Free Pumpkins 🎃🌾✨

“You are being generous,” she said to Granny, out of her new embarrassed rawness. “Arranging to keep me, I mean.” “No, I’m not,” Granny retorted. “Being generous is giving something that’s hard to give.”

Diana Wynne Jones, "Fire and Hemlock"

Headcanons for the Origins Crew

Morrigan likes to fly ahead as a crow while the rest of the party walks; this is partly to scout, but mostly so she doesn’t have to deal with their nonsense

The first time Morrigan sets up camp away from the rest of the party, someone asks what she’ll do if a darkspawn sneaks up on her in the night and they’re all too far away to provide assistance. She replies, “if that happened, you’d all already be dead.”

Leliana sings campfire songs and tells great bedtime stories.

Leliana once made everyone flower crowns. Griffin (the mabari) wore it with pride but eventually ended up eating it, Sten secretly really liked his, Morrigan completely refused to wear one, and Shale mostly found it ironic.

The real reason they walk everywhere is because none of them know how to ride horses (except maybe Cousland).

Alistair was banned from cooking after one of his attempts literally gave everyone food poisoning. They are still unsure if this was on purpose or not.

Zevran is actually a really good cook. He constantly bemoans his inability to properly capture the essence of Antivan cuisine with their poor Ferelden rations.

Morrigan is also a good cook, but doesn’t want to play the housewife as designated cook. She doesn’t mind being on rotation though.

Wynne can cook, but only by following a cookbook.

Leliana is an average cook. Orlais may be known for incredibly fancy delicacies—of which she quite enjoys—but she isn’t usually the one to cook them, and never while on the road.

Wynne not only likes romance novels, she likes smutty romance novels, and reads them with a completely straight face.

One time, Alistair made the mistake of asking what she’s reading and she reads a paragraph outloud, causing his whole face to turn red. Zevran cackles and teases him about it for weeks. He never lives it down.

Wynne also enjoys opera.

Sten doesn’t know what opera is, but if he did, he’d enjoy it (this is mostly just for fun).

Zevran and the Warden had their first heart to heart in the Brecilian Forest (mainly bc that’s how it happened for me when I accidentally clicked on him while fighting werewolves and it triggered a conversation).

Alistair knows how to whittle.

One time, Shale finds a scarecrow on an abandoned farmstead and tries to take it with them to ward off the birds. It takes several hours of arguing to get her to leave it behind. (She keeps the straw hat).

Zevran either can’t pick locks bc a) that was Rinna’s job, not his, or b) Antiva uses different locking mechanism (borrowed this from overthinkingfeathers).

If you named the mabari “Barkspawn”, at least once someone has to have yelled his name at camp and caused everyone to think they were being attacked by actual darkspawn.

At least once, while the warden and their love interest are getting steamy in camp, Wynne leaned in and told them to “leave room for Andraste.”

Leliana is actually a big prankster, but she almost never gets caught.

Wynne is secretly a troll, but you never expect it bc she looks like a kindly little old granny.

At least once, two of the companions have had a fight and passive-aggressively used the warden as a go between à la “Warden, tell so-and-so that I said…” while standing right next to each other.

May add more to this as I think of it.

An extract from this thread on the Dianne Wynne Jones mailing list archives about a HMC book workshop:

"When we got around to Howl it was to consider that he wasn't much of a conventional hero, what with the slithering out, the plain looks and vanity and so on. His relationship to Calcifer was gone into pretty thoroughly, just what it meant that Calcifer had Howl's heart. Was it Howl's heart that made Calcifer so nice to Sophie or was that Calcifer himself? It soon became clear that Howl is a rather contradictory character. He is the heartless wizard who charges the poor less and the rich more. He takes in orphans, grannies and old skulls, yet attempts to evade responsibility at all costs. Somebody made an interesting point about the softness of Howl's heart - which Calcifer shrieks about when it is being squeezed. We sort of concluded that a lot of what Howl did was to protect himself from his own generous impulses because he feared exploitation. This is in contrast to Sophie's rather overdeveloped sense of responsibility (whatever possessed her by the way to actually go along with posing as Howl's old mother and blackening his name to the king?) Howl had protected his soft heart by giving it to Calcifer. Someone speculated that Howl tried to keep Calcifer and Sophie apart to protect his poor feeble heart from her but of course it was to no avail."

book recs!! anything witchy will do!

