powerful and foreign. His mind is haywire.

Jaemin likes it. He likes it a lot.

When your eyes flutter open, his heart nearly jumps out of his chest because of the blush settling on your cheeks. “Hi,” you whisper, and he angles his body towards you, desperate for any kind of attention you’re willing to give him. “Hey, princess,” he answers, fingers twitching to hold yours. “Slept well?”

“Yeah.” You don’t move. Instead, you set your pretty eyes on his hands which are resting just below yours, and he wishes for you to take them. He’s too much of a scaredy-cat to do it himself. And that is so untypical of him - Na Jaemin isn’t scared of shit, affection is his second nature.

But you’re different. You were the match that set him ablaze, and his entire existence has shifted to accomodate you.

“Thank you for letting me stay over.” Fingers brush past his. He almost groans in frustration. “I was way too tired to drive home yesterday, and it was really fun, even though I was sober.”

“You don’t need to be drunk to have fun, princess,” is all he says, and it takes his entire courage for him to raise his hand and brush his knuckles against your cheek. Jaemin feels like ascending to heaven when you nuzzle his face against them, and he cups your face. You don’t stop him. You watch him, eyes curious, waiting. Jaemin inches closer.

Children of Eros don’t hold back. They exist for love and for passion, for lust and for loyalty. Emotions for them are inner explosions, felt more intensely than any other person in the world. And right now, he’s dying from anticipation.

“(y/n),” Jaemin murmurs. “I’m going to kiss you.”

His hand leaves your face to rest beside your shoulder, and your breath hitches when he lifts himself to hover over you. For a second, he thinks he’s overdone it. Instead, your fingers find his shirt and grip it tightly, godly strength shimmering through, tugging just so slightly. “(y/n),” he repeats. He needs you to say it. Needs you to give him permission to get lost in you and your touch, his very own paradise in the form of the stars locked in your eyes and all the love in the world in your smile.

If angels really exist, Jaemin is pretty sure they look like you.

“Please,” you whisper. Jaemin’s free hand moves to hold your waist, and you let him tug your shirt up so he can rest it on naked skin. You’re going to make him pass out, he realizes, because you’re so much to take in. So beautiful, so stunning, so alive.

“Please what, princess?”

You pull at his shirt, but Jaemin doesn’t move. You look cute when you bite your lip. “Please kiss me.”

You’re even cuter when you beg.

It should disturb him that the scent of blood lingers to your clothing like a constant afterthought. The bruises you’re going to leave on his shoulders because of your grip should scare him away. But all it does is draw him more in, and even though he’s the one in control right now, Jaemin feels like the little mouse walking right in your trap.

Hook, line and sinker. The moment your lips touch his, he’s a goner. Jaemin grips your waist tighter, hand sliding down to grip your thigh and guide your leg around his hips. He’s very aware that you could crush his shoulders with his bare hands, but the pain you inflict starts to turn into a guilty pleasure. How are you so powerful without knowing it? He tugs at your lower lip, welcoming the whine you let slip a little bit too enthusiastically, tongue meeting yours in a heated frenzy.

Jaemin thought he knew what love was. If not him, who else would? But after this, all his definitions are rearranged and they all spell out one name: yours. He’s barely able to abandon your lips, finding solace in the way you arch your back when he nips at your neck, leaving love bites wherever he can reach. The sound of his name falling from your lips is seriously messing with his sanity. Your hands move on from his shoulders to his hair to tug at the dyed locks, and Jaemin moans at the feeling.

Your taste of heaven is interrupted by someone furiously knocking against his door. Once, twice, until someone angrily yells from outside the room: “Na Jaemin, I’ve told you a thousand times that you have clean-up duty! Get your ass up!”

Jaemin groans, lips still attached to the column of your throat. Your legs keep him trapped against you and you close them tighter, to Jaemin’s delight. Neither of you want to be seperated right now. “Go away, Mark.”

“If you don’t get your ass outside in two minutes, I’ll come in and say hello to your female companion, you dick.”

You giggle at that. “Go, go,” you urge him, shyly cupping his face in your tiny hands to kiss him for a few seconds, way too short for his liking. He’s going to kill Mark for this. Jaemin looks you in the eyes for just a few seconds longer, then he rolls off from you in a pout.

