#book asks!

[misscrawfords]

3, 7, 28

3. First book that had a major influence on you.

Ignoring the picture books I don't really remember and young classics like Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland, the first books that really formed me as a person were the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I made a log cabin out of clay following the instructions in the books, that's how obsessed I was! I can even still recite Almanzo's proposal from Those Happy Golden Years basically from memory. Laura and Almanzo were probably my first ship. The family dynamics, the description of the prairie world, the romance - I can guarantee that these books had a profound influence on me and my taste in fiction and reading/writing interests. I haven't re-read them. I want to but I also don't. Laura's attitudes towards settlemen and development in the American West are very much of her time - something I never cared about when I was seven but I would now. I don't think that's a reason not to read and appreciate the books within the historical context but, sentimentally, I don't want anything to really sully the memory I have of the books.

7. What is the most important part of a book, in your opinion?

Um, not entirely sure what this question means. Surely it depends on the book? I want to answer like Henry Tilney and say something like "the quality of the binding". I don't read a modern romance novel for the same reason I read a 700 page Victorian novel so I look for and expect different things from them. I guess... probably the most important thing part of a book is its integrity. If I feel like the author, whether of the 250 page romcom or the 700 page worthy tome, looks down on me or has an agenda they want to push on me or they think I need things spelt out or it's obvious no effort has been put it and they're a hack or they are somehow dishonest in what they are writing, that's going to turn me right off.

28. An ending you wish you could change

An ending I hated and wish was different but I understand it and it was probably right: The Portrait of a Lady

An ending I hated because it was stupid and bad: The Harry Potter series. That epilogued sucked balls and should be burned.

[oh-mydarling]

10, 17, and 25 for the end of year book asks. Please & thank you.

Hello!! Thank you for asking!

10. What was your favourite new release of the year?

I am such a bad reader oh my but the only new release I can think of is 'I didn't know I needed this' by Eli Rallo which is super cute <3

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

SO MANY!! Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro changed me and I have a whole document of my favourite quotes from it, highly recommend ❤️

25. What reading goals do you have for next year?

I used to read so many classics and have been slacking recently, so I'd love to get back to classics and also just read more consistently in general, but nothing number-wise

thank you for asking! 🤍

[likecastle]

3 & 17!

Somebody else asked about 17, so I’m just going to answer 3!

3. What were your top five books of the year?

This is so hard! I’m so bad at top anything (by what criteria? how do you compare wildly different things? what are categories even? what if I change my mind?) but I’m gonna do my best!

I’m leaving out The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson, because I just rambled about it, and Silver in the Wood and The Drowned Country by Emily Tesh, which are all-time favorites and therefor exist in a different category. Anyway, in no particular order:

Fruiting Bodies by Kathryn Harlan, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor, The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings, Siren Queen by Nghi Vo, and Slow Salt by Julia Armfield. I think.

Ask me about books!

[isahorcrux]

3, 7, 10?

3. Any poetry on your TBR?

I’d love to make my way through Emily Dickinson’s collection and would also love to read some Sylvia Plath as well.

7.What languages do you plan to read in? Do you want to read anything in translation?

Mostly English, though I’m brushing up on my Italian for a trip next year, so would like to read something in Italian.

10. If you're more of a mood reader, what do you think your 2023 reading mood(s) will be?

I’m always in the mood for a good romance with other plots happening - it’s been this way for 4+ years and I don’t think that’s going to change soon.  I’d say my moods do oscillate between fanfic versus traditional fiction.  Right now I’m very much in a fanfic mood, so probably the first quarter of the year it’ll swing back to traditional fiction.

[triona-tribblescore]

I WANNA DRAAWW!! RAHHHGG!! Absolutely swamped with college work, im so tired TT (hence whatever tf this is lmao)

[kazoosandfannypacks]

as always, I'd love to hear your answer in the tags, especially if it's one of the "other" choices!

[egophiliac]

What do you like about the Diasomnia boys if I may ask?

