#perfect prey

[foxfren]

For the bookish ask

📕 What book has had the biggest impact on your life, and why?

📝What fictional world would you love to visit and explore if given the chance?

🧉 and two extra, what are the books that you need to/wish you could recommend to everybody and do you have a character you wish everybody knew about?

Which books had the biggest impact on your life?

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I read Hatchet in the eighth grade, and it taught me to learn things more intentionally. I had known before, but this book confronted me with the importance of adapting knowledge into a given situation. I was also more interested in learning practical skills afterwards (fire building, plant identification, etc). I read The Alchemist a year after in high school, when I was uncertain about my future. It gave me the motivation to finish projects and it got me out of a huge creative slump. I’m very grateful to both of these books.

Which fictional world would you love to visit and explore if given the chance?

HANDS DOWN THE DC UNIVERSE!! Guys I would be living it up in Gotham idc 🔥

What are the books that you need to/wish to recommend to everyone?

Depends on what genre they like:

Crime fiction/mystery -> The D.I. Callanach series by Helen Sarah Fields

Romance: anything by Emily Henry

Romance/fantasy: All Of Us Villains duology by Amanda Foody

Rlly sad lgbt romance: Lie With Me by Philippe Besson

Sports (hockey) lgbt romance: Icebreaker by A. L. Graziadei

Urban fantasy: The Stranger Times by C. K. McDonnell

Memoir: Fun Home a Family Tragicomic

Graphic novel: Mamo by Sas Milledge

Jason Todd comic: Red Hood Lost Days by Judd Winick

(Among others ofc. I have too many recs lmao)

Do you have a character you wish everyone knew about?

This is actually a very hard decision, there’s too many lmao. I’m picking Stephanie Brown from DC comics though bc she is too often ignored in the fandom 💥 she is cool and feral and silly!! And her story is so sad :(

[realismovisceral]

Natalia Preis

by Omar Coria

[asleepinawell]

this is what peak performance looks like

[pennyserenade]

i’m actually so serious about ewan mcgregor’s filmography. no one else is serious enough abt it. there’s so many incredible movies and about 90 of them are underrated or cult classics. star wars is great but it’s almost one of the least interesting things he’s done. there’s trainspotting! there’s moulin rouge! shallow grave! down with love! i love you phillip morris! big fish! perfect sense (devastating movie)! birds of prey!!! not to mention his season of fargo!!! where he plays not one but TWO characters and blows it so far out of the water i was genuinely sobbing by the end of it. like on my knees. good stuff

[kneelingshadowsalome]

speaking of sheep:

https://www.tumblr.com/bestiolin/734582117661556736

i think the dynamic of a wolf!könig and sheep!darling not only goes hard but also helps aid my love for forbidden romance tropes. because something as wrong as two complete opposites like predator and prey can be something so horrifyingly beautiful yet so doomed by the narrative.

because what makes you think könig would be in his right mind when he realize that not even his own kind could desire him, that he is no respectable beast if his only reason for hunting down and killing his own pack was because not only they betrayed his trust as a family but, most of all, they targeted the one thing that gave him the tiniest bit of attention and praise. his sheep darling, the one who was much too foolish to understand her own placement in the world, where she was destined to bleed for him but instead, she was no better than him.

könig and daring were just as much as one of the same when it came to their rejection of their kinds. everybody shunned them, they beat them down with words and high expectations, they didn’t belong because of their skewed perception of what it means to be a predator that provides and a prey that survives. but who’s to say, if everyone around them socially disposes them what’s wrong about abandoning those norms.

what’s so wrong about a measly little sheep aiding the slaughter of a beast who’s purpose is no longer just to provide but to protect the very thing that made him feel belonged?

despite the incompatibility of these two, they find solace in each other in their sadness and lust for love, no matter how twisted it is, no matter was illegal it should be, nothing could stop them now.

I love predator/prey dynamics because once the prey discovers her power over the predator… then who’s the one really being preyed upon here? Her purity transmutes to something darker (something that was always there), while he taps into his protective qualities and becomes, if not innocent again, at least something far more complex than a beastly, instinctual creature.

Instead of devouring her, he will cherish her; instead of using her as sustenance, he will sustain her. He learns that his deepest yearning is to chase, not kill, she learns that surrendering to getting caught is far better than surrendering to fear.

And it’s not about healing or changing anything or anyone anymore: it’s about becoming a force to be reckoned with…

[tennessoui]

I'm begging on my hands and knees for more Twilight au, and those are words I never thought I'd say! Anakin being able to resist compulsion, and Obi-Wan seeming instantly obsessed, and poor Shmi! Pretty please 🥺🙏

hey!! sure! here's some more!

(2.5k)

Having a sheriff for a mom sucked a lot when he was a kid growing up in a small town. There was probably nothing Anakin was rebelling against more at eleven, at thirteen, at seventeen than the rule of law his mother represented. 

All things considered, she was pretty good at separating her home life from her worklife. It was Anakin who was bad at respecting the separation, Anakin who couldn’t keep son out of delinquent.  There’s only so many times he could be pulled out of wreckage and bars and buildings with Keep Out No Trespassing signs on them before he got The Sheriff at home and out in public.

He’d hated it growing up and had come to grudgingly respect it later and in fits and starts. His dad dying had, terribly and ironically, helped a lot. His mother had had a stroke just before and then Anakin had been faced with the possibility of being an orphan, and the terror of that had mellowed him out.

Sorta.

He still hates a lot of things about his mother’s job. Especially the fact that she’s the sheriff of a very small town.

And when people talk, she listens.

The thing about small towns is that everyone’s always fucking talking. And other people are always fucking lsitening so they can talk later. One big fucking community, which means when Anakin comes home from his weird doctor’s appointment with Dr. Kenobi, a few hours later because he took a detour biking along the edge of the seaside cliffs just to spit in the good doctor’s metaphorical face, Shmi Skywalker already knows more than Anakin ever planned to tell her.

Like, for instance, “Sheila says that Dr. Kenobi thought it would behoove you to spend some time at the local library volunteering.”

Anakin pauses, backpack half-slung off his shoulders. He hangs his stuff up slowly, careful to keep his tone very light. “Did Sheila say what I told him after he said that?” 

His mom’s silence is very loud.

“I don’t want to do i—”

“I asked the new librarian about it on my way home from the station. She thinks it’s a wonderful idea. Apparently we used to have a program like that in the forties but it died out during the war.”

“Mom, come on—”

“It’ll look good on resumes, saying you created and supported a local reading program.”

“Yeah, but I’m a bit too old to be applying for babysitting positio—”

“It’ll look good for me as well,” Shmi says in her sheriff voice. “Elections are coming up soon. It’ll be good, if my kid was involved in the community.”

Anakin’s glad that his back is still turned to the living room, where his mom is sitting. “Are you gonna run again?” he asks, paying special attention to his tone this time.

“Why wouldn’t I?” his mom replies. “I’ve been sheriff for a decade and a half.”

Anakin lets his eyes fall closed for a second, knowing that his face can’t be seen. This is how they end up half the time: Shmi’s ardent belief that she is invincible, going up against Anakin’s desperate desire for her to be so.

And they just don’t talk about it. As if they’re actually in agreement.

He knows how this is going to shake out.

“Do you have any plans tomorrow?” His mother asks.

Anakin’s eyes remain closed. “I guess so,” he says.

—--------

Mrs. Kenobi—call me Satine—is sort of scary up close. She’s tall. She glides between bookshelves. Anakin’s never met someone who glides before. And she’s so intensely, incredibly, blindingly perfect that Anakin would rather be anywhere but in her vicinity. There’s something incredibly unnerving about the symmetry of her face, the sharpness of her cheekbones. She’s obviously an absolute knock-out, just drop-dead gorgeous, but it makes Anakin’s skin crawl and his heart beat fast, but not in a good way or a normal teenage boy way.

Anakin tries to keep the unease off his face as Satine leads him through a tour of the library, a gentle hand on his forearm. That’s another thing Anakin doesn’t really like. She’s wearing satin gloves. He doesn’t know anyone who wears gloves anymore.

It’s just all a bit…unsettling.

“I put in a few words around the school yesterday afternoon,” Satine tells him. They pass by the mystery section, the fantasy section, and take a hard right into the young adult section. The shelves are smaller here, and Anakin feels rather stupidly gigantic as he and Satine walk through them. “To some parents picking their children up after school. They agreed it would be good exposure to bring them to the library for an hour or so of reading before supper.”

Anakin highly doubts it will be, but Satine hasn’t really asked him.

She sweeps past his figure and pushes open a pair of double doors with a flourish better suited for a Russian tsarina hosting an elaborate ball than a small town librarian showing off a small, cramped, and dusty room filled with padded seats and threadbare rugs.

And then, as if she has been waiting to put the last nail in the proverbial coffin, Satine adds, “A few students from the local high school will be here as well.”

“Sorry,” Anakin says, “are you saying I’m going to be reading to high school students? Can’t they do that themselves?”

After all, Anakin went to high school here. Academics hadn’t been too rigorously challenging, but they’d taught the fucking basics.

Satine raises one perfectly plucked eyebrow in his direction. “They’ll be volunteering as well.”

Oh. Right.

“It looks good on their college applications,” Satine waves a hand through the air and the words linger there. Anakin looks out the rather dirty window, jaw clenching. “I’ve already chosen a handful of books I think the young ones will enjoy.”

Anakin, committed to his fate, pads over to the titles placed carefully ontop of a short, stout side table. 

“Peter the Rabbit,” he reads off the top. “Peter Pan. Alice in Wonderland. Treasure Island. The Prince and the Pauper—look, you’re the librarian here, but don’t you have anything written this century maybe? Harry Potter, even.”

“These are classics,” Satine tells him, her nose raised into the air as if she has encountered something particularly foul-smelling. She turns away, presumably to return to the front desk so she can welcome half the fucking town inside the library so Anakin can read them fucking Anne of Green Gables and become a better person.

“These are fucking boring,” he mutters to himself, flicking the cover of the first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz open. Publication date: 1900. “I’d rather be in Kenobi’s office getting lectured at.”

There’s a sharp noise of disapproval from the doorway, and Anakin’s head snaps up to see the tail end of a very heated look from the librarian before the door closes behind her.

He shivers, alone in the emply room, and it takes several long minutes for his heart to settle back into its normal pace. 

—----------

After the fourth kid sneezes, Anakin closes his book with a snap and stands from the very small chair they’ve got him sitting on. “Come on,” he tells the cluster of children he’s been assigned to. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Are you kidnapping us?” One of them, a snot-nosed kid who’d started the sneezing says, rubbing at her cheek beneath her glasses. “Cause mommy says that’s not allowed.”

“I’m not kidnapping you,” Anakin snaps back, barely holding in his natural follow-up to the sentence which is of course, I don’t want to be around any of you in the first place. “Also, just for future reference, you shouldn’t ask if someone’s kidnapping you after you already start following them.”

The girl scowls and reaches up her hand to hold onto Anakin’s. 

For the love of Christ.

“We’re just going to go into the main part of the library,” Anakin tells his children, all six of them. “They have windows out there.”

They have windows out there and they also have parents. Parents who absolutely should be doing other things with their lives and precious hour of extra freetime.

Parents who are clustered instead around the library’s front desk as the town’s newest librarian holds court.

“Is reading time over?” one of the kids asks him, turning his head to look up at Anakin.

Anakin thinks about it. “Do you want reading time to be over?”

The kid thinks about it back. “Yeah,” he decides. “You don’t do the voices good.”

“It’s a boring book,” Anakin tells the kid. “Voices aren’t going to make it better.”

“Voices always make it better,” another kid says. “They make everything better.”

“Oh look,” Anakin says. “Is that your father?”

He gestures vaguely towards the cluster of drooling middle-aged somethings focused on Satine.

The kid peeks around his thigh and then shakes his head. “No,” he says. “That’s Dr. Obi.”

“Dr. Obi!” The kid holding Anakin’s hand says, and she lets go.

Anakin gets a bad feeling about this, a feeling that only doubles when he turns around to see Dr. Kenobi sauntering towards him, hands tucked into the pockets of a long dark jacket that makes him look even more pale than he already is.

He scowls automatically as the man gets closer. “Dr. Obi.”

Dr. Kenobi spares him a look that’s far too amused for Anakin’s pleasure before he crouches down to the level of the kids. “Hello there, young ones,” he says, opening his arms to accept a hug from the traitor of a girl Anakin’s just spent thirty minutes reading to. “Are you eating all your vegetables? Even the brussel sprouts?”

“I like brussel sprouts,” one of the kids reports sounding proud, and that starts a cacophony of opinions about brussel sprouts from all around Anakin.

“Wow! One of mine just absolutely hates them,” Dr. Kenobi says. “She refuses to eat them, so you’re very brave, Michele.” He lets go of the girl and turns his golden-brown gaze up to Anakin. “And what does Mr. Skywalker think?” he asks, raising a hand for Anakin to take. It’s very obvious he’s asking for a hand up and Anakin is obeying before he thinks about it. He snatches his hand free almost too soon, but Dr. Kenobi doesn’t even have the grace to lose his balance and fall over. 

His hand is like ice in Anakin’s, and Anakin stuffs his fingers into the pocket of his jacket automatically a second later.

“Do brussel sprouts help with circulation?” he’s biting out before he can stop himself. “Cause you may need some then.”

Kenobi’s head tilts very slightly to the side as his eyes catch and hold onto Anakin’s. “Oh?” he asks lightly. 

“You’re cold,” is all Anakin mutters in return. He swipes his other hand against the back of his neck. “”S poor circlutation, isn’t it? Something in your diet maybe?” Dr. Kenobi blinks at him and then breaks into a wide smile. “I can assure my diet is very…circulation-mindful,” he says. “Blood health positive.”

Anakin’s mouth thins into a line. He guesses that’s what he gets for trying to give health advice to a doctor, especially a doctor like Kenobi who just so happens to be devastatingly attractive and also smart.

And also an asshole. And also married.

Speaking of which. “Are you here to fend off your wife’s admirers with a scalpel?” Kenobi’s eyebrows raise. “Young ones,” he turns his head away from Anakin, down to the children.

The strangest feeling breaks of Anakin the second Kenobi looks away, almost as if a strange pressure he hadn’t even realized had been building was suddenly dissolved.

The very small beginnings of a headache begin to thrum in his temples.

“Young ones, it’s time to find your parents, isn’t it?” Kenobi says, and like fucking magic, the crowd of six children around Anakin disperse, children swarming away from him towards the group of adults surrounding the front desk.

“Can you teach me how to do that?” Anakin blurts out, even though he’d meant to ignore Kenobi now that he doesn’t have to make nice in front of small kids. Not that he was really making nice in the first place. But now he definitely doesn’t have to.

Kenobi gives him a half-smile, eyes heavy-lidded. “It’s a special sort of skill that takes, above all else, much practice.”

Anakin scowls. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Does Kenobi think he can’t commit himself to something even as mundane as a fucking commanding persona? Does he think he doesn’t have it in him to be–-

Kenobi’s eyebrows go up again. “Has anyone ever told you that you are exceedingly defensive?” 

“You’re extremely nosey,” Anakin snaps back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t you have better things to focus on right now anyway?”

He gestures loosely towards Satine, who has started playing with one of the mother’s bracelets as the other woman stands and looks at her rather dumbfounded.

Kenobi follows his gaze and then lets out a huff of laughter. “Satine can take care of herself,” he says, even though it hadn’t really been Satine that Anakin was worried about.

He’s about to open his mouth to say so when Kenobi turns back to him. His eyes are piercing, a dark, captivating sort of gold. 

“Do you find my wife beautiful, Anakin?” he asks.

Anakin blinks. His headache is getting worse, which is probably down to what can only be a trick-question fashioned to look like a grenade lobbed at his feet. “I don’t think there’s a good answer to that,” he mutters, rubbing absently at his forehead. “What the fuck.”

“An honest answer is a good one,” Kenobi says lightly. “Tell me honestly.”

The words feel pulled from Anakin’s stomach, and he’s opening his mouth before he realizes it. “No,” he says. 

Kenobi’s eyebrows crinkle together. “No?”

Anakin curses his stupid impulse control. “She’s beautiful,” he adds quickly. “Really. But…it makes me uncomfortable.”

Kenobi’s lips purse, and then there’s something like disappointment in his eyes as he examines Anakin. “Ah yes,” he murmurs. “I’ve been told my wife can make countless young men feel rather uncomfortable. It’s normal in men your age, Anakin. Sexual ar—”

“Uncanny,” Anakin blurts out. He doesn’t mean to, but he also doesn’t want to listen to  Kenobi trying to lecture him on fucking arousal in the public library. When it’s not even relevant. “She’s so beautiful, it’s uncanny.”

“Uncanny.”

“Yeah, like. Monstrous.”

Kenobi’s mouth falls open, pink lips parted in what looks like honest surprise.

Anakin’s own eyes widen as it hits him that he’s just called Kenobi’s wife a monster to Kenobi’s face.

“Shit,” he says. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m going to go.” 

He throws a look at Kenobi, whose eyes are lit with something a lot like interest and then across the library to where Satine’s head is turned, cocked, and eyebrows up high on her forehead, as if she’s just heard everything he’s said.

He decides rather immediately that he’s going to take the backdoor exit.

[butchgeorgefayne]

i will say, one thing about rwby (maybe 2 things) is i don’t feel there is enough romanticism. i don’t mean romance, for that i think there’s plenty, but i mean there isn’t enough romanticism in the framing or the style of it. this is a show about fairy tales! We should get to see a princess in a big beautiful ballgown. Some bridal carrying. Some riding off into the sunset. Gimme some fairies, some sparkles, something to make me embrace the cheesiness of what I’m actually watching.

[vulpesarctica]

Hey hey hey, I'm back on my Harley bullshit~~

[armed-with-a-waffle-iron]

Stephanie: So. You, my kinda, sort of big sister, are engaged to the sort of adoptive brother of your sort of adoptive daughter, who's also the sort of adoptive son of our sort of old boss and the sort of adoptive brother of my brooding jerk ex-boyfriend, whose sort of family sort of loves me more than they love him?

Barbara: Maybe it's unnecessary and, frankly, impossible to neatly categorise everything.

Stephanie: Says who?

Barbara (smirking): You know, by your logic, when Dick and I get married, this would make Bruce your kinda, sort of, sort of father-in-law by extens—mph!

*Stephanie slaps a hand over Barbara's mouth and collapses over her lap*

Stephanie (eyes squeezed shut): Ew-ew-ew-ew-EW!! Stop-trying-to-put-a-label-on-everything!! What's-wrong-with-you??? Babs!!! Stop-talking!! STOP IT!!! NO!!! *shakes head aggressively* AAAAHHHH!!

Barbara (smiling with her eyes): Thhts mh ghrl... *pats Steph's back*

[flopsy-art]

So many mediocre sci fi stories, but then there's prey

[sotogalmo]

3:51

Thinking of the top 3 video.

When aliens were all up & in front of Luka, he made himself look small I think.

I'm still thinking of that.

Luka making himself small like a flower, a toy, whatever; when the aliens are around.

But Luka has a strong empowering presence around Hyuna, Mizi and soon Till

The cycle repeats ig <- abuse cycle that is

[welcometogrouchland]

I actually think the most pressing thing from pre-52 continuity we should be bringing back is Steph and Cass' pet rats from Batgirl: Convergence

[bolithesenate]

not to be a fanon girlie on main but I think we should consider taking away the 'human' label from Dooku

he comes from a planet that has at least one magic space dragon, was under Sith hegemony for a while and according to wookiepedia has enough of a chiss population that they count it distinctly.

honestly, the exact details I don't care about. Are most serennians part chiss? did the sith do some fucked-up genetic fuckery and alchemy on them that still has unexpected influences on their behavior/immune system?? Did they just evolve funny because that's the same planet that gave us the magic space dragon???

a combination of these?

something else entirely?

like. if we can decide that no, stewjoni are their own thing, then surely we can give the same treatment to Serenno

[dailydccomics]

the Birds of Prey by David Nakayama

[wildsaltair]

@nihillist-blog I am still losing my mind over this screencap you got. I zoomed it in because I’m so obsessed with it. I am eternally grateful to you

[lostandbackagain]

things most fantasy does poorly but skulduggery pleasant kills at is showing what happens to people who live extraordinarily long:

1. they go crazy

2. they're consumed by grief

3. they turn on people with shorter lifespans

I'm tired of elves or immortals or pseudoimmortals being noble, sad people who mostly think humans are just as important as them. I want more peoples whose brains were just not built to process living that long and who decide regular humans deserve enslavement. way more fun