#and she actually did read them but she wanted paperbacks only and it was a small town so there were no libraries so she used to save up

[delicatetaysversion]

i have not grown up one bit lmao 💀

[thebibliosphere]

(ID provided in Alt)

Lore of the Wilds by Analeigh Sbrana -- available for pre-order now!

A Library with a deadly enchantment.

A fae lord who wants in.

A human woman willing to risk it all for a taste of power.

In a land ruled by ruthless Fae, twenty-one-year-old Lore Alemeyu's village is trapped in a forested prison. Lore knows that any escape attempt is futile–her scars are a testament to her past failures. But when her village is threatened, Lore makes a desperate deal with a fae lord.

She convinces him that she will risk her life for wealth, but really she’s after the one thing the Fae covet above all: magic of her own.

As Lore navigates the hostile world outside, she’s forced to rely on two fae males to survive. When undeniable chemistry ignites, she’s not just in danger of losing her life, but her heart to the very creatures she can never trust.

Release day September 5th, 2023

More pre-order links are incoming as they generate.

----------

Hey booklr! I'm posting this on behalf of my friend Analeigh Sbrana (@literaryxqueen on insta), who doesn't have a Tumblr. Her debut novel, Lore of the Wilds, went live for pre-order this morning, and I'd love it if we could show it some love.

Analeigh tried for two years to sell her story to trad-pub, but the vibe was that trad-pub didn't want to take the risk on a Black Fae fantasy adventure set in a breathtakingly descriptive magic kingdom in a market currently flooded with white fairy romances. So, she took matters into her own hands and joined the ranks of self-pub.

Full disclosure: I worked on this book as a proofreader, and I loved every minute of it. I kept forgetting I was supposed to be working and reading ahead. I scheduled a week to finish reading it in did it in 3 days, and the only reason it took so long was that I had to actually pause and work on it 😅.

So, if you like:

-🍄cottage core -✨fairy core -📚light/dark academia vibes -🌈a diverse cast of lgbtqia+ Black characters -💘romance -🧝🏾‍♀️ being kidnapped by a fairy prince to tidy up his cursed/enchanted library and coming into your own magical powers as a result, then Lore of the Wilds might just be for you!

Here, have a sneak peek of what the physical books will look like:

(ID in alt) The book will eventually be available in eBook, paperback, and hardback--Ana's just having a time getting the links to generate. I'll post them as soon as they're live.

Please do consider giving LoTW some love. It's such a fantastic book, and I'd love to see it thrive where trad-pub left it to fail. Thank you 💖

[acewithapaintbrush]

"My dad has the hots for your dad!"

Amity can only stare as Hunter slams his hands down on the table she is working at. He glares at her with narrow eyes and a mouth pressed firmly into a thin line. The perfect picture of determination and confidence. 

"What. Did you just say?" 

He immediately deflates at her pointed and icy tone. His hands leave her table and fidget with his overalls and hair instead while he squirms from side to side, eyes averted and cheeks blushing. 

"I-uhm. I read that in one of Mama Camila's books. It- well, I mean, it means-" 

Amity cuts him off. "I know what it means. Didn't Camila forbid you from reading them?" 

Them being the small paperbacks with the half naked humans on the front. Usually a woman in distress with a very well built male, rescuing her from certain doom with wet hair and big abs. The first time Camila had caught Hunter reading one of them she'd almost burst a blood vessel and ripped it right out of his hands. 

"Nonononono," she had chanted and hugged a perplexed Hunter to her chest, carding a hand through his hair. "Those books are way too spicy for an innocent, cute boy like you!" 

Hunter huffs and puffs. "I'm an adult. She can't tell me what to read." At Amity's raised eyebrow he mutters "And she didn't find the one hidden under my mattress." 

He shakes his head and takes her shoulders to shake her a little. She allows it, 'cause she can see how agitated he is. "But that's not the point! Darius has… he likes your dad. As in like-like! And we gotta figure out how we feel about that." 

Amity thinks about Darius. The dashing rebel, who had been pulling the strings of an uprising in the shadows from the start. A headstrong abomination user. He would definitely be a big step up from Odalia, that's for sure. 

She imagines Darius as her father's new partner and discovers that she is more than okay with that. 

Amity is not naive. She knows her father needs a headstrong partner at his side, someone who is not afraid to take the reins in a relationship. Not like Odalia, who's taken that to mean that she should micromanage every facet of his life and turn him into someone he is not, but someone who reminds her father to eat and to leave work alone every once in a while. 

"I approve." Amity says and seeing Hunter's desolate expression narrows her eyes. "You got a problem with my dad?" 

"What?" Hunter lets her shoulders go as if they have burned him. "No, of course not! He's super cool! I just… Arrrrrg!" He rapidly runs his hands through his hair. "I just don't know if I can handle a second parental figure!"

"Uhhh."

He starts walking up and down in front of her, Waffles flying after him with happy little trills. "Things with Darius are good right now. He told me to call him Dad and it's… It's yeah, you know? But it's also a bit awkward sometimes, you know? The only father figure I ever had before… Well. And we are still trying to find our rhythm, you know? How am I supposed to deal with another parent right now?"

"Hunter!" Amity has to shout to get him to stop. She can't believe she is having this conversation right now. "Hunter. You do know that you have like, four parental adults in your life. Don't you?" 

He blinks at her and his blank face tells her everything she needs to know. She wants to face-palm so bad right now. "What?" 

Amity starts counting on her hand. "You call Camila Mama Camila." 

"Wha- But that's just-", he splutters. Amity talks right over him. 

"Eda calls you her Fledgling at least once a week and she and Raine are kinda a packaged deal. Grandma and Grandpa Clawthorne call you son so often, I don't even know if they know your real name. Every time Lilith fusses over your scars she mutters 'my poor boy' under her breath. And let's not forget Willow's parents who took one look at you and had the adoption papers ready." Amity looks at her hands, which have barely been enough to count on. "Oh look at that. Not four but eight, actually."

Hunter looks gobsmacked and not a little teary eyed. Amity pats his shoulders, just a little relieved that he has apparently forgotten about their parents budding romance over this new revelation. She'd rather not get involved in that for as long as possible. 

"Face it, Hunter. You are pretty much public son number one at this point." 

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

There is no reason for this except that I had the image of hunter saying "my dad has the hots for your dad" and me running with it

[autumnslance]

FFXIV Write 2024: 18 Hackneyed

“This is,” Thancred began, waving the thin paperback carelessly. “Quite possibly one of the worst things we have yet read.”

Aeryn snatched the book from him before it slipped—purposefully, the dexterous bastard—from his fingers, glowering. “You liked the characters.”

He grinned at her indignation. “I liked a character, and how she makes the others come to life when sharing scenes, but one well-written character who is quite likely the author’s self-insert cannot make up for a trite and tired plot. Which you said of it first.”

“I said it employed some hackneyed tropes that did weaken the climactic moment,” Aeryn said, trying to smooth the spine and cover again. “You’ve gotten crumbs in the binding, how in the world…”

“Anyroad,” Thancred said with a dismissive shrug. “I think we can agree that even for a cheap yellowback, it’s a stale and clichéd tale that was produced for a quick gil and will be forgotten just as easily.”

Aeryn nodded, shaking the last of the crumbs out and fixing a few dog-eared corners. “It’s the sort of novel that lives up to the stereotype of purchases from those wandering book stalls. Yet you never fail to let them stop you and sell you some tawdry affair.”

“When we were young, Fourchenault once called them a plague in the city streets, and thus did they become my favorite places from which to purchase reading material,” Thancred replied cheerfully. “I have in fact found a few rare gems among the muck, now and again.” He gestured at the tattered tome Aeryn was attempting to clean up. “This is not one of them.”

“Highly readable, though,” she mused. “You know it’s drivel, and yet keep going because it simply moves along.”

“Oh, the author has a way with words, certainly. Neither of us stumbled or grew tongue-tied whilst reading aloud. Excellent craftsmanship. Now if they could only extend that to plot and characters.”

“Perhaps they do,” Aeryn said. “The bookseller said this is an early entry in a series.”

“No!”

She nodded. “A dozen and counting, all around that one shining character and her exploits.”

Thancred rubbed his chin. “Hrm. This may bear further investigation, then.”

“You said you hated it.”

“I said it was among the worst things we’ve ever read. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. And so did you.”

“Well. Sure. But do we really want to read more?”

“Now that we are aware of the possibilities, I say we unfortunately need to. It’s become an imperative.”

Aeryn rolled her eyes.

“I’m quite serious,” Thancred said, getting up and meandering to the door. He looked over his shoulder and smirked. “Especially since some of that authorial talent with wordplay during the sex scene had quite the impressive effect on you.”

Her blush instantly darkened her cheeks as she opened her mouth to retort, snapped it closed again, and resorted to glaring and fuming about how mad she actually wasn’t. She would not throw the book—for various reasons, chief among them her tendency to baby anything bound—but it was probably one of the closest baits he had managed yet.

“Come along,” he urged, nonchalant. “Let’s find that bookseller and see if they have more of these wretched things, and if they do in fact improve with the writer’s practice.”

She did join him, and arm in arm they made their way out to Sharlayan’s streets and plazas, searching out cheap and terrible reading material.

[imsodishy]

(prev) Part 4 (next)

Billy doesn’t actually have anything to do. The party invites have shriveled up. Dates too, girls still eye him up in the halls, but none of them actually want to put up with his shit. So he’s back in the arcade parking lot before five thirty anyway, he can wait here just as easy as he could anywhere else in this town. At least there’s a streetlight here for him to read under as the sun sinks.

