#like read a book or something enjoyable

[raventhekittycat]

Turns out that upon having my first completely free day (no classes, no social obligations, no immediate deadlines) I turn into a sack of potatoes.

[rookflower]

on one hand yeah this is the kitty cat book fandom where at least 95% of the people here are just here to draw funny cats or for nostalgia reasons and it's really not that deep, there is nothing wrong with taking a critical backseat on this one. but on the other, the amount of people in the fandom who seem to genuinely believe that children's literature and xenofiction are both somehow inherently unworthy of any form of criticism whatsoever, to the point where random tumblr posts casually identifying shit like.... themes.... and narrative trends... is looking into things way too deeply and makes you a bad or stupid person in some way because "they're just cats", gives the literature student in me such a headache

[sableeira]

someone free me from this very cursed The Raven Cycle inspired bsd au. rich kid Dazai spends all his time researching the supernatural and ley lines in Japan’s country side. He had a (near) death experience as a kid but was saved through supernatural means and now he is unable to die. But the gift of his immortality is unbearable to Dazai. Thus he has dedicated his life to researching the supernatural to figure out what happened to him and how to reverse it. Since his incident he has also been able to see the supernatural. Unfortunately, when he is trying to come in direct contact with the supernatural it dispels, almost like he is nullifying it.

Chuuya is the youngest in a found family household of shrine workers and spiritual mediums. He is the only one in his family that’s not inclined to the supernatural but everyone around him feels the supernatural more severely when he is around. Even though he can’t see the supernatural like his family members do, he helps out and enhances the supernatural during seances and other family business.

When Dazai and Chuuya meet, their opposing inclinations to the supernatural cancel each other out. But the same way their inclinations to the supernatural are opposing each other so are their personalities. Will they get over their differences to work together?

And then there is this little tiny detail that could shake up this potential research partnership. Chuuya has been told since he was a little kid that he would kill his true love with their first kiss. During a seance he enhanced a few months earlier, Chuuya managed to catch a glimpse of an actual ghost for the first time. The ghost of a boy who is supposed to die in the next 12 months. Lippmann told him that non-clairvoyants are only able to see the ghosts of the future-dead if they are the one to kill them… or their soulmate. The boys name? Dazai. And now that Chuuya has met him he is pretty sure he is going to kill him. Right?!

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT,

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I absolutely love the recs you've given (you've introduced me to tomione, and I love it!) and I was wondering if it's possible to give you some recs in return? There are some books and fics that definitely have dramione / got vibes, and I was wondering if I could share them with you!

So glad you've enjoyed them! Feel free to rec me anything you want. I've read most of the classic recs in terms of fic and adjacent content (Cruel Prince et al), but I'll try anything that's well-written. My tastes run towards weird and/or audaciously creative stuff, and I can forgive a lot of weaknesses in plot on the grounds of (1) ambition or (2) character work. My turnoffs are instalove, protagonists who can't fail, and most Y/A (I'm not a hater, I swear, I just need characters who can say "fuck" when their leg gets chopped off.)

I'm also a fan of weird and fucked-up dynamics.(Wuthering Heights was my favorite book for a while, and as a teenager I wrote an AU in which the book ends on a long sex scene where Heathcliff fucks Cathy's ghost and then immediately gets murdered by Catherine 2.) Obviously, I am very normal.

[hanzajesthanza]

also i realize i'm saying all these noble and beautiful things about the channel from the purest depths of my heart. but actually i'm also just doing this because i fucking love the witcher books and it pisses me off that people don't know about them that much in english and i can only go for so long (seven years) with people not knowing that there are books. or that the witcher is from the 90s. or polish.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Fallen Thorns

dark urban fantasy coming-of-age

follows a boy settling into university, when after a date (that he didn’t even want to go on) turns bad he’s made into a vampire

as he settles into his new existence and the local vampire community - while they try to find who’s been leaving bodies across the city - he discovers that there’s something different and darker within him

aroace neurodivergent MC

[the-holy-ghosted]

absolutely sucks when youve gone out of your way to watch as many movies as possible and find interviews and read books from your favorite actor and yet all anybody knows about you is the guy who spam reblogs and barks in the tags of pictures of him. its a shame. none of you know i am even less normal than you already think i am

[rollercoasterwords]

hey rae! you said you haven’t been reading many fics lately and i was wondering what were your favorite books you read this year :))

LOVE this question omg thank u 4 giving me an excuse 2 talk abt books <3 i'm gonna split this into fiction + nonfiction + poetry...will try 2 keep it somewhat concise but. fear it may get long...

