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forestwater87 · 3 years

Note

How did you become a university Librarian? Did you do an English degree? Sorry if this is a weird question it just really interests me as I’m not sure what to do when I’m older

Eeee I got really excited about this question!

Okay, the fun thing about librarianship is that all roads can lead to it: as long as you get an ALA-approved (assuming you’re American; if you aren’t I cannot help you) graduate degree you can do just about anything for undergrad. English majors are extremely common, just by the nature of who’s into the job, but literally it doesn’t matter; in fact, weirder and more specialized degrees can actually help in certain jobs, because they give you a ton of background info and qualifications than most of your contemporaries have.

I fell into it because I worked at a library in high school and fell in love with the environment, and when I realized I’d rather die than work in publishing (my previous life’s goal) I gravitated toward library school. I knew from the beginning that I’d need a Master’s -- and a very specific one at that -- so mostly my undergrad was just “grab a foundational degree and have fun with it.” That was really freeing, honestly. I had a ton of fun in undergrad.

Now, if you, Anon, were interested in getting into librarianship I’d have a handful of recommendations. These are all based on my very American experience, and there are probably smarter people than me with better advice but I’m the only one on this blog so heeeeerrreeeee we goooooooooo!

Undergrad

You need a 4-year degree. Full-stop. It doesn’t matter what kind, but you gotta have one to get into grad school.

Like I said, you can do just about anything for an undergraduate degree. Most of the time English is the BA of choice, because librarians love them some books, but some far less common ones that I think would be hugely helpful to a hopeful librarian would be:

Computer Science: Oh my god you need at least a baseline competency in computers/technology please you don’t have to code but you need to be able to turn a computer on and navigate just about any website/office application on just about any device at the very least you need to know how to Google

Business/Marketing: Particularly if you want to work in public libraries, where a bunch of your funding comes from begging politicians and convincing taxpayers to donate/vote to give you money

Law: If you want to be a law librarian

Medical . . . whatever, I don’t know what fields of medicine there are: If you want to work in a hospital or other medical library

History or Art History: If you’re interested in archives or museum librarianship

Education: School librarians in my state require you to be a certified teacher, and no matter what kind of library you end up in, you’ll end up teaching someone something a decent amount of the time

Communications: You’ll be doing a lot of it. Public speaking, too

Spanish/ASL/any not-the-common language: Hey, you never know what your patrons speak

Literally fucking anything I promise it doesn’t matter what you major in you will use it in a library at some point

Just be aware that you will need more than an undergrad degree. You’ll need probably 2 years of postsecondary schooling (more for certain types of librarianship), so get yourself comfortable with the idea of college.

If you’re like me (please don’t be like me), you might toy with the idea of getting a minor or two/double majoring to round out your skill set. Honestly I’d encourage it if you’re comfortable with the workload and have the time or money; like I said, there are no skills or educational background that won’t come in handy at some point. I promise. We see it all.

Along those lines, a wide expanse of hobbies can be hugely helpful too! You never know when your encyclopedic knowledge of Minecraft will be useful to a patron, but it absolutely will be.

Graduate School

All right, you’ve got your lovely little Bachelor’s Degree, maybe in something weird and esoteric for the fun of it . . . now you’re off to do more school!

It’s a bit complicated, because there are a handful of different titles an appropriate degree could have; my school called it “a Master of Science in Information Science” (MSIS), but other schools might just go with “Master’s of Information Science” (MIS), “Master’s of Library Science” (MLS), “Master’s of Library and Information Science” (MLIS) . . . it’s a mess.

What you need to do is make sure the degree is approved by the American Library Association, who decides if a program is good enough to make you a librarian in the States. (Again, if you’re not American, good luck.)

Here’s a list of ALA-accredited programs and the schools that offer them.

The nice thing is accreditation has to be renewed at least every few years, so that means your program is always updated to make sure it’s in line with national standards. I’m not promising you’ll learn everything you need to be a librarian in grad school (oh my god you so won’t not even close hahahaha), but at least in theory you’ll be learning the most up-to-date information and methods.

(I’m curious to see how things have changed; when I was in school from 2015-17, the hot topics in library science were makerspaces (especially 3D printing), turning the library into the community’s “third space,” and learning how to incorporate video games into library cataloging and programming. No idea if those are still the main hot-button issues or if we’ve moved on to something else; I imagine information literacy and fake news are a pretty big one for current library students.)

Anyway! You pick a school, you might have to take a test or two to get in -- I had to take the GRE, which is like the SATs but longer -- almost certainly have to do all that annoying stuff like references and cover letters and all that, but assuming you’re in: now what?

There are a couple options depending on the school and the program, but I’m going to base my discussion around the way my school organized their program at the time, because that’s what I know dammit and I will share my outdated information because I want to.

My school broke the degree down into 5 specializations, which you chose upon application to the program:

Archives & Records Administration: For working in archives! I took some classes here when I was flirting with the idea, and it’s a lot of book preservation, organizing and caring for old documents and non-book media, and digitization. Dovetails nicely into museum work. It’s a very specific skillset, which means there will be jobs that absolutely need what you specifically can do but also means there aren’t as many of them. It makes you whatever the opposite of a “jack of all trades” is. You’re likely to be pretty isolated, so if you want to spend all your time with books this might be a good call; it’s actually one of the few library-related options that doesn’t require a significant amount of public-facing work.

Library & Information Services: For preparation to work in public or academic (college) libraries. Lots of focus on reference services, some cataloging, and general interacting-with-the-public. You have to like people to go into library services in general, heads up.

Information Management & Technology: Essentially meaningless, but you could in theory work as like a business consultant or otherwise do information-related things with corporations or other organizations.

Information Storage & Retrieval: Data analytics, database . . . stuff. I don’t really know. Computers or something. Numbers 3 and 4 really have nothing to do with libraries, but our school was attempting to branch out into more tech-friendly directions. That being said, both this and #3 could definitely be useful in a library! Libraries have a lot of tech, and in some ways business acumen could be helpful. All roads lead to libraries; remember that.

Library & Information Services / School Library Media Specialist: This was the big kahuna. To be a school librarian -- at least in my state -- you need to be both a certified librarian and a certified teacher, which means Master’s degrees in both fields. What our school did was basically smushed them together into a combined degree; you took a slightly expanded, insanely rigorous 2-2.5 years (instead of the traditional 1.5-2) and you came out of it with two degrees and two certifications, ready to throw your butt into an elementary, middle/junior high, or high school library. Lots of focus on education. I started here before realizing I don’t like kids at all, then panicked and left. Back in 2017 this was the best one for job security, because our state had just passed a law requiring all school librarians to be certified with a MSIS/MLS/whatever degree. So lots of people already in school libraries were desperately flinging themselves at this program, and every school was looking for someone that was qualified. No idea if that’s changed in time.

No matter what concentration you went in with, you automatically graduated with a state certification to be a librarian, which was neat. You didn’t automatically get civil service status, though; for some public libraries you need to be put on a civil service list, which means . . . something, I’m not entirely sure. It involves taking exams that are only available at certain times of the year and I gave up on it because it looked hard.

No one did more than 1 concentration, which is dumb because I wanted to do them all, but it takes a lot of time and money to take all the classes associated with all of them so I personally did #2, which was on the upper end of mid-tier popularity. School library and database services were far and away the most popular, and literally no one did the business one because it was basically useless, so library and archives were the middle children of which the library one was prettier.

THAT BEING SAID! Some forms of librarianship require a lot more education. A few of those are:

Law librarians: At least in my state, you gotta be a certified librarian and have a J.D. This is where the “big bucks” are -- though let’s be real, if you want to be a librarian you have zero interest in big bucks; reconcile yourself to being solidly middle-class and living paycheck-to-paycheck for the rest of your life or marrying rich -- which I guess is why it requires the most work.

School librarians: Like I mentioned, depending on the state you might need two degrees, and not all schools smush them into one. You might need to get a separate Master’s in education.

College librarians: Now, this depends on the college and the job; some colleges just need an all-access librarian, like mine. I didn’t need to specialize in anything, I just showed up with my degree and they took me. (Note: these sorts of entry-level positions tend to pay piss. Like, even more piss than most library gigs. Just a heads-up.) However, if you’re looking to get into a library of a higher-end university, you might be asked to have a second Master’s-level or higher degree just to prove you’re academic enough to party at their school. (Let’s be real, Harvard is almost certainly gonna want someone with a Ph.D. at the very least. That’s just how they roll.) Alternatively, the position might be for a specialty librarian, someone in charge of a field-specific library or field-specific reference services; if you’re being asked to head up the Science & Engineering Library at Masshole University, it’s reasonable to expect that you’ll be bringing a degree in engineering or some sort of science to the table. Colleges have so many different needs that predicting what kind of experience/education you should get is a bit of a challenge. Good luck. Some schools will help you out a bit with this; my grad school had dual degree programs where you could share credits between the MSIS and either an English or History Master’s so you could graduate with both in less time. I . . . started this, and then panicked at the thought of more school/writing a thesis and bailed, but it’s great if you’re into that idea!

What’s the point of the Information/Library Science degree?

You have to have the degree. If you don’t have the degree, you don’t get the job and you don’t make-a the money. Resign yourself to getting a Master’s degree or you’re gonna be bummed out and unemployed.

In terms of what you learn? Well, obviously it depends on the program, but I found that a lot of what I learned was only theoretically related to what I do on a daily basis. My instructors were lovely (well, the adjuncts anyway; the full-timers really didn’t want to be there and wanted to be off doing research and shit), but every library is so idiosyncratic and there’s such a massive umbrella of jobs you could get in one -- god, I didn’t even get into things like metadata services, which I learned basically nothing about in grad school but are super important to some positions -- that it’s hard to learn anything practical in a classroom.

However, besides the piece of paper that lets you make-a the money, there are two important things you should get from your grad school education:

Research skills: My god, you’re going to be doing so much research. If you’re a public librarian, you need to know how to Google just about anything. And if you’re a college librarian, being able to navigate a library database and find, evaluate, and cite sources . . . I mean, you’re going to be doing so much of that, showing students how to do that. Like a ridiculous amount of my day is showing students how to find articles in the virtual library. Get good at finding things, because much like Hufflepuffs, librarians need to be great finders.

Internship(s): Just about every library program will require an internship -- usually but not always in replacement of a thesis -- and if the one you’re looking at doesn’t, dump it like James Marsden in a romantic comedy. Internships are hugely important not only because they look good on a resume and give you some of those delicious, delicious references, but they are a snapshot of what your job is going to look like on a day-in, day-out basis; if nothing else, you’ll learn really fast what does and doesn’t appeal to you. As I mentioned, I wanted to be a school librarian for about half a semester. You know what changed my mind? My class required like 40 hours of interning at schools of each level. Being plopped into that environment like a play you’re suddenly acting in? Super helpful in determining whether or not this shit is for you.

What else should I learn, then?

Besides how to research basically anything? Here are some useful skills in just about any library:

Copyright law. Holy shit, do yourself a favor and learn about publishing/distribution laws in your state. Do you wanna show a movie as a fun program? You need to buy a license and follow super specific rules or it’s illegal! Does an instructor want to make copies of their textbook to give to the students? Make sure you know how much they can copy before it’s no longer fair use! Everything in my life would be easier if I’d taken the time to learn anything about copyright. I did not, and now I’m sad. (I lost out on a job opportunity because they wanted the librarian to be particularly knowledgeable in that kinda thing, and I was very not.)