Oooh I love doing book recs, OKAY, witchy-themed books:

Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher - I finished this recently and it's a really lovely dark fairy tale style story, in which a princess seeks out magical help to kill the prince that's been abusing her sister.

The Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik - a fantastic trilogy set in a very dark, twisted magic school, following Galadriel 'El' Higgins as she tries her resist her destiny to become an evil sorceress.

Sorceror to the Crown by Zen Cho - a regency set fantasy following Zacharias Wythe, the first Black Sorceror Royal, who is trying to discover why Britain's magic stocks are drying up. A really fun read with a really interesting take on the fairy realm.

Literally anything by Diana Wynne Jones but for particular witch feels Witch Week is great - it's middle grade but still really fun to read as an adult, set in a boarding school where one of the students has been anoymously accused of being a witch in a world where witchcraft is illegal.

Wicked Like a Wildfire by Lana Popovic - Iris and her sister Malina are descended from a family of witches taught to keep their powers a secret and never to fall in love. But when their mother's attacked, they set out to find the truth and discover that there's a curse haunting their family.

Shades of Milk and Honey by Marie Robinette Kowal - another regency set one, that's very Jane Austen with magical powers, where manipulation of glamour is an essential accomplishment for young ladies.

A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin - an urban fantasy following sorceror Matthew Swift who finds himself resurrected from the dead after being murdered three years ago. He's got two questions: who killed him? And who brought him back?

Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett - an absolutely stellar book, in which the witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat find meddling in royal affairs isn't that easy ...

The Witch Trade by Michael Molloy - I read this when I was eleven or twelve and it has etched itself into my pyche, and is such a fun, exciting middle grade adventure.

The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy - I don't care how old you are, if you haven't read this you should. Mildred Hubble's misadventures at Miss Cackle's Academy of Witches are just iconic.

Poison by Chris Wooding - this isn't about a witch, exactly, but it has very witchy, fairy tale vibes and I adore it so I'm going to include it. It follows a young woman called Poison who sets out to reclaim her sister from the fairies after she's stolen and replaced with a changeling, but finds a much bigger adventure waiting for her.

Okay, that's a lot of witchy books so I will stop there before this gets too unwieldy but I highly recommend all of these!!

When Wynne asked if she had anything to give to Regan, Jade considered passing. After all, they parted ways forever, right? No hard feelings. Regan was adamant there would be no other way to reach her, refusing to disclose the address where banshees got their correspondence. This was breaking the rules, so to speak. And Jade loved breaking dumb rules, but she always respected Regan’s decision over everything.

But there was still conflict in Jade’s heart, so she consulted with her cats over the following days. Concluding, thanks to Lullaby’s wise input, that she couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to reach out. Except, she had nothing to give Regan, nothing she hadn’t already taken with her. More consulting was needed for Jade to have her lightbulb moment. See, there wasn’t a thing Regan needed from her currently, not with Wynne and Elias going after her. But in the future, maybe, possibly, if something came up and minds suddenly changed (as unlikely as that was to ever happen), she wanted Regan to know where she stood. 

Jade figured a change of mind wouldn’t be enough for Regan’s stubborn ass to leave Ireland and what she believed to be her duty behind. No, Jade knew she’d try to make it work, somehow. No matter how miserable she felt. So Jade wanted to give Regan a hand, all the way from Wicked’s Rest, on the chance that Regan felt like her own desires didn’t matter enough to tip the scales. Regan had always been a little weak for Jade’s big-brained logic, hadn’t she? So she ended up handing Wynne a small envelope before they left for Ireland. The outside read: “Break in case of emergency”, and then below, “DO NOT break. OPEN” for Regan and Wynne’s more literal brains.

