#i would probably aim for random childrens fantasy series tbh

[multiverseforever]

Idea for an impromptu one shot: DM gathers a list of novels (and their covers) that they have read at some point (preferably a long time ago) but think their players have not. This will be easier or harder depending on you and your group.

Then, have the players remove any that someone has read and randomly pick one of the remaining ones (either based on title and cover alone or after a brief explaination). Whatever the DM recalls of the plot and setting are now that of your adventure.

Give the players a run down of the premise and ten to twenty min to character build (probably something low level. 5e would be good for fantasy ofc but maybe plan on something like fate if there's multiple genres on the original list). The DM uses that time to prep too, but as I said, the adventure is primarily based on what the DM recalls. So maybe grab some names and maps or art from the wikipedia page, if available, but avoid summaries best you can!

Such an adventure would obviously be silly, contrived, and full of plot holes, but that's part of the gimmick. As long as everyone is into it, it should be great fun!

[ace-trainer-risu]

what are your fave diana wynne jones books that aren’t howl’s moving castle??

Oh whattt a lovely and fun question which I was definitely not secretly hoping someone would ask!!!! Yay!!

Hm okay so, not specifically in order, probably my top fave Diana Wynne Jones books would be:

Deep Secret! Deep Secret is not just one of my favorite books by DWJ but one of my favorite books full stop! It’s so good. Basically, the premise is that there is an infinite series of interconnected worlds, some of which have magic and some of which don’t, at the center of which is a vast interdimensional magical empire. Magic in the multiverse is overseen by an organization of magicians called Magids and there must always be a specific number of Magids in existence. When Rupert, a young Magid living on Earth, discovers that his mentor has died (ish) he becomes unexpectedly responsible for finding and training the next Magid, which is extremely inconvenient timing for him because the aforementioned magical empire is on the brink of civil war and chaos and its his job to stop it. And also almost all of this takes place at...a science fiction convention. It’s amazing.  I have read this book minimum four (probably more) times and every time it’s absolutely delightful and hilarious. I would like to go to the sci fi convention in this novel more than anything. It’s such a good read and its one of her few novels which is specifically aimed at adults, so I would EXTREMELY recommend it. Plus the romance in it is extremely good...not exactly enemy-to-lovers but more like ‘annoys-the-shit-out-of-each-other’ to lovers.  (**One note about this one...there’s a few very briefly mentioned side characters who are gender noncomforming and even tho they are actually portrayed very positively, it’s not necessarily ideal and 100% respectful (basically the protags comment on them being very beautiful and nice but also keep trying to guess their “real” gender). Additionally there’s a different briefly mentioned side character who is fat who isn’t portrayed very nicely. Both of these are brief incidents, just wanted to provide a warning for them)

Dark Lord of Derkholm - Okay this one is weirdly hard to summarize but it’s about this magical fantasy world which has been taken overy and is being used as a tourist destination by a non-magical world (heavily implied to be Earth) for people who want to role play at being in a classic high fantasy story, including fighting and killing THE DARK LORD...who is really just a random magician pretending to be evil. The inhabitants of the fantasy world do not enjoy this and are trying desperately to stop the tours, but unfortunately according to a magical oracle, their best hope of stopping the tours is this year’s Dark Lord, a hapless farmer magician named Derk, and his, um, eccentric family consisting of his glamorous wife, seven children (of whom five are griffins and one is a bard) and a simply improbable amount of magical animals. And also there is a very good dragon.  I think Derkholm is so great as a novel b/c it’s a very funny, loving but sharp, parody of high fantasy stories...but a lot of the time parodies only function as parodies but not as good stories in their own right, you know? But this novel completely functions as a story too, and in fact the first time I read at maybe age nine or ten, the high fantasy parody went completely over my head...but I still loved it. I also really love that this novel is very accessible to all ages, I think I enjoy reading it as an adult just as much as I did as a kid, which is rare.  For anyone who has read Howl’s Moving Castle but nothing else by DWJ and isn’t sure where to start, I think this is a great place to start. (TW: There’s a brief, non-explicit scene which has implied sexual assault.) 

