#actually god Sophie editting this: oh god oh fuck jesus fucking christ

[askoctoling]

A little.. sneak peek, perhaps? - Mod ?????

[aceandsparrow]

Survivor 40: Episode 4

[A] "I just did everything that you are not supposed to do in Survivor." And yet your dumbass is still in the game and will likely be rewarded with a tribe swap. [S] "I just did everything you're not supposed to do in Survivor." WHY DID IT TAKE YOU SO LONG TO REALIZE THIS?

[S] Just go do the challenge and stop complaining. Get some cardio.

[A] Twenty times up and down for a single log of firewood...Danni's just going to sit this one out, isn't she?

[S] God Natalie's arrogance is obnoxious. 

[S] I'd rather have a fire token than a baby to be honest.

[A] Why do all the edits of Ethan talking make me nervous that something bad is going to happen to him… 

[A] Ethan, no. Stop. Sit down. Breathe.

[S] You better not medevac Ethan!

[S] You're damn right. You can do it, Ethan!

[A] My ass would finish mine and then finish his for him. Fuck the competition. That man deserves respect.

[S] Oh good. Crying. 

[S] Here's the problem, Adam. You've made it so easy to lie about you playing both sides.

[A] LMAO. "So under the radar that I did not even know her name." Poor Sophie.

[S] Why is Sarah trying to smell Tyson's breath?

[S] Tyson isn't lying though, Sandra. It's you soon after Tyson.

[A] So does Sandra sit out this challenge too? [S] Sandra sitting out?

[A] Jesus Christ, I was joking. [S] Shocking.

[A] Oh hey look, blue team is failing at a challenge. Again. 

[S] How hard is it to grab a fucking key?

[A] They better fricking do the tribe swap AFTER Adam gets voted out. He is losing this challenge for his tribe. 

[S] Rob didn't struggle on the last challenge's puzzle. He almost pulled off a miracle comeback.

[S] And he actually came back this time… [A] WTF just happened?

[A] Adam, you don't get to feel proud with this showing. This wasn't a "there is no stopping him" moment. This was a "the rest of your tribe compensated for your lack of talent" moment.

[A] Nice to finally see the other side do this scrambling (so long as Yul stays safe).

[A] According to Tyson, Sandra is a smaller target than Tyson and Tony. And this is why Tyson will not win. [S] SANDRA IS THE BIGGEST THREAT ON THE BEACH YOU IDIOTS, NOT TYSON!

[S] Tyson is voted out and it's not interesting. Tony just doing whatever Sandra tells him. [A] This is my shocked face that Tyson got voted out. 😑

[S] For a season titled "Winners at War," this has been a pretty boring season so far.

[S] Nick? What? [A] Wait, he gave his token to Nick? Interesting...

[A] Oh there's the tribe swap. [S] Looks like I was off of tribe swap by a week.

[just0nemorepage]

My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories || Stephanie Perkins || 321 pages ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Top 3 Genres: Young Adult / Short Stories / Romance

Synopsis: If you love holiday stories, holiday movies, made-for-TV-holiday specials, holiday episodes of your favorite sitcoms and, especially, if you love holiday anthologies, you’re going to fall in love with My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories by twelve bestselling young adult writers, edited by international bestselling author Stephanie Perkins. Whether you enjoy celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah, Winter Solstice or New Year's there's something here for everyone. So curl up by the fireplace and get cozy. You have twelve reasons this season to stay indoors and fall in love.

Finished: December 14th, 2017.

Progress: 13 / 50. 26% complete.

My Rating: ★★★★★. [5/5]

My Review: [Under the read more - NOT SPOILER FREE]

Alright, it's been three days, I've seen the new Star Wars on opening night, survived my office's Christmas party and a trip to the mall, spent a night with Tyler and an evening out with my entire family for my dad's birthday, ticked off another D&D session, woke up early to do some dog sitting, passed out in bed before 11pm on both of my days off cause – who knew – I am tired, SO, it's about time I wrote this review.

Gift wrapping still needs done today too.

REVIEW FIRST.

CAUSE THIS BOOK DID THINGS TO ME.

To be fair – as with all short story books, some stories fell kind of flat, most others were either neutral or just generally enjoyable, and the rest were like JESUS CHRIST I WANT A FULL NOVEL OF THIS.

I also had a fun time trying to identify which of the ice skating couples on the front of the book corresponded with each couple in each story. 😁

So I suppose I'll do a breakdown of all twelve stories, with individual ratings and comments for each one, knowing that the whole book gets a full five stars cause holy shit my heart.

