#John X Clarice

[coffeebookslovegt]

John & Clarice

[phantompoguefangirl]

The way Blair Redford gently takes the girl's face in his hand or hands EVERY SINGLE TIME HE KISSES SOMEONE-

I-

I am not okay.

Like LOOK AT THIS

EVERY

FUCKING

TIME

I CAN'T-

FUCK-

[prxdk]

For Everyone's Sake

Rating: T

Date: September 2, 2016

“I wouldn’t move if I were you”

There was no surprise, just a sigh and the man turned around to face John Brigham. When the agent recognized the man’s face, his hold on his gun tightened.

“Good afternoon, Special Agent Brigham,” said the man in an even tone, as if there wasn’t a gun pointed at him. 

“Drop any weapons you have on you,” the agent ordered.

“Now why would I do that?”

“So I don’t shoot your sorry ass, that’s why”

The good doctor smirked. “I take you believe you can arrest me, Agent Brigham”

John narrowed his eyes. “I have not a single doubt of it, Lecter”

“I think you’d like to know that the only reason why you’re not dead on the floor right now, Officer Brigham, is because I believe it would make Agent Starling very upset. You weren’t exactly discreet on your way in, anxious to please your master?” the doctor sneered.

“Starling never said you talked this much” Brigham smirked half amused, his hold on his gun never wavering. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“That is a matter to be discussed with our common acquaintance, Agent”

“Please, tell me you weren’t going through her underwear or something like that”

“Is that a confession?”

“Hell no”

“Good. Put the gun down, Agent Brigham, you’d have used it by now if you really intended to”

“Can’t do it”

“This will be a bit more interesting then…” Lecter muttered.

Before Brigham could question his words, the front door opened almost hitting the agent and Starling entered the room taking a moment before catching up with the scene.

“What the…?” she whispered before tensing and her eyes met Lecter’s. 

John watched as emotions passed through her face before she finally cast a mask over her expression, one Brigham had seen a few times before.

“Good afternoon, Agent Starling” the good doctor’s greeting came in an all too amused tone. Starling wasn’t looking at him.

“Good afternoon, Doctor,” she replied in a calm tone. “You shouldn’t be here”

“And miss the opportunity to pay you a visit? I wouldn’t dare to”

“Should I make the arrest, Starling?” Brigham asked in a serious tone, eyes on Lecter. His words got the attention of both Starling and Lecter but neither of them looked his way, actually, they were focused on each other.

There was a hint of hurt in Starling's expression, hurt or disappointment.

“He’ll kill you before you manage to,” she told the other agent.

“Smart girl,” Lecter said with a proud smile on his lips.

“Why do you put up with him, Starling? The guy is a smart ass” Brigham questioned with a half smirk on his lips.

“You haven’t seen half of it. Put the gun down, John”

That surprised the agent, he hesitated watching her intently, searching for something in her expression.

“You have permission to shoot him if he attacks, now put the gun down, it won’t do any of us any good”

John complied but he didn’t put the gun away.

“I appreciate it, Agents,” Lecter said.

“You’ve put us in a difficult position, Doctor”

“I hardly believe that, Agent Starling. Your partner here has no doubt in his mind of what he should do, it is you who is having doubts”

Brigham observed Starling with curiosity and confusion in his eyes.

“What is he talking about, Starling?” he was tempted to pull the gun up again.

“Don’t do this, Doctor,” she said, dismissing John’s question.

“Should I lie? Why won’t you just take your gun and help your partner make the arrest, Special Agent Starling?”

“You told me you wouldn’t call on me, what are you doing here?”

“You know better than to expect me to cause you harm, Clarice”

Brigham was puzzled by such interaction.

“It’s not me I’m concerned about”

“I’m glad to see that was correct about my assumptions regarding agent Brigham. You’re a big girl, my dear, you shouldn’t be playing among the cubs, someone might get hurt.”

“I’m fine, Doctor”

“Tsc, tsc, tsc. What have we discussed about lies, Agent Starling?”

“Starling…” the other agent tried.

“Tell me, Agent Brigham, have you ever found a curious collection of magazines around this place?”

John took a moment before answering. “Yes, why?”

“And have you ever wondered why such interesting pieces would be under Agent Starling’s possession?”

“A bit, what is your point?”

“Can you see my point, Clarice? What do you think about the pieces, Mr. Brigham?”

“Odd, I never thought of Starling as someone who would be interested in them”

“Well, Clarice? How can someone so close to you know so little of you?” Lecter questioned.

She swallowed down, her expression hard.

“He is a good man, Clarice, why won’t you allow him to be close to you?”

“That’s none of your business” Brigham growled.

“Isn’t it?” Lecter provoked. “Isn’t it, my dear? You date a man and you don’t allow him to truly know you, why? Is there something you don’t want him to see? Something he could never understand?”

“I don’t have to”

“Oh, but that’s where you’re mistaken, Agent Brigham. There is a curious delight in being seen, isn’t there, Clarice?”

“Why have you come here, Dr. Lecter?” Starling questioned.

“I’ve come to see you, dear, and you know that”

Brigham saw the world differently then, observing Starling and then Lecter he saw creatures of the same kind.

Hannibal smirked. “Ah, I sense epiphany”

“Leave him alone,” she said.

“Whatever you desire”

“He is right, isn’t he?” John questioned and saw Clarice tense in the corner of his vision. “I would never truly know you”

She didn’t answer but the sadness that she felt was quite telling.

“You should go,” the man said, making her turn to him, Lecter shot him an intrigued gaze. “Go before it kills you”

“I might have misinterpreted you, Agent Brigham”

Brigham shook his head. “Leave it, Lecter. Go, Starling, leave while you can, they’ll have you burned at the stake before you notice if you stay”

Her eyes were wide and her expression frozen. Finally, she faced Lecter who gave her a reassuring smile.

“Go, I’ll buy some time”

She finally moved towards Lecter as if her legs had a mind of their own.

“I’m sorry, John”

“Don’t think about it. Go. And, Lecter, if you harm her in any way, I kill you”

Hannibal smiled, amused and pleased. “Have a good day, Agent Brigham,” he took Starling’s hand as soon as she was within his reach.

They watched as John left the room.

He would never see Starling again and would only ever wonder if he would someday be able to understand her, only to find it was hopeless, no one would ever know her like Lecter. They were two of the same kind, two big cats, a couple of lions.

Brigham prayed they would never be seen again, for everyone’s sake.

[the-feral-gremlin]

if Sonya had lived past season 1, I would’ve fucking loved to seen some sort of polycule between john, Sonya, and Clarice.

[nekoannie-chan]

Now is real

Title: “Now is real”

Ship: Thunderblink (Love).

Word count: 502 words.

Rating: Teen.

Square: G2 “Pretend couple becomes real”.

Summary: Clarice and John finally admit their feelings.

Warnings/Tags: Love, fluff, undercover mission.

A/N: This is my entry to @marvelrarepairbingo​  @marvelrarepairs​ MarvelRarePair Bingo Round 2 2023. Annie MRP-066.

You can read it on Wattpad and Ao3 too.

@saiyanprincessswanie

My native language is Spanish so I wanna improve my writing skills in English if you notice any mistakes, please let me know and I will correct them.

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DISCLAIMER: I don't own Marvel's characters (unfortunately), except for the original characters and the story.

Add yourself to my taglist here.

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Clarice and John had been working together on a mission for a long time, especially to obtain some information that could benefit mutants. However, this time, their objective was different. They had to pretend to be a couple to infiltrate a party where very important people would go and retrieve valuable information.

Before the mission, they met at one of the mutant headquarters in the subway. Clarice was nervous about having to pretend to be a couple, just as John tried to hide his true feelings for Clarice, but every time he looked at her, his heart beat faster.

The night of the party finally arrived. Clarice and John entered the venue, looking flawless and radiant. As they made their way through the crowd, they realized how well they complemented each other. Their conversations were fluid and natural, and their chemistry was undeniable.

As the night progressed, the tension between them became more apparent. Their glances became more intense, and their casual brushes became more meaningful.

As they walked through the party, Clarice and John continued with their roles, but inside, they both knew that what they were experiencing went beyond what they were pretending; there were other kinds of feelings.

In the middle of the crowd, they encountered a suspicious man who seemed to have information. Clarice and John decided to separate momentarily so they could investigate.

Clarice was in one of the main rooms, where she was surrounded by influential and powerful people. As she tried to keep her objective in mind, her mind kept wandering back to John.

Meanwhile, John was in the garden of the mansion, trying to gather information. But his mind was constantly distracted by thinking about Clarice. He couldn't help but wonder if there was something more between them beyond the mission.

When Clarice and John met again, their gazes met, and at that moment, they pulled each other close and melted into a passionate kiss. After a few seconds, Clarice broke the kiss and whispered to him. John, I know this is just a game, but what I feel for you is something inexplicable: I'm in love with you.

John looked at her in surprise but quickly broke into a big smile.

Clarice, I feel the same way," John confessed. From the moment I saw you, I knew I wanted to be with you forever.

They continued to pretend to be a couple for the rest of the night, but this time with clearer minds, so they could get the information they needed.

After successfully completing their mission, Clarice and John decided that they were going to be a couple. However, their relationship would be no problem for mutant welfare.

Although they didn't care much about what the rest thought, after all, these were difficult times for everyone, and they knew what could happen to them if they were caught by the Sentinels or any enemy.

So there was no time for doubts; no matter what happened, they had to live to the fullest.

[mattdevil]

Annual mandatory rewatch of the gifted. I almost finished the whole first season. Still fucking love Thunderbird.

[billiewena]

FOUR YEARS SINCE NOV 5TH, 2020, as summed up by Supernatural

past recaps: year one / year two / year three / year four

full context and sources below:

various explanations + resources/sources/extra reading on this year's recap:

balls deep: misha collins says the quiet part out loud at Cross Roads 8 Supernatural Convention, saying "if the CW wasn't so homophobic dean and cas would've been balls deep for sure" at a con (x) (x) (x)

garthbenny canon: supernatural actors DJ Qualls (who played hunter-turned-werewolf Garth Fitzgerald) and Ty Olsson (who played the vampire Benny Lafitte) reveal they're married, delighting crack shippers like myself everywhere (x)

spn spooky picture book: official supernatural children's picture book is released, retconning things like john winchester as a happy father figure and castiel being their cowardly childhood friend who sorta hangs around (x) (x)

boop button: tumblr introduces a feature people enjoy for once for april fool's day and halloween and allows users to boop each other, spn bloggers re-awake like sleeper agents to use it in full force (x) (x)

bedlund speaks on destiel: former spn writer ben edlund goes on a tweet fest replying to fans, talking about destiel multiple times including this profound tweet (x)

clear text, not subtext: jensen speaks out again on the confession at Purcon 8, this time taking a more open stance on how the relationship was textual, his take on dean's feelings about cas's feelings, and how the scene with cas deserved a resolution (x)

bury your gays: famed author chuck tingle (known for his plethora of highly specific and delightfully inclusive, if strange, indie erotica novels) publishes his second mainstream horror novel, inspired by TV network studios' infamous history of censoring LGBT relationships and openly killing off queer characters. In a non-subtle nod to supernatural fans, the main character is named misha. (sidenote: did end up reading this and this book is actually really good commentary on the industry in general and really good, 10/10 recommend) (x) also someone got the book signed by misha, to further break the fourth wall (x)

tracker: jensen ackles begins starring in a CBS show where he is basically csoplaying dean winchester, with the show featuring many non-subtle spn references (i.e. him pretending to almost get in an impala before going to his truck, characters wearing spn necklaces, etc.) (x) (x) (x) (special shout-out to clarice @youre-only-gay-once for expertly tracking the tracker show and these easter eggs, highly recommend their tag for their show)

cw's walker cancelled: fans rejoiced upon hearing the cancellation news for jared's post-supernatural show, walker, a remake of "walker texas ranger." in addition to generally being a copaganda show for the notoriously racist texas rangers, jared's inspiration for the show's direction caused much concern. the actor himself said the show was inspired by the US border crisis, not by the immigrant families affected by the separation and internment, but instead wanting exploring the POV of the law enforcement agents working at the border and the moral dilemmas they had to face (x)

pro-destiel Wonder Woman: Lynda Carter (aka the iconic and beloved original actress for Wonder Woman, not the z*onist one) says she could "go for some Destiel" when promoting #GeeksandNerdsforHarrisWalz and Misha's involvement (x) the rest of the spn cast and original Showrunner Kripke were also a big part of this event

chili's backfire: the chain restaurant chili's drags destiel while interacting with 9-1-1 bucktommy shippers on twitter, immediately gets backfire. notably, their stock takes a dip the next day. coincidence? maybe so, maybe not (x) (x)

samgirl voting fraud: "who is the gayest spn character" tumblr poll surprisingly gets heated, with a blogger straight-up admitting they used a bot on the "castiel vs. sam" poll to rig the poll in sam's favor, which they apparently also did for w*ncest in another poll in the past, and posting a guide on how anyone could do the same. luckily democracy wins in this one instance and castiel prevails anyways, leading to an also contested "castiel vs. charlie bradbury" round (x) (x)

pink pony jarpad: jared is spotted at lesbian pop star chappell roan's set at a festival, un-likely place for him to be (x) also may have been one of the "boring" people called out by chappell? (x)

pro-kamala castiel: in a last-ditch effort to get out the vote, misha uses the power of castiel photo ops to campaign for harris-walz and even shouts-out destiel. I feel depressed writing this sentence, if you've made it this long in your read and you're in the states I hope you're doing alright! maybe by the time I wake up things will be a little different though. (x)

[soracities]

i saw your tags, and i wanna ask what books "punched you in the gut" (i wanna get punched too)?

SO glad you asked anon omg

Let the Right One In, John Ajvide Lindqvist

i am lewy, Eoghan Ó Tuairisc

Antigone, Jean Anouilh

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki

"The Condemned", Stig Dagerman

The Snake, Stig Dagerman

A Moth to a Flame, Stig Dagerman

Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin

From A to X, John Berger

The Plague, Albert Camus

The Myth of Sisyphus: Essays, Albert Camus

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, Saša Stanišić

Posession, A.S. Byatt

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, Eimear McBride

"The Husband Stitch", Carmen Maria Machado

The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong

An Inventory of Losses, Judith Schalansky

The Need for Roots, Simone Weil

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, Svetlana Alexievich

Deaf Republic, Ilya Kaminsky

Agua Viva, Clarice Lispector

Broken Vessels: Essays, Andre Dubus

The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

A Field Guide for Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

We, Yevgeny Zamyatin

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

Books Burn Badly, Manuel Rivas

The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa

The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

Uzumaki, Junji Ito

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

For Two Thousand Years, Mihail Sebastian

[scottyzoomz]

WEST SIDE STORY ROLEPLAY SIGN UPS

So, my friends has a blog called @ask-tony-wyzek and @ask-riff-lorton. Those are the only west side story character blogs (from what i have seen), and yknow, it's getting kind of boring.. so if you wanna be a west story character this is your chance !! This is just for being fun and being silly, the rumble hasnt happened yet and it's just an au where the Jets and the Sharks are just still arguing on whose turf it is. No killing has happened, Tony, Riff and Bernardo is still alive, . And OC's ARE ALLOWED !!! Fanon ships are allowed, Oc x character is allowed too !! just PLEASE dont make it weird/illegal. be logical, a 1-2 year age gap is fine but dont make it illegal. so far we have RiffxTony (im sorry for those who i have offended do not harass me just for a silly fanon ship if you don't like it, kindly scroll this doesnt hurt anybody.) AND THOSE WHO KNOWS ANY ACCOUNTS LIKE THIS OF THE WEST SIDE STORY CHARACTERS PLEASE TELL ME I WOULD LOVE TO INTERACT WITH THEM !!! Jets ( those who are taken have a blog ) Riff - @ask-riff-lorton Tony - @ask-tony-wyzek Ice - Snowboy - Baby John - @ask-baby-john Action - @ask-action A-rab - @ask-a-rab Tiger - Joyboy - Big Deal - Mouthpiece - @ask-mouth-piece Gee-Tar - Anybodys - @ask-anybodys Diesel - @ask-deisel Numbers - Balkan - @ask-balkan Little Molly - ----------- The Girls in the Jets Graziella - @ask-graziella Velma - Clarice - Tessie - Debby - Hotsie - Pauline - Luna - ====================== ( these are all that i found on the Sharks wiki so these not might be accurate, feel free to put your headcanons on these characters ) Sharks (note: who nicknames their friend anxious what???) Bernardo - @ask-bernardo Chino - @ask-chino Pepe - Indio - Luis - Anxious - Nibbles - Juano - Toro - Moose - Quique - Chago - Braulio - Pipo - Julito - -------------- The girls in the Sharks Maria - @ask-maria Anita - @ask--anita Rosalita - Consuelo - Teresita - Francisca - Estella - Marguerita - ====================== The OC's in the roleplay !!<3 The Jets - @ask-scotty - @ask-hops - @ask-mizumi - @billie-jones - @ask-birdie-baletti

--- The Sharks none:( AGAIN. THIS IS FOR FUN!!! YOU CAN JOIN AS AN OC !! If you have more questions please feel free to go to my ' Ask Me Anything ' or in my dms. !!! Feel free to reblog:)

[fassbendersflwer]

X Men characters I write for -

Erik Lehnsherr

Charles Xavier

Peter Maximoff

Remy LeBeau

Scott Summers

Alex Summers

Kurt Wagner

Jean Grey

James “Logan” Howlett

Wade Wilson

Henry “Hank” McCoy

Ororo Munroe

Anna Marie D’Ancanto

Roberto Da Costa

Robert “Bobby” Drake

Katherine Pryde

Warren Worthington III

Raven Darkholme

John Allerdyce

Azazel

Clarice Ferguson

James Proudstar

Kevin Sydney

Axel Cluney - Zeitgeist

Gaveedra Seven - Shatterstar

Chris Bradley

Donald Pierce

Apocalypse 🧍🏻‍♀️

Margaret/Vuk 📸

[meta-squash]

Squash's Reading List Year In Review 2024

(I've also posted this on WordPress here, where it might be more readable: https://jesuisgourde.wordpress.com/.../30/readinglist2024/)

Last year I read 92 books. I didn't plan on trying to surpass that number but I did, quite easily. This year I read 116 books. I didn't start off with any specific reading goal, but early on I decided to make it my goal to read more books by not-cis-men (women, trans/nonbinary people, etc) than by cis men. I hit that goal with 72 books. I did want to reread a number of books; I reread 7 books, but not all were the ones I listed in my last yearly reading review. I read 89 fiction books and 27 nonfiction. Of the nonfiction, the genres were mainly biography/autobiography, essay, science, and history. I read 45 books from small press publishers. I read 39 books by and/or about queer people. I don't have a super nice photo spread this year because I read a lot of books at work; I was going to screenshot my goodreads grid but unfortunately they have (frustratingly) changed the format from grid to list in the past week.

Here's a photo of the books I read that I do own, which isn't a whole lot, since I read most of the books at work this year:

I'll do superlatives at the end, here is the list of what I read this year, in chronological order. (Apologies for the random line breaks in the middle of the list, tumblr doesn't like it when you have 50+ lines without breaks)

-The Sorrows Of Young Werther by Johann von Goethe -The Changeling by Joy Williams -Child of God by Cormac McCarthy -Pierrot Mon Ami by Raymond Queneau -The Ghost Network by Kate Disabato -The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan -Richard III by William Shakespeare (reread) -The Recognitions by William Gaddis -A Kestrel For A Knave by Barry Hines -Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter -Bluets by Maggie Nelson -The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March -The Hospital by Ahmed Bouanani -I Love Dick by Chris Kraus -Minor Detail by Adiana Shibli -Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson -Rent Boy by Gary Indiana -One Or Several Deserts by Carter St Hogan -Samedi the Deafness by Jesse Ball -Norma Jean Baker of Troy by Anne Carson -Die My Love by Ariana Harwicz -Missing Person by Patrick Modiano -Petite Fleur by Iosi Havilio -Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi -The Address Book by Sophie Calle -In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado -Plastic Jesus by Poppy Z Brite -New Animal by Ella Baxter -The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel (play) -Green Girl by Kate Zambrino -Death In Spring by Merce Rodoreda -Harold's End by JT LeRoy (reread) -Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto -Stranger To The Moon by Evelio Rosero -H of H Playbook by Anne Carson -When The Sick Rule The World by Dodie Bellamy -Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson -Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector -Not One Day by Anne Garreta -Mauve Desert by Nicole Brossard -Binary Star by Sarah Gerard -Slug and other stories by Megan Milks -Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block (reread) -The Deer by Dashiel Carrera -Mean by Myriam Gurba -Humiliation by Wayne Koestenbaum -The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch by Thomas Thwaites -Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts by Claire Donato -Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

-Notes on Thoughts and Vision & The Wise Sappho by H.D. -Harrow by Joy Williams -A Feast Of Snakes by Harry Crews -Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Lucy Sante -Milkshake by Travis Dahlke -Little Fish by Casey Plett -Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor -Sex Goblin by Lauren Cook -Biography of X by Catherine Lacey -Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller -Hir by Taylor Mac (play) -Daddy Boy by Emerson Whitney -Notes On Camp by Susan Sontag -Transformer: A Story of Glitter, Glam Rock, and Loving Lou Reed by Simon Doonan -Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo -Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell (reread) -33 1/3 Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott -The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides -red doc> by Anne Carson -Darryl by Jackie Ess -A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan -The Postman Always Rings Twice by James Cain -Body by Harry Crews -St Sebastian's Abyss by Mark Haber -The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams (reread) -Don't Think Twice: Adventure and Healing at 100 Miles Per Hour by Barbara Schoichet -Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer -Timbuktu by Paul Auster -Nevada by Imogen Binnie -The End We Start From by Megan Hunte -Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang -Like Flies From Afar by K. Ferraro -Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe -Bestiary by K-Ming Chang -Playboy by Constance Debre -Red Dragon by Thomas Harris -Parting Gifts for Losing Contestants by Jessica Mooney -The Outline of My Lover by Douglas A Martin -Monstrilio by Gerardo Samano Cordova -Essex County by Jeff Lemire (reread) -Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have To Offer by Rax King -The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter -Lover Man by Alston Anderson -Cecilia by K-Ming Chang -The Employees by Olga Ravn -It Lasts Forever And Then It's Over by Anne De Marcken -Mercy Killing by Alandra Hileman (play) -Tentacle by Rita Indiana

-Nox by Anne Carson -What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami -McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh (reread) -Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin -John by Annie Baker (play) -Widow Basquiat by Jennifer Clement -All Down Darkness Wide by Sean Hewitt -The Blue Books by Nicole Brossard -The Book Of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender and Unruly by Kate Lebo -Blood Of The Dawn by Claudia Salazar Jimenez -The Balloonists by Eula Biss -Ravage: An Astonishment Of Fire by MacGillivray/Kirsten Norrie -Gods Of Want: Stories by K-Ming Chang -Fem by Magda Carneci -Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Toshio Merino -Mr Parker by Michael McKeever (play) -Fucking A by Suzan-Lori Parks (play) -Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha -Otherspace, a Martian Ty/opography by Brad Freeman and Johanna Drucker

I DNF'ed a few books, but all were put down with the intention of finishing them at some point. Mostly they were books I needed to read when I was less busy/in a different headspace. I DNF'ed: Soldiers Don't Go Mad: A true story of friendship, poetry and mental illness during the first world war by Charles Glass, a reread of Her by HD, and The Apple In The Dark by Clarice Lispector. The Lispector and HD are both modernist novels that need 100% attention, and the Glass book is a nonfiction book (very good so far) that I put down in favor of something that at the time was more interesting.

