#and like not even acknowledging the trans part is v funny to me

[sodacowboy]

what if I stole my mom’s thunder and came out on her birthday

[thegeminisage]

If you want to, name ur top 5 spn fic recs bc I need stuff to read and I trust ur judgement :D

HELLOOOOO okay it’s v tragic that most of the fic i used to read back in 2010 and had lovingly bookmarked on delicious got lost to the sands of time but i do still have 38 in my ao3 bookmarks so we will work with them. i’m gonna do 11 because i didn’t want to just do 5 and when i tried to do 10 i couldn’t seem to elimate that last one. it’s my blog i can do what i want

One Shot by InsaneTrollLogic (gen) THIS is my favorite spn fic of all time and has been for years and will probably never ever be unseated. it’s very short (only 1500 words), and it’s gen, and you need to have seen season 1 to understand it, and you also need to go in COMPLETELY blind. do not look at the comments or the bookmarks. it’ll only take a few minutes to finish. if i write something even half as good as this before i die i’ll consider that a success beyond my wildest imagination. if you only read one fic on this list i’m begging you make it this one

not with a bang but a yelp by strange_estrangement this is by @maulthots and it’s a collection of yelp reviews for all the fucking motels sam and dean stay at. it is theeeee funniest thing she’s ever done. truly love this one. chefs kiss.

like moses and batman and james dean by saltyfeathers (destiel) this is the ULTIMATE fic if you believe in the jackles headcanon of hooker!dean. i cannot possibly say enough about how well-written it is and how many times i have read and read and reread it. 

Phantom Load by lovesrain44 (gen) CONTENT WARNING FOR THIS FIC. HEED THOSE TAGS. this is not a fic i usually rec to people (and in fact it’s bookmarked privately) because it deals with and graphically portrays child sex abuse. that’s not normally something i read fic about or really even think most people should be writing, but the author covers this topic really fucking tactfully for the most part and the fic is really well-done. i actually read this fic before i watched spn (i have no idea how i got here, like i said it is WAY out of my usual comfort zone), and this fic is what made me decide to watch the show. bonkers, right?

What Has Eight Tentacles and Isn't Allowed to Eat Pie? by Annie D (scaramouche) (destiel) this has no tentacle porn I PROMISE. i love this one bc it inadvertently makes the best possible case for an ace or even trans cas. you’ll see what i mean (and if you don’t, message me, i’d love to explain my passions). it’s also incredibly funny. everyone always asks who ellie is and she’s a one-off character they saved on a case. don’t worry about it, she’s great, she deserved to be in a fanfic

Named by RC_McLachlan (destiel) i mean, we all know what named is. if you don’t, it is utterly imperative that you go in blind. i gotta say though as an atheist who despises organized religion this fic accomplished what church and family and religious propaganda could not and made me like jesus. if jesus was in spn proper this is how they should have done it. i love jesus, he’s my homeboy. why haven’t you read this yet it’s so fucking good

Lake Effect by kalliel (gen) short s14 fic about dean and michael and alcoholism and drowning. this is one of those things where you don’t get it until the end and then you IMMEDIATELY have to open a window and scream. LOVE it.

the long walk by katsidhe (gen) short 13.21 coda with (chefs kiss) sam & lucifer content. which is like, its own warning obviously, but i was dying in this part of s13 for more acknowledgement of sam’s lucifer-related traumas here and this fic DELIVERS. late season spn often forgets to make lucifer scary, but he is scary here, and i love that

"Strangers" by saltyfeathers (destiel) an “episode script” on how destiel might’ve gone canon if we weren’t scaring away the general audience. this one is laugh-out-loud funny and also by the author of fic #3 on this list so you really can’t go wrong there

Redemption Arc by galaxysoup (gen) a post-s8 cas fic about him working to undo naomi’s memory wipes and save the world he inadvertently doomed. charlie & as bonding, a nice cas-centric arc, and oh yeah big bonus here is the asexual cas. i just read this one like last night but i loved it <3

body of proof by Askance (doomcountry) (gen) CONTENT WARNING FOR THIS FIC TOO. we all rightfully talk about the repeated theme of dean undergoing sexual violence, but BOTH winchesters have, and this is the sam side of that coin. it’s a really rough read and it won’t be for everyone but tbh sam deserves to have this acknowledged as much as dean does and this fic nails it.

and that’s my list!! pls enjoy, as always DEFINITELY check the tags, etc etc

[spn masterpost]

[smores100]

once again we’re in full agreement lol. What’s your take on s3 remakes you’ve watched? Wondering how you feel about Skam FR as it’s kind of a similar situation to me where the chemistry & beauty is there but the writing and style is iffy (overwrought &overdramatic). My favorite s3 is druck. As a wlw I had high hopes for españa but it was p slow/v desexualized—a whole discussion, but my other gay friend & I were disappointed given how remakes with guys don’t hold back in that respect.. Thoughts?