Fire and Hemlock - This may be the most controversial one since it features a romance with a significant age gap where the two characters meet when one is a child and the other an adult. And I fully agree that that’s :/ and normally that trope is NOT my thing but it doesn’t come off at all creepy in this story imo, and if you think you can deal with that then this is a very weird, atmospheric, cool book about storytelling and fairy tales and growing up. The short summary (this is another hard to summarize one) is that as a child, Polly encounters and strikes up a friendship and correspondence with a young man, Tom, which mainly consists of the two of them jointly making up a silly, ongoing fairy tale type story...but things get weird when parts of their story start to come true in real life.  I’ve only read this one twice but it really stuck with me and in fact just describing it here...really makes me want to read it again!

The Chrestomanci Series - So all of the above are either specifically aimed at adults or a general audience whereas the Chrestomanci series is aimed at children, mainly a middle grade type audience. And tbh I started reading them as a kid (fond memory - I bought an omnibus of the first two with my allowance money...b/c it had a cat on the cover!) so I don’t know what it would be like to first read these as an older teen or an adult. BUT. Honestly they are really good and would be a quick read so I do still recommend them. There’s seven overall, with th seventh being a collection of short stories, and they’re only semi-chronological so the reading order isn’t vital. My recommended order (b/c this the order I read them in, haha) is Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, The Magicians of Caprona, Witch Week, The Pinhoe Egg, Conrad’s Fate, and then Mixed Magic you can read whenever you want so long as you read it after Charmed Life and The Magicians of Caprona.  So the very core premise of it is not dissimilar to Deep Secret - there’s an infinite series of worlds/universes and there’s a magician, called the Crestomanci in this case, who is responsible for making sure magic isn’t abused across the multiverse. The Chrestomanci is an extremely powerful enchanter who has nine lives, and the novels are various semi-connected stories about the adventures of Chrestomanci as an adult and child. Chrestomanci is a title so it’s not always the same person, but for the majority of the stories it is the same guy and he’s...the best/worst...He’s this extremely handsome, charismatic, powerful enchanter who is very good at his job, loves his wife a lot, wears very beautiful clothes and makes, um, questionable life choices and is very annoying to everyone. I’ve thought about this very hard and I believe that he’s what happens when you take a fundamentally chaotic good person and make him do a fundamentally lawful good job; yes, he’s going to do it and do it well, but he is going to do it in the most chaotic, ridiculous way possible, and he IS going to die at an ALARMING rate, doing things that would not normally kill a person, such as playing cricket and trying to catch stray cats. He also, as previously mentioned, frequently wears very dramatic silk dressing gowns with elaborate embroidery, which the protag of Charmed Life finds deeply alarming.  It’s very odd to me how these books don’t seem to be well known, because the Chrestomanci books were some of my absolute favorite books as a child. I still have my omnibus editions of the first four novels and they are very worn and very beloved. And it’s so WILD to me that I don’t think I have ever talked to someone who also read those as a kid! Like I’m not saying those people don’t exist, I’m sure I just haven’t met them, but that’s so weiiirddddd to me. If I bring up Tamora Pierce or Garth Nix or other authors of weird, eccentric children’s fantasy novels to other avid childhood consumers of fantasy, people usually know what I mean, but Chrestomanci and its just..crickets. Is it b/c she’s British? Anyway all of the Chrestomanci books are very degrees of good, but if I had to pick a favorite, I think, controversial choice here, it would be Conrad’s Fate. Particularly in terms of recommendations to others, Conrad’s Fate works as a standalone and, unlike the other books in the series, it’s aimed more at a YA audience, so if you wanted to read a Chrestomanci novel without getting into the whole series, that’s a good way to go. It’s about a boy, Conrad, who is told that he has a terrible, possibly fatal Fate awaiting him unless he goes to work as a servant at a wealthy, and weird, estate neighboring his town, at which place he encounters things including color changing livery, an extremely annoying teenage Chrestomanci, and the greatest liminal space house EVER. It’s like a combination of an upstairs/downstairs Downton Abbey type social drama with bizarre fantasy shenanigans. How could that not be good??

