#Book: The Genius and the Absurdity

[dykeseinfeld]

the hunger games simply is that bitch it simply has that complex understanding of the ideas it is discussing and distills them so effectively that people don't even notice how much work is being done even by basic functions of the plot like. the fact that katniss is not the leader of the revolution, coin is. (and while the districts were rebelling independent of coin, it is extremely less likely they would have won a war against the capitol without her esp that quickly) and so! of Course katniss has to kill coin! because you can't trust military leaders of revolutions to be good leaders it's simply a completely different skill set

[muniimyg]

1: the confession // series m.list

note: been daydreaming abt this jk... enj <3

taglist request: send a request with the title of this fic “aao” // DO NOT comment here or on the masterlist . it gets confusing and i prefer answering and tagging through asks !!!

🏷️ permanent taglist: @joonsjuice @taetaecatboy @pb-n-juju @miss-rainy-days @firesighgirl @whoa-jo @vantxx95 @pamzn @kakixaku @casspirit0705 @tae165 @defzcl @sopebubbles @leefics @ggukkieland @bebebutbetter @yoongimentita7 @boraength @era-genius @4ksj @vampcharxter @miss-jupiter @floweryjeons @taegijns @jeonqkooks-main @ellesalazar @jkslvsnella @thekookiecorner @parkinglot-nights @seagulljk

fic taglist: @peterstarkchrishiddleston

//

The library is your favourite place. 

At least, that is until your predictable love for it comes to a disadvantage. May your tranquil moments alone rest in peace as your friends corner and gaslight you to leaving your sanctuary. Sometimes, it’s for parties. Other times, it’s for something stupid like driving to the next town to watch a movie at their theatre because their theatre chairs recline better. 

You won’t have it this time. 

No way. You have so much work to do!

"Oh, come on! Please, ___?” Hobi begs. “Come tonight! It'll be fun!" Suddenly, he’s clinging to your arm, making it harder for you to ignore him. You try shaking him off, but he pouts at you and clings on even tighter. 

“Hobi,” you whine. “Go to the party if you wanna go. Jimin said he’d meet you there! And Nam Joon, and Taehyung, Jin, and even Yoongi!” 

“But I want you to come!” He cries. “I need someone to keep count of my drinks—”

“Use a marker and tally it on your arm.”

“But then what if I need to throw up—”

“Then throw up.”

“... Jungkook will be there!”

You blink at him. 

“So?”

Hobi lets go of your arm and raises a brow at you. “What do you mean so? Isn't he your boyfriend?”

His accusation has you tongue-tied. This is the first time you’ve ever heard such an absurd thing! Jungkook became a part of the friendgroup after you. He’s the newbie. Actually, he has a whole other set of friends aside from you guys. Why? Because he’s cool. That’s it. Everyone on campus knows him and truth be told; he deserves his hype. He’s good-looking, kind, and a little weird (in a good way). He’s funny and smart (but not in an obnoxious way)... He’s just… Kind of good at everything? It intimidates you and often leaves you daydreaming. 

Come to think of it, everything happens by coincidence. Yours and his lectures usually start and end around the same time. Not to mention that he also loves the library! He usually walks you home after your study sessions. But, yeah… Aside from these things—you and Jungkook aren’t actually that close.

“W-what? I’m not dating Jungkook! Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?” you ask, careful not to sound too noisy. 

Hobi shakes his head. “Girlfriend? Yeah… You.”

Your eyes widen.

In a panic, you hiss at Hobi. “Don’t start rumours! That’s embarrassing for him to be associated with me—”

“Oh shut up,” Hobi laughs. “Do not get all insecure and pick me when the campus crush has literally been drooling over the past few weeks. Everybody knows. Everybody talks about it! Besides, they talk about him being all lovestruck—not you! So, spill it. What did you do, huh? Did you manifest it or some shit—”

“With all the time I spend in class, work, and the library… You think I have time to manifest?” you chuckle at him, ultimately trying to dismiss his suspicion. 

Hobi rolls his eyes at you. 

“For someone who reads fanfics and book loads of romance stories… You’re dense as fuck.”

Tilting your head at him, you try to find the words to defend yourself and fail. 

He’s right. 

You are dense. 

But that never hurt anyone before… So why does it matter?

“Earth to ___?” Hobi waves his hands to your face. You blink, brushing your thoughts away. Offering him a tired smile, he looks at you weirdly. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” you exhale. “Why?”

“You’re blushing like crazy,” he teases, poking your cheek. Your hands fly to your cheeks. He’s right. They feel warm and the sudden embarrassment just made you feel even more flustered. Then, he nudges you. 

“Get it together!” Hobi mutters, “Your boyfriend is coming!"

Turning your head, you see Jungkook making his way through the doors. He has his backpack on one shoulder and his eyes glued to his phone. Like muscle memory, he turns his heels and walks toward your direction. 

“Oh my god,” you hit Hobi’s arm. “Why did you plant these thoughts when he’s literally—”

“Plant thoughts? Babes, it’s reality. Helllooooo?” Hobi sings, tauntingly. 

You pout at him, unable to take this lighthearted. 

Then, before you know it, Jungkook approaches you. 

He pulls the seat next to you out and settles in. After offering a fist bump to Hobi, he quickly leans his body over and places his hand on your knee. He’s always done this but why was it suddenly so different now? Was it always like this and you never noticed until now? Until Hobi…

Wow… 

“Hey, you.” Jungkook greets you warmly.

“... H-hi.”

He gives you a weird look. You avoid his eyes in return. Clearing his throat, he asks, “Why aren’t you packed up yet? Aren't we going to the party?”

Jungkook eyes your spread of notes on the table. You clunch your iPad closer to you and shrug. “We? It’s you. Aren’t you going to the party?”

Jungkook returns your question with a grin. “No. Us. You, specifically. You, especially.”

“Yeah, ___!” Hobi chimes cheekily. “Aren’t you going to the party?”

Hesitantly, you shake your head. 

“N-no… I have too much work to do. Here! I’ll just—” you pause your sentence and reach for Hobi’s arm. Pushing his sleeve up, you take the sharpie from your pencil case and write on his arm. 

If piss drunk, please return to ___. 

(xxx) xxx-xxxx <3

Hobi reads it sideways and yanks his arm back. 

“I hate you,” he utters. With laser eyes, he glares at Jungkook. “Tell her you’re coming to the party. Drag her to come! She’s always here! Homework can wait for tomorrow!”

Jungkook exchanges looks with you. With a soft gaze, he shrugs and turns to Hobi. 

“She doesn’t wanna go.”

Hobi groans. 

“Fine. Let’s go. Let’s leave—”

“I’m staying,” Jungkook says calmly. "She's not going... Neither am I."

He picks his backpack up from the ground and begins to unzip it. Taking out his notes and laptop, he looks up and smiles at Hobi. “Can I see your arm?”

Huffing, Hobi shows Jungkook your note. As Hobi rambles on and on about how you and Jungkook are party poopers, Jungkook takes your Sharpie and crosses your number out. 

If piss drunk, please return to ___. Jungkook

(xxx) xxx-xxxx <3

(xxx) xxx-xxxx

For the second time tonight, Hobi reads his arm sideways and yanks it back. He squints at the unfamiliar number. 

“Why’d you cross her number out? Whose number is this?” Hobi asks. 

“Mine,” Jungkook states, smiling at the correction. “Call me if you need anything.”

“What? Why?”

Jungkook blinks. “I’m not really crazy about ___’s number being on your arm for other guys to have and call her with.”

Hobi’s mouth drops. He slowly turns to you and gulps. Blinking at you slowly, he gives you crazy eyes. “You can not be this dense, ___. Jungkook is literally ripping me into shreds in his head right now—”

You laugh.

“Go. Have fun! Call me if you need anything.”

Hobi turns to Jungkook. 

Jungkook smiles at him sweetly with his eyes closed. He shakes his head slowly and wiggles his finger at him. “Don’t call her.”

