#jules haunting me w ideas …

[zerokissingbooth]

just started writing gepard nsfw 💯💯 its entirely selfship coded 💯💯 i win these

[gingerjolover]

Julien with the prompt "I can't risk losing you again." <3

hi baby! i combined this with 2 other #30 w julien asks as well as two asks that requested a haunted house mini fic (i hope that's ok mwah)

wc: somewhere around 775 (short king!)

julien baker x fem!reader - #30 "I can't risk losing you again."

The orange and green strobe lights do nothing to help pave your way through the dark hallway, the panic rising in your chest as actors in horrifying makeup jump out, just barely grazing your shoulders and hips. This was not how the night was supposed to go.

5 minutes ago, Julien's hands were on your hips, your fingers interlocked with Phoebe's as she walked in front of you; Lucy in front of Phoebe, Billie behind Julien, your other friends scattered sporadically, effectively sandwiching you between them as you walked through the haunted house.

Signing a release was the first sign that this was not a good idea.

The second was the orange wristband Julien insisted you ask for as a precaution. “Do not separate," stamped on the outside.

Yet here you were, like a mouse in a maze, trying to maneuver through the twisting hallways, the exit nowhere in sight.

You swear you can hear Lucy's scream, but she doesn't sound near or far. The best thing you can do is hide in the corner, recalling the moment an actor with "melting skin" popped up out of the floor, your entire group scattering in different directions; you felt Phoebe's hand slip from yours, Julien getting pushed into a different direction behind you.

It feels like there's no way out; your breathing gets heavier, and the corner comforts you with promises that nothing can come up behind you. Your back slides down the wall, eyes squeezing shut, hands to your ears to drown out the screams and cackling.

You don't know how long you sit there before two cold hands grab your body, one on your ankle and the other near your cheek. You're instantly screaming, kicking, and pushing the hands away.

"Baby... hey, hey! Babe! Hey! It's me, It's Jule...ow don't kick me," Julien says loudly, grabbing your wrists. Your eyes try to focus on her face, the strobe lights behind her washing her out. You instantly wrap your arms around her shoulders, small sobs leaking out of your eyes, her hands moving to support your lower back. "Shh, sweet girl, I know, I'm sorry...I'm so sorry baby..." your tears soaking into her flannel jacket. She pushes you away softly so she can see your face, wiping your eyes as she presses apologetic kisses to your cheeks.

"You left me," you say softly, voice thick with emotion. Julien's heart cracks; your wobbly tone and slight rasp fill her with guilt, even if it was an accident. "I would never leave you on purpose, princess. I got shoved to the left, and when I turned around, you were gone..." Julien says sympathetically, the music getting louder, groups of screaming teens and young adults passing you where you're both hidden in the corner of a long hallway.

"C'mon, let's get out of here," Julien says, cradling your arms and helping lift you up. Julien aggressively grabs your belt loops, tugging you to her front, your back hitting her chest harshly, "Ow, don't be so rough," you grumble, already feeling anxious.

"I can't risk losing you again," Julien says, leaning close to your ear. She places a few kisses on your hair before you start to walk through. You've walked for a few minutes when Julien pushes herself in front of you, choosing to lead you, facing whatever is ahead of you first. She has you grab her belt as an anchor, walking quickly, telling you to keep your head down. It was like Julien had gotten familiar with the layout while you were separated, reaching the exit easily and with only 12 panicked screams from you.

As soon as you get out, Julien's face goes from determined to pissed, her eyebrows furrowing as she steps away and puts her hands on her face. "You have a fucking wristband, how did none of the actors attempt to-"

"Julien, please just... can you just hold me for a sec?" you ask, slightly panting, the adrenaline coursing through your body quickly.

Julien's eyes soften instantly, moving back towards you, "Yeah pretty girl, I- I'm sorry," before wrapping you up in a hug.

Phoebe comes rushing out, face flushed and eyes wide, a small smile lifting on her face in relief when she’s the two of you.