Metadata and cataloging. In theory, you should learn this in grad school, but I was only given the bare basics and it wasn’t enough. Dublin Core, MARC-21, RDF -- there are so many different kinds of metadata schema, and I took a 6-week class in this and still don’t understand any of the words I just used in this sentence. But basically, to add items to a library catalog you often need to know how to input them into your library’s system; to an extent that’ll be idiosyncratic to your library’s software, but some of it will be based on a larger cataloging framework, so familiarity with those is very useful.

Public speaking and education. You’re gonna do a lot of it. Learn how to deal.

General tech savviness. Again, we’re not talking about coding but if you can navigate a WordPress website? If you know how to troubleshoot just about any issue with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, etc.? If you can unjam printers and install software and use social media you’re going to be a much happier person. At the very least, know how to google tutorials and fake your way through; your IT person can only do so much, and a lot of it is probably going to fall on you.

Social work, diplomacy, general human relations kinda stuff. You’re going to be dealing with all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds, with every political view, personal problem, and life experience under the sun. You need to get very good at being respectful of diversity -- even diversity you don’t like* -- and besides separating your own personal views and biases from your work, you’ll be much better equipped to roll with the punches if you have, for example, conflict resolution training. Shit’s gonna get weird sometimes, I promise. (Once a student came in swinging around butterfly knives and making ninja noises. You know who knew how to deal with that? Not me!)

Standard English writing and mechanics. It’s not fair, but in general librarians are expected to have a competent grasp on the Standard English dialect, and others are less likely to be appreciated by the general populace. Obviously this differs based on your community and environment, and colloquialisms are sometimes useful or even necessary, but as a rule of thumb it’s a good call to be able to write “properly,” even if that concept is imperialist bullshit.

*I don’t mean Nazis. Obviously I don’t mean Nazis. Though there is a robust debate in the library community about whether Nazis or TERFs or whatever should be allowed to like, use library facilities for their own group meetings or whatever. I tend to fall on the “I don’t think so” side of the conversation, but there’s a valid argument to be made about not impeding people’s access to information -- even wrong or harmful information.

Any other advice?

Of course! I love to talk. Let’s see . . .

Get really passionate about freedom of information and access: A library’s main reason for existing is to help people get ahold of information (including fiction) that they couldn’t otherwise access. If you’re a public librarian, you have to care a lot about making sure people can access information you probably hate. (If you’re an academic librarian it’s a little more tricky, because the resources should meet a certain scholarly threshold, and if you’re a school librarian there are issues of appropriateness to deal with, but in general more info to more people is always the direction to push.) Get ready to defend your library purchases to angry patrons or even coworkers; get ready to defend your refusal to purchase something, if that’s necessary. Get ready to hold your nose and cringe while you add American Sniper to your library collection, because damn it, your patrons deserve access to the damn stupid book. Get really excited about finding new perspectives and minority representation, because that’s also something your patrons deserve access to. Get really excited about how technology can make access easier for certain patrons, and figure out how to make it happen in your library. Care about this; it’s essential that you’re passionate about information -- helping your patrons find it, making sure they can access it, evaluating it, citing it . . . all of it. Get ranty about it. Just do it.

Be prepared to move if necessary: One of my professors told us that there was one thing that would always guarantee you a job that paid well -- this was in 2016 but still -- that as long as you had it you could do whatever you wanted. And that was a suitcase. Maybe where you live is an oversaturated market (thanks for having 6 library schools in a 4-hour radius, my state). Maybe something something economic factors I don’t really understand; the point is that going into this field, you should probably make peace with the idea that you’ll probably either end up taking a job that doesn’t make enough money or struggle a lot to even find one . . . or you’re going to have to go where the jobs are. It’s a small field. Just know that might be a compromise you have to make, unless you can get a strictly remote job.

Read: This sounds stupidly obvious but it’s true! Read things that aren’t your genre, aren’t your age range; patrons are going to ask you for reading advice all the goddamn time, especially if you’re a public librarian, so the more you can be knowledgeable about whatever your patrons might ask you about, the easier your life will be. If you’re considering librarianship you probably love to read anyway, so just ride that pony as hard as you possibly can.

Learn to be okay with weeding -- even things you don’t think deserve it: You are going to have to recycle books. You’re going to have to throw away books. You’re going to have to take books out of the collection and make them disappear in some fashion or another. There are a lot of reasons -- damage and lack of readership are big ones -- and there’s no bigger red flag to a librarian than someone saying “I could never destroy a book.” That kind of nonsense is said by people who’ve never had to fit 500 books onto a shelf built for 450. Archivists are different, of course, as are historians, and everyone should have a healthy respect for books both as physical objects and as sources of information, but you’re going to have to get rid of them sometimes, and you’re just going to have to learn how to do that dispassionately.

Have fun! No one gets into this because they want money; if you want to be a librarian, or work in any library-adjacent field, it’s because you really care about the values of librarianship, or the people in your community, or preserving and sharing as great a wealth of information as possible. Your job will often be thankless and it’ll sometimes be exhausting. There will be times where it’s actually scary. And unless you’re rich as balls, it will make you stare at your student loans and sigh with despair. (You may be living in your parents’ basement while you sigh at your loans because you can’t afford to live on your own, for an example that has zero relevance to any authors of this blog, living or dead.) I can’t tell you if it’s worth it -- though you’ll probably find out pretty quickly during your internship, because that’s what internships are for. All I can say is that I love it, and I can’t imagine doing anything else.

#ask forest #libraries #librarianship #information science #career advice #education advice #oh my god this is long #i have a lot of feelings okay?#there is no way on earth anyone will read all of this #if you do tell me bc i will not believe it #Anonymous

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elsewhereuniversity · 4 years

Text

There is a map (No, a Map, capital letter intended) in the Staff-Only room of the Library. The Map is old, probably from the 50’s, when the New Library Building was constructed, and isn’t really a map at all, but a blueprint.* It’s covered by a sheet of glass, which is in turn covered with dry-erase marks denoting changes to the layout; a bookshelf here, a walled-up door there, notes on where certain sections can be accessed from. The Map has seen many changes since its creation, from the coffee stain left on the Reference Desk to the small tear from a careless Page removing sticky notes, back before the glass cover. Let me show you a few sections of it: there, the lower fire exit by the Archives, which leads to a tunnel the Librarians suspect connects to the Wyrm’s lair. If one were to follow the tunnel, they’d pass newspaper nests, small scales and echoing words until they came to a collapse that only a small animal could fit through. The Pages say this is where the Bookwyrms nest, in this small tunnel, and none really care to find out. Or here: where the back wall of the Library should be there are pieces of printer paper taped to the wall, sporadically updated by those that venture into the Deep Stacks.

*Unlikely to be a reproduction, as notes from the contractor can be viewed on the back. They have been dated to roughly the period in which the New Library Building was under construction.

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The Map is ever-changing and often inaccurate, as the Library shifts with a mind of its own, (Poppy, 1922) but its pathways are followed faithfully, the safe havens redrawn every time they move, and those who must re-shelve books deeper in swear by the compiled notes of generations of Librarians and their helpers. Notes are made on where sections blend into one another (distinguishable by carpet and bookshelf appearances) (Multiple sources, including Library residents and Mercury) alongside dotted lines of color marking the migratory paths of vending machines (towards Historical Biographies in the spring, doubling back to Law & Government around the summer solstice, then swerving to Unnatural Science until the first hard frost to avoid raising the ire of New Additions & Editions before finally wintering in the fiction area. Various vending tribes tend towards different sections; Chips & Snacks in Sci-Fi, Candy (real and/or imagined) in Dystopia, ect.) (Rosen et al.,1997)* Should one be careless enough to rouse the defensive instincts of a vending herd, the safest place to hide would be one of the Pages’ forts, built of old shelving and couches in a triangle formation reinforced by vending machine corpses long picked clean by scavengers. You can hide in them until the stampede passes even without authorization, though an alert will be sent to the nearest Chapter. If you leave before said Chapter arrives, just be sure to toggle the distress beacon’s switch to Off.

It's also worth mentioning that vending machine stampedes can also be caused by their main predators, rogue bookwyrms. If you suspect there is a rogue bookwyrm in the area, retreat to a safe zone and stay inside one of the provided hula hoops.

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*Rosen and Hall have different accounts of the date (1835 and 2000), but the general consensus between the eight authors is the 1996-97 academic year.

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I have been privy to several of the Circulation Chapter meetings in which it was discussed who would have the unfortunate job of marking the edges of magazine territory, which I understand is somewhat dangerous drudge work. I have also had the dubious honor of being trusted enough to venture out with the Expedition and record the behavior of newer vs. older magazines. While it is a fascinating topic, I imagine you’re not interested, so I will only give you the few bits of advice I have before moving on. One: The National Geographics travel in packs, but are primarily ambush hunters; keep on your guard and you’ll be fine. Two: Vanity Fairs are vicious little bastards, and absolutely nobody will object to a few of them being ‘unexpectedly removed from circulation.’ And three: A spray bottle of saltwater is generally enough to dissuade tabloids from attack, as they’re very vain and water makes the pages stick and tear.

#lonely-roads-at-midnight #love this!!#the library #the citations especially give it such a good tone #absurd content and serious format is dear to me #stories #long post #submission

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awed-frog · 3 years

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Do you think maybe banning that stuff from AO3 could be a good thing?

I don’t know. I don’t like censorship, and I think it’s very hard to know which stuff one should censor in the first place. I do wish some people would not share what they share, that’s for sure. I think maybe there should be a system that recognizes how long you’ve had a page open - sometimes people will open a fic with weird tags in a kind of Dead Dove moment then close it, but the result is that some truly upsetting works have a very high number of hits, which pushes them at the top of any search. And I also think that stuff that’s just porn shouldn’t be in the same place as other stuff. I know the distinction is problematic, but again - writers should be more honest about what they’re writing. A lot of things you find on AO3 are one-chapter PWPs or ‘one kink per chapter’ fics, and imo those don’t belong in the same category as a long fic with two explicit sex scenes in it. And also: maybe some tags should show up only if you’re specifically looking for them. Like, if a fic is tagged ‘castration’, then it only shows up in your search if you’re typing in “enemies-to-lovers, castration” so that if you type “enemies-to-lovers” you don’t get pretty weird porn you never asked for.

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I think people often underestimate the damages porn can do, and while movies are worse for lots of reasons (chief among them, the presence of real human performers who’re often abused on screen, or whose work is shown and sold without their permission), fiction is not great either. It can still normalize stuff that shouldn’t be normalized, and desensitize us to stuff we should find unusual, unacceptable or shocking.

And while fanfiction is not the whole problem here (published books are doing what they can to close the gap), I think it is still part of the problem.

(Anyway: I say porn, but there is a lot of other stuff that’s harder to catch but a lot more dangerous - mostly the way some ‘romances’ are written.)

Most of all, I wish that people would stop spreading these ideas:

1) It’s okay because it’s not real. Yeah, no. Fiction matters, it shapes how we see the world and how we respond to it. Obviously this is more complicated than *sees Se7en, becomes serial killer*, but fiction is central in our life as humans and that should not be taken lightly.

2) It’s okay because trauma. As far as I know, there is zero research into who writes and reads the most extreme stuff out there, and even if those were all trauma survivors working through their stuff and not, say, people who get off on child porn or whatever else, there is still no reason to put that stuff out there.

3) It’s okay because Nabokov. A sex scene in a book (or long fic) is very different from a PWP, or a story built around porn. I’m not a prude, and I don’t think all porn is necessarily bad, but comparing some of the filth that’s out there to the Decameron is a bit much.