Midnights ; Rainbow Rowell - ★★★☆☆. 3/5. One of the ones I felt kind of neutral towards, and maybe even fell a little flat. It was cute, definitely, and a good start to the book, but the characters felt so... "young adult." They didn't feel real at all. It felt like an extremely romanticized version of a friendship turning into a romance, and like it was more a stylized painting of a relationship than an actual relationship. But, it was still cute.

The Lady and the Fox ; Kelly Link - ★★☆☆☆. 2/5. The writing was beautiful and poetic, but the relationship was... weird. I know that a lot was left unexplained and up to your imagination on purpose, but there was so much left out that I don't know if it was actually on purpose or if it was just poor storytelling. I also don't like the concept of a young girl meeting a strange older man, and as she "ages into it" they eventually fall in love. Especially since he was mean to her at first. Plus her personality change into "goth/punk" and the witch's appearance and deciding to let Fenny out of her grasp happened very abruptly, and left me feeling very unsatisfied. And Elspeth sort of just.. appearing in the middle of it all? Already fully understanding the situation? It was weird and needed much more explaining to feel like a fully developed story, and without it just felt like the bare bones outline of a story that could have maybe been decent with more flushing out.

Angels in the Snow ; Matt de la Pena - ★★★☆☆. 3/5. Yaaas Mexican main character, and mixed-race relationship. The story was all extremely adorable and felt very real, and I like how the ending wasn't necessarily happy. I also like how the whole situation was messy, and neither character is completely likable – Shy had his pride, was a chronic liar, and had issues with expressing healthy emotions, and Haley never fully explained WHY she wanted to break up with her boyfriend, and also had a night of cheating on him. These things are what made me feel genuinely annoyed enough to not actually be able to enjoy the story and the messiness of everything. But – BUT – Shy understood consent, and Haley understood things were no longer fair and healthy between her and her boyfriend, so she broke up with him that very same night she cheated. I heavily appreciate and respect these things, and I must say that even though the character's annoyances cut through too deep for me to rate the story any higher, it was very powerful and actually pretty well done.

Polaris is Where You'll Find Me ; Jenny Han - ★★★☆☆. 3/5. THIS ONE WAS SAD. I wasn't expecting a fantasy story in this book, and it was a pleasant surprise! BUT IT WAS SAD. I loved that the MC was Asian, and the concept of a human raised amongst Christmas elves is a pleasing one to me, especially since these elves seemed more like LotR elves than Elf elves. But that Natalie was so unaccepted and unwelcomed by everybody? That Santa (as her father) seemed relatively oblivious to it all? That Flynn apparently has had feelings for her and only showed it after he provided her with Lars's address, already knowing she's likely to go back to the human world to choose Lars than stay where she knows she doesn't belong? Annoying, hence the three stars, BUT SO SAD. Probably the saddest story in the book, and having an ending that wasn't necessarily happy and left so up in the air REALLY was a nice surprise.

It's a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown ; Stephanie Perkins - ★★★★★. 5/5. THE FIRST ONE I ADORED. OH GOD. This is also my first ever Stephanie Perkins story. If all of her shit is like this then OH MAN OH MAN. The story and the situation was so fucking cute, and actually believable, and holy wow *another* PoC MC, and paganism treated as real and respectable and legit and holy shit it's actually in a story (which legit made me want to find ways to celebrate the Solstice in addition to Christmas cause fuck man that's closer to what I actually feel than anything else out there), and I just, idek. EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS STORY was fucking amazing and incredible and I want a whole NOVEL of it. I mean I could re-read it again right now cause AAAHHHH. This isn't doing the story justice at all and I feel horrible for it but I CAN'T ORGANIZE MY THOUGHTS OKAY.

Your Temporary Santa ; David Levithan - ★★★★☆. 4/5. A gay couple!! Treated as completely normal and not about coming out and not facing shitty people and oppression!!! That in itself is fantastic. And then there's the "oh, this is more complicated than I thought" thing that pops up right about when Lana comes out to taunt the (Jewish!!) MC, who I think I just realized went unnamed in the whole story. It's never stated clearly but it's heavily implied that the last person to wear that Santa suit is Connor's dad, who is also heavily implied to have left the family. Riley is still too young to understand, Lana is SO ANGRY about the situation and takes it out on everyone and everything at only 12 years old (that poor kid), and Connor seems to just want to do something for his baby sister without realizing what it might do to the rest of the family.. that, and that the MC crawls into bed with Connor at the end of it when it was both implied that he wasn't yet properly introduced to the family, AND that to do so would give away the Santa secret.. those last couple things are what made me go "?" and docked the one star off. Otherwise though, it's powerful and sad and I am a HUGE fan of the diversity in this whole book cause omg.