"Thank fuck, there you are," Phoebe says, moving to you quickly. Julien steps back and allows Phoebe to pull you into a bone-crushing hug. "I went back in because when we all got separated, I couldn't find you or Julien. Billie and Lucy got out but went over to ask the worker to find you because of the wristband and-"

"Pheebs I'm fine," you breathe out, a little overwhelmed at Phoebe's out-of-character quick and panicked speech. "Julien found me," you say softly.

"She kicked me," Julien says deadpan.

"Why did you kick her?"

"Phoebe, I couldn't fuckin see anything!”

[leehallfae]

hihi i would love to hear some more of your thoughts on the tempest !!

hi jules !! aaaa literally it’s so good. in the class i’m reading it for, we’re talking about folktale influences on shakespeare, so im reading it through the lens of an adaptation of the “magic flight” folktale type, which follows a man falling in love with a magician’s daughter & then escaping from his persecution with her help. so it’s interesting to see the construction of prospero’s character not as a villain trying to break them apart, but as a father who wants to challenge his daughter’s love for the purpose of strengthening it.

also i just love castaway stories & the kind of liminal space they exist in. what do you do when you’re separated from the rest of humanity, from social rules, expectations, & consequences? how does that kind of situation change you into a different person, & at the same time how does it reveal a more authentic version of yourself?

smth that also immediately struck me is the subject of (in)humanity w/ relation to ariel & caliban. the parallels between them are sooooo delicious. both being passed from sycorax (queen of haunting the narrative fr) to prospero, kept in his service as slaves & threatened w/ torture if they disobey him. they’re treated as such bc they’re both perceived as less than human, ariel being a spirit, & caliban having been born to a wicked mother so treated as irredeemable by virtue of his blood.

ive only read acts 1–3 so far so im very excited to see where all this goes (tho i have an idea bc i know the folktales) & also watch some productions slash films of it if i can!

[deanwasalwaysbi]

Thinking About How This Wasn't Actually a Denial

But was it self preservation?

The year was 2013 and rather than a denial, Jensen said "Don't ruin it for everybody now."

What was the fan 'ruining' for everybody? The Con? or something else? So if I was a tinhatter - and sometimes I am - I might think about other tv shows from the past that were covertly queer and how they handled the question, were TV shows 'out'?

Mainstream shows like Bewitched, you know, shows that are so clearly straight, you can tell because... well. ... they never technically used the word 'gay'. ... witches honor

SPN Film Studies is Back in Session! Join Under the Cut for more on supernatural & the story about how Bewitched! came out of the Broom Closet

Bewitched aired from 1964-72, it's so old the first season was in B&W. The show starred Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha, the strange housewife with a stranger secret. Her husband, Darrin, unwittingly married into the whole witchy family, from the now drag icon Agnes Moorehead's Endora with her open marriage, to the unmarried and batty Aunt Clara (Marion Lorne who played the mother in Hitchcock's heavily gay coded 'Strangers on a Train'), to the extremely coded Uncle Arthur (gay actor Paul Lynde). (We can't know for sure, but it seems at least 4 members of the cast were gay themselves.) The core premise of the show involves Samantha balancing who she really is with repressing that self for the safety and comfort of her family.

Samantha and her husband keep her [ahem] 'queer' nature a secret which gets harder on Samantha when she has to tell her daughter to live the same way, “I know what fun it is to be a part of the magical life ... to have so much at your fingertips. But we’re living in a world that’s just not ready for people like us, and I’m afraid they may never be. So you’re going to have to learn when you can use your witchcraft and when you can’t.”

There are plenty of generic 60s wacky hijinks but there are also whole episodes metaphorically about repression being harmful, episodes where characters asked if another was a 'thespian', episodes where Darrin was queercoded while under a spell, episodes about representation & bad stereotyping in media, and even two episodes where witches discussed whether it was time for witches to come out to the mortals, (whether mortals could accept that they were just nice normal people trying to live their lives like everybody else - or not - and would just freak out and kill them again).