The room feels really warm now. Sitting up, you fix your hair and he watches you, entranced. Like you’re his favourite movie and he didn’t want to look away. Mark keeps his promise, bursting in through the door to get his friend, but Jaemin pushes him out and steps into the hall with him.

“Write down your number before you leave, princess,” he calls over his shoulder, and then the door is shut.

❀ ❀ ❀

“I can’t believe you hook up with someone the second I leave you alone.”

“For the last time, Yuqi! I didn’t hook up with him!”

Your best friend is sprawled across your floor, fanning herself with her hand. It’s hot outside, the blue sky calming you down just by looking at it. For someone who lives to destroy you sure have your knack for aesthetics. “Then what else do you call it?” Yuqi hums.

You don’t know what to call it. You don’t have a noun for the feeling that Jaemin ignited, and you couldn’t get rid of it, despite avoiding him for a full week. Someone like you wasn’t supposed to feel like this. So ... weak. At someone’s beck and call. You are made out of conflict, strength and violence. Love wasn’t something Ares had in mind when he created you.

No, you scold yourself mentally, don’t refer to it as love. It’s not love. Love is stupid. But there isn’t any other way to describe it. All the books lie. There aren’t any fireworks or butterflies in your stomach. It feels like war elephants are running rampant, and your heartrate spikes the second someone mentions the J in Jaemin. The worst thing is that you miss him, had longed for him the entire week, inner turmoil caused by your wish to fall into his bed again or to run away from this university as far as possible.

You may not notice, Yuqi watches you. Your nervous antics of cracking your fingers and tugging at your hair. Both of you know there’s no way to win this war, no matter how long you sit down to think about a good strategy. There’s only one solution: admit defeat.

Something you were very, very bad at.

“(y/n),” the girl sitting on the ground speaks, voice soft, careful. Her eyes remind you of an owl’s. “You should have just left him your number.”

You breathe in shakily. “I don’t know him.”

“But you want to.” Her hands grip yours, finally pulling you out of that terrifying place in your head where you punish yourself for never being in love before and making this so hard for yourself. “I know this is new territory for you and you dislike things that are unknown to you. But just because you were born to fight, doesn’t mean you automatically aren’t born to love and to be weak. Your father loves war. Your mother loved him. Was she weak because of that? Absolutely not. She taught you how to fight and survive in this world, to stand up after being kicked down, to earn your place. Is that not what true warriors do? Is that not strength?

You bite your lip. Then you nod. Yuqi raises her head to kiss your forehead. “Don’t forget that love is the most powerful thing in the entire world,” she reminds you. She looks like Athene more than ever right now, her gaze firm, determinded. Razor sharp mind cutting apart this scary new feeling for you so you can digest it.

“Now go get your man.”

❀ ❀ ❀

[1:33pm] y/n: i should have written down my number

[1:34pm] jaemin: why didn’t you, princess?

[1:36pm] y/n: i’ll tell you personally if that’s okay with you

[1:36pm] y/n: dream café in five minutes

❀ ❀ ❀

Love is an act of surrender to another person.

Your father never taught you what that is. There is only victory in being the last one standing, winning, living to tell the tale. There is no room for error, or for weakness.

The strong ones never admit defeat. That was what Ares had imprinted into your mind from the minute you were born into this world. But what Ares doesn’t know is that he’s wrong. He’s not all-mighty, no God ever is. Their countless myths are living proof for that. And that is why you know that surrendering doesn’t mean being weak. It’s the most brave thing you could ever do, and not every one is able to do that. That itself is a strength. A streng not everyone possesses, but you’re willing to take the risk to acquire it, to step into the unknown, a blind fall.

It would be worth it if Jaemin was waiting to catch you.

He looks as beautiful as always as he approaches you, hands tucked into his leather jacket. You had been terribly afraid of him being angry with you, but he only sends you an angelic smile and dips down to drop a feather-light kiss on your cheek. “You changed your mind,” he beams at you.

Puzzled, you blink up to him. “What?”

“You had a change of heart.” Jaemin raises his hand and rests it on his chest, eyes never leaving yours. The amount of trust and joy you find in his eyes is astounding. “I felt it right here. I knew you’d be able to do it.”