He's only been there about twenty minutes when Max explodes out of the arcade, door snapping against the limits of its arc.

Sinclair is hot on her heels, hands bouncing like he’s pleading. “I just don’t understand why you care,” Billy hears him say.

Max turns on him, shouts, “I don’t!” right in his face.

“Then so what? If he’s being –“ Sinclair freezes. He’s spotted the Camaro. He takes a step back.

Max spins again to follow his sight line, she spots him too, and her angry little face gets pinched. She storms away from Sinclair. Billy can see his mouth flapping, trying to come up with something to say to her, but he doesn’t manage it before Max has sealed herself into the car with Billy.

“Let’s go,” she says when Billy doesn’t immediately take off. Throws about three extra syllables in go.

Fine then, no skin off his nose. He tosses his paperback in the back and turns the engine on. Sinclair just stands there and watches as they peel out, Max keeps her face turned pointedly away from him. He doesn’t ask. No point.

She clearly dwells on whatever the issue is as they drive. The car silent except for Ratt on the stereo. She’s got her arms crossed, jaw working like she’s chewing leather. They’re only about five minutes from home where she finally spits it out. “Do you have brain damage?” she snaps at him, then folds impossibly tighter into her seat.

Okay. Not what he was expecting.

He turns the radio down, rolls his lips into his mouth. “What?”

She huff and starts flinging her hands around like she does when she’s worked up, “Well I don’t know! Did the – did the drugs mess you up?”

Ah. Perhaps he’s been being weirder at home than he realized. This can’t just be about the silent treatment. That’s weird, but it’s not possible brain damage weird.

“You didn’t break my brain, Maxine.”

“Well then what the hell is wrong with you?” she explodes.

He scratches his chin while he thinks it over. It’s a question he’s heard a lot, in a lot of different tones, but he’s never found a satisfactory answer. Never found a way to explain that, even on his best days, he feels like he’s speaking a foreign language. Let alone bad days, where it still feels like that, but now it’s a language he doesn’t know at all, and also maybe his tongue has been cut out of his mouth. How he’s swimming through cement while everyone else seems to be walking on water.

As he parks in front of the house on Cherry he thinks about trying to explain any of it and he gets hit with a wave of exhaustion. Max’s breath puffs little clouds as the heat flees the vehicle while she waits on him. The engine ticks down in the late November cold.

“Dunno.” he says eventually.

Max makes a shrill noise of frustration in her throat and stomps her way into the house.

They make curfew, for whatever that’s worth.

[befuddled-calico-whump]

Total $hit$how: Bombs Away

in which Joy overcomes her boredom

cw: adult language

previous ///// masterlist ///// next

×~×~×

Things went from exciting to uneventful in record time. Even though they were on a supposed ‘tight schedule’, all they did was train and practice and practice and train.

Joy was no stranger to training overkill; she'd experienced it plenty in the army, but that at least made some sense. The army was full of dumbass kids who came in not knowing which way was up. Here wasn't. 

...With maybe the exception of Harbor. The guy looked thirty, but sure as hell acted like a dumbass kid. It was hard for her to pinpoint how old he actually was.

Not that it really mattered. No matter their age, skill, or background, they were all monkeys in the same shitshow.

They'd been here for close to a week now, and they still hadn't been given more info for the all important file. Not to mention the fact that the mission made no sense to her.

Sure, they were all skilled. Jericho had proven he could bust down cyber walls better than a digital wrecking crew, and she'd seen Benji crack every lock Sahota tossed his way in seconds. Even Kaius, for all his insufferability, was adept at finding little details the rest of them missed. And though Harbor followed directions about as well as a deaf rat would follow the pied piper, he still had the biotech to give him an edge on whatever Sahota tasked them with.

Skills aplenty. But why couldn't whoever’d sought them out just helo some mercenaries to whatever floor the secret tech shit was on and bust it up? Why did it require so much finesse? If it was so important, if leaving the program alone would potentially doom the city, what was with all the secrecy? And maybe most importantly, why couldn't the almighty Sahota and Vic do it themselves?

It probably wasn't her business. She probably just didn't care enough about the polite subtleties tech conglomerates required to give a shit.

But the powers that be demanded secrets and fine tuning, so fuck it, she'd play their game.

Training was fun enough, but Joy could stand to complain about their downtime options. As far as she could tell, they could either read, work out in the gym that was set up on the far side of the training room, or mindlessly wander the hallways.

She'd checked out the little library, and hadn't found many books she was interested in reading. There was barely a shelf's worth of nonfiction; old equipment manuals and biographies of people she’d never heard of. There was a significantly higher amount of classic literature. The kind of shit you had to read in school, and probably her least favorite genre. She'd sifted through the paperbacks anyway, if only out of boredom. The most worn book was a copy of the dreaded 1984, and when she flipped through its pages, she found tally marks. A shit ton of them, like someone had been bored and just wanted to see how many they could make.

There were maybe a hundred to a page, carefully drawn in the margins. Weird as they were, Joy couldn't find anything that gave them context, even after devoting an evening to checking the rest of the books for markings.

Maybe someone had a weird sense of humor and just wanted to put down 1,984 tallies. Either way, it didn't seem worth it to lose her mind over, so at the end of the night, she'd just shelved it and gone to bed. That had only been day two. Who knew how much time she'd have to kill while waiting for the mission to kick off?

The compound was woefully lacking in the engineering department. It didn't even have a proper toolbox, at least not one she'd been able to find, and Joy resorted to swiping little bits of cutlery and disposables to build shit. Nothing useful, just little things to entertain herself.

Day three, she made a working crossbow out of toothpicks and dental floss. Day four, a tiny model plane crafted from broken plastic cutlery. By day seven, she was on the verge of dismembering the AC unit in her room, just to see if she'd be able to fix it without a manual.

Joy pondered if it would be worth it as the crew stood half-awake on the sparring side of the training room, waiting for the morning’s session to begin. Of course, she didn't exactly have tools, but maybe she could improvise something.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed everyone else suddenly look towards the door, and made an effort to point her gaze in the same direction and pretend to pay attention, even though her mind was elsewhere.

It was Vic who walked in. A little weird, since it was usually Sahota strutting through the doors, but Joy brushed it off.

“Good morning, everyone,” Vic said.

“Good morning,” she parroted with the rest.

Maybe she could find a butter knife in the kitchen? With enough dedication, she could probably shape it into a half-decent flathead.

“I heard you've all been doing well in your training,” Vic continued.

What if she ran into an allen bolt though? Well, if it wasn't recessed she could probably finger-loosen it with enough dedication, but if it was—

“Today I'm going to test your skills.”

Joy's gaze suddenly sharpened. A test? That was new. Did that mean they were finally close to getting this show on the road? She raised her hand, and waited for Vic to look her way.

“How are you gonna do that?”

“I've laid out a mock mission. I'll give you all an objective, and see how quickly you can meet it. And perhaps more importantly, how you meet it.” He folded his arms, offering a friendly smile. “I'm afraid I haven't had the time to watch every one of Sahota's sessions. I’d like to see how it's coming along with my own eyes.”

“Where is Sahota?” Kaius asked from beside her.

“He's on a mission. A real one.” Vic chuckled. “Can't come to the phone right now and all that.”

“What sort of mission?”

“Well now, I can't go handing you all the details, Mr. Manak. I'm sure you understand.”

Joy had already assumed Sahota was going somewhere. This morning, she'd caught him and Vic in the kitchen and she swore they'd been about to kiss. She'd awkwardly excused herself then ran to tell Jericho.

Poor Jer needed something to distract himself with. The two of them had learned that there was no wifi in the computer lab way back on day one. And since they couldn't leave the compound and didn't have communication devices of their own, that meant they were effectively cut off from the rest of the world.

Which did make sense, considering all the top secrets they'd supposedly be exposed to. Not to mention the fact that the base’s location was probably a secret in itself.

Joy could deal. Her family was used to her going months without contact. Jer, on the other hand, was used to working from home. He had a kid now, a six year old daughter, and fuck had it really been that long since she'd last seen him?

They’d only had a semester's worth of compsci partnership before she'd deployed for the third time, but they'd really hit it off. Kept in touch, more or less, though she'd never mentioned her shady weapons dealings and he'd never mentioned his secret hacker missions. Which made them even. And now their respective skills had brought them back together, so Joy couldn't complain.

She was a little hurt that he'd never mentioned his kid, but given his skillset, she got it. You could never be too safe when you had both a family and a dangerous hobby.

“Her name's Arabella,” he'd told her, passing over a wallet-sized photo of a grinning girl with an assortment of wildflowers poking out of her softly-coiled afro. “Her mom took that on her birthday this year. She wanted a fairy princess party. That's the reason for all the flowers.”

“She's adorable.”

“She's a handful,” Jer said, smiling a proud-dad smile as he put away the picture. “She's the only reason I agreed to do this.”

Joy didn't have to ask what he meant. She didn't know what was at stake for the rest of the team, but for the two of them, it was just as much about protecting their loved ones as it was staying out of jail. It wasn't the government she had to worry about, or pride, or how society might judge her family. It was old enemies. People who would see her picture on the news and suddenly know where to look for her weaknesses. She imagined Jericho was in the exact same boat.

Vic clapped his hands together; a relatively soft sound, but enough to jerk her focus back into the moment.

“If everyone is ready, I'll brief you on your tasking.” He strolled over to one of the built-in metal cabinets that lined the sparring area, punching in a code on a keypad that prompted the doors to slide open. Inside, on the shelves, were what Joy could only describe as high-tech basketballs.

