#LIKE THE POET AND THE BOOK BINDER

[calamitoustide]

just thought about i’m setting off (but not without my muse) jegulus in the first time in it must be over than a year and i miss them so so much

[hedgehog-moss]

I was talking with a friend the other day about how I was fascinated with American school life when I was a teen because it seemed so different from how things are in my country (I knew about US high schools thanks to Hollywood, an accurate and trustworthy source) and we talked about which aspects of US schools felt foreign or strange to us and one thing I brought up was, how American teens only seemed to have like 15min for lunch (I had 1h30 here in France), as evidenced by the cafeteria scenes (no one seemed to eat a proper four-course meal? I definitely never saw a separate cheese course), and I was like, I envied a lot of stuff about US schools but not this

... and I went looking in my old diaries to see if I ever wrote about this, and you know what? I was wrong. I did envy their school lunches which, like almost everything about US schools, felt intriguing and different and cool. The reason middle school-me thought American school lunches were superior to French ones is because, since American teens in TV shows only seemed to get like 4 chicken nuggets and a milk carton for lunch, their lunch tray was very light and they could hold it with one hand under it, the other hand in their pocket or holding their bag strap on their shoulder all casual-like. Sometimes there was no tray, even!

I envied these American teenagers for their lunchtime nonchalance. I would have liked to handle lunch in this cool-cat way but my French lunch tray being loaded with 4 different heavy and breakable plates, I had to hold it carefully with both hands. In my view this was unfair as the hindrance of governmental nutrition guidelines made French students look like uptight nerds, unable to strut around the cafeteria with one hand in our pocket like we didn’t care. Same for the absence of lockers in our schools, we had to carry all our books on our back all day like studious turtles whilst the beautiful 25 year old American teens on my television casually leant against their lockers chatting with friends then strolled around school with just a couple of books tucked under their arm like they were in Dead Poets Society. Thank god there was an ocean between us, imagine a French kid entering a US school cafeteria carrying 3 binders and 5 textbooks in their big rucksack and holding their tray with two hands like a complete loser

Note that these comparisons are quite worthless since I don't know what US school life / food is like in the real world (I imagine it varies a lot!)—I just find it funny to re-read old diaries and discover what was important to kid-me. Discussing these little cultural differences gleaned from US TV series, adult!me is like "yeah I remember being intrigued & envious about a lot of things! Not their school lunches though, they didn't look balanced and nutritious"—meanwhile middle school-me, focused on what mattered, was like, imagine what we could be... imagine being able to hold your lunch tray with 1 hand instead of 2 thus accessing a realm of coolness unfathomable to us in our backward country

[pictureinme]

Fic idea: reader takes kitten out on a picnic for her birthday or their anniversary and treats her the way she deserves to be treated and like reader gives her all these cute gifts and treats and it's just a cute moment

thank u so much for this request !!! i felt so inspired by this ;-; it may be a bit more than you expected !

autumn breeze

patricia ‘kitten’ braden x f!reader word count: ~1.2k tags: romantic fluff, established relationship, marriage proposal, kitten appreciation hour is in full effect

(ao3)

Kitten walks blindly through the park, unaware of just how beautiful the falling leaves look across the grass. You’re guiding her through winding paths, all the way to a secret spot you paid the caretaker off to leave undisturbed.

Her outfit was as beautiful as ever, and the only criteria you gave her was to dress for the season. While she giggles incessantly, you take it in: a roomy brown sweater which nearly enveloped her hands, tucked into orange corduroy flares, paired with brown mule heels.

You uncover Kitten’s eyes, revealing the surprise she has been anticipating for a week now. Her eyes darted quickly, taking in the set-up before her: a yellow gingham blanket, and atop it was an overflowing picnic basket. She could only imagine what else could be awaiting her, but she could definitely see a familiar wine bottle and accompanying glasses.

“Oh, darling…” Kitten’s hand comes to cover her agape mouth.

You grin, hugging her tightly from behind, “Happy anniversary, my love.”

“Even bought my favorite wine…” She spins around, and her hands come to rest on your shoulders. Her eyes are sparkling, hints of tears threatening to spill. “Thank you, (Y/N).”

“Don’t thank me just yet!” You guide her down to the blanket, kicking off your flats before sitting. “You haven’t even seen the records I brought.”

Kitten daintily takes off her heels, grinning almost maniacally as she kneels on the fabric, “Do tell!”

“I brought all of our favorites,” gesturing to the case against your hip, she notices you had the portable record player, as well as your book of 45s. “Goldsboro, Rubettes, Sweet… even some Stevie!”

You rifle through the binder, and pull out your Bobby Goldsboro “Honey/Danny” single– something you bought for Kitten on your second date. She glowed when she unwrapped it, revealing the orange magenta label with her favorite song’s title plastered onto it.

Kitten holds the record carefully as you set up the portable player, its wood grain stark against the gingham, a holdover from your parents’ generation. She places the disc onto the center spindle, and you place the needle. The sweet, sweet sounds of adult contemporary fill the space.

The warmth of the afternoon lay dappled on the ground, wrapping the two of you in something like a yellow aura. Kitten’s nails were adorned with an orange polish, with delicate flowers– painted by you– in white. Her hand is on top of your own, and you bathe in the feeling of contentment. The autumnal breeze was cool, but welcome.

From her reclined position on the blanket, she hums, “We should probably eat before whatever it is goes stale, hm?”

“Perhaps,” you groan as you move from your own lounging, “You do tend to be the voice of reason.”

You shuffle towards the picnic basket, and hand her the bottle as well as the glasses. Opening it further reveals to Kitten the true lengths you went to for this event: cucumber sandwiches, various berries, cheeses, and crackers, and even more she couldn’t see.

“Goodness, you pulled out all of the stops, didn't you, dear?”

Laughing slightly, you take the bottle back from her and pop the cork, “I’d pull the stars from the sky if it could make you happy, my love.”

She scoffs, rolling her eyes as you pour the Sauvignon blanc into her awaiting glass, “Oh, such a poet you are.”

You pour your own glass as she takes out the sandwiches and charcuterie set-up. Kitten splits the sandwich triangles between the two of you.

“Thank you, my love,” Kitten bites into her sandwich, careful not to smudge her meticulously painted lips, “Truly.”

“It’s our third anniversary, and you always do so much for me,” you pop a cube of chèvre into your awaiting mouth, “You deserve so much more than this, Kitten.”

Cocking her head, she hums, “Well, you’ve certainly outdone yourself! Can’t remember the last time we could do something so romantic together in public…”

You bite your lip slightly as her lidded eyes meet yours, “Me neither, I had to bargain for this spot, you know. Sold all our assets away!”

“Shame, I was just about to blow it all at the slots tomorrow night with Charlie.”

“And you weren’t going to invite moi?” You hold your heart in faux offense, “Now I don’t feel so bad about auctioning off your precious silk slips.”

“You did not!”

Laughter erupted from your throat, “Dear, I would never do such a thing! You really must pick up a book on sarcasm.”

Rolling her eyes yet again, Kitten smiles as she tosses a blueberry in her mouth, “Silly, silly girl. On our special day, too.”

You grin widely, and the pair of you continue to eat away at your borderline rabbit food and white wine. The way her head is thrown back after a particularly raunchy joke you made, or how her blonde curls bounce when she’s truly excited, you couldn’t get enough of it.

The two of you make it through almost all of the records before you decide to reveal the true surprise of the afternoon.

“Doll, could you check the basket for me?” You coyly ask, busying yourself with cleaning the stray napkins and empty berry containers. “I’m sure I forgot something.”

She cocks an eyebrow, “You, forgetting something? Believe it when I see it, love.”

You watch as she leans over the picnic basket, moving her locks from her eye-line to properly check. As she investigates, you feel your heart begin to race. What if she said no, what if–

“(Y/N)!” Kitten practically shrieks when she finds the so-called missing item. “Is this what I think it is?”

She moves back to sit in front of you, an expression of pure joy written all over her face.

“Patricia ‘Kitten’ Braden, saint of my heart… will you marry me?”

Her hand was held open to reveal a golden ring, within the center was an oval diamond cushioned by two smaller ones.

“Oh, God, yes, yes!”

Before your hand reaches to slip the ring onto her finger, she’s caught your lips in a kiss that would’ve knocked off your feet, had you been standing. You could feel her heart beating out of her chest, and you raise a hand to cup her cheek.

“I love you more than anything in the universe, my Kitten. I know it may not be easy, getting married and all, but–”

Kitten shakes her head slightly, a tear falling from her eye, “Don’t say such things right now, we’ll be okay.”