You suddenly remember who Jaemin’s father is. While he grins at you, your cheeks heat up to a thousand degrees, and you cough to cover it up. “I did,” you mumbled. “And I’m so sorry of letting you wait. I... I’ve never felt for anyone like this before. I’m not used to feeling alive unless it’s because I’m breaking someone’s nose.”

Jaemin wraps both arms around you, and you rest your hands on his shoulders. Moving on instinct was common for the both of you. “I’m glad you found that feeling by being with me and not actually punching me,” he teases you. “And for the record, I’ve never felt like this either. You’re very special to me. And that’s why I was willing to wait. So stop apologizing, princess.” His face inches closer to yours, mischievous glint in his eyes. “I haven’t even taken you on a date yet. Very scandalous, if you ask me.”

“So that kiss meant nothing you? Traitor.”

“Hey, that’s hot how I meant it.” You both laugh, though you’re disrupted by him kissing you sweetly. “I don’t need any dates when my heart’s already yours. But you deserve to be treated like a princess, and to get properly taken out and pampered. I want to give you the world, (y/n). Will you let me?”

You do.

Somewhere in Greece, three old, angry hags are disappointed with your lack of protest. They had expected more ruin and punishment for Na Jaemin as an effect of tying your strings together. They should’ve remembered that Jaemin learned all his tricks from his father, who secretly lent his son a helping hand.

What did Jaemin say again? What the Fates don’t know, shouldn’t bother them.

[coffeebased]

Hey! Wikathon na! I’ve started reading Relocations by Karen Tongson, about a third through now, but I had to take a little detour through Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir like I said I would. I’ve finished reading HtN but I’m not quite done experiencing it, so I’ll probably pick Relocations back up tomorrow.

But here’s what I read in July! What’s a segue?

1. Haikyu!! Volume 44 and 45 by Haruichi Furudate

A chance event triggered Shouyou Hinata’s love for volleyball. His club had no members, but somehow persevered and finally made it into its very first and final regular match of middle school, where it was steamrolled by Tobio Kageyama, a superstar player known as “King of the Court.”

Vowing revenge, Hinata applied to the Karasuno High School volleyball club… only to come face-to-face with his hated rival, Kageyama!

And with those two volumes, Haikyū has ended. I’m really glad that my cousin got me to catch up to the series because being a part of the sheer joy and love that’s poured out the fandom these past few months has been refreshing to my spirit. I enjoyed the way Furudate brought the series to its conclusion, by giving all the characters a future and room to grow. I hope to hear more from him in the upcoming years.

  2. Looking for Group by Alexis Hall

I read Looking for Group because I was reading up on Alexis Hall in anticipation of Boyfriend Material, which I will talk about later, and saw the synopsis:

So, yeah, I play Heroes of Legend, y’know, the MMO. I’m not like obsessed or addicted or anything. It’s just a game. Anyway, there was this girl in my guild who I really liked because she was funny and nerdy and a great healer. Of course, my mates thought it was hilarious I was into someone I’d met online. And they thought it was even more hilarious when she turned out to be a boy IRL. But the joke’s on them because I still really like him.

And now that we’re together, it’s going pretty well. Except sometimes I think Kit—that’s his name, sorry I didn’t mention that—spends way too much time in HoL. I know he has friends in the guild, but he has me now, and my friends, and everyone knows people you meet online aren’t real. I mean. Not Kit. Kit’s real. Obviously.

Oh, I’m Drew, by the way. This is sort of my story. About how I messed up some stuff and figured out some stuff. And fell in love and stuff.

And I knew that I had to read it. Immediately.

I enjoyed it way too much. The characters were adorable, the conflict was done well, the geeky gamer wrapper was AMAZING and the author never dropped the ball on integrating the online game into the narrative. It was very readable and I enjoyed the atmosphere of the book immensely. I also may have spent a heady week or so thinking of playing WoW, but I avoided that temptation. Made me miss uni too, and the way my friends and I would spend countless hours with each other.

  3. Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

Wanted: One (fake) boyfriend Practically perfect in every way

Luc O’Donnell is tangentially–and reluctantly–famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he’s never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad’s making a comeback, Luc’s back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.

To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship…and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He’s a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and he’s never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words: perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened.

But the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And that’s when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Don’t ever want to let them go.

