#...no this has nothing to do with me picking up more magic realism book from my library

[trabandovidas]

I think they should make a program where whenever a latinoamerican child turns 3yo they start sending them a latam magic realism book per month until they turn 18

This would only make us even more fucked up, but it would be so much fun just think about it!

[autism-alley]

hi originally posted this at the end of a long thread of back and forth, here’s the og post if you want full context but i feel like this needs to be its own post especially bc i keep seeing this argument being made—the argument that the kids (in this case it was annabeth) SHOULD just know the monsters are monsters and who they are and how to defeat them before ever encountering them, that it’s a problem if they don’t.

the problem is not if 12 year olds should recognize a trap when they see one, even if they’re smart 12 year olds, and if that’s realistic. that is entirely beside the point.

the problem is rick riordan wrote a book series whose formula is bringing myths to the modern age and he’s not sticking true to that in the show—percy jackson and the olympians’ Shtick is taking these classic, ancient threats and giving them a new face. these traps work because these kids are not walking into a cave marked with Get Out and getting ambushed by monsters—the monsters are disguised as harmless mortal human beings, in harmless mortal human being places (for the most part) and i think we—and more importantly, the show—are all forgetting the mist, the magic involved here. it’s not just that medusa is a “creepy lady with her eyes covered” it’s that there is ancient magic at work here, magic that, like the systems of abuse pjo exists to criticize, has been evolving and continuing its malevolence for millennia. it’s formulaic, that’s the point. it’s the same trap you’ve learned about all your childhood, the same trap a thousand children before you learned all their childhoods, and still, it works. you fall into the trap. because that’s how generational abuse works. it’s a trap. it isn’t enough to learn monsters exist, what they look like from a second hand story that originated thousands of years ago. if you want to escape alive, you have to adapt as quickly as they do, recognize their face, and ultimately, beyond any individual trap, the game itself has to change. real, generational change.

so. the problem is rick riordan wrote a series with a formula for action that perfectly captures the overarching, systemic conflicts he was commentating on, and then threw that formula out in the show because it was “unrealistic”. i don’t give a damn about realism when it works to the detriment of the story. this is a story about generational abuse, yes, but it’s told through ‘a tale as old as time’ and that’s why it works so fucking well. and when it comes to basic storytelling, if your characters know the threat before they even walk in and you do practically nothing to then make up for the stakes you have removed, that’s a flaw. now you’ve lost the entertainment value for your audience, on top of also lessening your themes.

something else that is so. honestly soul-crushing as a writer and a creative, is that to me this is reflective of the way we are now afraid to tell earnest stories. stories where we care not for listening to the people who want to pick apart fictional, mythical, fantasy stories for not being “realistic” instead of aligning with our target audience who acknowledges reality is not what makes a story. think of your favorite movie, show, book, comic, what have you—has the reason for your favoritism ever been because it is the most reasonable, the most grounded, the most practical out of any you’ve seen? or is it because of the emotion? the way it speaks to you, to your life and the person you are? the journey it takes you on? is the percy jackson and the olympians book series so good because it’s inherently realistic?

the secret to storytelling is, very simply, focus on your story. everything else is secondary. if it’s written well, it doesn’t matter to me that the characters walk into a trap that, to the audience, is obviously a trap. because i can understand how the characters don’t know it, and how the story falls apart if the narrative just tells the characters it’s a trap from the jump. that’s what dramatic irony is—first used in greek tragedies! this is literally a tale as old as time in every sense except for the end—where it’s happy. and it’s not earned if we don’t first see, over and over, the status quo as a tragic trap.

it’s not about if annabeth (or the other kids) is “smart enough” to not walk into a trap, or about if she’s just too prideful to not walk into what she knows is a trap (or any reason that could apply to the other characters), it’s that annabeth, at the end of the day, is a character. she is a storytelling tool for the messages of the narrative. that doesn’t make her any lesser. in fact ignoring it reduces her, because it reduces what she represents. it’s about how rick riordan, or whoever else at disney, has fumbled the storytelling bag so ridiculously hard that they can’t take the simple, effective formula outlined from start to finish (by good ol 2009 rick himself) and adapt it to the screen without answering the most unimportant, derailing, anti-story questions.

[ramshacklefey]

No but serious. Dungeons & Dragons is one of the least flexible systems out there. So whenever I hear someone asking, "Why can't I do X in DnD?" or "How would I do (thing that the system is totally ill-suited for)?" my first response is just "GURPS."

For those of you who aren't familiar, GURPS stands for "Generic Universal Role Playing System." I always say it's like the Linux of ttrpgs, in the sense that it's less a system and more a framework that you can use to do whatever you want with.

And I really do mean whatever you want. You want high fantasy? Done. You want gritty realism in a dystopian world? Got it. You want superheroes? Good to go. Super tech space opera? Oh boy we got you there. You want magic systems that aren't based on spell lists? Go for it. Horror games where character death is a constant and very real threat? Sure thing.

You can set up your game to be anything from a complex data driven grinder to a cinematic rules basically optional flight of fancy.

You can play characters who are anywhere from realistically squishy humans to god-like super beings.

Characters personal flaws and strengths can have a direct impact on mechanics. Character species can have a direct and serious impact on mechanics.

The existence of so many options can make GURPS seem overwhelming at first glance, but if you are willing to put in a bit of effort, it's actually a very simple system to play. Most of the hard work is front-loaded into setting and character creation. Once play starts it runs as smooth as can be.

It's totally possible to play it with just the two core books, BUT there are dozens of books that are nothing but tips and advice for how to build a particular type of world or a particular flavor of campaign.

And the books, while not nearly as pretty as DnD books, are laid out in a way that makes it incredibly easy to find exactly the information you want.

Some more mechanical things that I particularly like about it (under the cut):

Characters are created on a point-buy system, but you don't just buy your basic stats, you also buy your skills, advantages, and secondary stats. And you can gain points back by dropping stats below average or taking disadvantages.

The advantage/disadvantage system. This is sorta the core of the character building, and it is *so* much fun. See, rather than pick out a class or species, you have a list (selected by your GM from a much larger list) of things you can buy that will have mechanical impacts on you in the game. Basically, an advantage is anything that opens up more possibilities for you in-game, and a disadvantage is anything that closes off possibilities. They can be superpowers, species traits, cinematic plot armor, personality traits, or things like chronic illness, bad temper, physical or mental disabilities, or being doomed by the narrative.

Simple dice system. To play a GURPS campaign you need three d6. That's it. All checks and saves are done by rolling 3d6 (low rolls are better than high). This has an additional advantage over the d20 system in that there is a probability curve. You're more likely to roll numbers in the mid-range, which makes both critical successes and critical failures rarer, and therefore more satisfying.

Your target roll is adjusted, rather than adding/subtracting from the roll itself. Say you're trying to, idk, hack a computer. Your skill level doesn't affect your dice roll, it affects the number you need to roll in order to succeed. This makes things a lot simpler on the player's end, imo, because there's less they need to keep track of. (You're trying to roll under the skill check, so whatever the base difficulty is, the GM just adds or subtracts your skill level from that).

The basic stats are on a much tighter scale, and they make a lot more sense. Human average is a 10 in everything. When you make your character you can buy higher stats or take lower ones and get more points to spend on other things. All stats cap out at 18, because that's the highest number you can roll. At a 10 strength you are a normal person. At 18 you're basically Superman. You'd have to roll a critical failure not to succeed in a strength check, and remember: critical failures are far less common than in a d20 system.

I could keep going ad infitum here, but instead I'll just close with:

Come with me boy, play my games! We'll have cowboy times in space!

[veerbles]

thoughts about dream thieves (and some predictions!)

After probably almost a decade of thinking to myself, I’m an adult who’d like to read more and also enjoys YA, I should finally pick up TRC, I finally picked up TRC. I finished Raven Boys and immediately started Dream Thieves, so I didn’t pause to gather my thoughts on the first one, but here I am now. Ready to unleash several K’s of words by using my limited information to analyze characters and make some predictions that may or may not come true.

• I really enjoy the whole magical-realism, bordering-on-alternate-dimensions theme, but I’m SO SORRY Cabeswater gives me the creeps. I can read context clues and infer from the fact that Blue and Gansey both love it that it’s not meant to be sinister? Probably? But like, talking forests and time loops and magical possessions have, in the history of literature, revealed ulterior motives. I’m mostly side-eyeing the way Adam’s sacrifice to Cabeswater immediately derailed his life and mental stability. It might just be an Adam thing. It’s probably an Adam thing. But like, if I were these kids I’d be a biiiit more wary of the scary time-defying magical land I stumbled upon.

• The sudden emphasis on how time is circular kind of came out of nowhere. There was definitely a point made in the first book about how time doesn’t flow the same way inside Cabeswater, but mid-second book the nonlinearity of time was suddenly a huge thing and all the Sargent seers made a point of how every prophecy is something that both happened already and hasn’t happened yet. I’m totally down with some time-fuckery, but I would’ve liked some more build-up. Also, is this meant to play into Blue’s prophecy? Adam’s visions? Gansey’s fate? Glendower’s fate?

• I was preparing myself for a long, drawn-out love triangle B-plot, and I’m glad it didn’t happen. I couldn’t tell if I missed some subtext and Blue’s intense attraction to Adam faded before their fight at his room, or if it was a direct result of it, but I like that their thing (he called her his girlfriend and I was kind of like… is she? Who established that?) was short and not too well-developed. I think it mostly served as a lesson that Blue can influence her fate, but she can’t run from it (“Why couldn’t it be Adam?”). 

• Also, I think the marketing of the first book did it a HUGE disservice. I have nothing against romance as a main plot and maybe I would have enjoyed that as well, but adventure and the found family trope have a much stronger pull. Was really glad the romantic relationships aren’t really the main focus (at least yet?).

