#How Long Should My Book Be?

[batcavescolony]

A Batfam AU where instead of going to get Dick to be Robin again Tim uses necromancy to bring Jason back from the dead. He just leaves Jason on the Wayne doorstep with a 'do better this time' sticky note. Batman can't find out who did it and Tim stays his little latchkey self with semi ok but distant parents (cus canonical they weren't really abusive just not there which isn't good but they could be worse). His parents bring him along on trips but again they love him but they just leave him to do as he pleases. so in Paris he ends up still getting trained by Lady Shiva. This keeps going and Tim just keeps reviving batfam members, if they fake their deaths and Tim tracks them down to check on them. They still have no idea who their shadow is, they can't find him, Tim likes it this way. Bruce goes MIA and Red Robin happens just minus Tim actually being Red Robin. The JLA doorstep gets a passed-out Batman with a 'I can't believe I have to keep doing this shit' sticky note on his head.

[spacebags]

The Rabbit

[dorothywonderland]

I started doodling greek gods, it's over for me. I have to accept that I'm officially addicted to epic the musical

[they-didnt-last]

anyone interested in talking about the iconic 2000's middle-grade-bordering-on-ya book series gallagher girls??

[tootditoot]

Their office reeked of sulfur and salt. Under the floorboards, I could hear dozens of tiny legs skittering about intermittently. Dried leaves and dead twigs were scattered under the furniture, ink stains covered the book that laid on the table, and I imagine that the scented candles that had been left burning were some futile attempt to make the room feel more pleasant.

"You must forgive me, Inspector, had I known you were coming sooner, I would've..." She looked around, her eyes landed on the dried leaves on the floor and then back to me "...prepared tea".

She led me to the center of the room as she sat at the side of her desk at the other end. Beetles and cockroaches started to pop up from under the floorboards at this point. She paid no heed to them. I could've sworn those pests were forming a perimeter around her and were ready to swarm me by the snap of a finger.

"I don't suppose you came here to ask for my expertise". A scan around the room revealed walls lined with bookshelves, filled with monographs on insects, fishes, and mythical creatures. There were even a few books with her name on, Salome Barko, listed as the author.

"For the yearly census. Have you recently travelled outside the city within the past month?"

"Oh yes, recently I had just returned from my trip in the desert city of..."

Listening to her recount her travels, I started to realize what I was surrounded by. These insects infesting the place weren’t normal.

"...then a small bite killed the camel I had in no less than a minute!"

These insects are not from here. A cockroach suddenly flew and landed on my arm, I saw its mandibles slowly widening. Instinctively, I frantically shook my arm and slapped it, knocking it to the ground. I then heard hundreds of wings furiously buzzing from under the floorboards so I ran. I tripped over a dead twig in my haste, hitting the ground with a hard thud. As I scrambled to my feet, I glanced back. She was still sitting at her desk, looking at me with a blank stare.

Only after the door slammed shut behind me was I was finally able to breathe. I paused to fill my lungs with fresh air, then pulled out a checklist from inside my coat and crossed off a name.

I will be writing my resignation letter next month...

- Personnes d'Intérêt Illustrated: The Excommunicated and the Exiled., Chapter 6: "Excerpts from the Diary of Inspector Priuli", P.38

[sanasanakun]

Jimithon Mouthwashing is such a good representation of untreated, enabled NPD like it makes me want to squeeze the life out of him. I'm endlessly fascinated when watching him interact with his crew, surroundings, and himself because he's so fucking lost in his own sauce. It's insane. If I'm being real, it makes him my favorite character in the game.

It's a little scary to say, but watching Jimmy is like seeing a mirrored version of myself two years ago before I truly committed to treatment for my NPD. He's like a shadow. The opening line "I hope this hurts," which I believe comes from Jimmy right before the crash, is such a poignant statement. It's a simple line, but I can tell you from experience that the desire to hurt others when in a narcissistic rage is overwhelming. It's such a good line to sum up Jimmy's character in that moment. Luckily, in the real world, I had my friends and family there to catch me when I hit my lowest, even though I'd hurt them so many times. Jimmy probably could've used friends to force him into therapy (cough cough Curly cough cough)

[tokyoteddywolf]

Not me debating writing an Aventio fic based on a book I really loved... urgh-

I got Aven recently and just finished his arc in Penacony and I am incredibly bored! I wanna write while I have the energy...