If Regan were to ever open the envelope, she’d find… a letter. It starts with a dramatic opening, “Regan. Hey…if you are reading this it means [del: I‘m]… things are not looking good”.

“Things might be super mega bad, right now, actually. And I know you wanna stick to your guns, I know you think there’s a way to turn this around and make it work. A last-second 3-pointer that’s gonna fix it all and make your granny cheer (I watched Space Jam, I think that’s how basketball works). I almost wanna believe in you, cause that’s all I do. But please… hear me out. Ireland isn’t the end of it. You can do what you must do here. I should’ve said it. You should’ve stayed. I wanted you to. But that’s not why I’m writing to you. I want you to stop thinking about everyone else but yourself. You are a person too. [del:You’re my] But if you can’t think about you, think about me, okay? You enjoy doing that a lot too.” 

The message is followed by a list titled: “69 reasons why we should be together (number 69 will make your jaw drop)”. Jade started the list months before Ireland was even on the horizon, back when Regan was still pretending there was nothing going on between them. She never planned on finishing it, cause she got the girl, but desperate times called for desperate measures. 

The list… is a bit of a mess. Parts heartfelt, part inside jokes, the numbers are not in order, cause, why would they, it’s Jade? Number 12 talks about both of them being nosy, which totally means they would have all the tea about the town, followed by Number 36, a simple “We can share clothes”. Number 20 is “You need someone to watch whales decompose with, I happen to have my Google alerts on”. Number 69 is just a winky face, but number 66 says, “bog sex might happen”. Number 17 mentions how opposites attract, while Number 18 points out that they’re more similar than either wants to admit. Number 52 is “We’d never run out of things to talk about”. Number 47 is “Porcupines deserve to be held too, in fact, they might need it more than others”. Number 10 reads, “Chemistry that should be studied in a lab, actually”, and Number 2, “I’d give up on hearing music for the rest of my life if that meant hearing your voice whisper my name again”.

At the bottom of the list, there’s Number 1, and it says: “I love you, and you love me. That’s not changing in this lifetime. So not doing something about it? Super irresponsible”

The letter ends with,

“Prove me right”. 

Wynne has taken the envelope to Ireland and has not opened or broken it, even if there were some emergencies. The letter is left in Regan’s clinic, as mentioned in Dead End.

Found Family Tournament Round 1 Part 24 Group 116

Propaganda and further pictures under the cut

Warden's Squad: Zevran, Leliana, the Warden, Wynne, DOG, Shale, Oghren, Morrigan, Alistair, Sten

Submissions are still open!

Zaphod, Arthur, Marvin, Trillian & Ford:

Sorry, I got no propaganda for them yet :(

Warden's Squad:

i mean have you seen morrigan? a goth gf, literally. zevran is the babiest baby, same with leliana. we all have a thing for assassins ok, especially if they are gay (they all are, its a rule), alistair gives u a rose :( wynne is a granny and she loves u so, so much!!! shale doesnt understand anything but i love her still, oghren is me in 2 years probably (drunk). AND U CAN NAME A DOG????? i named it potato lol.

Things I would change in Dragon Age: Origins

- Make Morrigan a lesbian. I know a lesbian when I see it and when I see her she screams lesbian. Also making Alistair bi, he gives me Bi in denial vibes, they should've done that in the first place tbh.

-make it where you can have a poly relationship with the characters you can romance, let me have Leliana and Zevran at the same time PLEASE. But it wouldn't work with characters that hate each other like Morrigan and Alistair.

-Wynne can be a romance option. Let me have Granny Wynne be my love interest 💕

-make Oghren a love interest I feel like there needs to be more love interests rather then just the main four, I get locking Sten and shit but Oghren would be fine to have as a love interest.

-give Zevran and Leliana more conversations with the warden, after you ask them the main questions you can't talk to them really anymore besides asking Zevran to go to your tent.

-Have a fucking gift shop or at least a shop that has a decent amount of gifts in it, it's so annoying to try and find gifts for the companions I understand the plot gifts having to be found and all, but the random ones should be able to buy easier.