Also as Honorable Mentions - A Sudden and Wild Magic and The Time of the Ghost. A Sudden and Wild Magic is fun b/c it’s one of her few works aimed specifically at adults and it’s (gasp) a little bit NAUGHTY which I was very surprised and delighted by when I read it. (This may seem like an unfair statement considering that Deep Secret fully has an orgy in it, but Rupert is so fundamentally unnaughty of a character that he completely unnaughtifies the whole novel, whereas Sudden and Wild Magic embraces being a (little bit) naughty.)   The Time of the Ghost on the other hand is weird and haunting and creepy and atmospheric. I only read it once but it’s one of those novels you just think about periodically and go “wait what the fuck that was a weird novel” (Also known as the “Garth Nix” effect) 

[jungnoir]

tagged by @jingogi quite a while back, but never got the chance to really sit down and do this. It’s such a cool tag!! so here we go...

rules: pick a story/scenario/etc. from a few muses/idols you write for that you really enjoyed writing, whether it gained popularity or not – and then tag your favourite fellow writers to share their own favourite works as well!

I did more than one story for a few idols rip, I hope that’s cool.

bts

destiny ⇢ yoonkook x reader, demon and angel au. one of my fave series I have ever planned out. I’m very excited to lay everything out and tie this series up in a bow one day. I spent countless hours staring up at my ceiling, mapping out this story as much as possible. It has become a bit of a pride for me.

amour chassé-croisé ⇢ jungkook x reader, miraculous ladybug au. this was very fun to write. I don’t usually just write straight with barely any stops but I did for this fic. I love miraculous ladybug and often times, when I like a show or movie, I fantasize my favorite groups in place of its’ characters. I kinda sat down one day and said “imagine if this was a thing? ...I’m going to make this a thing”

in between the lines ⇢ namjoon x reader, writing to life au. by now, you can probably see I love au’s. I’ve often thought about the relationship between writer and work, and even attempted to do something once where a writer got sucked into their own story. This is really the reverse, and I love this au.

kim’s emporium of the strange ⇢ taehyung x reader, witch au. If there is one thing I’m soft for, it’s magic au’s. Around halloween last year, I really struggled to come up with some cool halloween au for Taehyung. I have like two or three semi-long drafts for versions of kim’s emporium of the strange that were titled “pumpkin spice and everything nice” (ik, cringe lol). this one got a lot more attention than I thought (and a nice ass moodboard by @shinybts who according to tumblr does not exist and won’t let me @ them but I find a way)?

first love ⇢ yoongi x reader, best friend au. ONE OF MY FAVORITES!!! I never thought it would have gotten the attention it did, and I’m super proud of it. felt more like writing a fantasy of mine than a well planned fic which is probably why I enjoyed it so much lol.

the married life ⇢ yoongi x reader, vampire au. I spent quite a long time on this (this was my longest fic ever? hmm). I was a little let down in the beginning when this fic didn’t get a lot of love so I kinda sat around moping about what might’ve turned people away from reading it, but I’ve found my peace with it now. I really do love this fic and I put a lot of heart into it so in the end, it doesn’t matter how much attention it gets, I’m proud anyway.

a dash of wicked ⇢ seokjin x reader, writing to life au and villain au. I love love love au’s about villains becoming good/getting redeemed. I didn’t know if jin would really fit a legit villain so I went for a children’s book one, and I really liked the idea. it was fun to play with!

take a breath ⇢ jimin x reader, dad au. stay at home dad!jimin, that is all. 

got7

i’ll always make it back to you ⇢ jackson x reader, zombie hunter au. my first fic for jackson and my first smut 🙈. I was going through a zombie au phase and this came out of it. I like how soft it felt.

frat boy!got7 ⇢ got7 x reader, frat boy au. YOOOOOOOOO this was a monster to do but I love love love doing hc’s for got7 and this just came out really lovely. I’m not a fan of frat au’s so you can see how much I loved this one to add it to my favorite fics list :)

babysitter!got7 ⇢ got7, babysitter au. I cannot tell you where this really came from but I just love the thought of babysitter!got7 okay.

got7 working at a grocery store ⇢ got7, grocery store worker au. this shit... every time it gets a note I get reminded that I did this in like a night and it was so utterly random and silly but a lot of people have said it’s funny and honestly... this is what I create when I have no restraints :D

one of those days ⇢ jinyoung x reader, neighbor au. one of the cutest things okay. I don’t write for jinyoung often but writing this made me fall for him.

spirit!yugyeom ⇢ yugyeom x reader, spirit au. to this day, I have been threatened over this piece more than any other thing I have written. I love it.

ghost!jaebum ⇢ jaebum x reader, ghost au. so fucking depressing. I love it.

ghost!youngjae ⇢ youngjae x reader, ghost au. the ghost au that started it all and is still one of my favorite pieces that I wrote sitting on my mom’s toilet for half an hour.

seventeen

boyfriend!jeonghan ⇢ jeonghan x reader, boyfriend au. currently the only living proof I am soft for this libra. 

dad!hoshi ⇢ hoshi x reader, dad au. I definitely struggled with which ways to approach this story, but I liked how it came out. I got a little extra with it tbh, but I enjoyed writing it. 

college boyfriend!jihoon ⇢ jihoon x reader, college bf au. AHHHHHHHHH!!! the thing that solidified me as a woozi stan. I had soooo much fun with this you don’t even know. I love it so much.

college boyfriend!minghao + animal shelter volunteer!minghao ⇢ minghao x reader, college bf au and animal shelter volunteer au. another fun one, I really had feelings for minghao after this one!! I love the idea of minghao being a lover of unorthodox pets and just being a cute bf. 

college boyfriend!wonwoo ⇢ wonwoo x reader, college bf au. this is almost at 700 notes 😱. I didn’t know you guys liked wonwoo this much until I wrote this. I’ll keep that in mind.

bonnie and clyde ⇢ wonwoo x reader, hacker au. I won’t lie and say I didn’t listen to the mystic messenger theme on repeat and didn’t look at 707 aesthetics on pinterest to get in the mood for this one. 

monsta x

tough guy ⇢ jooheon x reader, biker gang au. I wrote this for my friend jen’s request and no lie... I was swooning for jooheon in the end. I always thought it was really cute!!

babysitter!monsta x ⇢ monsta x, babysitter au. ahhhh, this came from monsta x ray ep 5 bc monsta x and babies kill me. usually these long hc’s tire me out and this one definitely did, but I love it.

truce ⇢ changkyun x reader, rival au. this was the official debut of my love for changkyun, I believe. I have this ongoing thing in my head that me and changkyun are rivals, always one-upping each other and trying to embarrass the other before we fall for each other in the end. this was more of a pleasure write than anything :)

hate me now ⇢ wonho x reader. okay, I really love me some day6 and their emo songs, so when I heard “how can I say?” I was really inspired to do something angsty and sad but I had no idea who to do it for. Then, wonho popped into my head because I seldom write for him and I don���t know... it just fit. It was quite an emotional write for me. I’m glad I posted it. I usually aim for happy endings but this was new for me.

nct

boyfriend!taeyong ⇢ taeyong x reader, boyfriend au. One of my very first posts on this blog. It hit 500 notes recently and I’m still??? wow??? this was when I was at the height of my love for taeyong (pshhh, I’m still at the height of my love for taeyong).

blackpink

blue lagoon ⇢ lisa x reader, mermaid au. my non-kpop friend found out about my writing blog and really, really wanted me to do a mermaid au for a girl group and lisa was the glaring choice in my head. I love Lisa and mermaid au’s and this was just a nice thing to make. low-key based reader off me because I cannot swim either haha. 

welp!! that was a lot of fun. I liked looking at all the things I’ve written and picking my favorites, and I hope all of you that I tag can do the same and admire all the good work you’ve done. now, I’m tagging...

@seoulscapes (have fun with this one girl), @stormae (I hope it’s okay to tag you!), @teeyongs, @ultdabdab and @kimtrain!!! let me know if any of you would like to be untagged!