Honestly re: wtfock tho I really do wonder if they had like one good writer in the room surrounded by fools. Bc it really does feel like some group projects I’ve been in where I feel like I’m the only one who’s not a fucking fool and carry the whole thing while having to fend off bad ideas (but when the majority rules, those bad ideas/execution get put in). I wonder if that’s what happened w wtfock.

re: wtfock, lol group projects are the worst….idk what wtfock’s writing process was like, but i’d love to know it. according to their wiki there were 3 writers this season? all seem to be male, naturally. did the two other writers have good ideas but there was a main writer who overruled them and did his own thing? or maybe they’re the rl one brain cell squad, that would explain a lot :p in any case, i’m unimpressed (friday’s clips did not help with that).

as for the other part of your ask….oh damn i have so many Thoughts on that, lol. this is probably gonna get long and messy, but you asked for it!

* druck - my absolute favorite. it’s the only one i’ve watched since s1, so that definitely played a part in my emotional investment and attachment. still, there was more to it than that. it was the closest to og imo in vibe and style (it felt small, real, lowkey, quiet, natural like og, as opposed to - as you said - overwrought and overdramatic + overproduced like the others); they cast an actual trans guy to play a trans character, if you wanna talk about a skam remake doing something REVOLUTIONARY? druck is the one; i loved matteo’s and david’s characterizations, how they both had a bit of isak and even in them, and the role reversal in some scenes, made things feel fresh *and* fit their characters/story; i LOVE that teens matteo and david were played by actual teens michi and lukas!! they’ve completely ruined me for all other remakes, bc thissssss is how it’s supposed to be! thisssss is how it should look like! THEY ARE KIDDOS. and they (druck and michi/lukas) truly captured what it’s like to be young and fall in love for the first time, the awkwardness and the nervousness and stuttering and fumbling around, the softness and pureness and innocence of it all!!! also they have THE BEST dynamic - other people might prefer all the hot kissing and steamy making out and the smouldering looks, but me? i just couldn’t get enough of their dumb chaotic energy, best friends who love each other deeply and are also constantly little shits to one another. gimme them pranking each other and playfighting every day! and then being soft and THE HANDS and matteo being a clingy koala basking in david’s affection :3 i also loved how for the most part they didn’t just copy/paste og’s storyline, they made some changes and knew how to make *other* changes accordingly for it to make sense and fit the story *they* were telling - for example, replacing the ‘call your gf’ scene with matteo’s panic attack/breakdown (one of my fave scenes), or their reunion at the end of ep 7 (replacing the desperate kissing + sex with a comforting and relieved yet also bittersweet and melancholic hug), or even matteo getting advice from his drug dealer instead of the school’s doctor, lol. also THE BEST BOY SQUAD, hands down. and matteo is my favorite isak bc to me he felt like his own character instead of just another isak, he was different and reletable and a constant Mood. that being said - it wasn’t perfect and it had its issues. there were a few times when i did feel they stuck too close to og scenes and it didn’t *entirely* work for me, just felt a bit off; i will forever be disappointed that they didn’t directly address and acknowledge matteo’s mental state/depression, bc there were enough signs imo to indicate that he did suffer from something. they mentioned ‘therapy’ in mia’s, alex’s and kiki’s cases, i truly thought they would with matteo as well, but alas, they dropped the ball on that one; i was extremely upset with david’s outing, but i’ve since calmed down and have managed to see it in a more positive light, tho i still have mixed feelings about it and am not fully on board with that decision, still wish it had been done differently (but at least! it wasn’t brushed off and was addressed immediately and eventually led to david having agency and yelling out his pain!!! which was good and important and cathartic); also eps 8 and 9 were pretty messy writing-wise, things either didn’t make sense or would’ve made more sense had the clips were organized differently (that random ping pong clip….?). overall tho, the good outweighed the bad, and it remains my fave