Or at least they were roughly the size and shape of a basketball. Most similarities ended there. They were smooth metal, with fine seams that suggested interior electronics, and a lense that was almost like… no shit.

“Are those robots?” Joy blurted out, forgetting to raise her hand this time.

Vic smiled. “Sharp, Miss Cavan. They are. Or drones, rather.” He took one in his hands, thumbing a button on the side, and the thing whirred to life, lifting itself from Vic’s grasp and hovering there.

Joy watched it with wide eyes. How was it floating? There was no propelling system or engine she could see, was it—?

“Electromagnetism,” Vic said, as if answering her thoughts. “We have a weak field that covers the training grounds.”

“Fancy stuff,” Jericho murmured.

“Is that our task?” Benji asked, gesturing at the drone. It swiveled in the air, facing its camera towards him, and he took a cautious step back. “Those… thingies?”

“On the contrary,” Vic said, moving to activate the other two. “The drones will act as a stand-in for armed security guards. They'll attempt to prevent you from reaching your goal.”

Benji gave an exaggerated wince. “But the drones aren't armed, are they?”

“They are.”

Joy's eyes flew to the trio of bots, scanning for weapons capabilities. Based on their size, they didn't have the carrying capacity for ammo or a full auto system. Not that she assumed Vic was willing to shoot them, but…

“Each drone is equipped with the equivalent of a cattle prod. Nothing that'll do permanent damage, but enough to give you a sting.”

Benji took a bigger step backwards. At this point, Joy was probably the only one in range of said ‘equivalent of a cattle prod’, but she didn't care. If anything, she wanted them to come at her so she could watch how they deployed their attack. Fuck, she’d give her left arm to take one of these apart. Maybe Vic would let her mess around with their armaments? She could probably devise a ranged electrical attack, if she could just get a look at the internals. She'd done similar shit in the gun shop, and she'd worked with some low-grade drones when she was still running arms overseas. Shouldn't be too tough to combine the two.

“What is our task?” Kaius took a step forward, so that he was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her, his eyes on the drones. “What goal will they be trying to prevent us from reaching?”

At that, Vic drew out another metallic device, this one boxy and covered in so many screens and buttons Joy figured most were just for decoration.

Vic set it down, typing a quick sequence into a keypad next to the cabinet. A giant sound, like stone dominoes, echoed out from behind them, and Joy whirled around.

The concrete pad that stretched between the sparring mats and the gym equipment was moving, shifting around like tectonic fucking plates and rearranging into something that looked like an abstract painting; huge cement cubes stacking into a maze of stairs that nearly reached the ceiling.

“Holy shit,” Joy whispered. “How does that work?”

Vic chuckled. “I can’t give away every secret, Miss Cavan.”

“Can I come work for you guys?”

“We'll see.” He hefted up the metallic box, fidgeting with some of the buttons and dials on one of its faces.

“Alright, team, listen up,” Vic said, raising his voice to draw their attentions back from the newly formed obstacle course. “This,” he held up the box, “is a bomb.”

Joy raised her eyebrows, again scanning its surface. If it was a bomb, its fuzing was total overkill. But given her current surroundings, she guessed she shouldn't be too shocked.

“It's… like a real bomb?” Benji asked, but Vic’s only reply was a smile. He pressed a button, and the side facing them lit up in a garish, movie-style countdown. Digital red, seconds already ticking away.

“Shit,” Benji muttered.

“I trust you understand your goal then.” Vic pressed another button and the box spun out of his hands, hovering alongside the drones for a moment before disappearing into the maze of concrete that now stood in the center of the room.

“Evade the drones. Disarm the bomb. You have one hour.”

He grinned at the collection of shocked faces surrounding him.

“Try not to die.”

×~×~×

tag list:

@theonewithallthefixations

[blysse-and-blunder]

in lieu of a second chance

10:30pm, sunday, may 12, 2024

wow oh man i have forgotten how to do this!! but it's spring, it's the end of the term, it's the start of a new season and a new burst of creativity and, perhaps, a different routine-- so let's try again.

reading audio-books and ebooks have been my absolute constant companions all winter, but shout-out to the stack of paperbacks on my bedside table, which i am slowly but surely working through. finished italo calvino's if on a winter's night a traveler (a loan from @hematiterings), part of my now intentional quest to read calvino's whole oeuvre, and basically loved it. the whole 'first chapters of various novels you'll never get the rest of' was such a good way to showcase a bunch of cliches from, like, mid-century literary fiction. very meta, and very fun. the connective frame narrative, in second person, was a little more of a stretch (again, very mid-century literary self-referential/ironic/whatever, which unfortunately i did find amusing)-- and calvino's female characters are not great, except for in the nonexistent knight's narrator who i loved)-- but there was a section addressed to a female reader which did, in fact, feel like it read me for absolute filth. other finished reads from the last few months which i will mention here briefly: the angel of the crows, katherine addison; our wives under the sea, julia armfield; the bell in the fog, lev ac rosen; the nutmeg's curse, amitav ghosh; the ruin of kings, jenn lyons.

listening this would have been different if i'd written this last week, but have y'all heard beyonce's album cowboy carter?! i know i'm a few months late but i actually feel like i'm years late, like i haven't responded to a beyonce album this strongly maybe ever. i love the covers, i love the vocal layering and harmonies, i love the samples from old timey radio and everything familiar and texas and country about it...i keep thinking i have a favorite track, but genuinely i like listening to this one all the way through, as a cohesive album, as a work in itself. have a pitchfork review. pull quote:

"On Cowboy Carter, Club Renaissance is swapped out for KNTRY Radio Texas, an AM station hosted by an ever-hazy Willie Nelson. Here she re-contextualizes roots music—Americana, folk, country—for a contemporary moment, reminding listeners that Black artists were the genesis of these forms and never stopped playing them, despite what Hollywood or Nashville might have on offer....Despite drawing from the kitsch and fun of ’70s and ’80s country music, Cowboy Carter has an air of melancholy to it, a quality that reverberates through the scores of songs in minor keys about loneliness on the range.

^^ this is a playlist of the whole album on youtube, if you're into that. AMERIICAN REQUIEM, the opening track, is what hooked me-- i was in from the opening notes. but TEXAS HOLD EM' is also great. fuck yeah, rhiannon giddens.

watching so in addition to rewatching the entire sixth season of dropout's game changer today, last week we finished a truly wild show out of netflix italy: la legge di lidia poët / the law according to lidia poët, which is a historical mystery-romance like only netflix can make. is it bridgerton but for ninteenth century italian lawyers? is it the girlbossification of an actually interesting historical figure? yes, maybe, but everyone is very attractive and the costumes are bonkers in a satisfying way. she has insect themed jewellery, rides a bike, has a lot of sex, finds a decent relationship with her brother and, god help me, i do want a second season.

featuring, hey isn't that pasquale from my brilliant friend? and wow, they probably think this song choice is really cool but it is so on the nose in english it is almost distracting.

playing hollow knight! hollow knight. hollow knight. it's become a problem, actually, since i have quite literally turned my evening yoga time into gamer time, and would you believe, i am less flexible and have higher anxiety levels lmaoo. but i'm getting so powerful i don't care. i probably can't promise myself to beat this game any time soon, and should stop thinking i can, but look! two dreamers down?!

making patched the inner thighs of some jeans-- they will probably remain weekend pants, but they're further from dead than they were. similarly, clumsily darned a hole in my sweater. baked a caffeinated cake courtesy of a b. dylan hollis video (coffee loaf from 1959) . glued a wooden salad tong back together and i feel like the seams are actually quite subtle.

(this wood glue claims to be food safe after curing, pray for me etc etc).

working on ooof. i am done teaching but still owe two-three students emails. i survived my committee meeting but have done nothing to follow the schedule of deadlines we set me, despite being so excited to back on may 2 / so energized to do All the Things back on april 26. i have an article to prep to submit! a chapter to finish tweaking (reworking? reframing? changing from the ground up? lololololol)! not to mention a newsletter to draft and copy edits (almost done) to send back on a friend's article! but i can't stop playing hollow knight in all my free time, and really, what's more important here.

[shieldofiron]

Billy Hargrove’s Haunted Bong

For Harringrove Week March 29, Happy Billyday! Also on AO3 Here.

Specific Dialogue: “You don’t know what you put me through.”

NSFT-ish, just at the end.

Steve feels a little awkward picking through Billy Hargrove’s stuff. His dad’s gone, and now Max and her Mom are moving, they need to get rid of the excess, he knows that. There’s some of Billy’s dad’s stuff here, too, though a lot of it has been picked over by the neighborhood moms, trying to get shoes for their husbands and stuff.

There’s less of a market for teenage boy stuff, though Tommy has a few button downs slung over his arm, and apparently Max unloaded a bunch of Billy’s tapes on ‘The Freak’ Eddie Munson.

Steve is really here more as a favor to Max. He doesn’t know what he would do with a Scorpions t-shirt, or a stack of books. Who knew that Billy read so much, anyway?

Max walks over and crosses her arms, “Hey. Want you to see something.”

He shrugs, tossing the paperback he was never going to buy back in a pile, “Ok.”

Max leads him up the stairs and into the half packed house and into a mostly empty room. There’s a bed that’s been stripped, and a small cardboard box, open and half full on it. Steve catches a glimpse of a few tapes inside, and a handful of clothes. Maybe it’s stuff they’re saving.

Max holds up two cans of Aquanet, “Do you want these? I’ll give them to you for a dime.”

Steve fights to keep his face neutral, “Uh, not my brand. But thanks.”

“How about this?” She holds up a bottle of cologne, Paco Rabanne.