With that, Hobi grumbles a few exchanges before packing his stuff up. He waves goodbye and tells you that you’re lame one last time. You agree with him and wave him goodbye. As he leaves, Jungkook moves his chair closer to you. 

“So… Same schedule? Study until 9PM and then I walk you home? Or are you hungry tonight? Maybe we can wrap this up by 7:30PM and grab a bite to eat? I know a really good burger spot just up campus—why’d you do that?”

Your body stiffens.

“Do what?”

Jungkook eyes your chair distance. 

“You moved away.”

What the heck… How did he even notice? It’s not like you moved across the table! You just moved like… Half an inch. 

“No, I didn’t,” you deny. “But yeah… Sure! I’ve been craving a good burger with extra cheese—what are you doing?”

“I’m moving closer to you.”

“Why?”

“Because you lied to my face and moved away.”

“N-no!” 

Jungkook inches his face closer to yours. He boops your nose and scrunches his. “You sniff whenever you lie. Did you know that?”

“N-no…”

“Now you do.”

For the first time ever… You lose your breath. It’s like you forgot how to breathe. He’s so close to you. His eyes are so doey, you’re literally getting lost in them. The scar he has on his left cheek… You can see it so clearly—the detail of how his skin healed and all. His hair is brushing above his eyebrows and you can’t help but realize how much you like the way it falls on his face. He’s… Cute?

Oh god. 

“D-dont do that—uhh—” You move away from him. This time, there’s an obvious space between you two. Jungkook straightens his posture, completely confused by your burst of emotion. It’s… Conflicting? He swears you two were about to kiss… Now, what’s going on?

“___? What’s wrong?” Jungkook asks with a gentle tone. 

You turn away and shove your notes to your face. Mumbling into the paper, you tell him what’s on your mind. “Everyone thinks you have a crush on me and it’s embarrassing.”

Jungkook doesn’t hear you well. 

“Say that again,” he requests. Without warning, he takes the paper from your hands, leaving you to face him. “Don’t act all cute. What is it?”

You stay silent and contemplate.

Was this worth saying? Was this worth addressing? Would it change anything between you two after? What about the burgers? You’ve been craving a cheesy burger like crazy—

“It’s fine if you don’t feel comfortable. You can tell me later or never. I don’t mean to be pushy—”

Then, you blurt it out. 

“Everyone thinks you have a crush on me… Or something.” 

Jungkook doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t hold his breath. 

He doesn’t deny it. 

“I do have a crush on you.”

Your throat feels dry. What?! Has he lost his mind?

“W-what? You can’t j-just—”

Jungkook tilts his head and pouts. 

“I don’t really understand why I should deny it. Why should I lie? Why should I make an excuse? This is how I feel. You just found out earlier than the confession… I guess this is it though, right?” He laughs. 

You hit his chest. 

“This isn’t funny!”

“Why can’t it be funny?” Jungkook laughs even harder. He catches your wrist and holds you still. “Doesn’t it make you laugh? That everybody on campus watched me wait outside your classes every day for almost 3 months… That everybody waits on me to go to parties but I don’t show up because I rather walk you home and stay home… That everybody on campus watched me enter this goddamn library of a snoozefest—”

“Hey! I like it here.”

“Yeah,” he rolls his eyes at you. “I like you. That’s why I’m here.”

“I… I thought you wanted to study.”

Jungkook laughs even louder, earning a few hushes from others nearby. He groans, throwing his head back. “I can’t even fucking laugh in here without getting in trouble. Why the hell would I like this place?”

“... To study!”

“To be with you.” 

You shut up. 

No words, no thoughts, no feelings. 

Okay…

Feelings. Lots of them. 

“I don’t understand why you’re so overwhelmed,” Jungkook murmurs, leaning his head against your shoulders. “I thought you knew. I thought you figured it out by now. I wasn't exactly discrete."

You sit still, not knowing if you should move or let him settle in. Before you can decide, he sits himself up and grabs your hand. He squeezes it tightly and brings it to his lips. Kissing your hand, he looks at you. 

“Doesn’t matter if you’re dense. Doesn’t matter if you don’t know how you feel right now. I’ll win you over… You’ll fold."

You yank your hand away from him. In response, he leans over and kisses the side of your head instead. You gasp, but your cheeks blush. Quickly, you cover your face with your hands. He laughs heartily, tugging you close to him. You bury your face in his chest and groan at the sinking feeling of wanting to be anywhere but here. This was humiliating!

And just when you think it can't get any worse, Jungkook wraps his arms around you and hugs you tight. As he pats your back, he murmurs—

"You're falling for me already, aren't you?"

[massiveharmonytiger]

So I think Gabe's portrayal was really intelligently done in the show and I'm pretty dismayed at the negative reactions. I'd argue that TV needs more portrayals of abusers that seem harmless and victims that make efforts to advocate for their own agency because that is what abuse often looks like in the real world. Yes, sometimes abuse is as in your face as with Gabe's introduction in the book version (which the show was still pretty true to, I'll discuss that below) and the other portrayals we've seen on TV, abusers being explicitly threatening or violent, victims cowering and showing visible distress, all that usual, tropey stuff. However, I think more education is needed on all the ways abuse is subtle, because this misunderstanding and this view of abuse as this black and white thing is often the reason so few victims get help, so many abusers get away with it and so many of the people around the victim and abuser, at best, are surprised when the find out what's really been happening, and at worst, defend the abuser because they're so harmless, nice, upstanding, pick your adjective and there's no way they're capable of that.

Source: https://www.domesticshelters.org/articles/identifying-abuse/the-silent-ways-abusers-control

I feel like a lot of the fandom has already fallen into this trap somewhat. Gabe from the TV show is too nonthreatening, bumbling, pathetic, silly, idiotic, nowhere near scary enough to warrant getting petrified by Medusa's head. He doesn't look like an ABUSER. And yet we're confronted with so many markers of abuse in that scene.

Gabe is harmless…

And yet he's verbally abusive to outsiders. The guy that leaves as Percy is arriving has experienced an interaction with Gabe that warrants Percy apologizing for Gabe's actions only for him to apologize back because he gets to leave, Percy doesn't. He's concerned. Sure, Gabe is fat shaming and yelling about eating fruit at the moment. The absurdity of the topic doesn't make it any less inappropriate or abusive btw, because its about the abuser having any excuse to display their dominance and power over you even if the subject matter is batshit. Ever see cases where one person in the relationship (usually a man) will police the other's clothing (usually a woman) because it's too revealing, too tacky, too whatever. That's abuse.

Gabe is harmless…

And yet he's verbally abusive towards Percy. He sarcastically greets him with the cruel nickname "genius" and immediately picks a fight with him. Percy refuses to engage because he knows, from experience, what being goaded looks like. Wrap your head around that. Kids older than him are out there having catfights and making stupid "your mom" jokes, but this infant has so much experience facing conflict, he already knows what steps to take to steer away from that kind of drama and stay in safe territory. He only engages a bit when he hears about Gabe answering Sally's phone. Anyone who's answered a friend or partner's phone before will probably consider Percy's anger and indignation a little bratty and unwarranted. The issue here is that Gabe is someone who ignores boundaries. The issue isn't that he answered Sally's phone, the issue is that he very likely did it without permission. Based on Percy and Sally's reactions (Percy is angry, Sally is resigned), he's someone who's regularly done stuff like look through Sally's phone or purse without her permission. Percy makes it clear that this is not okay, and he gets dismissed. Gabe just answers "whatever's ringin'" and Percy is made to look like the one overreacting. This is what abusers do. They're never in the wrong. And then, the cherry on top of the blue icing, he blames the victim. "What're we doing Percy, every time." Gabe's the one who picked the fight, but by the end of it, Percy's the one being blamed. This is so commonplace and anyone who's been through this knows how maddening it can be. This is such a short interaction but they pack so much into it.