* skam france - now that’s a tricky one. the way i felt about it in the first half of the season, is different from the way i felt about it in the second half of the season, is different from the way i feel about ever since watching druck’s s3. it’s funny you should say how similar it is to wtfock for you, bc i’ve been thinking the same thing for quite some time. those neighboring countries sure have a shared flair for the dramatic! fr’s s3 was pretty much the first s3 i watched (i gif-watched half of skamit, couldn’t get into it). i wasn’t planning to (i was extremely unimpressed by the couple of s1 eps i tried watching, and same by axel’s acting in those first two seasons), but even is the loml and they got me gooood with their eliott pov trailer, which might have affected my excitement over it during the first half. back then i really enjoyed it for the most part, despite some clips being rushed or missing the point thus not fully having the required effect (their locker room scene, for example, or the ‘generalizations are bad’ convo), or how much i hated basile (a character so obviously written by a man it’s amazing), or the cheesy piano music. there were enough good things for me to focus on instead (more in a bit) that i could ignore the things i didn’t like or weren’t as good imo. however, all the positivity got sucked out of me when yann noped tf out after lucas came out to him bc WAY TO MISS THE POINT OF SKAM!!! and things went downhill after the director’s IT’S NOT DISNEYLAND IT’S FRANCE 2019 comment. i’m getting all upset just thinking about it, but to say *that*, to explain that horrendous decision bc lowkey homophobic reactions are realistic!!! only to THEN be all ‘haha jk yann isn’t homophobic! we just wanted you to *think* he was! he’s actually an awesome friend who took several days to reflect on all his past wrongdoings while his bff was at home having a nervous breakdown bc he believed his bff hated him!’ ughhhhhhhhh, miss me with that shit. great that they had yann apologizing for his past comments, but the way in which it was done was for pure shock value and angst, completely ooc for his character (all season he was all ‘tell me tell me tell me let me help let me help let me help’ only to do *that*?? nahh), and interesting how out of everyone the only black character was the only one with a negative reaction (remind you of anyone), highlighted even more during ep 7 aka the ott lucas coming out tour. then ep 8, that should have been 100% all lucas and eliott and building up to eliott’s manic episode suddenly had that weird random pov changing clip in the middle of it which truly wtf, basile was still basile, lucas thanked chloe for outing him, more scenes felt rushed, they had sex in school where people could come and go in front of huge windows in broad daylight and luckily didn’t get poisoned from licking all that paint! and i did not like the flatshare, i absolutely hated mika and lisa kicking lucas out of his room - which he pays rent for! - and manon not even trying to put up a fight, and them being like ‘roommate isn’t just a place, it’s a way of living. that’s a family, and you’re more like a cousin.’ ‘a second cousin.’ ughhhhhh and then when eliott was recovering from his depressive episode, they *still* didn’t give lucas his room back or at least let eliott stay there, he was sleeping on the couch, i’m aldjlajdafj. can’t believe i’m gonna say it, but TAKE NOTES FROM WTFOCK. tl;dr there were some good moments in the second half, but i was feeling bitter more often than not about certain things, so my enjoyment wasn’t as high as when it first started. and after watching druck, druck’s brand is definitely much more my style. plus, i was already struggling with making myself believe axel and maxence were in their teens, but after druck it’s completely impossible, so i just pretend they’re in college or something lol. all my issues with it aside, i’d still rate it higher than wtfock, bc overall the writing was better, more coherent, and made much more sense. i also liked lucas’ friendship with the girls; i loved that instead of copying the underwater kiss + 21:21 like some others have, they came up with their own thing i.e. polaris, which i thought was lovely; the lucas/manon crying in the middle of the night together in front of the tv was one of my fave scenes of the season; also love how we were introduced to eliott on the first week! and they spent time together! and specifically the piano playing scene, ohhhh; and in general elu are sweet and i reeeeally like axel and maxence and their friendship. so yeah, it had some major issues, but i’d rather have a coherent story with something done for shock value and drama ONCE than an incoherent story with several shock value moments.

* skam espana - sorry to hear you girls were disappointed! i only watched half of it, so i can only comment on what i saw. i decided to binge watch s1 and give s2 a shot when i heard they were giving cris isak’s story - it felt a bit weird to me, but it was also something different and new, and i did have an appreciation for their decision to have a wlw season (also much more revolutionary to me than showing a gay bashing), so i was intrigued and willing to try it. sadly i didn’t really vibe with s1? it’s totally a personal preference i think, maybe even a cultural thing idk, but it felt very fast and loud and hectic to me, idrk how to explain it. i was just more into the chill more lowkey vibe of druck and skamnl. but i still gave s2 a shot, and idk, it still wasn’t my cup of tea. i thought it was ok for the most part, but there were some things that bothered me - joana/cris felt underdeveloped to me? and things b/w them felt like they were moving so fast from the second they met, like jona was so intense and forward ALL THE TIME, they had like 6 almost kisses in a really short time, like shhh slow down. i remember disliking their ‘call your gf’ scene, it felt really petty and kinda mean to me? bc i felt like joana came on to cris *really* strongly and *very* frequently, so cris was more than entitled to feel hurt and betrayed when she found out joana had a bf, but then cris was kissing a dude and joana positioned herself and her bf in front of cris so she’d see them kissing too, and i just didn’t like bc seriously?? cris is valid, just apologize to her and explain?? idr much else tbh, they had some really cute and sweet scenes afterwards, i’m still against doing the underwater kiss + 21:21 so i was kinda meh about that (tho aesthetically speaking it was BEAUTIFUL, and i’m like, fiiiiine girls deserve an underwater kiss too, i’ll allow it just this once!), and that cuddling clip in ep 6 i think was sweet and the last one i watched. like i said, i was less vibing with this remake, and iirc it was going on during druck’s s3 and skamnl’s s2 - which were my faves, plus skamfr was on too i think and i was lowkey following it too, so….there was just too much all at once and something had to go, and it was skamesp. it was also around the time when panaphobia-gate happened, so *shrugs* i’m not wlw myself so your opinion on it being desexualized is probably more valid than mine? i just know when i did watch, there was a lot of kissing and making out and being cute and touchy with each other, so i thought it was ok? as i’ve mentioned before, i don’t need to see a naked butt or anything like that to *get* it lol, i thought they were lovely! but that’s just me. i will say that my faaaave part was most definitely the cris/amira friendship. they were so wonderful! one of the best skam friendships imo. i might one day go back and finish the season just for the heck of it, but they didn’t do anything major or highly offensive that made me have negative feelings towards it, it was just a personal preference + circumstances (too many remakes!) that made me be less into it and drop it before the end.