Lemme know if I should :p

Basic premise is its based on a book called Written In Red, which I feel absolutely fits Aventurine??? Look at the book first, give it a read, and tell me the main character doesn't remind you of him. I will go feral.

Anyways if you don't, the premise of the book is that the main character, a blood prophet who is also a slave, escapes and runs away from captivity to a town in order to hide and live amongst sentient predators called "Others", basically ancient as fuck monsters that can swap between animal and human forms. Others actually do prey on humans, but it's modern times and they have a begrudging agreement to coexist with humans because they make decent stuff that the Others can't create. The main character ends up living among them and figures out herself, while also teaching the Others some new things. It's actually a nice book in my opinion.

I'd have to reread the book but yeah. That would be the very basic idea. I already have a character list of who is who lmao.

I wouldn't make it a carbon copy of the book though, not with the characters I have in mind, but it would be a similar plot at least. Consider giant wolf Ratio, everybody, that's all I'm giving you.

So...

EDIT: Holy crap that's like 50 people and it hasn't even been a day-

Here you go ya feral bastards jesus-

Warnings for gore, violence, blood, people get torn apart and eaten you have been warned. (Can only be viewed if you have an account)

Enjoy

[short666bread]

some baby draco spell cards inspired by pre-film tapestry blankets (1) (2)

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2025: ADRIFT IN CURRENTS CLEAN AND CLEAR by Seanan McGuire.

Ah, yes, my favorite January tradition: heartbreak in tiny series installment form :)

This one is about a turtle-obsessed disabled Russian girl who gets adopted by an American family and fitted for a prosthetic she doesn't ask for, want, or need, and then she splashes through her Door.

I love Russian language and culture things (shout out to accidentally double minoring in college), so I was excited for a Russian protag and a Russian-coded Door world! Excellent enrichment in my enclosure. Neat cultural expansion on the Wayward Children universe (multiverse? cosmos?? insert appropriately scaled setting word here).

I also liked the aquatic nature of Belyyreka--terrifying giant frogs and delightful giant turtles and delightful talking foxes on the riverbanks were all lovely, and the worldbuilding about different weights of water was neat! Very mind-bendy kind of setting, I dig it.

This installment felt very slim (146 pages in my copy), and Our World Heavy--the first 46 pages were in Colorado, and the last 100 were in Belyyreka, but it felt like we did More Frequent and Larger Time Skips in Belyyreka compared to Earth? Kind of speedrun mode, sans Quests, really (this one was a lot more oriented toward Finding/Building Your Family, which was signposted pretty clearly upon our arrival in Belyyreka). Mostly a quieter installment up until the, y'know, Typical Impending Tragedy of Return at the end. (Did I almost put it down at 1AM last night with 30 pages left so everyone could Be Happy? perHAPS,)

Overall: I had a good time! But, ow, my heart (once again and forever).

[darcyolsson]

would i be crazy if i drew every tsc protagonist. there's only about 36 of them it will be fine (<- incorrect)

[gingermintpepper]

I was reading the Orphic Argonautica last night and the author has mentioned the various methods of divination Apollo knows and guess what? One of them is prophesying by studying the entrails of organisms. As soon as I read that I was reminded of your headcanon of Apollo being into hepatoscopy for divination and I giggled.

Awww 😳😳It's so nice of you to think of me!

Hehe, so fun fact, the overall practice of divination by studying the entrails of animals (including blood, lungs, intestines and so forth) is extispicy while hepatoscopy is specifically using the liver in prophecy and divination readings.

If, like magic in old text exactly like the sort Medea is described as using, the types of divination spoken about in the texts are reflections of the popular divination cultures of the time, I much rather prefer ascribing those to Apollo than I do some vague, somewhat mysterious power which he uses to see the will of the fates, especially since it's mentioned a few times that he'll teach his sons the language of the birds and how to read their signs and so on and so forth.

In short: HEPATOSCOPY APOLLO IS COOL!! HE'S SO NEAT!! Apollo at the altar who predicts the coming droughts and famines from the entrails of his flock!! It's just such a neat little image (to me)!

Also the Orphic Argonautica bangs, genuinely I hope you enjoy it! Orpheus is an insane man and I do not think him along with the collective subspecies of mythical man known as 'sons of Apollo' get enough credit for how truly unhinged they are at any given point in time.