Krampuslauf ; Holly Black - ★★★★★. 5/5. THE SECOND ONE I ADORED. At first it seemed like it was too try-hard and edgelord, but then quickly proved to be a PERFECT combination of my aesthetic – cause I mean, a faun IS going to be my next costume project, so there's that, AND justice is a massive turn-on, SO. Creatures from some sort of fae realm showing up during Christmas to deliver justice against a cheating sexist shit-head as a gift to the girls he's wronged, especially in the form of a fae woman with a knife and a satyr who's probably the sexiest character I've read about in a book to date (the gold-painted goat-legged Krampus self-dubbed Joachim), is EXACTLY my kind of shit and oh my god I want like – a whole novel or a whole series of novels about this. Just oh my god. Once I realized what was going on I was like "HOLY SHIT" and almost felt like it was written specifically for me because it fit so perfectly. I mean of course it wasn't – BUT STILL. I WANT MORE. I was NOT expecting darkness or anything seductive in a CHRISTMAS story so this took me so off guard and asdhkjhkdhf.

FAE, BUDDY. YOU DON'T MESS WITH THEM. THEY ARE GOALS IN LIFE.

What the Hell Have you Done, Sophie Roth? ; Gayle Forman - ★★★★★. 5/5. Another one I thought was utterly fantastic. The storytelling and the characters and the setting felt so well done and so real, and ANOTHER mixed-race relationship (AW YISS), and the MC being a card-carrying intersectional feminist in all but a specific statement saying so, and, DUDE, SHE'S JEWISH, and idk this one was SO FUCKING CUTE and I loved it to pieces. She reminded me SO much of myself – a personality and sense of humor that doesn't really fit in and tries so hard to be aware of other peoples' plights and troubles, and that she actually fucks up and handles it, and just. IT HIT ME IN THE FEELS.

These comments with each story are probably getting less and less clear and concise as I go on but idgaf.

Beer Buckets and Baby Jesus ; Myra McEntire - ★★★★★. 5/5. I didn't adore this one as much as the other five starers, but it still gets five in just how pleasantly surprised I was, and how all my stereotypical expectations were blown completely apart and proved totally wrong. Troublemaker guy has a crush on pastor's daughter, who is dating the star football player, and all these people end up coming together to put on a Christmas pageant troublemaker-guy is responsible for as his act of community service for all the trouble he gets into. And it's set in the south. Quite frankly, it sounds sickening and like I'd rather suck on a cactus.

BUT. Pastor's daughter (Gracie) COMPLETELY proved to be her own, strong, willful person who doesn't even seem to be SUPER religious – still religious, sure, but more into science and historical accuracy than "Bible this and Bible that", who knows what she wants and goes for it and is complicated and fucking smart (valedictorian!), and Vaughn – troublemaker guy – eventually sees all of this and COMPLETELY RESPECTS ALL OF IT. No taking advantage of her, no thinking less of her, no belittling her, IS RESPECTING OF CONSENT, sees her completely as her own person, respect everywhere, oh my god. And the football star Gracie's dating? Is ALSO ACTUALLY PRETTY RESPECTFUL. And nice. And it turns out the situation there was just a cover for a long-distance relationship he's in that his family wouldn't approve of, that she's understandably not a fan of and wants out of, and they promise to handle it and fix it like mature adults. So. DUDE.

I WAS SO SURPRISED.

It gets a full five stars just for shattering all my horrible expectations and actually being completely everything I could ever want in this situation.

More things need to shatter my expectations like that! I was so happy!

Welcome to Christmas, CA ; Kiersten White - ★★★★★. 5/5. Oh man another one I loved. Maria reminded me so much of my boyfriend, and this whole story is just so adorably sickeningly cute and sweet and I can't get enough of it. Candy's boyfriend can go FUCK HIMSELF and I am so happy she got away, and also so happy that Maria came to see the truth of things and adopted a much more healthy outlook at the end, and I am HALF CONVINCED Ben's story of "juvie" is just a cover-up that he's a Christmas elf. Though I also accept the story that he's actually from juvie, cause fuck, people with those kinds of backgrounds NEED more stories of hope and success and still making a good life for themselves.

I'M FEELING ALL FLUFFY INSIDE AGAIN JUST THINKING OF THESE STORIES I LOVED SO MUCH JESUS CHRIST.