When it came time to recast Dick York's Darrin with a new 2nd lead, Elizabeth and her husband, William Asher, knowingly cast the gay Dick Sergeant. (Although he wasn't out publicly at the time.) Then, when Sergeant came out in '91, Montgomery supported him and the two served together as the grand marshals of the Hollywood pride parade.

Dick Sargent expressed in the 90s what he would want in a Bewitched reunion episode: for Darrin to meet another like couple, a witch and a mortal who are married, and another, and another, and end up forming a whole community and support group, finding out that it was never so uncommon after all, that it was actually "about 10% of the population." The two would march in the first mortals and witches pride parade, saying they should have come out years ago.

In '94, Montgomery had this to say about the queer themes of the show, “Don't think that didn't enter our minds at the time. We talked about it on the set, that this was about people not being allowed to be what they really are. If you think about it, Bewitched is about repression in general and all the frustration and trouble it can cause. It was a neat message to get across to people at that time in a subtle way.” (x)

Interviewer: Are you concerned that your involvement in the gay-pride parade will lead people to believe you're a lesbian?

"[Laughing] I'm really not worried about that. There are bigger things to worry about. Like the presidential election and finding a cure for AIDS. I did the parade in support of Dick. I mean, in the end, didn't we all?" (x) (Montgomery was also one of the first celebrity allies to fight for LGBTQ rights and support HIV/AIDS-related fundraisers.)

So did they talk about it at the time? No. You can bet they didn't speak about it publicly. What would have happened if a fan, publicly, had asked Elizabeth, William, or Dick about the show's queer allegory content? This was a time when being gay was a literal felony. They would have had to have lied or risked losing the show, their careers, and possibly subjecting themselves to violence.

Now. back to Jensen and the Schrodinger's long con:

This was in 2013 - The same year that the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a federal ban on gay marriage. You certainly couldn't call homosexuality illegal in the US at that time. It's the same year that Dabb and Sgriccia spoke about the Aaron moment on the DVD and whether there's 'this potential for love in all places' for Dean. Of course Jensen said this about the very same scene: "But it was - you know - it was comedy. It was a comedic moment in the show and fortunately Dean gets a lot of the comedic moments in the show and it was just, you know, Ben was poking fun at the fact that - you know, how can we make this very kind of manly, heterosexual guy uncomfortable - uh -you know, or  or have him back on his heels and throw him off his game a little bit.”

I'm reminded of 2012 when Ben Edlund stepped in about a Destiel question at comic con, pretending it was some freaky thing that fans had made up even though he'd already written and directed TMWWBK, which had already aired.

Jensen: “What’s Destiel?” Ben Edlund: That’s some weird shit. Jensen: Is this something that you created, Ben? Ben: You don’t want any part of that.

Or the next year for season 9 when Jensen said “I think the whole Cas and Dean thing has gotten out of hand”  “I don’t think there’s anything secret to their relationship even though a lot of people wish there was” EVEN THOUGH- that season we got the nightstands acknowledgement and Misha (or both of them?) was told to “play him like a jilted lover”

Or Jensen's knowing bromance smile in 2015

I think recent events (cough spn gate) have made clear that the network and many viewers were still uncomfortable with CAS being gay in 2020, deleting even familial mentions of Cas from the finale episodes once he was revealed to be not only gay but also in love with Dean. (x) (x) (x) Can you imagine then what Warner Brothers would have said to an acknowledge bisexual Dean Winchester in 2013? Granted, there was no Trump election, but legitimate, could that have been the end of the show? Or the Russian and Conservative US viewership? Is it possible that Jensen would have feared so?

Is it possible that Jensen had a more personal reason for a knee jerk defensive response?