He shrugs, “Sure. How much?” This is probably fine, a non-weird thing to get, anyway.

“Uh... a quarter?” She says distractedly while he glances down to dig in his pocket for change. “And what about this?”

He looks up and almost chokes on his spit. It is without a doubt the biggest bong he’s seen in person.

“Put that down!” He says.

She scowls, “What’s your problem?”

“N-nothing. Didn’t Eddie want that?” Steve really would feel better if she put it down. Maybe stepped away from it too.

“He took the other one,” She shrugs, “Why? What’s wrong with it? It’s just a vase.”

Right. Just a vase.

He snatches it from her hands, just wanting to get it out of the house, “How much?”

“Uh... a dollar. No! Two dollars!” She cries.

He rolls his eyes, because this thing is probably expensive as shit, but he just wants it out of her house.

“Sure,” He pulls a couple of bucks out of his wallet, “I’ll see you, okay?”

She nods, counting the money, “You want your change?”

“No, nope, just gonna head right home,” And smash this thing to pieces, he thinks.

He hops in the beemer, throwing his vase across the passenger’s seat along with the cologne. It really is enormous, blue swirling glass that would be kind of pretty if it wasn’t dirty with old bong water and stuff.

“Never let it be said I never did anything for you, Hargrove,” He grumbles, eyes searching the road wildly.

He turns the corner off Cherry Lane, shaking his head.

“I mean, whatever. I didn’t like... jump in front of a monster. Though I did. For Max, I mean,” He tightens his hands on the wheel, “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

He glances down at the bong and the cologne.

He shakes his head, “You would think I was high already.”

The bong glints in the afternoon sunlight, reflecting the blue skies out the window and the slowly turning leaves.

“You know my birthday is tomorrow,” Steve says, to no one. “I guess I could have one smoke. Just to see what I’m missing.”

The sunlight glints, and it’s almost like a wink.

He’s going crazy, that’s the only explanation for why he heads home and takes the bong into his house instead of throwing it away. He dumps the old water in the sink, trying to take it apart so he can rinse it out. He might actually catch some kind of disease smoking out of this thing, considering Billy died in July and it’s halfway through January.

He shakes his head at himself, dunking the bong into the water and rubbing the side, trying to take off the film of hairspray and weed smoke that’s formed a crust along the sides. Probably he won’t smoke from it. It’s a lost cause.

The bong trembles in his hands and he rears back into the kitchen island, soapy water splashing everywhere. Blue smoke comes from the top, pale denim blue that swirls in the air and shifts and then...

Billy fucking Hargrove is sitting on the edge of his kitchen sink.

He looks much the same as he always did, shirtless, tanned and perfect with a necklace glinting from his chest. Winking in the sunlight.

“Harrington,” He says with a smile.

“H-holy shit.” Maybe Steve is high. How did he get this high and he doesn’t even remember smoking?

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Billy’s eyes sparkle, electric blue. Were they always that blue, glowingly blue? They look like Kyle McLaughlin’s eyes in that freaky movie Dustin dragged Steve to a few weeks ago.

“This is not happening,” Steve shakes his head, “This isn’t happening.”

Billy laughs, full and open, and then the blue smoke is back, smelling like Paco Rabanne and cigarettes and Aquanet, swirling through the air.

“What do you wish for, Pretty Boy?” Billy’s voice sounds like it’s coming from  right in Steve’s ear, but when he looks, the Billy on his counter is just smiling mischievously.

“Uhhh...”

Billy disappears and the smoke surrounds Steve. He clings to the countertop, the only thing that feels solid. Smoke slides along his face and arms, like a caress.

“Make a wish,” Billy’s voice beacons, “Birthday Boy.”

“I-if I blow hard enough, will you disappear?” Steve mumbles, not sure what kind of weird dream this is.

“If you blow?” Billy whispers, his tongue sliding along his lower lip teasingly.

“What are you?”

“You’ve never heard of a genie? Djinn is more accurate,” Billy’s voice is behind him now, along the back of Steve’s neck, sending goosebumps down his spine. Billy hums and it takes Steve a few moments before he picks out the theme to I Dream of Jeannie. “Should I call you, Master?”

“It’s not real,” Steve half laughs, “You died. I saw you die.”

“Where did the body go, Harrington? Disappeared... like smoke...” Billy appears in front of him, sudden and solid, “Poof.”

“You’re not a genie, though,” Steve shakes his head, “They aren’t real.”

“Try me, Harrington,” Billy smiles, eyes blazing.

“Uh...” Steve blinks at Billy’s face, so very close. He’s had dreams like this. Billy Hargrove, close and within reach, kind and laughing and oh so kissable.

“Go on,” Billy’s chin juts forward, and its so much like Steve’s dreams, he gives in. Maybe it is a dream. A weird one, but one of his regular dreams.

“Is it a three wishes kind of deal?” He asks.

Billy shrugs, “Dunno. I came to in a van full of shouting Russians who shoved green liquid down my throat. And then smoke poured out of my mouth, my ears, my eyes, and I turned into... this. Tried to go home, get Max’s attention. But then I got sucked into that thing when I got too close.”

Steve stares at him, at his lips actually. Is it nighttime already, or is it just the smoke swirling around?

“S.S. Butterscotch,” He mumbles.

“What?”

“I want a scoop of Scoops Ahoy S. S. Butterscotch,” Steve chokes, “Haven’t had it since the mall... uh...”

Billy puts a hand behind his back and winks at Steve, sending an electric bolt of lust down his spine.

“Your wish is my command,” Billy pulls his hand out and there’s a waffle cone stacked with a single scoop of S. S. Butterscotch, as smooth and round as if Steve had done it himself.

Billy raises it up to Steve’s lips, his eyes going dark and cloudy blue when Steve licks along the top. A shiver runs down his spine from the top of his head, making his knees weak.

“Oh, Harrington. You don’t know what you put me through,” Billy smiles, “Never thought I’d see you again. Never.”

Steve blinks, his mouth swirling with the flavor he’s been craving since Starcourt.

Steve finally manages to dig his claws out of the counter and reaches out, knocking the cone to the side. Well, it’s his dream. He might as well get to do what he wants.

Billy Hargrove tastes like woodsmoke and butterscotch and he groans into Steve’s mouth like he’s real, like he’s oh so human again.

Blue smoke trails up Steve’s spine like a featherlight touch, and he trembles, falling forward, hands digging into Billy’s hair. He’s always dreamed about boys and girls, he’s always had a lot of sex dreams, but they never felt like this.

Billy’s chest is warm, though there’s no heartbeat. But his tongue is wet and wicked and alive, and tendrils of smoke are curling against Steve’s overheated skin while Billy’s fingers dig into his hips. Holy shit.

Steve groans when Billy begins to slowly drag his hands to the placket of Steve’s jeans, teasing along the buttons. His tongue is teasing the inside of Steve’s lips, turning all of his thoughts to liquid lust.

Then Billy disappears into smoke and laughter, and invisible hands trail along Steve’s cock, under his jeans... through his jeans...

“Oh fuck,” Steve gasps, hips working. “Don’t stop.”

“Feel good?” Billy’s voice is somewhere on the ceiling.

“Fuck, yes, B-Billy... fuck...”

“Wanna make you feel so good,” Billy says softly, his voice crackling like a flame, “Wanna make you cream your jeans.”

Steve is embarrassingly close to that already, “R-Revenge?”

“For all the times you turned me on in class? No. But good guess,” Billy practically purrs when a smoky finger flicks the head of Steve’s cock and Steve cries out.

Steve gasps, “T-then...”

“Haven’t touched anyone in six months,” Billy laughs, and it echoes off all the polished surfaces of the Harrington’s pristine kitchen. “And you’re so touchable.”

Steve closes his eyes before they roll back in his head and makes an inarticulate noise, “Fuck, Billy... I’m... I’m... g-gonna...”

Billy’s corporeal in a moment, hand pressed over the invisible fingers, pressing Steve’s cock hard into his stomach, a kiss to the corner of his mouth, “Come on, Pretty Boy. Get there.”

Steve’s orgasm bursts through him like a wildfire, and he screams into Billy’s shoulder, pressing his mouth against flexing muscle in a vain attempt to silence himself. Blood roars in his ears and he passes out into Billy’s waiting arms. He half expects to go right through them, but they catch him, sure and steady.

When he wakes up, his eyes are blurry and his body is blissed out, floating like it hasn’t since Starcourt. He sits up in his bed and looks around the room but there’s no one there.

Oh shit. It really was a dream. He bites down the bitterness and looks down at the bed beside him.

It’s the bong, gleaming and blue, glass colors swirled together like smoke. The morning light glints off the edge. Like a wink.

“Good morning, pretty boy,” The voice rumbles through the room and Steve closes his eyes. Wishes he was dreaming.

[uneducated-author]

I got a present from a student of mine, a beautiful hardcover copy of 'Howl's Moving Caste' and I'm so happy, but it does remind me of what 10 (AND A HALF) year old me did when she found out that it wasn't in my local WHSmith.

Full of rage and vitriol I knocked on the door of every classroom in my school (I was a renowned introvert, so this was EXTREMELY out of character) and politely asked if anyone had a copy. I received Many Many Many rejections. Inconsolable I lay in the library and wept. Then, like a beacon from the dark, the librarian miraculously told me that when I'd asked earlier she was mistaken and 'oh, I think we have it actually! It's just in loan'

I've looked back in this moment with the benefit of hindsight and realised that the librarian, who knew me as the girl who'd hide from bullies in the reading room and spent lunch hours organising books, must have elected to specially order the book for me, and it makes an already sweet moment even sweeter.