Nodding, you smile through what you realize are your own tears, and take the ring from her still outstretched hand. You hold her left hand in yours, and slowly slip the delicate ring onto her finger. Her breath hitches, and so does yours.

“Please tell me I’m not dreaming, darling,” the desperation in her eyes made that knot in your throat hurt so much more.

“Far from it,” you kiss her sweetly on her plush lips, “This is as real as it gets.”

[earthtooz]

WELL, SINCE YOU DONT MIND~

a scenario in which reader gets writers block and xiao appears and xiao professes his undying love for us and we kiss him and hold hands and share almond tofu under the stars and we get married is a very cute idea and 10/10 plot. definitely the best idea to ever be thought of

FLUFF, xiao being xiao, reader is poet, i've never played genshin ever, i got spammed with this so much that i decided to give up and give in. @sixosix, for you, my little sibling xx

"what are you doing here? it's late." 

the sudden voice shocks you from the leather-bound notebook that you were previously writing in, so caught off guard by the intrusion that your pencil slips from your grasp, falling through the cracks of wangshu inn’s balcony. you’re about to curse out your own inability when a sudden gust of wind swirls around you, followed by a flash of blue. 

then, a pencil is outstretched towards you- your pencil, in xiao’s hand. 

“thank you,” you murmur, stunned. 

“like i said, what are you doing here?” the adeptus repeats, demanding for an answer.

retracting your legs that were previously dangling over the edge and closing your notebook with a defeated slam, he notices the look of defeat that graces your expression as you look out at the horizon.

“i’m trying to find inspiration for a new poem,” you murmur. “although i wasn’t very successful, i thought coming up the wangshu inn might have inspired me. sorry for overstepping on your turf.”

glancing up and meeting his golden eyes, you ignore the heavy pounding of your heart and pressurising of your blood rate; two feats that only xiao was able to accomplish. 

unlike your internal meltdown, his hardened expression doesn’t change with your complaints, in fact, xiao doesn’t even acknowledge them, heartlessly brushing over your predicament. “you shouldn’t be out here for much longer though, once it’s night the plagues will be out, and it’ll be dangerous.”

“i know, i know. no need to remind me.”

a beat of silence passes. you don’t make a move to get up. xiao doesn’t make a move to kick you out. instead, he takes a seat beside you, keeping his distance. “i didn’t know you write,” he mutters, the slight tilt in his voice betraying the disinterest he previously showed towards your predicament.

momentarily surprised by his curiosity, you nervously fiddle with the binder of your book. “oh, it’s just for fun,” you murmur, glancing away. “something i do to take my mind off of things.” 

he doesn’t say anything in response, the flicking of delicate paper pages fill the atmosphere instead. you wish you could peer into his mind to see what he is thinking so that you could have the easy conversations that you share with other people. however, for xiao, the only thing to discuss is nothing.

glancing aside, the unfinished almond tofu that you bought from the merchants sit beside you. as much as you’d like to finish the delicacy, your constant frustration with your inability to conjure up words diminished your appetite. there is one solution, but you feel a little foolish asking, “would you like some almond tofu?” to the blue-haired beside you sits up a little.

“i shouldn’t,” he mutters dejectedly when looking at the platter you pass to him. “you have it.”

“i can’t finish it, that’s why i offered. why don’t you help me out by finishing it for me?” you slide it across to him. 

with obvious hesitance, he complies. you look away when he takes a bite, the sight too oddly intimate and rare for some poet like you. how rewarding it is to do something for someone like xiao.

it’s silent once again as you both watch the setting sun, the colours melting into one another whilst dusk’s purple dominates and claims its turn in the sky. it takes the first star to appear before you mention leaving, especially now that the cicin’s are beginning to emerge, but more importantly, you’re surprised that xiao hasn’t told you off.

declaring your departure, xiao mimics you and stands up, tightly holding onto his spear.

“i’ll walk you home.”

“no- it’s okay!” you squeak, surprised by his decision. his golden eyes flicker to you, almost in warning that you shouldn’t argue back because he’s already made up his mind. “i shouldn’t bother you from your duties. thank you though-”

“-you don’t live far. it won’t be too inconvenient. besides, walking you home and fighting off potential demons is still doing my job.” he walks away, but not before turning over his shoulder to reassure that “i’ll protect you.”

he leads you down the inn and walks in front of you whilst leading you home, outstretching a hand in front of you whenever he thinks you might need his assistance down particular staircases or hills. you know you shouldn’t touch him, but the urge is there, and incredibly overwhelming, especially with each subtle flex of his muscles that are illuminated by the moonlight.

(you wonder if he does this with anyone else. judging by the rumours and talk that surround him, his apathy, and uptight front, you wouldn’t think so, yet here you are, being protecting by the legendary and fleeting xiao.)

the night is disturbingly silent, as if the archons had decreed that no inconvenience shall bother the two of you in this moment, but the peace is far from unwelcomed.

when your home appears in your view, you turn to face him with a reluctant smile, a little sad to leave, but very grateful for his time nonetheless.

“thank you for walking me home, xiao. i really appreciate it,” you mutter into the quiet night. 

“don’t thank me. if you ever need me, just call my name and i’ll be there,” he promises. you don’t even get to say anything in response before he puts on his mask and teleports away, all done in the blink of an eye and leaving your mind in a hurricane of questions you want answered.

for a second, you wonder if he was ever there, but the fading blue particles tell you that he indeed was.

shutting your door with a quiet click, you sigh out a breath that you didn’t even know you were holding before scrambling to your kitchen table, frantically opening your book to whatever blank page you could find. 

‘i’ll protect you’. 

you definitely need to take your mind off this evening. 

© EARTHTOOZ 2023, do not steal, translate, repost my fics and do not recommend my fics onto any other site.

[theregencyreticule]

Notes from Thursday (all the things I've learned this week)

It is possible, if you are talented enough, to slice your thumb very badly while washing a cheese grater. (Single slice blade thing, I hate you)

You will bleed a lot and have to ask your teen to help you bandage up.

You also get to go in for a surprise tetanus booster because *of course* it has been 10 years and 4 weeks since your last one.

Td boosters are painful and your arm hurts even 4 days later. (I googled and apparently they are one of the worst for long lasting arm pain)

And on to the good stuff:

Rainy days surrounded by mountains have an otherworldy kind of beauty. Watching a whole cloud system make its meandering way down the valley, one wispy cloud after another has become my new morning tea pastime.

I unearthed an entire binder of my grandmother's writing when we were packing up the house. I've just this week opened it up and started to pore over it. She was an artist, and a writer and poet and there are so many poems in this stash. It has been like having her sitting beside me talking to me as I read these words she never shared with anyone. I decided this morning to start a Scrivener project with her work and see where that takes me. If nothing else, I can gift my Mum a book of her poetry for Christmas.

How many things do I have to say that I never voice? Why have I let other people keep me silent for so long? It's time to let my own voice free.

[nico-nico-suavecito]

Update on Printing and Binding my Poetry Book, The Weeds Grow Anyway

It was around a year ago that I decided to print and bind my first full-length poetry book, The Weeds Grow Anyway! In honor of that, I'd like to share an update on where things are at, some of the physical and mental challenges that have arisen through the recent months around this project, what is coming next, etc. I especially want to document this, in case any poets or writers find themselves also interested in producing their own books.

In June my partner and I printed the covers, with huge thanks to a residency offered by The Press at Colorado College. The covers are three layers - a yellow layer, printed with risograph at Ladyfingers Letterpress in Colorado Springs, and a green and blue/black layer printed using linocut on the Vandercook press at the college.

Despite the long hours of carving the linoleum and printing all the copies, this turned out to be the easy part!

After that came the time to finalize the manuscript and make some production decisions regarding how I would bind the book. The editing was its own challenge, as it was a time in which I experienced (and admittedly, continue to experience) the usual anxiety many writers feel when the time to share our work with a paying audience is impending. It is a joyful thing, but also, terrifying.

Beyond that, my hot glue binder was not providing a binding I felt great about, and I think I've landed on the plan to stitch the books using a saddle stitch. This does prolong the release date. I initially planned to release the books this fall, but I think that I will instead be aiming for a spring or early summer release date to allow me the time to stitch the books. This might also allow for the possibility of an outdoor release show, which would be my ideal situation, both for covid safety reasons, and because it will match the climate of the book itself, so to speak.

I do want to be careful, knowing that my tendencies toward both procrastination and perfectionism can absolutely create situations where the work expands to fit the time. I think setting a deadline will be good for me.

So here is what is left to do, which I figure I'll share for my own internal organization, but also to share for anyone who also wants to produce their own book!

Schedule the release show, and promote it.

Make a few more book mockups for reviewing and editing the book, and to practice the bookbinding technique.