4) It’s okay because libraries. This is what irritates me the most. Libraries don’t keep everything, and they don’t keep everything for a reason. If you ask for white supremacy propaganda, for instance, you’re likely not to find anything unless it’s a university library, in which case it will be a heavily annotated edition and not simply a random ‘Jews are bad’ pamphlet. And another thing: a librarian won’t say, ‘Since you enjoyed If This Is A Man, try Mein Kampf.’ People recognize the two works are different even if they can both be tagged as ‘history, memoir, WW2, holocaust’. AO3 doesn’t do this (and as far as I understand it, it’s a deliberate choice). If you enjoy Coffeeshop AUs, it will happily offer you a fic that’s 90% about bestiality set in a Starbucks. And I know the argument - readers should search better - but the thing is, 1) I won’t necessarily know what I don’t want to read and 2) some stuff is just tagged the same when it comes to the main tags, but obviously it doesn’t mean the two stories are similar in any way.

5) It’s okay because free speech. Well: free speech has limits. We regulate some of it, as there are laws against hate speech, genocide deniers, Neo-Nazis, threats, bullying, harassment, and a lot of other things. So free speech doesn’t mean you get to regurgitate whatever bs into the world.

6) Children are old enough to protect themselves. Literally no, they are not. Any sane person should recognize a child is not an adult and that there are certain choices about his life he shouldn’t get to make (for instance, you wouldn’t allow a child of 12 to join the army no matter how much he begged you). Now the internet has become a central tool for education and lots of stuff of everyday life, it’s absurd that we ask children to do the right thing and that’s it. I mean, you wouldn’t have a bakery near a school sell meth by the croissants and then be like ‘It’s labelled as meth! I asked this kid if he truly wanted it and he said yes, it’s not my job as a random adult to decide stuff for him!’. Like - what the fuck? In a way, yes, it is your job. Children are raised by the entire community. We should do what we can to make sure they have more good choices than bad, and in my opinion that includes not having stuff that’s objectively awful freely available and sitting right next the cuddly and fluffy stuff.

(A stupid example from real life: this school I taught at had a convenience store next to it, and some kids would sneak in there during breaks to buy energy drinks. While that’s legal, and it was also allowed for them to leave the school grounds, energy drinks still have a lot of caffeine and are not healthy for 13-yo kids. After this happened regularly with the same kids for about a month, the owner refused to sell them anymore of the stuff and went to talk to the teachers instead. The school started a whole project - on the one hand, they had kids doing science experiments and learning why energy drinks are bad, and on the other, they offered support and free breakfast to anyone who needed it - and specifically to those who normally skipped a meal because their families had to leave for work very early - and the gorging on energy drinks and chips at 10am stopped.)

I don’t know. I’m very conflicted about this. I wrote fanfiction and though my style is pretty consistent, I know my own stuff has issues. There are days I reconsider even having it out there, tbh, especially when I got yelled out for forgetting to tag something or I see a particularly callously libertarian pro-AO3 post, but rn I don’t have the time or energy to make a decision about that.

I just wish we would all think of each other a bit more, that’s all.

#ask #discourse #untagged #i already know people don't agree #so i'm not looking to start arguments

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a-little-slice-of-fandom · 3 years

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Dont mean to be rude but what on Earth is the Invisible Library and where can I find it?

*pulls out a PowerPoint* I’m so glad you asked anon!

The Invisible Library is a YA (?) book series written by English author Genevieve Cogman and I think the it’s like if Doctor Who got put in a blender, a parady of Sherlock Holmes and more fantasy elements were added and the whole thing was thrown into a alternate, steampunk Victorian London with faeries and dragons and murder.

That’s a really bad description I’m sorry. You can buy it from waterstones AFAIK but it is also on kindle.

Basically the main character is called Irene, and she’s a librarian for an inter-dimensional library that is tasked with collecting variations of books from different dimensions and also making sure the entire multiverse isn’t destroyed. If that concept alone doesn’t make you buy this book then I don’t know what will. There’s faeries, there’s dragons, there’s steampunk elements, there’s dimension hopping, there’s lots of representation for both non white and non straight characters. If that sounds interesting, you can read the blurb here

And honestly I love this series for a lot of reasons.

Firstly, Irene as a main character is just such a nice change of pace for a YA protagonist. I feel like a lot YA main characters are like eighteen but act as if they’re twelve. Howeve, since Irene is in her mid twenties (I’ve had it in my head that she’s twenty four but don’t quote me on that) the series benefits from a more mature and level headed lead. That’s not to say Irene doesn’t make the odd stupid decision, she does, but I never felt frustrated by her like I have other main characters.

Secondly, I love the world of the in Invisible library. Seriously, what’s cooler than an inter-dimensional library??? But I genuinely love how the hub of the library gives the series a much bigger scope than other series. The first book’s setting is an alternate Victorian London with a mix of magic and steampunk technology, but later books go to more locations, including different dimensions with no fantasy elements but lots of science fiction elements and vice versa, so there’s always something new to look forward to in the series.

Also, there’s the relationship between Irene and her love interest/assistant Kai. Now I usually hate straight romance in YA novels because they can feel incredibly contrived and promote downright toxic behaviour...but Irene and Kai are a genuinely refreshing couple. These two actually communicate with one another and work together instead of against one another and oh my god the bar is in the floor for straight romances but these two are just so brilliant and I love them.

Also Bradamant. Just Bradamant.

Also you know the way that another certain fantasy author that shall not be named continues to disappoint us in regards to trans rights? Yeah you don’t have to worry about that here. Not only do the dragons and fae in this series have a very “meh” approach to gender, but Genevieve Cogman herself has been very supportive of trans and non binary folk on Twitter! Plus it’s all but confirmed that Irene is bisexual and her previous relationship with a female library is actually integral to the plot instead of just a throw away line! And you can’t convince me that Silver is straight I’m sorry.

(And this doesn’t really impact the actual content of the series but these covers are just beautiful and they look even better in person!!!)

Seriously I’m a massive Doctor Who fan and it genuinely baffles me how Genevieve Cogman hasn’t been asked to write for that show yet because Irene is basically a female doctor written three years before Jodie Whittaker was even announced as the thirteenth doctor. Seriously the BBC are sitting on a goldmine here. Plus Genevieve Cogman is just a wonderful human being in general.

Okay this was a super rambly post but seriously this series is so amazing and I seriously think that everyone should give it a read.

#the invisible library #genevieve cogman #irene winters

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mediaevalmusereads · 3 years

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Strange the Dreamer. By Laini Taylor. New York: Little, Brown Books, 2017.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Genre: YA fantasy

Part of a Series? Yes, Strange the Dreamer #1

Summary: The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around— and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever. What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving? The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: blood, violence, drug use, rape, sexual slavery, abduction and imprisonment

Overview: I really enjoyed Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, so I decided to give her new work a go. Overall, I also really enjoyed Strange the Dreamer because it had a lot of things that are characteristic of Taylor’s writing that I love - lush, lyrical prose; tragic, star-crossed love; a political conflict involving otherworldly creatures. The reason why I’m giving this book 4 instead of 5 stars mainly has to do with the pacing and the way events played out. There wasn’t anything wrong, I think, with the way Taylor handled her story - it’s just that I felt like things started to rush to a close too quickly, and I would have liked to spend more time in the book exploring character emotions.

Writing: Taylor’s prose tends to fall into two categories: lyrical and descriptive or straight-forward and economical. Part 1 of this book is more lyrical; the metaphors are more fantastical and the prose evokes a sense of longing and fascination. Taylor really captures the feeling of being immersed in a library, surrounded by stories, as well as what it’s like to have a dream (not a dream in your sleep - more like a goal or a wish that has a small or nonexistence likelihood of coming true). Part 1 was probably my favorite part of the book for this reason, as subsequent sections tended to lose that lyrical quality and fall into a style more typical of YA books.

Taylor’s pace is also fairly well-done in that I didn’t feel like I was being rushed or that I was plodding through the book. The only thing I would change in terms of pacing is the book’s ending; I felt a lot of things were dropped on the reader all at once, and though they were foreshadowed earlier in the book (which I very much appreciated), I tend not to like endings where too much happens.

Before I close this section, a couple of notes on descriptions and worldbuilding: though I know teenagers have sexual urges, I was a little put off by the descriptions of teenagers’ bodies in certain places. I can remember a few instances where Taylor describes the look of one character’s breasts, and though it wasn’t gratuitous, I didn’t like that these descriptions were included. I also thought the worldbuilding detail of “women get tattoos on their bellies as a rite of passage/coming of age marker when they become fertile and Sarai longs for one of her own” was a little uncomfortable. It made me feel like the world Taylor built was concerned with showcasing female reproductive capacity, and that just seems exclusionary. While it could have worked if the story was more about pushing back against reproductive regulation or exploring what such tattoos would mean for trans characters, as the book stands, that doesn’t really happen, so it was a weird detail that I felt distracted from the main themes.

Plot: This book primarily follows Lazlo Strange - an orphan who dreams of finding the lost city of Weep - and Sarai - the daughter of a dead god and a human who must hide her existence in order to stay alive. Lazlo is surprised one day when some inhabitants of Weep - led by someone called “the Godslayer” - show up in his library, asking for assistance from the land’s greatest scientists. Though Lazlo isn’t a scientist, he is the most knowledgeable person about Weep and its culture, so the Godslayer elects to take him along. Meanwhile, Sarai and several other demigods live in a secluded Sanctuary, hiding from the inhabitants of Weep so that they won’t be slain on account of their parentage.

Without spoiling anything (which is kind of hard, since there is a lot that happens), I will say that I really liked the central conflict of this book. Taylor does a good job of setting up a problem with no black-and-white solutions; it seems like everyone had a legitimate reason for acting the way they do, and no matter what happens, someone will be hurt.

But perhaps the thing I appreciated most about the plot was that Taylor never sets up a surprise twist that comes out of nowhere. I feel like I’ve read a lot of YA books that drop a bomb on the reader with no set up, and I personally feel like such twists make the story feel less cohesive. Taylor sets up all her reveals and twists by dropping hints early and frequently, and rather than make the story feel dull, I felt like they made the end emotionally fulfilling.

If I had one criticism of the plot it would be that the romance doesn’t feel genuine. Lazlo and Sarai seem to fall in love with each other too quickly, which made it seem like they got together because they just hadn’t had opportunities to meet other people. I didn’t see what they saw in each other aside from looks and special qualities like “oh, he’s able to share my dreams” or “she was kind to me when so many other people weren’t.” I wanted more out the romance, like Sarai falling for Lazlo’s kindness and Lazlo falling for Sarai’s compassion towards those who would harm her. Maybe there was some of that, but it was definitely overshadowed by lengthy descriptions of kissing, which I wasn’t much a fan of. I also wasn’t really a fan of the “dates” that they went on; some parts were cute, but overall, they dragged.

Characters: Lazlo, one of our protagonists, is likeable in that he’s pretty much the embodiment of a lot of book nerds. He starts off shy, completely absorbed with fairy tales and folklore, and loves to roam the abandoned stacks in his library. What I liked most about him, though, was his willingness to help people even if they treat him poorly. For example, there’s a character named Theryn Nero who is basically a Science Bro. He’s rich, beloved by everyone, and gets famous for cracking the secret of alchemy. While he puts himself up as the lone genius, he was actually aided by Lazlo and takes sole credit for a lot of things that Lazlo proved to be key in discovering. Lazlo, though annoyed, never lets his feelings get in the way of helping Nero when the greater good is at stake, and I really admired that.