[bamsara]

There needs to be a thing where people who get coupon codes from purchases (not the advertised codes stores send out in emails, but the rewards kinds that usually expire before people can use them) but know that they aren't going to use them, can collectively add them to a rotating database for people that could use them that periodically removes codes that don't work/are used up and have a search function for people who need discount codes for certain stuff/sites

Anyway here are some Hot Topic discount codes for whoever is fast enough:

Code: BT2-5G7N7FQ52H $30 off a $75 purchase (ends 9/6/23) Code: J8C97WJP $15 off of a $50 purchase (ends 8/31/23) IM NOT SPONSERED BY HOT TOPIC I just bought the freddy plush backpack and sunmoon plushies with rewards and coupons I had saved up and they gave me these and i know im not gonna use them before they expire. Let me know if you used these so I can cross them out for others

[sisididis]

Let me tell you, the post-House of Hades heartbreak is like no other.

[mildmayfoxe]

big fan of your romance novel complaint posts (love to see a fellow hater living it up) but i’m also curious if there are any you would recommend? not looking for anything in particular, just would love to hear your thoughts as someone else with nitpicky reading habits and a taste for trash

ok hello. i left you hanging for a FULL week and for that i am sorry but i wanted to be able to have some time to sit down and type out a real answer to which the short version is YES of course there are several that i have enjoyed!! my disclaimer is that i almost solely read gay romance so if you are looking for lesbian or even straight reccs i don't have much for you (although i will put a couple at the end anyway). hopefully something in this list is interesting to you or at least interesting to someone else! links are mostly to goodreads. break bc i'm gonna write too much

-kj charles is one of my fave authors in this genre bc they're all pretty reliable and there's a ton of them. they're all historical fiction and usually there's at least one murder- she's good at keeping a plot going while developing a romance. often supernatural or magical elements. sometimes cults! i've read almost all of the books she's written and have enjoyed them all

-charlie adhara wrote a really incredible werewolf series that i loved, the first of which is the wolf at the door. this is one of the only series i've read which keeps the emotional stakes up through the whole thing & kept me interested in a relationship after it was established bc sooo many series get boring the second the leads get together. i actually read the first book of the spin-off series (a pack of lies) first which is technically possible but i don't recommend bc i was like "wow they're really throwing me in here. i love it" and then i read the first series and i was like "oh i was supposed to know all this stuff." but i actually liked the dynamic between that couple better and i'm suffering every day because the next one still doesn't come out til 2025 and i read it in 2022. also worth noting that this (the original series) is cops-ajacent (~federal special agents~) and one of the characters is really prejudiced at the beginning & imo doesn't have enough character growth before it's waved away but if you can ignore that it's really good. mysteries! werewolves!

-speaking of werewolves (i could suggest several but i'll keep it to two) tj klune's wolfsong ends up at the top of a lot of gay werewolf novel lists (i'm keeping tabs) and there's a good reason. i enjoyed it a lot. made me kind of sad which is always a good sign to me. the writing voice was very fresh and novel at first but i did find it a little grating by the end so i've put off starting the second book in the series (it's also about a different couple which was disappointing) but i will get around to it. i enjoy tj klune in general although his recent stuff has a very different vibe than this and lightning struck heart is very 2015 in a bad way imo

-bone rider by j fally is a standalone that really delighted me. the russian mob? aliens? vaguely western? possession? throuple? it's got it all. very fun

-ok speaking of westerns there's this other series called magic & steam (yes it's steampunk. sorry. it's very silly) that starts with the engineer. a federal agent is sent to a town to apprehend a ~madman engineer~ except he runs into an infamous outlaw in the process. and the outlaw is really sexy. and probably why i enjoyed the series so much. the series also keeps them apart a lot in a way that i enjoy- i love when things take a long time. it's ongoing so this is another one that i keep checking for updates on

-i've read a lot of stuff by nr walker and they tend to be VERY hit or miss for me but one of my faves is evolved which is almost pure smut. it's about a sex robot that gains sentience. what more do i need to say. she also wrote a three-book series about an amnesiac that made me cry cry cry. and her cowboy (australian rancher) series is pretty ok. i could go through a list and tell you which novels of hers aren't worth it and which ones are good; i've read most of them

-salt magic skin magic by lee welch was a big surprise to me. cool magic, good folklore, fairies in there too. historical. big kj charles vibes which makes sense bc she edited it. welch also wrote a book called seducing the sorcerer which i had more mixed feelings about but had magic in it that i think about OFTEN (the horses)- that one's about an imposing sorcerer and a rundown groom cum handyman. and they're in their FORTIES!!! 🥳🥳🥳 (i love when books are not about 23 year olds)

