1. The sky is dull; not a true blue like I usually like but I smile up at you anyways.
2. The air smells like ice and hot cocoa; you drink and then press your lips against my neck and it sends a tingle down my spine and into my toes which I can barely feel because I always refuse to wear boots in the snow.
3. Once I’ve stepped in too many puddles, you tell me “alright, jump up.” carrying me home on your back; I whisper in your ear and you grin beautifully.
4. We are sitting on the couch under the covers watching Inception for the millionth time.Your arm around my neck, our fingers interlaced, our faces pressed against each other’s; we breathe in the warmth from one another’s lips.
5. I’m standing in the kitchen, coffee in hand, crinkled nose, wearing your hoodie that is 3 sizes too big. My hair is messy but I am happier than usual; it radiates off of my freckled skin.
6. You are fast asleep covered in my favorite ice blue blanket from Kohl’s; my head lies on your chest. Twinkle lights shine down on us, barely lighting the room. My fingers are curled up in your chest hair while I sing “My Everything” by Ariana Grande quietly until I fall asleep too.
We are two broken bottles from families who loved to smash pretty things. Our edges jagged; sharp in some places and dull in others. We shine brightest when lined up together on window sills where the windows actually open; freedom gracing our figures creating watercolor ballets on the bedroom wall. We are opposite colors. You are red- anger and shame fill up more of you than you’d like to admit but warmth lies inside of you too. I am deep ocean blue-full of more sadness and self hatred than you like to think but my love for you runs to those ocean depths and even further than that. When we dance together we mix so beautifully (even when we don’t.) We can’t fill the empty spaces, fix the cracks, or rewind the time back to when we were whole and new but we sit together, watch the sun rise and fall, create memories that make the old ones a little less vivid; we love through it all.
-3 TROLLS:(2 on the go, 1 complete) -1 SLUGTERRA: (on the go). I will update this post as I add new stories.
The Long Road To True Happiness (Branch x Poppy)
How would Broppy have developed if Chef never found Troll Village? Here’s my take on it! Upbeat Princess Poppy has finally found a way to convince grumpy loner Branch to give friendship a try! It doesn’t involve her usual tactics of befriending someone, but it just might work to cheer him up! Easy as pie, right? He’ll be smiling and laughing and singing in no time… right?
Shane Gang Adventures: The Fifth Member (Kord x my OC, Eli x Trixie)
A month after the events of Into the Shadows, Tad Blakk’s betrayal is in the past, and the 99 Caverns of Slugterra have remained generally peaceful and uneventful. But when a seemingly simple mission goes dangerously wrong, the Shane Gang meet an exotic newcomer who will change their lives forever.
We spent a few minutes combing through a curious scrapbook in the papers of Braxton Craven (considered Duke’s second president, he led the institution from 1842 to 1863 and then from 1866 to 1882).
It contains sentimental and moralizing love stories clipped from newspapers and magazines. Many of the stories are accompanied by handwritten summaries of their key lessons–and here are some of the best ones for your edification. (You’re welcome.)
Lest you think that this guy doesn’t look susceptible to this sort of story, let me remind you that one of his claims to fame is as the author of “Naomi Wise: Or, The Wrongs of a Beautiful Girl,” the story of a Randolph County, NC murder that became the basis for the oldest known American murder ballad.
I am OBSESSED with people telling me how they met the love of their life. Just found out my director met his wife through a misdirected email - that’s fate right there.
“I saw her last name was Jewish - and I’m Jewish, so when I corrected the email I told her Shabbat Shalom with a smiley face — this was the very beginning of the emoticon era, you understand. She had a watermark of a dog rescue at the bottom of her email, and I love dogs, so I found her website and there she was — all these videos of her rehabilitating dogs and talking about the organization. I fell in love with her just from those videos.”
“I asked if we could meet for coffee, told her I was looking for volunteer opportunities — which was halfway a lie — and she said ‘okay, but just so you know I have a boyfriend, so this is strictly business,’ and I was so disappointed, but I did want to meet her. We sat in that coffeeshop until they turned the lights out on us, and she broke up with her boyfriend the next day.”
MULTIPLE people in the notes have told me how important these tags are to them so here’s to keeping it in the main post.
[ID: A cropped screenshot of the posters tags on this tumblr post. They read:
“also they were in their forties at this point / not young lovers / which is a reminder that love stories happen at all ages”
no but remember when Marco Alisdair asked Celia Bowen if she remembers all her audiences and she said she only remembers the ones who look at her the way he does and then he asked her what way might that be AND THEN CELIA SAID THE ICONIC “LIKE THEY CAN’T DECIDE IF THEY ARE AFRAID OF ME OR IT THEY WANT TO KISS ME” AND MARCO HAD THE ABSOLUTE AUDACITY TO ANSWER WITH “I’M NOT AFRAID OF YOU”-
REVIEW Title: There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories Author: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya Genre: Romance, general; contemporary fiction My Rating: ★★★ (specifically, 2.5 of 5 stars)
Short stories possess a kind of magic that novels sometimes do not have. The worlds in them seem smaller because of their length, but I came to realize that this is nothing but a hypercritical verdict: the worlds in them are in truth so much bigger, as there is a plethora of possibilities hanging at the ledge of every tale’s abrupt end. The readers often get to be the mind-pilots when they reach the said ledge, imagining what would happen past the borders. These tales are like tiny pieces of a universe pulled apart and made to stand alone. The very good ones are strong enough to make a reader believe they do not need to be a part of something bigger in order to do what volumes of others could, from something as small as scraping the reader’s heart to something as large as totally changing someone’s life. Imagine what an anthology of these kinds of stories would be like!
But let us keep in mind that a tale’s power is directly tied to its effect to the audience. In the end, it is still a matter of preference and taste—what can reduce you to tears may only be able to make me arch an eyebrow; what can make me laugh like there is no tomorrow may only make you shrug. Considering this, I believe that Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s ’s anthology There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories may be regarded as a powerful collection, but one whose clout does not quite hit my heart’s bull’s eye nor grabbed at my interest for long. (The title did arrest my curiosity, I’ll admit, but it was its contents that I have a few concerns with.)
Don’t get me wrong: the stories have a lot to offer. They bring forth a blend of bittersweetness, hope, desperation, grit, heartbreak. They flash facets of histories of women who sought, found, and lost love in a variety of places and situations: seedy apartments that witnessed infidelities, hasty and messy one-night stands, hesitant romances in corporate bubbles, trysts crutched by temporary bliss, and label-less relationships. They feature an assortment of women, too—there are strong ones, “weak” ones , and those lodged in between. But even though there is a lengthy list of rave reviews for this anthology and the one that preceded it (There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales), I cannot seem to find a concrete element in it that will make me cherish it as something that is utterly remarkable.
I think my main concern with the whole thing is that even though the stories are meant to be stand-alones, the characters (and in effect, the situations they are in) seem to bleed into each other. And I am not talking in a seamless, spin-off-like Venn Diagram way either. It was as if there is a handful of templates for characters that get recycled for the individual tales, as though there is a lone element that make them identical in voice and demeanor.
The result, for me, is that there is no character that stood out. Well-written characters are vital for short stories because they often drive the whole tale with them. Like what I said in the beginning of this review, there might be a bigger universe outside a short story’s concrete margins when it reaches the end, but the space where characters could establish themselves as beings worthy of being remembered is very small. The process of character creation and/or development should happen here—it could not extend to those unseen margins.
I liked how each story unfolded, though. The successions of every scene hold a flavor of honesty and simplicity; their undemanding messages could be conveyed to their audience effortlessly. Remembering these bits as something notable could be a lot easier if their anchors—the characters, of course—are as strongly knitted as they are. —
“I can tell the way you looked at me was different. Because you looked at me, the way I looked at you. And I looked at you as if the whole constellation had put itself within your eyes.”
Figured out I’m not really a fan of enemies to lovers but I’m a HUGE fan of annoyances to lovers
Enemies to lovers too often for me has BIG interpersonal conflicts and like. Legitimate reasons they hate each other in a way that I don’t particularly enjoy that romances. Annoyances to lovers rules tho because that tells me that the only divide between love and hate in these characters is petty bullshit and I LOVE petty bullshit. Hell yeah you’d be head over heels in love with her if she just stopped fucking taking your yogurt from the company fridge
When Reaction Junkie and I reached the party, he suggested we go up to a private room. I was a little unsure, but I decided to go along with it. We went upstairs and picked a room. Reaction Junkie unzipped his bag and began showing off his handcuffs. He’s a bit of a fan. (That’s an understatement. He almost always has like 5 or more sets of cuffs in his kink bag, even if he’s just going to happy hour. And of course, I have to carry the damn thing.) He showed me how to use a couple sets and I set to work putting them on him.
I secured his hands behind his back and cuffed his ankles together. Then I started hitting him a bit. Not very hard, but hard enough. As we played, we chatted. I don’t remember much of what was said, although I’m sure the regular conversation was intermixed with me saying condescending and/or insulting things to Reaction Junkie. I told him I wasn’t sure about having sex, but noted that, I really should since he is a man, after all. At the time, MLAM and I were playing with a fairly intense and all-encompassing context of fucking with my feminism/consensual misogyny, which meant I was supposed to offer myself to any and all men for their pleasure and entertainment.
I also informed Reaction Junkie that he couldn’t give me permission to get off, though, since he was choosing to let me dominate him, thus forfeiting the control over my orgasms he would otherwise have as a man. I enjoyed saying that to him, even if it meant I wasn’t going to get off. At his request, I uncuffed his hands and recuffed them in front of him. I straddled Reaction Junkie and started grinding against him. I continued messing with him, and I was really getting into it.
I told Reaction Junkie to say nice things about me, and he immediately started complimenting me. He said wonderful things about parts of my body, my personality, my intellect, etc. I loved it. I should make him do that sort of thing more often. I uncuffed his hands and he started using them on me. He’s got game in the “hand stuff” department, but I wasn’t quite getting there. I knew what I needed. I needed degradation, consensual misogyny, name-calling, and to feel subby. I felt a bit bad, but decided that it was best to just ask for what I wanted. I asked Reaction Junkie, “Would it ruin it for you if I asked you to say terrible things to me?” Without missing a beat, he slapped me across the face and said, “Shut up, whore.”*
I swooned. Reaction Junkie saw how positively I responded to his words and the slap. He took over and continued this treatment, degrading me and hurting me. I clearly remember thinking “What a clever boy” as he got a handle on the consensual misogyny quite quickly, calling me names, insulting women as a class, saying the kinds of terrible things that get me soaking wet. He hit me, hurt me, and choked me, treating me the way I crave being treated. His words and actions combined to put me in a lovely little subby headspace. When he started playing with my cunt again, I got into it, gasping and moaning. Reaction Junkie said, “Oh? Can I give you permission now?”, calling back to when I told him he couldn’t give me permission to orgasm because he hadn’t been taking his rightful place over me. He continued using his hands on me as I whimpered that of course he could give me permission. He continued rubbing my clit and fucking my cunt with his fingers, gave me permission, and managed to get me close to orgasm.**
By this point, I was both super turned on and super into Reaction Junkie. I said*** that we could have piv sex (whether by saying “Fuck me!” or asking more demurely, I can’t recall), and he took me up on that offer. I grabbed one of the condoms supplied by the space, gave it to Reaction Junkie, and he fucked me. Now, I had mentioned to him earlier that I was into forced impregnation/nonconsensual unprotected sex fantasies. Not one to let a chance to press someone’s buttons pass him by, after he came, Reaction Junkie leaned close and whispered into my ear, “Our baby is going to be beautiful.”
We chatted while we cleaned up the room, and then sat on a nearby couch for a while to cuddle and talk more. Eventually, we went off to do our own thing with other people at the party. Whenever we ran into each other, Reaction Junkie took a dominant attitude with the way he spoke and acted towards me. I had already been hoping to see more of him because of the fun we’d had the previous night, but seeing him in that new light made me even more eager to spend time with him. At one point, he even threatened to choke me out. Then, as I was leaving, I went over to him and was delighted when he grabbed my hair firmly to say goodbye. I smiled to myself as I walked to my car and drove home.
The next day, I texted him, “I had a great time last night! It hurts when I press on my sternum, which is the best. We should definitely hang out again sometime soon.” He responded, “I had a fantastic time too. Glad you enjoyed yourself. Let me know when you want to get together again soon.” “Soon” turned out to be the following Wednesday. And then again the very day I got back from my San Francisco/Colorado trip. We started to see each other most days out of the week. That became spending most nights together. Before I knew it, I had fallen for him, and he had fallen for me.
*Reaction Junkie likes to say this is when I fell in love with him. That’s not actually true. But it did flip a switch in the way I thought about him. I decided, “I need to spend a lot more time with this guy.”
**Reaction Junkie thinks I did get off, although my notes on the night say I got close. Either way, I know I was impressed with his hand stuff game.
***To be honest, I actually can’t remember who offered/suggested the piv sex. Either way, the important point is that I was more than ready to have him fuck me.