If I had any criticisms of Lazlo, it would be that I wish his “dreamer” status or knowledge base was put to better use. After Lazlo gets to Weep, he isn’t quite as interesting as he was before, probably because he no longer needs to use his vast knowledge of stories to make his way through the world.

Sarai, our other protagonist, is fairly sympathetic in that all her problems feel undeserved. She is forced to stay locked away in a hidden Sanctuary in order to protect herself and her little found family (composed of other demigods), and though it’s for the best, it also feels stifling. I really liked that Sarai was not single-mindedly fixated on revenge for the things that happened in her past. Without spoiling anything, I will say that something happened which put the demigods and inhabitants of Weep in conflict with one another, and there is no easy solution that would guarantee that the demigods stay alive. Sarai has a lot of dreams like Lazlo - of finding family, of living a normal life, of living among the humans - but it’s not really viable for her, and instead of letting hate consume her, she tries to think up other ways of existing.

Sarai’s “family” is also charming. The group consists of 5 demigods who are the last remaining offspring of the slain gods, and all of them feel fairly complex. They all possess some kind of magical “gift”: there’s Sarai (who can produce supernatural “moths” that allow her to enter people’s dreams), Ruby (a girl who can turn herself into flames), Feral (the only boy, and he can summon clouds), Sparrow (a girl who can manipulate plants), and Minya (a girl who can make ghosts do her bidding). I liked that these characters had different personalities that often put them in conflict. Ruby is boy-crazy and seems to be obsessed with sex. Sparrow is more passive but has sweet moments where she makes a “flower cake” for Ruby’s birthday and braids Sarai’s hair. Minya is completely consumed by her desire for revenge, and it presents some real barriers to finding a solution to the group’s problems.

The supporting characters down in Weep are also fairly compelling. The Godslayer is sympathetic in that he doesn’t revel in his heroic image or title; instead, he feels complex and seemingly warring emotions tied to guilt over what happened to Weep and his role in it almost 20 years prior to the events of this book. The Godslayer’s companions are also sympathetic and have emotions that are easy to understand, and I loved that they seemed to take to Lazlo so quickly. They welcome all outsiders with open arms, but they have a soft spot for Lazlo, which I liked because it meant that he didn’t have to face bullying or gatekeeping from people he had longed to meet his entire life.

The inhabitants of the world outside of Weep were interesting. There’s Theryn Nero, who seemed like he would be a primary antagonist but doesn’t have enough “screen time” to truly be a threat. I liked that his conflict with Lazlo was low-key - it was intense enough to be annoying, but no so intense that their rivalry consumed the whole story or put petty emotions above the greater good. The other “scientists” who follow the Godslayer back to Weep served their purpose; not all of them had rich, complex lives, but they didn’t really need to because if they did, the story would feel crowded.

Overall, there weren’t any characters I disliked, per se. While I do wish Lazlo got to develop differently, there wasn’t much wrong with his character, and I think all of the main players had interesting backstories and motivations, and I appreciated the layer of complexity they all had. I do wish there had been more queer characters though. There is one wlw couple, though they aren’t too prominent in the grand scheme of things. Of course, that could change, as there is a whole second book to go through, but I wish some of the demigods had been lgbt+ so it felt like Taylor’s world wasn’t overwhelmingly straight and cis.

TL;DR: Despite some pacing problems at the end and minor details that didn’t fit my personal tastes, Strange the Dreamer is a lush, evocative fantasy about the power of dreams. Readers who enjoy epic fantasy and stories about gods, star-crossed love, and will probably adore this book.

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laurelnose · 4 years

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the Library at Kaer Morhen

Full disclosure: I am a student of library and information science, not a historian of anything, but I do know a little bit about historical libraries and the general scope of information collection and organizational work, so! here is a brief summary of what might have been in Kaer Morhen’s library, how the library functioned, and what is left of the library as of show timeline.

The closest analogs to Kaer Morhen’s library would have been monastic libraries of medieval Europe and to some extent later medieval university libraries (which existed a little later in history than the years Kaer Morhen was active). On the other hand, Sapkowski likes anachronisms in his worldbuilding, so I don’t feel beholden to perfect historical accuracy on that front and you shouldn’t either. One big difference, for instance, is there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of paper/parchment in the Witcher world like there was in medieval Europe (especially considering the video games), so Kaer Morhen would be totally free to, for instance, keep a lot of ephemera that would never have been created in the first place/been recycled into more ‘important’ texts in an actual medieval library.

This is long, so I’m putting it below the cut.

what was in the library?

Because of the specialized focus of the School of the Wolf (Kaer Morhen’s library is what the LIS field would uncreatively call a “special collection”) most of the materials would probably have been related to the School and its goals, so primarily nonfiction, reference, and archival material.

Kaer Morhen would have two main types of materials: stuff by witchers and stuff not by witchers.

In book and game canon, non-witcher academics study monsters, as well as relevant topics such as alchemy, regular biology, and magic. Subjects like history would also probably mostly be drawn from outside the keep. Witchers might have picked these up in the course of their travels and donated them to the library or have been sent out specifically to retrieve desired volumes. The mages would likely have been able to portal in and out of the keep; this would have allowed the mages to collect texts as well (they may also have potentially had access to mage-only sources for books and materials such as other mages and the mage schools; YMMV on how willing these sources might have been to share with Kaer Morhen’s mages).

Regarding stuff-by-witchers, most of it would have been created by Wolf School witchers and affiliated mages (who I will consider honorary witchers for this purpose). Some of these materials might also have created by witchers from other schools—Kaer Morhen might have traded with other schools for materials, or non-Wolf witchers who needed to shelter at Kaer Morhen might have left materials there. Witcher-created materials might have included some or all of the following:

armor and sword diagrams

treatises and bestiaries by witchers

witchers’ personal/field journals

case/hunt reports

witcher-only alchemy recipes/alchemical research notes

mages’ research notes

important correspondence

saved contract notices

inventory and supply records (this is what the first-ever historical libraries were created to organize!)

personnel records (It’s W3 canon that records were kept of the boys who didn’t survive the Trial of the Grasses; likely similar records were kept of graduating/active witchers and their deaths.)

The collection itself probably wasn’t that big. Literacy in the Witcher seems somewhat more widespread than it was in actual medieval Europe, but for reference, in 1331 one of the largest libraries in Europe had only 1,850 books in its collection, whereas the second-largest public library system in America today keeps an average of 570 thousand books per location. If Kaer Morhen was keeping ephemera like saved contract notices the total number of individual items would probably have been a lot higher, but by modern standards it would have been pretty a small collection overall.

It also might not have all lived in one place. Smaller collections likely existed in other pockets of the keep: the mages’ tower probably had the bulk of the resources on magic and research on mutagens, for instance, and alchemy texts might have lived in the mutagen/potion labs for ease of access. Individual witchers keeping stashes at Kaer Morhen might also have had small private collections.

Fictional/artistic materials such as novels or poetry are unlikely to have been a priority of whoever was in charge of acquisitions for the library. If Kaer Morhen had any, they were likely brought to the keep by witchers who personally fancied particular volumes and gave them to the library, or they existed mostly in private collections. Plausibly some witchers might have spent winters writing poetry and such.

If there was written erotica floating around Kaer Morhen, I would guess most of it existed primarily in witchers’ private collections rather than officially cataloged or kept in the main library. This would make it much more difficult for trainees to sneak around and steal trashy romances, but stealing from specific witchers is also arguably funnier, so do with this what you will.

how did the library work?

There was absolutely at least one person dedicated to the upkeep and maintenance of the collection. More reasonably the head librarian would have had at least one or two assistants (possibly full-time, possibly on-and-off), depending on how dedicated you think Kaer Morhen was to saving and cataloging stuff. Fewer people are needed to keep a collection in order if people aren’t regularly wandering off with stuff. (Fun fact: the librarian of a monastic library was called an armarius or armarian.)

Tasks the librarian and assistants would take care of would include:

helping people find things

repairing, restoring, or copying materials that needed it

acquisitions (requires knowing what gaps of knowledge exist in the collection and figuring out what books to fill them with)

cataloging and keeping inventory (elaborated on further below)

checking out books and tracking where loaned books were

Speaking of checking books out: we have very little information about how specific lending policies worked in medieval libraries, but monastic libraries did lend things out to other monasteries and to individuals. However, witchers probably very rarely wanted to take books out of the keep with them, since books are a pain to carry around all year. Monastery libraries sometimes had written contracts for taking books out, which might have been the case for witchers who just wanted to have books out around the keep. There’s no evidence of card catalogs in medieval libraries but it wouldn’t be implausible for the library to have used something similar to keep track of checkouts if there was paper available. It is unlikely that Kaer Morhen would have enforced a certain time period for check-outs, especially if books remained in the keep; when everyone knows everyone, that becomes sort of unnecessary.

The actual organization of the library would have been…messy, by modern standards. Medieval catalogs were simple lists of items, featuring the title and author, or if neither existed, the first couple of lines of the first page, and perhaps a call number or shelf. They also often described the physical appearance of the book in detail. These lists would have been roughly sorted by either subject or by the physical shelf and shelving order of the items (or both). Some catalogs were sorted by the donor of the items, but this seems unlikely for Kaer Morhen. Sorting by surname or author seems to have been basically nonexistent.

The main purpose of a catalog was to do inventory (usually done at least once a year—probably a spring task at Kaer Morhen, after cataloging any new stuff witchers brought in over the winter), not to locate items.

Materials that existed in smaller collections (if the mages or alchemy labs had their own places to store books) might have been in the catalogs of the main library with notes that they were shelved in other buildings, or they might have had their own catalogs kept up by the people who used those resources most frequently.

When it came to actually finding stuff, the catalog would have been very difficult for people to navigate and someone looking for something specific would have just asked the librarian (or if they were a huge nerd, just been familiar enough with the collection to know where it was and cut out the middleman). Call numbers for books did exist in medieval libraries, but they varied wildly from library to library. Kaer Morhen might also have put numbers on the sides of its bookshelves to help find things, as was done in Roman libraries. (As an aside, it was common for medieval books to be color-coded for subject: red for theology, black for law, green for medicine, etc., which is not really true of books in the video game but would have helped with locating items.)

Notably, Kaer Seren, the Griffin keep, was destroyed by mages for refusing to share its library (presumably the most extensive of any of the witcher libraries); that doesn’t mean Kaer Seren and Kaer Morhen didn’t share materials with each other or the other witcher keeps, but it means outsiders likely were not allowed access to any of the witcher libraries, either directly or indirectly.

what is the library probably like as of the show timeline?

When Kaer Morhen was sacked and the secrets of the Trials were lost, that assault in all likelihood included systematic destruction of most of the library collection.

TW3 shows Ciri has access to bestiaries during her childhood, so either a few things survived in various corners of the keep, the witchers have still been acquiring and bringing back volumes to Kaer Morhen during their travels despite the dissolution of the library, or after she was brought to Kaer Morhen they collected texts specifically for her.

Attempting to properly rebuild the library, even just the non-witcher texts, would be a full-time job for anyone who wanted to pick it up, especially as the catalogs would likely have been destroyed with the books. Probably none of the remaining Wolf School witchers were quite familiar enough with the library’s structure to even begin a project like that, even if they wanted to. The violent destruction of everyone in Kaer Morhen and all of Kaer Morhen’s history would also be an enormous source of pain, so my suspicion is, while they may have a few books that they used for Ciri’s education, none of them have touched the library itself or desire to. Unfortunately? The library is, most likely, currently a room full of ashes.