fiction

the archive of alternate endings, by lindsey drager [favorite book i've read all year]

how to live safely in a science fictional universe, by charles yu

giovanni's room, by james baldwin

stone butch blues, by leslie feinberg

i'll give you the sun, by jandy nelson

and then i woke up, by malcolm devlin

on earth we're briefly gorgeous, by ocean vuong

cursed bunny, by bora chung

i have the right to destroy myself, by young-ha kim

infect your friends and loved ones, by torrey peters

the bloody chamber and other stories, by angela carter

at least we can apologize, by lee ki-ho

nonfiction

playing the whore: the work of sex work, by melissa gira grant

cistem failure: essays on blackness and cisgender, by marquis bey

gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity, by judith butler

essays against publishing, by jamie berrout

trans liberation: beyond pink or blue, by leslie feinberg

females, by andrea long chu

socialism: utopian and scientific, by friedrich engels

capitalist realism: is there no alternative? by mark fisher

whipping girl: a transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity, by julia serrano

poetry

soft science, by franny choi

grit, by silas denver melvin

in the pines, by alice notley

[edwardshundredyearoldspunk]

I'm tired of the "this series is awful" aftg readers feel the need to preface with before they admit they love it. I admit I used to do this, mostly because I felt i would be deemed cringe for very sincerely enjoying the more "out there" aspects of the series (fake sport, japanese mafia, andrew's meds).

I think the series, by virtue of being self published, is naturally going to be very unconventional. I've seen people complain that there isn't really a beginning, middle & end and that is true. the structure is odd and for three-act-structure enjoyers it might actually even be unsettling. but I think it's disingenuous to say there isn't a story because the story is the emotional journey of it's characters. the author pays little regard to respecting conventional story structure because the plot is just a vehicle through which the characters self-actualize. like, yeah, in most books, the climax would be in the last third of the book. yeah, in the king's men it's at the midpoint. yeah, some readers are going to call this "bad writing".

but I don't think that just because some people are going to think it's bad (particularly bad faith readers) it's enough for you to preface your love of the series with "I know it's bad! I'm obsessed with it tho." it isn't! I genuinely don't think these books are bad. I think there are fair criticisms to be made, but why is the line in regards to what a reader should be willing to accept drawn at a fictional sport? I think if you approach aftg the way you would approach a fantasy novel (i.e. willing to move past crazy concepts because that's the structure of this world and this world isn't our world) rather than nitpicking things that are functionality fantastical, you'll be able to look past all the unorthodox storytelling to realize that you like these books for a reason. and the reason is that they're good.

the writing is polished (not just for a self published novel imo), the characters are otherworldly yet have complex emotional arcs that are consistent with their characterization, the plot is absolutely fucking bonkers but within the framework of the world it functions as a driving force for the characters to make choices and grow. that's a good book from where I'm standing. aftg asks a lot of the reader but I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing.

I think people need to learn to stand for their opinions regardless of what "critics" will say. maybe this preemptive need to assert that you know aftg is bad but you love it anyways is a result of not wanting to seem cringe, wanting to seem in on the joke, idk? but really, I think it does more harm to constantly deride something you love, just because you want to make sure people know you know it's bad before they get the chance to tell you it's bad. you should respect yourself as a reader. anyways I love aftg and genuinely think they're good books!

[bookishfreedom]

have you ever totally LOVED a book, and then read all of the one star reviews and thought “you know…. these are good points”

tragically that was me with immortal longings.

the story appealed directly to a lot of things i adore: shakespeare retelling? check. dystopian? check. THG-style tournament to the death featuring a star-crossed romance? check. absolutely feral and unreliable main characters? CHECK.

but objectively? i can also see why people were unimpressed with the pacing & worldbuilding.

I, however, am easy to please and not afraid to admit it.

[spandexinspace]

Just saw an entire tiktok comment section filled with people who read batfam fic instead of any source material and they kept talking about how they would never watch "the movies". What fucking movies? The dynamic you pretend to know isn't from there. At least know what you're not consuming if you're going to be an idiot.

[shorlinesorrows]

just got the time to start the sunshine court and I'm Vibrating out of my skin

[ghostcrows]

working in a library i have been forced to mellow out my response to harry potter fans because half of them are my own coworkers...but its like do we have to talk about it do we even have to bring it up at all...can you not just compartmentalize this and have it as your stupid guilty pleasure. why are you justifying it to me go drink your butter beer in the dark

[whatkindofnameisella]

UHM. so i read the chapter where paragon and vivacia meet!! and

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads / storygraph

The Archive Undying

semi-postapocalyptic scifi/fantasy

the sole undying acolyte of a dead mecha god who went mad and destroyed its city, who is on the run and drowning himself in substances & men in order to forget

he joins an expedition to explore the shrine of another AI entity, and after something goes wrong finds himself thrown back into the violent world of gods & machines

godpunk, giant robots, body horror, trauma, shifting POVs, generally weird, vibes-heavy

[ablednt]

I like how the death of literacy is because tumblr users watch kids cartoons and not that we live in a capitalist hellscape where you don't own what you have and curating your internet space to include anything of substance is increasingly inaccessible