[simonjadis]

Anon I’m ASSUMING that these are from the same person; apologies if they are not

I would say that my feelings are similar to yours, but not quite identical ...

Disney’s handling has been imperfect, and some of the mistakes have been made the highest level (I know that people give Kathleen Kennedy a hard time, but if rumor is to be believed, some of the interference that made IX kind of weird came from higher than that)

for example, Kennedy said in an interview that she tries to find people who just make big, successful movies to make sure that these are also big, successful movies. I can understand that as being a safe bet from a business stand point, but that’s not the same thing as finding someone passionate about very specifically telling good, new Star Wars stories, which we did not really get in the Sequel Trilogy

(one of the most common theories that I saw from TLJ apologists was that people didn’t like that it was new/different than what they were expecting, which was really not the issue for me or my friends. Also it was just a speedrun of parts of Episodes V and VI)

I think that I’m “too close” to Star Wars to see it as a financial asset rather than a beloved universe full of characters and stories that I adore, but I don’t think that “literally just rehash the Original Trilogy for two movies and barely acknowledge any other part of Star Wars until IX” was a good idea

Rey deserved her own story. and Luke deserved to not be retroactively robbed of his

as for George Lucas, I do think that years of backlash over the Prequels sucked the fun out of it for him. Also, who doesn’t want four billion dollars? it was a sweetheart deal for Disney, of course

the sad thing is that this meant the end of Clone Wars, because Disney took one look at Lucasfilm’s budget and was like “OH NO YOU CANNOT SPEND THAT KIND OF MONEY ON A CARTOON” which is why Season 6 was paid for by Netflix and why Maul: Son of Dathomir was a comic

I love Star Wars Rebels and I’m not trying to knock the show at all, but the budgetary difference was palpable. Clone Wars did have it a little easier because of the Clone Troopers (all having the same face), but on Rebels, you notice that 90% of the Imperials are the same guy wearing a hat with his visor obscuring most of his face. market scenes show just a few people (but plenty of Storm Troopers)

the designs of the main characters -- Ezra, Hera, Sabine, Zeb, Kallus, Thrawn, Kanan, etc -- are great and loving and detailed and most of those change a little over time, but there’s a reason that we only see so many planets on Rebels. look at the huge armies and crowds in Rebels. my friend @drunkkenobi​ is the first who pointed out to me that in Clone Wars, you sometimes see lines of ships (Space Traffic) and each ship in line will be unique, distinct from the others

it’s not Rebels’ fault that they didn’t have that kind of budget. that’s also why their space battles (and space ships) never quite look right. meanwhile, for Clone Wars, if they wanted a particular scene or ship that went over their planned budget, all that they had to do was ask Uncle George

eccentric billionaires funding expensive media isn’t necessarily the most sustainable model for storytelling, but it sure worked out well for Clone Wars and for The Expanse

(Jeff Bezos personally called up the head of Amazon Prime programming, who had already been considering acquiring the extremely good but expensive show, and was like “hey the cast from this show is at a thing where I am, I’d love to just tell them that their show is saved, give me it?” and we saw as many new locations in Season 4 as we did in the first three seasons)

but streaming -- where you actually get money directly from customers who then, through their activity on your platform, show you exactly what they want to see aka what is keeping them on your platform -- offers a new opportunity for high quality genre media. remember, scifi and fantasy were EVERYWHERE in the ‘90s and the early aughts, and then because too expensive for regular TV unless they had huge audiences. only through streaming do we have these new Star Treks, The Witcher, and the real possibility of a new Stargate series

why do I bring up streaming? because

The Mandalorian goes to show that Disney can 100% do good Star Wars. Rebels was good, despite its budget, but can you imagine how much better it would have been if it had aired on Disney+

as with the DC movies (three of which are good and I’m also excited for Birds of Prey), the solution to the our-movies-made-a-lot-of-money-but-aren’t-strictly-speaking-good is literally just “let the people who do the cartoons make the movies”

and now we’re getting a final, seventh (half) season of Clone Wars! twelve episodes looking better than the show has ever looked!!