But a week later, I was distraught again. The winter holidays were coming up. I would loose access to the only library that had this treasure. I was holding Diana Wynne Jones masterpieces in my hands, despairing against my upcoming tragedy, until it came to me. The perfect solution.

I just had to write the whole book.

'Oh you fool, you could not write three books in a week'

I could sure as hell try.

I was in a frenzy. I would shovel breadsticks into my mouths and fervently write at lunch. I stayed up late and wrote by torchlight.

(Honestly, I probably could have written by lamp, but torchlight felt more dramatic and I lived for the feeling it evoked.)

I wrote in my reading class, permitted because I'd finished the list of books and the assorted quizzes. I wrote in friday PE because the friday teacher never took attendance and nobody cared if a young girl had locked herself in the bathroom for an hour, scribbling away.

I learned how to write with my left hand, but I was too slow if I wanted it to be legible, so I worked through the pain.

So? Did I finish? Was my fervent effort rewarded? Books had to be returned to the library on Thursday so I didn't even have Thurday night. Would the fortnight be enough?

Sort of. I finished my transcription of 'Howl's Moving Castle' and 'Castle in the Air' but couldn't move on to the final book in the trilogy. Hence started my winter vacation. I poured through the story, luxuriating in the rereading. I impressed my mother with my skill in making whipped cream, turns out mixing is much less intensive than furtive writing.

And on Christmas, I opened a beautiful collection of three paperbacks. I reread those books until I could recite swathes from each, and memorised the whole first chapter, which I'd murmur to my younger cousins.

I passed those books down to a younger girl in the neighbourhood, who passed them down to her sister, who gave them to a friend who lost them on a holiday. I have no idea where they are now.

But I have a book, from a student who loves reading where she used to hate it, and revels in a story with happy ending and good characters.

I don't know if there's some greater meaning to this. But I love the story, and it's come back to me. And my wrist almost hurts remembering almost 100,000 words for this story, but I can't help remember how much I wanted it.

Sometimes I think 'do I have that passion now? Is there anything I'd care about to that extent, until it hurts, until I hate it?'

I was so foolish, but so so alive and that week feels impossible. I talked to strangers! I transcribed a book! I didn't give up, not for a second!

(In fact two years later I did the same thing for Good Omens, transcribing the copy at my library over the period of a whole Summer. I purchased a copy a year after that, and gave it to a friend last year.)

I'm proud, of what ten and a half year old me did. Not because it was specifically moral, or impressive. Because of how much she loved something that she resolved to do anything to keep it with her.

The frantic handwriting is unfamiliar to me. It's spidery and smudged. The paper seems unbelievably thin, and the script uneven and unlevelled. A whole chapter has been lost to water damage. I barely have any of the book memorised. I keep it all the same because ten (and a half) year old me would weep if I lost it.

A heart is a heavy burden. But I poured mine into a strangers words, and then into those pages. I can't give them away.

[munson-blurbs]

congratulations on 2K!!! that's so cool!

i was wondering if i could request Steve/Library/Romance Novel? (also maybe include glasses!steve if you want because he's my favorite)

congrats again! you deserve it, dear!!! 🫶🏻💗

Thank you! I tried to sneak a little glasses!Steve in there for you. I hope you enjoy!

Warnings: Brief mention of sex

WC: 917

--

“Hey, Y/N,” your co-worker, Steve, calls from the return cart. “Check this one out.” The two of you are constantly finding the most ridiculous books, daring each other to read them. Steve’s holding up a copy of The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman. “This is your challenge for the week.”

“I accept your challenge,” you say with a knowing smirk, “and raise you this.” You toss him the romance novel that someone had brought back earlier. You’d been saving it for this exact moment since you checked it in earlier.

Steve catches it, wrinkling his nose when he reads the title. “The Duke of Hardwood Kingdom?” he chuckles. “No way. Challenge denied.”

“C’mon, Harrington,” you protest, jutting out your lower lip in a pout, “you haven’t turned one down yet. Are you really gonna let the Duke be your downfall?”

“I guess not,” he grumbles, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose and taking another glance at the cover. “But does he have to be so…naked?”

His comment catches you off-guard, and you bark out a laugh, clapping your hand over your mouth before someone shushes you. “I bet you wouldn’t be complaining if it was a naked woman.”

“No I would not,” he chuckles. “All right, I’ll read it. But I’m only doing this because I can’t turn down a dare,” he insists, pointing the paperback toward you.

“And you never know; it might help you with the ladies,” you tease, and he responds with a flip of his middle finger.

~

Your next shift that coincides with Steve’s isn’t for a few more days. You always get there before he does, and you greet him with a smile. 

“How’s the Duke treating you?” You bat your eyelashes innocently, making him laugh. 

“Thoroughly entertaining. I’ve read about more sex positions than I thought were possible,” Steve confesses. “But he’s always doing way too much, y’know? Like, why does he have to show up everywhere on a horse? Why can’t he just drive, like a normal person?”

“Who shows up everywhere on a horse?” Amy, another librarian, interjects as she flops a stack of returns on the counter. 

“No one,” Steve mutters, just as you say, “Steve’s new best friend, the Duke of Hardwood County.”

Amy raises her eyebrows in disbelief, an amused grin spreading across her face. “Well, maybe it’s because it takes place in 1803? Like, way before cars were invented.” 

“You read it?” Steve asks her, and she nods. “Okay, then I have a question for you.”

“Fire away.”

“What the hell is a petticoat?”

~

The next day, Steve slaps The Duke of Hardwood Kingdom onto the counter triumphantly. “Finished!”

“Congrats,” your voice is dripping with sarcasm as you break out into a slow clap. “And it wasn’t even a picture book.”

“You slay me with your humor,” Steve grunts. “But I will say, it actually wasn’t half bad. Kinda corny, but not the worst book I’ve ever read.”

“Care to share your findings with the class?” you tease, filing the book back into circulation. “Any tips or tricks you picked up from the Duke?”

“Besides traveling via horse?” Steve scrunches his face. “Not really. Oh, but there was one scene where the Duke and Serenity—that was the chick’s name—were dancing at the Grand Ball, and I realized I’ve been dancing all wrong.”

You laugh and start on another stack of returns. “Steve, have you been breaking into the YMCA during the slow songs?” 

Steve rolls his eyes at you when you start doing the moves. “Uh, no. But I just kinda did the whole…here, let me show you.” He awkwardly takes your hands and places them on his shoulders, putting his own hands on your hips. “So I used to slow dance like this.”

“Oh my God,” you throw your head back and giggle. “Steve, this is like how Eddie Munson and I danced at the middle school Snow Ball!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, trying to ignore the pang of jealousy he feels over a dance you shared when you were thirteen. “But now, thanks to the Duke, I’ll dance like this.” He holds your left hand in his right, and you let your right hand rest on his bicep. “There ya go,” he muses, bringing his free hand to the small of your back and pulling you close. 

“Now we just need some music,” you joke, but Steve’s too lost in your eyes to pick up on it. You’re suddenly aware of the lack of space between you. “Okay, well…” you clear your throat and step back, “gotta get back to these bad boys,” you blurt out, smacking the pile of books for emphasis. Heat creeps up your neck from the embarrassment. 

“Yeah, they’re, uh, not gonna check themselves in,” Steve chuckles nervously, shoving his hands in his pockets. You both get back to work for a few minutes before suddenly saying, “Do you like music? Like, um, listening to it and stuff?”

“Mhm,” you nod, allowing yourself to glance in his direction. 

“Cool.” He bites his thumbnail, a habit you’d noticed he engages in when he’s anxious. “Would you wanna listen to some with me sometime? Maybe tonight after work?”

You smile, unaware that it lights up the room—no, the whole library—for him. “That sounds like fun.”

“Cool,” he repeats, “I’ll see ya then.” He shoots you finger guns as he backs up, nearly walking into the cart. 

“You learn those moves from the Duke, too?”

“Shut up.”

--

[slutforwings]

books i read in 2023 that i recommend :) mainly because i am trying to find new books to read in the 'book rec' tag and none of these people give summaries so I shall bravely do it instead for others!

wrong place wrong time - gillian mcallister (mystery)

Blurb: a woman sees her son killing someone in front of her, then wakes up the next morning only to realise it's the day before the murder. she keeps traveling back in time, unraveling the reason for the murder and trying to stop it along the way Review: i misread the back and thought it was gonna be a time loop but this was even better actually. i fucking devoured this book it was so compelling. i tend to devour mystery books like these regardless of their well-writtenness but this was genuinely really good and tied up everything neatly at the end.

autobiography of a corpse - sigizmund krzhizhanovsky (short stories)

Blurb: bunch of fantastical short stories like about the people living in your pupil, a society that deals in anger and malcontent, a guy trying to bite his elbow Review: this book made me realise i love short stories, but then it turned out i mainly love THIS GUY'S short stories. they were just that good. slavic writers are built different

the secret history - donna tartt (psychological fiction)

Blurb: cult group of pretentious college kids study greek and turn it into a personality trait. also theyre gonna conspire to kill one of their own and then try to hide it Review: all of these characters are cunts and i love them so much. do not believe the dark academia girlies peddling this book, these people are stupid and pretentious and morally corrupt and theyre SO MUCH FUN!! the internal monologues are fantastic, i want to study Dick's brain. its a very Long book and absolutely takes its time and yet it does not feel like any parts are really unnecessary. really good.

this is how you lose the time war - amal el-mohtar & max gladstone (sci-fi)

Blurb: two time travelers from opposing agencies each have a mission (the mission involves historic meddling through time travel but is honestly not as important) and keep encountering each other and leaving letters to taunt, falling in love throughout the story Review: listen i saw that tweet 'do not look up anything about this book and just read it' and i did and i had zero regrets. i bought the paperback after reading the ebook bc it was just that good. beautiful prose, fantastic worldbuilding that is sometimes only hinted at but everything made me go !!! can you tell i love time travel.

notes on an execution - danya kukafka (pyschological fiction)

Blurb: serial killer on death row recounts his life, as well as pov of the police officer that investigated the cases and got him in jail + pov's of the family of the victims Review: incredible story about family, morality and love. raises a lot of questions about criminals and 'evil' and does not answer them because that's the whole point. insane quotes too. also very vivid storytelling in the way that i could picture all the locations perfectly despite them not being described in detail. i think it was due to the intense Vibe

bunny - mona awad (uh. horror?)