Gabe is harmless…

And yet we find Sally sitting outside in the rain on the balcony, as if she's trying to ground herself after a traumatic experience. As if she's trying to bring herself into the present and not dissociate because when Percy arrives she needs to be there for him. She can deal with the Gabe stuff AFTER Percy is safe. I'll get more into Sally's interaction with Gabe in Part 2 because a lot of people were confused by the fact that she was so firm with him. There's an explanation, I promise.

A lot of people also expressed concern that we wouldn't see Gabe's truly monstrous side before he gets petrified but from what I can see, the shows been making great use of flashbacks and exposition, so I'm pretty sure this will be addressed. Percy and Sally are the heroes. It would be counterintuitive for the show to establish that and then not give them a blatant cause for turning Gabe into stone.

[fillinforlater]

It’s that time of the year again. What are some of your favorite smuts released in 2023?

Monday of Appreciation: Part 104

Hello everyone, Smite here!

2023 is coming to a close and it's been quite the year, a mixture of "this is a bridge year for greater things to come" and "WE LIVIN' NOW MF!" What is a bit different this year is that the highs weren't as high and the lows weren't as low compared to previous years---maybe that is just me getting older, maybe it's hindsight. Either way, I'm good and this year was good.

But some things are more than just good. I'm of course talking about these writers and their stories that I have featured today. All of them deserve special mention, but I want to focus on two of them specifically.

In a year of great, fantastic and already legendary fics, these two stand out.

Without further ado, let's dive into the final MoA of this year:

-1-

@fanfiction4sooya: Can't Save You Now ft. Chaewon, Kazuha, Sakura

I- I- I just read the damn tags and new I one day had to give this a shot. ff4sooya has crazy ideas, futa galore, different dynamics and kinks, which is SO MY THING. This has Mommy and Daddy involved in an absurd (and absurdly hot) threesome that I couldn't take my eyes off.

Now I definitely need to read more and you should too because I bet there are a bunch of Masterpieces in that long Masterlist!

-2-

@iznsfw: Drunken ft. Olivia Hye

Is it really a Monday of Appreciation post without IZ?

Seriously, what this genius is able to cook up in a commission or in the currently ongoing (HYPE) IZ DAYS OF CHRISTMAS is absolutely incredible. We have long stories with in depth characters and love drama that ends not only smuttily but sweetly. Who the fuck needs books, when you can just binge IZ?

With "Drunken", they have once again hit it out of the FUCKIING park. There is never enough Daddy kink fics, yes, but mine seem like nonsensical cringe porn compared to this beauty of a piece. I love how it plays with my heart, no I'm not crying---okay, now that is hot.

Let me change that: there is three very fucking special stories today!

(I think this might even be better than Levi's Hyeju, wtf)

-3-

@cataboliac: Enkindle ft. Wendy

Firstly: I LOVE YOU CATA, BIG QT!

Secondly: "Enkindle" feels a bit like coming home, like a day in Paradise, like the one person that shines so bright in your life that you don't want it to go. And you know, that is the great thing: this might be Cata's final fic, the farewell, but not only is his life gonna be great and he'll be super happy - we also get to read this again and again, and I'm sure I will one day.

Thank you, Cata, for hanging around!

Thirdly: I'M GONNA KISS YOU, CATA!

-4-

@writerpeach: Delectation ft. Wonyoung, Yujin

1.000 Notes, and it's still not enough for what is my pick for fic of the year (FOTY? FOOTY? There is a scene like that, yep). IZ*ONE truly never dies, but it is IVE and these absolute super stars, bomb shells with flawless faces and different, yet irresistible bodies that have us in a frenzy.

Talking about frenzy, all those 30,699 words are a frenzy. I thought Peach would set it up with a long and painful tease that has us edging the entire time BUT NOPE this has so much fucking smut, so many lines of neediness and horniness, it is impossible to finish in one try or two tries or... I dunno, seven-hundred tries?

It's detailed, it's straight forward, it's sex from every fucking angle, I can never get tired of this. I will go so far and say this is Peach's magnum opus, the GOAT fic by the GOAT writer. At least for that day, I can say this without a doubt.

Peach, you are crazy and thank you for that <3

#PeachPavedTheWay #AnnyeongzForDaddy

[borderlinebelle]

🪄🧠

a brain busted lunacy letter to:

YOU AND UR VERY OWN HUMAN EYES- READING THIS RIGHT NOW

+ tumblr,

I need each and every one of you to pls hear me out: i want you to feel it too. Remember long form content? Alright, gather your tits. Let’s get into it. 😈 if you remember how to read … come down there and see it for yourself.

hey you little bag of flesh meat, cartridge, water and electricity… come closer i said… 🙂

I deeply find the tumblr space, as a whole, so vitally valuable to our current society. I, like all of you, have painstakingly enjoyed sifting, repurposing, creating, and displaying a woven unique tapestry… mine is currently over 10 years long. A historical virtual “scroll” 📜… Manila ironic in the worst way: the scroll 🤳🏾 that consumes us.

This isn’t MINDLESSLY scrolling… it feels like… peaking penetratingly into the minds of human beings through their own perceptions.

Every fucking photo, gif, text post, meme, story, song, collage, any and all of it … was put there purposely. Everything … means something to someone here. That’s … fucking incredible.

That’s … fucking human magic. 🪄 something no other social media platform can recreate in the world of TikTok’s, we remained tumblr.

Every single mf time I find a new blog or revisit a mutual’s blog… and I just burst with color and vibrance and wild wickedness and I … drift… loosing myself in the back of your brains, I’m saved.

I’m saved from my own brain, trauma, habits, hangups, mental health… I’m just safe.. tucked behind YOUR brain… and they always fucking feel JUST like mine… so thank you.

I love human beings so much and this is my MOST favorite way to experience them. I’m so fucking happy I haven’t been able to log back into my TIKTOK for months. This is the only place I want to be when I’m online.

The tumblr scroll is so much more healthy: i see these feeds as very distinct and endlessly versatile flip book of human ingenuity and stupidity and comradery and community stitched together to make a pattern that mirrors a portion of a person… can you imagine? IT’S FASCINATING! I mean I know It’s equally ugly here and often… yet outstandingly but overwhelmingly … this is a safe space for creators and the many fandoms we express and decompress with.

i remain almost speechless,on the brink of pure pleasure… on how absolutely embedded i am into all of your collective energy on this stupid little imperfectly perfect fucked up little platform.

Look at April Fool’s Day: Tumblr reminded us all.. to just exhale and have fun TOGETHER. Ugh. gut me gently with the sheer scale of talent and genius and curiosity and kindness and skill and silly and authentic and absurd and individual yet succinct creation of … art. Of feed art. 🖼️ the scale and silly of the creativity around that now HOLIDAY, was tremendous and stupid and clever and community and inclusive.

i hope to one day gain support in organizing and leading a team of experts to create a true con for us. i have experience in events and .. I care. 🧠🪄

tumblr… this … is one of my longest lasting relationships, and i cherish the time so very dearly. From screaming at porn bots to whispering to mutuals… I’m so grateful for all of it.

[ventique18]

Book 7, Chapter 7, Episode 108

It's true; Ortho confirms with his mom is she plans on contacting all the sleeping people to ask them to go against Malleus. If you can't attack from the outside, then you have to do it from within. Ortho is shocked from the absurdity of it, but thinks maybe it'll work. Chances are always zero only if you do absolutely nothing about it and give up from the start. Even if the possibility is only 0.001%, it's not zero and can become a hundred.

(Vil you are this boy's idol lmao. Children really are impressionable.)

So Ortho's going to dive right in to get everything done with, but he's stopped by papa Shroud. Why? He needs to contact brother quickly...

Papa Shroud: "If Idia's dreams have become a reality, then... He might cast you out."

Because in Idia's perfect world, you're not a robot. You're not dead.