if you’re like me, you probably thought to yourself “gee, only 12?” and, cynically, you figured that it’s a trick -- announced at ComicCon in 2018 to build up the first wave of hype for Disney+

and it is ... but it 100% worked on me, I signed up for Disney+ and will pay anything for Clone War

my HOPE is that this is a test run to see if people really like high-quality animated Star Wars stories enough to continue with it. there’s only so much clone wars that one can cover (my suspicion is that we will see Ahsoka fake her death during Order 66 in these eps, so yep, that’s the end of the Clone Wars right there)

imagine a well-written series with everything that Clone Wars had in terms of content and visual quality, but it’s set after Episode IX. to my frustration, IX ends with effectively the same worldstate as VI which essentially means that nothing much happened in the Sequel Trilogy. but imagine a series set after IX. we could see a new set of (Force-wielding) characters. we could see Rey, Finn, Poe, and Rose during some episodes. Rose could finally get to do something that’s not an insulting fool’s errand (she deserves so much better!!!!!)

we don’t need a new Big Scary Empire/First Order thing, just organized crime and pirates and Hutts and bounty hunters and individual planet systems going to war as the characters try to assemble a NEW New Republic (gods I hate the unchanged worldstate)

now, I know that Star Wars Resistance is not ... reassuring. this is the only screencap that I have from it because I couldn’t get into it. it’s not the animation (I enjoyed Tron Uprising and Iron Man: Armored Adventures and this is the same kind of deal), but three things:

-I watch Star Wars for the Force primarily; other stuff can be cool but I need the Force

-I will never care about ships racing and really I don’t care about an individual ship flying; I’m a Command Ship kind of space nerd

-apparently the writing doesn’t improve much during the first season. people tell the main character to not do something, then he does it, and disaster ensues. that’s ... it’s fine, it’s fine to exist as a show, it’s just not for me

obviously, not all Star Wars media is for me, but when something -- like TLJ or the Sequel Series as a whole (even though VII and IX are enjoyable) or Resistance -- disappoints me, I would never accuse it of “ruining Star Wars”

Star Wars is a whole franchise. the breadth of canon isn’t all wiped away by some disappointments. was the MCU ruined by Age of Ultron? no. it was a bad movie but from the same franchise that gave us The Winter Soldier and Thor Ragnarok. hell, Dawn of Justice doesn’t “ruin” Wonder Woman or Aquaman or Shazam. bad movies aren’t contagious

for the past several years, the Entitled Dude crowd has felt empowered. they were radicalized in the altright/redpill/MGTOW/meninist/nazi/gamergate/comicsgate/etc spheres of the internet and now they just have a reflex where they see any sort of representation and decry it as “SJW,” which they also seem to think is a bad thing

in the same way that well-meaning people on tumblr can get radicalized into being antis/puriteens, people with certain vulnerabilities on reddit or youtube can get sucked into a world that tells them that they are the default and that other people existing is “political” in media and in real life, and that people being upset by outright cruelty towards them is both funny and means that the cruel person is the victor. they need therapy and studios need to not listen to them

unfortunately, sometimes there are movies that are bad despite having things like solid representation. Ghostbusters 2016 was a delight, but my friends and I with whom I saw TLJ (all of us queer feminists) left the theater angry. we’ve bitten our tongues a lot (even if it seems otherwise) because publicly criticizing the film too often leads some incel monster to chime in with agreement, and we’re just like

the redpillgate crowed et all is a natural ally of conservative white evangelicals, even though the former group is generally made up of New Atheists (the short version is atheists who hold socially conservative views because racism/misogyny/transphobia benefit them without using christianity as an excuse). it’s kind of like how terfs will side with conservative hate groups because, though they’re natural enemies, they both despite trans people just for existing

unfortunately, when you’re looking at who went to see a movie or who hated it, not everyone posts with an ID card saying exactly their demographic. which is only going to make studios like Disney even more nervous about including queer content in Star Wars and in the MCU (I mean real queer content with characters whose names don’t have to be searched on a wiki)

that was a bit of a tangent, but yeah. sorry if I missed anything

[booksandwords]

Meet Cute: Some People Are Destined to Meet (Anthology)