Blurb: um. goth/'not like other girls' girl gets indoctrinated into joins a cult group of really girly girls that all call each other bunny and have kind of weird rituals meetings. Review: listen. i hate when people do this to me but. just read it. if you're a fan of magical realism and cult-y things, you're in for a treat. this book made me bike home in a daze. i love stream of consciousness where you as the reader are just as lost as the character! i love you bunny!

instructions for a heatwave - maggie o'farrel (fiction)

Blurb: a pensioned father leaves the house for his newspaper and then doesnt return. all the children are gathered by the mother to try and figure out what the fuck happened. Review: not so much a 'hey where'd he go' as it is a rumination on family and unconditional love. ofc theres some family secrets that get revealed but i found it more interesting to watch the family dynamic and the changes the secrets brought to it. bittersweet :)

[goodlucktai]

run, boy, run

chapter five

natsume yuujinchou pairing: one-sided kitanishi word count: 2k summary: Nishimura has a cursed mark on his arm, a crush on Natsume’s famous idol friend, and a whole lot of brand new problems that start and end with the taboo circle he found. full circle au

read on ao3

x

Satoru keeps looking over his shoulder at Hiiragi, just to make sure she’s still there.

“Watch where you’re walking or you’ll fall, Nishimura,” she says after the third backwards glance, voice low and monotone and still, somehow, entirely reassuring. She’s looking at him, talking to him, and he can hear her.

“No, I won’t,” Satoru argues cheerfully. Natori’s hand on his shoulder steers him around a crack in the pavement before he can prove himself wrong. And he’s still holding a sleeping Nyanko-sensei, so he definitely would have eaten dirt.

They’re south of town, much farther down the highway than Satoru ever has reason to go on his own. Matoba must have had his yokai chauffeur drive them for longer than Satoru realized. He’s pretty sure there’s a gas station nearby, and he thinks this is the road his old elementary school is on, but other than that he’s got nothing.  

Natori’s rental car is parked in a tiny lot outside a Western-style building with a rustic cottage vibe. Satoru expects to be sheparded into the car, but instead Natori leads the way up the brick steps and through the lattice-patterned front door.

The inside is cluttered and cozy, warmed by potted plants on every available surface. A smiling young woman behind the pastry counter encourages them to pick any table they’d like.

There’s an older couple seated in the back corner booth, and a grizzled man reading the paper in a squashy armchair shoved next to a bookshelf overrun with paperbacks and waving cats. Natori guides Satoru to a table by the window, points him into a chair, and then slides over the laminate menu. Satoru remembers, abruptly, that he skipped breakfast and missed lunch.

“Order whatever you like,” Natori says, sounding distracted. “I need to make a few calls. I will be right outside. Okay?”

“Do you want something?” Satoru asks. He settles Natsume’s cat in his lap, relieved when the lucky cat actually stirs a bit and grumbles before tucking himself into a comfortable-looking loaf and going back to sleep.

“No, but Hiiragi has a sweet tooth. Pick her out something with strawberries.”

The shiki makes a noise that could, by generous definition, be considered a scoff. Natori leaves, and the cheerful woman who greeted them by the door takes Satoru’s order for hamburger steak and an ice cream parfait with all the extras. She looks indulgent when he tacks on the dessert and he can’t exactly explain it’s for a ghost.

The ghost in question sinks into the chair across from him only after the employee has dropped off a glass of melon soda and gone again.

“Your friends were very scared for you,” Hiiragi says without preamble. “They’ll be relieved to know that you’re safe.”

Satoru’s heart makes a sudden glad leap. “You saw them?”

“I did. Natsume called Natori-dono this morning when you didn’t arrive at school on time. And your little bird warned them you weren’t safe. You were missed immediately.”

It seems like she’s making a point, and Satoru can’t say he knows why, but he’s grateful all the same. It’s good to know that the whole time he was in Matoba’s dubious clutches, rescue was imminent. It’s really, really good to know that Fish didn’t just fly away in a panic, she flew away to the rescue. 

“Do you know if they told anyone else?” Satoru thinks to ask after a moment.

“Just your brother,” the shiki replies. “Kitamoto informed Natori-dono that he had two hours to find you, after which time he would  also be telling his mother.” If she considers it strange that Satoru’s own mother wasn’t a part of the equation, she keeps it to herself. Yokai probably don’t have strong feelings on humans and their relationships with each other anyway. She does add, “It took Natori-dono an hour and a half. …He was stressed.”

“I bet.”

Kitamoto can be kind of intense. Sure, Natori deals with curses and ghosts and what have you, but that’s nothing on Acchan when he’s in a mood.

Natori doesn’t come back to the table until after Satoru has started eating. He orders a cup of coffee and seems content to sit there for an indeterminate amount of time. Even though he’s busy—living a double-life, with double the work—he makes pleasant conversation with Satoru and teases Hiiragi about her ice cream and does nothing to rush either of them out of the restaurant.

Digging the tines of his fork through the sauce left on his plate, Satoru carefully doesn’t look at anyone in particular when he says, “Um. I didn’t say earlier. Thanks.”

Natori doesn’t speak up right away, and the silence is excruciating, even though it’s only like two seconds long. Satoru rushes to fill it.

“For—you know. You didn’t have to. I know you don’t really—uh, I just meant, thank you.”

Please stop talking! he begs himself.

The coffee cup lands against its saucer with a solid click and Natori’s hand comes to rest on the table between them. Satoru catches the little dart of a lizard tail disappearing up his arm, beneath his sleeve. It’s distracting enough that he almost forgets to be mortified that Natori Shuuichi is giving him his undivided attention. Almost.

“You’re a good kid,” Natori finally says, sounding, somehow, as if he means it. “And you have nothing to thank me for.”

Nyanko-sensei wakes up for real in time to finish the rest of Satoru’s hamburger steak. Natori gives sensei a dirty look, but Satoru is so relieved that he lets him have the fried potatoes and broccoli florets, too.

———

Less than an hour later, Satoru is delivered to the temple doorstep like he’s a Lotteria burger and Natori-san is a very stylish, very single-minded Demae-Can driver.

At around two in the afternoon, anyone who might be happy to see Satoru turn up out of the blue is almost definitely still at school. Satoru is opening his mouth to explain as much when the door rattles open hard enough that it crashes into the wall, and half a dozen voices yell, “Nishimura!”

It's a little funny. The sudden chaos settles something jangly and jittery in his chest that the quiet ride back into town couldn’t. Natori’s hands on his shoulders propel him gently forward and Satoru is folded into the crowd. Nyanko-sensei is lifted from his arms. Kitamoto is there.

He looks paler than he should. His eyes are dry, but red-rimmed, and while he usually greets Natori with a glare for whatever reason, this time he doesn’t seem to see the man at all. He’s staring right at Satoru from the second the door opens. He yanks Satoru into a hug that feels like it could go on for years and years, warm and tight and safe.

For the first time since he left his house that morning, Satoru relaxes fully. He can’t move his arms enough to get them around Kitamoto in turn, so he clutches fistfuls of his best friend’s shirt and sinks against him. He could probably fall asleep standing up right there if they’d just give him about five minutes.

“Come in, please,” Tanuma is saying, his tone equal parts gentle and stressed out. “I’ll make tea.”

Natori helps shuffle the Kitamoto-and-Satoru package into the genkan. The door rattles closed, and Satoru floats through the motions of exchanging sneakers for house slippers, peeling out of his sweaty school jacket and pulling a hoodie over his head instead.

“I know for a fact that you should be in English right now,” is the first thing he says, to Natsume, who looks like he doesn’t know if he wants to hug Satoru or shake him like a terrier would a rat.

“If anyone should have been anywhere, ” Taki says, and lets the statement hang there ominously.

“Shibata will be here by dinner,” is what Natsume settles on saying. He has Nyanko-sensei nestled in one arm, petting him gently with the opposite hand. Sensei’s eyes are slitted, his purr a quiet, rumbly thing. “He’s getting on a train after school.”

“Ogata’s volleyball team is away at a tournament right now, but she’s going to be livid she missed all this when she checks the group chat,” Taki adds.

Tanuma returns to the crowded hall with a tray of tea and glasses, and since he looks like he’s seconds away from a nervous breakdown if he can’t host them properly, everyone finds a place in the living room to sit. There’s one too many cups on Tanuma’s tray, but after the day they’ve had, Satoru doesn't blame him for miscounting. 

Kitamoto doesn’t even pretend like he’s about to let Satoru go anytime in the immediate future, keeping an arm wrapped around him like it belongs there. Satoru, for his part, doesn’t pretend like that’s anything but a comfort. 

A clatter on the engawa is the only warning any of them get before a frantic magpie bursts inside, silent except for the noisy scrabbling of her talons against the floor, wings half-spread, beak ajar.