-when making your warden let us be able to pick our body type and customize it to our liking I hate where you only have certain body types for different races.

I just realized: Alistair dumping the leadership responsibilities onto you also makes Wynne annoying or even more annoying depending on how you play. Like she is all over you preaching about "responsibility" and "you are a Grey Warden, you have a duty" and bla bla bla. Meanwhile Alistair is over there literally shirking HIS duty for no other reason than "I don't wanna."

Why is Morrigan the only one to question this shit!?

The thing that really bothers me is that Wynne acts like Alistair's kindly old granny. Like, she's darning his clothes and fussing over his injuries and generally acting like your typical grandmother and it's all just sooooooo sweet... and then she's constantly getting on the Warden's case for not being the perfect darkspawn-killing Blight-ending machine to the point of lecturing them about duty over things like having (at the time) casual sex? Even though Alistair actively refuses to take on the responsibilities of a Warden, Wynne doesn't get on his case about it! In fact, having gone through her banters with him, if you romance Alistair she encourages it on his end... while telling the Warden to back off because duty and responsibility. ...Which, thinking about it, what was she going to do if she successfully hyped Alistair up over the relationship and successfully talked the Warden into breaking it off...? Odd choice there. But yeah, Wynne seems to forget that Alistair is also a Warden and so should also be responsible for ending the Blight. Whatever his reasons may have been for not taking charge, Alistair has very firmly refused the responsibility that should be his, and instead of lecturing him the way she does the Warden (who, reminder, is taking on their own share of responsibility in ending the Blight and picking up all of Alistair's slack) Wynne babies him! It's such a blatant double standard!

And I mean, Bioware could've gone somewhere interesting with that by suggesting that Wynne's so much nicer and more forgiving to Alistair than she is to the Warden because Alistair's a former Templar and she has the usual Circle trauma that's making her want to suck up to him to avoid trouble in a way she doesn't feel the need to suck up to the Warden. But they didn't do that (in fact when he asks she insists he doesn't make her uncomfortable in any way and that Templars are necessary), so we're just left with the sense that Wynne's being incredibly unfair and blatantly playing favourites!

Ten Books To Know Me

Rules: 10 (non-ancient) books for people to get to know you better, or that you just really like.

Tagged by @softest-punk, thank you for utterly derailing my afternoon into nostalgia <3 My problem is less not picking ancient books and more not picking exclusively Canadian and English children���s lit published between 1995 and 1999. (Still the first three picks all the same though because it is like, the opus within which my psyche is almost wholly contained.) This got long but I'm going to be very brave and not apologize about that at all. I love talking about books, and these are some of the books I love the most. In chronological order of arrival into my heart.

Some of the Kinder Planets - Tim Wynne-Jones This book has been a part of my life for so long I cannot remember when, exactly, I first read it - only that it was taken from my gran’s shelf; Tim had sent her a copy with a lovely inscription. It’s a short story collection which remains today (and forever) my favourite format. Ted Chiang’s Exhalation, Karin Tidbeck’s Jagannath, Karen Russell’s Orange World, Margaret Atwood’s Stone Mattress are all fabulous examples, stacked before me at my desk, but Some of the Kinder Planets itself lives (alongside my two most precious childhood stuffies) at my mum’s house, the safest place of all. The stories are kids being kids in the way you want to read as a kid yourself: clever and wondering and scared and brave. Special mention also to his Zoom trilogy, beautifully illustrated in black and white by Eric Beddows.

Skellig - David Almond Another book likely pilfered from my granny’s library. There’s a little magic in Some of the Kinder Planets, but here is ALL the magical realism, and it changed me. This book has a sickly bird-or-man-or-angel in a garage being nursed to health by a boy with an ill baby sister in hospital that he can’t help at all; the indelible image of surviving off bluebottles and then getting snuck Chinese takeaway and brown ale; nature and weird kids and William Blake poems. I will weep if I continue thinking about it.