I always love hearing about the different reasons people enjoy characters.

I mean, c'mon. he has split custody over Sebek okay

also, Lilia in particular has maybe the best timeskip character development of all time

[inkskinned]

so while i was writing the book, i became violently suicidal.

this was mostly due to the fact that i had a very bad reaction to some meds and my brain stopped producing any serotonin. also i was in the last semester of grad school where it's actually illegal to feel anything but dread. so it wasn't going well.

somewhere in the fog of it i became aware i needed help. nobody was taking clients or my insurance. i didn't want to do inpatient care - it wasn't right for my needs. there's not really an "in between" stage between "inpatient" and "no care," but i was trying to do the right thing. i was trying to activate the chain of command that was my emergency plan. i knew i needed help now.

i used betterhelp.

i know, i know. i'm a straight-A student and so smart and so clever, how could i ever use something so blatantly bad. to be honest with you, i didn't feel particularly keen on it from the getgo - things that seem too good to be true usually are. also, if something online is free, the price is usually your privacy.

the thing is that there was kind of a global pandemic happening at the time and i worked 5 jobs alongside of being a fulltime student and also like writing a book on the side. it is a miracle that i even thought about getting help. i would love to tell you i had the mental wherewithal to like, process whether this was the right choice for me. mostly i was desperate. i was so suicidal that i was trying to find a reason to stay inside of fortune cookies. i was the kind of suicidal that looks like splatterpaint. i hadn't been that bad in an entire decade.

they took my data. i gave them it freely. somewhere out there, they have a dossier on me. on everything i survived. my story in little datapoints, scattergraphed beautifully.

the first woman told me that really i should be grateful, because (and this is a direct quote): "at least you're not anne frank." i said that i felt that statement was antisemitic, as anne frank's life and experience shouldn't be compared to like, a nonbinary lesbian in western massachusetts. the therapist said that i should try to use lucid dreaming to try to picture myself in an actually scary situation, like running from nazis.

i applied for another therapist. i was willing to accept the possibility that there was a bad apple in the bunch. the next therapist and i even laughed about how inappropriate that statement was. and then, in our next session: the new therapist said if i was struggling with body image issues, i should just work harder on my appearance. she spent 3 sessions in a row talking about how she was grieving, and made me memorize facts about her grandmother so "she can live on through my clients."

i am a three's-a-charm kind of person. okay, so what if the last person made me uncomfortable. i figured it was just a misunderstanding of priorities - she had felt she was sharing with me, i had felt like i had to take care of her. i applied for another therapist.

the last woman asked me to help her pray. she bowed her head. i stared at her, frozen, while she said: lord, i beg you: cure her. take the pain of being gay away from her.

i spent somewhere between 2.5 and 3 months on betterhelp. in that whole time, i was not getting the professional help i so desperately needed, even though i was fucking trying.

in the end, i survived this because i finally could get off the meds that were literally killing me. a request for a real therapist finally went through. i survived because my friends saved my life. because nick let me sob myself dry in his arms. because maddie took the razors out of my room when i asked them to. because grace slept over in my bed for like 3 weeks in a row since nobody trusted me not to hurt myself when i was alone. i survived because i got fucking lucky. because even when i was desperately suicidal, i was too old and too self-aware to take "you need to be prettier" as good advice.

the thing is that there's a 19 year old me who isn't like that. who would have heard "just think about how grateful you should be" and said - oh, i see. i would have assumed that is what it means to be in therapy: the same thing my abusers used to tell me. that i am just pretending and lazy. that i am ugly and unworthy.

betterhelp positioned itself to take advantage of an incredibly vulnerable community. it preys on desperation. it knows it is serving people who are not doing well mentally. it saw that there is a huge need for real, immediate, compassionate mental health care: and then it fucking takes your money and privacy.

i still get their ads on instagram. last night i watched as a woman in a pool pretends to talk to a different woman. they discuss her anxiety.

there's a 19 year old version of me, and she didn't survive this. she was too tired, and drowning. i almost fucking died. this thing almost fucking killed me.

in the ad, the woman playing the therapist takes a note on a clipboard and then nods once, sagely.

i have to admit it's a pretty scene. the steam and light coming off the pool water lands on the actresses. like this, it almost looks baptismal, holy.