Papa Shroud: "You saw it for yourself, right? Your maintenance dock was missing in his dream. You understand what this means."

He announces that they should try to have a professional psychologist try to do the contact first so that the situation can be explained properly.

"You don't have to worry, it's alright."

Ortho: "Because I'm sure, I'm sure that brother..."

"Would just go: "A HUMANOID BISHOUNEN IS ASKING FOR MY HELP FROM WITHIN THE COMPUTER?! IS THIS LIKE THAT LIGHT NOVEL I'VE READ FIVE TIMES ALREADY? IS IT FINALLY MY TIME TO BECOME THE CHOSEN ONE?" ... Something like that."

HIS MOM AGREES.

So Ortho claims that he's sure that no matter what, Idia will at least listen to him.

Ortho: "Don't you two know? Idia Shroud is an unprecedented genius raised by STYX's Director and its Head of Technologies?"

Ortho: "He'd always rather take the shortcut than the long, easy way out!"

[mitsies]

-;, sweet dreams ! ; isagi yoichi > isagi's favourite way to fall asleep is with you.

your bedroom door opens with a sharp creak that makes you jump. a familiar figure appears. one hand carding through his own hair while the other holds his phone, he stands with big confused eyes as he watches you.

"babe? have you seen my phone?"

you purse your lips. for a 'genius', your boyfriend could be really, really dumb sometimes. "no. it's not with you?"

"i swear, it was just in my hands."

"hm. did you check the couch?"

"yeah. not there."

"kitchen?"

he snaps his fingers and grins at you. "you're so smart."

and then he's gone again, phone in hand, strolling off with an absurd amount of faith in you as you try to stifle your laughter into the book you were reading. you've just composed yourself and resumed flipping the pages of your novel when the door opens yet again:

"can you call my phone? i actually have no idea where it is."

he looks so puzzled, it almost makes you giggle- but you bite your tongue and feign a blank expression. "that's so weird. yeah, sure- but did you look at your side of the bed? maybe it's under the sheets or something."

isagi replies with a hum and moves to the opposite side of the room. you watch as he puts his 'missing' phone into his sweatpant pocket as he diligently checks beneath the pillow and blankets, eventually sighing and flopping onto the mattress- just like you knew he would.

"babe," he practically whines, "call me?"

you click your tongue as he pulls himself to lay in your lap. his skin is warm and pressed flush against your thighs, and you gently thump his head with the paperback book. "so desperate, yoichi. how gauche."

your tone is soft and you smile, shifting the book to your other hand so you can work your fingers through his dark locks. they're still slightly damp from his post-practice shower. you push the strands that conceal his eyes back, and they stay that way.

"just call, please babe?"

"check your pocket."

he sits up and sticks both hands down his pockets- one comes up with an old gum wrapper, and the other with his cracked-up iphone.

he blinks at the item and then at you sheepishly. "oh."

"mhm." you don't flinch as he flops back down onto your thigh, and simply tilt your book at an angle so both of you can read it. his pulse thrums steadily against your own skin, even through the thin fabric of his old t-shirt.

"what're you reading?"

"'the priority of the orange tree.' the one i got at the bookstore last week, remember?"

"oh," his response is punctuated by a yawn as he shifts so his whole upper torso's weight is pressed close to your stomach and on your legs, and you move an arm to rest on his side. "how far in are you?"

"almost halfway."

"what's it about?"

you don't reply- instead, you slip to the back of the book to show him the synopsis printed in neat black text. isagi hums. "so what's happening now?"

as you explain to your boyfriend the plot of your novel, he nods and asks questions, and you're struck by an overwhelming sense of adoration. because how lucky were you, to have the most wonderful person curled into your lap like a cat, all eyes on you?

you think you're just the luckiest, no doubts about it.

at some point, isagi falls asleep. you don't mind- you knew he was exhausted. it was only early in the evening, and neither of you had dinner yet, and you should probably wake him up, but you just smile and move your hand again to play with his hair. you think you'll continue reading in the company of your lover, if not just for a little longer.

[shuttershocky]

I just got done watching the KnK movies (wish I didn’t watching 6 but here we are) and I’ve just gotta ask from the local lore expert:

Why Touko so hot?

She just is. Like, canonically.

Mahoyo's got an extra chapter about Beowulf following Touko around town to see what she gets up to, and the narration goes into how Touko walks with the strut and confidence of a supermodel on the runway and is such a head-turner that she had to invent a charm that makes her appear 40% less attractive just to move around without being ogled.

There's also another chapter where one of Aoko's schoolmates happens upon Touko's temporary corpse (she had such a good time singing karaoke that she drank herself to death) and that girl finds her so hot (despite looking like she drank herself to death) that the girl legitimately questions her sexuality before even thinking about how someone died.

But also, Touko's a fun character because Type-Moon as a setting is about setting up extremely elaborate worldbuilding rules and then breaking all of them without giving a shit, but Touko in particular interacts with the setting in a way that shows she's not above it, she goes around it.

For example, she's hardly the strongest fighter since her talent as a mage is not about combat, so sometimes she hides a monster with her like in Mahoyo or Kara No Kyoukai, or sometimes she just roundhouse kicks a dude in the head to end a fight before it begins like in Case Files.

Another example: as someone that travels constantly and constructs bases everywhere, Touko needs a ton of resources that she can't normally have, due to being a wanted criminal and exiled from her own family. Instead, we see all the various shit she gets up to to keep herself afloat. Touko uses her polymath talent to take on any jobs supernatural and not, such as being paid to hunt down and kill specific targets, making puppets for an art exhibit, designing a major building as its architect, even making an anime. Mahoyo even has her wiping out pachinko houses by using her genius to guess which machines would end up giving the biggest payout, while the material books say that Touko's also set up public transportation for mages (called Touko Travel, it's essentially a magic slingshot from point A to point B) and she makes money from the fare.

Touko gives off the illusion that she's too powerful for the rules to apply to her: she can't be permanently killed, no sealing enforcer has been able to capture her, she goes in and out of every setting in Type-Moon as she pleases, but seeing all the effort she has to put in to maintain that illusion of being above the rules makes her go from a boring hypercompetent character into a cool outlaw, leaving you wondering what sort of absurdity she's up to now.

Plus her boobs are huge

[alaska-mii]

ᴅᴇᴄᴋ ᴏғ ᴄᴀʀᴅs | ɪʟ ᴅᴏᴛᴛᴏʀᴇ sᴇɢᴍᴇɴᴛs x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

〖 . . . 〗ɪɴ ᴡʜɪᴄʜ dottore creates a carbon copy of himself in every stage of his growth that he undertakes. to address the elephant in the room — your reputation amongst the segments is, to be blunt, quite the lunchtime dispute.

〖 ᴀ/ɴ 〗more of a character study per say, than an interaction between reader and segment squad.

ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢs: heavy descriptions of gore, obssesive behavior, pet names

〖 Ⅱ 〗ɪʟ ᴅᴏᴛᴛᴏʀᴇ sᴇɢᴍᴇɴᴛ: ᴋᴀᴘᴘᴀ

bearing quite the zealous streak, the verdant scholarly robes you often spot cascading behind him as he scrambles to and fro between endeavors betrays the years he had spent in the field during his legal reign of research.

absurd as it seems, kappa's prone to donning his heart on his sleeve, evidenced by the fawning, nigh tenderhearted nature he moulds over the blasphemy of his character rooted in each segment for your sake. and whether it be tainting the nonchalance of his genius or, in the scholar's case, festering beneath his bygone clean record, you reap the benefits of the devotion you've sowed.

despite the reputation he had garnered as the resident goody two shoes, a notion that even the others seem to gloss over as a half-baked jest, you've barely dug into the details of the open book you once pegged kappa to be. peering into the carmine eyes above the flush that dusted his cheeks if he happened to so much as glance at you — a cast to his palor you had once upon a time pinned the blame of to a candid crush, during the youth you had spent as a student yourself — they beheld such raw infatuation and frenzy in the razored grin below. both served as a wretched reminder of the doctor's sheer lunacy, buried beneath the cloak of a young, foolhardy scholar.

the scholar — though he sports the crammed role of the errand boy, bossed around and treated like another meager masked fatui agent — always seems to knit together occasions to gift you near heart attacks whenever he stumbles upon you as he flocks haphazardly throughout the palace, moments that he, of course, takes guilty delight in. the shock that bolts through you when he pinches you into an embrace from behind never ceases to send your composure into haywire, a secret the cheeky bastard devours.

you beam at the pitter-patter of steps echoing throughout the brittle corridors. it is always a delicacy to see a crumb of energy against such drabness within these halls, but kappa's stifling zest is a flavor you'd prefer not to taste.

as the rhythm of tapping trails away, you mark the coast as clear. alas, when you bite back a shriek as arms slink around your waist — much to his jovial laughter — you had ventured far into the den of the vulture's playground.

he chuckles breezily, nuzzling further into the racing thrum at your neck without shame. giddiness seeps from him in waves, "you'll have to forgive me, love,"

he squeezes you against him once more, lapping up the morsel of your choked rasps, before untangling the grasp he snaked around you. he stows those hands behind a cape of silk as if to conceal their breaching acts moments before.

the scholar flashes a serrated smile, ear to ear, "the feast you made yourself to be was an invitation far too appetizing to ignore."

〖 Ⅱ 〗ɪʟ ᴅᴏᴛᴛᴏʀᴇ sᴇɢᴍᴇɴᴛ: ᴅᴇʟᴛᴀ

the rogue has a penchant for brandishing the cold shoulder towards you, evidently due to the fresh memory of the rejection sustained from his homeland that seared into the soles of each gloomy traipse he treaded. no matter the hours you spend interrogating delta between the mounds of research — really piles of clutter atop his equipment — he entombs himself in, your pyring inquiries always seem to be greeted by blunt hums and the dreary rustle of a shrug. the vague responses you manage to wring from him are victories you savour.

in moments of weakness, after an onslaught of questions — fueled only by the desire to fathom such detatchment encapsulated within each twitch of his person — are thwarted by matching stubbornness, the urge to cleave his head from the column of his neck and chop at his candy blue curls if only to peak at the dense fog that clouded him so often entices you. the utter gloom he stokes is painted boldly on your poise, yet unbeknownst to you, the rogue's macabre thoughts mirror yours precisely, merely concealing it behind his bleak demeanor.

delta mulls it over when the muse strikes him. one time, he had halted when his gloves were soaked in gore to the elbows, gaze gliding over to your fidgeting. today, the droning sentence that had caught his attention, a murmur you sandwiched in yet another ramble: to prompt you into abandoning him would be yearning to peel a parasite from its host. a ludicrous — yet somehow touching — sentiment.

the rogue truly does ponder about it, balancing the options upon a scale chained by the hours you spun yarns of storybook tales and mundane chores throughout your days. you color him puzzled, weaving such a labyrinth between him and the coherent course of choice. the fleeting deranged idea plagues him though, tugs at him to wonder if you really are a species of nonhuman that initiates conversation to harvest some form of energy from him.

a mellow snore drags him from his sulking — ah, it seemed you've cruised into a drowse yourself. gingerly draped across a surface swept from rather noteworthy gadgets and documents, you nestled your chin into tucked sleeves. that particular tangled thread of thoughts is for another day.

the chair scratches along the ground as he unfurls from his seat. he ambles towards your slumber, focus latched onto you.

delta looms above you, reaching a languid hand to the crown of your head. how he yearns, yet he reigns his own talons in, collecting himself. then, as he observes you stir from your doze, it happens upon him like a whip.

your glossy, sleep ridden eyes meet his.

he wouldn't be bothered — he thinks as a tender, questioning, sleepy keen escaped those lips—were you a leech feasting upon his blood. so long as you needed a part of him to breathe.

〖 Ⅱ 〗ɪʟ ᴅᴏᴛᴛᴏʀᴇ sᴇɢᴍᴇɴᴛ: ᴏᴍᴇɢᴀ

omega's been favouring a curious hobby, as you've gauged as of late, which was his habit of dangling bait before you, humoring in your battle against the hook, and after he tugs you out of your element, judging if you'll squirm or yield as the gambler gobbles you up.

not a sole segment of ghastly skin tattered with scarred ingravings of past experiments, adorned with pale blue locks draping across sharp pristine wardrobe, coupled with those eyes granting only a shred of the endowment packed into his mind scratched beneath your skin more than that damned gambler.

an odd monicker, yet not without background — since it had always been a routine matter of chance with him. whether you had unlucky dealings with the others and if he was feeling rather malicious when he encounters you, or whether he'd notice the bounce in your step as his mood was bizarrely indulgent for once. each jest he sends is designed to coax an answer, not to dictate any of the perturbed backlash you let slip through the crevices of the etiquette you sculpted into your behavior.

and in exchange for obediently playing along with this game of his, you craft a mock of your own — the high and mighty gambler.

the morbid satisfaction that racks through you whenever you bear witness to the smugness draining from him is a trophy like no other. you know he loaths it as the harbinger bestowed with the second seat is infamous for his schemes founded upon logic harvested from centuries worth of shrewdness beneath his belt. only then does he clench his mouth shut, refusing to hand his pride to you on a silver platter without a fight.

how you both entertain yourselves by spewing barbed quips to one another is beyond even you. omega does seem to find amusement in your ruffled feathers, however. such a stark unlikeness to the spineless skirmishers who quiver at the offer of his honeyed venom.

you hear the rhythm of his clacking footfall only due to his current indulgence, you know he'd leave no hint of his incoming presence otherwise. the gaze boring onto your back bothers you too much to ignore. even through that beaked mask of his.

he notices the brake in your hastened stride. to tempt his dormant pestering tendancies would not be wise.

"going somewhere?" he drawls, moseying into place beside you. before you could respond, he drones on, "perhaps a stroll outside the palace would do you well. you cage yourself inside these walls so often that i've been meaning to ask the last time you've seen the sun."

the lure beckons you to throw another jab back. although, one-sided banter is one of the more pleasant things you'll encounter in his company. you hum instead, "but i've heard the weather tonight is the least bit inviting. besides," — an olive branch — "won't you join me either way?"

the question hangs heavy in the static air between the pair of you. you wonder if you should've held your tongue.

then, omega haughtily scoffs, "break away from the delusion you've fooled yourself into believing. you are not entitled to my presence."

he nears you, then. arms clad in moonlit silver tucked behind his back, a soft glow emitting from the liquid encapsulated in his glass earring, the sharpness of antiseptic and iron and the faintest, fleeting whisper of a floral aroma, all just swallowing you whole.

"however," he tilts his head, breath fanning at your cheek, the sharpened tip of his crow's mask a hairsbreadth away, "make no mistake, darling. the time i spend with you this evening is of my own free will."

he resumes his amiable snail's pace stroll, leading the trek to nowhere in particular, leaving you to scramble behind him.