#the witcher #fic reference #kaer morhen #the library at kaer morhen

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all1e23 · 5 years

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Astrophile [Pt.13]

Chapter: Cassiopeia

Summary: Bucky and Y/n spill the beans to their friends about their not-date and, Ori asks her for a very special book.

Warnings: Usual Astrophile fluff with a pinch of… angst? I don’t know. I don’t consider it angst.

A/N: The bracelet mentioned is found on Pinterest. Link here. Send me love because I’m needy, okay??

***My fics are not to be saved or posted on any other sites without my written permission. Reblogs are welcomed! Thanks!**

Bucky hasn’t woken up late after spending all night on the phone with a girl since he was in high school but here he is, rushing around because he slept through his alarm after staying up till three in the morning talking to Y/n. She’s good at doing that to him, making him forget everything but her and Ori. Every time he’s around her his brain goes foggy and it’s getting harder and harder to remember a time before her. Bucky grins to himself thinking about her sleepy voice early this morning as he cuts Ori’s peanut butter and jelly into a star.

“Y/n, we should probably hang up. You’re drifting off, babydoll.”

“I d-don’t need sleep. I’m fine. Did I tell you that Cassiopeia is my favorite constellation?” her voice slurred from sleep that’s calling her, her eyes closed and barely able to hold her phone up.

Bucky chuckled as he watched her breathing start to even out through the small screen on his phone, “Yeah, you did. Go to bed, Beck. I’ll call you after my shift.”

“Pinky promise?” She whispered, eyes remained closed but she was smiling.

“Pinky promise, sweetheart.”

Bucky’s never been what he would consider lucky. Yeah, he’s had a few wins over the years. Some big and some small. His most significant being his baby girl and he wouldn’t trade Ori for all the good fortune in the world but, he’s never been one of those guys that simply fell into the good stuff. He’s never stumbled into a new job because he was in the right place at the right time or happened to work with the love of his life. Bucky’s never been the guy that won the big-ticket raffle. He’s never had started with a straight flush in his hands on poker night.

Then Y/n walked into his life with stardust sprinkled book pages, lemon pancakes and a heart that could start a raging fire if he let it. Something changed in his destiny the day he met her. It was a soft, simple sort of change. One you miss if you blink too many times. It wasn’t some big moment that led them here. She didn’t do anything that could be written in the lines of a song or played on screen for thousands to see. Their late-night talks would never be recited by others in sweetheart whispers, but he would take their story over any sonnet or ballad.

It’s funny how it all happened. Bucky is the same man he was when they met, but there’s something about having her fingers weaved in his that makes him feel like he can be a better man; for her and Ori. It was a simple fall. So simple, he never noticed she was taking little pieces of him every time she said his name, every time she read to Ori or made his girl smile. It was just books and giggles and pancakes, and then, it wasn’t. In the blink of an eye, every laugh made him lighter, every phone call took another piece of his heart, and every touch changed the way he pictured his future.

Bucky never planned to fall for her. He had no plans to fall in love and never thought luck would be on his side when he did, but his heart left his chest months ago without notice, and it’s been resting comfortably next to hers.

And he never wants it back.

Ori skips into the kitchen bringing Bucky back to the frenzied reality of his morning. His daydreams were much more beautiful to live in, but they are late, and if he doesn’t hurry along, he will never get to work. Ori climbs up onto her designated stool. Even she could tell they are late. Super, duper late as Y/n would say. Y/n doesn’t spend the mornings with them (with a birthday exception), but if she did, that’s what she would call their morning.

She sends Bucky a quick ‘morning daddy,’ and grabs her fork, but her smile slowly fades as she looks down at her plate. This isn’t her usual breakfast. Ori knew something was off when she woke up this morning, but this? This is… this is… totally awful!

“Eggs, daddy? They are bad luck!“

Bucky groans and looks at the near-empty pancake container. He forgot about that, eggs always mean a bad day. His eyes travel to the clock above the stove, he just doesn’t have the time today. They are already an hour behind, and that meant he had to check Ori into the front office, making him even later for his shift. He walks over to his scowling daughter and presses a kiss to her forehead in an attempt to soothe the angry wrinkles set there.

"Comet, baby, they are just eggs. I need you to eat, yeah? I’m running really behind today, but I promise I’ll pick up stuff for pancakes after my shift."

Ori sinks down in her seat and pushes the eggs around her plate. "Okay, but today is gonna be a bad day,” she grumbles sourly.

---------

What was it about working in an Elementary school front office that made people so grumpy and forgetful? Bucky has been in that front office over twenty times since Ori started Pre-K, and the lady at the front desk still acted like she didn’t remember him. He’s had to introduce himself to her every single time he comes into the front off. How many little girls are named Orion in that school that she can’t remember his name?

Thanks to Ms.Forgetful, he was an extra twenty minutes late, and Steve gave him the look. Bucky hates that look. As if Steve has never been late before? Bucky recalls a time when he was strolling in late nearly every day with a dumb grin on his face and a smirking Sam following close behind.

At least it turned out to be a slow day, and nothing was burning down.

“Hey, so, uh,” Bucky stammers, propping his feet up on the chair in front of him and tosses his piece of bread onto his plate. “Can you guys keep Ori this Thursday? I’d ask Nat but thought you two could use the practice."

Steve rolls his eyes, but doesn’t take the bait the same way Sam would.

"I don’t think watching my Five-year-old niece will be practice for when we adopt a baby boy, but you should know that you don’t have to ask. We love having Ori over."

"Why we gotta watch her?” Sam asks, a sneer on his face as he nudged the brunette's boots with his own from across the table.

“Sam…” Steve sighs heavily.

“I’m just askin’ is all! You got a date or just need a night off?"

Bucky’s gaze flicks back and forth between the two men, and he finally deflates with a massive sigh. He may as well confess and let them get it out of their systems now. It would be less embarrassing that way.

"I asked Y/n to come over, and I’m cooking her dinner. It’s not a big deal so let’s not make it a big deal,” He adds the last bit as his eyes land on Sam.

"No big deal?” Sam screeches as he flies out of his chair towards Bucky. “This is huge, man! It’s taken you long enough to ask her out on a date. You’ve been talking for what six months now?"

"Three and a half,” Bucky is quick to correct.

Sam’s grin widens because of course, Bucky knows precisely how long they have been talking. Sam wouldn’t doubt he has it down to the minute. “Yeah. Right. Three and a half months. I thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives waiting for you to get a damn clue, but you finally got your head on straight and told her how you feel!”

Bucky clears his throat and shifts uncomfortably in his chair making Sam’s grin fall, “Oh, for Christ–” Sam groans with a shake of his head. “You didn’t tell her how you feel did you?”

"There’s nothing to say. I don’t– we are still –” Bucky blows out a breath and sits up bolt straight. “It’s not a date, okay? I didn’t say the word date when I asked her to come over. She probably doesn’t even think it’s a date. We have done movie night plenty of times before and it's never been a date.”

"What did you say?” Steve prods before Sam has a chance to speak up. Bucky gives a slight shrug and meets his eye over the table, “I asked if she wanted to come over to watch a movie. I told her I could make dinner and that it would be just the two of us."

"That’s a date!” Sam shouts excitedly.

Steve dips his head to the side and smiles, “Sorry, Buck. I have to agree with my better half on this one. Sounds like you asked her on a date."

Bucky opens his mouth to argue, but their zone lit up a call, and there was no time to yell at his dumb friends, they had work to handle. Even if they didn’t, Bucky had no idea what he was going to say because hell if his heart wasn’t praying it was a date.

-------

"Hey, there, librarian.”

Y/n wrinkles her nose at the nickname as Natasha walks into her office. She hasn’t seen Natasha since Ori’s birthday party. A twinge of guilt creeps up her chest because Natasha no doubt knows Y/n and Tony broke up, and she didn’t hear it from Y/n. Not that she has to tell Natasha everything. Still made her feel guilty. She slowly sits up and peeks out the large window in her office to find a head of bouncing curls bobbing through the children’s section.

Good. That would give the adults a minute to talk.

"I’m not a librarian. I own a bookstore. There is a difference."

"Is there?” Natasha asks and leans against the edge of her desk, chuckling at the look of annoyance on her friend’s face and the serious tone in her voice when she replies, “Yes, I don’t have a degree in library sciences, and I don’t work in a library. I sell books– you’re teasing me, aren’t you?"

"A little bit,” Nat confesses. “So, what’s new with you? Skip the Tony part. I heard that news from a chatty blonde and his husband.”

"Um, well…” Y/n’s eyes dart back out to the main floor. She wants to make sure Ori is not within earshot when they speak about a certain new development. “I think Bucky asked me out on a date but now that I’ve had time to think about it I feel like it’s unlikely it’s actually a date.”

Natasha snorts and crosses her arms over her chest, "It’s very likely it’s a date, but why do you say that?"

"It’s a movie at his place, and he offered to cook, and Ori is spending the night at Steve’s. I don’t know. It’s probably just a friend thing. How many times have we done a movie night since we met and it was never anything more?"

Natasha is quick to refute every flimsy reason she just put forth, "How many times did he cook you dinner on these movie nights and when has Ori not been at the house?"

"Never,” Y/n squeaks.

“It’s a date,” Natasha confirms with a smug grin as she hops up onto Y/n’s desk. She spots something interesting resting on the corner by the picture Ori drew for her. She leans over and grabs before Y/n can stash it away. It’s two bracelets, thin black leather cord with a small silver star in the middle attached to brown paper.

It’s one of those wishing bracelets. They have a special saying and usually made with a certain person in mind. Mother, sister, boyfriend or best friend. This sounds very much like something Y/n would pick out for a certain dark-haired, blue eyed single dad. She reads the label and her grin widens.

Pinky Promise. I promise to wear this, so I never forget how lucky I am to have you. Close your eyes and make a wish, tie this bracelet to your wrist. When the bracelet falls off the wish you made will come true.

“Did Bucky give this to you?”

Y/n leans back in her chair and shakes her head, quietly admitting where those actually came from, “Um, not exactly. I bought that. As a gift. For Bucky. I thought – Well, we say pinky promise to each other. Did you know that? Anyway, we do, and when I saw it, I thought of him. It’s kind of our thing, and well, it had a star. I doubt he’s going to wear it, but yeah, it’s for him.”

Natasha hands it back over to Y/n who clutches it to her chest.

It’s cute, and Bucky would definitely wear it for you. It’s pretty clear he would do just about anything for you.” Y/n tightens her hand around the bracelets and ducks her head to hide her smile from Natasha, but the red-head caught it.

She will let it go this once.

“Y/n?” Ori asks from the doorway, nervously tugging at her braids. “I can’t find a book I want.”

Y/n chuckles and slowly stands up not before putting her trinkets back in their rightful place by Ori’s drawing. She holds her hand out to take the little girl’s and follows her out onto the main floor.

“What are you looking for?” Y/n ponders aloud, trying to mask the confusion in her voice as Ori leads her away from the children’s books.

"A book about love?"

Y/n grins and drops to her knees in front of Ori pulling the little girl to a stop, "Why? Are you in love, my starlight?"

Ori doesn’t smile like she usually would, she simply shakes her head and whispers, "It’s for daddy. He needs help. He’s good at loving me, but I don’t think he knows how to say when he’s in love.”