[persephinae]

YOOOO DISCWORLD IS ON HUMBLE BUNDLE!!!

If you've been on the fence about starting these books THIS IS YOUR SIGN

[obsob]

oooooooooough i love you i love you i love you!!!! hand in loving hand !!!!!!

[likecastle]

1, 9, and 10 for the book meme! :D

Yay book asks! Thank you!

How many books did you read this year?

I read 79 books this year, and I'm on track (hopefully) to finish one more.

9. A book that was better than you expected it to be

This is maybe a cheat of an answer, but I'm going to say How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. It's not so much that I didn't have high expectations going in, more than I kind of didn't know what to expect at all, and I was really blown away by how ambitious (complimentary) it was.

10. A book that didn't live up to your expectations

The Witchcraft of Salem Village by Shirley Jackson. I love everything I've ever read by Jackson, but this brief nonfiction account of the Salem witch trials, which was written for young readers, didn't really feel like it had any of the qualities I've come to associate with Jackson's work. It read like any mid-century general-audience history, not something distinctly written by THE Shirley Jackson, which was kind of a bummer, because the subject matter is such a good fit for her sensibilities as a writer.

Ask me book questions!

[arkieve]

a jegulus fic where it's dual pov and james' pov plays out like a romcom and regulus' pov is pure horror.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 271

“Grandmother is visiting,” Damian suddenly said with no warning and with his usual not-quite demanding tone. 

“Who?” Tim wasn’t the only one to startle, seeing as Bruce had practically froze, a downturn to his lips in a silent show of confusion. 

Damian scowled. “Are you deaf Drake? Grandmother is coming to Gotham to, quote, make sure I am being properly cared for.” None of them had known that Ras was with anyone actually. At least Tim was pretty sure that would have been in the files. 

“Oh?” Dick didn’t quite crouch to Damian’s height but it was a near thing. “She-” “He,” Damian corrected, interrupting him. They all exchanged a glance before Dick continued. 

“Is he coming to the Manor or…” 

Damian scoffed again, a tiny bit of a flush against his face. “No, Grandmother will most likely be staying with Akhi-”

Now wait one moment-

“YOU HAVE ANOTHER BROTHER?!” 

[deadsetobsessions]

Danny no longer has a haunt. So… he decides to find another one. And while he technically has a whole world (other dimensions aren’t an option because he’s going to stay near where Jazz’s grave is, damn it) there’s only a couple of other places with enough ambient ectoplasm to sustain him. Nanda Parbat, Tokyo, and Gotham.

Nanda Parbat had a weird old musty immortal that kept trying to summon him and exchange power for the ability to “take a worthy body and rain as much destruction” as he’d like. As if Danny would need a body to bring the world to its knees.

Tokyo… it’s too far from Jazz’s grave. He could ask Wulf or even open his own portal but when Danny tried it out, Tokyo was too peaceful. Obviously there’s crime, but nothing… nothing big like Danny’s used to.

Danny ends up picking Gotham, even if the sewer zombies and the weird group of rich fruit loops with an adoption problem creeps him out. So, he destroys the portal, packs up his parents’ house and sells it, and hauls ass to the cesspool calling his name. His family’s stuff is stored respectfully in a vault located on the deepest parts of his personal haunt in the Infinite Realms.

And honestly, he’s doing better. Sure, he’s got a shitty apartment near another revenant’s almost-haunt and he feels like he’s drowning all of the time, but Danny isn’t in danger of turning into Dan, he’s catching up on royal paperwork, and he’s got like a job as a barista. In his own coffee shop that paid for using his parent’s money (who, despite their hazardous everything, made a crap ton of money off of their more normal inventions).