[Not Any Book But Just A Lot Of Books] - Kit Pearson, Diana Wynne-Jones, Kenneth Oppel, Philip Pullman, Madeleine L’Engle, etc. Listen, I know this is an INSANE cop-out but if you know the authors you know more or less exactly what I mean. These are the books that made me more tender than I already was, made me believe in Good, and Kindness, and Love, in a totally immutable way I thankfully do not ever want to change, because I don’t think I could.

Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett My first introduction to Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, and footnotes. Also one of the first books I did not simply pick up because it was Lying Around. I bought it because my older cousin listed it as one of her favourite books on Facebook, and she was (and is) impossibly, horribly cool. I was maybe 13 or 14 and wanted to be cool too. I’ve since read a smattering of Gaiman but I’ve yet to read Terry Pratchett on his own. I’d like to! I know I’d love it.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams Loaned to me by my best friend before we were best friends. It is, apparently, the second novel in the Dirk Gently series, and I remember nothing of it except a very good bit about a couch getting stuck in a stairwell; nonetheless it’s listed here because this is clearly actually a thinly disguised chronology of sentimentality, and also because Douglas Adams is a wonder and delight to read and I don’t need to fully remember the book to know that in my bones. I’m not sure if it’s fair but I’ll also blame Douglas Adams for my inability to be brief and to resist using semi-colons. Could’ve been someone else. But it was definitely someone English.

Sailing to Byzantium - W.B. Yeats This is not a book, but it was in my English Literature textbook in high school, so it counts. If it wasn’t, I would still count it. Why a sixteen year old girl connected with a poem that begins “That is no country for old men.” is irrelevant, as is every stanza but the third, which contains the fateful, ruinous lines: “Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is;” I remember when I read it, and I remember the chill feeling of Yeats’ spectral hand reaching all the way from his grave in County Sligo, across the whole Atlantic and the enormous landmass called Canada, to reach into my chest and cruelly grab my own heart, and I remember thinking How, and Exactly. The first thing I read that named the strangeness I felt inside of me. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of all my teenage angst. Written on my bones to this day, if I’m being honest.

Hamlet - Shakespeare We got off on the wrong foot, after I was personally victimized by the line ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’, but I do love Shakespeare. I credit this to having an excellent teacher for it, and reading it aloud in a cohort of tryhards and musicians and theatre kids. A case of familiarity breeds...appreciation, actually. We did a lot of Shakespeare, but we were asked to learn 20 lines of Hamlet specifically, and rewrite them, marked down for every error. Forty lines for bonus marks. There was much grousing and it seemed like a cruel, outdated task of rote memorization, but writing this a decade later, I am belatedly realizing this was a sneaky way to get a bunch of kids to recite a soliloquy so much that they couldn’t help but find the life in it, the rhythm and meter to make it stick in our minds. And now look! I love it! I am writing fanfic in iambic pentameter! Wherefore art my fucking restraint!! I learned my lines so hideously well that when I pulled up the scene just now (2.2, from “Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal peak”), I a) noticed and b) was offended by, minute differences from the version I memorized, which I then searched out and knew the moment I found. Incredible?!  

Still Life With Woodpecker - Tom Robbins The most recent time I’ve read a work of fiction and been rearranged by it, at the tender age of 21. here I am, I wrote, in my journal, after a very good sob, happier and more rudderless than ever. This man writes with totally unfettered joy and unhinged sincerity, two things I am hopelessly into, but also with a deep distaste for institutions and conformity that I desperately needed back then: lost, returned from a year of magical realism and the sort of adulthood growth spurt that makes you feel dizzy, home and yet horribly missing the home I’d made for myself elsewhere, all my nearly-fulfilled ambitions towards security and prestigious government postings feeling sort of hollow and reeking in my hands. It comforted me that I wasn't wrong as much as it spilled my own guts into my hands, and while I went on for another year seeing things through, it planted a seed that quickly grew proper roots and pushed me right off the ledge of respectability. And it’s a love story, of course.

It’s his prose that sits glowing on the horizon to me when I try to write richly: a distant shore of orgiastic language (from which you can surely hear the wind-carried cries of people fucking day and night), towards which I, still shy and prudish, ever point my prow.