It felt like someone had reached into Y/n’s chest and ripped her heart out. Bucky is in love with someone else? She can’t breathe. He’s been dating someone this entire time, and she didn’t even know. She was right all along Thursday night isn’t a date and Natasha is wrong; for once in her life.

But why did it have to be this she was wrong about?

“Are you okay, Y/n?” Ori whispers watching her carefully.

She focuses back on Ori and forces a smile the young girl would believe, “Yeah, starlight. I’m okay. Um, I’m not sure I have any books like that here, but I will keep an eye out and maybe order some, okay?”

Ori nods and wraps her arms around her neck in a tight hug, “I hope so. We can’t wait forever, right?”

Y/n swallows the lump in her throat and wraps her arms around Ori, giving her the biggest squeeze she can muster while her heart is breaking in her chest.

“Right, starlight. We don’t wanna wait forever.”

--------

The call wasn’t anything too serious. A car accident and only one of the drivers were hurt. There were small cuts, a few scrapes, and bruises, but everyone made it out okay. No jaws of life needed, and everyone is making it home to their loved ones tonight. All in all, it was a good call in Bucky’s book. It did push Bucky thirty minutes past the end of his shift though. Apparently being late is the theme of the day. Now he’s scrambling to get his gear put up, and get his bag together. He’s itching to see his bright-eyed comet, and he might have a call or two to make.

"There a reason you’re trying to rush out of here?” Sam teases with a soft chuckle. “Got a pretty girl waiting for you or something.”

Bucky wants to be mad. He really does. He wants to tell Sam to fuck off because he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Things between him and Y/n aren’t like that, and he can shut his mouth, but Bucky can’t. He can’t bring himself to feel anything close to that thanks to the way his heart is beating, frantic and heavy. It’s about ready to crack his ribs with the way it’s thumping against his chest. All he can do is grin because, yeah, he’s got a pretty girl with a kind heart waiting for him to call and Bucky’s never wanted to see her face as badly as he does right now.

His phone chimes. A message from Y/n, as if she knows he’s slowly fading away from the distress of not seeing her since last night; he misses her that much.

But the message is not what he expects.

[Beck]: Hey, I can’t make this Thursday. Something came up. I’m really, really sorry. Maybe we can reschedule?

Bucky’s heart slows as he reads the words over again. One more time just to make sure he’s reading it right. His world darkens; suddenly lemon seems too sour, the stars have dulled and those starry book pages are too tattered to read. He tosses his phone in his bag and slams his locker shut, silencing the soft murmurs stirring around him.

“Don’t worry about Thursday, Sam. Something came up.”

Sam watches Bucky stalk to his car and looks back at Steve. He’s never seen that look on Bucky’s face before, absolute disappointment and it stung all of them.

Bucky should have known better than to think– None of it mattered anyway. It wasn’t a date. It was a chance to see if she really felt something more, but if she realized she didn’t, it was better Thursday night didn’t happen. Besides, they are just friends and friends cancel sometimes. He isn’t mad at her. He could never be mad at her. Just… disappointed he wouldn’t get to spend the night with her. It’s no big deal though. Something could have come up. She doesn’t tell him everything.

They are friends. Just… friends.

After all, Bucky has never been one to just fall into the good stuff.

Previous // Next

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #single dad bucky #daddy!bucky #fireman!Bucky #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky x y/n #james bucky barnes #james buchanan barnes #Firefighter AU

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thecomfywriter · 4 years

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Worldbuilding 101

Hello! It’s your girl— @thecomfywriter — back with another post. Today, I’m going to describe worldbuilding as a general concept to you guys. Specifically, how I like to go about it. As always, if you enjoy this post, make sure to like and reblog, comment any suggestions or specific topics, and if you want to repost (though no one ever does), my insta is @tovwriter and my tumblr is @thecomfywriter. Now without further ado, let’s jump straight in.

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Aside from character building (which I can also make a post on, if you would like?), worldbuilding is the basis of creating your story. It's the creation of a setting, a culture, a language, a system in which your story exists. It's the explanation to your character’s behaviours, the reason why everything in your story takes place. Without worldbuilding, your story cannot exist because there is nothing for it to exist for.

Worldbuilding can range from simple to complex, with intermediate hanging out somewhere in the middle. It’s alright if your worldbuilding is simple; it will grow naturally as your characters interact with the world around them. For now, let's start off with each level:

Simple Worldbuilding

This is the first base of worldbuilding. The framework for your entire story relies on NAILING this. You want to create strong foundations so that you can later expand on them if you choose. Solidifying your simple worldbuilding also prevents plot holes in your story.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

Setting: Where the hell is this world located? What is like there? Generally describe the setting. This includes location, time, atmosphere and even climate

What I like to do is make a general map for my world. That way, I can plot out certain things about the geography that make sense to the area, as well as plan the weather accordingly

Northern kingdoms probably have harsher climates and more extreme winters; depending on the ocean currents and how the rocks have been forged, they might even have canyons, or if they are in an earthquake prone area, mountain ranges

I use the website Inkarnate to do this. It helps you create fantasy world maps

Culture: This is broad as hell, I realize, but generally answer questions like,

What culture do your characters belong to?

What is their ethnicity?

What language(s) do they speak?

Is it a monocultural area, or multicultural?

How do they express their culture? This can include art, music, literature, religion, architecture, history, warriors, monuments, etc

Values: I personally like to put this in the simple worldbuilding section because I think it is important to highlight the values of your world, so you can base the values of your characters around the environment they grew up in.

For example, what are things your culture values?

In my book, art and music is put at the top-most value due to their religion stresses these as the expression of Maadh (their main goddess); meanwhile, written literature isn’t stressed at all since stories are told orally, or through song and art

This simple value sets up so much about the society and who is considered important / higher class (artists, dancers, musicians, priests) in comparison to the middle / lower class (scientists, scholars, scribes, clerks, librarians)

See? Simple worldbuilding is actually quite easy and subconscious. You’re probably already in intermediate worldbuilding without even realizing it. Speaking of which, let’s expand on that.

Intermediate Worldbuilding

Aight, boys and girls (and others), time for details :)

Setting

Key Locations: Where are some important locations in your world. This includes places that are frequently visited or where the story takes place most often. You can add these locations on your map with stars or another key symbol

i.e. where do your main characters live? How is it like there? What is that close to? How do you get there?

Where does the majority of the story take place? What are some descriptions/characteristics of this location? Is it indoors or outdoors? What can you do here? Why would they go here? Is it crowded?

What are some special spots for your characters? A romantic getaway if you will. Or a secret location meant just for them (and their best friend?)

Weather: look at your key locations and the geography of them. Where is it located? Cool, now how is the weather there like? Is it rainy a lot, or super sunny, or is it cloudy but warm, or bright and chilly?

What are the four seasons like? (unless you have more or less than four, then describe it!)

Temperature ranges for each season [i.e. winter = (-4) - (5)*C ]

Characteristics of each season (i.e. rainy and muddy in spring, thunderstorms and heavy humidity in the summer, dry and chilly in autumn, heavy snow and icy in the winter)

Population: Is it a city? A town? A village? A hamlet? A tribe? How many people live there? How crowded are the neighbourhoods? Is it easy to navigate? Walkable?

Transport: how do people get around? Do they walk? Bike? Magic? Fly a dragon? Horse back? Carriages? Palanquins? Bus? Car? Plane?

Now explain why.

Culture

Arts: What art style does your culture have? What medium do they use? Why?

What is considered art in this culture?

How is art regarded? Is it important to culture and highly respected, or is it looked down upon as an inferior practice/career choice?

What emotions does the art illicit?

What does the art often depict?

Music: is it considered an art? Why or why not? How does it sound? What style do they use? What instruments? Is it lyrical or instrumental, or neither? How many people sing? Do people sing at all?

What is the purpose of music in this culture?

Sciences: what is being studied? Why? How does this help the culture advance? Is the culture advanced because of the sciences?

Is science a respected field, or is it seen as an opposition to religion/magic?

[if your world has magic] how does magic and science interact? How does magic and religion interact?

What role does science play in the technology of your world

Technology: how advanced is the technology in your world? What is it used for? How does it ease the lives of people? Is it uncommon for people to use technology? Is it accessible? Is it considered important or necessary to daily life?

Values:

Religion: does it exist in your world? How does it work? Is it a monotheistic or polytheistic?

What role does religion play on the history of your culture? What role does it play on the current society

How important is religion in your society?

How many different religions are there in your world? Do they clash? What is the outcome of those clashes?

How does religion influence the government of your society?

How does it influence morality and ethical standards?

Mythologies surrounding this religion (if any).

Refer to my mythology post for guidance on how to create a mythological system

Government: I’m putting this here for now because I will go fully in-depth with the government in the second part of this post, which is the COMPLEX worldbuilding (aka what I always find myself doing because i daydream wayyy too much). But for now, some general points:

What type of government?

Role of religion / magic on government

General rights and freedoms of citizens

Values of government (economy / human rights / conquership / power / magic dominance, etc)

How is the economy managed? (value of money? High or low? Currency type or existence? Trade v.s currency?)

How respected is the government?

OKAY! I’m fried lol. I have a shit ton more to say, so I will definitely make a part two. But that’s all for now folks.

Happy Writing! :)

#wip #books #writers #fantasy #writing #worldbuilding #magic #writers blog #writerblr #writing community #writers tips #advice #writers on tumblr #writings on instagram #world #novel #author

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thisblogisalsoboundforglory · 3 years

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WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING LATELY

Kage Baker’s Company Series

In the Garden of Iden

Sky Coyote

Mendoza in Hollywood

The Graveyard Game

The Life of the World to Come

The Children of the Company

The Machine's Child

The Sons of Heaven

The Empress of Mars

Not Less than Gods

Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea

Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers

Gods and Pawns

In the Company of Thieves

Ø Science Fiction written by a woman with Asperger’s. Wildly uneven. Main protagonist is female, but there are lots of POV characters, male and female.

Ø Big ideas.

Ø Lots of adventure, some action.

Ø Small doses of humor.

Neil Gaiman

Good Omens (with Sir Terry Pratchett)

Neverwhere

Stardust

American Gods

Anansi Boys

The Graveyard Book

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Ø Neil’s books are a road trip with Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and a baggie full of sativa.

Ø Ideas are incidental. The Milieu’s in charge.

Ø Adventure happens whether you like it or not.

Ø Cosmic humor. The joke’s on us.

Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel Series

Firewatch

Doomsday Book

To Say Nothing of the Dog (and the novel that inspired it – Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat)

Blackout/All Clear

Assorted:

The Last of the Winnebagos

Ø Connie loves her historical research. Blackout/All Clear actually lasts as long as the Blitz, but anything in the Oxford Time Travel series is worth reading. Doomsday Book reads like prophecy in retrospect.

Ø One idea: Hi! This is the human condition! How fucking amazing is that?!?

Ø Gut-punch adventure with extra consequences. Background action.

Ø I’d have to say that Doomsday Book is the funniest book about the black death I’ve ever read, which isn’t saying much. To Say Nothing of the Dog is classic farce, though. Girl’s got range.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash (After the apocalypse, the world will be ruled by Home-Owners Associations. Be afraid.)

Cryptonomicon

Anathem

Seveneves

Ø Neal writes big, undisciplined, unfocused books that keep unfolding in your mind for months after you’ve read them. He’s a very guy-type writer, in spite of a female protagonist or two. Seveneves, be warned, starts out brilliant and devolves into extreme meh.