So was Jensen covering in 2013? Well. This happened 5 years later in 2018:

That hostile "? No." came even though Misha confirmed that he and Jensen had discussed Destiel by that point. Granted, discussing Destiel as a concept and accepting Dean being inherently bisexual are two very different things - Cas is GN after all - still, less than encouraging.

I may never get over the jumps back and forth that Jensen did. At this point I think there's no denying that a lot of SPN's queer content was on purpose, even as writers and actors were telling fans and network execs otherwise. Yet when each person involved was brought in? that question haunts me at night. I have gone off before about the timeline in my pursuit of whether Jensen was Ben Hur'd (x) and, if so, for how long. I'm sure many in this fandom have so much to add.

In the meantime we'll just have to cherish this moment from 2019:

Interviewer: 'So, tell us just a little bit about what you’re most excited to tackle with your character this final season.’ Jensen: “Cas. Just like a full football form tackle.”

Bewitched references in SPN:

2.05 - Dean: Well, it looks like he can't work his mojo just by twitching his nose, he's gotta use verbal commands.

2.20 - Dean says Barbara Eden was hotter than Elizabeth Montgomery - sigh - Dean.

7.05 - Dean thinks a husband has no idea his wife is a witch, and refers to him as Darrin. Dean also indicates he likes the first Darrin better. - (I guess I can't make a comment about how much TV Dean watched as a kid if I get all of his references and also haven't saved the world.)

14.03 - Jules refers to the witch as 'Brunhilde' - this is a minor character in bewitched but more so from mythology and likely referred to the cartoon witch from WB cartoons - the stereotypical witch that faced bugs bunny with the green skin and straw hair.

let me know if you have any to add. Stay Witchy ✌

[saltine-kakyoin]

Ok I know ull have gotten a lot of asks by now but maybe do caesar or mister wagon😳👐

bro, i could do these all day! (and lowkey i’d be down bc tomorrow starts the Week of Anxiety) i’m gonna do both, thank you for the ask jules!! ;w;

edit: i put it under a readmore because it’s a bit long, sorry mobile gang!

starting off w the best boy, Mister Wagon!! uwu

1 sexuality headcanon: bobert was the 1st Gay Man in the jjba universe, no strap no cap

2 otp: jonaeriwagon to the DEATH! also caesar, and really the rest of his lineage, x health and happiness ; - ; 

3 brotp: i dearly wish we’d gotten to know more about tattoo and the other guy, bc you Cannot tell me their adventures pre-jonathan were not absolutely LEGENDARY. phantom blood is really foggy now, but god from what little i do remember him + zeppeli were so good too…

4 notp: i don’t think i’ve seen any speedwagon ships beyond jonawagon + jonaeriwagon, so I really don’t know! I think I’d really detest canon dio + speedwagon, but i had this dream once about them meeting in the underbelly of london as kids + like. pushing each other to do better, to be better and scraping their way out of ogre street (through some mildly nefarious means, but also it’s ogre street so…) dio never found the letter from george, which in turn means bobert never met jonathan. it was just younger spw and dio crawling out of hell together (I remember it was spurred on bc I reached the episode where someone was like: oh yeah he was born evil! re: dio + like. it PISSED me off bc i think? granted i hadn’t gotten too far into jjba so i think i was still holding out hope for dio? but also.. he killed danny p early on, so. I have no idea. anyhow the concept of someone being born evil Truly set off my gears + I was miffed about it + then dreamed up a canon-divergent au in which Dio becomes Good bc of it) 

5 first headcanon that pops into my head: the hat was a gift from one of his buds :’(

6: one way in which I relate to this character: i, too, would support jonathan joestar and his entire lineage until my death at the age of 89, during which i was a bachelor…

7 thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character: jOOEEESTAR-SAN!!8: cinnamon roll or problematic fave? you’d have to be out of your Mind to ever even think spw is a problematic fave! he is THE cinnamon roll of the series

and now *stifles back an entire mfin sob* we do b ubble buddy

1 sexuality headcanon: another bi legend!

2 otp: caejoseq oh my WORD. 