Gotham’s got some pretty interesting local gangs, most of which respected the sanctity of Danny’s cafe. Sure, they tried blowing it up and tried extorting money from him in the form of “protection costs” but after three months of failure, they gave up.

(Really, the local gangs gave up when they saw him take three shotgun shells to the chest and continued to work.) (They didn’t know it never hit him. Intangibility is extremely useful.)

The Rogues, on the other hand, just gave Danny flashbacks. Their gimmicks are different, sure, but after years of Box Ghost, Skuller, Lunch Lady, etc., Danny’s more than done with costumed villains. They don’t bother him either. Some of the reason is probably due to Harley and Ivy, who had walked into the cafe and (because they were bruised and scratched up from a fight) triggered Danny’s mother hen tendencies. They were promptly fed and watered and caffeinated and their hyenas were also similarly taken care of. They declared the cafe under their protection and that was that.

Red Hood stops by, and begins to interrogate him. But when Danny met his… helmet eyes? The crime lord paused, paid for his coffee, and sat in a corner table of the cafe for the rest of the day.

And he kept coming back?

But Danny figures it’s because Hood was a revenant and people who had come close to death tends to feel more comfortable around him.

(Considering this is Gotham where people almost die every other day? Yeah, he’s pretty much friends with everyone. Or at least, less likely to get shot.)

(Hood does stay because of the King’s presence and the Pit calming itself, but also Danny’s hot and he’s got a sleeper build and Hood definitely did not imagine himself in the place of the heavy box he saw Danny lift effortlessly onto a table. No.)

But of course, the peace couldn’t last forever. But by then, Danny was so antsy, he welcomed the trouble with open arms.

It starts with a clown. Danny knows who he is. He knows who Danny is.

So, Danny has no idea why the clown thought it would be a good idea to aggravate the owner of Gotham’s official neutral grounds. See, Clovkwork? Danny’s learned how to gauge his own political importance!

“HAHAHAHAHA! COME OUT, DANNY-BOY! LET ME TELL YOU A JOKE!”

Danny comes out and grabs a chair, and with a flat expression, says, “you’re not funny and I hate clowns.”

And then he swings and slams the chair into the Joker’s face. Over and over again until Danny’s sure the clown won’t get back up. The thing about Gotham’s outdoor chairs is that they’re mad out of steel and are bolted down to the ground to prevent undedicated thieves (dedicated thieves can and will steal the bolted down steel chairs). The Joker’s hired muscle just watched this scrawny twenty-something year old yank the steel chair and take some of the fucking ground and the bolts with it and beat the fuck out of their boss who is the literal Joker.

They surrender on the spot and is taken to jail. Danny just smiles at the officers who come by and since he’s got pretty privilege and they don’t want to mess with the guy who, again, owns one of Gotham’s official neutral ground and also beat up Joker without breaking a sweat, the officers just lets him go with a warning.

And then the bats comes, and wow, Danny’s playing mentor to a formally dead person again!

But before that, the Red Hood asks for an autograph on the Gotham Gazette article with a picture of a tired Danny standing over Joker’s prone body. Then Hood stammers through asking Danny out (which Danny said yes to because he’s tired, not blind, and Hood is built like a brick house and HOT).

Batman interrogates him. Danny, who can tell that this man needs therapy and is Sad TM, tells Bats that Danny’s died before and that’s why he’s like this. He also calls Batman a furry, but like in a nice way. And then he kicks Batman out with a coffee and a file on Nanda Parbat.

Now, Danny’s got a date to prepare for and he realizes that maybe this is what Jazz wanted for him- to be happy and mostly safe and happy. (Or, happier, he thinks. It’s been a long time since he’s been truly happy, but this might be a good start)

[lucidloving]

@inanotherunivrse // You're On Your Own, Kid— Taylor Swift // @inkskinned // Richard Siken, Crush // @lilcowgirl7-deactivated20210223 // Heather Havrilesky, How to Be a Person in the World // Zoe Heller, "Everything You Know" // Atticus