#1-star rating

[sweetsavageflame]

Historical Romance Review: Waves of Passion by Casey Stuart

Blue Falcon reviews Waves of Passion by Casey Stuart, another subpar early-era Zebra historical. But at least it has a pretty cover! TOTAL SPOILER ALERT ⚠ The Book This review is of Waves of Passion by Casey Stuart. It’s an early Zebra historical romance from 1980. The Plot Book #1 Predestination Waves of Passion begins in Northampton, England, circa 1810. Alaina Deering, the heroine, is…

[theunholyvirginemilyprentiss]

EMILY PRENTISS’ GOODREADS:

THE HOLY BIBLE

multiple authors

★☆☆☆☆ 0.1

Overly-preachy narrative, too many plot holes. Profiled God as a malignant narcissist with an inferiority complex. Can’t blame Satan for lashing out at has dad like that, rebellion is typical of scapegoated children in a toxic family dynamic.

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

J.D. Salinger

★★★★★ 5.0

Didn’t read it, five stars anyway because its reputation precedes it.

HOW TO FIND AT-RISK KIDS WHO GREW UP IN A 360-DEGREE ENVIRONMENT OF FAMILY VIOLENCE

David Rossi, Jason Gideon

★★☆☆☆ 2.0

Literally ruining my life. But two stars because I was high when I read it and it made my brain feel fuzzy in a good way.

THE LORD OF THE FLIES

William Golding

★★★☆☆ 0.3

Strong concept, disappointing lack of women.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE

Kurt Vonnegut

★★★★★ 5.0

It’s so freaky-deaky, I love it.

Check out my Masterlist for more BAU scenarios

[fairylando]

can letterboxd interview carlos and ask him his four favorites? i know he has an account! i know he's a cinephile!!! 🥴

Carlos: "For me, Gladiator 1 is a legendary movie that I watched, obviously when I was a kid. I think I must have watched them 3 or 4 other times. I watched it, again 2 or 3 days ago to remind myself a bit about the movie before coming here. Just makes you realize what a good piece of film it is. Keen to see what happens in number 2 and if they can do as good as job as that!"

[sayingyournames]

okay so in the last few days i’ve seen at least a dozen tik toks from various hp fic writers (mostly dramione) who are taking down their work from ao3/tumblr because it’s being bound and sold on etsy without their permission.

and i’ve seen even more videos from the people who read these fics, talking about how they can’t believe people would go so far against someone’s wishes and be so disrespectful.

but then the caption says “I have the pdf, I can send it to you!"

and there are hundreds of comments asking for it.

the lack of self-awareness is insane. y’all are so unwilling to believe that you’re part of the problem.

some of these fics have been online for over 15 years and are well-known and loved by entire communities online, and they’ve been able to stay up for that long without any major issues up until the last few years when people who have no understanding of how this shit works have come out of the woodworks.

idek what to say about it anymore other than i’ve been in fandom longer than some of y’all have been alive and i have never seen anyone act this entitled. never seen anyone have less respect for the people who put this work online for free. it’s exhausting. and it’s an issue in every corner of the hp fandom bc i see it here in marauders every gd damn day.

if a fic writer takes their work down, it’s because they don’t want any more people to read it. it’s bc they don’t trust their community to respect their work. and it’s really fucking sad that this is what it’s come to.

[fandomcentral101]

Megamind and Roxanne Megamind Rules 1x01

[evilkaeya]

genshin impact ❌️ colorist impact ✅️

[other-peoples-coats]

ok so we all agree that jedi sports are just like, ludicrously insane, right?

like jedi baseball is really only technically sort of like baseball, if you squint very hard and are also very drunk. the ball is a stunner shot, the bat is your lightsaber, and it's less 'catching to throw out' and more 'deflecting it directly at the runner'.

Jedi soccer has a special pitch with re-inforced walls and ceiling because the last time a ball escaped the pitch it went through three buildings.

the less said about jedi track and field events, the better.

[aritany]

just read a book so bad it reinforced my belief in myself like nothing else has in a hot second.

nobody can stop us. no matter how shitty your ideas and writing feel you cannot be stopped. PERSIST

[allastoredeer]

I think what really sells the comic for me is Alastor's non-reaction. Honestly, if people in Hell are anything like people in the fandom (which, let's be honest, the venn diagram is a circle and I say this with love) Alastor's probably used to people brazenly flirting with him as though he couldn't bite them in half.