I came into this book with high expectations after Looking for Group, and my expectations were mostly met. The few issues I had were ultimately negligible, probably cultural differences or conventions of a genre that I’m not familiar with. The characters were strong, and I found the book funny. I know it sounds as though I’m damning it with faint praise, so I’ll say it plainly: it was an enjoyable read and I was totally invested in the romance. I think it’ll make a really good film as well.

4. The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya

Everyone talks about falling in love, but falling in friendship can be just as captivating. When Neela Devaki’s song is covered by internet-famous artist Rukmini, the two musicians meet and a transformative friendship begins. But as Rukmini’s star rises and Neela’s stagnates, jealousy and self-doubt creep in. With a single tweet, their friendship implodes, one career is destroyed, and the two women find themselves at the center of an internet firestorm.

Celebrated multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya’s second novel is a stirring examination of making art in the modern era, a love letter to brown women, an authentic glimpse into the music industry, and a nuanced exploration of the promise and peril of being seen.

If you’re a millennial and if you’ve ever had complicated friendships, this book will ring really true for most of it, I think. I kept wincing at the characters’ actions and “mistakes”, recognising them as things I or my friends have done, but there are portions of the story that I found inaccessible because Neela, the main character, just seems really opaque even when they’re the ones speaking. The music Shraya made as a companion to the book slaps and can be found here.

  5. Empowered 11 by Adam Warren

Costumed crimefighter Empowered finds herself the desperate prey of a maniacal supervillain whose godlike powers have turned an entire city of suprahumans against her.

Not good! Outnumbered and under siege, aided only by a hero’s ghost, can Emp survive the relentless onslaught long enough to free her enslaved teammates and loved ones, or is this–*gulp*–The End?

From comics overlord Adam Warren comes Empowered, the acclaimed sexy superhero comedy–except when it isn’t, as in this volume’s no-nonsense, wall-to-wall brawl guaranteed to bring tears to the eye and fists to the face!

Warren’s tying up a lot of loose ends and answering a lot of questions and I’m wondering if that means Empowered‘s ending soon. I haven’t seen any info regarding this, even though the words “The End” are right there in the summary, because comic books always lean on the whole the hero could die! thing, and more often than not they never do. But Emp has come so far in the past 11 volumes, and I think that she’s ready to confront a lot of the stuff that Warren’s only hinted at in the past. Most of Empowered is about how Emp deals with failure and how she rises above it, and recently it’s become about how other people have failed her, rather than how she has failed, and how she deserves better. I’m worried about her, but at least we are another volume’s worth of evidence for the Emp/Thugboy/Ninjette OT3.

  6. Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan

The iconic author of the bestselling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians returns with a glittering tale of love and longing as a young woman finds herself torn between two worlds–the WASP establishment of her father’s family and George Zao, a man she is desperately trying to avoid falling in love with.

On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can’t stand him. She can’t stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have the view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can’t stand that he knows more about Curzio Malaparte than she does, and she really can’t stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin, Charlotte. “Your mother is Chinese so it’s no surprise you’d be attracted to someone like him,” Charlotte teases. Daughter of an American-born-Chinese mother and blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucy is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment, and ultimately herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world–and her heart. Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures.

This was the third romance novel I read in July, and that’s honestly the highest concentration of romance novel I’ve ever had in my life. I know that I’m supposed to find romance novels like super kilig and stuff, but so far I am just very anxious for romance novel protagonists all the time. I think that the whole thing about the romance novels I have read is that they’re mostly about how deeply anxious people learn how to allow themselves to be loved and that is tough! I wanted to protect Lucie all the time! I was Invested in her Welfare, and I don’t think I cared about Rachel Chu from Crazy Rich Asians half as much, even if you condensed all my attachment from the entire trilogy. Also, small spoiler, there is a hint that Sex and Vanity is in the same universe as Crazy Rich Asians, which I think is awesome.

  6. Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

Pulitzer Finalist Susan Choi’s narrative-upending novel about what happens when a first love between high school students is interrupted by the attentions of a charismatic teacher

In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

This is a book I could not stop reading and I felt gross after I finished it. I think that I enjoyed it and that the narrative flips were well-done and it was engaging, but Choi writes teenage trauma in 3D, and you can smell her scumbag characters. Very good will never read again unless looking to feel bad.