Read time: 10 Day Rating: 4/5

Contains stories by Katie Cotuguo, Nina LaCour, Ibi Zoboi, Katherine McGee, Sara Shepard, Meredith Russo, Dhonielle Clayton, Emery Lord, Jennifer L. Armentrout, Jocelyn Davies, Kass Morgan, Julie Murphy, Huntley Fitzpatrick and Nicola Yoon

Overall Thoughts So I will start by saying I enjoyed this collection. There is a bit of something for everyone the couples are M/M, M/F and F/F, one of the main characters is trans. There are different time settings, different writing styles and the meet-cutes appear at different points in the stories. IOn the writing styles I think it is important to know that they run the gambit of perspectives (1st, 2nd and 3rd). The stories are charmingly brief (20-25 page each) making it a great palette cleanser or pick up put down book. Now here's the but. Meet Cute really needed an introduction. Either whoever at Alloy collated it or whoever bought the authors together. Due to the diversity within the stories, I was wondering what the brief was. Even just a definition of a meet-cute would have been better than nothing. One other issue I had was that all the meet-cutes were implicitly or explicitly coded as romantic. I would have really liked one that was just a friendship or someone to tackle an ace protagonist. Standout stories: Click, Oomph, Say Everything.

Siege Etiquette by Katie Cotuguo This is a Queen Bee (Hailey) and Farm Boy (Wolf) hiding kinda from the cops in a bathroom. They have shared pasts, misunderstandings abound and there is a definite attraction. It's written in 1st person for only one person (Hailey's) something I don't read a lot but it works. It's an interesting premise well-executed in less than twenty pages. I can see where it could go if it was longer but it works really well at this length.

Print Shop by Nina LaCour It's Evie's first day at a new job, it's not what she expected but she is trying to make the best of it. One of the jobs given to her is setting up social media for the print shop. Lauren is a disgruntled customer. Evie identifies as queer and she has one of the most adorable coming out stories, it was essentially an accident. Nina LaCour has an engaging style. Her story is a meeting of worlds, a meeting of times. It's the perfect length and frames itself well.

Hourglass by Ibi Zoboi Hourglass focuses on Cherish, an African American girl living in a town where there are only 4 other African American families. It is set at the end of her senior year, right before prom. Hourglass is less about the meet-cute and more about female friendship and the end of an era. That is not to say the meet-cute isn't sweet, it is and it challenges some norms and expectations. I was sort of disappointed with Hourglass. I like Cherish. I wanted to know more, I wanted to see what choices she made. Or at a bare minimum, I want to see her rock that dress.

Click by Katherine McGee Click is fantastic. Unlike some of the other stories, it feels entirely self-contained and uses an alternating perspective. The main characters are the hurting and technologically inclined Alexa and the creative Raden, those alignments alone deserve applause. I feel like there is some inspiration taken from not only real-world dating apps but Scythe. It just made me happy. It's a hopeful story with endearing characters.

The Intern by Sara Shepard The main characters are slightly eccentric rock star Phineas and Clara the daughter of a celebrity and not what her father expects. Clara is involuntarily interning at her father's record label for the summer. Phineas and Clara meet as part of her role at V. It's a simple story about how two young people spend a day finding out each other in New York. Honestly, I got The Sun Is Also A Star vibes. It's not bad, it just feels a bit unoriginal and there aren't enough details given for me to really enjoy it.

Somewhere That's Green by Meredith Russo Somewhere That's Green is an opposite attract story. Nia is a young trans woman struggling with having her community acknowledge her identity. Lexie is a Christian girl at her school who appears to be leading the charge to have her use the male facilities rather than the female ones. While I appreciate Nia and Lexie I have issues with Meredith Russo's writing. Meredith Russo is a trans woman with that in mind her writing feels overly cliche and perhaps wasteful. It is a very personal opinion. The story isn't bad, I enjoyed it, I just wish there was something more real about it.

The Way We Love Here by Dhonielle Clayton This is a reasonably clever play on the red string of fate but also uses time travel elements. It's another wonderful, hopeful story with unexpected protagonists. The artistic, driven Viola and the creative but sick Sebastian. Its focus is the possibilities and alternatives life can offer. I would like to know where Dhonielle Clayton drew their inspiration from the setting is on an isolated island which you cannot leave, it all feels very mythological both using eastern and western elements. I really enjoyed it.

Oomph by Emery Lord Oomph is super sweet and the perfect amount of nerdy. The main ladies use Natasha Romanov and Peggy Carter as nicknames, well actually names. They are in an airport waiting for flights. It's very cliche but it's a cliche for a reason. It's just so good. The smores are brilliant. I loved the writing, it's funny and cute.