“There’s my best girl,” Satoru says brightly. “Fish, you’re a hero, you know that? Hiiragi told me what you did. They should write songs about you.”

“satoru,” she cries, hopping across the room with gusto. “the scary human took you.”

“That he did.” Satoru puts the cup down and offers his hands to his bird instead. “But thanks to you, he gave me back.”

With Fish nestled under his ear where she belongs, her warm, slightly oily feathers and rapid little heartbeat against his cheek both a touchstone, Satoru accepts the cup of tea that’s pressed into his hands. He opts to just hold it for a while, breathing in the fragrant steam, shaking off those last, clinging fingers of anxiety.

“Wait,” Taki blurts. “Hiiragi told you?”

Oh, yeah. “There’s been a new development,” Satoru tells the room at large. “I can see yokai without the circle now.”

For a beat, no one moves except to stare at him blankly. Then all heads swivel toward Natori, who only says, with feeling, “It has been a very long day.”

“And it’s only halfway over,” Hiiragi comments plainly. 

Since unpacking the yokai thing is going to be a conversation and a half, Satoru interjects quickly, “Before we get into all that, can we talk about how much trouble I’m in at school really fast?”

Natsume and Taki look too frustrated to speak for the moment, so Tanuma says, “You’re not in trouble, Nishimura. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Refusing to let Tanuma’s whole soft-spoken, gentle self get to him—he was kidnapped today and didn’t cry about it, he’s not going to cry just because his friend is being nice —Satoru replies, “Okay, we know that, but Nomiya-sensei doesn’t.”

“He does,” Tanuma insists.

It turns out that Satoru won’t have after-school suspension after all—because Kiyoshi, in a bizarre, uncharacteristic turn of events, covered for him.  

“Sorry, I forgot to let his homeroom teacher know this morning,” was his brother’s story. He had called the school and lied directly to the principal herself, according to an impressed Taki’s eyewitness account. “He has a stomach bug. Can one of his friends bring by his homework later?”

“We had to call Kiyoshi-niisan when you didn’t show up,” Kitamoto says doggedly. It’s the first thing he’s said since Satoru got here. “I didn’t tell him everything, but I had to tell him something.”

Fish tugs on a piece of his hair with her beak. Satoru leans his head on Kitamoto’s shoulder.

“Acchan knows best,” Satoru says, because that was true even when it wasn’t. Of course, this meant that Satoru owed Kiyoshi the truth, whether he was ready to have that conversation or not, but at worst, he would just think Satoru and his friends were crazy. And he kind of already thought that, so no harm done. “At least that’s future-me’s problem,” he goes on, smiling around at his friends. “He’s taking a mock entrance exam for Kyushu University today, up in Fukuoka. That’ll keep him busy and give me time to spin a story.”

They frown back at him. Even Natori looks over, a crease in his brow.

“You think he still went to Fukuoka?” Taki says slowly.

“Nishimura, you were missing, ” Natsume adds, bemused. “Someone took you right off the street.”

“It sounds bad when you say it that way.” Satoru can feel the twinge in his arm that means the cursed bruises are coming back. His heart rate picks up a little, too, for good measure. “But it’s his mock exam. Mom’s been hounding him about this school for ages. He wouldn’t do anything to mess this one up.”

He wouldn’t let me mess this up for him, is what Satoru doesn’t say out loud. He digs his fingers into the overlarge hoodie he’s wearing, twisting the cuffs all out of shape.

Natsume glances at Natori quickly, concerned. The man sets his tea aside and stands up, moving around the table and then settling tailor-style in front of Satoru and Kitamoto. 

“I think there is a reason your brother studies so hard,” Natori says. “And I think it has very little to do with your mother.” 

“You haven’t met my mom,” Satoru says. It makes Natori crack a smile. 

“I haven’t had the pleasure. But Kiyoshi told me plenty. And while you might think he’s doing everything he can to please her, from where I’m standing, it looks a lot more like he’s doing his best to spite her.”

Natori Shuuichi spoke to Satoru’s brother. They talked about personal stuff. Satoru wants to bury himself under a rock. 

It doesn’t sound like Kiyoshi at all to trash-talk mom in any capacity. He’s her shining up-and-coming med student, bringing home perfect scores and skipping weekend trips and holidays to study. She doesn’t really care about Satoru, but she loves Kiyoshi. He has no reason not to love her back. 

But if his friends are to be believed—and of course they are—then Kiyoshi covered for him today, even without understanding what, exactly, he was covering for. Why would he do that?

Footsteps from further in the temple draw nearer, along with a voice that Satoru would know anywhere. He whips around, spilling tea over his fingers, because that’s his brother’s pissed-off tone, here, in Tanuma’s house, where Satoru and his friends and Natori and the ghosts all are. 

As he gets closer, his words get clearer, until Satoru can make out, “…my problem, remember? Not yours. Please don’t trouble yourself.”

“Nii-san has always had the best timing,” Kitamoto mutters. 

“Kyushu was a compromise, ” Kiyoshi is saying, his voice making it easy to trace his progress down the engawa. “Fukuoka is three hours away, I didn’t want to go to school there in the first place. Kumamoto University is much closer, and it’s a good school. My friends are applying there, too. It’s where I want to go.”

Fish is poking insistently at Satoru’s ear and chin, so he lifts his hands mechanically and moves her down into his lap instead. She busies herself with snapping at the drawstring of his hoodie instead, unbothered by the force of nature headed their way. 

“Um, so he knows some stuff,” Satoru hears himself say weakly. “How much exactly is that?”

“Enough,” Kitamoto says, which explains nothing. 

The porch doors rattle the rest of the way open from where they were cracked, presumably to let nosy spirit birds in and out, and Kiyoshi stands there backlit by afternoon sunlight. It’s impossible to make out his expression. Satoru thinks he’s more nervous now than he was with Matoba. 

“Bye, mom,” Kiyoshi says, and hangs up without waiting for a reply. 

“You wanted to go to Fukuoka,” Satoru blurts before anyone can say anything else. “You made me memorize the train line.”

“That was just in case, brat,” Kiyoshi replies, crossing the room in long strides. Natori moves and Kiyoshi takes his place, looking over first Satoru, then Kitamoto carefully. “I was probably going to throw the mock exam anyway. I was just going today to make mom happy. I’ve been accepted at Kumamoto Uni already. An hour-long commute will be annoying, but it’s better than the alternative. Heaven only knows the kind of trouble you’d get into on your own.” 

“And us,” Taki pipes up. “We know.”

“Right,” Kiyoshi says, sitting back. His expression is no-nonsense, gaze level and boring into Satoru’s. “And now me. Start talking, or I’ll make your life miserable.”

Now that, Satoru thinks, is the first believable thing anyone has said all day.

[seeminglyseph]

It is a little wild sometimes seeing Invincible the superhero series being written about as like... "new and innovative" or something... because I did absolutely read the comic in 2010, and there were multiple trade paperbacks at the time.

I mean, I know full well "I read the comic" is a useless phrase because The Boys is also coming out, and the comic for that is just as dated and I avoided it for the most part because I liked DC Comics and didn't want to read Ennis' unhinged gore porn. DC was going through its Dork Dark Age that needed commenting on that is fully lost in commentary now, I feel like a madman trying to explain that now that like... "I mean I think this is around the same time Teen Titans decided to bring back the Wonder Twins, Wendy and Marvin from the old cartoons, including their Wonder Dog, only it turns out the dog was a monster who ravaged and mauled them to a bloody mess. Marvin is killed on the panel, and Wendy is gravely injured and paralyzed from the waist down. She got an Oracle moment in a different book with a more optimistic tone, but that was far from the original intention, or the only Teen Titan killed in a gory and gratuitous way on the pages of Teen Titans. The comic most likely to be picked up by children because of brand identity."

I fully stopped reading DC Comics because of Lian Harper back in the day... like. Then they rebooted the universe so it fully didn't matter but like. It very much confuses me when I hear like... "it's so innovative to see superhero media where it's fucked up."

And like. Clearly, the only superhero media you are consuming is MCU movies or spinoffs. That's the shit that I was pretty sure these comics were commenting on. That's the hell Frank Miller built for us.

Injustice: Gods Among Us came out in 2013. How are we still acting like "Superman but bad" is the most shocking concept. Anthony Starr's acting is fucking stellar and I do enjoy most of Kripke's writing. I did my time in Superhell. But like... I mean the fact that the Seven are a Justice League parody and The Boys have to bed over backwards to try and parody Marvel is like... man, this was written when someone else was on top, and now modern audiences are mixing metaphors because the DC references just aren't relevant unless sexy Harley Quinn is in it.

I have a migraine and maybe no actual point... I don't want to return to the era of pointless gratuitous violence in comics. Like I said, it made me stop reading because any time I even started to get attached to a character, they were brutally murdered or went through something traumatic and changed or left or were sidelined or something. It was just... exhausting and stressful. And paying money to be stressed out and disappointed was like... not fun or interesting. I think a lot of The Boys fans are experiencing that with this most recent season, which feels authentic to the comic experience. (A season four event is very close to a real-life trauma for me, so I'm making a mental health decision to not watch it at the moment. But I am watching fans spiral into disappointed rage. It's interesting...)

Anyway, this has been a rant about Superheros that doesn't really go anywhere. I think I'm gonna go smoke a blunt for this migraine and the stress. I'd suggest people broaden their horizons since like... there's been grimdark superheroes forever, but it's like... it's a mostly miserable slog through various fluids and rushed art and bad plotlines that go nowhere. And most people probably got revealed to be sex pests at a minimum by now because the industry appears to be full of monsters... I'm very tired.