  Re-read:

Temeraire: His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, andEmpire of Ivory by Naomi Novik

Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors ride mighty fighting dragons, bred for size or speed. When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes the precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sweeps Captain Will Laurence from his seafaring life into an uncertain future – and an unexpected kinship with a most extraordinary creature. Thrust into the rarified world of the Aerial Corps as master of the dragon Temeraire, he will face a crash course in the daring tactics of airborne battle. For as France’s own dragon-borne forces rally to breach British soil in Bonaparte’s boldest gambit, Laurence and Temeraire must soar into their own baptism of fire.

I started re-reading it because I wanted to introduce it to my girlfriend, and I outpaced her very quickly, and selfishly. She’s still at the beginning fourth of Throne of Jade, and I feel like I blinked and gulped down four of the books in quick succession. I had to stop myself after Empire, in a very belated effort to sync up to my gf’s progress. The series is amazing, and I don’t know if I’ll ever read one like Temeraire again. Being able to revisit it should be enough, really, because every time I do it’s as though I’m caught up in a strong and wonderful wind that fills me up with delight and awe. Novik’s starting a new series this September, and I hope it’s just as good.

    That’s it for July! I’m probably going to do two books at a time for my Wikathon posts, just to keep things fresh and current, so keep a weather eye out for those posts!

  July, next verse, same as the first Hey! Wikathon na! I've started reading Relocations by Karen Tongson, about a third through now, but I had to take a little detour through…

[lettersfromtheruins-blog]

Dear Jenn

Do you remember planting the mint patch? My mother had decided to grow a vegetable garden in the back corner of the yard but soon became too caught up in living life to follow through, so I went out back one afternoon and planted in the dug-up earth the small potted mint that lived on our kitchen windowsill. I thought it was a very brave thing I was doing, something akin to releasing a caged bird. I patted myself on the back - and then immediately forgot all about it. But my mint plant didn't die, it took root and thrived, growing over the weeds, overwhelming the overwhelming. My mint plant - because of course I took - still take - credit for its gumption.

The space between our houses.  A grassy glen, a pastoral space, hushed, the breeze there always gentle. I'd come out from around the back of my house, stomping hard to alert and warn away snakes, and come across you, crouched in the middle of the green like a garden sprite, moistening or mulching the ground or picking out the biggest leaves.

(Even when I was old enough to know that we never got snakes in our backyard, I still did a stomp-dance on my way to the mint patch. For tradition's sake, as a salute to my childhood fears, as an acknowledgement that I was still scared, just in case.)

It was our meeting spot, and it always felt like a neutral ground where the troubles of the world only reached so far as they could be complained about, sighed over and then forgotten in the sharp tang of the breeze. Late at night, I still think of about how lulling it was.

I don’t remember many of our conversations with that much specificity - after all, we talked so much over the years. But one night stays in my head in particular. I remember one fall afternoon when I wandered there, ruminating on nothing, haunted by everything, suffering teenage aimlessness. It was an unusually cold day, and I spent the whole afternoon ambling around the neighborhood with my hands stuffed into my pockets, the Little Match Girl in Ugg boots. My feet by habit took me to the mint patch. I stomped over, and I saw you sitting, not spritely, not delicate nor fairy-like. You were hunched over, weary and heavy, sitting cross-legged on the dew-damp grass, tying grass stems to dandelions.

"You're supposed to tie the dandelions to the dandelions," I told you, sitting down across from you. You nodded but kept tying your slipshod knots. I started making a dandelion chain in the right, neat way. And we sat there for half an hour; I kept tying wispy flower to wispy flower, and you kept tearing at grass stems, and the silence was antsy on my end and distrait on yours. My hands held three feet of chain to her mass of tangled weeds before at last -

"Such awfulness occurred tonight." You didn't really say it to me, though it had to be addressed to me; I was the only person with you. But you said it more to the space around you, as if confessing, as if you needed to say it or implode. As if purging it from yourself. You talked casually, but each word had such a resounding ache to it.

"Just now," you continued. "A family-wide brawl. It was way too long and drawn out and excruciating and frustrating and terrible for me. But I pressed on. I don't know why I did that. I couldn't stop."

"You started it?" I asked.

"No, not really. My mother did, mostly by getting offended out of the blue. Very, very offended. Very, very out of the blue."

You waited for a minute, as if waiting to see if I would take sides against you, join forces with your mother and get offended or turned off by what you had said. You waited for me to ask why your mother often got offended out of the blue. We never discussed our families with each other and just assumed - or pretended, even though we knew otherwise - that the normal level of suburban dysfunction existed within both households. I didn’t say anything. I waited. 

"What was it about?" I asked.

"It was about nothing. Except my mother getting to yell. All the same bullshit. It’s always the same. The subjects are different, but the bullshit never really changes.”

"Seems pointless."

"Right. I tried to interfere at one point, but no, mom is spitting out wine and becoming angrier and it's just a huge fucking mess."

"So she just started a fight for nothing?"

"No, she was offended. I ganged up on her. Because I just thought she had been...pissier than usual."

"More so than usual?"

Your mother was such a funny figure to me. I imagine she fancied herself in so many guises - the lady who lunched, the Southern belle sipping mint juleps from her front porch, the artist who was squandering her potential in the suburbs and would immediately begin a career in whatever field she fancied, the soccer mom who was now ready to cheer, a soccer mom who now disdained her lot in life, the Mary Kay saleswoman with eyeliner caked in the corner of her blurry but bonny blue eyes, the former beauty queen turned grande-dame-who-could-have-been. Whatever the rôle du jour she believed she was playing, she always presented to the rest of us as the star of a drunken tragicomedy, without realizing that we all knew she was playing at a variety of cliches because she had no sense of what her reality was or ought to be. She was often pissy, but no one mentioned it. I didn't know what constituted pissier than usual for you. 

"So that’s why I'm out here feeling shitty,” you said. 

"Were you right? Has she been pissier than usual?"

"I can't have my opinion too loud about it." I remember this in particular, I think of this phrase often. As if I should have gleaned something from this offhand statement.

"Anyway,” you continued, “instead of having a rational discussion, it becomes an argument about, 'Jenn always has to be right.'”

"Well, is that totally untrue? You do like to be right."

You glowered at me. "Totally untrue. And whenever she brings it up, the argument becomes about me. And that’s not fair that I have to tolerate her like that.”

“She's your mother. You should do more than tolerate her."

"No, that's just bullshit. God." You ran your fingers through your mane in frustration, leaving pieces of grass in the waves. It was a little glint of color in a dark world. The sky was turning to night. The last colors of the sunset, silver and black, moon throwing everything into shadow but itself. Your eyes were blazing, and then you blinked.

"Okay," you said, and your voice trembled a bit. "Yeah, you're probably right. She thinks that I have some warped perception of our whole relationship. She was actually shouting tonight, 'We are FAMILY, JENN.'

"It's personal with family, though. They're not just people. You can't treat them like they're just people."

"But If it's personal with family, then we're more entitled to our dignity than anyone else and it's not fair when she denies it to me in passing for no reason because she’s been drinking and thinks I’m trying to fight with her when I’m not. It wastes my time and energy. God. God, she exhausts me. I just don't get her."

You sighed. The moon shone through a gap in the branches of the trees above. The light illuminated our nearness; you had moved closer to me in comfort-asking, and I had moved closer to you in comfort-giving, and our weeds and flowers were tangled in both our hands and our heads were bowed over them. We sat for a few minutes like this, not quite holding hands, but dawdling over our weeds and herbs.

Then the dusk cleared and the houselights came on, the haunting ended. The twilight gray gave way to night and light. We had gone too far into your secrets, and we couldn't stay there, not for long, never long enough. 

You sighed and yawned, stretching as if you had been asleep and were only now waking. "Whatever. I don't care that much. My parents and I don't have a whole lot to say to each other. I'm over this topic. I'm an official grown up and have zero philosophizing or perspective-forming to do about my family."

This is the image I carry with me from that night: You got up and started to walk away, squaring your thin shoulders. I hadn't noticed before that you weren’t wearing a jacket or even a long-sleeved shirt. You were only wearing a thin white t-shirt and gray sweatpants. You arms were spattered with goosebumps and your skin had a faint bluish tinge. It made you look even thinner than you actually were. You were more deathly in that moment than I had ever seen. You turned back to me for one last second, reaching your hand out with porcelain fragility. 

"This," you said, pointing at your house with the lights dimmed in every room, your home with its distorted shadow, your family with every member sitting in a dark of their own sort, "can't…." and your words trailed off and you turned around and strode off.