3 brotp: truly caesar + lisa lisa. caesar may be Stupide, but he is smarter than joseph and has common sense sometimes; lisa lisa undoubtedly prefers his presence fhfghsu (is that harsh to say ; o ;)

4 notp: i have only ever seen people ship caesar with suzi and joseph! i couldn’t imagine a notp for him

5 first headcanon that pops into my head: is this cheating bc it’s from the sda? probably. is it the first instinctively the first headcanon i think of for caesar every time? Also Yes. at some point, he and joseph get to talking about what they’d do after the pillarmen are done away with, just having a quiet moment to hope for the future, yk? Anyhow, Caesar gets to talking about his family, because he’s very driven by his family, and how he’d name his firstborn son Sergio- maybe after a little brother that didn’t make it through their rougher days after their father abandoned them. Following Battle Tendency, Joseph considers naming his and Suzie’s child Sergio, but they get Holly instead! but in the sda… worm hours ;3

6 one way in which I relate to this character: I can be really brash and impulsive too q w qb (and i Also look up to Lisa Lisa as a mother figure! i’m jk dhfhdhg)

7 thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character: i only vaguely remember the one part with the girl + the doves + joseph finally getting the leg up over him in terms of Hamon bullshittery. it still haunts me #f’sinchatforcaesar8: cinnamon roll or problematic fave? cinnamon roll through and through

[foliealou]

hey rachel! was just wondering what you thought were the best lirry fics to come out this year

ooh anon thank u so much for asking, under the cut are

rachel’s top 20 lirry fics of 2017 (in no particular order) (w/ my commentary)

two years by angularnotions

heed the warnings on this pls! it deals w/ heavy stuff but it’s also so good and me and @lirryonce​ stayed up until 2am for like 3 weeks straight waiting for chapters to be posted lmao. love it

future starts slow by abovetheserpentine

sooo good, and consider this a blanket recommendation for this entire series of fics. in 2018 i want more drummer!liam please and thank you

running on nothing but hope by onewasturning

the first of probably several werewolf aus to show up on this list, but i love the world-building in this one and the idea of a commune of werewolves living in the woods and loving each other. amazing

fishing in the dark by countthestars

mermaid fic! liam’s a janitor! harry’s obsessed with him! it’s so good!!! everything i want!

wild card (nobody, nobody) by dramaturgicallycorrect

omg. i reread this maybe a week ago and loved it just as much as i did the first time. their dynamic is sooo good in this and bonus points for the fact that wimbledon the movie is one of my fave rom-coms. 

fool’s gold by anonymous

fake dating au! my fave!! also american college au but harry is still british, which is lovely, and their whole relationship/dynamic is so cute. 

all i wanted was you by justyrae

written by my love justine and is so amazing. girl!liam and boy!harry in a begin again au, like what more could u want?? they’re cute together but tbh liam’s path to self-discovery is probs my fave part of this fic

see my shapes (shift them) by abovetheserpentine

wow, wowww if u haven’t read this fic what are u doing. beautiful beautiful backpacking in south america au, p much what should have happened during wwa tour lmao. also reread this a couple weeks ago and loved it again

when the wolves come out by countthestars

currently rereading this, still love it. hits all my niche interests by being a friday night lights au and a werewolf au, truly beautiful :’)

you make loving fun by softlylirry

by the lovely isbah! and like the sweetest fluffiest kidfic you’ll ever read, i love it so very much

the stars look very different today by colourexplosion

locked unless u have an ao3 account, but i love this fic, it’s like the perfect little world and also probably telling the truth abt harry being an alien lol

wait for me, i’m ready now by dramaturgicallycorrect

i love kidfic soooo much and this one is so good! tbh i want like a 50k fic with harry and liam and jules but this little snippet is enough to hold me over since i reread it all the time lol

it hurts my hands to hold the rope by salem (guccisuit)

oh angst angst angst, but still so good. the flashbacks are amazing and tbh i go back and reread the end of this fic like over and over i love it so much

there is nowhere for you to hide, the hunter’s moon is shining by justyrae

justine rly delivered for me on the lirry fic this year ngl. this is (another) werewolf au but it’s also a harry potter au so i’m doubly weak. so so good