It doesn't faze him anymore. He doesn't even blink an eye. He is well aware of how many Radio Demon fan-clubs there are (easiest bunch of souls he's ever collected), and there is nothing they can do at this point that's going to surprise him.

[sunshine-and-her-ikevil-stuff]

Oh my god

OH MY GOD

OH MY GOD!

With the free ticket! I always dreamed this day would come!! And it’s the one I wanted!

[tomcriuse]

cant stop thinking about these back to back reviews my roommate did of mi2 and 3

[ncfan-1]

I have a few wants for Mae’s story next season, with the hope that she gets her memory back relatively quickly being a pretty important one, but it’s not the only want I have for the way things go for Mae that I consider important. There’s something else that feels even more important: namely, that Mae find people in her life that deeply love and prioritize her.

There’s something very pointed going on in Season 1. “Everyone seems to want you,” Qimir says to Osha, but by comparison, nobody ever seems to want Mae. When they’re children, Sol professes a connection to Osha, and Mae is little more than an afterthought; as an adult, Sol ultimately leaves nothing for her but the worst parts of himself. Qimir is visibly fascinated with Osha from first sight, and ultimately doesn’t seem to have thought much of Mae even before she attempted to desert his side; he seems to brush her off the way you’d brush a speck of dust off of you.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that Osha should have chosen to stay with Mae in Episode 8. It doesn’t make sense from a storytelling standpoint, not at this juncture. This is the culmination of Mae’s character arc this season, where she is finally able to stop clinging to Osha, to accept that what she wants more than anything is for Osha to be happy, even if she isn’t with her. For Osha to choose to stay with Mae at that point would feel wrong, for Mae has to prove to the audience that she has reached this kind of peace regarding her relationship with her sister by accepting that Osha doesn’t want to stay with her without bitterness. As for Osha, this is the culmination of her character arc this season, which has been about taking her life and her power into her own hands, and it would be strange for her to stay with Mae when Qimir has offered to help her do what she wants. It wouldn’t feel right from a storytelling standpoint; for things to make sense, they have to part ways at the end of Season 1.

But even if Osha frames it as making sure that Mae is safe from any reprisals on Qimir’s part, and even if it’s what make sense from a storytelling perspective, what it ultimately amounts to is that Osha doesn’t choose Mae, either. Nobody ever chooses Mae.

And it’s so uneven. I’m not saying I want Osha to be this alone, too—I don’t. But it’s wrenching to watch this woman who has nothing and no one at the beginning of the season still have nothing and no one at the end of the season, because even the memory of Osha forgiving her and loving her again has been taken away from her. Even her memory of the one person she had left who actually loved her has been taken away from her. She had nothing then, and she has nothing now.

Like I said, it feels pointed, the way Mae is never chosen, and what I’m hoping is that this means that it won’t be the case anymore in Season 2. Vernestra, you say, and yeah, I have high hopes for that dynamic, but no matter how things shake out between Mae and Vernestra, that is never going to be a relationship of equals, and I don’t think it’s ultimately going to be the kind of relationship where Vernestra would choose Mae, not meaningfully. Not over every other option.

That’s what I want for Mae, really. Someone who will love her deeply and choose her over everyone else, every time. With her memories and without. Knowing what she’s done, the good and the bad, knowing what she’s capable of, the good and the bad, knowing her past, knowing her faults and knowing that those faults aren’t all of who she is. Someone who would choose her without a second thought.

Because I feel like there’s going to be a scene like the one in Episode 8, where this time, it’s Mae who chooses. But Osha had more than one option. Either Qimir or Mae were viable options. Osha had a solid foundation to rely on, whatever she decided to do. But as it stands, Mae only has Osha. Osha is all Mae has. And if we do get a moment like that in Season 2, where this time it’s Osha asking Mae what she wants, if she wants to go with her or not, if Mae’s options are still “Osha” or “be completely alone,” then it's not the meaningful choice that Osha had, is it? My point is, I want Mae, whatever she decides, to have actually had a meaningful choice. To not be completely dependent on Osha for love and acceptance. To have someone else she could turn to if she decided that she didn’t want to go with Osha. To not have her choices be: Osha—or no one.