〖 Ⅱ 〗ɪʟ ᴅᴏᴛᴛᴏʀᴇ sᴇɢᴍᴇɴᴛ: ᴇᴘsɪʟᴏɴ

if the bandwagon of torture was a worshipped diety, epsilon had taken it upon himself to employ his torment upon you as a sacred custom.

despite the frequent visits he suffocates you with, abiding by the disheveled schedule he had demanded you to heed, panic creeps into you whenever his mood sours at the farthest thing from you. few and far in between, the poor outcome of an experiment — a glass chamber had broked beneath the rampage of his hand, you had quivered quietly as you watched — other times yet often enough, the errors of his assigned researchers — there had been a bloodbath when he finished, you faintly smell the tang of copper clinging to you still — or, heaven forbid, a fault of your own.

the trecherous memory haunts you, a ghost forever paralyzed in sweltering agony and numbing horror clutching at your heels, never to forgotten and submerged from your mind. he remembers, too. yet it is an unspoken rule amongst you that both butcher and carcass would play pretend, unless you choose to relive the nightmare of a cleaver's blade.

ah, but that vexes him too. he doesn't wish for a corpse to be his everyday companion, rather, he urges you to sew together a semblance of an ordinary bond shared between a pair of animated lovers: to be a taxidermied toy, stitches and staples and a ploy at being alive. his scholarly days had been the target of his unadulterated disgust for ages, and he was not about to alter such inner resolve within him over a silly fantasy, but perhaps.

perhaps, a lifetime ago, he could have graduated from that wretched hellhole with his hand intertwined in yours, looping through one another in matrimony. perhaps you could have travled the lands together, never quite quenching your hunger for the unknown, never settling as wanderlust tainted the both of you. how charming — you would be the only home that daren't chase him away with pitchforks and torches. he hates that such enchanting dreams will always be a distant fairytale.

yet in a cruel twist of heart, epsilon does find solace in having you within arm's reach, ready to be beckoned at a moment's notice. he had been stripped of his prestige, now forced to operate within inky shadows — should there be a single aspect of his former life that would never escape his grasp, it would be his lover. the only one who could hold him wholly within the palms of your hands.

it's that truth that drives each word lashed towards you, every vice grip he latches onto you. he wouldn't part from you if death came to seize his soul, yet how effortlessly you could just let go unnerves him to his bones. surely you of all crowds would understand this overbearing character he acts behind — no doubt, you would read between the lines of the scripts he spouts.

no matter if epsilon gets lost within the scenes, melds with the butcher who lusts after the wounds he tears and stitches back together upon your flesh. nevermind if he feels a twinge of glee whenever tears are shed from eyes squinted with pain. you would be the needle of his haystack audience, always meant to throw yourself into a standing ovation at the end of his preformance. always meant to tell the butcher from the knife he wields.

splatter paints him another coat of skin.

he stares, the smothered trembles on your figure are earthouakes to him. eyes flickering to the puddle oozing from the crack of the door, to the mangled bodies that lay mauled behind it, anywhere but his own that fixes on the grimace crinkling your face.

shattering the moment frozen in the dead of the evening, he dares a step forward.

he stops before you — a bundle of nerves packaged by the stun of his scrutiny — and peels his soiled gloves from his hands. sprinkling dots of blood on your cheek.

he tosses the pair at your feet, you startle with a hitch of your breath. he catches your jaw, and at last, you timidly peak at his towering form above. you thought you would perhaps glimpse a note of the mayhem that plagues him, yet you only find a sickeningly soft glint glossing his twin crimsons.

epsilon kneels like a knight in a pool of dribbling blood. he presses his forehead to yours, chanting your name a prayer, "be not afraid, my dearest. so long as you stay by my side," he signs, hysteria bleeding into his voice, "i won't lay a hand on you."

a lie, stemming from the desperate need for stability, an offer to a fake haven that wouldn't crumble into the depths of the evening. you know the invitation is merely another slight of hand biding time for the other to lash out, for the other shoe to drop.

yet you can't help but take the bold-faced lie with greedy hands.

〖 ᴀ/ɴ 〗disclaimer, delta and kappa are my own. had a blast writing this, so please leave a note below!

[centrally-unplanned]

Extreme charm from this Nabokov list of "reviews" of authors:

Melville, Herman. Love him. One would like to have filmed him at breakfast, feeding a sardine to his cat.

Tumblr-post worthy, 10/10.

Faulkner, William. Dislike him. Writer of corncobby chronicles. To consider them masterpieces is an absurd delusion. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me.

He's just like me fr fr

Joyce, James. Great. A favorite between the ages of 20 and 40, and thereafter. Let people compare me to Joyce by all means, but my English is patball to Joyce's champion game. A genius. I. Ulysses. A divine work of art. Greatest masterpiece of 20th century prose. Towers above the rest of Joyce's writing. Noble originality, unique lucidity of thought and style. Molly's monologue is the weakest chapter in the book. Love it for its lucidity and precision. II. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Never liked it. A feeble and garrulous book. III. Finnegans Wake. A formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book. Conventional and drab, redeemed from utter insipidity only by infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations. Detest it. A cancerous growth of fancy word-tissue hardly redeems the dreadful joviality of the folklore and the easy, too easy, allegory. Indifferent to it, as to all regional literature written in dialect. A tragic failure and a frightful bore.

I never complemented a human like this before in my life, and I never could, I tremble in fear of this complement

Freud, Sigmund. A figure of fun. Loathe him. Vile deceit. Freudian interpretation of dreams is charlatanic, and satanic, nonsense.

He's just like me fr fr!!!

Anyway its a list of great takes, like Nabokov always delivers - though I like Sarte & Camus myself.

[drnikolatesla]

Was Nikola Tesla an Alien, or was he in contact with aliens?

Nikola Tesla was, and still is one of the most unique and influential people in history, so much so that his life's work has inspired some of the more absurd conspiracy theories of today. These include Tesla being an alien from another planet, or that he was in contact with aliens who guided him in his work, or that he was obsessed with the Egyptian pyramids and found the secrets to ancient technology. These very colorful narratives, although very intriguing, falsely portray and exploit the genius of Tesla.

So where to these conspiracies stem from?

In 1959, sixteen years after Tesla's passing, Margaret Storm wrote a novel titled Return of the Dove. She revealed that Tesla was originally born on board a spaceship traveling from Venus to Earth in 1856, and was delivered to a Serbian family with the purpose of bringing the world electric power and mass communication systems. She also stated that Tesla developed an apparatus for interplanetary communication in 1838, and his assistants rebuilt it after his death in 1950. This device allowed them to communicate and maintain a relationship with "Space People" who told them of Tesla's origins. The book is actually pretty good, and might resonante more with people who enjoy spiritual and mystical quest stories, but in all it's just a fictional story. This story would even reach the FBI, but not because they were curious about "Space People," but because Nikola Tesla's nephew, Peter Savo, was in contact with them about Storm's exploitation of his uncle.

The conspiracy that Tesla was in contact with aliens comes from his experiments in Colorado Springs where he confessed to the press that he had recieved a signal from an unknown source, possibly Mars. He wrote a letter to the Red Cross in 1900 where he says: "I have observed electrical actions, which have appeared inexplicable. Faint and uncertain though they were, they have given me a deep conviction and foreknowledge, that ere long all human beings on this globe, as one, will turn their eyes to the firmament above, with feelings of love and reverence, thrilled by the glad news: “Brethren! We have a message from another world, unknown and remote. It reads: one… two… three.” Tesla would continue to promote the possibility of interplanetary communication for the rest of his life, but he was not in contact with aliens.

A far as Tesla being obsessed with the Egyptian pyramids there is no evidence back these claims. These conspiracies are derived from silly people using Tesla's inventions to correlate and further promote their far-fetched, evidence-free theories that the Egyptians were visited by extraterrestrials.

Ironically enough, the Office of Alien Property Custodian of the United States did confiscate Tesla's property after his death in 1943...so maybe he was an alien! ✌️👽

[bettsfic]

Ohh any thoughts or notes on their eyes were watching god? It's one of my very very favorite books!

their eyes were watching god is one of those books that reminds you that genius is a real thing, and that real genius often goes unrecognized during the lifetime of the artist. creativity is always walking the fine line between the familiar and the unknown, and the closer to the unknown your work is, the harder it is to find an audience. that's why the work of criticism is so important i think--critics are people who seek out newness and bring it to an audience. what brought me to hurston was alice walker's essay "in search of zora" which is imo one of the greatest essays ever written.

here's the end of it:

every time i read this it gives me chills. it's amazing to me how many great artists are buried in weeds. van gogh was so loathed in auvers that theo couldn't get anyone to approve a place to bury him.

it's so intensely tragic. i really get what walker means by grief feeling absurd.

since i read their eyes were watching god for funsies i don't have many critical thoughts about it. i love that it's an odyssey. i think it's a masterwork of voice and style. i admire the use of frame narrative. janie and tea cake are such iconic characters. there's just so much to learn from it in terms of craft, and i hope one day i get to teach it in an intermediate or advanced fiction class.

i'd love to hear your thoughts on it as well! i'm especially interested to hear what makes it one of your favorites?