(i want us to gerund, essentially) by softly (alexenglish)

this is the most recently published fic on this list but i love it so much, the amount of worldbuilding done in such a short wordcount is honestly amazing and i want approximately 100000 words more of it

obedience training by coffinofachimera

listen this is basically pwp so don’t read if you don’t want to read sex but like, the characterizations of liam and harry in this are so on point it’s amazing. it’s like delightful married bickering and then rly hot sex so everything u could want from a lirry fic

closer than you’ve been by harryismymuse

harry is a siren!!! the mythology is rly good in this and their relationship is so sweet, loves it

don’t have to wait for a miracle by anonymous

ok more than any other trope i love amnesia fic, so this is amazing with the added benefit of having established relationship lirry before liam loses his memory. i love it!

us while they stare upon by kingdra (aroceu)

an 80k fake dating famous/nonfamous au, legit when this was posted i was so hype and it’s so good. i just love all the tropes involved in fake dating aus, and this fic hits all the right spots

and you linger like a haunting refrain by onewasturning

another fic i would love to just live inside the worldbuilding is so good. has such a sweet yet melancholic tone to it and such a hopeful ending, it’s amazing

and those are my fave fics from 2017!! here’s to more lirry fic in 2018 :)

[charoshane]

My Favorite Books of 2016

I read well over 100 books this year which I say not to brag (although, obviously, to brag a little) but to provide some perspective about the size of my field for consideration and to explain why there are so many titles. Most of these weren’t published in 2016 so you’re not going to see the same 10-15 that kept showing up on all the usual year-end lists. You’re welcome! Here we go:

THE UNFORGETTABLE 

Zippermouth by Laurie Weeks — Sweet, funny, propulsive. I adored it. 

Dark Pool Party by Hannah Black — No one’s brain works like hers.

Eros The Bittersweet by Anne Carson — Also read this year, and recommended, of course: Antigonick, Decreation, and Float, which I reviewed for The New Republic

Straw Dogs by John Gray — Invigorating and smart, albeit peppered with extreme declarations supported by little to no evidence. You have to be willing to put up with a voice that assumes complete authority without always earning it, i.e., a man’s. 

White Out by Michael W. Clune— If you were going to read only one book on this entire list, I’d probably urge you to make it this one. And I know, I know, he is a man, and I just took that dig at men! But truly, this is a masterpiece, and you know it has to be exceptional to override my reverse sexism. Hilarious, vivid, insightful, insert additional superlative here and additional superlative here and then just go read it.  (Gamelife, his subsequent book, is also very good, but it’s hard to write something perfect twice in a row. That’s more Anne Carson’s domain.)

10:04 by Ben Lerner — What can I say? Ben Lerner is a genius, this book is genius, 2016 was the year I could not deny that men actually wrote some things worth reading. I continue to almost shudder in admiration every time I think about this title. 

The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner — I thought about its ideas a lot, and referenced it in the Float review linked above. Pick 10:04 over this if you’re only doing one, maybe, or start with this one instead because it’s short and direct (?)

The Gift by Barbara Browning — God bless @ruthcurry for giving me this book on election night. It was the only thing I could read over the following two days: gentle, loving, wise. I am so grateful to have had this book when I did. It has shades of 10:04, which I say just to compliment them both, not to imply it’s derivative. It doesn’t come out until spring of this year, but please give yourself the gift of reading it ASAP. (See what I did there?) 

Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson — I put off reading this for years—can you guess why—but once I started I could not stop. I usually went back and reread the stories that had come before, before I progressed to the next. Good albums are like that too; too arresting for you to get very far into them right away, because you keep replaying the opening track(s).