[flyhighisco]

i'm also now stalking spurs back up back up part time goalkeeper because he has a letterboxd account

[demonwebs]

lolth as a concept is so funny bc you cannot please her and you know you cannot please her and it still drives vhaal abs bonkers every time he rediscovers this fact during their monthly 'trance' meetings

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: June Wrap-Up.

Okay, y'all have Convinced Me--I'm going to start doing little wrap up posts! Behold: a shelf of what I read in June (not pictured: the bookmark at page 466 of ORDINARY MONSTERS, because despite having read two (2) books worth of book so far, I'm still not quite done with that one).

June was kind of a slow reading month for me (I did a LOT of writing, looking back--nice). I wanted to take OTHER TERRORS and THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE a bite at a time so the horrors and figures of rhetoric (respectively) didn't all run together. Both of those, much like A SHINING, turned out to be pleasantly leisurely wanders, whereas MONSTERS is kind of a plod.

I already did bigger write-ups for TERRORS and SHINING, linked in the bullets below.

OTHER TERRORS - ★★★★ Great bite-sized horror anthology with a really inclusive mix, as promised! I enjoyed most of these (always nice in an anthology!)

A SHINING - ★★★★ Weird fucked up heavy little book in translation, lit-fic flavored, but very approachable, I thought. Tiny enough to swallow in a sitting, but also kind of exhausting to do it that way? I'll definitely reread this one in the future.

THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE - ★★★ Fun romp through rhetoric! The examples were fun, and I appreciated the humor, but I also find myself still uncertain what a bunch of the figures actually ARE, definitions-wise, despite having read a book full of so many of them (I did just buy his recommended A HANDLIST OF RHETORICAL TERMS to help with that, at least, which is. almost entirely. definitions by volume). Neat thing to have on my references shelf, but it wasn't as excellent as I was hoping it'd be.

ORDINARY MONSTERS - 466/658 pages read; will report back later (but it's not looking good, folks).

[steddieunderdogfics]

He's The Whore Next Door by a_lil_a_alot and Extocancer

@ukulilyjane

Rating: Explicit

44,444 words, 1/1 chapters

Archive Warning: No Warnings

Tags: 5+1 Things, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Gay Eddie Munson, We pretend Karen Wheeler wouldn’t actually fuck a teenager, Like the fake dating trope but make it slutty, Established bisexual Steve but he doesn’t know it, Hawkins isn’t cursed but El still has powers and lab trauma, No Beta - We Die Like Steve Harrington's Heterosexuality, Crack Treated Seriously, POV switches as TV advertisements/announcements, POV Steve Harrington, D&D rules as a sex talk, Everyone Is Gay, no one is safe, Recreational Drug Use, this is not a Mike Wheeler safe space, the kids aren't kids anymore are they Steve?, maidenless behaviour from Mike, not-so-background ronance, authors are working with 5e D&D knowledge don't come for us, Blow Jobs, First Time Blow Jobs, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Switch Eddie Munson, Background Greatwise, Jargyle if you squint, I'm the Lorax and I speak for the trees and the trees say: multiple orgasms, Crack

Summary:

“I just mean you’ve, like, practically slept with half the town. You don’t need to bring the fictional into it.” Dustin lets out an appalled noise, choked between opposition and surprise, staring directly at Steve as he awaits the response. Steve takes, admittedly, quite a few moments to reboot. He runs his hand through his hair, head tilting to one side. “Is that so?” “I just don’t trust you to not try it on with anyone ! It’s like I’m constantly questioning if you’re hitting on someone or if you’re just— god!”    And oh, boy, wasn’t that just the most delicious lightbulb to ever pop above Steven Otis Harrington's slightly shaken but amazing head? “Anyone, huh?” OR: 5 times Steve pretends to fuck an adult in Mike Wheeler’s life to get under his skin, and the 1 time he actually does. OR: Enter: Karen Wheeler. But not actually. Just pretend.

This is a MOD rec as a part of our Fic Fridays.

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