The Dictionary of You and Me by Jennifer L. Armentrout I'm nopeing all the way out of this one. I have issues. I'm a librarian and this is all kinds of bad and just annoying stereotypes that push my buttons. Basically, I know too much and I can't turn my brain off. It is kind of cute but it is also kind of creepy. Essentially she is a librarian and he is a patron with an overdue dictionary. When she rings him to try and get the book back they flirt. I just can't not see how wrong it is.

The Unlikely Likelihood of Falling in Love by Jocelyn Davies This is another one with perhaps reverse archetypes. She is a math nerd, he is a musician. The plot revolves around her mathematical inclination and a final assessment. Their meet-cute really is adorable and the thing of daydreams, eyes meeting through train carriage windows. Sam urns it into an exercise in probabilities which is adorable. I do like Sam, the plot and the ending. The writing is well suited to the character which is in and of itself isn't easy.

259 Million Miles by Kass Morgan 259 Million Miles focused on missed opportunities with a side of social conscious. The main characters, Philip and Blythe, are likeable and human. It is truly standalone and doesn't ask for more. The ending brings out mixed emotions as one wants from a story dealing with humanity. But it was nice to have a story that was basically a locked room, a true two people put together with only one thing in common. Though in the battle of the futuristic meet-cutes, it loses to Click... easily.

Something Real by Julie Murphy This is the only review I'm spoiler warning so see my Goodreads for this bit.

Say Everything by Huntley Fitzpatrick This is such a well written and unexpected story. But I don't know if it is a meet-cute, there is too much history there. Emma is a fantastic character, I appreciate her resilience and forthrightness. Sean is well, Sean is something. But Emma is an unreliable narrator. The story is written in 2nd person, the only one in the book written as such. Like the book of quotes idea popularised by A Walk to Remember The Book of Lost Opportunites sounds like a brilliant idea. It is such a strong story though, at least to me.

The Department of Dead Love by Nicola Yoon This is the perfect last story, the perfect last line. It is a visually stunning story that plays on some unexpectedly heavy ideas. While I was torn on the three central characters I loved the writing and world. Nicola Yoon has a way with words that evokes emotion.

[princelucivaryaslana]

hngh

what’s it like having parents that care about you?

Like, lemme be clear; the only abuse my parents can be accused of is emotional negligence and, in the case of my mom, emotional abuse. I write in tags and stuff all the time about how both of them have the collective emotional intelligence of a 7-year-old with adhd, and I wish to god I was exaggerating. But that’s all, the only physical stuff I dealt with was the occasional spanking on my behind with a hand.

My dad has a reason for being the way he is, since his mom emotionally (and probably physically let’s be real she was a huge bitch) abused his dad and probably him, and he vowed never to let a woman treat him that way, even if it meant treating his wife the way his mother treated his dad.  As for my mom, as far as I can piece it, despite having six siblings she was at least her dad’s favorite, and she idolized her mom something fierce. I can only imagine being married to a man who didn’t love her and who emotionally (and probably physically lets be real he used to not even let her visit her family and made her quit a well-paying job because it wasn’t “a woman’s place”) just so she could have children like she wanted, only for her husband to have some accident that left him infertile and left her only the option to adopt two children who had already experienced trauma and to watch her husband emotionally (and definitely physically, my mom told me of instances where he’d broken their teeth and gave them bruises) abuse them as well as her and to exacerbate that abuse because it was the only way she could feel in control.....could do that to a person. 

Luckily for me and unfortunately for my aunt and birthmom, I was a pretty low-key kid to raise compared to them, what with my aunt exhibiting behaviors that could be attributed to borderline personality disorder and my birthmom having stereotypical “daddy issues” and running away at 16 to be with some guy, only to come back home covered in lice. They also had the misfortune of living with my dad when he was still young and hadn’t lost 80% of his lung capacity to pneumonia yet, so he hadn’t mellowed out and had a lot more energy to take out his own trauma on them.

I was fortunate in that 1) they had me my whole life so I didn’t have the chance to have sexual and physical trauma thrust upon be before age 5, 2) despite the fact that I was a grade A brat when I was little, all you had to do was scold me sternly enough to make my emotional ass cry and I’d immediately give in and come to you for comfort, and 3) despite having some.....deeply disturbing thoughts, I enthusiastically honored and feared authority (unless my mom told me to fold the laundry and sweep my room lmao) and drew and read when I wasn’t doing homework, so I wasn’t very much trouble at all compared to them. The worst I ever got was when homework started getting hard for me and my parents couldn’t understand why, so most of our conversations about that ended either with me in screaming arguments with my mom about grades because neither of us knew why I was doing so poorly (hint: it was undiagnosed inattentive ADHD that no one knew I had because I enjoyed quiet hobbies) and me being grounded V E R Y frequently, or else it ended with her bargaining with me to try to motivate me to do better (hint: it never worked because when I tried to force myself to do homework I always ended up crying because I couldn’t make myself do it and I had to rely on in-class work and tests to coast by). Since that was the worst of it and not me, say, sneaking a boy into my room so we could fuck, only for my dad to find out and chase him across the yard with his rifle to scare him away, they didn’t really have a whole lot of trouble with me. That’s not to say my dad wasn’t ridiculous still, I’m p sure he threatened to call the cops on me a couple times when I was like 19 despite the fact I wrote him a note telling him where i was going and what exact time I intended to be home by that day, although I can’t for the life of me remember where I was going. All I know is that my mom talked him out of it by telling him exactly how dumb he sounded and how the police would never take him seriously because he cosigned me onto the car insurance. 