[a-n-conrad]

Bad Poetry (Micah Yujin x Reader)

[Summary: Micah takes it upon himself to distract you while you stress out about homework. (They/Them pronouns)

Warnings: None

Request: None, but you can request at my survey! I’m just… down bad. (https://forms.gle/D9rsJtkERoBPaKvv8)]

You had hoped that you’d be done with your school work before Micah’s visit. Most of your work, you could get done ahead of time. The classes were easy enough for you, so you could work a week or two ahead. That meant that you had more time to spend with Micah. He didn’t get the chance to visit all that often, so you didn’t want to waste any of the time you had on school work. 

Unfortunately, there was one class that you just couldn’t get ahead of, no matter how hard you tried. You had hoped the poetry class wouldn’t be that much of a challenge when you signed up for it. However, it seemed you just couldn’t keep up with all the assignments. That was how you ended up pouring through your poetry books while Micah watched over your shoulder. 

“Angel, I’m bored,” he whined, leaning on your shoulders as you tried to stay focused.

“And here I was, thinking that you just enjoyed spending time with me. I suppose that’s not enough for you anymore, huh?” You couldn’t help but tease him a bit, still not looking up from your book. The reading you were trying to do was due the next morning, and you still had to write up your analysis on it.

“Aw, that’s not fair,” he pouted. When you didn’t respond, he moved to sit across from you at the table. Honestly, you couldn’t help but think it was sweet that he wanted your attention so badly. You wanted to take a break from your homework too, but you truly didn’t have the time. “You know I enjoy just hanging out with you, but I was promised cuddles. I bought a whole plane ticket and everything.”

You couldn’t help but laugh a bit as he whined. You knew he was joking, but he was really giving the bit everything that he had. He could be ridiculously dramatic when he wanted to, and you had to admit it was endearing. “I promise you’ll survive until I finish with this, you dork. I just have to get this done, and I should be done for the week.”

“Ugh, can’t you just cheat? I thought you said that was what you normally did,” he was getting more and more dramatic with every moment. You could vaguely see his golden puppy-dog eyes staring at you in the edge of your vision. 

“That was a joke, idiot. Besides, shouldn’t you be used to sitting around like this? I doubt this is as boring as your 8 hour study sessions,” you looked up just long enough to stick your tongue out at him, earning a chuckle that always seemed to make your heart melt. “Speaking of, if you wanna help me out with the analysis for this, it would probably do more for you than all that pouting.”

“I don’t know,” he replied, drawing out the words in a way that told you he was about to say something absurd. “That seems unfair to all of your classmates. I’m kind of a genius when it comes to poetry, after all. You don’t want to make them all feel stupid, do you?”

“I mean, a bit,” you responded, unable to hide the smile forming on your lips, “but I’m really not all that worried about that.”

“What, you don’t believe that I’m a poetry god? A master wordsmith? You dare doubt me?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” your words were dripping with sarcasm as they left your mouth, “I’m sure you’re just a modern day Shakespeare.”

“I don’t know, Angel. It sounds a bit like my wonderful partner is doubting my abilities,” you hadn’t even realized that he had stood up from the chair. You were far too focused on trying to get your work done. You probably should have known better than to think Micah Yujin wouldn’t use the opportunity to fluster you.

“No comment.”

“Oh, Angel, you wound me,” his voice was much closer, finally catching your attention. You looked up from your books, only to find him kneeling next to you, his face much closer to your own than you expected. You knew he was enjoying the banter because the sparkle in his eyes didn’t fade for a second. 

You tried distracting yourself, looking at his hair instead of the mischievous look in his eyes. The chunky white stripes in his hair were a signature look of his. You could barely imagine what he would look like without them. Still, you could tell that it had been a little while since he had touched them up because his roots were growing out a bit. However, you couldn’t help but to look back at his face after a moment or two, meeting his cocky grin that always put his fangs on full display. You just had to hope the blush wasn’t noticeable yet. 

“Can I help you, Micah?” You asked, keeping your voice as steady as you possibly could.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day, Angel?” He moved a hand to rest on your cheek, and you were sure that he could feel the heat pouring off of your cheeks. You never understood how his voice could have such an effect on you. He never failed to make you weak in the knees with just his words alone. Not that you were going to tell him that. You would never live that down and you knew it.

Instead, you just looked at him, trying to keep a straight face as he stared directly into your eyes. You didn’t trust your voice with a response. The last time he had caught you stuttering because of him, he teased you about it for a week. He only stopped because you pointed out all the times he had done the same thing. Still, you decided that avoiding that teasing would be much easier than finding a way to distract him afterwards. So you just raised an eyebrow at him in response, trying your best to seem entirely unimpressed.

“Because you’re hot as fuck.”

It took you a second to process, the sudden change in tone catching you a bit off guard. However, once you finally wrapped your head around what he had said, you couldn’t help but burst into laughter. 

It was the ugly, absurd laughter that often came when he caught you off guard with a joke. The kind that only he had ever really earned. It always seemed to make him smile, but your eyes were too watery for you to see the dopey, love-struck look on his face. 

“Micah Yujin, that was terrible,” you said between giggles. You were still gasping for breath, but you felt as though you had to say something or you’d never manage to calm down.

Honestly, you hadn’t even realized how tense you were getting about your school work until that moment. Until the tension was shaken from your shoulders with each laugh. Until you finally felt relaxed as you slowly caught your breath. It was at that moment that you realized Micah hadn’t been trying to get you to take a break because he wanted your attention. He wanted you to take a break for yourself. 

“Micah Yujin, you absolute dork,” you sighed, leaning your face into his hand that had returned to your cheek. You and Micah might tease each other constantly, but it was moments like that when you were reminded just how caring Micah really was. And you were eternally grateful to have him. However, the only way you could think to express it was a simple, “Thank you.”

He seemed to get the message, though, if the soft kiss he pressed to your forehead was anything to go by.

[A/N: This is shorter than my usual stuff, but hey, at least I've started getting over my writer's block. At least a little bit.]

[athingofvikings]

A Thing Of Vikings Chapter 105: No Greater Fear Than That Of Love Standing Helpless

Chapter 105: No Greater Fear Than That Of Love Standing Helpless

The idea of blood is ridiculous.

And while I have some complaints to Odin about the red stuff that runs in our bodies and leaks out when you poke too hard, that's not what I'm talking about here.

The idea of good blood or bad blood or bloodlines or 'they take after their father or mother,' or, going bigger, that's just how they are because of who they are, what they are, that's absurd.

I'm proof of that. I grew up as my father's runt of a child, someone who was strange and who didn't fit in, despite all of my efforts to be just like them. How can I say to other people that that's what I would expect of them because of who their parents were, who their family is, when I remember so strongly that I wasn't like my own father?

'That's just how they are'. Oh really? That's just how 'they' are? Why? It didn't matter to me how much 'Vikings' were like that, even as I tried to be one with all of my (rather sad) might. I wasn't an ax-wielding warrior.