I gave out a lot of 5 stars this year. The books I rated as 5 stars were: The Changeling by Joy Williams, The Recognitions by William Gaddis, Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield, 33 1/3 Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott, Transformer by Simon Doonan, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Body by Harry Crews, Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang, Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, and Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.

~Superlatives~

Like last year, I'm going to do runners-up because I read so many books.

Favorite book: The Recognitions by William Gaddis. I have to pick this one as my favorite for the year, because reading it was a journey, and because it was a book that was exactly everything I love in a book: fascinating, very human characters, weird formatting, great dialogue, metaphors galore, and most importantly, hundreds of cultural, artistic, historical, biblical and literary references. I started this book on January 4 and I finished it February 22. It was so unbelievably dense, probably the densest novel I've ever read, and I absolutely loved it. So much is going on in this novel that it's hard for me to summarize. In the very shortest version of a summary, it is a novel about counterfeits (specifically paintings, but counterfeits in all and any forms) and Catholicism in 1930s/40s New York. The main character is a young man named Wyatt Gwyon, a talented artist who instead of painting for himself, becomes a skilled counterfeiter-- not because he wants to make money, but because he's obsessed with the perfection of making exact interpretations of other people's art. He also struggles with religion and belief due to his strange religious upbringing. Many, many other characters are also focal points throughout the novel. The book is unique in that it doesn't use quotation marks when characters speak and rarely uses "he said"/"she said" or any similar phrase. But Gaddis is incredibly talented at writing dialogue so that each character's voice comes through, and it's obvious (except when he doesn't want it to be) who is speaking. Gaddis is also wonderfully scathing, and much of the novel is incredibly witty and intelligent observations about the Modernist art world and artistic spaces in general. The characters are all fascinating, there is a lot of mirroring and metaphors. I say this book is about counterfeits in every form, because it constantly highlights different ways in which each character is faking something, or lying, or pretending to be/know/do/think something they are not. This book was incredible, I annotated every single page and had so much fun reading it, even though or perhaps because it was so unbelievably dense.

Just for a bit of reference, here are a few of the more annotated pages in my copy of The Recognitions:

Runner up: Body by Harry Crews (more on this one further down)

Least favorite book: Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi. I was so disappointed by this book. The blurb on the back made it sound like it was going to be really beautiful and interesting and unique. It wasn't. It was all tell and no show. It follows Ada, a person who is born with one foot in the spirit world. A traumatic experience at university causes her to develop split personalities as the spirits from the other side step forward to protect her from trauma. Unfortunately, the spirits who now control her body have darker, more dangerous desires. Sadly, there was almost no plot, just description after description of Ada's unhealthy relationships and erratic behavior. But because the narrative is so distanced from said relationships and from Ada, the high stakes of this behavior is not felt, not really. Interesting characters can easily save 'all tell and no show type' books, but none of the characters get delved into with any depth, even Ada. The show rather than tell narrative also seriously undermines the poetic prose that crops up almost at random. This book felt flat. No plot, little stakes felt, no interesting characters, tell rather than showing everything, and it's not compelling at all.

Runner up: Playboy by Constance Debre. The back of this book describes it as a memoir detailing the writer's "decision, at age forty-three, to abandon her marriage, her legal career, and her bourgeois Parisian life to become a lesbian and a writer." Which sounds amazing! But it isn't! It's unbelievably pretentious and quite boring. It's mostly just complaining hidden by a facade of faux-philosophical meandering and directionless autobiographical vignettes. The author is a lawyer and she spends most of the time complaining about poor people and about women. It's so hilariously misogynistic. It's just various vignettes of her relationships with various women (who she dislikes and disparages for being femme or having bad bodies or for having lowbrow/uncultured interests etc etc) and then her going and visiting her ex-husband and teenage son, and then complaining that she has nothing. There's little to no emotion in the book, she is not charming, and her pseudo-philosophical musings are boring.

Most surprising/unexpected book: Body by Harry Crews. This book crept up on me in terms of a favorite. Crews' writing is not for everyone, but it's absolutely for me. The book follows bodybuilder Shereel Dupont and her trainer, Russell, who are at the world bodybuilding competition. Shereel has left home to compete over the past year and is now one of the most likely to win. Unfortunately, her family, who are "corpulent rednecks" with odd habits, show up to cheer her on, causing disruption and chaos throughout the hotel at which the competition is held and turmoil for Shereel herself. This book blew me away completely. Every time I thought it had reached a plateau of weirdness and chaos and insanity, it ratcheted that all up even higher, culminating in the most perfectly fucked up ending.

Runner up: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin. A mother trapped in the liminal space between life and death is made by an unfamiliar changeling child to retell the events of the recent past, desperately trying to pinpoint the moment she can reverse the environmental poisoning of herself and her daughter. I picked this book up because it sounded interesting, and then it ended up being an amazingly written short horror novel. It had a lot of interesting thoughts on motherhood and the horror of being a parent - not in a negative way, but the horror of wanting to protect and keep your child safe and the inability to do so.

Most fun book: Like Flies From Afar by K Ferrari. I fully judged a book by its cover with this one, and it did not disappoint. Small-time criminal/oligarch Mr Machi thinks he's hot shit, until he pops a tire on the way to an appointment and discovers an unidentifiable corpse in his trunk. As he scrambles to deal with the body, his paranoia grows as he tries to calculate who out of all his enemies and employees might be responsible, and who is trying to frame him, and who the body might be, and his life slowly transforms into a nightmare. Everyone in this book is loathsome, but in a way that is so fun to hate. The whole novel is a romp of panic and paranoia, people who think they're so cool and hard exposing how uncool they are, and a mystery that's so fun because watching the protagonist panic is a kind of schadenfreude.

Runner up: Transformer by Simon Doonan. This is a book for people who love Lou Reed, by a man who loves Lou Reed. It's just a wonderfully written biography that focuses mainly on the album Transformer, but also gives Lou Reed's history and is interspersed with stories about Doonan's own thoughts and experiences with Reed. The whole book is really passionate and vivid, and fun to read even if you don't have the album immediately to hand.

Best queer book: Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield. Leah, a marine biologist, has returned from a deep-sea voyage that went wrong. Her wife Miri begins to realize that something is wrong, and Leah came back changed. The narrative switches between Miri's point of view as she tries to reach Leah and struggles help her despite not knowing what's happening to her wife, and Leah's point of view as she remembers and recounts what happened to her during her submarine voyage. I started this book at work and brought it home. In the middle of reading it, I stopped to finish some task (I think it might have been to make dinner), and ended up having to cut the task short because I needed so badly to keep reading. The most compelling part of the book is the very different ways the two characters' love for each other shines through, even in the darkest moments of the novel.

Runner up: Darryl by Jackie Ess. The titular narrator of this novel discovers that he genuinely enjoys a cuckolding lifestyle, watching men have sex with his wife. But then he realizes that part of the reason he likes it so much, is that maybe he wants to be the wife. His explorations with sex and gender and relationships (and basketball) begin to unravel his marriage and his friendships and his own mind. Then he learns more about one of the men his wife has been sleeping with, and things get dangerous. I loved this book because despite it being written by a trans woman, the story doesn't at all go where you'd expect regarding gender or sexuality. It's satirical, it's witty, it's got some cool things to say about kink and about gender, and it's totally original.

Saddest book: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. This is a classic I'd been meaning to read for a long time. The narrator is an American WWI soldier named Joe who was hit by an artillery shell and has woken in the hospital having had his arms and legs amputated, as well as most of his facial features mutilated beyond use/recognition. Trapped in his body, he drifts through memories and musings on life and war and philosophy as he tries to keep track of the days and to figure out some way to communicate with the hospital staff. It's no wonder this book is a classic. The writing is incredible, the imagery vivid and the plot totally gripping, even as it switches between the peaceful past and the horrible present. The end is completely gut-wrenching.

Runner up: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli. This novel explores what in history is a minor detail, and what impact that little moment might have on someone in the future. The first part of the novel opens in Palestine in 1949, in a military camp, where a group of Israeli soldiers (led by a captain suffering from a bite-induced hallucinogenic fever) kidnap, rape, and murder an unnamed Palestinian woman and bury her body in the desert. Fifty-odd years later, a Palestinian writer learns about this "small" moment in history, which occurred 25 years to the day before her birth, and becomes obsessed with learning more. She obtains an illegal pass to the Zone in which the woman died, determined to go there and find more information. I don't want to summarize much more because I don't want to give away any of the hard-hitting plot points. But Minor Detail was published in 2020, and it explores the cycles of violence and the ways in which oppression has not changed for the Palestinian people. It's a book that I wish I had read twice because (as the title suggests) there were a lot of small details that repeated themselves or were less noticeable at first but slowly grew or became important later in the story, and I'm sure I would have noticed more.

Weirdest book: The Changeling by Joy Williams. I love Joy Williams! I love everything she writes! Her themes are always so interesting and her writing style is so unique. The main character, a young woman named Pearl, escapes her terrible marriage by joining a rich older man and in doing so ends up living with him on an island that is populated by children he has taken under his wing. Pearl wants little to do with them and spends most of her days getting drunk by the pool -- the children are eerily smart and her son has joined their games and lessons, and they all want her attention. But her son is less and less her son as time goes on, and the children are not always the children, and the adults in the house are all bizarre and half-mad. I wish I could give a better summary, but Joy Williams books are always difficult to summarize, because so much of the stories are less about the plot and more about the characters just feeling things at the reader, and the plot is often built on or around odd occurrences and philosophical musings. This book blew me away with its imagery and its metaphors. I want to reread it, because it was just so amazing. My absolutely favorite thing about Joy Williams (and this is true for all of her books) is the way she writes these incredibly profound and philosophical phrases like they're nothing at all, like they're so easy, just breezes on by them even though she's just punched you in the chest. It's amazing.

Runner up: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.

Most gripping book: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. This book is an absolute masterclass in pacing. It tells just a few fragments out of the whole history of the Irish Troubles, but the fragments that are focused on are woven together with brilliant timing, humanizing and vivid portrayals, fantastic analysis and contextualization, and altogether excellent writing. Every time I put this book down I wanted to keep reading, to know what was going to happen next. The book has 3 focal points: Gerry Adams, (alleged) leader of the IRA; Dolors Price, a member of the IRA; and the family of Jean McConville, a woman kidnapped by the IRA. At first, all three storylines are disparate, but Keefe slowly weaves them together, pulling all the threads of context and action and years in prison or government or delinquent schools together slowly but steadily. The book reads like a thriller, and I adored it completely. (Yes, I do know about the miniseries. I haven't finished watching it yet!)

Runner up: Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield.

Book that taught me the most: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

Runner up: The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch by Thomas Thwaites. This could also go under weirdest book, easily. As a graduate art school project, Thwaites decided to attempt to build the simplest (and cheapest) appliance he could think of - a toaster - fully from scratch. Quite literally, starting with mining the elements to make the right kinds of metal and figuring out how to make the right kind of plastic. Half of the book is Thwaites' attempts to build various elements of a toaster - and how they go wrong, or right, and why it's so hard. The other half discusses all the processes that go in to making all these elements in a more manufactured setting, their impact on the environment and the economy, and the difference between cheap mass-produced products that break down vs more expensive products that last longer. The writing was fun and included photos and diagrams and interviews with various industry professionals Thwaites contacted to learn more.

Most interesting/thought provoking book: The Recognitions by William Gaddis

Runner up: Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang. I've now read everything this author has published and this is by far her best book. Her narrative style is so unique and so poetic, and the themes she always comes back to are so interesting, and they culminate in this amazing novel. This magical realist novel centers around two best friends, Anita and Rainie, who are both first generation Taiwanese-American. The story opens when they are adolescents, and Anita has recently learned that they come from generations of dog-headed women and women-headed dogs. They vow to become dogs together, tying a string around each other's throats as collars and playing at dogs in the empty lot near their apartment complex. But Anita's dreamlike imagination and obsessively loyal personality starts to clash with Rainie's more reserved nature, and when it becomes too much, Rainie's family moves away. Rainie grows up, while unbeknownst to her, Anita has sunk into a dreamworld and her body has begun to rot. She narrates her family's past and her mother's bloodline because she cannot narrate her own present. When she returns to the town she grew up in, Rainie discovers Anita's condition, and knows that she is the only one who can save her. This novel is beautiful, incredibly poetic, and experiments with formatting and narration in really unique ways. Its exploration of friendship and queerness and obsession and tradition and folklore is absolutely fascinating. I often write in my books and underline sentences or paragraphs that I really love. I didn't write in this one, because I would have ended up underlining the entire novel.

Longest/shortest book: My longest book was The Recognitions by William Gaddis at 952 pages, and my shortest was Notes On Camp by Susan Sontag at 57 pages.

General thoughts on all the other books that didn't get superlatives:

-Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. This is the first McCarthy book I've ever read (I know, I know) and I really enjoyed it. You just watch a horrible guy walk around in the rural countryside of a small town, doing increasingly fucked up things and committing various awful crimes. Which is exactly up my alley in terms of literature. The main character, Ballard, is someone who is so weird and pathetic that he becomes turned inside out into evilness. You feel sorry for him but you also hate him and he's also fascinating because he's so fucking weird. It's a great book.

-The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato. This book was so much fun to read while living in Chicago. It's a rock n roll mystery novel that riffs on Situationism and the L tracks and maps. A rock star disappears, and the main character who is a fan of her's is determined to find out what happened to her. What she uncovers is a series of clues based on defunct lines and stations of the Chicago transit system, and the Situationist concept of detournment, which lead her towards finding out what actually happened to the rock star. This book was so much fun, and so much of it was based on real life defunct train lines and the actual Situationists, both of which I found really interesting. The ending was also just so good! Somehow I managed to have read everything I needed to in order to get every single reference in the book, which was really surprising to me, because they all came from different places.

-New Animal by Ella Baxter. This book baffled me. It is about a woman who works as a makeup-artist at her family's morgue. When her mother dies unexpectedly, she skips the funeral and goes to stay at her estranged father's house. While there, trying to figure out how to vent her grief, she decides to try out the local kink scene. Her first experience is with a dom who is a manipulative, horrible asshole. She has a bad time, but wants to try again, so she goes to a place that hosts scenes. She acts like she knows what she's doing when she doesn't, no one gives her any instruction, so she fucks up massively, and everyone has a bad time. It's the worst portrayal of the kink scene I think I've ever encountered. The author said she did a lot of research but it just seems like a lot of terrible assumptions and misinterpretations. I thought it was going to be a book that positively portrayed kink and people who like the kink scene, but it's very much not. It didn't even feel like the author was doing this so the character would learn that she can't run from her grief. It seemed more like the author had one bad experience due to poor communication or shitty individuals, and then decided that's what the whole scene was like.

-Harold's End by JT LeRoy. I read this book in high school (or perhaps just after graduating) and totally fell in love with it, and then never saw another copy until recently. It was so good to reread it, to re-experience the gorgeous watercolor portraits that come with it. The novel follows a young street kid/hustler who lives with other street kids; all his friends have pets but he doesn't. A john takes a liking to him and buys him a snail as a pet, who he names Harold. The book follows him as he lives on the streets and as his relationship with the john develops. The book is classic JT LeRoy, and the end is LeRoy's usual style of characters experiencing a life lesson and growth but not necessarily in a happy way. It definitely holds up!

-Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson. This was such a fun and weird book and I really enjoyed it. Markson's idea for the novel was "what if someone actually lived the way that Wittgenstein's Tractatus suggests?". What we get is a woman who believes she is the last person on earth (it is never confirmed whether this is true or not). She muses on life, culture, art, philosophy, and her past, and discusses her trips across the world despite its emptiness. But her story changes constantly; she's always referencing things she said before and editing herself. It's a weird, fun, fascinating novel with a lovably weird main character.

-A Feast Of Snakes by Harry Crews. Yet another fucked up book that I loved. It follows Joe Lon Mackey, a former high school football star that now lives a dead-end life in his hometown in Georgia. Each year the town hosts the Rattlesnake Roundup, where people come from many states away to try and catch as many rattlesnakes as they can in order to win a competition. Joe Lon is in charge of the event now that his father is too old and ill. He's uncomfortably self-aware of his own personal failings and his inadequacy and his abusive relationship with his wife; he'd rather not think about any of it and is incapable of figuring out how to change things. But his old girlfriend is returning for the event, and his father's attempts to control the goings-on from afar mean he's unable to stop thinking about where his life has ended up and where it's going. All this drives him slowly crazy with desperation until the insane ending. Crews is incredibly talented at writing characters that are likeable despite being so flawed and fairly awful people. This book is no exception.

-Milkshake by Travis Dahlke. What a weird novel! In a near-future dystopian heatwave, an 11 year old girl escapes the environmental catastrophe by traveling back in time to her past life as a fertilizer salesman whose marriage is slowly collapsing. I really enjoyed it, because it was just so odd. Now that I'm thinking about it, I feel as though it would have been really interesting to read just before or just after reading Tentacle; both books focus specifically on time travel and on environmental disaster.

-Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. At the opening of the box, a Witch has been murdered in a small village in Mexico called La Matosa. The rest of the chapters are narrated by different characters, who all have some small or large hand in the death of the Witch, who was a woman who the whole town visited in secret for medicine, fortune-tellings, and advice. The narrating characters include a schoolgirl, a drug dealer, a prostitute, a hapless husband who wants to make something of himself, and a teenager in love with his young girlfriend. With each narration we learn more about the Witch, and her mother who was a Witch before her. Slowly, we get inklings of the nature of the murder, and the revelation at the end is brutal. Melchor's writing is incredibly vivid, and the characters are all caught in the cycle of poverty, driven by superstition and fear and hardship. None of the characters are likeable, but they're all so human.

-Biography Of X by Catherine Lacey. In a dystopic alternate-universe US, where the Southern Territory split from the North after WWII and established a fascist theocracy, a woman named CM grieves her recently deceased wife X, who was a famous artist. Despite X's wishes, CM decides to delve into her wife's past, researching her history before they met and before she was known as X. She uses her credentials and privileges as a journalist to cross into the Southern Territory and learn about X's family and the communities from which she came, her activism and her hidden lives, and begins to realize that maybe learning all this about the woman she loved won't benefit her in the long run and that maybe their relationship wasn't as rosy as she thought. This novel combined fiction and real life in really fascinating ways, and includes both real and fake sources in its footnotes.

-The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. A famous and successful painter murders her husband and then refuses to speak. A psychologist who is also a fan of her work is determined to get her to speak again. Obsessed with uncovering the truth, he ends up taking risks that threaten himself and his patient. A fun mystery that went down easy. It didn't attempt to be too realistic from the start, so suspension of disbelief wasn't hard. I do think the book could have done without the entire last part. Leaving it on the realization of what had happened and allowing the reader to sit with that realization (especially with how creatively the twist is presented) would have had more impact I think than the slower and less engaging denouement of the last 3 chapters, which were far weaker than the rest of the book.

-Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell. I reread this book for the first time since about 2009 and really enjoyed it. It's a very sad novel about a man living in NYC during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Most of his friends and lovers have died and he's scared and sad about his own life and cynical about love, but he's attracted to the man who owns the shop below his apartment. It's a dark book, sad and scared and jaded. I think the main character's anxiety and grief that slowly escalates into paranoia is an amazingly surreal way to portray all the emotions that consumed the queer community at that time. I also loved the sort of lack of closure at the end - because many people didn't get that.

-Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. I don't generally go for science fiction novels, but I read this one because so many people said they had liked it. I really enjoyed it. The unnamed narrator, a biologist, is part of an all-female expedition into a harsh, unknown territory that has appeared adjacent to the US. The suspense and strangeness of the novel had excellent pacing. The descriptions were also so vivid and clear, which made the story's weirdness so compelling. I loved watching the main character struggle to remain objective the whole time while knowing that she's failing. Her growing fascination and terror is so fun to read as each feeling tries to overtake the other. I also think it was great as a standalone and I feel no interest in reading the other books in the same universe.

-Nevada by Imogen Binnie. I'm a bad queer person, I hated this book. In it, the narrator, a trans woman, is frustrated with her life and has just broken up with her girlfriend, so she steals her ex's car and drives away, ending up in a small town where she spends the night with a department store employee. I just really don't like books that are meandering tell and no show without characters or a plot that are interesting. This entire book felt like someone recounting their weekend over breakfast, complete with casual informal language and overuse of the word "like". Which would be fine if any of the characters were compelling, or if the plot was really interesting and went somewhere, but it didn't. A good portion of it is just musings on New York City, but without the creativity or vividness that other portrayals of NYC have to offer. After I read it, I learned this book was kind of the catalyst for a specific style of trans writing. Which also explains why I hated Detransition, Baby when I read it a couple years ago, as it's a sort of literary descendant of this. I'm happy to read books that are tell rather than show....so long as something interesting happens or at least one of the characters is unique and compelling. This book sadly has neither.

-Essex County by Jeff Lemire. I read this for an English class in university, so this was a reread and I really enjoyed reading it a second time! All the stories in this collection are so beautiful and compelling, all the characters are so real. And the art style is fantastic. The stories revolve around characters living in the titular Essex County in Canada, across a number of generations. It weaves together their relationships and their lives, much of which revolves around hockey. There were some storylines I remembered quite well and others I didn't remember at all, so it was really nice to revisit this one.

-Ravage: An Astonishment of Fire by MacGillivray. Man, this book had so much potential. This novel is a fake biography of a fake poet who disappeared from a Scottish island in the 1960s after falling into delusions that he has become a demon. The fascinating thing about this book (at first), is that it's completely convinced that it is an actual nonfiction book. It gives no hints that it's fake, and the first 50 pages are convincingly written with an academic, nonfiction voice as the novel is utterly convinced of its own delusion of factualness. The novel claims to be an analysis of found papers: first, the poetry and written tracts of Tristjan Norge, a Norwegian poet, then the analysis of his works by MacGillivray, and finally, the diary of his companion Luce Montcrieff. Unfortunately, it is fairly repetitive in a way that bogs the reader down quite a bit. Even so, I think I would have enjoyed much, much more if the ending did not abruptly switch genres to a supernatural/fantasy novel in a way that was startling and had no previous indications of earlier in the book. Up to the last 20 pages I thought it was interesting, even when it was dense, but the end felt like the author didn't know how to end the novel and just used the deus ex machina of supernatural occurrences.

My goal for 2025 is to read majority nonfiction. I don't know if I'm going to actually meet that goal, but I'll try. I don't have any goals for how many books I want to read, especially because I tend to read nonfiction quite a bit slower than fiction, so I don't have a good idea of what my reading amount goal should actually be. This year I also forgot entirely about my attempt to read all of Jean Genet's (translated) works, so I will hopefully actually meet that goal in 2025, since I only have one or two books left to read. But my first three books of the year are going to be Soldiers Don't Go Mad by Charles Glass, which I started this year but didn't finish, The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews by Jean Genet, and Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe.

[slash-aaa]

also - like for a starter from one of my horror muses ( listed below ). specify muse.

anita lesnicki - jennifer's body. billy loomis - scream. beetlejuice - beetlejuice. carrie white - carrie. camille preaker - sharp objects. clarice starling - silence of the lambs. clayton riddell - cell. daniel le domas - ready or not. dana polk - cabin in the woods. dennis rafkin - 13 ghosts. graverobber - repo! the genetic opera. sheriff hassan - midnight mass. hannibal lecter - hannibal. hugh crain - the haunting of hill house. jason dean - hearhers. jeremiah hackett - the quarry oc. joel miller - the last of us. john kramer - saw. josef - creep. lee - bones and all. margot - the menu. maxine minx - x. mike schmidt - fnaf. nathan wallace - repo! the genetic opera. natalie scatorccio - yellowjackets. nathaniel james carson - serial killer oc. owen sharma - haunting of bly manor. parker nash - fbi agent oc. richie tozier - it. stu macher - scream. travis hackett - the quarry. warren hawthorne - grim reaper oc. wendy christensen - final destination 3.

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … December 11

1475 – Pope Leo X (d.1521), born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was the Pope from 1513 to his death in 1521. He was the last non-priest (only a deacon) to be elected Pope. He is known for granting indulgences for those who donated to reconstruct St. Peter's Basilica and his challenging of Martin Luther's 95 Theses. He was the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici, the most famous ruler of the Florentine Republic, and Clarice Orsini. His cousin, Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, would later succeed him as Pope Clement VII (1523-34).

Several modern historians have concluded that Leo was homosexual. Contemporary tracts and accounts such as that of Francesco Guicciardini have been found to allude to active same-sex relations - alleging Count Ludovico Rangone and Galeotto Malatesta were among his lovers.

Cesare Falconi has examined in particular Leo's infatuation with the Venetian noble Marcantonio Flaminio, with Leo arranging the best education that could be offered for the time. Von Pastor has argued, however, against the credibility of these testimonies, and rejected accusations of immorality as anti-papal polemic. Gucciardini was not resident at the papal court during Leo's pontificate, while other contemporaries such as Matteo Herculano took pains to praise his chastity. Paul Strathern, a British writer and academic, argues that Leo, while homosexual, was not sexually active as pope, despite identifying notable members of that family as such.

Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais

1913 – Jean Marais, French actor (d.1998); Marais was never much of an actor, and it is doubtful he would have achieved international fame had he not become Jean Cocteau's lover, but he was, by universal acclaim, one of the most handsome men ever to appear in films. In the 1940s when he made most of his movies for Cocteau, actors were still slicking down their hair with Kreml and Vitalis. But he changed all that. His cheveaux fous and athletic good looks created a new style of postwar leading man.

Cocteau and Marais

When in 1946 he spent his time in Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, trapped within an ape-like constume, waiting for Beauty's kiss to turn him once again into Jean Marais, Gay moviegoers around the world secretly wished that they were Josette Day who actually got to kiss the handsome actor's furry face. What is perhaps most interesting about the friendship between Cocteau and Marais is that the actor's face in profile bore an astonishing resemblance to the boys Cocteau had been sketching for thirty years before meeting him.

In the 1960s, he played the famed villain of the Fantômas trilogy. After 1970, Marais's on-screen performances became few and far between, as he preferred concentrating on his stage work. He kept performing on stage until his eighties, also working as a sculptor. In 1985, he was the head of the jury at the 35th Berlin International Film Festival.

1945 – John Preston (d.1994) was an author of gay erotica and an editor of gay nonfiction anthologies.

He grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts, later living in a number of major American cities before settling in Portland, Maine in 1979. A writer of fiction and nonfiction, dealing mostly with issues in gay life, he was a pioneer in the early gay rights movement in Minneapolis. He helped found one of the earliest gay community centers in the United States, edited two newsletters devoted to sexual health, and served as editor of The Advocate in 1975.

He was the author or editor of nearly fifty books, including such erotic landmarks as Mr. Benson and I Once Had a Master and Other Tales of Erotic Love. Other works include Franny, the Queen of Provincetown (first a novel, then adapted for stage), The Big Gay Book: A Man's Survival Guide for the Nineties, Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS, and Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong.

Preston's writing (which he described as pornography) was part of a movement in the 1970s and 1980s toward higher literary quality in gay erotic fiction. Preston was an outspoken advocate of the artistic and social worth of erotic writings, delivering a lecture at Harvard University entitled My Life as a Pornographer. The lecture was later published in an essay collection with the same name. The collection includes Preston's thoughts about the gay leather community, to which he belonged.

His writings caused controversy when he was one of several gay and lesbian authors to have their books confiscated at the border by Canada Customs. Testimony regarding the literary merit of his novel I Once Had a Master helped a Vancouver LGBT bookstore, Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, to partially win a case against Canada Customs in the Canadian Supreme Court in 2000.

Preston also brought gay erotic fiction to mainstream readers by editing the Flesh and the Word anthologies for a major press.

Preston served as a journalist and essayist throughout his life. He wrote news articles for Drummer and other gay magazines, produced a syndicated column on gay life in Maine, and penned a column for Lambda Book Report called "Preston on Publishing." His nonfiction anthologies, which collected essays by himself and others on everyday aspects of gay and lesbian life, won him the Lambda Literary Award and the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award. He was especially noted for his writings on New England.

In addition, Preston wrote men's adventure novels under the pseudonyms of Mike McCray, Preston MacAdam, and Jack Hilt (pen names that he shared with other authors). Taking what he had learned from authoring those books, he wrote the "Alex Kane" adventure novels about gay characters. These books, which included "Sweet Dreams," "Golden Years," and "Deadly Lies," combined action-story plots with an exploration of issues such as the problems facing gay youth.

Preston was among the first writers to popularize the genre of safe sex stories, editing a safe sex anthology entitled Hot Living in 1985. He helped to found the AIDS Project of Southern Maine. In the late 1980s, he discovered that he himself was HIV positive.

Some of his last essays, found in his nonfiction anthologies and in his posthumous collection Winter's Light, describe his struggle to come emotionally to terms with a disease that had already killed many of his friends and fellow writers.

He died of AIDS complications on April 28, 1994, aged 48, at his home in Portland.

1948 – Alvin Baltrop (d.2004) was a gay African-American photographer who earned fame through his photographs of the Hudson River piers during the 1970s and 1980s.

Baltrop was born in 1948 in the Bronx. He discovered his love of photography in junior high school. Baltrop received no formal art education; older photographers from the neighborhood taught him different techniques and how to develop photos himself.

Baltrop enlisted in the Navy as a medic during the Vietnam War and continued taking photos, mainly of his friends in sexually provocative poses. He built his own developing lab in the sick bay, using medic trays for developing trays. After his time in the Navy, Baltrop worked odd jobs as a street vendor, a jewelry designer, a printer, and a cab driver. Because he wanted to spend more time taking photos at the Hudson River piers, he quit his job as a cab driver to become a self-employed mover. He would park his van at the piers for days at a time, living out of his van to take pictures.

From 1975 through 1986, Baltrop took photographs of the West Side piers, where he was a well-known member of the community. Baltrop knew every person he photographed, and people often volunteered to be photographed. Younger boys and men at the piers often confided in him about their sexual orientation, their relationships with their families, their housing status, and their work.

Baltrop captured the gay cruising spots and hookup culture that existed in New York City before the AIDS epidemic. Baltrop's photographs not only captured human personalities, but also the aesthetics of the dilapidated piers. His life work is a snapshot of gay, African-American, and New York City history.

Baltrop struggled to make his way in the art world, facing racism from the white gay art world. Gay curators often rejected his work, accused him of stealing it, or stole his work themselves.

"Three Sailors"

Late during the 1990s, NYC artist John Drury, who knew Alvin from their shared neighborhood - Drury living on Third Street, with his wife and Baltrop on Second Street, in lower Manhattan - befriended the artist and recognized the photographers unique abilities, nominating him for a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award for the Arts. Alvin Baltrop had few exhibits in his lifetime; his work gaining international fame only after his death.

According to one journalist, Baltrop came out as gay at fourteen years old. Baltrop had long term relationships with men and women, but preferred identifying as gay.

Baltrop was diagnosed with cancer in the 1990s. Impoverished and without health insurance, curators and filmmakers attempted to exploit him for their own financial gain. He died on February 1, 2004

1990 – Nakshatra Bagwe, born in Mumbai, India, is an Indian actor and award winning film maker. Nakshatra will be making his Indian feature film debut in My Son is Gay and is due for his international film debut as the lead actor of Hearts. His films Logging Out, Book of Love, Curtains and PR (Public Relations) represent the current LGBT scenario of India.

He is a LGBT rights activist and also an organiser of Gujarat's first ever pride march. Nakshatra has participated in several Pride Parades in India. He won KASHISH – Mumbai International Queer Film Festival in 2012 for his debut film Logging Out. It was screened at prestigious venues like Queens Museum of Arts (New York), The Old Cinema (London) and it was also a part of Queer India European tour 2012 to raise awareness about LGBT issues in the Indian context.

Nakshatra hails from Konkan coastal region. Masure, Malvan is his native village. He takes part in homosexuality awareness projects. Nakshatra and his mother were featured in a promo of popular Indian television show Satyamev Jayte. He came out to society when he participated in Asia’s first LGBT flashmob. He also participated in second queer flashmob which happened at Dadar station, Mumbai. Nakshatra posed nude for a campaign named 'Breaking Closets'.

In July 2014, He became the brand ambassador of Moovz, a global social network for gay men. Nakshatra is first and only openly Indian LGBT person to be signed up as the brand ambassador by any brand till now.

1998 – At a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Denver, a resolution was passed rejecting reparative therapy. It stated that attempts to change a person's sexual orientation can cause depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behaviour. A similar resolution was passed by the American Psychological Association in August 1997. Dr. Nada Stotland, head of the association's public affairs committee, told the Denver Post that the very existence of reparative therapy spreads the idea that homosexuality is a disease or evil and has a dehumanizing effect resulting in an increase in discrimination, harassment, and violence against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

[arainmorn-art]

why… does your edgeworth look like baz pitch from Carry On but if he had grey hair

sorry im just thinking aloud i mean i love your art it’s fan-fucking-tastic i just keep cackling anytime i see your edgeworth/baz

Will you be upset if I say you I've discovered him only because of your question?XD Frankly my Edgie reminds me of Jodie Foster as Clarice on some frames.

I often joke about how feminine my Edgeworth is, but... I also try to channel the grace and dignity of the Empress from Anastasia while drawing him x')

And John Rolfe.

Gosh, I've been thinking all day where I've seen that nod of the best type of male characters. I've seen it bazillion times. How could I forget.

I don't care what people'd say, I loved him much more than John Smith since I was very little. We love gentle sarcastic intellectuals here a lot. Redheads with long hair. Ahem where were we.

So yeah. You weren't asking but that's my artistic influence sipping through Edgie x') Or just my favorite type: • dignified intellectuals • somewhat long hair • sarcastic yet sweet • square jaws apparently

Don't know what you'll do with this information but thanks for asking x')

[nekoannie-chan]

Ahora es real

Título: “Ahora es real.”

Pareja: Thunderblink (Amor).

Palabras: 505 palabras.

Rating: B.

Cuadro: G2 “La falsa pareja se vuelve real.”

Sinopsis: Clarice y John finalmente admiten sus sentimientos.

Advertencias: Amor, fluff, misión encubierta.

N/A:  Esta es mi entrada para el bingo de Marvel Rare Pair Round 2 2023. Annie MRP-066.

También puedes leerlo en Wattpad y Ao3.

         Si te gusto por favor vota, comenta y rebloguea.

No doy ningún permiso para que mis fics sean publicados en otra plataforma o idioma (yo traduzco mi propio trabajo) o el uso de mis gráficos (mis separadores de texto también están incluidos), los cuales hice exclusivamente para mis fics, por favor respeta mi trabajo y no lo robes. Aquí en la plataforma hay personas que hacen separadores de texto para que cualquiera los pueda usar, los míos no son públicos, por favor busca los de dichas personas. La única excepción serían los regalos que he hecho ya que ahora pertenecen a alguien más. Si encuentras alguno de mis trabajos en una plataforma diferente y no es alguna de mis cuentas, por favor avísame. Los reblogs y comentarios están bien.

DISCLAIMER: Los personajes de Marvel no me pertenecen (desafortunadamente), exceptuando por los personajes originales y la historia.

Anótate en mi taglist aquí.

Otros lugares donde publico: Ao3, Wattpad, ffnet, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter.

Tags: @sinceimetyou @black23 @unnuevosoltransformalarealidad @azulatodoryuga

Clarice y John habían trabajado juntos en una misión durante mucho tiempo, especialmente para obtener alguna información que pudiera beneficiar a los mutantes. Sin embargo, esta vez, su objetivo era diferente. Tenían que fingir ser una pareja para infiltrarse en una fiesta donde irían personas muy importantes y recuperar información valiosa.

Antes de la misión, se reunieron en uno de los cuarteles de los mutantes del subterráneo. Clarice estaba nerviosa por tener que fingir ser una pareja, al igual que John trataba de ocultar sus verdaderos sentimientos hacia Clarice, pero cada vez que la miraba, su corazón latía más rápido.

La noche de la fiesta finalmente llegó. Clarice y John ingresaron al lugar, luciendo impecables y radiantes. A medida que avanzaban por la multitud, se dieron cuenta de lo bien que se complementaban. Sus conversaciones eran fluidas y naturales, y su química era innegable.

A medida que la noche avanzaba, la tensión entre ellos se hizo más evidente. Sus miradas se volvieron más intensas y sus roces casuales se volvieron más significativos.

Mientras caminaban por la fiesta, Clarice y John continuaban con sus papeles, pero en su interior, ambos sabían que lo que estaban viviendo iba más allá de lo que estaban aparentando, había otro tipo de sentimientos.

En medio de la multitud, se encontraron con un hombre sospechoso, el cual parecía que tenía información. Clarice y John decidieron separarse momentáneamente para poder investigar.

Clarice se encontraba en una habitación de las principales, donde estaba rodeada de personas influyentes y poderosas. Mientras trataba de mantener su objetivo en mente, su mente se desviaba constantemente hacia John.

Mientras tanto, John se encontraba en el jardín de la mansión, tratando de recabar información. Pero su mente se distraía constantemente por estar pensando en Clarice. No podía evitar preguntarse si existía algo más entre ellos más allá de la misión.

Cuando Clarice y John se encontraron nuevamente, sus miradas se encontraron y en ese momento, se acercaron el uno al otro y se fundieron en un beso apasionado. Después de unos segundos, Clarice rompió el beso y le susurró. —John, sé que esto es solo un juego, pero lo que siento por ti es algo inexplicable, estoy enamorada de ti.

John la miró sorprendido, pero rápidamente esbozó una gran sonrisa.

—Clarice, también siento lo mismo —John confesó—. Desde el momento en que te vi, supe que quería estar siempre contigo.

Ellos continuaron fingiendo ser una pareja durante el resto de la noche, pero esta vez, con las mentes más claras, así podían obtener la información que necesitaban.

Después de completar con éxito su misión, Clarice y John decidieron que iban a ser pareja. No obstante, su relación no sería ningún problema para el bienestar mutante.

Aunque tampoco les importaba mucho lo que el resto opinara, a final de cuentas, eran tiempos difíciles para todos y sabían lo que les podía pasar si eran atrapados por los Centinelas o cualquier enemigo.

Así que no había tiempo para las dudas, no importaba lo que pasara, debían vivir al máximo.