-another one with a magic system i enjoyed was magician by kl noone. this was the first book i read by this author and i liked it but generally i find their books are too "nice" for me. i'm in the middle of one right now that i started months and months ago that i keep trying to go back to and it's sooo rough for me. but this one and the twelfth enchantment are pretty ok

-emily tesh wrote a duology of silver in the wood and drowned country that i loved because i am suuuuch a sucker for a wild man/green man story. really good. haunting! evocative! kj charles has a green man story too which was actually the first thing i read of hers (spectred isle)

-i complained about the monsterfucker book i was reading a while back but despite that i will also recommend the series it's from: lily mayne's monstrous, which starts with soul eater. are they messy? yes. are they repetitive? yes. are the monsters usually disappointingly humanoid? yes. are a lot of them about the military? also yes. so we're starting off on a bad foot. but the world building is interesting and there's LOTS of kinds of monsters and most of them were pretty fun. the one i just read (#7) was the worst one of the bunch though imo. and i have problems with #6. but 1 2 and 5 were good

-ok i should do a quickfire round. honeytrap: about two enemy agents during the cold war. put it off for a long time bc i didn't love that but it takes place over a VERY long period of time which is always interesting to me. zero at the bone: about a hitman who needs to protect a witness to a mob hit. really strong start but fell off a bit in the middle to the end imo.

-you'll notice a lot of these have subgenres of like fantasy historical supernatural etc but here's some regular contemporaries. a lot of these are about sad guys bc those are my favorite. best laid plans: hardware store owner helps a guy fix his house. in the middle of somewhere: same author actually. guy moves to small town to work at a college. mr jingle bells: this is a christmas one. bad title. fake dating. part of the reason i think i liked it so much is because i expected it to be awful but it was actually pretty good. good emotional stakes. published 2021 but feels very 2014. ignore that part. work for it: i rated this five stars but actually don't remember much what it was like. i think they were both really sad which i love. give me big emotions and i eat them right up with a spoon. i should read it again

-OK now i've got some straight & lesbian options. talia hibbert's brown sisters series is good and cute. she also wrote work for it, above. the unhoneymooners is the first real Romance Novel that i read and it really surprised me because i had fun! previously i had kind of written off romance novels as not for me but this kicked off a reading habit that is still going strong (primarily reading romance novels). i read this in 2020 so it might not be as good as i remember. as for lesbian options olivia waite has a series that i enjoyed that's also historical, and a friend of mine really enjoyed delilah green doesn't care (but i haven't read that one myself). and while not really romances i will always be a sarah waters fan: you may recognize her as the author of fingersmith, which is the novel park chan-wook's movie the handmaiden is based on. if you haven't seen the movie or read the book i recommend both. her books are very dramatic lesbian historical fiction; they don't always have happy endings but they're all very good

ok i think that's the end! regular disclaimer that romance is generally not a genre notable for Good Writing so a lot of these are just things i had fun with or just stuck out in my memory for having fun conceits etc. i can't guarantee that any of these are actually good, especially because this is a list solely based on my own taste and bad memory. would love to hear anybody's thoughts and/or if anybody has recommendations for ME!!! this post took me over three hours to write! crazy!

[sinhasfluffyheadfur]

[ID: A digital drawing done in pink pencil of Galadriel and Orion from The Scholomance book series. They’re cuddling, and Orion has his arms and one leg wrapped around El, the other dangling next to her legs. Orion has his eyes closed and is grinning. He wears a hoodie and baggy cargo pants, and his socks are falling off at the toes. El has an arm wrapped around Orion, and she looks down at him in a subdued loving way, with a slight smile. She’s wearing a t-shirt and baggy sweatpants. A flurry of hearts is above Orion’s head, and a single heart in a word bubble is next to El’s head. /end ID]

I just really like cuddles :3

[protect-namine]

see I think cs lewis would be on board with rock n roll-ified narnia... whatever that means. like, this is the guy who said to his readers to make fanfictions about what happened to susan after the series. he wrote jesus and santa and dionysus co-existing in the same setting. there's a lamppost purely to annoy tolkien.

and I mean, I think greta gerwig can make a good narnia movie, but like... saying "it's all about rock n roll" doesn't come across as genuine but instead comes across like saying, "narnia is brat." like what are you saying. what does that mean. give me something to put my confidence in here