[wuxiaphoenix]

Book Review: The Lord Julian Mysteries

The Lord Julian Mysteries, by Grace Burrowes, start with A Gentleman Fallen on Hard Times. I’m reviewing them as a group because I’ve read all five out on Kindle so far, and I have them on my list of “I want to get the paperbacks to snuggle for comfort reading.” Five out of five stars, blissfully clever Regency mysteries.

And I do mean blissful, to anyone who has frayed nerves from the general morass we’ve all been dealing with lately. Nobody dies.

Granted, there are insults and injuries, and it’s just after the Napoleonic Wars, so an awful lot of people have died. And some of those deaths have left thorny knots of inheritance, allegiance, and ill feelings to sort out. But the mysteries themselves are not about finding a murderer. The consequences are all to the living. Blackmail, assaults, dognapping, persons gone missing, did someone leave an illegitimate (but in fact very welcome) heir behind. Lord Julian Caldicott investigates them all, discreetly.

...Or as discreet as you can be when half the ton’s decided you betrayed your country, even when the military cleared you. Bit awkward, that.

And this is where the Lord Julian mysteries succeed and a lot of other recent stories trying to show their protagonists as “heroic underdogs” fail. Lord Julian did not start life as a persecuted man.

He did, however, start it as a bastard. An actual, legitimized bastard; though he bears the Caldicott name, he doesn’t know who his father is. (Though he supposedly has suspicions.) Still, his mother’s husband acknowledged him as a son, and few outside the family are any wiser. He grew up a normal, loved, third son of a duke; not the heir, nor even the spare. And he admits that before he went off to war he was very young and stupid.

He was a reconnaissance officer, and good at it. But so was his older brother Harry, and when Harry got caught... Julian tried to get him out. That went very badly. Warning, there’s nothing extremely graphic, but various kinds of torture are mentioned and it’s pretty clear Lord Julian suffers from PTSD. He’s getting better. Slowly.

And then his godmother invites him to a house party.

Shenanigans ensue, including meeting up with an old flame he truly respects, searching for an assailant, a battle on the lawn with lawn darts, a horse stolen, all kinds of insults and societal posturing, and finally uncovering a thoroughly nasty villain who had no compunctions about taking advantage of anyone and everyone around him.

But the villain gets caught.

Because even exhausted, battling his symptoms, and all the disdain of High Society, Lord Julian is not going to leave his friend Lady Hyperia West when she needs help. He has learned from his experiences - even the torture. He’s become a wiser and better man. And that man is an investigator.

Yet he couldn’t have done that if he hadn’t believed, truly believed, that he was a decent person, and loved. And therefore honor-bound to act like a decent person, even in the face of what seemed overwhelming odds and the scorn of all around him.

Lord Julian did not start life persecuted, but he faces that fate now. He has a bad reputation with many; he’ll always be facing an uphill battle with those determined to believe he betrayed England. But he acts as a good, decent, and smart man. He is a hero.

Too many writers start with every man’s hand against their character, and an upbringing that not only skipped over moral, it didn’t even read it in the dictionary. This is wrong. To make a hero, you need love.

...Yes, and then have some horrible things happen to them. But there has to be love. Always.

The quiet love in this series, between Julian and Hyperia, and Julian and his family - the honor and respect he gives to every person he deals with - is not to be missed.

[lies-unfurl]

hi! I think you’ve mentioned on your blog before that you read marvel comics, so as a sambucky fan can I ask you which comics in particular one should read for sam and bucky? I know there’s only one comic book for them, I think - the Cut Of One Head collection. I’ve read that, but I want moore. and I just don’t know where to start. (do you pirate them or do you have the Marvel Unlimited subscription?)

and I saw Mackenzie Lee wrote a Winter Soldier book, have you read it? I’m tempted to check it out. I am mostly asking all of this bc I want to be writing sambucky fic but I struggle with coming up with "villains" and you've come up with so many good villains in your sambucky fics, and just in general you get the mcu vibes just right

Hi anon, thanks for the question and the kind words! I have read some comics and am actively trying to read more, but I have a tendency to get sidetracked. The Falcon and Winter Soldier series is probably peak SamBucky. I've also read some of the Death of Captain America arc and enjoyed that, though it's been a little while and I don't recall how heavy on the SamBucky stuff it was. Sam's most recent Cap series, Symbol of Truth, does have a little bit of Bucky, but you'd have to also read Steve!Cap's Sentinel of Liberty arc to understand it.

The best resource I've found for comics is Comic Book Herald's reading order lists -- Sam and Bucky. Take a look and see where they overlap, and you should find at least some SamBucky content to satisfy you. I'll also tag this post in the hopes that more knowledgeable people might be able to help.

As for your other questions -- yes, I use Marvel Unlimited. I have mixed feelings; it's convenient, but I find the website annoying to navigate and lacking in some features, to the point where you pretty much have to use the app. If you don't mind reading on your phone, or if you have a tablet, I'd say it's worth it. Pretty much all of the older series will be out in trade paperbacks though, so if you have access to a library you may be able to get them for free.

And YES, I did read the Mackenzie Lee Winter Soldier book. It's absolutely like if a Bucky whump fic got published; he's suffering in like every chapter lol. There's no Sam due to the timeframe, and it actually gave me Steve/Bucky* vibes in a few spots. I'll put the specifics under the read since they're (mild) spoilers. But Steve doesn't actually have a huge part in it. I'd say it's worth checking out if you're interested in WWII/early Winter Soldier Bucky. It's comics-adjacent, but not actually part of the main 616 comicsverse, so you can read it without any background.

(And if you're interested in writing villains -- do you want more serious ones, or just sort of like... background plot devices to set up the story? The first one is harder, but if you're interested in the latter, I wouldn't stress it! There's so much weird shit in the comics, if you're going for a lighter tone, you can basically just make up Some Guy, give them a grievance, and let your imagination go.)

*When Bucky and Steve meet for the first time, Bucky thinks about Steve's "thick quads that strained the seams" of his pants, and his "chiseled face." A female friend of Bucky's has a line about wanting to marry Captain America, and then says she isn't sure if Bucky is more possessive over her or Steve. And Bucky flashes back to him and Steve snuggling in a foxhole for warmth, and a different time when he had pneumonia and Steve wrapped them both in a jacket and held him until his fever broke??? Like Steve genuinely isn't a huge part of the story and I wouldn't let that put you off of it if you're otherwise interested in the novel, but I did come away thinking that Mackenzie Lee had probably written Stucky fanfiction at one point.

[polaroidcats]

I assume that you have emotional attachments to objects (because of the print you love) and so have a favourite book which you know you will never read again but can’t throw out (and what is it if I’m right?) ❤️❤️

Hi Rory!!! 💖

oh wow everyone is nailing it with these, you are so, so correct!!!!

My inability to get rid of things I have emotional attachments to definitely applies to books, here is an incomplete list of books I will likely never even read or reread but also will never be able to give away:

My Gregor the Overlander books!! I knew Suzanne Collins mostly from these books and when Hunger Games came out/became popular I tried to tell all my friends about this series because I loved it so much when I was 10-12 years old!! And my first internet name was "Boots" because of the younger sister in that book, I loved her so much. And I don't see myself rereading them anytime soon but I have so many fond memories of absolutely devouring and rererererereading them as a preteen so they will stay forever!

"Die Geschwister Apraksin" by Karla Schneider, this was also one of my fave books when I was around 12-13, I don't remember much, except that it was about 5 orphaned siblings during or after the Russian revolution, and it absolutely broke my heart and I cried more than I had ever cried before when reading a book. I don't even think it was a particularly sad book, I think it just made me very emotional for some reason, to imagine these kids' lives and their struggles. And I read it as part of my local bookstore's initiative where they let kids borrow and read the advanced reader copies of books, and then we wrote little reviews that would get posted on a pinboard at the store. So when I had to give the book back (in order to borrow a new book, it was like a little library system within the bookstore), I immediately asked the bookseller if they had the book in stock because I wanted to buy it with my pocket money, but they only had the paperback and (again) I had gotten so attached to the hardback one and the bookseller could tell how much the book meant to me so she just gifted me the copy I had just returned, the one I read, and that meant so much to me, to get to keep the physical copy that I actually read and not have to buy a new version.

Herzen, Hände und Stimmen by Ian McDonald - I have never read this book, idek what it's about but from the book cover I assume it's scifi. I did an exchange semester in France as a teenager, and my host family didn't speak any german but somehow they got this random (thrifted) german book and they gave it to me bc I speak german. And I've never been that much into scifi but the gesture was so sweet and I have so many nice memories of my time with them, so even though I will probably never read that book I will also never give it away.

A complete translation from Vergils Aeneid with the latin and german text side by side. I did Latin in school, and for our final exams we all had to pick one specialized subject we would have an oral exam on, and my specialized subject in Latin class was the 6th book of the Aeneid, so even though I barely remember any Latin and will definitely not reread that for fun, I enjoyed it back in the day and will never get rid of that book.

I have a book on erotic dream interpretation, idk if that fully counts into this category, but my friend and I saw it when my uni library (!!) had a thrift sale of their old books, and that book was so hilarious, I had to get it and then for a while whenever I had people come over to my flat to pregame I would ask them about their dreams and would then very professionally interpret them with my book. This one might not fully count bc I'm not ruling out that I will never do that again but I haven't looked at it in a long time but would never get rid of it because it's too iconic haha

Okay this got way too long so I'm stopping now, but yeah hahaha you were so correct with this one 😂

make an assumption about me!