How to Be Happy - Eleanor Davis A comic collection. Sharp and wonderful and alive. Another Best Friend gift (bless those around us with impeccable taste), of which every single panel is MARVELOUS. I meant to share one of my favourites here but apparently it has! Gotten up and left!! I will buy another copy in hopes of coaxing it back out of wherever it’s hiding.

Down to Earth - Monty Don This did not rearrange anything. But it does give me a good hug about it, so to speak. A month-by-month gardening guide which is chock-full of brilliant, sensible advice, and also so cheerfully comforting in a highly specific English way that I actually feel like I’m drinking a cuppa whenever I read a page or two of it. It makes me think of my grandmother. And so we’ve come full circle, eh?

I hope some of you are now nodding thoughtfully and thinking, well, Chrissakes, that explains it. Very sorry, hope this helps, etc. Passing on the tag to @fancy-rock-dove, @chubsthehamster, @broomsticks, @wordsinhaled, @btwimkindagay, @hardly-an-escape, @xx-vergil-xx, @that-banhus, and anyone else who wants to expose themselves on main and chat about their fave books

Ok, I managed to do a top 5 current favourite books. It’s not accurate because if I didn’t decide to include only one book per series this would be just Realm of the Elderlings. I looked at all the books I put in my all time favourite shelves and tried to see if I would replace any of these 5 by the ones I left behind and I wouldn’t. I think an organized top 10 would be harder to do. I am pretty sure about my top 3 at least for now.

1 - Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb

There is no doubt in my mind about what my favourite series is. Sometimes I have doubts about what my favourite book in that series is, but ultimately I always end up picking Fool’s Errand because it features so many good interactions between my favourite trio (Fitz, Fool and Nighteyes). Plus, it’s adventurous, fun and also sad. It is also pretty self contained so I think it’s perfect in cases I have to name just one book. The writing is beautiful as usual and it makes me feel a lot of emotions. If I was being truthful, both Farseer and Tawny Man would be in the top and those are two trilogies, which would take over the first 6 spots already.

2 - Shadows Return by Lynn Flewelling

This author doesn’t have the beautiful prose I usually enjoy in my favourites. In fact, her style is a bit messy, but it works for the kind of fun story the Nightrunner series is. I mean, the second book did made me cry a bit and then there is this fourth one, but in general the books tend to be adventurous and fun. This fourth book is very polarizing because the series took a left turn from the fun adventures into complete misery and pain territory. Turns out that that is my preference so I felt blessed. The fact that the story started here has an awful conclusion in the following book kind of makes it lose points, but I can also pretend the series ends here (even though there are two other books after that terrible 5th). I would have preferred it, to be honest. There were two characters introduced here that had spectacular interactions with the main ones and no one will ever know the chills I got from the sentence “My price, little Haba, was you.” The book ruined me and I keep thinking about it still (recent read).

3 - Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Just so much fun and it forever will be my favourite comfort read. The dynamic between Sophie and Howl is just *chef’s kiss* I can’t get over how funny and brilliantly plotted this book is. The opening line is one of my favourites. It starts in such a fairytale-like way and it’s beautifully done. A true masterpiece in such few pages.

4 - Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

I usually pick my favourites due to how they make me feel more than other merits so this one is probably the most clever in the way it addresses some societal topics. It is still a product of it’s time and I am sure some changes would have been made now to accommodate that, but I still think it’s fantastic and for once I enjoyed a book with aliens and spaceships.

5 - Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

I debated between this and Hogfather, but ultimately I picked this one because Hogfather still has one or two scenes that I didn’t care much for while in this one every character was fun and interesting to follow. It goes really in depth into the witches of the Discworld, especially Granny Weatherwax, and those books always tackle some feminine issues that are still relevant.

image 1 ID: a young woman is on all fours searching the muddy floor of a dried stream for her glasses that are mangled and cracked a few feet away from her, rests against a muddy slope.

image 2 ID: wider shot of image 1 reveling the woman’s distressed expression as her hand searches for her glasses. Behind her, something stands silhouetted in in the woods whose attention has been caught by the woman.

image 3 ID: The woman sits in a bed of hay, nervously talking to some out of the picture while a large rests in the blood-stained table before her.

image 4 ID: wider shot of image 3 revealing a large corvid-like monster in a hooded cloak pouring tea from a kettle for the young women with a toothy smile. They are in the monster’s cabin and the woman is blissfully unaware of the corpses hanging by the fire thanks to fragrant drying herbs.

been thinking about how much it suck to lose your glasses in a fantasy world filled with monsters and the potential dangers that would pose... 