Ø Big. Fucking. Ideas.

Ø Battles, crashes, fistfights, parachute jumps, nuclear powered motorcycles and extreme gardening action. Is there an MPAA acronym for that?

Ø Humor dry enough to be garnished with two green olives on a stick.

Christopher Moore

Pine Cove Series:

Practical Demonkeeping

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror (Okay, yeah, Christmas. But Christmas with zombies, so that’s all right.)

Fluke (Not strictly Pine Cove, but in the same universe. Ever wonder why whales sing? They’re ordering Pastrami sandwiches. I’m not kidding.)

Death Merchant Chronicles:

A Dirty Job

Secondhand Souls (Best literary dogs this side of Jack London)

Coyote Blue (Kind of an outlier. Overlapping characters)

Shakespeare Series:

Fool

The Serpent of Venice

Shakespeare for Squirrels

Assorted:

Island of the Sequined Love Nun (Cargo cults with Pine Cove crossovers. I have a theory that the characters in this book are direct descendants of certain characters in Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.)

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (So I have a favorite first-century wonder rabbi. Who doesn’t?)

Sacre Bleu

Noir

Ø Not for the squeamish, the easily offended, or those who can’t lovingly embrace the fact that the human species is pretty much a bunch of idiots snatching at moments of grace.

Ø No big ideas whatever. Barely any half-baked notions.

Ø Enthusiastic geek adventure. Action as a last resort.

Ø Nonstop funny from beginning to end.

Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London Series

Rivers of London

Moon Over Soho

Whispers Under Ground

Broken Homes

Foxglove Summer

The Hanging Tree

The Furthest Station

Lies Sleeping

The October Man

False Value

Tales From the Folly

Ø Lean, self-deprecating police procedurals disguised as fantasy novels. Excellent writing.

Ø These will not expand your mind. They might expand your Latin vocabulary.

Ø Crisply described action, judiciously used. Whodunnit adventure. It’s all about good storytelling.

Ø Generous servings of sly humor. Aaronovitch is a geek culture blueblood who drops so many inside jokes, there are websites devoted to indexing them.

John Scalzi

Old Man’s War Series:

Old Man’s War

Questions for a Soldier

The Ghost Brigades

The Sagan Diary

The Last Colony

Zoe’s Tale

After the Coup

The Human Division

The End of All Things

Ø Star Trek with realpolitik instead of optimism.

Ø The Big Idea is that there’s nothing new under the sun. Nor over it.

Ø Action-adventure final frontier saga with high stakes.

Ø It’s funny when the characters are being funny, and precisely to the same degree that the character is funny.

Assorted:

The Dispatcher

Murder by Other Means

Redshirts (Star Trek, sideways, with occasional optimism)

Ø Scalzi abandons (or skewers) his space-opera tendencies with these three little gems of speculative fiction. Scalzi’s gift is patience. He lets the scenario unfold like a striptease.

Ø What-if thought experiments that jolt the brain like espresso shots.

Ø Action/misadventure as necessary to accomplish the psychological special effects.

Ø Redshirts is satire, so the humor is built-in, but it’s buried in the mix.

David Wong/Jason Pargin

John Dies at the End

This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It

What the Hell Did I Just Read?

Ø Pargin clearly starts his novels with a handful of arresting scenes and images, then looses the characters on an unsuspecting world to wander wither they will.

Ø Ideas aren’t as big or obvious as Heinlein, but they are there to challenge all your assumptions in the same way that Heinlein’s were.

Ø Classic action/adventure for anyone raised on Scooby-Doo.

Ø Occasional gusts of humor in a climate that’s predominantly tongue-in-cheek.

Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St. Mary’s Series

Just One Damned Thing After Another

The Very First Damned Thing

A Symphony of Echoes

When a Child is Born*

A Second Chance

Roman Holiday*

A Trail Through Time

Christmas Present*

No Time Like the Past

What Could Possible Go Wrong?

Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings*

Lies, Damned Lies and History

The Great St Mary’s Day Out*

My Name is Markham*

And the Rest is History

A Perfect Storm*

Christmas Past*

An Argumentation of Historians

The Battersea Barricades*

The Steam Pump Jump*

And Now for Something Completely Different*

Hope for the Best

When Did You Last See Your Father?*

Why Is Nothing Ever Simple*

Plan For The Worst

The Ordeal of the Haunted Room

Ø The * denotes a short story or novella. Okay, try to imagine Indiana Jones as a smartassed redheaded woman with a time machine and a merry band of full contact historians. I love history, and I especially love history narrated by a woman who can kick T. Rex ass.

Ø The ideas are toys, not themes. Soapy in spots.

Ø Action! Adventure! More action! More adventure! Tea break. Action again!

Ø Big, squishy dollops of snort-worthy stuff.

Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell Series

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

A Monstrous Regiment of Women

A Letter of Mary

The Moor

Jerusalem

Justice Hall

The Game

Locked Rooms

The Language of Bees

The God of the Hive

Beekeeping for Beginners

Pirate King

Garment of Shadows

Dreaming Spies

The Marriage of Mary Russell

The Murder of Mary Russell

Mary Russell's War And Other Stories of Suspense

Island of the Mad

Riviera Gold

The Art of Detection (Strictly speaking, this is in the action!lesbian Detective Kate Martinelli series, but it crosses over to the Sherlock Holmes genre. If you’ve ever wondered how Holmes would deal with the transgendered, this is the book.)

Ø Sherlock Holmes retires to Sussex, keeps bees, marries a nice Jewish girl who is smarter than he is and less than half his age and he’s mentored since she was fifteen in an extremely problematic power dynamic relationship that should repulse me but doesn’t, somehow, because this is the best Sherlock Holmes pastiche out there. Mary should have been a rabbi, but it is 1920, so she learns martial arts and becomes an international detective instead. Guest appearances by Conan Doyle, Kimball O’Hara, T.E. Lawrence, Cole Porter, and the Oxford Comma.

Ø Nothing mind-expanding here, unless the levels of meta present in a fictional world that is about how the fictional world might not be as fictional as you thought come as a surprise to anyone in the era of tie-in books, films, tv, interactive social media and RPGs.

Ø If these two geniuses can’t catch the bad guys with their dazzling brilliance, they will happily kick some ass. Adventure takes center stage and the action sequences are especially creative.

Ø Amusement is afoot.

Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next Series

The Eyre Affair

Lost in a Good Book

The Well of Lost Plots

Something Rotten

First Among Sequels

One of Our Thursdays is Missing

The Woman Who Died a Lot

Ø In a world where Librarians are revered and Shakespeare is more popular than the Beatles, someone has to facilitate the weekly anger-management sessions for the characters of Wuthering Heights, if only to keep them from killing each other before the novel actually ends. That someone is Thursday Next – Literature Cop.

Ø Mind-bending enough to give Noam Chomsky material for another hundred years.

Ø Adventure aplenty. Action? Even the punctuation will try to kill you.

Ø This is a frolicsome look at humorous situations filled with funny people. Pretty much a full house in the laugh department.

Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series/City Watch Arc

Guards! Guards!

Men at Arms

Feet of Clay

Jingo

The Fifth Elephant

Night Watch

Thud!

Snuff

Raising Steam

Ø If this were a game of CLUE, the answer would be Niccolo Machiavelli in Narnia with a Monty Python. Everything you think you know about books with dragons and trolls and dwarves and wizards is expertly ripped to shreds and reassembled as social satire that can save your soul, even if it turns out you don’t really have one. Do not be fooled by the Tolkien chassis – there’s a Vonnegut-class engine at work.

Ø Caution: Ideas in the Mirror Universe May be Larger Than They Appear

Ø The City Watch arc has plenty of thrilling action sequences. Some other of the fifty-million Discworld novels have less. Every one of them is nonstop adventure. Most of the adventure, however, takes the form of characters desperately trying to avoid thrilling action sequences.

Ø Funny? Even though I’ve read every book in the series at least ten times, I still have to make sure I have cold packs on hand in case I laugh so hard I rupture something.

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ashleesbookishadventure · 3 years

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11/22/63 by Stephen King

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

This book was 33 hours on audio and even after all that time, I was not ready for the story to end. The story was amazing. Definitely an instant favorite of King’s for me. It’s an interesting look into the concept of ‘what-if’. It’s really easy to think that if you could just do something over, do something differently, that everything would turn out for the better. But, as we see in 11/22/63, that’s not always the case. I can definitely think of a few things just in my personal life I’d love to go back and do differently but unless I could guarantee I would end up with the same life I have now, I’m not sure I would take the chance. Obviously I know not everyone feels that same way.

**Contains Spoilers**

There are definitely some things about the story I wished I could change, but nothing to do with the writing. I wish certain things had gone differently for Jake aka George. I felt like the ending was really rushed. I wish he could have spent more time in “the new present” to understand, rather than just listen to the words of a strange man who has no reason whatsoever to tell you the truth. I also wish he maybe would have gone back once more and changed some things. He could have done all he did up until Dallas then brought Sadie home with him to the future. Who knows what would have happened but it would be better than nothing at all.

**End of Spoilers**

I’m giving it 4 stars.

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books.

#ashleesbookishadventure #books #currently reading #tbr #reading #tbr post #booklr #book review #book reviews #book nerd #11/22/63 #stephen king

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canceraquariuscancer · 4 years

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Types of Aesthetics

*from Aesthetics Wiki

How to create your own aesthetic

Aesthetics 101: Create Your Own Aesthetic

Reminder: It IS possible to mix aesthetics and create your own.

1. Color Theory

The color wheel:

The color wheel is a starting concept of color theory. Primary colors are colors needed to create other colors.

For paint, primary colors are red, yellow, and blue.

For light, it’s red, blue, and green.

For printing, the colors are cayan, magenta, and yellow. They use subtractive color model, using the secondaries from light.

We’ll be focusing on the RYB (red, yellow, blue) model. These colors are mixed to create secondary colors-red+yellow=orange, yellow+blue=green, blue+red=violet.

Complimentary colors:

Colors opposite on the color wheel-red & green, orange & blue, yellow & purple. These colors contrast with each other.

An aesthetic using complimentary colors with full saturation would be Slimepunk. The main colors used are black, green, red, and purples.

An aesthetic using complementary colors at low saturation would be Warriorcore. The main colors used are brown, red, green, and grays. It’s a common aesthetic on tumblr right now.

Full saturation can be an eye strain while low saturation can make certain images pop.

Split complementary colors:

Split complementary colors take two colors on one side of the color wheel (ex: red+orange) and pairing it with a color on the opposite side of the wheel (in this example, blue). This creates a sense of unity and a sense of energy.

An example would be Fallencore.

Analogous colors:

Analogous colors are colors beside each other on the color wheel (ex: red, orange, yellow). These go together harmoniously, creating a sense of unity.

Some aesthetics would be

Light Academia. It’s main colors are beige, off-white, white, plaid, dim shades.

Red. It’s main colors are shades of red.

YamiKawaii. It’s main colors are black, red, pink, purples.

Triads:

Triads are colors equally spaced on the color wheel; red, yellow, and blue or orange, green, and purple.

Some aesthetics would be

Halloweencore. It’s main colors are orange, green, and purple, black, and red.

The Art Hoe aesthetic mainly uses triads-red, yellow, and red.

Hatchimitsu Core also uses some triads in it’s color scheme. It’s main colors are cadmium yellow, navy blue, white, beige, and warm earth tones.

a. Saturation

Saturation uses a high to low scale, where 1 is gray and 10 is the brightest version of the color. This can make something look light or dark, but it doesn’t mean that is is. Saturation is great for focal point, but high amounts of saturation can worsen headaches and seem chaotic. Desaturation can seem tired or old.