Finalize the manuscript and formatting. Determine whether I want a foreword or introduction.

Print the text blocks, either using my fancy new-to-me printer, or sending them to a local printing company.

Trim the text blocks to be slightly bigger than the final size.

Bind the text blocks with the inner cover paper.

Press the books using a book press.

Score and fold the outer covers.

Sleeve the books in the outer covers.

Sign the books.

Have the release show.

Ship out any remaining books.

Amidst all this, I'll also reach out to venues and poetry shows in the region to see about featuring and touring the book. I'll also reach out to local book stores about selling the books.

I think the hardest thing about all of this has been the promotion of it. My relationship to social media has been slowly dwindling, and I have not quite figured out how best to share about the book and the process in a way that fits the best practices of frequent, video-based updates that most social media sites reward. So hence why this update is going on Tumblr, and maybe I'll share screenshots to my Instagram story, or something like that.

I digress.

If you want to preorder the book, the link to do so is here!

[arwainian]

Reading This Week 2024 #28

hello! much lighter on reading this week than the past two but I'm pretty satisfied with What exactly I've been reading

Finished:

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian as I said last week, I really love this main couple! This deals with some pretty major stuff like death of a partner and the grief that follows that but in a way that I think keeps the romance still generally light and sweet. I slightly resent the marketing that this is a grumpy/sunshine romance because while I guess its gets there, for the first at least third of it it's talkative depressed asshole x snobby depressed asshole

"Rape and the Rise of the Novel" by Frances Ferguson "Criticism and the Subject of Sexual Violence" by Ellen Rooney along with skimming a whole ton of articles to figure out that those were not useful to me. I've started to organize the articles I've read into useful and not sections in a binder so I can get ready to start outlining and pulling out specific quotes and thoughts

and the tree was happy by zombiekittiez on ao3 an ace attorney fic that a friend recommended to me, because despite not being very familiar with ace attorney, this angsty family drama is exactly my shit

The Way of the Househusband, Vol. 11 by Kousuke Oono, translated by Amanda Haley cute and funny, but i think at this point, the househusband comics have done everything they can for me, so I might not be reading further volumes

Started/Ongoing:

Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems translated by Burton Watson this is a beautiful translated collection of haiku from the poet credited with moderning the haiku form in the Japanese poetry scene. I picked this up from a free book box at my grad school and I'm not regreting it, reading a bunch of short little poems is very pleasing

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske @mosswolf is reading this series currently and so I was finally motivated to pick up the third and final book in an attempt to finish reading it before he does. this is a race that matters only to me. anyway the way that this crew continually waltzes into doing all the work for the villains is sometimes very frustrating for me. i paused reading a chapter to come type this up because otherwise I might combust

[lifeafterthelayoff]

Part II, Day 92.

My Grandma, the poet and painter, would’ve been 102 today. I published her work as a tribute.  🎂

Most folks become ambivalent about their birthdays after a certain age. Not Grandma Krull. The fact that her birthday fell on May Day made it even more memorable. Memorable, just like her.

Over the course of ten months during the pandemic, I edited an anthology of her poems and paintings. It's one of the toughest things I've done, but also one of the most rewarding.

My hope when I started this project was to hand her a copy of this book, but she passed before this could happen.

Let me tell you, as a word person, the hardest edits you'll ever make are the ones where you switch verbs to past tense because someone is no longer around.

The 55 poems were mostly kept in a 3-ring binder at my parent's house, limiting their reach. Some were handwritten in that older style of cursive you see from older folks. Some were typed up at a later date on an electric typewriter.

The 54 paintings were scattered in drawers and picture frames between family members. After I published the book, more and more of the paintings kept popping up. Her format of choice was greeting cards, which she would paint and send out into the world. I’ve found some, my family have found a few more, and other people that she knew return them when the original recipient passes away. It’s probably due for a 2nd edition with updates!

I wanted to have a copy of all of these works in one place, and I figured that my relatives might want the same. So I created a template, wrote an introduction and a family history, uploaded the 183-page PDF to Lulu Express (an on-demand publishing company) and then connected it to a Shopify store so my relatives could buy it. (I lose a few pennies on each one, but I’m fine with that.)

In an interview with a local paper, Grandma said this:

“I’ve always wanted to be an artist or a writer. But we didn’t have money for my education, so I just did it later in life. I give it all away. I send them birthday cards and they frame them. I don’t know why they do, but they seem to like them.”

After finding that quote, I felt like I had the permission to call myself a writer, which is one heck of a lasting influence.

One of the greatest realizations of it all was that my Grandma was also a mother, a wife, and before that a young woman on a farm falling in love via letters with a soldier stationed overseas during WWII.

I just knew her as grandma.

[runawayolives]

Baby daddy II

Part I

Pairing: nate jacobs x female reader (she/her pronouns)

Warnings: The Jacobs family, talk of nudes, reader isn't the best person. Manipulation, from Nate and reader. R is pregnant, teenage pregnancy.

TWO YEARS AGO

"Y/N, right?" She didn't have to look up from her now-closed locker to know who had locked it.

"Yes." She gently moved Nate Jacob's hand from the metal door to open it again, grabbing her binder and biology book.

"You, uh, had interesting things to say during history class." The girl walked away from her locker, going to her next class.

"It makes me angry when people glorify white dudes that didn't do admirable shit." Nate faltered for a second but didn't let it show.

"They founded America. They did do something admirable." Y/N shrugged, not really caring about the boy's opinions.

"Okay."

...

"Do you want a boy or a girl?" She looked up at Nate, tired of the endless conversations about the baby.

"Does it matter?" Nate looked down at her, placing a piece of hair behind her ear.

"I want a girl that looks like you." Y/N looked up from the book she was trying to read.

"Yeah, you said that before."

There was an awkward silence in the room. Nate had known Y/N long enough to know when she didn't want to talk. It never bothered him. Well, that's a lie. He appreciated how she wasn't clingy like other girls he had dated. How she wasn't on him 24/7 in case he was cheating on her. When he started talking to her, he liked it, loved it even. A few months in, he realized how much he despised her nonchalance. It wasn't that she wasn't insecure. It was that she didn't give a fuck. Y/N was going to be neutral, didn't matter if he dated her or left her. Nate was sure that if someday he stopped talking to her, she wouldn't even notice.

So, he did what any other teenage boy would do if he was so into a girl that didn't pay him attention. Ask her friends.

Nate first went to Maddy. He thought it would be easier to approach her, considering that she was a cheerleader and that they had spoken at parties before.

"You want to know what she likes?" Nate had been waiting for Maddy after practice.

"Yes, flowers, chocolate, stuff girls like." Maddy looked at Nate up and down

"I don't think you're her type. Pretty hard to make her like you if you don't even get her attention." Nate followed the shorter girl. Trying not to lose his temper at what she was saying.

"Let's say I'm her type. What do I do?" Maddy turned around, tired of his insistence.

"Look, she's never shown interest for anyone before, so I don't know. She likes daffodils, something to do with a movie about poets or something."

"What about food?" Maddy sighed, turned around, and kept walking.

"She likes m&m's and sushi."

The next week he convinced Y/N to go to his house, have dinner and watch a movie. He had dismissed the flowers, deciding on looking for the movie, so that they could watch it together. Hopefully, it was romantic, so that it could somehow set the mood. The movie ended and Y/N was trying not to cry. Not what Nate had been planning, but he could work with it.

"Do you have a favorite poet?" Her teary eyes met his dry ones. Maybe it's because he was sick in the head, but crying eyes were prettier than dry ones. It showed better eye color, making them more noticeable.

She let out a dry chuckle but replied. "I don't really have a favorite poet. I have a hard time understanding classical poetry. I guess I like Shakespeare's, but I think it's because of the depths of the characters."

"I had never watched this movie. It was nice." She looked down to her close enough hands. Y/N placed hers on top of his.

"I'll educate you in film, don't worry."

They then turned this into a routine. Once a month, sometimes even twice, they watched a movie Y/N considered a must-watch. By their third hang-out, Nate asked for some book recommendations. He had noticed that that was also one of her main interests. Her eyes lit up after his question. They shone more than when she was crying, and he realized that he craved for that shine. She promised to make him a specific list of books she thought he would like.

He wasn't used to taking relationships this slow. Nate assumed this is what meant finding the right girl. Just like football, results didn't come in a second, and if they did, they probably weren't good ones.

He once asked Y/N about her life plans, and her eyes lit up again. She explained both of them, the five years one and the ten years one. He wasn't a fan of her looking for independence like that. She had a foolproof plan, and it didn't include him. Nate could and would change that slowly but surely. He would let her go to college to get her master's. Doctorate if she felt like it, but she was staying home. Maybe it was because he was possessive. Every time he thought about it, his stomach would jump.