(but don't worry tho, she'll be fine) 🌿✨

“Take care,” she said. “And if a book set you off, a book may help again when you’ve fetched it out of you. Try it.”

Diana Wynne Jones, "Fire and Hemlock"

Okay, History 5, I don't get you anymore...I really try to understand where you come up with all this drama, but it is just ridiculous at this point...Why is it now a good time to send Johnny back? What is the reason that it should be now? After he found a place for himself? Because he thought about his granny? Well, he is doing this for the last fucking eight episodes!

And why the fortune teller story? This is not good. Why does he need to get a higher god to send you back? He had the power to bring you here in the first place...Please explain this whole time travelling...that would be fun 😂

And please, Johnny, did empathy leave you again? A blind date for your boyfriend, while you are still his boyfriend??? I don't get that stupid fucking mind of yours! Just cherish the time you still have together and don't push Hai Yi away and perhaps talk to him!!! I must say, Hai Yi is the communication king of all of these stupid men! He explains his feelings and that Johnny hurt him with his actions.

Wynn...saying you had a car accident is not okay, even though you want to speak with Liang...but he obviously doesn't want to talk with you! And Liang...Not even a call? Really? It is easier for him to hate you...I hate this bullshit drama! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! This is my hate watch of the week! And I am glad it is over next week!

And bringing back History 4 doesn't help at all! Because now I want to watch History 4 again...damn...

“It was a windy day in autumn. In Granny’s garden the leaves whirled down … Every leaf you caught, Nina shrieked, meant one happy day.”

—Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock

I literally have no idea how tumblr functions so idk if you've ever been asked this before but... What's the first book that comes to mind when someone asks you about a book that had a huge effect on you? Like a book that holds a special place in your heart? A book you'd wish people could read and experience everything you experienced when you first read it, even if that's not 100% possible

hello, anon!! apologies but i could not possibly choose one so here are three books that fulfill your criteria:

a) (and i guess this IS the first one that came to my mind, on top of being my favorite) Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones! it's such an underrated book but gosh, i love it to pieces!! it's very intertextual and meta on top of being simply a very heartwarming story (i will give you this wonderful quote: Granny always made Polly think of biscuits. She had a dry, shortbread sort of way to her, with a hidden taste that came out afterwards). I experienced it the way i experienced some of the ghibli movies the first time i watched them, which is ironic since Howl's the DWJ book that got its ghibli movie!

b) The Little Prince!! This one had a huge effect on me, i remember reading it when i was kid and being fascinated by everything in it! The baobabs! The roses! All those lonely planets! There is a thumb-shaped blood smear in my childhood copy someone left there after pricking their finger and i remember it SO vividly. It's also the only book that I collect copies of -- i have one for each language I speak /and/ a comic version! It was very formative for me, too -- if I have anything resembling a life philosophy, it's to be found in The Little Prince <3

c) A Tale of Two Cities... Oh man, A Tale of Two Cities. I actually don't wish that people could experience this book the way I did because my reading experience involved: crying so much I got a headache, getting a fever from Too Many Emotions, insomnia, nightmares about what I knew would come to pass in the novel, and several, increasingly unhinged voice messages sent to my friends. It's just such a flawlessly executed novel, i kinda guessed what would happen very early on, not because it was predictable, but because it was the only thing that made sense, the perfect ending, if you know what i mean, and it was crying my eyes out for 300+ pages from there... It's not even my favorite Dickens but: A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it. (also, my tumblr username is a line one of the characters says!)

Sorry for how long this reply is, but that's just what happens when I start talking books <3