Yes, there are tendencies across groups of people. But those come from how the child is taught, from what the people around them say is acceptable on how to behave, and also from their own personal gifts and temperaments. Everyone likes to say now that my eldest kids are 'geniuses, just like their father' since they started reaching adulthood and I'm finding out exactly what my father and Gobber meant by "the Grandparents' Curse". And yes, part of me would like to think that it's all my 'blood'. But it isn't. It's because when they were little, I helped them ask questions and grow. I encouraged the parts of them that wanted to know, wanted to understand the world and how it is put together. And not all of my kids are that kind of 'genius'. Oh, Asta and Magni definitely are, and it's been a joy to watch them scare and upset the old scholars as they've finish their schooling—or in Valka's case, scare the lords now that she's starting to take some responsibility in leading. But Hamish, ahem, 'takes after his mother,' and while he's certainly smart enough, he's not interested in being a philosopher or a lord or an artist or a priest like his brothers and sisters are. He's growing up to be a warrior, a soldier, an officer and general like his mother is, and I'm just doing my best to help him be a man of honor and not a bully. And I'm not going to force him to be like me if he doesn't want to be. I know how much that hurts.

But that's just my own family. I wasn't a model Hooligan growing up, no matter how many tales people tell now to the contrary. Fishlegs grew up around books and cultivated that in him, but he wasn't a perfect warrior as our people pictured it either. Hel, Mildew, may Nidhogg gnaw on his bones, was one of us, and look at how he acted! It was as if every law and rule we had was something he viewed as a challenge to break!

So when I hear people say in the Thing that that's 'just how the Turks are', or 'everyone knows that's how the Han people are', or any of that…

I always end up asking sarcastically about what 'everyone knows'. After all, 'everyone knows' that Jews are weak scholars—and some of our most highly honored soldiers come from their people. I've had my own people comment to me in private that 'everyone knows' how Franks are untrustworthy fanatics who will betray oaths to outsiders if they can find an excuse. And, sure, there have been examples of that… and there have been many more examples of good and kind members of their people, who repay decency with decency and honor with honor.

No. Blood is ridiculous. I grew up with a smith for a guardian and became a craftsman. My wives grew up in the homes of warriors and leaders, and that's what they were taught to become.

And that is why I do my best to help my people, regardless of their 'blood', to grow and fly on their own.

Because I know what it's like to be a square peg in a round hole, even if people now are saying that the hole was always square.

It wasn't.

—From the Journal of Hiccup Haddock, October 12th, AD 1067

AO3 Chapter Link

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My Original Fiction | Original Fiction Patreon

[nanowrimo]

30 Covers, 30 Days 2023: Day 8

Since it's day 8 of NaNoWriMo, some of you might start wishing someone else could write your novel for you. Here's a fun novel that explores that exact idea! Today, we have 10 Maniacs are Trapped in a Death Trap and they Each Must Write a Short Story or They Will All Be Killed by Adam Marler, a Satire/Humor novel! This novel cover was designed by the amazing returning artist, Christopher Simmons!

(For those of you who don’t know, 30C30D stands for 30 Covers, 30 Days in which 17 Wrimos and 5 YWP Participants get the chance to win a professionally designed cover! The rest of the days are being filled by community features. We’ll be posting a cover a day throughout November, so make sure to check them out!)

10 Maniacs are Trapped in a Death Trap and they Each Must Write a Short Story or They Will All Be Killed

(What if the bad guy from Saw trapped people and made them write his NaNoWriMo?)

On June 15th, a brilliant creative mind met tragic fate. Dr. Bloodcastle, a literary genius, faced a fate worse than death. A horrifying collision with a bus filled with 10 total maniacs left him messed up, both physically and creatively. His life's work, a collection of short stories, lay in ruins, missing a staggering 50,000 words. His literary agent, once a faithful ally, severed their professional ties.

Years passed, and from the depths of despair, Dr. Bloodcastle emerged with a visage as chilling as his resolve. Now his face was a skull.

The 10 maniacs responsible for his ruin would soon discover that their twisted fate had taken a malevolent turn. Dr. Bloodcastle, with a thirst for retribution, kidnapped each one of them. He would force them to wield the pen and write, an agonizing task of producing 50,000 words in a mere month.

Prepare for a chilling tale of literary revenge, where the boundaries between sanity and madness blur, and the pen becomes a weapon of torment. Dr. Bloodcastle's macabre narrative unfolds, and justice will be written in the ink of vengeance.

About the Author

Adam Marler is a lifelong reader with a great appreciation for literature and the written word. Despite that, he is currently working on 10 Maniacs are Trapped in a Death Trap and they Each Must Write a Short Story or They Will All Be Killed which shouldn't be considered a reflection on any of his previous teachers, academic or otherwise.

When he isn't writing this dumb thing he's spending time with his wife, son, two dogs and house that is roughly 25% remodeled.

About the Designer

Christopher Simmons is a designer, author, artist, occasional hamburger blogger, and a former curator of NaNoWriMo’s 30 Days/30 Covers project. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries ranging from The Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art to the de Young Museum in San Francisco to The Smithsonian Institution. He has written four books and designed considerably more.

Cover Design Process:

This year. we gave designers the optional prompt to explain their design process for the cover! Here's Christopher's:

The title, as I was given it, was “10 Maniacs are Trapped in a Death Trap and they Each Must Write a Short Story or They Will All Be Killed by Adam Marler.” My first instinct was to play with the absurd length of that title. Most of my early explorations were around that. But there was also something intriguing to me about the run-on between title and author; it almost read as if Adam Marler was going to do the killing. I became interested with blurring the boundary between author and title, which is how I arrived at implicating him as one of the maniacs. Since the book is a satire about the writing process it seemed apropos. The full title appears on the spine, but this is the kind of concept cover that would probably get rejected. Still, I like to lead with it to jumpstart creative discussions.

[hornyforpoetry]

Winter Reading Challenge

Every season I like to give myself a challenge to read. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to finish almost any of the ones I had in the autumn challenge (I'm not a procrastinator, I swear, I just have very little free time). This time, I tried to include in the list books from several fields, from prose to poetry, philosophy, theater and theater theory, biographies. There are many Russian authors in this list, it seems to me that they fit very well with the cold season. Let's hope that this time I will stick to reading more. Wish me luck!

From December 1st - February 29th (European calendar)

Leo Tolstoy – ”Childhood. Boyhood. Youth”

Leo Tolstoy – ”War and Peace”

Fyodor Dostoevsky – ”The Double” (1846)

Fyodor Dostoevsky – ”Demons”

Ivan Turghenev – ”Rudin”

Nikolai Leskov – ”Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and other short stories”

Anton Chekhov – ”Novellas and novelettes by Anton Chekhov”

Nikolai Gogol – ”Dead Souls”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – ”One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”

Mikhail Bulgakov – ”The Master and Margarita”

Maxim Gorky – ”Mother”

Vladimir Nabokov – ”Lolita”

Marguerite Yourcenar - "A Coin in Nine Hands"

Marguerite Yourcenar - "A Blue Tale"

‌Franz Kafka - "The Metamorphosis and other stories"

Edgar Allan Poe - "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket"

John Edwards Williams - "Stoner"

Ovid - "Metamorphoses"

Dante Aligheri - "The Divine Comedy - Inferno"

Giovanni Papini - "Gog"

Plato - "Phaedo"

Aristotel - "Metaphysics "

Marcus Aurelius - "Meditations: Thoughts to Myself"

Immanuel Kant - "Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Article Talk "

Niccolo Machiavelli - "The Prince"

Emil Cioran - "The Trouble With Being Born"

Peter Brook - "The Empty Space"

Jerzy Grotowski - "The Poor Theatre"

Antonin Artaud - "The Theatre and its Double"

Martin Esslin - "The Theatre of Absurd"

Salvador Dalí - "Diary of a Genius"

Vaslav Nijinsky - "The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky: Unexpurgated Edition"

August Strindberg - "The Ghost Sonata"

William Shakespeare - "Titus Andronicus"

William Shakespeare - "Coriolanus"

Maxim Gorky - "The Lower Depths"

Racine - "Britannicus"

Goethe - "Gotz von Berlichingen"

Frank Wedekind - "The Spring Awakening"

Aeschylus - "The Oresteia" (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides)