#don't rec looking that up if you're squeamish

[qfitpac]

19. favorite fanfiction(s)

This is really just so I can add to my tbr LMAO

Ooh this is a hard one actually, I don't read much qsmp fanfiction. Everying in the fitpac tag is awesome (not biased at all), starhalo and starcicle tags are also great (also completely unbiased). The celltw ppl have some AMAZING fics but avoid if you're squeamish around gore or unhealthy relationships. (specific fics under bcuz this ended up long lmao)

Definitely check out this roier/mariana fic by my lovely friend molly halftheway and also their ongoing work, 4 guys 1 car (not the actual title)

Also taking the opportunity to plug my own favorite fics: this roier/slimecicle/mariana series that I love to death, this slimecicle/etoiles fic that made ppl like me (/hj), and this starhalo fic I'm extremely proud of

I mostly write fanfic (looking through, I've written 27 for qsmp which is INSANE) so between that, work, and fucking 8 hour streams I haven't been reading much at all. Actually, if u have any recs pls lmk lmao.

Also bcuz I can, these are my two favorite fics in the entire world. (disclaimer that they're both rpf so avoid if ur not into that).

These fics like, SHOOK me. I think about them unprompted to this day, and I first read them back in like 2020. The second one in particular sparked such a visceral reaction in me. I think I died.

This one is an apocalypse lunch club au. I don't know any of these people except slimecicle and vaguely schlatt and Ted, but god the ending makes me cry every time. (Also cmc is not in it)

This one. God. This one. I can never read it again because I'll get nightmares but I'll never stop thinking about it. It's set in a haunted mansion (warning for horror, blood, abuse, and a lot of relived death, def heed the tags) and it's SO good. It honestly rewired my brain, I've never had such a gut reaction. Even thinking the title makes me tense a little in my gut. It's an EXO fic but it's so AU that you really don't need to know the ppl in it. I HIGHLY recommend if you think you can stomach it. I need more people to read this fic and talk to me about it.

[ladytauria]

i think i reblogged it from you but never sent you questions, so for the book rec asks: 1, 13, 23, 44, 50, 54, 79, 92, 116, 130, 131 please!! thats A Lot, so feel free to pick and choose haha

ahhh thank u bean! i love talking books uwu

coming back up after answering to edit... um. bean, i'm so sorry for my answer on the last one xD i should have picked a different book. (i ranted. a little.)

1. a book that is close to your heart

there are a few books i could name, but i'm going to do the one i thought of first.

a girl of the limberlost. i only remember reading it once, but my mother is the one who gave it to me, and told me that it was a book she loved at my age at the time. (same with the secret garden.) so i can't think of that book without thinking of her, which makes it a little bit more special to me <3

13. your favorite romance novel

immediate impulse is to say legends and lattes by travis baldree bc. it's so good. however, while there is a romance i don't know if i would count it as a romance novel.

so.

the lady's guide to celestial mechanics. historical, sapphic, featuring both women in STEM (or, yknow, historical equiv) but also an appreciation for domestic arts / crafts normally looked down on. also there's an acknowledgement that homophobia existed, but there's none on page.

the prose is also gorgeous.

i don't actually read a ton of romance novels, but i've been trying to pick up more!

23. a book that is currently on your TBR

mmm, too many

but Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield went on sale on kindle the other day so! it's mine now <3 and one i've been eying for a while. the kindle cover isn't the one i wanted, but that's okay.

44. your favourite fantasy novel

a very large chunk of what i read is fantasy. this is HARD 😂

uhhh.

the locked tomb is technically sci-fi, isn't it?

fuck.

i'm gonna go with The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle bc it is the only book i purposefully own more than one copy of! would love to get my hands on the graphic novel <3

honorary mention to the Inheritence Cycle bc reading Eragon was what got me to start writing my first novel.

which absolutely wasn't just. Eragon but with griffin riders instead.

(okay, legitimately, there were differences, but there was also definitely heavy inspiration.)

50. a book that made you cry a LOT

i don't actually cry at much? the last time i remember actually crying was when i was reading an abridged version of little women and beth died xD

i'm trying to think of another book which really grabbed me emotionally recently that also isn't. already on this list. and i'm coming up empty?

54. a book with the best opening line

i don't have a good memory for opening lines ^^; however for some reason i want to say The Lightning Thief, so. that's what i'm going with.

79. a book that reminds you of your favorite song

my favorite song changes by the moment, so i don't have answer for this one ^^;

92. a book about a redeemable villain

kay, so i almost answered this question with the book i gave for the next question, but i realized i don't? read a lot of multi pov books?? or at least not that i remember being such. i did remember one but it was the second in a duology, so.

so.

anyway!

the closest i can think of atm would be Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone. (highly rec this one, though i was a little disappointed when the pairing i wanted didn't happen xD)

116. a book with multiple povs

The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley.

this book.

i.

woof.

okay, so. if you are. remotely squeamish, like. at all? you might wanna give this one a pass. (def check storygraph / other places for trigger warnings. im also happy to elaborate myself, lol.) i am. very squeamish, and made it through only because the story grabbed me tight and wouldn't let go. the worldbuilding is extremely interesting. the characters are all very different and both likeable and unlikeable in a million different ways. but.

oh boy, it was a tough one.

if you're NOT squeamish, though--

it was a 4 or 5 star read for me, iirc, so, y'know. recommended. not sure i'll ever pick it up again, but like. do not regret reading.

130. a book featuring flashbacks and/or intersecting storylines

i know i've read others like this, but the book that comes to mind is--and i had to google this bc it's been so long since i read it---Thirst by Christopher Pike. It was also published under "The Last Vampire." i don't actually recommend them; i read them during my middle school vampire phase and even i remembered being a little mindboggled. mainly bc i think there was an alien abduction in... the second or third book? idk, i had an omnibus.

131. recommend any book you like!

there's only one answer i can give to this, tbh. the locked tomb series brainrot is real and deep and i am. both highly anticipating and dreading the release of alecto so.

i gotta recommend Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.

that SAID, i am well aware that this book has a reputation on tumblr esp for being poorly summarized, as the most oft-used pitch is "lesbian necromancers in space."

this is not an inaccurate summary.

BUT.

it is also not complete.

so first, some expectations: it's sci-fi, definitely, but also there are a lot of fantasy vibes? probably because of the swords and the necromancy and the sworn knights-esque plot. uh. basically, it's sci-fi like star wars is sci-fi, but also it's. it's not star wars.

second thing: this series is unreliable narrator central. tamsyn picks the least qualified person in the group for you to follow the story with, and it works. so well. like, firstly bc ofc things get explained (some; it does drop you in and expect you to pick up a lot through context clues) but ALSO because you WILL pick up things you didn't on re-reads. i did a reread before Nona and spent half of it screaming. i'm not much of an annotator beyond highlighting some lines on kindle but i was commenting all over the place.

uh.

i still haven't talked about the plot, my bad.

Gideon the Ninth follows the titular Gideon, after her childhood nemesis and heir to the Ninth House, is invited to the First House by the God Emperor of the Nine Houses to seek quasi-immortality and join him in fighting a war as old as the Houses themselves. When they get there, though, they soon find their fellow heir-and-cavalier pairs being picked off one by one.

this book also features a lot of gay... not pining, not really, but like. Gideon likes women and her pov spends a lot of time appreciating the other women with them xD (this is also part of what makes her unreliable as a narrator. plot? what plot? gideon is here for thirsting, and a little bit of pining.)

also mild enemies to lovers vibes.

ALSO there are memes. there's a none pizza left beef joke in book 2, i'm still not over it.

does get a little squicky at times with loving descriptions of bones and viscera, though.

if i keep talking about this book i won't ever stop <3

[ book recs ask game ]

[fictionfixations]

Awake and Unafraid | TMA Fic (Fic Rec)

Martin's new job at the Institute isn't what he was expecting. Along with Tim and Sasha, he's struggling with a disorganized Archive, no direction from their slightly-devious boss, and the growing feeling that they're in danger. Which is not helped by the cryptic warnings from a far too-knowing voice on an ancient tape recorder calling themselves the Archivist.

its. so fucking. cool. AND IT MAKES SENSE, like genuinely. with an actual plot, and i really enjoyed it. There was no part where I felt like 'I have to stop reading' because it's too much? It was perfect. Well not perfect perfect obviously, but I had a really enjoyable experience binging it lmfao. If you don't know what TMA stands for, its The Magnus Archives, its basically like a horror podcast. This is where I admit most of my knowledge comes from other fanfics because I'm still on like season one? And I do this thing where I tune out background noise accidentally, but I wouldn't be able to fully focus on it because I'm a multi-task person, so I've been slowly doing the task of reading the transcripts for every episode out loud instead, which helps but I get a headache cause MAN they're long.

anyway this is Martin/Jon, which I'm still figuring out ships but I'm assuming that's the big whole OTP that nearly everyone ships in the fandom, but if that's not your cup of tea (cause that's understandable, I think Bakudeku is like an OTP but some people find it uncomfortable due to the previously kinda toxic relationship?) here's your warning. Uh. also. as the tags say. "The Usual TMA Warnings Apply". Which. uhh. if you're squeamish at just the mention of stuff maybe. don't. Or maybe if you don't like horror?? I've never actually been affected by horror books unless they're super gross or go extremely in depth about depictions of like, say, gore, so I can't actually say if the fic is scary at all, but I found myself very invested. Also uhh, Martin POV. If you've been looking at my bookmarks recently (why are you?) then you'd find it's kind of like a mix of TMA and HP x Twilight rn. Opposite sides of the spectrum kinda where ones are either romance-typical with Twilight which I've never seen, or character bashing. And then TMA's here like 'there are things more powerful and blah blah blah--' But to be fair..

At the very left is Twilight x HP. And the very right is TMA. Although a few tabs are out of sight because I have too many open. lmfao. Anyway I've been rambling. Um. Um. UH. JUst. give it a shot??? You kinda get the gist of what's going on after you read a few multi-chapter fics because it develops a timeline and they generally tend to be close to the 'start' (which I don't know when. but. worm usually.) and then you can kinda notice based on similarities between fics what's usually canon. imma shut up now (anyway martins a def fav that you might see around if i have more fics to share)

[npdclaraoswald]

book recs game: 14, 32, 106, 132, or 134?

14. a book that made you trip on literary acid

I'm gonna be honest, I don't know what this means

32. your favourite nonfiction

I'm so bad at picking favorites, but I'm gonna go with Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation by Eli Clare- it's an essay collection about fighting for disability justice, queer rights, environmentalism, classism, land back movements, and how they all intersect.

106. a book that made you squeamish

Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica translated by Sarah Moses my beloved!!! It's so good but do NOT read if you're squeamish! It's set in a world where a virus spread through all livestock making eating animal meat impossible, and rather than transitioning into societal vegetarianism, they started cornering off sections of the human population to raise as livestock. It's an extreme version of the dehumanization present under late stage capitalism and how we're all turned into products. Fantastic read, but absolutely look up trigger warnings before picking it up

132. who is your favorite person to go to for book recs?

I don't really have any irl people who read a lot, but my favorite bookish influencer is Perpetual Pages on YouTube

134. unreccomend any book you like

First time I'm picking a comic book for one of these answers, but fuck Daredevil: Guardian Devil by Kevin Smith! I loved Kevin Smith's Green Arrow, so I was so excited for this one! Then it's all just out of character, ableist horseshit! And a huge example of fridging on top, but I at least knew about that bit going in

[elkian]

trepanning sounds laughable right up until you get a sinus headache and then you Understand