I'm gonna have to bookmark them or something so I can re-read them again whenever I want omg.

Star of Bethlehem ; Ally Carter - ★☆☆☆☆. 1/5. Seemed more like a situation that was trying too hard to be a thriller, and with an ending that was a COMPLETE flop and let down. I spent the whole story trying to figure out wtf the real issue was and why Liddy was as scarred as she was. So when it got to the end, and it was revealed that she was a teen music star and the "bad guy" was her manager-turned-guardian and was only missing the goatee and steepled fingers for as typical of a "bad guy" as he was – I mean, he all but yelled back "YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST OF ME" like some Batman villain – just, man. I was so disappointed. It all was so fast and so basic and so stereotypical and so one-dimensional – I mean, the family and town would all accept her just like that? No anger that she lied at all? Aunt Mary actually wants to adopt her after just a WEEK? She let Ethan kiss her and actually felt okay with it amongst all the rest of it? I mean – wasn't he upset about Hulda? He knows nothing about this girl and just knows she's lying and could hurt his whole family – how could he feel anything good at all, let alone romantic feelings toward her? None of it made sense and none of it fit and it actually felt kind of... bad. I mean, okay, the underlying story was interesting, I appreciate the idea of someone famous just wanting to be normal again and have a loving family again, and I like the idea of a family seeing through someone's completely obviously bad coverup story and taking care of the person anyway, but I DON'T like the lack of consequences, the complete inconsistencies in character development and plot, and how friggen rushed and horribly written the ending and the reveal was. This one was probably my least favorite story in the entire book, and left me feeling actively annoyed and disappointed.

The Girl Who Woke the Dreamer ; Laini Taylor - ★★★★★. 5/5. AND THEN THERE'S THIS ONE.

OH, MAN.

I almost want to just leave this review at JUST THAT cause holy shit how do you review this one.

It was SUCH a perfect ending to this book, I just, oh my god, it was so beautiful and perfect and wonderful and fantastical and FUCK THAT MINISTER MAN and idk it seemed all about the "fuck Christianity pro-nature pro-paganism" that I feel down in my bones and the depth of my soul, and I JUST COMPLETELY ADORED THIS STORY. idk other people might be able to say that it's "fuck a very specific kind of Christianity", which I get and agree with. But this "very specific kind" is like.. 99% of all people who follow it. Including all of history and what America was founded on and what people are trying to work into American law. So like. Yeah.

Enough about that though. Oh my GOD, this whole story and situation and everything about it. THE WRITING. OH, MY. THE WRITING. Holy shit I do not do favorite authors, but I think Laini Taylor just found her way into a spot amongst my favorites anyway. This is not the first story of hers I've read that has been written this beautifully, so I believe it's a consistent thing and I AM IN LOVE.

The only thing that made me sad was leaving all the other girls behind in the dust. So things went WONDERFULLY for Neve... but what about all the others? Are they going to be left behind to rot in unwanted, rape-y relationships? Was this society and the situation fixed at all? Was the shitty oppressive religion silenced in favor of the old one, the real one, the one that doesn't empower horrible people and punishes ACTUAL wrong-doings and sees all people as equals?

I sincerely hope so.

A BOOK COULD BE WRITTEN ABOUT IT TO ELABORATE.

Yanno. Just saying.

Oh my god I am so happy with all the diversity and differences and equality and YAAAAS in this book. SO HAPPY.

Things that could have made it all even better: A LADY-LOVE ROMANCE. Or some other form of gay relationship – like maybe someone who's bi! Or even ace or pan – THAT would've been wonderfully rare and unexpected!

I do realize that the average of my star ratings should put my overall rating at about.. a 3.8. But, seriously – the ones I loved, I loved SO MUCH, that it completely overrode any feelings I had about any of the ones that I didn't. They were just THAT GOOD, that I could ignore the meh ones' presences entirely and go right ahead and fucking love the entire compilation anyway.

I mean, it's not like I didn't appreciate the efforts and the stories and what all the others were trying to get across. Everything still had its own sweet or sad notes and it all still felt appropriately Christmas-y to me.

So, yeah, I can still honestly say I adored the whole book and would shove it in the faces of people who are in the mood for some cute romantic shit and are ready to barf Christmas everywhere. :D Barfing Christmas everywhere is my LIFE each December. So this is absolutely for anyone who does the same!

Those five-star stories I'll read YEAR-ROUND anyway, not even gonna lie, they were THAT GOOD. I'll barf Christmas in JUNE to re-read that shit.