• On the same note, these books are so far really good with show not tell. The numerous unspoken hints about the Blue/Gansey attraction did such a good job making me root for them. The slow progression from Gansey caring an inordinate amount about how Blue views him, to Blue dedicating large chunks of her time analyzing him and trying to figure out all of his layers, to Gansey definitely growing aware of his feelings but not doing anything explicit because of Adam… The boat scene with Orla was pure comedy, lmao. Tell me you’re 16/17 years old without telling me you’re 16/17 years old.

• The Blue/Adam “break up” scene was so good because it evoked true emotions in me. I think a reasonable percentage of teenage girls were once The One Girl in a group of guys, and Blue’s feelings of being treated differently because she’s a girl really hit right where it hurt. I think Adam’s inability to understand that she wants to be his friend first and a love interest later was so real. I also do think that this scene brought up multiple points and maybe Blue’s character would have benefitted from addressing each of them separately, even just in her own head. She feels left out because she’s a girl, and she feels he only views her as a Girl and not as a friend; she’s wary of his anger issues and feels she doesn’t know him; she has feelings for Gansey; she has an ominous prophecy hanging over her head. Ultimately, her saying he’s not “the one” is what hurt him most, because she hit him directly in the insecurities, but it wasn’t really the most interesting or impactful point. Who is Blue Sargent and what does she really want in a relationship (or in general?)

• I have a hot take, but don’t kill me for this. …Adam gives off real Peter Pettigrew vibes. I’M SO SORRY. I really hope he gets more character development later on, because right now he’s straight on the path to evil villain. Or, okay, maybe he veered off that path after his talk with Persephone and their quest to fix the ley line, but for a minute there I was like… My guy, I get where you’re coming from, but you’re slowly gnawing on the leg that you used to stand on. It’s okay to be mad at the world because you were handed a worse hand of cards, and it’s okay to want to climb your way up to prove your own worth. But a minute ago your whole point was that you HAD worth, and now you’re acting out because you feel worthless? Adam’s getting eaten away by his insecurities and thinking/saying/doing really uncool things to his friends, and it’s just Not It. At this point of time, I personally would not have made him Secret-Keeper of the house I’m hiding in.

• Direct follow up: Honestly? Gansey should punch someone. As a treat. Gansey certainly has flaws, but he’s also certainly the most self-aware of the whole bunch. He is continuously harder on himself than anyone else is hard on him, and trying to make things right, and he’s kind of getting stepped on by his best friends. Adam stole his most prized possession and sneaked away to do exactly what Gansey didn’t want to do on GANSEY’S search quest, and then took the offer of networking but spit it back in Gansey’s face, and admitted he’s going to fight Gansey for Glendower’s favor because he thinks he deserves it more. Ronan ALSO stole his most prized possession after letting Gansey clean up his messes, and didn’t even really apologize? Like, it’s somehow okay because after he stole it he wrecked it and then dreamed it back? Nah dude. It wasn’t okay you took it to begin with! Now, I definitely think it’s not a black-and-white situation; Adam brings up plenty of good points in his arguments, and Ronan, to the best of my recollection, never asked to be cleaned up after. They’re both super traumatized and Gansey chose to stick by their sides through that. But everybody else gets to lash out and make stupid decisions and I, personally, think Richard C. Gansey III should pull a teenage boy move and punch one of his best friends. Which one is up to him. The punch can be metaphorical.

• This book focused mainly on Ronan and Adam’s journeys, and I have to say I loved the night terrors as a symbol of self-loathing. But I remain unsure about Ronan himself. Unlike Adam I don’t think he’s doing villain-y things, but he’s definitely doing very normal teenaged self-destructive things. And that’s fine. It's expected. But it’s also not really productive to self-acceptance? Which he somehow reached at least partially by the end of this book anyway? My point being, Ronan kind of lost it when Gansey was gone and went on a weird dreamer-bender and took all kinds of suspicious drugs and made all kinds of bad decisions, and I expected that to have ramifications. He didn’t really face any of his self-hatred or made efforts to be a better friend. He did kind of face (literally) his grief over his father, which is obviously huge, but I would have liked him to take down some of those walls, be vulnerable, apologize? Face some of his obvious inner homophobia? Anything before that wholesome ending. I guess I just stay hopeful that it’d happen in the next two books.

• On that note, the whole goddamn Lynch family needs therapy. What the fuck. Hated Declan significantly less than the last book, but all three of them should get some professional help for their asses. Their mother is a dream? Ronan’s new friend’s mother is dating his father’s murderer?? Ronan’s dad kicked him out of his home on the heels of his tragic death to teach him some lesson about… dreaming??? So much shit happened in this book. However: loved the idea of Ronan having an actual parent and functioning sibling relationship now. Hopefully, that would do some good for everybody involved.

• Very happy at the subtle queer themes and foreshadowing that led up to Ronan’s very understated sexuality revelation. I could smell it coming from a mile away without it being spelled out for me, which is good: it means it was written into his character really well. I was both thrilled and kind of confused by some of the Adam/Ronan hints in this book, though. Ronan… slept on the floor by Adam’s bed…? ("Surely he would wake up soon and find himself [...] lying on the floor beside Adam’s bed at St. Agnes.") This was literally mentioned in one line and then never again. And he doesn’t spend too much time thinking of Adam, but somehow the epilogue still explicitly states that his secret is Adam and not his sexuality as a whole. I’m rooting for them, but I’ll need more convincing in later books that this apparent crush didn’t spring out of nowhere. 

• On the subject of themes I didn’t see coming, the redemption arc for The Gray Man with the gray morality surprised me. It’s not that I’ve never read or enjoyed books where this subject was explored, I just didn’t expect it to happen in this book series. It seems to me like so far every character we’re supposed to root for is very clearly that, and evil characters give off hints in advance. Gray Man definitely did some dubious things in this book, even if you disregard the killing itself, so I expected his ending to line up with that. I guess it still might? Truthfully I find the subject of responses to trauma and how it affects your moral compass very interesting, and I’m definitely into characters’ redemption arcs, but I just don’t know if romantic entanglement with a known dissociative killer is a smart thing for a mother of a sixteen-year-old. If the Gray Man drove away at the end and started a new, less-violent life, I’d be far less conflicted. But he very clearly stated his attachment to Henrietta, which just… leaves me mostly confused. 

• Speaking of, I love how a major theme of this odd little magical book is how different people handle childhood trauma (Adam, Ronan, Gray Man). No further notes, just love it.

• I also really like that adults are directly involved in this story, instead of being intentionally kept out of the loop like in most YA stories. In the majority of the YA books I’ve read I really felt like 70% of the problems could be solved by a whole ass grown up swooping in instead of letting a bunch of kids handle real life-endangering shit all by themselves. The 300 Fox Way women are certainly a specific breed of adults, but they are adults, and they do intervene when needed and are kept mostly informed. It’s a nice change of pace. 

• Going to quickly mention my only real point of criticism and then move on. The dialogue in this book isn’t very realistic, and the clear preference for dramatic chapter endings is a little excessive. I can forgive the dialogue issue, because it does help create the atmosphere that this isn’t a real place in the real world but a magical and intriguing town in some mystery land, but I don’t know if this is what the author actually intended. In every other way, the kids are all pretty well fleshed-out and realistic depictions of teenagers. But every time they open their mouths I think: this is not how a natural conversation sounds. And the dramatic chapter cliffhangers isn’t terrible, because it does keep my interest, but I think it’s fine to have a few chapters not ending with a dramatic one-liner, lol.

Predictions! 

Gansey is a reincarnation of Glendower’s. This is not a certain one, but if it’s not true I feel like it’s a missed opportunity. Gansey is constantly described as “both very old and very young”. He died, but mysteriously didn’t die. He has this connection to Glendower and for some reason connects his sense of self to him. It would tie in to the theme of nonlinear time. I think it could be a good ending for this journey, a la “the thing you were looking for was in yourself all along”.

Gansey answering with “That’s all there is” will have more meaning later on. It could be that dialogue thing again, but I found it to be a weird response in the context of that scene. Since I am of the firm belief that this is all heading to a Blue/Gansey kiss, Gansey dying and then undying, and Blue somehow walking him back down that corpse road, I feel like that quote could maybe tie in to that future scene.

Is Adam’s vision really “gone”? In the scene where Adam makes peace with his powers and returns to Cabeswater he remembers the vision from the dreaming tree and thinks: "That wasn’t going to happen now. He’d changed his future. He’d chosen a different way." And I simply can't help but think that that's just... too easy. Why mention the vision so many times if it's not going to happen now? On the one hand, it would be far more interesting if it did happen, but it had a whole different connotation to it than Adam can currently imagine (he specifically says Gansey is dying, not dead.) On the other hand, it does seem like that vision fits in the reality where Gansey dies back in the first book on Neeve's pentagon, if Adam hadn't rushed in and made the sacrifice. I just feel like it's going to make a comeback.

Noah should not be a ghost. There was not once a good explanation for why this happened. Because he died on the ley line? Presumably, if the ley line runs through the US, many people die on the ley line. Gansey’s backstory is that he came back to life from those hornet stings because someone else who should not have died has died. But Noah is like. Not exactly dead? I’m assuming this will need to be addressed later on and serve as some sort of plot resolution.

Persephone has a connection to Cabeswater. She essentially told Adam that she was in his place once (“They won’t understand,” Persephone said. “They didn’t when I came back.”). That lady has something weird going on with her and this tell me it will have some sort of connection to Cabeswater. She kind of gives off the vibes of someone who will get forever lost in a magical forest. Also I feel like maybe one of the psychics won’t make it out alive, and I dread it’d be her or Maura.

Artemus is definitely a Cabeswater creature. I think this was almost explicitly stated? He appeared suddenly and disappeared suddenly? Almost like the surges and outages the ley line causes? Also, I don't remember the specifics from the first book but I think Maura needed Neeve's help to find him because he was in that "place where they can't see", or something like that - presumably Cabeswater. Also, his story does not give human.

[meirimerens]

What were you reading on your trip!!

Omg love this question. It's been so long since I've been able to discuss books... you're getting reviews too. Or like My Thoughts.

First book was La Nuit Chienne (Nightbitch) by Rachel Yoder. my review: first thing first I do think I'd have loved it more in its original English version, but I bought it in France in a French bookshop so it's in French. However, a lot of the packed punch of it hinges on the wordplay and the homonymy of bitch and bitch, of Da Dog, so the orginal version probably is a less "jarring" read, as the translation left in parts in English that it just Couldn't find a way to translate.

the feminist themes are both overt and somewhat shallow, one could say "loud" without being "deep", being tinged a little of "baby's first feminist thoughts" and "baby's first discovery of Feminine Rage/the concept of a mother goddess" However Comma it does fit with the characters AND considering the author grew up in a fundamentalist Christian cult which, as Christian cults do, offers nothing but patriarchal projections and rehearsal, the narration does feel like something like she might have found/thought while deprogramming, and I don't doubt it could have been very liberating and empowering to her, and could be for many, manyyy women in the same situation as the main character. [Extremely vague spoilers from now but you'll have forgotten all about this if you pick up the book + i do feel like the "ride" is not spoiled by this] the husband was way too readily redeemed, and I think it's another symptom of writing about a feminism that's quite centered on wives and mothers (nothing wrong with that) but does not want to make them confront the fact that Your Husband Is Part Of The Problem. The actual Bitch (As In The Dog) I find actually quite good, and it's both the thing that attracted me to the book ( I ❤️ STORIES OF LYCANTHROPY OR EVEN VAGUELY RELATED TO LYCANTHROPY ESPECIALLY FEMALE LYCANTHROPY I DID MY BACHELOR'S ACCROCHAGE ON IT) and kept me going. [/spoiler] Tldr: the bones are good but the meat leaves to be desired (topical metaphor)

Second book was Le Ciel en Sa Fureur ("the sky in its fury") by Adeline Fleury. About the life in a small tight-knit Normandy village as animals turn up dead, this one kid is making it rain frogs and toads and is constantly found near the animal carcasses, and everyone has to come to terms with the town's secrets and their own that they've kept all these years. I ❤️ magical realism stories and I ❤️ stories in rural settings so mostly I've had a good time. The background of a tight-knit rural village slowly overtaken by a new suburb greatly appeals to me + how legends are woven into the fabric of social life... loved that... I thought the storey was kind of diminished by the early reveal of Who Done It, even thought it serves to humanize them and That's The Point, I felt like it could have been kept secret juuuust a little longer. Get scared etc. Also on one hand I'd have wished to know more about the [...]-kids, on the other I believe the ambiguity is how they're truly lived and experienced as living legends so. Yeah I'll cope with that. Also they had a lesbian second-main character and the author was normal about her \o/ you would not believe the bullshit I've had to read in contemporary books for 10 years until I got a lesbian character who's written normally. It's never too late!

THANK YOU FOR QUASTION... me tucking myself into bed every evening 📖🤓

[evanox]

rewatching TOH pt2: I’ve seen some arguments about how the final season bent back over to coddle Luz and how it felt like she had everything to gain and nothing to lose, and the counterarguments that “not every end needs to be doom and gloom to be good.” I mean, I get where the latter is coming from; there’s too much media out there obsessed with angst because oooh realism but I still find myself siding with the first opinion, because the show makes a point of calling out the Chosen One trope, and there was a significant amount of screentime dedicated to Luz stressing about having to choose between Earth (real world) and Boiling Isles (fantasy land) only for her to get both anyway, and become the chosen one. It feels like the Luz we started the show with is the same Luz with whom we ended the show. And like, having to lose/sacrifice something doesn’t necessarily make the ending sad yk? Maybe bittersweet but not necessarily bad.

What really cemented this for me was s1ep11/Sense and Insensitivity, where Luz mentions that she was aware that becoming a witch on Earth was impossible, so her runner up dream was to become a writer and I wish that was how the series ended---Luz choosing to stay with her mom before the gateway between both worlds is destroyed, thus choosing the real world with all its dread and dullness, but realizes that doesn’t mean she has to become dull too. Instead she channels her creativity and love for magic through writing and shares the stories of the heroes of the Boiling Isles. In a way she does get both real life and fantasy but it feels like she actually grew up. And she herself says in s2ep13/Any Sport in a Storm (after finding out Azura’s writer was human after all): “Some times it’s nice to be reminded that you don’t need to be a powerful ancient witch to make something special.” 

I’m gonna get a bit fanfic-y here but I like to imagine her on her first book signing/reading/whatever in the epilogue. In the first page she dedicates the book to her father, with whom she found her love for magic and books, to her mother, the kindest and most patient mom anyone could ask for, and finally to the Owl Lady and her magical friends who helped find her real ambition and grow into the person she has become today. A bright-eyed child asks if the Owl Lady, Amity, and King are really real, which Luz answers vaguely, with a distant but affectionate gaze.

Move on to the Boiling Isles and everything they need to show us about how it changed including the reformed schools of magic, and end with Amity walking by the beach where she discovers what resembles the human trash Eda used to collect (and maybe Tibbles picking through it to find his next scam). Among these is a book, its cover art a dramatic witch duel between somewhat familiar face, and it reminds her of all these years ago when she first found the Azura series. Unlike that series, however, this book is signed by a name she knows very well. 

Boom happy where everyone finds their place in life and is doing what they love and even though it’s sad that they separated you still have an open ending that gives hope for the gang finding each other again.

Idk I just think it’s a shame ep11 is the only episode where we see Luz’s passion towards writing fantasy (rather than just reading or dreaming about it), besides maybe teasing starting a writing club with Amity in s2e13. If not to foreshadow where her future was headed, the whole episode was kinda pointless since the episode right before this one where King manipulates a half-transformed Eda could’ve already served the purpose of bringing to light King’s tendency to step over others for his Demon King fantasies (but he gets away with it scot-free because Eda conveniently turns a blind eye every time Luz or King do her dirty lmao) so why do we need 2 of those in a row? Tbh there’s too many King-focused eps towards the second half of the show when I’d rather there was more time dedicated to seeing Luz actually learning magic. Why’s there 3 episodes between the episode where she gets signed up for school and the one where she actually has her first day? So much for a magical girl show.

[thatsnotbuddies]

g’s hrpf recs

okok this blog exists bc one day I clicked on a tknp fic in some random person’s bookmarks just because it seemed interesting and the rest is history

so it’s only right i make a list of my fave fics I’ve read since then

here goes

⭐ = ultimate faves

I’ve got about . 200 hrpf bookmarks on ao3 but these are the ones that I think about a lot/have re-read more than twice. there’s soo much more I could rec, if you want a list for a specific pairing lmk??

TKNP

colours i can't see (with anyone else) - (E, 7,357 words) ⭐

Travis gets the call about two weeks before he stands before the team, helmet dangling from his fingertips and heart beating against his chest like it wants to crack through his ribs.

“I’m moving to Toronto.”

The silence that washes through the locker room is deafening. No one says anything for a long 30 seconds. The only sound is that of skate guards squeaking against the floor.

Nolan is the one who breaks the silence. “What the fuck? They can’t trade you.”  And Travis winces and Nolan widens his eyes like a deer caught in headlights and someone to his left sighs. “Oh.”

Notes: The conversation in the second to last scene gets me Every Time 😭

vision trick - (E, 21,528 words)

Pat’s new house is haunted.

Notes: I’m an Interstellar (2014), Contact (1997), love-transcending-all-dimensions-including-time girlie so this is. everything. to me.

JOEL FARABEE/MORGAN FROST

letters from allentown (T, 4,539 words) ⭐

“Hahahah the flyers are shit,” Morgan tweets, sometime in early November of 2013. He's probably not expecting a pissy pre-teen from Cicero, New York to slide into his DMs and start up a four year argument over whether or not the Flyers suck, right up until Morgan turns eighteen and gets drafted by the Flyers himself.

Notes: This is THEE quintessential joel/morgan fic to me

in my defense, spring - (T, 2,764 words, Magical Realism) ⭐

Morgan gets called up a month into the season. He arrives in Philly with three suits, two duffle bags full of gear, and a very large potted basil plant.

Notes: I went on a magical realism bender for a bit and this is one of the faves. Frosty as a spring witch born into a winter witch family :’) Taking care of all his plants :’)

MCSTROME

The Next Next One (M, 71,275 words) ⭐

No, Dylan has not picked up a copy of the book, nor does he plan to anytime soon. No, he has not talked to Connor about it. He hasn’t talked to Connor about anything in a long time, but the media does not need to know that.

Notes: This is number one all time fave. It turns me inside out every time I read it. So well written down to the fake book snippets!!!! You could take this and make a movie adaptation of it and it would kill at the box office.

MATTDRAI

how lovely are thy branches (M, 5271 words) (also Tim Stutzle/Brady Tkachuk)

“What is it about my family that makes us so damn irresistible to you Germans?”

Notes: This is just such a laugh, I love it

JOEL FARABEE/CARTER HART (you know when you’re not that invested in a pairing but some of the writing for it is just so good? this is me with this)

pour some sugar on him and blame it on the rain - (T, 5,719 words, Magical Realism)

Carter is a witch working the convenience store night shift. Joel is a regular customer who just can’t seem to stop getting cursed. Morgan is mostly along for the ride.

Notes: Fun! Shenanigans!

You look so sweet in the heat of the summer (E, 5,319 words)

Carter's fed up with feeling like he’s wasting his summer, out of sync with his friends, watching the days dwindle down with nothing to show for it.

He’s not sure what he expects Joel to be able to do about that feeling, but at least he’s a promised distraction.

Notes: This is so great at capturing a Very Specific summer vibe. End notes changed my whole opinion on ‘Tis The Damn Season, lmao. I cry now.

[landwriter]

Ten Books To Know Me

Rules: 10 (non-ancient) books for people to get to know you better, or that you just really like.

Tagged by @softest-punk, thank you for utterly derailing my afternoon into nostalgia <3 My problem is less not picking ancient books and more not picking exclusively Canadian and English children’s lit published between 1995 and 1999. (Still the first three picks all the same though because it is like, the opus within which my psyche is almost wholly contained.) This got long but I'm going to be very brave and not apologize about that at all. I love talking about books, and these are some of the books I love the most. In chronological order of arrival into my heart.

Some of the Kinder Planets - Tim Wynne-Jones This book has been a part of my life for so long I cannot remember when, exactly, I first read it - only that it was taken from my gran’s shelf; Tim had sent her a copy with a lovely inscription. It’s a short story collection which remains today (and forever) my favourite format. Ted Chiang’s Exhalation, Karin Tidbeck’s Jagannath, Karen Russell’s Orange World, Margaret Atwood’s Stone Mattress are all fabulous examples, stacked before me at my desk, but Some of the Kinder Planets itself lives (alongside my two most precious childhood stuffies) at my mum’s house, the safest place of all. The stories are kids being kids in the way you want to read as a kid yourself: clever and wondering and scared and brave. Special mention also to his Zoom trilogy, beautifully illustrated in black and white by Eric Beddows.

Skellig - David Almond Another book likely pilfered from my granny’s library. There’s a little magic in Some of the Kinder Planets, but here is ALL the magical realism, and it changed me. This book has a sickly bird-or-man-or-angel in a garage being nursed to health by a boy with an ill baby sister in hospital that he can’t help at all; the indelible image of surviving off bluebottles and then getting snuck Chinese takeaway and brown ale; nature and weird kids and William Blake poems. I will weep if I continue thinking about it.

[Not Any Book But Just A Lot Of Books] - Kit Pearson, Diana Wynne-Jones, Kenneth Oppel, Philip Pullman, Madeleine L’Engle, etc. Listen, I know this is an INSANE cop-out but if you know the authors you know more or less exactly what I mean. These are the books that made me more tender than I already was, made me believe in Good, and Kindness, and Love, in a totally immutable way I thankfully do not ever want to change, because I don’t think I could.

Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett My first introduction to Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, and footnotes. Also one of the first books I did not simply pick up because it was Lying Around. I bought it because my older cousin listed it as one of her favourite books on Facebook, and she was (and is) impossibly, horribly cool. I was maybe 13 or 14 and wanted to be cool too. I’ve since read a smattering of Gaiman but I’ve yet to read Terry Pratchett on his own. I’d like to! I know I’d love it.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams Loaned to me by my best friend before we were best friends. It is, apparently, the second novel in the Dirk Gently series, and I remember nothing of it except a very good bit about a couch getting stuck in a stairwell; nonetheless it’s listed here because this is clearly actually a thinly disguised chronology of sentimentality, and also because Douglas Adams is a wonder and delight to read and I don’t need to fully remember the book to know that in my bones. I’m not sure if it’s fair but I’ll also blame Douglas Adams for my inability to be brief and to resist using semi-colons. Could’ve been someone else. But it was definitely someone English.

Sailing to Byzantium - W.B. Yeats This is not a book, but it was in my English Literature textbook in high school, so it counts. If it wasn’t, I would still count it. Why a sixteen year old girl connected with a poem that begins “That is no country for old men.” is irrelevant, as is every stanza but the third, which contains the fateful, ruinous lines: “Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is;” I remember when I read it, and I remember the chill feeling of Yeats’ spectral hand reaching all the way from his grave in County Sligo, across the whole Atlantic and the enormous landmass called Canada, to reach into my chest and cruelly grab my own heart, and I remember thinking How, and Exactly. The first thing I read that named the strangeness I felt inside of me. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of all my teenage angst. Written on my bones to this day, if I’m being honest.

Hamlet - Shakespeare We got off on the wrong foot, after I was personally victimized by the line ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’, but I do love Shakespeare. I credit this to having an excellent teacher for it, and reading it aloud in a cohort of tryhards and musicians and theatre kids. A case of familiarity breeds...appreciation, actually. We did a lot of Shakespeare, but we were asked to learn 20 lines of Hamlet specifically, and rewrite them, marked down for every error. Forty lines for bonus marks. There was much grousing and it seemed like a cruel, outdated task of rote memorization, but writing this a decade later, I am belatedly realizing this was a sneaky way to get a bunch of kids to recite a soliloquy so much that they couldn’t help but find the life in it, the rhythm and meter to make it stick in our minds. And now look! I love it! I am writing fanfic in iambic pentameter! Wherefore art my fucking restraint!! I learned my lines so hideously well that when I pulled up the scene just now (2.2, from “Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal peak”), I a) noticed and b) was offended by, minute differences from the version I memorized, which I then searched out and knew the moment I found. Incredible?!  

Still Life With Woodpecker - Tom Robbins The most recent time I’ve read a work of fiction and been rearranged by it, at the tender age of 21. here I am, I wrote, in my journal, after a very good sob, happier and more rudderless than ever. This man writes with totally unfettered joy and unhinged sincerity, two things I am hopelessly into, but also with a deep distaste for institutions and conformity that I desperately needed back then: lost, returned from a year of magical realism and the sort of adulthood growth spurt that makes you feel dizzy, home and yet horribly missing the home I’d made for myself elsewhere, all my nearly-fulfilled ambitions towards security and prestigious government postings feeling sort of hollow and reeking in my hands. It comforted me that I wasn't wrong as much as it spilled my own guts into my hands, and while I went on for another year seeing things through, it planted a seed that quickly grew proper roots and pushed me right off the ledge of respectability. And it’s a love story, of course.

It’s his prose that sits glowing on the horizon to me when I try to write richly: a distant shore of orgiastic language (from which you can surely hear the wind-carried cries of people fucking day and night), towards which I, still shy and prudish, ever point my prow.

How to Be Happy - Eleanor Davis A comic collection. Sharp and wonderful and alive. Another Best Friend gift (bless those around us with impeccable taste), of which every single panel is MARVELOUS. I meant to share one of my favourites here but apparently it has! Gotten up and left!! I will buy another copy in hopes of coaxing it back out of wherever it’s hiding.

Down to Earth - Monty Don This did not rearrange anything. But it does give me a good hug about it, so to speak. A month-by-month gardening guide which is chock-full of brilliant, sensible advice, and also so cheerfully comforting in a highly specific English way that I actually feel like I’m drinking a cuppa whenever I read a page or two of it. It makes me think of my grandmother. And so we’ve come full circle, eh?

I hope some of you are now nodding thoughtfully and thinking, well, Chrissakes, that explains it. Very sorry, hope this helps, etc. Passing on the tag to @fancy-rock-dove, @chubsthehamster, @broomsticks, @wordsinhaled, @btwimkindagay, @hardly-an-escape, @xx-vergil-xx, @that-banhus, and anyone else who wants to expose themselves on main and chat about their fave books

[cosmicrhetoric]

tagged by the incomparable @briarhips to post nine book recs <3 sorry so many of these are classics im going thru smth

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen: This is MY Austen of choice. I'm doing a reread atm and it's very Emma in it's social commentary but this is THEE eldest daughter book of all time. Maybe I just like when characters are super repressed but if you want to see a woman (who has spent 200 pages being soooo hinged) have the most cathartic breakdown about it......

Identitti, Mithu Sanyal: For fans of Kuang's Yellowface who want a bit more of an academic lens! Our main character, a 2nd gen Indian-German woman, spends years of her life in the trenches of postcolonial study under a seemingly Indian woman who is then exposed as white. It doesn't give you any easy answers but it provides a lot of scholarly resources and leaves a lot of space to come to your own conclusions. Read it on a plane. Kinda fire.

Eros the Bittersweet, Anne Carson: We all know Carson. But I'm picking a nonfiction essay instead of Autobiography of Red or her translations mostly because this one takes you behind the curtain of a lot of her famous translations when it comes to the aspect of love. I'm not really nonfiction girl in general but this was worth it

Chain Gang All Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: Speculative abolitionist fiction! Set in a near future where prisoners can compete in death matches to try and win their freedom. I've honestly read nothing like this...ever, like it's in a league of it's own but if you're a fan of the way footnotes were used in something like Babel you're gonna wanna check this out. Multiple povs (really interesting pov switching from a craft perspective actually) overlap to paint a stark and realistic depiction of American prisons.

The Devourers, Indrapramit Das: This was described to me as "IWTV but with werewolves and in Mughal India and actually really good" and while that's a pretty comprehensive plot summary it does not even begin to cover the shit this novel goes through. This is a book about transformation and stories and what letting a story live in you can do for you. The werewolves are kinda obviously a genderqueer allegory as well (as they often are in sff lmao) but when the interviewer himself starts talking about gender in his experiences you can see how that changes the story he's transcribing and it's just very cool. Heavy trigger warnings on this one though. Don't read if you can't handle a bit of piss (they are wolves). Writing style wise feels very similar to the magical realism of The Hungry Tide if that's ur bag

The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot: In the way that s&s is my Austen, this is MY Eliot. A classic story about women of this era who cannot fit into the boxes society lays out for them. A failed romance brands the main character an outcast in their town in a way that is. Hear me out. Fucking Utenaesque. Follow for some classic tragedy and themes of water....I would compare this more with like Dickens Bleak House than Austen though.

Villette, Charlotte Bronte: Once again. MY Bronte. Maybe it's just cause I read this before Jane Eyre but literally I do not understand why Miss Eyre gets so much more love than my girl Lucy. In broad strokes the story is about an English girl who ends up having to support herself by moving to France and becoming an English teacher at a girls boarding school. She's also plagued by a terrifying apparition of a nun, because this is Charlotte we're talking about and there's a bit of Catholic v Protestant thing going on. I read this during the very early pandemic and let me tell you some of the descriptions of isolation and loneliness are soooooo. yeah.

Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett: Listen. Like, listen. It's that good. I wouldn't put a discworld novel up against fucking chain gang all stars unless it was THAT good. This is a classic 'girl dresses up as a boy and goes to war to find her brother' story. It definitely started as a commentary on folk songs/stories but it is at it's heart a novel long criticism of imperialism, nationalism, and organized religion (there's jokes though it's funny). Also not to be that guy when it comes to LGBTQ book recs but the thing came out in 2002 and it's surprisingly thoughtful when it comes to both gender and sexuality. You do not have to be a fantasy fan or a discworld fan to read this. If you gave Pratchett a try and didn't like it i STILL insist you give MR a shot. It is in a league of it's own.

Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell: Do not be scared off by the sheer length of this one. It's fucking silly. This is one of my faaaaaaaave 1800s novels about class. We have juxtaposition between Molly's family (her father is a gentleman but a working doctor) and the landed gentry but also this divide between the uneducated Squire and his Cambridge bound sons and another one with the 'new money' gentry. There's also quite a lot of early science and anthropology documented in this (Gaskell and Darwin were besties) if that's interesting to you. WARNING: SHE DIED BEFORE SHE FINISHED THIS. ITS LIKE 99% DONE THOUGH

This was a hard list to narrow down but I have to include (at least as honorable mentions): Ling Ma's Severance/Bliss Orange, Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem and the SFF POC anthology New Suns

tagging: @weltonreject @bronskibeet @gaymersrights @orchidreign @brechtian + any and all mutuals i know ive forgotten <3

[winged-fool]

which books are you reading right now? do you have any queer book recs?

Yeah happy to share what I've been reading! I've only knocked out a few but I have a few more on my list.

The City Beautiful – this is about a young Jewish man (around 18 I think) and takes place in Chicago during the World Fair (sometime in the 1890s). Alter is in the US trying to save enough money to bring his mom and twin sisters from Romania and during this time one of his roommates is murdered and he becomes possessed by his dybuk (like a Jewish soul) and is spurred on to find his murderer. Alter is explicitly gay and has had a few relationships with other boys; the book itself is rich with Jewish culture and deals with homophobia and anti-Semitism of the time. It’s incredibly good.

Siren Queen – this one is a little dark and it’s WLW book. This one takes place in the Golden Age of Hollywood, in the 1920s, and features magical realism. It’s about a Chinese little girl who wants to be a Hollywood star and how she is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve her dream. She is also explicitly gay and has two main relationships throughout the book (and ends in a relationship with another one). Its theme focuses on what does it mean to be a monster and challenges your perceptions of monsters. As a queer Chinese woman, she finds her fame in playing monsters in films and makes connections with others in the industry that don’t fit the mold of Hollywood at the time. This one really hooked me, I couldn’t put it down.

The Once and Future Witches – this book isn’t as queer centric but it has a lot of great representation. It’s about three sisters who are witches and are trying to bring magic back to society. It takes place in fictional New Salem also in the 1890s and ties the witching movement with the suffragist movement which sounds weird but honestly REALLY works. One of the sisters is explicitly queer, she has a relationship with a WOC, while another one is asexual-coded, and there is a trans side character as well. I had a bit of a difficult time getting into this one but once it picks up, it REALLY picks up and I couldn’t put it down.

The Secret Lives Of Country Gentlemen - Okay this was a really fun read that's a little less plot driven but so enjoyable! It takes place in the late 1800s England and is about Gareth whose estranged father recently passed away and he inherits an obscure earldom on the marsh and it's about him trying to fit in with this new society and be accepted by his half sister he'd never met before. Prior to coming to the marsh, he had a brief anonymous relationship who turns out to be a crime big shot on the marsh. There's some mystery with Gareth's father's death but not really the focus of the book haha

Lavender House - this is basically a queer whodunit. It takes place in the 20s or so and follows Andy who was recently fired from the police force after accidentally being outed. He's hired by a woman whose wife was killed and turns out she has this house in the country that's a queer safe place where everyone including the staff are queer. It's pretty easy to guess who the murderer is so what really works is the queer relationships.

Last Call At the Nightingale - this is another murder mystery but definitely has more twists and turns than the precious one. This is the only bisexual book on my list so far so while it wasn't the best book, it's still special to me lol it's about Vivian an Irish working girl in NYC during the prohibition era. Someone is murdered at her favorite speak easy which is also her safe haven so she decides to help the owner, Hux who she may have a crush on, solve the murder so the speakeasy doesn't get closed.

I've also read The Song of Achilles which I think is a pretty well known one so I won't summarize that one. Next up I've got these books:

Giovanni's Room (mlm)

Last Night at the Telegraph House (wlw)

Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken (wlw)

If you're interested, I'd be happy to update this post once I finish the other books :)

[evelhak]

📕Book rec: Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura🐺

In this blend of magical realism, mystery and fairytale elements, seven students who are avoiding school, find themselves pulled to a strange castle through a mirror. If they play a game and find a key hidden in the castle, they are promised one wish. In the attempt to escape their lives, the kids are not only drawn to the game, but figuring out why they were brought to the castle, while also looking for someone who understands, in each other.

Recommended especially to lovers of: fairytales, character-driven fiction, reality bending, psychological depth, social commentary

Spoiler free personal thoughts:

Everything about this story, its characters and style match what I want to read and what I want to write myself, too. Reading this book was like being home for me, the layers, the metaphors, the fairytale references, the connected lives, the interaction between characters as individuals as a part of a whole. The web of meanings. The hope and healing in the discussion of hard subjects. It made me reflect a lot on my own past, and my reading taste and writing taste too, because I seem to have read it at a point where I've felt for a while that some other people want me to write differently to how I want to write, and reading a book like this, a really successful book a lot of people love, a book that I thought was a really, really important book, makes me more confident that there's nothing wrong with striving to write books that are in a similar realm as this absolutely gorgeous mix of reality and fantasy. It was a really inspiring read.

The mystery was completely obvious to me from the start, and plot-wise the book actually didn't surprise me once, every revelation at the end, I had called from the first clue. Did I care? Absolutely not! Because everything about this story was so filled with meaning and purpose. That's really a mark of a great story, isn't it? It doesn't matter if you know what's to come, because you're eagerly waiting to see how exactly those events will unfold, and you care about the characters so much, that you want to see them discover what you already know, and you want to see how they will do it. A lot of the scenes at the end of the book appeared in my head like scenes from the most beautiful movie I could imagine, and they definitely made me cry, they were just so fulfilling.

I think this book is like therapy for anyone who was lonely at school or experienced it as a traumatic environment. It has a variety of different experiences and people who react in their own organic ways. From a psychological viewpoint I think this book was masterfully written, especially because it's so relevant to understand different ways in which people react to hardships and abuse, how many forms they can take, how hidden it can be and how individual the circumstances inside the bigger phenomenon.

Maybe if there was anything that was less than perfect for me personally, it was the scene where most of the mystery was explained, reflecting back on the clues. I felt it was unnecessarily long and detailed, because I had picked up on all those clues, and it felt redundant to read the explanation because that part wasn't done in any particularly innovative way, it was just an explanation. But I understand it has its place, since this book is aimed at younger readers, and it will also be useful for the readers who may not have picked up on the clues for any reason, or readers who read this book over the course of a longer time, and may not remember everything from the beginning.

Also, the blending of reality and fantasy was particularly well executed, because you really couldn't tell where one ended and one began, but everything in this book is still relevant for reality even if the fantasy wouldn't be true, and that's what made me cry at the end the most, I think. Because in a lot of stories similar to this, when the fantasy fades, the lessons from it become too intangible, and the reader is left to guess whether they had that much meaning at all, because the characters have essentially just returned to where they started from. Not in this book. This book actually goes the extra mile and doesn't leave the reader to do the writer's job at the end. It didn't aim to appear elusive and mysterious at the end for the sake of appearing mysterious, it really ended with a feeling of "this is what I wish for you, this is what I wanted to show you" instead of "go figure out if I even told you a story". I really, really, really loved that.

[primevein]

The Prime of His Youth: Book II: Quest for Fire: Ch06: Unnerving Realism

"Is this a firing range?" Jack asked.

"Why is that hard to imagine?" Knockout asked, "I was thinking about something to work with your sword. How would you like a hand-held flamethrower?" Jack glared at him, "No? How about a Bolt Pistol?"

"A what?" Jack asked.

"It's from an old war game. A strange combination of realism, pessimism, and space magic. Humans tried to do something similar, but it was too hard to manufacture. But, this is honestly nothing for us. Instead of a bullet, it's basically a tiny rocket."

"And why would I want that?" Jack asked.

"Because if you can get through their torso plate, a couple of bolts to the spark chambre will take out any bot you come across."

"Why are you working on guns, anyways?"

"First off all, for Humans, it's not guns, it's firearms. Gun means something completely different, and second, there's nothing Humans love doing more than shooting each other."

"You're joining the military industrial complex?" Jack asked.

"Don't worry, I hired a Human lawyer to make sure I'm ethical. But, the problem with a lot of my firearms is that they are a little too much for the average Human." He gestured to Jack.

"And I've got two layers of exosuits." Jack uttered.

"You know how to use a firearm, right?" Knockout asked.

"Fowler has taught me to shoot, yes." Jack replied.

"Alright, here's the bolt pistol, along with ammunition and magazines. If you want the hand flamers, they're over there. I'll leave you to it and go get Shock-and-Awe for your little girlfriend."

"She's..."

"Uh-huh." Knockout dimissivesly stated as he walked away, "Don't care. Have fun."

Jack looked at the bolt pistol on the table in front of him, and then back at Roxana, "Did you want to try?"

"I'm not Warrior caste." she said with a smile. Jack was curious about the smile, but picked up the bolt pistol. Overall, it works like a lot of semi-automatic pistols. Bulkier than usual, no slide. He found the charging handle, safety, mag release. He aimed it down the range and dry fired it to test the trigger weight. He grabbed a magazine, loaded it, readied, aimed, pulled the weight of the trigger before finally triggering it. He definitely felt it, but his suits were taking much of the impact. The strange part was that a moment after impact it exploded. This caught him off guard, and he stood there for a few moments. "It explodes?!"

"That looks like it would definitely hurt a Cybertronian." Roxana gleefully said.

"You are having way too much fun with this." Jack replied.

"I am not Warrior-caste, but I absolutely love to watch them in action. Their passion, their power, their fury."

Jack looked back at her, and paused. He was definitely getting some physical attraction vibes. Did Cybertronians even get those?

* * *

Knockout walked back into the range, carrying his shock prod. He walked up to Roxana and handed it to her. She gratefully nodded her head, and then turned back to intently watching Jack.

Knockout instead walked over to him as he put the bolt pistol on the table. "That was incredible." Jack stated, and Knockout developed a look of incredible joy.

"Well, if you liked that, we can get you a full-sized version."

"Full-sized?" Jack asked, "How big is?.." as Knockout brought it over. It was about 3ft long, but bulky and heavy. Jack picked it up, and he could use it, but he would definitely feel it.

"This one works like an assault rifle." Knockout stated, "30 round magazine, select fire."

Jack looked at the weapon and then back at Knockout, "Okay, I can probably use it, but carry it?"

"Hm?" Knockout asked, and stepped around Jack to look at his back. "I could modify your jacket to have a backpack. We could shift the Energon storage back here, leaving your coat pockets for ammunition. We could then set it up to attach to the bottom of it, holding it crosswise."

"This is... a lot." Jack stated.

"That's why I started with the pistol." Knockout replied. "I should still move the Energon storage to the back, though we can turn it into ribs or something."

"Just these you have?" Jack asked.

"That can work on a Cybertronian." Knockout stated. "You can't exactly transform a blaster."

Jack put the boltgun down and picked the bolt pistol back up. "This IS incredible."

"Thank you." he vainfully and gleefully added. "You're too kind. Look, getting ready for your trip is going to take a lot of time in Vegas, so why don't I setup a room for you here? You can come and practice, and I can work on your coat."

"That sounds like a great idea. Thank you. Now I've got to head back to my..."

"Home sweet homeshed." Knockout dismissively stated, "I'll keep a room open for you here. One big enough for your ladies to join you."

"She's... not my lady." Jack said to him.

"Yes, whatever, however it works for you." Knockout dismissively replied.

Jack looked over to Roxana, whom was smiling brilliantly.

* * *

Jack stepped out of the building, with Roxana just behind him. He saw Arcelia waiting for him. with her trailer, and a lot of supplies. He gave her a curious look, "I called your mother to see what she wanted me to pick up." Jack walked over and climbed on top of her. He then turned to Roxana, whom was still standing there, "Roxana?" he asked.

A moment passed before she figured it out and transformed.

* * *

Jack rode Arcelia with his helmet up, with Roxana riding behind them. "So, how is Earth?" Jack asked.

"I'm not sure what I expected." Roxana replied, "More plantlife?"

"It depends where you are." Jack said, "Jasper is not greenest part of the planet."

"You are an adult, are you not?"

"I am." Jack replied.

"Then you could live wherever you want?" Roxana asked. "Humans inhabit the entire planet, don't they?"

"It's not that simple..." Jack uttered. "There's my mom."

"You want to live near her?" Roxana asked.

"Well, there's that..." Jack said.

"He's worried about his mother." Arcelia stated. "Humans don't normally live alone. They live in family units."

"My mom has been me raising by myself since I was young." Jack said, "She worked so hard. Now that I'm a man, I want to help her."

"It's amazing how much he loves his mother." Arcelia added.

"She's the most amazing woman I'll ever meet." Jack stated.

"And Arcee?" Arcelia asked.

"The most amazing Cybertronian femme I'm going to meet." Jack said with grin.

"She would say fembot." Arcelia stated. "She loves that word."

"Female Autobot." Jack said, "At least to her."

"I have heard her... refer to Humans as fembots." Arcelia added.

"She does seem to really like that word." Roxana added.

"She's not about making friends." Jack replied. "Though, she cherishes the ones she already has. She might seem like she doesn't care, but she cares too much. That's why she has trouble letting people in." He paused for a moment, "When I first met her, she was opposed to me becoming her partner, but it turns out a lot of it was that she lost her last two partners. Tailgate was killed on Cybertron by Airachnid."

"And the second?" Roxana asked.

"On Earth, by Starscream. Shortly before I met her. The reason she tried to keep me out is that she didn't want to get attached. She didn't want to lose someone else. Whenever we thought we might lose someone, she would go into a rage. She would transform, fly through the Ground Bridge, drive, flip, jump through enemy ranks. She once managed to get through a closing Decepticon Ground Bridge onto their ship. She got through everyone."

"What happened?!" Roxana eagerly asked.

"Soundwave showed up in a hallway as Arcee raced towards him. He was able to open a Ground Bridge right in front of her and dump her in the arctic."

"He was able to open a Ground Bridge on a moving ship in moments?!" Roxana asked.

"For us to do anything like that took minutes." Jack stated.

"What?" Roxana asked, "Why? Where?"

"A moving train." Jack stated, "Do you have trains on Cybertron?"

"Do they?" Roxana asked.

"They do." Arcelia stated, "And they are MUCH larger than the ones on Terra. The ones one Terra are barely large enough for a Cybertronian to fit in sideways, but not enough to actually stand up."

"How could you?.." Roxana asked.

"You'd have to ask Ratchet." Jack stated, "He's he one that pulled it off. He was actually against it. But, we had to get on the train."

"We?" Roxana asked.

"Me, Miko, and Raf." Jack stated.

"You were one who went on the train?!" Roxana asked.

"Not the first time we've been in the field." Jack stated, "And certainly not the last."

"It was long before he had his exosuit." Arcelia stated.

"Wait, what?" Roxana asked, "You were facing Decepticons without an exosuit?!"

"They had not been created at the time." Arcelia simply stated.

"Didn't he go to Cybertron?!" Roxana asked.

"Earth tech." Jack stated. "No where near the Cybertronian exosuits. One tiny breach, and I was dead. And on Cybertron, I didn't exactly have a place to fix it."

"You went all the way to Cybertron. With the risk of a single breach being your doom?!" Roxana asked.

Jack breathed in deeply, "Well, if I didn't, both Cybertron and Earth would be lost. I held up the Key to Vector Sigma, and it would glow in the direction we had to travel. Close to Kaon. When we got there, the ground transformed under our feet. We were attacked by Insecticons. Had to go underground..."

"And that's what we are going to do?" Roxana asked.

"The tunnel was damaged." Jack stated, "Who knows if it's been destroyed. If not, I will have to find another way underground."

"That's what happened with Orion Pax." Arcelia stated. "He had to go on a great quest."

"Then we don't have to worry we're over thinking this. We will need everyone, and all the supplies."

[rhetoricandlogic]

Magical Realist Mars: Ian McDonald’s Desolation Road

Magical Realist Mars: Ian McDonald’s Desolation Road

Jo Walton

Mon Dec 21, 2009 3:24pm

Desolation Road is a magic realist science fiction novel. Everything in it makes literal science fictional and technological sense, but everything feels like magical realism and makes sense on an emotional and mystical level. There’s a fair bit of science fiction that feels like fantasy, and vice versa, but Desolation Road is the only book I know that holds this particular balance. (There’s also a sequel, Ares Express, but I’m considering it to be part of the same thing as far as that goes.) It was McDonald’s first novel, it absolutely bowled me over when it came out, and while I have read everything he’s published since, and admire all of it and like most of it, this remains my favourite of his books because it’s so unusual. It’s also some of the most beautiful prose imaginable.

Rajendra Das had been given the power of charming machinery. There was nothing mechanical, electrical, electronic, or submolecular that would not work for Rajendra Das. He loved machines, he loved to take them apart, tinker with them, put them back together again and make them feel better than before, and the machines loved the feel of his long dexterous fingers stroking their insides and tweaking their dexterous components. Machines would sing for him, machines would purr for him, machines would do anything for him. Machines loved him madly. Whenever any device went wrong in the holes under Meridian Main Station, it went straight to Rajendra Das who would hum and haw and stroke his neat brown beard. Then he would produce screwdrivers from his jacket of many pockets, take the device apart and within five minutes have it fixed and running better than before. He could coax two years out of four month lightbulbs. He could tune wirelesses so fine they could pick up the cosmic chitchat between ROTECH habitats in high orbit. He could rewire prosthetic arms and legs (of which there were no shortage in Meridian Main Station) to be better than the fleshly parts they replaced.

The thing you have to remember reading this is that it isn’t metaphor. McDonald’s doing a thing that science fiction does of literalising metaphor, and he’s doing it at deeper levels than you usually see it done, so it’s like a direct transfusion of metaphor. And there are no actual metaphors in the book at all—lots of similes, and some of the best similes ever (“The triplets were as alike as peas in a pod or days in a prison”) but everything that looks like a metaphor or a way of saying things is actually and literally true within the story. It’s as if McDonald read Delany talking about how “she turned on her side” and “his world exploded” could be literal in SF and decided to do this for a whole novel, and then, even more astonishingly, made it work. It’s easy to make it sound too weird for people to want to read, but this is a very good book.

Desolation Road is a tiny community in an oasis along a railway line in the Martian desert. The novel takes it from the founding of the community by Dr Alimantando, through the accretion of other settlers, individually or in families, and on through the history of the community. This is a small scale story of love and betrayal, siblings and neighbours and sweethearts. And it’s a meditation on the idea of colonization, and the concept of “frontier” in SF. From Bradbury on we’ve seen Mars as the American West, and it’s a commonplace of science fiction to use other planets to revisit that colonization. McDonald gives us a strand of that bound to strands from elsewhere on Earth and plaits it together into something new and Martian—though he never calls it Mars. It’s Ares, and Venus is Aphrodite, which gives it another twist. McDonald has always been interested in the Third World, and here on the Fourth Planet he finds an interesting way of talking about that.

We had a reading from Desolation Road at our wedding. After we gave up on trying to find something that expressed our sentiments and decided to go for really good prose, we had no difficulty on deciding on The Lord of the Rings and Desolation Road. I think all the people there were familiar with the Tolkien passage, but I was astonished afterwards how many people asked me about Desolation Road. We joked that we must have sold seventy copies just by choosing the passage where it rains on the Viking lander for the first time. It sounds terrific read aloud, and of course it’s the sort of thing that makes you want to read it aloud. There should be an audiobook.

If you ever want to demonstrate how different science fiction can be, what an incredible range and sweep of things are published with a little spaceship on the spine, Desolation Road is a shining datapoint, because it isn’t like anything else and yet it is coming from a knowledge of what the genre can do and can be and making something new out of it.

Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

The Dark Lord of Derkholm

by Diana Wynn Jones

This was a reading from my 2022 goals of letting others pick out books for me. It is a nostalgic favorite of someone my age, and I can see how it could root its way into the mind of a yougin’. It upended a lot of fantasy tropes, turning the plot of the Earthling transported to a fantasy world into one of farce. A powerful wizard has the fantasy world in the grips of his tours, where everyone is forced to help pretend there is a dark lord, and the pilgrims who come are bestowed the quest of freeing the world of the dark lord’s clutches. These tours however are wreaking havoc on the inhabitants of the magical world, and the counsel of wizards put in motion a plot to end them.

The story is also quite ensemble. So between turning a common story plot on its head, it also could be an early venture in multiple consistent perspectives. The world building is entertaining, and the griffons and dragons as protagonists in their own right is very entertaining. The implications of the tours grow darker and darker as the book continues in a manner that would still feel safe but trying for young readers. 

There is a single scene that leaves me less likely to recommend it however. Part of the plot of the tours includes prisoners from the non-magical realm being used to fill the disposable ranks of the dark lord’s army. Our protagonists have to coerce them to their outposts, and at one point, they break free of all control and swarm upon the one teenage girl in the ranks. Nothing is explicit, and it’s hard to tell how far we’re meant to understand things went, but the girl comes out of it clearly being described in a state of trauma. My issue with it is that it had no bearing on the plot, isn’t followed up upon beyond a magical dragon doing some ‘mind healing’ and making the event seem like it ‘happened a long time ago’ and then... that’s it. It’s not reference again or even thought of again. A sort of ‘college rescinds acceptance’ moment happens and we spend much more time with her grappling with the unpleasantness of that then the moment described above. So it doesn’t function to teach lessons about empathy, healing, overcoming darkness, or anything useful. It felt used for the purposes of ‘realism’ in a trite and frankly unnecessary way.

It wasn’t overall my cup of tea, but I’m betting that had I read it at the same age, I would have felt vastly different as I really enjoyed the variety of characters and the upended trope. It doesn’t become no longer worth reading for my criticisms just lackluster in those cases.

My 2022 reads

[tarredion]

2020 fic roundup

hiii! i was going to do this earlier but,, um,, i posted three fics in the final two hours of 2020 year (for me) so :D here is finally my fic roundup - in order from newest to oldest

i’ll be using the original summaries, wordcounts n ratings etc, some of the tags, link to the tumblr post and the ao3 link, and maybe add a note or two if i feel that’s not enough

this’ll be a long post so read below the cut 

(or go directly to my ao3 here especially in case you don’t want spoilers)

Fireworks up above

g, 341

NYE, established relationship, husbands, tooth-rotting fluff, kissing

Husbands Dan and Phil and their placeholder-apartment share a final NYE moment (aka 2020 NYE)

ao3 // tumblr

Quiet morning

g, 304

tooth-rotting fluff, lazy mornings, sleepy cuddles, established relationship, husbands, forever home

Dan wakes up in the forever home, Phil breathing softly next to him…

ao3 // tumblr

Shadows / nocturne / parting clouds

g, 2.7k

hurt/comfort, migraine, arguing, angst with a fluffy ending, established relationship, ii tour fic, alternating and outsider pov

Phil wakes up with a migraine, causing him to snap at Dan. Throughout the day, while visiting a city for the ii tour, Cornelia observes the tension, and eventually, the two of them console

ao3 // tumblr

A tub fit for two

t, 853

dnp, forever home, established relationship, husbands, fluff, bathing/washing, and more

there are certain perks that come with building your own (forever) house

ao3 // tumblr

Signals

m, 1.6k

texting, established relationship, food, domestic fluff, very light angst, sexual content

excerpts of dan and phil’s texts throughout the years

ao3 // tumblr

At the turn of a page

g, 1.2k

liveshow, 2020-ish, fluff, established relationship, forever home

Phil’s had his reasons for not continuing liveshows during lockdown, but they’re ready for a comeback—a domestic one, at that

ao3 // tumblr

Prickle on the skin, ache in the heart

t, 1.4k

2014, closeted relationship, bbc party, alcohol, vomiting, self confidence issues, jealousy, angst then fluff, happy ending

phil smiles wider, brighter. every day. every day, dan falls in love again. he can’t help but be a little jealous, not being able to say

ao3 // tumblr

It’s home

t, 2.2k

au ice-cream parlor, established relationship, pure fluff, slice of life

A day in the life of Dan and his smitten ice-cream vendor boyfriend Phil, living on the coast of Connemara, Ireland

ao3 // tumblr

Whisper of the heart

g, 976

established relationship, headaches & migraines, hurt/comfort, fluff, piano

Phil has a headache. Dan plays the piano and comforts him.

ao3 // tumblr

Slice of cake

e, 2.7k

established relationship, bday sex, 2016, face-sitting, rimming

Dan’s promised to celebrate Phil with nothing but the best this year.

Naturally, he buys himself a new skirt - but it’s not just to wear.

ao3 // tumblr

Supple thirty-two

this is a chaptered wip !! it’ll continue in 2021 (the update note is currently inaccurate)

-

3/32

t, 4k so far

slow burn, friends to lovers, love letters, secret admirer, fluff and angst, internalized homophobia, outing, coming out, queer themes, happy ending

A secret admirer sends flowers and letters to Dan over the years

ao3 // tumblr

Tenderhearted

g, 1k

2009, comfort/angst, sad but sweet, sleepy cuddles, separation anxiety

Phil doesn’t want Dan to go home. Dan agrees. Quite strongly, actually.

Feeling properly loved for the first time causes serious separation anxiety.

ao3 // tumblr

I’d marry you (with paper rings)

m, 4k

established relationship, fluff, domestic, proposal, sexual content

Maybe learning calligraphy was of greater importance to Phil, and them, than Dan first thought

ao3 // tumblr

Blue can be kind, too

this is my favourite fic of the ones i’ve written !! so far. it’s from the pov of kid dan so very tender and mostly very childish / undeveloped in the language, as if actually told from his brain (even though it’s third person)

-

g, 4k

kid!fic, dan and phil are kids, kindergarten, developing friendship, past violence and bullying, referenced homophobia, fluff and angst, sad and happy, happy ending

A tale of being scared, starting fresh, and making your first ever friends after experiencing violent bullying.

Or rather, four-year-old Dan’s first day at his new kindergarten.

ao3 // tumblr

Ablaze

e, 4k

established relationship, spanking, daddy kink, oral, aftercare

Phil’s trying to work; Dan’s being a brat. Things get heated, but not in a bad way.

ao3 // tumblr

The brightest shade of sun (I had ever seen)

g, 3.9k

friends to lovers, getting together, only one bed

one dawn on the isle of man can be enough to unite two craving hearts, even if a lot of heartbreaking thoughts are revealed along the way

ao3 // tumblr

Tracing constellations

t, 1.3k

established relationship, sleepy cuddles, fluff, banter, kissing

Two 6-foot men cuddling in a single armchair doesn’t sound like a good idea.

It isn’t, but dan and phil do almost anything for intimacy…

ao3 // tumblr

Between the seams

g, 999

established relationship, cuddling, fluff, fear, hurt/comfort

Bone-tired lovers meet thundering downpour, rediscovering the best way to confront fear in the meantime

ao3 // tumblr

Fjäll med stjärnor

this one is also a chaptered wip !! it’ll also be continuing in 2021, and probably beyond bcs it might be even longer than that

-

2/?

g, 9k so far

fantasy, magic, kinda historical fantasy, dan’s a dragon, and Phil’s human (at first), strangers to friends to lovers (eventually), fluff and angst, lots of descriptions

a human’s and a dragon’s paths crossing is unusual, but in this case it was in alignment with the stars and a decision as old as time itself  

ao3 // tumblr

It’s not a date?

chaptered wip to continue into 2021 too

-

2/4

t, 4.6k so far

there’s only one bed, bodyswap, didn’t know they were dating, friends to lovers, getting together, idiots in love, tatinof

On one hand, it should all go flawlessly. When Phil goes on tour with his boyfriend of six years, Dan, he books them rooms with only one bed. He’s not deterred by their quiet and nonsexual (monogamous) lovelife. They do things ‘normal’ couples do, just maybe not as often or intimately. He supposes Dan’s just taking it slow, trying to come to terms with his sexuality and so on. It’s okay.

On the other… Dan doesn’t know they are dating. He has a longtime crush on Phil that he thinks is unrequited, despite their mutual rather romantic and domestic behavior.

ao3 // tumblr

Fur-ever

g, 3.5k

tooth-rotting fluff, dog owners/dads, dog wedding, established relationship, alternate universe - different first meeting, howells and lesters

Dog dads Dan and Phil marry their dogs, in preparation for their own big day

ao3 // tumblr

The maestro and his muse

chaptered but completed!

-

4/4

e, 5.5k

friends to lovers, mutual pining, body painting, teasing, sexual content

Phil is a professional artist. He’s always wanted to try body painting, and now he gets to, for a naked photoshoot. Unfortunately, his good friend, muse, and crush Dan Howell is his model of choice. What could go wrong?

ao3 // tumblr

Lightyear groovin’

t, 4.6k

star wars setting,  dj Phil, waiter Dan, mutual pining, friends to lovers

In a galaxy far, far away, there’s an abundance of 70s clubs. On Krithoo, local party freak Dan Howell works as a waiter at an often overcrowded cantina, Virgo Volans. And maybe, just maybe, he has an infatuation with the extraterrestrial dj frequenting their stage…

ao3 // tumblr

A theism in evolution

g, 5.9k

gods au, enemies to friends to lovers, getting together, fluff and angst, emotional h/c, written entirely in letters, 1st person pov

The sungod, Phil, sends letters to Mother Gaia. He puts all his worries into words… even when he himself can’t see right through them

ao3 // tumblr

Little comfort card

g, 932

separation anxiety, established relationship, business trip, vidcon, fluff and angst, homesickness, comfort, post-coming out videos

Phil goes to VidCon alone. Cue separation anxiety, something Dan seems to have accounted for..

"The whole room felt too airy, and lacked that simple, aesthetic Dan-touch. It wasn’t quite home, so to speak."

ao3

Your hoodies (come wrapped around me)

g, 869

york hoodie, clothes sharing, fluff, moving, house cleaning

Unpacking for their move into bigger quarters, Dan finds an ancient treasure in the back of their conjoined closet.

ao3 // tumblr

Awestruck

g, 996

barista dan, youtuber phil, fanboy dan, crushes, getting together, strangers to lovers

Dan might meet his best customer at the end of his worst day, and get a little more

ao3 // tumblr

Rainbow, proud

g, 513

post-coming out videos, established relationship, domestic boyfriends, fluff, shopping

Phil really wants the corgi shirt, but Dan thinks he has enough already

ao3 // tumblr

A prickly considerate gift

it’s the piranha plant bouquet !!

-

g, 1k

2014, established relationship, Valentines day fluff, gift giving, flowers and language of flowers, brief depression mention, domestic fluff, nerdiness

Phil finds a substitute for real Valentine’s day flowers

ao3 // tumblr

Cherish the smile

g, 783

husbands, honeymoon, established relationship, fluff

Phil wakes on the first morning of their honeymoon; a new day to cherish Dan’s gorgeous, excited, smile

ao3 // tumblr

“Seriously?”

t, 3k

strangers to lovers, enemies to lovers sort of, getting together, angst with a happy ending, co-workers, non-youtuber au, and lots of other tags lmao

Prompt: Dan and Phil meet while candle shopping and one of them can't help but comment on how obnoxious/boring/etc the scents the other one is picking out are the time Phil met a totally-not-handsome stranger and only sort-of wished they'd never meet again. Tough luck?

ao3

The lovers (VI)

chaptered, completed !

-

14/14

m, 31k

friends to lovers, magical realism au, lots of angst but also fluff, happy ending (more important tags on ao3)

Dan, guardian of the forest, feels inadequate to love and of love. His best friend Phil loves him despite that.. but doesn’t know quite what to do when Dan becomes a hypocrite- playing with both their feelings

ao3 // tumblr

Colour me rosé

another chaptered wip !! though this one may not be finished in 2021, because i have so much on my plate then - enjoy what’s here though !

-

9/?

m, 13k so far

sugar daddy Phil, sugar baby Dan, phil is rich, eventually domestic, strangers to lovers, developing relationship and friendship, sexual content, fluff, a little angst, and like a lot lot more tags

nineteen-year-old Dan Howell is looking for a sugar daddy to help him achieve the dream of luxury and romantic affirmations. Phil Lester, newly 24 and very rich, is searching for a romantic and sexual relationship. When stumbling upon the other on the internet, similar interests and all, have they found their match?

ao3 // tumblr

Archaic Allure (sonnet)

so as it turns out, writing a fic idea can really help you out with your grade (and yes, this is actually a sonnet)

-

g, 104

poetry, reminiscing, fluff, Dan’s pov

Dan reminisces his love for Phil - sonnet version

ao3 // tumblr

Something in your name

t, 3.2k

implied sexual content, fanfic about fanfic, emotional hurt/comfort, separation anxiety, established relationship; and more

phil reads a y/n fic ; guess who wrote it

ao3 // tumblr

Ellie enchanted

g, 986

fluff and angst, happy ending, parent!phan, new child, adoption, established relationship, self-doubt, implied homophobia 

Dan and Phil pick up their adopted child

ao3 // tumblr

Chocolate swirls

g, 3.3k

parent!phan, snapshots, bday surprises, baking, fluff and angst, cake

Dan tries to surprise Phil for his 33rd. He fails, as humans do, but ten years later he has luckily got two adorable little helpers at his side. And maybe that makes everything just a little better.

ao3 // tumblr

Dan or Da?

on ao3 this fic is just called Da, so beware of that

-

t, 9k

parent!phan, friends to lovers, pretend relationship (not what you think), misunderstanding, getting together, implied sexual content, marriage, canon divergence, pov alternating

One day can change your life forever. For Phil, his daughter Mel, and Dan, who’d have guessed that day would be one when all they’ve planned is doing ordinary shopping together.

ao3 // tumblr

and that’s it!! thank you for reading this sweetums, and be sure to check out any of the fics

[spoopybcbe]

here are some plots i would love based on a few books i’ve read this year (going to count comics/graphic novels too because why not). most of these are fairly loose interpretations, or are left relatively open so there’s a lot of room to play around with pairings and dynamics. a lot of these plots are open to mumus or groups, or as 1x1 ships.

meddling kids by edgar cantero

every summer, a motley crew of curious kids found themselves spending their days in an idyllic small town. it was like someone had plucked the town straight off of a postcard or movie set - but it also seemed to be a magnet for the strange and unusual, as well as ne'er-do-wells. determined to solve the mysteries of this quiet little town, the group of kids start their own investigation team. over the years, they find themselves in more than one sticky situation - but they always catch the haunts, and they’re always a bad guy in a mask. their last summer together, though, things end a bit differently. it’s their last case. they catch the bad guy in the mask. but something happened that night - something they can’t explain. something terrifying. and it changed their lives forever. (their lives fall apart, lots of wiggle room here, eventually they come back together as adults to solve the mystery - and be a 1x1 or mumu or group)

the saturday night ghost club: a novel by craig davidson

as a child, they grew up transfixed by their uncle’s stories of the strange, paranormal, and occult. they spent more time in their uncle’s oddities shop than they did playing outside or making friends. the new kids in town are also inexplicably drawn to his shop - and they form their own little rag-tag crew of ghost hunters. every saturday night, the uncle takes the crew of kids to a different spot in town, and tells them the story of what happened there - and the ghost that now roams. it could take a turn like the book - with the uncle’s tragedy and trauma coming alive through the stories - or it could stray and the town actually has its share of haunts. the plot could pick up with the child returning to their hometown as an adult, perhaps carrying on their uncle’s legacy by recreating the saturday night ghost club with a friend or partner. (lots of wiggle room here too, open to anything - 1x1, mumu, or group)

lumberjanes by noelle stevenson, grace ellis, brooke allen, and shannon watters

a group of friends spent a lot of summers together at a camp. they bonded over exploring the mysterious forest surrounding the camp, (almost) fearlessly diving deeper into endless puzzles as they tried to solve the mysteries around them. a lot of strange, and almost supernatural, things happened that they really couldn’t explain. but eventually their years at the camp came to an end, and they all went their separate ways. they promised to always keep in touch, but never did. the only thing they ever really shared or had in common was the camp and their adventures - without them, there was nothing holding the group together. years down the road, they all get a letter in the mail about a reunion. the camp is opening to alums for a few weeks and, feeling nostalgic, they all sign up for their old cabin. when they return a lot of memories come flooding back, and it isn’t long before the mysteries of the woods start calling to them again. (i know this is pretty different but please!! up for 1x1, mumu or group)

the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson

a haunted house. a group of strangers turned paranormal investigators. what could possibly go wrong? perhaps one or two people in the group are already familiar with one another, and they’re looking for their big break within the paranormal community. they don’t have a lot of equipment or an established team or a following. what they do have is a supposedly haunted manor scheduled for auction and a very limited amount of time to find some evidence of the paranormal. perhaps one used live in the house or spent summers there as a child, and is just looking for proof that what they saw and what they heard was all just a dream or a figment of their imagination. perhaps one is just looking for a change of scenery - for something, anything, exciting to happen to them - and this call to action is the perfect escape. (basically a modern sort of adaptation of the book minus the death, open to 1x1, mumu or group)

alosha by christopher pike

very loose interpretation - essentially playing around with the idea of multiple/different dimensions, and there being gateways/doors to these dimensions on earth. perhaps one muse discovers that they are actually from a different dimension and begin to recover memories from that life. perhaps they stumble upon a door and find themselves in another dimension - either eerily similar or vastly different from their own. (lots of wiggle room - you don’t have to be familiar with the book and i don’t really recommend it lmao. it was a childhood favorite. open to 1x1, mumu or group)

the ocean at the end of the lane by neil gaiman

in a quiet little town, a child meets a child a few years older than them - and befriends them and their unusual family from down the lane. the more time they spend with the family, the more it becomes apparent that they’re not exactly normal. eventually the child discovers that they are a family of immortal, interdimensional beings with extraordinary gifts. they protect the child and their family from a dangerous entity that has invaded their home - but it comes at a cost. in order to recover, and protect the child, they cast a spell over their memories. when they wake the next day, the family is gone, and the child only remembers them as the family down the lane and the child who used to play with them. as an adult, they return to their childhood home for a funeral, and are immediately overwhelmed with hazy memories of the family from down the lane. they mindlessly find themselves traveling down the lane until they reach the house long forgotten, and in the front garden is a familiar face - only they appear older now, too. (there is some wiggle room here, probably better as a 1x1)

moonstruck by grace ellis, kat fajardo, and shae beagle

cute, sleepy, idyllic little towns with magical and/or supernatural realism/surrealism? yes please. give me the werewolf who works as a bartender at the local LGBTQIA+ bar. a witch that owns the flower shop. the cute barista who has no idea what is happening right under their nose. a werewolf desperately trying to hide what they are from their super cute, clueless roommate. a witch who works at that cute little bookshop and their familiar is a regular customer. literally anything and everything you can think of. (lots of room here! open to 1x1, mumu or group)