All The Lives I Want by Alana Massey — It’s no secret that I’m friends with this little dynamo and I understand why you'd be liberally salting this recommendation as a result. But I’d never recommend a book I didn’t think was worth reading. Life is too short to pretend bad things are good, even if the maker of that bad thing is my friend. I just can’t do it! So believe me when I say that although I already respected Alana’s daunting ability to turn a phrase, I was so impressed with this book. It’s relentlessly intelligent, and mischievous, full of verve and focus and conviction. It made me want to write, which is the highest compliment I can give. 

Loving Sabotage by Amélie Nothomb — I’d never heard of Amélie Nothomb until I came across this recommendation from @magicmolly but now I think I’ve read everything of her’s that’s available in English. (Loving Sabotage is the best but there are striking passages in all the others, too.)

The Vet’s Daughter and Our Spoons Came From Woolworth’s by Barbara Comyns —  They’re both surprising horror stories told by unsentimental but vulnerable female narrators. I loved them very much. 

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle — I picked this up a few times as a kid but I couldn’t find any sex in it, so I didn't bother giving it a proper read. Now that I have, I can say it is exceptional: delicate, lyrical, original. I cried, and then I cried again. I know it’s about a unicorn, but fuck you.  

Other books I recommend without reservation:

Private Citizens by Tony Tulathimutte 

The Man in the Ceiling by Jules Feiffer (I cried!)

The Millstone by Margaret Drabble (Truly the year I fell in love with British female novelists.)

Drawing Blood by Molly Crabapple (generous, beautiful, singular)

Problems by Jade Sharma

D.V. by Diana Vreeland

I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitoris by Elizabeth Hall

Little Labors by Rivka Galchen (Good enough to inspire me to read her first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, which I’m glad to have read but perhaps should have been a short story instead of an entire book.)

Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick (When I’m reading Hardwick, I am amazed by her, but her writing also tends to leave my brain immediately, like it’s a dissipating smoke.)

Orgasmic Bodies by Hannah Frith (Academic but not too dense, and packed with important ideas)

Intimacies by Adam Phillips and Leo Bernsani (another academic one, but all about anal sex. [Ok, not only anal.]) 

The Lost Daughter by (duh!) Elena Ferrante, whom I wrote about a little here, much to a certain Freddie DB’s disapproval  

Sempre Susan by Sigrid Nunez

Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day by Winifred Watson (Recommended to me ages ago by Mallory Ortberg so you know it’s good.)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (Related: I read Memento Mori and sort of hated it!) 

The Selfishness of Others by Kristen Dombek 

The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick (+ The End of the Novel of Love)

Investing Sex: Surrealist Discussions (I dunno, it’s kind of stupid because it’s mostly a bunch of young straight guys sitting around talking about women’s orgasms like the complete jackasses they are, but it’s also fun and reminded me of things I forget too often, like how fundamentally boring sex can be.)

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman (bizarre, assured, unsettling. I was dying to talk about it with someone during and after I read it but that loneliness is what I get for reading everything at the wrong time. And for having no friends.) 

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (HAUNTING. So haunting.)

The Bitch in the House (It’s rare for anthologies to be good, I think, because they invite such a compromise on quality of writing . But this one is!)

The Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner (Also, A Girl’s Life and Other Stories, which is a rehash of a lot of what’s in Diary but I liked it anyway. You have to be prepared for true teenage diary writing though. Gloeckner has stresses it’s fiction but she also includes excerpts at the end from her real diary as a kid, and they appear almost verbatim in the book. It’s self-involved and repetitive and tedious in places—like diaries are supposed to be!—but I still found it worthwhile. )

Diary of an Emotional Idiot by Maggie Estep (And/or Soft Maniacs by the same.)

And obviously I loved everything @tigerbeepress released this year. I have a particular soft spot for my collaboration with @merrittk, and for Bad Drawings, which turned out more perfect than I could have imagined.