Funny how they only ever had my back if it went against each other.

Whatever. Despite all that, and despite how well they looked after me physically (I went to the doctor annually and the dentist semiannually, any dental work I needed done got done, they fed me well enough I’ve been fat my whole life and Mom bought me so many clothes I only ever wore 1/3 of them regularly, and they even indulged me with books and, a little more rarely, art supplies), they were always...kinda ass...at taking care of me mentally and emotionally. Like I said, neither of them could figure out why I was doing so poorly in school after showing so much promise, and while they were really good at the emotional care that little kids need (my dad used to read to me and let me take naps on his belly and rode bikes with me, and they both used to take me on car rides and tell me about the world and their pasts), the older I got the less equipped they were to fulfill my emotional needs. Even when I finally decided I needed to talk to someone about the severe depression I developed after I broke up with a guy who enjoyed exacerbating the guilt I felt for breaking up with him and after the whole AidanReese fiasco, my mom had to go behind my dad’s back to take me to therapy because he doesn’t believe in psychology and thinks that all psychologists think Christians are delusional and sick in the head, and all I ever heard from my mom was that fact and the fact that she was super shitty that she had to pay $20 every week for me to go to therapy just to see no improvement on my “attitude” and grades, despite the fact that she refused to drive any farther than the town she grew up in and despite the fact that that “therapist” was a lawyer with a PsyD who did therapy on the side. Mom’s real good at making you feel bad about things you can’t control.

I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt by saying they’d never had the chance to develop that skill because they hadn’t ever had a “normal” kid before, because though they didn’t understand my passion for music and art and stories, they tried their best to support those parts of me, and I will never forget that no matter how much I hate them now. My dad even funded my brief time as a music performance major because he and I genuinely believed that I loved it enough and was good at it enough to make a life out of it, and he never once tried to convince me to do something else when I told him it was what I wanted. I’ll never forget that either, as much as I have to hate him. Also, my mom sorta understood, although she could never really accept, that I wasn’t exclusively into dudes and that I didn’t want to get married, and she was even the one who actually came to me about me being trans because she read an article in the paper about it and realized a lot of what the lady in the article talked about could be attributed to me, although I couldn’t confirm nor deny it to her because it’s impossible to explain nonbinary as an identity to 70-year-old women. She never spoke a word of it to my dad. That was genuinely the closest she ever got to acknowledging my personhood, and I will never forget that either, as much as I have to hate her.

The only thing I wish they’d been able to give me is the love I needed. I wish I didn’t find the idea of openly sharing myself with my parents as grotesquely absurd and hilariously nonsensical as I do. I wish that my mom could see me as a person with desires and needs, and not as a sentient malfunctional doll. I wish I didn’t have to move away from my parents to finally have boundaries with my mom because she couldn’t ever really respect that I am a person and not her toy. I wish my mom wouldn’t see every behavior and ideal of mine that wasn’t in line with hers as an intentional and direct slight and an indication that I hated her instead of just an expression of myself. I wish my dad wasn’t the type of person to subtly give me the silent treatment the year I chopped all my hair off, just to start speaking to me again when I realized the reason for the silence was because he thought I was indirectly telling the world I was gay and I reassured him that I wasn’t (it was a half-truth, after all, so I wasn’t technically lying). I wish that I didn’t have to actively lie about small details of my life because the simple idea of me not wanting children and not wanting to have sex with another human being isn’t one my mom accepts or my dad would understand, so living with primarily men as a “girl” would make them see me as the same as my aunt and birthmom, which is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE to me. I wish I didn’t have to drop subtle hints to my dad that I’m still a Christian for fear of him finding out I’m not and removing me from his will.

I just...wish my parents loved me instead of either just doing their duty as a parent or seeing me as a toy, and I wish I loved them enough to not only see them as the gateways to the bee farm I intend to manage when they die and I get their house.

because i really need a hug from a parent figure that I care about and who cares about me right now