Just picturing her, his smart as hell wife, being home, reading books, and watching movies to her heart's content. She would make breakfast for the both of them, kiss Nate goodbye, and just be home, doing whatever she wanted. She didn't have to worry about the activism she was always talking about. She wouldn't have to be a human rights lawyer. Y/N would live a relaxed and calm life, not having to worry about anything.

Nate could picture her being a mom every single night in his bed. She babysat for some of her mother's friends, who had little kids, and she was so nurturing. One of the little boys had invited her to his birthday party, and Y/N had asked Nate to join her. She had gotten the dates mixed up and had to cancel their date. The way she didn't care about getting her dress dirty with grass stains, how she listened to the little boy speak to her about dinosaurs, it just made everything fall into place for Nate.

She was smart, pretty, and mother material. They would live a comfortable life after he inherited the company, and they would be the picture-perfect family.

After his daydream, Nate pulled Y/N closer to him. "I know this wasn't your plan. I'm sorry I was a complete asshole the other day. Can you forgive me?" She closed the book and left it on the coffee table. The girl cuddled closer to him, pulling her knees closer to her chest so that her whole body was on the couch.

"Why have you told our families that we're getting married?" The boy pulled her closer and kissed her forehead. He had missed this, even if they hadn't been broken up for so long. But those three months of her pulling away were awful. He knew Maddy and Kat had put those terrible ideas about him in her pretty mind. During this last year, Nate had made sure to slowly distance her from her friends, but it hadn't been easy. Even if he never understood how Y/N was their friend, they had a very close bond. They hung out every Friday and Saturday night. Some Sundays they went to the mall together to go shopping. Nate started interfering in the Sunday plans. He would take Y/N to the mall, specifically her favorite store. He would follow her around the bookstore, holding all of the books she wanted to buy, and he always paid. They would sometimes get books together, the same one, and read them during the month. Y/N would finish them in a week, but she knew Nate didn't have that much free time. Whenever they hung out to watch a movie, they would talk about their latest read. On the Saturdays they spent at the bookstore, Y/N would usually be worn down, and cancel the Sunday plan, sometimes even the Saturday one.

"I thought it was the easiest way to do this. Princess, I'm scared too. I have no idea what to do about anything, but we can do it together. And think about it; if you ever became a lawyer as you wanted, they could use the fact that you got pregnant in high school against you. If we get married before the baby is born, we could fix it up a bit." Y/N gently kissed his neck, the closes part of his body she could reach without moving from their position.

"I'm sorry I called your family a bunch of psychos."

"We both know they are." They both laughed softly, liking the now calm atmosphere. "Do you want to stay the night?"

"Okay."

...

The alarm clock read 3:26 am, and Y/N knew Nate was impossible to wake up in the middle of the night. She managed to move away from the human furnace he had become. She gently rolled out of the bed landing on the carpet. She stood up and walked towards the other side of the bed, where Nate had his nightstand.

Y/N picked up his phone, which lit up the moment she lifted it. The device was locked, showing a picture of them at the carnival last year. She was standing on her tippy toes, holding a stuffed Triceratops Nate had won for her. She was kissing Nate's cheek. While he held cotton candy with his free hand.

His mom had taken that photo of them, right in front of the Jacobs' chili stand.

Y/N swiped up, and the phone displayed the numbers to write in the passcode. She trusted Nate hadn't changed it and typed in her birthday.

The phone unlocked, and she was quick to get into Nate's photos app. She easily found the pictures, that were in a folder named Y/N. There were other pictures in the folder, not just the nudes. Some were sweet, from dates they had gone on. Her favorite was one they had taken right before going to one of the fancy dinners Cal would invite them to. Nate was wearing a basic suit, with a tie that matched the dress (Imagine whatever dress you like, this one is just for reference) she was wearing. Nate had gifted it to her a week prior, and she felt worth a million dollars.

Nate shifted on the bed, making her remember that she wasn't looking at his gallery to go down memory lane.

Y/N deleted all of her nudes, also the ones of them together, and left the phone how she found it. She went back to her side of the bed and got closer to Nate, in case he noticed that she was too far away and woke up.

For now, her plan was going okay, it was the next steps that were going to be more complicated.

A/N: I hope you liked part two, and be ready for part three. I have a long weekend from friday to monday, so maybe I'll be able to write two more parts for baby daddy. I have other requests I want to complete, some of them are for nate Jacobs, so if I don't write naything for baaby daddy, I'll have something else.

Thank you for more that 1000 notes on part one, has meant a lot, and if you want, send me ideas on what to write for future parts of baby daddy. It can be a flashback, a flash foward, a little detail you want inlcuded, whatever you want.

Thank you so much for liking part one, and I hope part two didn't dissapoint.

[toraashi]

𝐍𝐎𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐘, 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍

info: kaedehara kazuha x gn!reader, college!au, fluff, 1.5k words, lots of references to poetry, kissing, the quotes throughout are not in order sorry, that’s about it

author’s notes: i love this poem so much, i reference it a lot, so i’d recommend reading it really quickly: somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond by e.e. cummings. happy valentine’s day everyone! sorry if kazuha comes off a little ooc.

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me

Kazuha was… 

He was….

You watched him from your spot across the table, eyes tracing the peek of his round nose above the edge of a poetry book, the group project you were supposed to be working on sprawled haphazardly in the space between. You watched his brow quirk when he read an intriguing line, the messy strands of wavy platinum falling in front of his face, interfering with his glasses. Some deep part in your soul wanted to brush the curls away, but the way his ruby eyes flicked up at your scrutiny, a question in his gaze halted your desires.

"Yes?" Flustering, you averted your gaze to the strewn, handwritten notes on the table before you, frantically thinking of an excuse to deflect from your stare. 

"I was… thinking of how to go about this. e.e. cummings has such a unique style of poetry, he is quite difficult to decipher." Kazuha did not miss your nervous deflection, and his eyes twinkled knowingly - fondly. 

"Perhaps we should've chosen an easier poet to analyze." His words were nothing but kind and understanding, and yet you felt riled up. It felt teasing.

"No!" You raised your voice just slightly, immediately quelling with a swallow when Kazuha set his book down. "Sorry… I want to analyze e.e. cummings' work." Kazuha stared at you for a few moments, eyes wandering across your bashful features with a quaint smile on his lips. 

"All right then. Do you have a poem in mind?" He was so patient and attentive. It was nearly infuriating, the way he leaned in like you had his full attention, the gentle nod of his head whenever you spoke, inhaling your words, letting them churn in his mind, and giving them his entire thought. Kazuha was always like this, and he was… 

Kazuha was…

"Dove, maybe you ought to take a break." Both the sound of his voice and the playful drag of a pen across your cheek snapped you from your reverie, refocusing your vision to the boy before you. He'd moved his elbows to the table, the sleeves of his sweater covering his palms, a knowing grin spread across his cheeks. 

"Don't call me 'dove' if you don't mean it." You grumbled under your breath, swatting his pen away. "I have a poem I want to analyze. Let me find it." He backed off at your faux hostility, and a pinprick of guilt festered in your heart at your abrasiveness. Of course, he was just teasing, but it was Kazuha, and he'd never been anything but kind. It hurt your heart and pinched your cheeks to think about him too much. If you let your mind linger on him for too long… you'd start daydreaming about his rosy smile, how his glasses slid down his nose when he was tucked into a book, the edge of his jawline, the lines of his neck, and how they tapered down to his pretty collarbones.  

Shit. He'd catch you daydreaming again at this rate. 

Shaking the thoughts away like washing away a sandcastle, you sifted through your papers until a manila one caught your eye, the typewriter ink blotched on a few letters.

Your heart swelled, filling up with woozy thoughts of epic love, and you pulled the paper from its place in the binder flap, presenting it to the boy, casting him a shy look through your lashes. 

"S'a little cheesy. Don't tease." You murmured, a shudder running from your fingers to the tip of your toes when his hand brushed yours. His eyes ran across the parchment, while yours rebelliously dipped to the buttons popped at his collar, his collarbone shadowcast by the afternoon light in a nearby window. His adam's apple bobbed when he swallowed, and for your own sake, you wished you could keep your eyes to yourself. 

"i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;" He began reciting the last stanza in that silky smooth voice only he could have, and something in your chest fluttered and blew away in the wind. His eyes lifted for a moment, catching yours and holding them as he whispered the last lines, "only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses" You swallowed, willing your cheeks to stop burning. His ruby hues glinted, and you felt your breath stutter, coming out in soft 'put's in comparison to his steady exhales. 

"nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands" Kazuha finished with a low murmur, and your mind filtered through every memory you'd made since you sat beside him in your poetry class, the professor droning on about Emily Dickinson. He was lovely - a poem himself, and now, after many cafe 'hangouts' and post-class study sessions, he was reciting a love poem to you in golden afternoon light - perhaps Kazuha was an angel. He was gorgeous, you'd thought back then, but gorgeous people often had nasty personalities, and you'd been wary. Yet, every smile he'd given you had been genuine, and he had a devoted passion for the subject, giving every line, every piece of the writing a thoughtful approach. Working with your seatmate had never been more fulfilling, and he never once mistreated your interpretations, always handling them with the most care and consideration before giving you his perspective. 

You choked on your words when silence settled over your table. Kazuha's free hand had meandered closer, his knuckles brushing yours, but you couldn't bear to look away. Something was at the forefront of his gaze, something so adoring and careful that you couldn't quite place. The pads of his fingers traced your skin as the silence mellowed into something more comforting, your feelings on the tip of your tongue, heart following close behind as it lodged in your throat. 

your slightest look easily will unclose me

Finally, in the warmth of his stare, you unfolded, baring your intense fragility to him, the vulnerable heart you'd guarded behind petals bestowed to him - an offering. You wanted to open for him. 

"What did you think?" The sentence came out in a weighted breath, and Kazuha's gaze burned as the golden afternoon melted into a mellow sunset. 

"e.e. cummings' is quite the wordsmith. I'm not surprised to hear that he's your favorite. Reading his poetry feels like pressing flowers and perusing old libraries, the flutter of new love and the settlement of eternity. I can easily find you between the lines; it is a pleasant discovery." 

"Kazuha-" You started, but the words fell short when he reached across the scattered papers to brush a piece of hair away from your face, dragging his knuckle across your cheekbone and tucking the strand behind your ear. His hand hovered over your face, and the inexplicable tenderness crossing his features held your thoughts hostage.

"I adore you. You know that, right?" He breathed, touching you like you held the world in your small hands. 

"You do?" A hopeful whine and you swore your irises were shaped like hearts. Kazuha laughed, his hand withdrawing from yours to cup your face, smoothing his thumbs across your cheeks, darting across your fluttering lashes, leaning over the table enough that if you craned your head, you'd be able to touch your nose to his. 

or if your wish be to close me, I and 

my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

"Of course. I've wanted to soak up all of your pretty thoughts since that day we covered William Wordsworth in class. You got stars in your eyes when we spoke about it," He chuckled, lovesick and dainty. "I could've kissed you right there." Something about the way he spoke sounded whimsical as if he was recalling fond memories rather than desperately professing his love. His eyes bled the warmest devotion, something you could dive into and live in forever, wrapping yourself up in everything he had to offer. 

"Why didn't you?" Your words plumed against his face, and the scarlet in his eyes thickened.

"I wanted to wait. It would be a little presumptuous of me to just kiss you out of nowhere, don’t you think?" He smiled to himself, the curve of his lips tipped with a subdued slyness. "I didn't mind taking my time." 

"You're too patient with me." He smiled fondly.

"Of course I am." Face hot, you watched as he scoured your features with soft eyes. "My heart is yours." And with that, he closed the distance, planting the sweetest kiss on your lips, gentle enough to tickle.

At that moment, your question was answered, and you pulled him back in by the shirt collar, poetry assignment lost between the words of your hearts.

Kazuha was so many things, but he was serendipitous, and anything he wanted you to be (within reason), you would become. 

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

[dead-gypsophila]

Modern DA things:

cold brew in mason jars

secretly having an academic rival

online poetry class while it rains outside

all nighters and energy drinks just to finish all the assignments

hozier

hoarding pretty pens/notebooks/journals

reading pdfs at 3 a.m

booktok

extensive TBR lists

being the first one out of all your friends to reach your meeting spot on campus, and hanging by yourself

home made iced coffee

making your bed just to take a nap at 2 p.m

folklore and evermore

little women (2019)

scrapbooks

drying and preserving roses

walking around campus while it drizzles

having DA accounts/blogs on social media

dark academia playlists on youtube/sportify to help you study

pride and prejudice (2005)

listening to podcasts about your favorite conspiracy theories

being a space nerd

keeping all the books your mom passed down to you on your shelf but never reading them

buying notebooks or binders you don't need

black coffee with no sugar, even if your friends think it's gross

lana del rey

making sportify playlists for each book you read/like

YA Fantasy novels

following studyblrs to help you stay motivated

reading on your phone at breakfast

keeping a reading journal to track your monthly reads

being unable to function without your calendar/planner

messy journal entries

poetry on your phone's note app

the 1975

looking up the slowed down versions of your favorite songs

messy desks and even messier closets

lots of pillows on your bed

waking up with your phone still in your hand most mornings

sharp eyeliner

wine nights with friends/parents/family

discussing your favorite poets with your friends on the groupchat

knowing all your professors' email addresses by heart

that feeling when you're closing tabs after your finish an assignment

[darklightacademias]

Dark Academia Stationary

This includes stationary to feel like a dramatic Romantic poet and school supplies to feel Aesthetic in the classroom:

A black or brown leather satchel (duh). Be careful if you carry too many heavy books because satchels are not great for your bag if that is the case.

A black or brown leather backpack if you carry too many books and want to take care of your back. I think a vintage grey or black backpack with belts also works.

A small and simple pencil case in grey felt, or leather.

A black fountain pen

A small metal ruler

A black marker (like a sharpie)

Highlighters in muted shades??? If that’s what you preffer? Light Zebra liners?

white, gold, silver and copper pens

A black leather notebook as an agenda/ bullet journal.

A metal mechanical pencil in silver or gold.

Muji notebooks and pens and everything muji. Muji rocks.

Binders and folders. Unavoidable. Get them in black or transparent. I preffer when they are plastic over paper because they scuff less.

Sticky notes. Post it actually makes some in black, which is why you have white and gold and silver pens for.

Index sticky notes. I like to separate my binders and notebooks and books with index sticky tabs to make topics easier to find. I like to get them in black or white.

If you choose the route of technology (like I did) because technology is unavoidable and practical, you can make it more DA if you choose a solid and dark color for your case, a DA inspired background (maybe a literary quote or something like that) and avoid stickers. Leather cases are great, but not really protective. So get a black case for your phone, tablet and computer.

Also, still in the technology part: laptop and tablet covers if you want extra protection for them. There’s beautiful ones inspired in books or choose one in solid and dark colors. Or get a leather or pleather case. Technology can be aesthetic.

Get a label maker/ embosser with the black tape and white letters.

If you like to take your own food to school or college then get something cute like a small wicker basket, a linen bag, you can knot bento boxes with a linen square like the Japanese, or get a cute bag like from Modern Picnic.

Bring snacks in small plastic boxes. You could get glass boxes but I don’t trust myself with glass, I’d likely shatter it by accident.

Now to the desk stationary part:

A feather quill pen with a holder and ink case

A set of wax seals sitting on the table.

Leather notebooks stored haphazardly or neatly on a shelf or piled on top of the desk.

A vintage library lamp like those found in Oxbridge.

Hardbacks. Could be new or old. Could be paperbacks. I preffer to keep my books on the shelf unless it’s the one I’m reading but half read books around the room is very DA.

A set of watercolors in a wood box. Could be another type of paint. What you preffer.

A lacquered box with letters in them.

Sketchbooks filled to the brim with your art and clippings and drawings and pictures.

Dried flowers in books.

Maybe get a desk with a locked drawer so you can keep secrets there.

Get a fancy carafe and glass to keep with water because hydration is important!

Get a delicate China tea cup to drink tea on your desk. Or a huge mug. Depends on how much caffeine you need.

Get a nice pencil holder in glass or ceramic and put solid color pencils, pens, and silver mechanical pencils.

Letterheads with your initials

Thick letter paper made with flowers

Beautiful envelopes.

Keep a small dish or box with stamps to send letters easily. Or you could make a letter writing set in a beautiful vintage box and keep there the envelopes, the letterheads, the wax seals and the stamps.

I just love boxes. They are so mysterious. What do people hide in them. I don’t know. You don’t either. Only the owner of the box.

Have a dish with polaroid pictures of your friends.

Get gilded frames and put black and white or grainy pictures of your loved ones in there.

Make a picture of your lover in oil or water color, frame it and keep it on your desk.

[mitchmarnier]

make my way back home [when i learn to fly]

pairing: eddie kaspbrak/richie tozier [reddie] w/ stanley uris/patty blum [stanpat], mike hanlon/bill denbrough [hanbrough] & beverly marsh/kay mccall [mcmarsh] word count: 2,138 chapter 1 of 10 beta’d by: @treegelbmen & @photoboothreddie​ summary: He stiffened for a moment, thinking it was Coach Henderson coming over to yank him to his feet, but the touch was much too gentle. “Hey, Richie. Come on.” Eddie Kaspbrak’s voice whispered in his ear, and Richie had to wonder if the fall had knocked him completely unconscious. He let Eddie pull him to his feet, and mostly just stared at the other boy as Eddie helped him gather up the loose- and now slightly damp and dirty- Chemistry notes. ⤹ class scholar richie tozier and school track and field icon eddie kaspbrak rekindle their childhood friendship  loosely based off the art concept by @caliceal   

read on ao3

perma taglist: @jwilliambyers, @treegelbmen @photoboothreddie, @appojoos, @s-s-georgie, @chaotickaspbrak, @eddiefuckinkaspbrak, @edstozler, @emgays, @anellope​, @thorn-harvester-ven​, @wheezyeds​, @vipertooth​, @tozierking​, @billdenbrough​, @itfandomprompts​, @loserslibrary​ (let me know if you want added!)

“HEY FOUR EYES!” 

Richie was breaking into a sprint before he even had a second to think about it. He took off, leaving his friends behind, without even stopping to wonder if there was a possibility that they weren’t even shouting at him. Too risky. The assholes in this school had been tormenting him his entire life, whether it be because of his glasses or his messy clothes or from the mere fact that he was so much smarter than they were, Richie wasn’t sure. He’d probably never know the truth. 

Despite all the years of running away from bullies, Richie Tozier wasn’t exactly in great shape. He knew that even with a head start, he wouldn’t be able to outrun those bastards forever, so he took a sharp left and rushed out the back doors. He went up the cement stairs three at a time, praying that he didn’t fall and get a severe injury. He skipped, nearly face planting himself on the hard gravel, but let out a soft breath of relief when he didn’t. 

He steadied his feet and smiled around him. before realizing, of course, that he was carrying his seventh period books in his bag, and all the necessary items for doing his homework were still inside his locker. Richie huffed out an annoyed breath. There was no way he could go back inside now and risk getting caught by Bowers and his goons, presenting himself as a perfect target. He trudged over to the bleachers and dropped his bag carefully to the cold metal before sitting beside them. 

He rummaged through his backpack and pulled out his tattered copy of Dead Poet’s Society. Though not an old book by any means, it was already well loved. It had been Richie’s first real purchase, saving up the allowances of an eleven year old boy for nearly a year after seeing it in stores when it was released. As Richie had gotten older, he had begun to understand both why his father didn’t want to buy it for him, and why it called to him so deeply. Nearly four years after its purchase, it was still Richie’s favourite book and was rarely out of his possession. 

The commotion on the field dragged Richie’s attention away from his book before he could open up to the page he had marked to reread. The track team was running out of formation, and even Richie could tell that Coach Henderson looked pissed. Richie hadn’t interacted much with the gym teacher since gym stopped being a mandatory class at the end of freshman year, and admittedly, he actively avoided anywhere in the school he might run into the teacher who had told him directly to his face that he was only passing Richie so he wouldn’t have to teach him again the next year.

One of the students caught Richie’s eye and Richie felt his face begin to heat up. Eddie Kaspbrak. Once upon a time, a million years ago, Eddie and Richie had been friends. Frank Kaspbrak, Eddie’s father, and Richie’s mother had grown up together and were long time friends. Mrs. Kaspbrak had never liked the Toziers, never trusted Richie’s mother around her husband, and after Frank had died, she had done everything in her power to push Richie and Eddie apart. It wasn’t hard to stop five year olds from spending time with one another, and eventually, Eddie became just another face in the crowded school hallway.

Or, at least, he should have. Somehow, despite years of distance and borderline indifference, Richie Tozier still had a bit of a soft spot for Eddie Kaspbrak. Even after little dorky Eds ditched his fanny packs and colour shorts for sports wear and gym bags, Richie maintained firm that Eddie was good. All of Richie’s friends claimed that all jocks must be terrible, and Richie had yet to have any proof that they weren’t all egomaniac assholes, but he just didn’t believe that his first best friend could be like that. It was possible for people to simply like sports and not be terrible people, right? 

Richie didn’t notice his backpack tipping over until the papers started to blow through the field and towards the track team that seemed to be in the middle of getting their asses handed to them by Coach Henderson. Richie cringed and cursed under his breath, wondering for a moment if his grades could handle losing all of his AP Chemistry notes and he could get away with just taking off before the team noticed him. 

“What the- TOZIER!” Coach Henderson shouted, turning his attention and rage away from the members of the team and towards Richie, who was frantically grabbing at the papers still close enough for him to reach. “You’re distracting my runners! Come get your work and get out of here! This is a closed practice, boy!” 

Richie scrambled to his feet and rushed out onto the field, only to immediately slip in the grass and go crashing into the ground. He let out a small and pathetic noise that was completely involuntary and slipped out from the back of his throat, listening as the laughs of the track team immediately erupted around him. For a moment, Richie contemplated laying there until he died, but then he felt a hand rest on his shoulder. 

He stiffened for a moment, thinking it was Coach Henderson coming over to yank him to his feet, but the touch was much too gentle. “Hey, Richie. Come on.” Eddie Kaspbrak’s voice whispered in his ear, and Richie had to wonder if the fall had knocked him completely unconscious. He let Eddie pull him to his feet, and mostly just stared at the other boy as Eddie helped him gather up the loose- and now slightly damp and dirty- Chemistry notes.

“I think they’re salvageable.” Eddie told him, with a soft smile. Richie blinked at him, and hoped his cheeks weren’t as red as they felt like they were. 

He opened his mouth to respond, to make some sort of awkward joke or simply just thank Eddie, but Coach Henderson’s loud and annoyed voice cut him off. “KASPBRAK! Get over here or you’ll be running suicides for the rest of the week!”

Eddie shot Richie an apologetic look and jogged back over to the rest of his team. Richie stared after him for a moment, knowing he had on a dazed expression, but Coach Henderson gave another angry shout of his last name and Richie took off the field. He grabbed his bag, not bothering to try to cram his papers back inside, and rushed into the school. Surely the Bowers gang would have taken off by now. They weren’t exactly the type to loiter around after the final bell rang.

Stanley Uris, however, certainly was. He was leaning against Richie’s locker, and he looked almost as angry as Coach Henderson had just looked outside. Richie cringed and knew he was dragging his feet as he walked over. Stan’s hands came down to his hips and skewered Richie with his deepest disappointed look. “Did you forget that we’re supposed to go to the library after school today? We have to get ahead for the decathlon, Richie! It’s our last time to win! Aren’t you taking this seriously?”

“Yes, I’m taking it seriously, Staniel!” Richie snapped, tossing his bag to the ground and yanking out his Chemistry binder to begin putting his papers back into place. “I didn’t forget about the library.” He had. “Bowers and his gang chased me outside after last period. I was just waiting until I felt like it might be safe to come back into the school.”

“Oh.” Stan immediately dropped his angry stance and calmed his expression. “They messed with your notes? They’re such assholes.”

“Uh.” Richie cleared his throat, quickly shoving the rest of his notes into his bag before Stan could reach down and help him. “No actually, I just didn’t… my backpack fell while I was waiting outside and my shit flew all around the field.”

Stan made a sympathetic noise. “Bet Coach Henderson was real understanding about that.” 

Richie chuckled his throat. “Yeah, not so much. But actually…” He smiled towards the ground. “Uh, Eddie helped me get my stuff up. He didn’t laugh at me.”

Stan’s hands froze in the midst of helping Richie zip up the bag. Richie slowly moved to look at Stan and frowned when he noticed the skeptical look on Stan’s face. “What?”

“I just-” Stan quickly zipped up Richie’s bag and handed it to him, pulling them both up to their feet. “I thought you were over this whole Eddie is a good guy stuff. I know you want to believe that, but we aren’t five years old anymore.” 

Stanley was the first friend Richie had ever made on his own. For a short period of time, both Eddie and Stan had been a part of Richie’s close friends- along with another neighbourhood boy, Bill Denbrough, who was still around somewhere- but Stan was the only one Richie was really close with anymore. They were pretty much inseparable, and Stan had made it clear that he certainly didn’t believe their former friend was a nice guy at all.

“I know you hate him or whatever-” 

“I don’t hate him. I don’t even know him.” Stan interrupted him. “But neither do you. Rich, he’s not five years old anymore. You having a sandbox crush on Kaspbrak doesn’t mean he’s a good person. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Richie stiffened. This was the first time he and Stan had ever said anything close to acknowledgement of Richie’s sexuality. And while in all of their years of friendship, Richie had never heard Stan say anything hateful, Richie still felt fearful of saying the words out loud for fear of losing his oldest and dearest friend. He sometimes wondered if Stan knew, but it had never come up in any sort of conversation. 

The two friends looked at one another sadly for a moment before Richie plastered a smile over his face. “No need to fear, Stanny my Stanny! You know by now you’re my one and only. No need to get jealous!”

Stan rolled his eyes as Richie tossed an arm around his shoulders and chuckled loudly into his ear. Stan attempted to swat him away, but Richie only held onto him tighter. “Noooooooo!!” Richie moaned dramatically. “My love rejects me! Whatever should I do? I simply cannot live after such heart break!”

Stan struggled to get free from Richie’s grip, only succeeding at knocking them both to the dirty vinyl flooring. Richie cackled, squeezing Stan tightly and continuing to enjoy his overdramatic struggles until somebody cleared their throat behind them. Richie and Stan quickly leapt apart, Stan managing to get to his feet quickly while glaring at Richie. Richie sat up onto his ass and blinked in surprise as he took in the site of Eddie Kaspbrak, standing awkwardly and looking between the two of them warily.

“Can we help you?” Stan asked him coolly. 

Eddie blinked at him then frowned with a deep furrow of his brow. “Just uh… Richie left this book outside on the bleachers when he ran off. I wanted to make sure he got it.” Eddie held out the ratty copy of Dead Poet’s Society and Richie’s heart clenched in his chest. How could he not have noticed he’d left it behind? 

Richie scrambled to his feet and ran to Eddie, graciously accepting the book and pressing it to his chest. “Oh my god, thank you so much!”

“No problem.” Eddie said, sounding almost bashful. “It looked worn down, so I figured you must really care about it. I didn’t want anything to happen to it and you never get it back.”

Richie thanked Eddie again, hugging the book close. Eddie looked at Richie for a moment more before giving him a small smile. “You know, uh, practice gets out in about forty minutes? I know that’s a while but if you wanted to wait, then after maybe we could-”

“Sorry.” Stan suddenly interrupted loudly, causing the boys who had both forgotten his presence to jump. Stan stalked over and stood at Richie’s side. “We have to get going actually, Eddie. We have some very important studying to do for scholastic decathlon next month. Sorry.”

“Oh.” Eddie said quietly, looking a little dejected. “Right, of course. Sorry. Another time then.”

“For sure.” Richie said lightly, but Stan was already tugging on his arm and pulling him back towards his locker to get the rest of his things. Eddie kicked at the ground for a moment before turning and jogging back outside. “That was rude.” He hissed at Stan.

Stanley rolled his eyes. “You’ll thank me later.”

[upennmanuscripts]

Overlooked Texts, Overlooked Images (Part I): An Erasmian Album

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 40/52

   Album of Engravings and Devotional Texts by Erasmus, Marco Girolamo Vida, and Prudentius, Philadelphia, Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis E 179, fols. 46v–47r, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Prayer for Seious Illness; engraving, Christ breaking bread with the Apostles

Sixteenth-century books that combine manuscript text with engraved or woodcut images can sometimes fall through the cracks of scholarship. On account of their hybrid character, they are often neglected by manuscript specialists in favor of entirely hand-written books. At the same time, scholars of early printing, on the lookout for editions by recognizable publishers, tend to cast aside these complex combined works in the search for more easily classifiable items. However, over the past several decades these tendencies have started to change. Increasingly, scholars have taken on the complex interface of early printing and handwriting as a fascinating subject in and of itself.1

Still, the story of one neglected item, preserved in the collections of the Free Library of Philadelphia, perfectly illustrates the disciplinary pitfalls described above. Lewis E 179 is a modest book of 109 paper folios written in a non-professional, Northern European humanist hand, adorned with forty-five engravings illustrating the Life of Christ from the Annunciation through to the Last Judgment. Based on the texts and images, the book could be dated as early as the 1530s. However, the distinctive watermark visible on some of the book’s pages (with the help of transmitted light) was employed only in the 1550s and 1560s, in the Netherlands and Northeastern France.2 It provides a relatively late terminus post quem and a rough localization for the book’s place of origin.

   Lewis E 179, fol. 35r (detail of watermark visible with the aid of a light sheet); drawing of Briquet 9373 watermark from Briquet Online database

Evidence of subsequent provenance places the book in some important German collections of the early modern period. An early bookplate on verso of first flyleaf dated to 1661 indicates that the book was formerly in the possession of Joachim Enzmiler, Count of Windhag,3 while a second bookplate, from the eighteenth century, records the ownership of Eberhard von Kniestedt. Before joining the Lewis Collection, the book had been in the possession of the great German-Spanish-English bibliophile Henry Huth (1815–1878), who famously preferred intact and pristine copies to damaged books, qualifying the latter rather uncharitably as “the lepers of a library.” Huth spent a considerable amount of time in Hamburg, which may have provided him with access to this item. In both the posthumous 1880 catalogue of Huth’s collection, written by his son Alfred Henry Huth, as well as the 1911 catalogue of Alfred Henry’s collection, the book was described principally by means of its engravings.4

   Lewis E 179, flyleaf 1 verso, bookplate, Joachim Baron Windhag 1661; inside front cover, bookplate, Eberhard von Kniestedt

Since its acquisition by Lewis, the book had been summarily described in only two places: the catalogue of Lewis’ western manuscripts published by Wolf in 1937, and the de Ricci census.5 John Frederick Lewis, the Philadelphia bibliophile who had a penchant for oddities that could help illustrate the history of writing, evidently was not taken in by the widespread disinterest in this sort of book, even if those who catalogued his collection after his death did. Lewis liked “multimedia,” creations—he grangerized (adorned with extraneous material) dozens of his own modern reference books with pasted-down snippets and even full pages drawn from illuminated manuscripts. Lewis probably appreciated the book for its unusual amalgamation of print and script, not to mention its interesting original leather binding, with, on each side, a stamped center panel showing Christ triumphing over Death, with the initials HGV—perhaps those of the binder—, all set within blind-tooled, all’antica borders of scrollwork and portrait medallions.

   Lewis E 179, front cover; back cover

Looking more closely at the composition of Lewis E 179’s texts as part of the BiblioPhilly cataloguing process, I discovered that these consist of prayers and other devotional works by two important intellectual figures of the first half of the sixteenth century: Desiderius Erasmus and Marco Girolamo Vida. Interspersed as well are excerpts from the late-antique Christian apologist, Prudentius. These passages were copied by hand from editions that had been produced recently.

The prayers authored by Erasmus that have been copied into this book stem from three major sources. Eleven votive prayers are drawn from his Precationes aliquot novae, first published in 1535. These are interspersed throughout the work, diverging from their order in the 1535 edition. They consist of votive prayers for Receiving Communion, for Docility, for Penance, Against Temptation, for Thanksgiving in Victory, for Serious Illness, as well as prayers to the Virgin, to each of the three persons of the Trinity, and to Jesus as the son of the Virgin. Seven sections found in the second half of the book stem from Erasmus’ Precatio Dominica, a short work of seven prayers for the days of the week based on the seven parts of the Lord’s Prayer, first published by Froben in 1523. 6This work became immensely popular throughout Northern Europe and beyond, and within five years had been translated into German, English, Czech, and Spanish. Six sections, concentrated in the first half of the book, are excerpts from Erasmus’ paraphrases of Luke, Matthew, and John, each of which was published separately in the early 1520s.

Intercalated within the first half of the book are sections from the Christiad and four extracts from Prudentius’s Liber Cathemerion. The former is an epic poem first published in 1535 but written at the request of Leo X, which provides a Christian counterpart to Virgil’s Aeneid.7Its author, Girolamo Vida (ca. 1485–1566) was an Italian humanist, bishop, and celebrated poet during the early Counter-Reformation period.8 Works by the early Christian poet Prudentius, here represented by hymns for Epiphany, the feast of the Holy Innocents, for before meals, and for after meals, were appreciated by Erasmian humanists for their conflation of classical Latin forms with Christian motifs.9

There are other surviving manuscript compendia that contain assortments of Erasmus’ prayers, such as an unillustrated manual today in Brussels (Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 5010).10 However, on the whole, such items remain understudied, not to mention un-digitized. Hopefully, the substantial community of Erasmus specialists will now be able to discover the intriguing Philadelphia volume and provide yet more information regarding its original context.

By pairing a unique selection of manuscript texts with an unusually extensive cycle of printed images, Lewis E 179 provides first-hand evidence for how these popular devotional texts were adapted and recombined by readers as the popularity of the traditional Book of Hours waned. The Prayer Book demonstrates how a new type of devotional manual could provide an idiosyncratic alternative to traditional forms in a period of religious foment. But what of the forty-five engravings that punctuate its pages, which remain unidentified? More will be said about those next week, when we will be joined by guest contributor Dr. Brooks Rich, Associate Curator of Old Master Prints at the National Gallery of Art and recent University of Pennsylvania graduate.

  from WordPress http://bibliophilly.pacscl.org/overlooked-texts-overlooked-images-part-i-an-erasmian-album/

[random-jot]

tagged by @valinorbound , thanks for the tag!

ARE YOU STAYING HOME FROM WORK/SCHOOL? well, at the moment I’m unemployed (isn’t the gig economy wonderful) but I am working on my own  writing projects - the debut comic for my OC “The Pterodactyl” and a comedy-musical based around the High Fantasy genre - so technically yeah I’m working from home, just not working for payment rn.

ARE YOU A HOMEBOY? I do not - and i cannot stress this enough - know what this question means

AN EVENT THAT YOU WERE LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT GOT CANCELLED? Download Festival, this year was gonna go with a big group of friends, but alas, it’s not going ahead. Slam Dunk Festival as well, although they’ve rescheduled it for September and are aiming to get most if not all of the slated bands back, so silver lining for that one

WHAT MOVIES HAVE YOU WATCHED RECENTLY? I watched Bloodshot, which was - oof - look, it wasn’t terrible, but it was a fairly mediocre adaptation for a comic-book character that I really like. I also re-watched The Road To El Dorado, absolutely brilliant, just as it was the last time I saw it. Fantastic movie.

WHAT SHOWS ARE YOU WATCHING? I just finished season 1 of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, which I really loved, I started Season 3 of Buffy today, I’ve been making my way through Community, but I’ve hit season 4 which I hear is notoriously the worst season of that show. Oh, and I’m keeping up with the current season of Brooklyn 99.

WHAT MUSIC ARE YOU LISTENING TO? Oh god, what music aren’t I. First Things First by Neon Trees, as it’s a song that appears in Dirk Gently multiple times, so got stuck in my head. All Time Low’s new album ‘Wake Up Sunshine’ I’ve been listening to almost every day. The Wrecks are a band I just discovered and really like , ‘Fvck Somebody’ and ‘James Dean’ are my favourites so far. Also been blasting a lot of Yours Truly just today. I’ve also been listening to cast recordings of the Starkid musicals.

WHAT ARE YOU READING? I’ve just started The Poet And The Murderer by Simon Worral, it’s a true story about an Emily Dickinson poem that may well have been forged by a murderer named Mark Hoffman.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR SELF-CARE? Can I also say watching Road To El Dorado for this one?

Tagging: @primatechnosynthpop @kingfredtheok @b-listbadboy @un1c0rntea  @binders-and-beanies and anyone else who wants to

[quill-of-thoth]

The Lemuria Incident

At the advice of @marmaladedtoast​, I have decided that the statute of limitations has (probably) run out on telling you all the Lemuria Incident. At this time, Toast and I were running, mostly by the skin of our teeth, a college writing club. After a first year that included an unfortunate kerning incident, learning WAY too much about our then-secretary’s batman fantasies, and a miraculous lack of anyone pointing out that I didn’t know how to president, we had exactly one problem going into our first official year as a club. I’d promised to have a real published writer come in to give a talk once a year. Problem was, aside from the alumna I’d buttered up in year one after she came for another event? I didn’t know any.

Enter my lifesaving board. Toast was my vice president: her job was to keep me from making a complete fool of myself. We had a treasurer who was supposed to go to student council meetings (he didn’t) and keep track of the funds we didn’t have, and who was also more of a Leninist than a garden variety college communist. We had a public relations person, and I’m not actually sure this far after the fact what she did other than incite the other major drama of the club.

Oh, and mock the bad kerning.

Our new secretary, however, had an aunt who lived less than three hours away. I want to state up front that none of the following nonsense was, directly or indirectly, the secretary’s fault. “She’s looking into indie publishing,” said Secretary, and I emerged from my pile of chemistry homework to explain that we might be able to pay her in pizza, assuming Treasurer ever went to a student council meeting, so if she really wanted to volunteer for free...

“She wants to build an Audience.”

Fine. I had an analytical chemistry shaped hole to crawl into and die in.

The day arrived to a lot of excitement. Some of it was from me, because here was a week where someone ELSE would run my meeting and despite my increasingly bedraggled state, analytical chemistry hadn’t managed to kill me yet.

“Hello my darlings - now shut up.” (When you run a club in college, you have to address them like this, or they might notice that you’re winging it.) “We have a very special guest tonight: let’s hear it for Secretary’s aunt, Tikiphile!”

(Obviously not her real name, but we’ll get to the reasons behind the alias in a minute.)

“Tikiphile is here to talk to us about her book-” *checks notes* “Lost Island of Magic,” (again, not the actual name.)

Finally, I was able to sit down with Toast, and I had about 0.7 seconds of rest before the Lemuria Debacle truly began.

For those of you who don’t know - likely because it finally seems to have died out of the fantasy genre’s collective consciousness - Lemuria is a proposed counterpart to Atlantis, existing either in the Indian or Pacific ocean, because the ‘scientists’ who proposed it in the late 1800′s weren’t geographers and also nobody had noticed plate tectonics yet. It has since morphed in the world of fantasy writing into an “I want to write about Atlantis but that would be cliche so I wikipedia’d around” trope. 

In the minds of our club (again, if you’re on tumblr, Secretary... sorry? It was funny, though.) it means a one-way flashback trip to a presentation that went something like this:

“Let’s start with a little exercise,” said Tikiphile, “I’m very good at reading people’s creative energy, so let’s get to know everyone’s genre.” She looked the board up and down. “Ah yes, you must write romance, it’s in your eyes, dear,” she said to Toast, who may be 100% aboard the shipping train but has never, to my knowledge, written the “soulful love story,” that Tikiphile implied she was working on. “You are very clearly a poet,” she said to me, and because it was college and I had not yet run out of fucks to give I didn’t tell her that we were contractually obligated to avoid poetry. Not that I’d know that muse if she bit me. “Obviously you write horror,” she said to the Treasurer, who was 1) the only man in the board 2) incapable of producing horror intentionally, preferring to create the ongoing discomfort that always accompanies a man who thinks that if he keeps dating members of a social group one of them will eventually fall in love with him.

“Mystery would suit you,” she said to the PR chair, who preferred embarking on real life espionage to actually writing.

“And of course I already know that Secretary writes fantasy.”

Toast and I exchanged a look that, at least on my end, said “It’s only an hour, we can do this, right?”

Wrong.

It became apparent within the first five minutes of a talk that included the importance of making an inspiration board - out of printed out pictures in a binder - that Lemuria, for Tikiphile, was less of an interesting setting than a vehicle for regurgitating the entire new age, partially digested, for our consumption. 

She apparently believed that Lemuria and Atlantis had “some basis in truth” and that you could tell especially psychic people by their purple eyes.  Nobody told her that Snopes was already on the case. But she went on to describe her main character, an “exotic” Hawaiian-but-not-really-because-hawaii-was-just-part-of-Lemuria priestess with exceptional psychic powers, purple eyes, and a quest to save Lemuria from... sinking I guess? Honestly I broke down by the time she mentioned the purple eyes.

What the fuck? I wrote on the piece of paper that I had optimistically thought I’d make notes of agents or publishers on, and passed it to Toast. 

Toast did not know what the fuck. No one knew what the fuck. Except for Secretary, who was beginning to be embarrassed, and Tikiphile, who had apparently watched Twilight.

“You have to have a very clear idea of your character in your head,” Tikiphile explained, “especially if they’re the romantic interest. I’ve cast Taylor Lautner as the Lemurian warrior who my priestess main character is supposed to marry, but of course her true soulmate, the atlantean she has visions of -”

To this day, I don’t remember too many more details of the forty five minute talk beyond that it ranged from psychic visions to reincarnation to aliens to cultural appropriation and that all of my furious note passing to Toast on the topic of “what the hell,” and “This is so awkward,” and “she does know that saying that is kinda racist, right?” didn’t leave any evidence behind.

Finally, it was over, like a bad dream, or what I expect normal people’s bad dreams are like. 

“Any questions?” I asked the club, which was sitting around in various stages of secondhand embarassment.

“Um, yeah,” piped up one particularly brave freshman, “I wanted to know how much of this you’ve written so far, because I always have trouble finishing my stories.”

“About ten pages,” said Tikiphile, and demonstrated the loosleaf pages in her otherwise plump binder. Readers, Writers’ Guild did not have a key speaker the next year.