Neon/Florescent Colors:

Neons are highly saturated colors, causing a sense of chaos, disquiet, discomfort, and eye strain.

An aesthetic using neons are Psychadelica

Scene uses neon colors, which separates it from emo, which main colors are blacks.

Cyberpunk and Vapor Wave use desaturated colors to prevent too much discomfort. Vapor Wave’s main colors are blue, pink, and purple neons.

Pastels

Pastels are colors that have white added to them, making them tints, and have high value (closer to white than black). Pastels are often baby blue, baby pink, mint, lavender, and lilac.

Some aesthetics using pastels are

Bubble Goth. It’s main colors are silver, blue, white, black, and pastel pink.

Pastel Goth, using black and pastel colors.

Soft Grunge

Pastel Punk, using pastel colors.

Pastel aesthetics can also show femininity. Some examples are

Lolita and Mori Kei (Miri Kei’s main colors are green, brown, white, pink, and yellows).

It can also be used to convey sweetness and happiness, as used in

Cottagecore. Cottagecore uses green, brown, yellow, cram, and off-white colors.

Candycore.

Light Academia can also be put in patels.

Can be used to show child-like qualities like Kid Core, which main colors are pastels, neons, and bright colors.

And innocence and purity, as used in Angelcore and Fairycore.

Earthtones

Earthtones are desaturated colors made to look like nature. It includes browns, greens, blues, and yellows. It can symbolize life, nature, adventure, and the woods.

Some examples of Earthtone Aesthetics are,

Naturecore, Adventurecore (also uses whites/off-whites), and Art Nouveau.

Bright Colors

Bright colors have high saturation, but of any hue. They seem childish and hard to style together or bold and by themselves in a single person or group. These are associated with the 70s and 80s, and 90s-early 2000s.

Some exaples are,

Vintage/Retro

Nostalgiacore. Main colors are magenta, neon greens, bright reds, bright yellows, bright blues, and animal print.

Art Hoe

Hypebeast

Wormcore

b. Value

Value is how much white or black is added to a color. If black is added, its a shade and if white is added its a tint. Value is about how light or dark something is.

Tint=closer to white

Shade=closer to black

Darker colors are more serious, but not more masculine (the “little black dress”), however, tints are seen as purity (white is also seen as pure) and femininity.

Muted Tones

Desaturated colors and low value.

Closer to black.

Used to make things old and official, like in,

Dark Academia. Dark Academia mostly uses earth tones.

Dolly Kei.

Can be used to fit certain eras such as cryptidcore.

Can also be used to seem dull and lifeless such as Lovely Darkness.

Gray Scale and Monochromatic Colors

They’re not actually colors, but are colors with different variations in values.

Examples are

Poolcore, which mainly uses variations in blues.

You can see it in other colors like Purple.

High Contrast

High contrast is a limited color scheme that relies on the contrast of black, dark gray, and white to achieve it’s effect. Many goths use this color scheme.

Examples:

Vampire, mainly uses black and red.

Cybergoth.

c. Others

Jewel Tones

It was originally based off of crystals and precious stones. It’s main colors are medium to low contrasting purples, turquoise, aqua, emerald green, yellow, and red. It’s seen more in fall/autumn.

Some examples are,

(obviously) Autumn; main colors being red, orange, brown, yellow, gold, turquoise, violet, and indigo.

Fractal Art

Ethereal

Crystalcore

Metallic

Metallic rely on metals. They can be silver, gold, bronze, chrome, steel, and copper.

Some examples are

Y2K, using silver and bright and vivid colors.

Kinstugi, main color gold.

Crowcore, using rustic silvers, copper tones, white, green, and black.

Cyberprep, using chrome and leather.

And, arguably, Holosexual, using holographic colors and metallics.

Cool Colors

It can be cool colors like crimson red and ultramarine blue, and make a different feeling than warm toned reds and blues and make better purples and blacks in paintings, or colors associated with winter or water.

Examples:

Sea Punk. Main colors are blue, green, purple, and blue.

Ice Punk. Main colors are white, pale blue, and muted pastels.

Warm Colors

Warm colors are warmed toned, such as Cadimun Red, Cerulean Blue, and Cadimun Yellow. These colors will make better oranges. They’re associated with warmth, summer, or food.

Examples:

Coffee House. It’s main colors are dark brown, black, mustard, forest green, and maroon.

Warmcore. Main colors are soft/pale yellows, warm white, and light grays.

Golden Hour which is about sunsets, sunrises, and the color gold.

No Color Pallet or Scheme

Examples:

Cleancore, main colors being pale blue, white, and mint green.

Goblincore, main colors are earth tones.

2. Suffix Meaning

Academia focuses on academic styles. It doesn’t just focus on studyblr, it can go with other styles like Librarian Chic. It’s not limited to western academics, it can include academics from anywhere in the world.

Core N/A

Goth is a subculture that branches out of 80s punk. Dark clothes, Victorian, and Edwardian era fashion, makeup, and decorations are inspirations, but it has many branches to the aesthetic. Here is more information on goth subculture.

Kei is a Japanese suffix mainly used in the sense of “type”, and can range from theme to personality type.

Punk is referred to as a time rejecting social norms or a subgenre of speculative fiction. It originated with Cyberpunk, born in a new wave science fiction in the 70s. It can involve anything that would fit into the fictional high tech dystopia, including fashion, architecture, music, products, vehicles, etc. Some exceptions are Pastel Punk and Sea Punk.

List of aesthetics are posted seperately

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weaverlings · 5 years

Text

Every Episode of WTNV with Carlos Mentioned

No, I did not keep track of how long I spent on this. Anyway.

Total series count: 89 episodes

In the main podcast, anyway. The list includes at least partial context; however I wasn't counting the number of times Carlos was mentioned per episode, just if he was mentioned at all. So if he came up more than once I didn't necessarily record each time. Still, there are definitely spoilers.

I can't like… guarantee that I didn't miss something, unfortunately. However, I used both "Carlos" and "scientist" all the time, and I additionally used "boyfriend" from 26 onward and "husband" after 100. So it should be pretty close, at least.

I might go through and do live shows later. However, the answer for them is (almost) always yes, as most of them at least have a segment that Dylan Marron performs at some shows, so it'd be more a matter of checking for mentions of Carlos outside of that.

The reason I did this was to see if I was at all correct in my sense that Carlos has been mentioned less over time. My conclusion: well… sort of?

There actually was less of him than I thought in both year 1 and year 2 (year 1 in particular). However, years 3 and 4 had a LOT of him, and it has gone down from there through the end of year 7, when Carlos was only mentioned in 7 episodes total, with very few casual mentions by Cecil (vs when he had a particular role in what was going on).

So the problem (or at least, I consider it one) hasn't been going on for as long as I thought in the grand scheme of the series. I now believe that a significant part of the issue is just… Well, it has at this point been almost three years since that decline. Plus listening live makes everything feel drawn out, so there's a lot of perceived time in between individual mentions.

That being said, I think the actual conclusion is: it's maybe not as I thought, but I also wasn't completely imagining it, especially not looking at very recent events. We don't know what this year will hold, but year 7, as mentioned above, had the least of Carlos in it so far. There are also some significant gaps - Cecil mentions Carlos in episode 91, and after that the next time he comes up in year 5 is in 100 (!!!!)

He is mentioned in a solid majority of the series, but it's pretty front-loaded at this point. Also he has a few appearances in the first novel, and he's a central character in It Devours!

Finally, thanks so much @cecilspeaks because this wouldn't have been possible to do at all otherwise.

The complete list is as follows:

Year 1

episode 1: yes (well of course)

episode 2: no

episode 3: yes (the Telly thing)

episode 4: yes (dissenting at the PTA meeting)

episode 5: yes (Cecil tried to ask him about the moon but couldn't find him)

episode 6: no

episode 7: no

episode 8: yes (Carlos wants to talk about lights in Radon Canyon, not dinner or weekend plans)

episode 9: yes (but in the context of Telly wandering the desert)

episode 10: no

episode 11: yes (Cecil asked about tectonic activity - Carlos is "distracted yet beautiful")

episode 12: no

episode 13: no

episode 14: no

episode 15: no

episode 16: yes (basically the central plot of the episode)

episode 17: no

episode 18: no

episode 19 A+B: no for both

episode 20: no

episode 21: no

episode 22: no

episode 23: no

episode 24: no

episode 25: yes (absolutely)

Total year count: 9

Year 2

episode 26: no

episode 27: yes

episode 28: no

episode 29: yes (Carlos has opinions on subway riders' DNA)

episode 30: yes (checking out the house that doesn't exist)

episode 31: yes (Carlos "promised a certain person dinner")

episode 32: yes (Carlos gave Cecil the watch for their 1-month anniversary)

episode 33: no

episode 34: no

episode 35: yes (Carlos is being industrious!)

episode 36: no

episode 37: arguably (Cecil mentions finding "someone that might make [him] feel better about what has happened today" which probably means Carlos, but he's not mentioned directly)

episode 38: yes (Carlos has scientific opinions about orange grove growth + Cecil almost texts that he loves him but just knocks the imposter out instead)

episode 39: no (but fun fact: Dylan Marron originally did the pre-episode announcements for this one. I don't have the file anymore sadly.)

episode 40: yes (Lauren brings him up though)

episode 41: no

episode 42: no

episode 43: yes (Carlos is looking into the house that doesn't exist again)

episode 44: no

episode 45: no

episode 46: yes (he's on the phone w/ Cecil about the oak doors)

episode 47: yes (but it's Lauren and Kevin talking about how they haven't found him)

episode 48: yes (Cecil doesn't know where he is)

episode 49 A+B: yes (and I don't wanna talk about it :( )

Total count: 14 (ish, because 37 is subject to debate and 47 is different as noted. So maybe 12.)

Year 3

episode 50: yes (people have been asking Cecil about Carlos)

episode 51: yes (he spends most of it on the phone with Cecil)

episode 52: yes (Cecil's been getting calls and snapchats)

episode 53: no (but Steve mentions Cecil had "softened in the right places" over the past year)

episode 54: yes ("A Carnival Comes to Town." that's it.)

episode 55: yes ("The University of What It Is." again. that's it!)

episode 56: yes (Cecil's been isolated w/out Carlos, Cecil talks to Diane about Carlos, and then Cecil has a dream about being w/ Carlos again and sleeps well…)

episode 57: yes (Cecil wonders if Carlos knew the list, and then discusses the "current context" of their relationship - a matter of space)

episode 58: yes (Carlos doesn't want Cecil to say he's trapped in the other world + Cecil misses him)

episode 59: yes (Carlos is on the phone w/ Cecil)

episode 60: yes (Cecil considering whether or not he can visit Carlos)

episode 61: yes (Cecil mentions Carlos to Earl and also wonders if science can help him process the events of 59)

episode 62: no

episode 63: no

episode 64: yes (this episode has the watercolor painting in it)

episode 65: yes (Carlos leaves a voicemail)

episode 66: yes (considering the logistics of the Dog Park)

episode 67: no

episode 68: yes (Cecil talks about visiting Carlos)

episode 69: yes (Cecil announces his "last" broadcast to move to be w/ Carlos)

episode 70: A; yes (but again, context - it's got Carlos still in the otherworld). B; yes, Cecil describes Carlos' return

Total count: 17

Year 4

episode 71: yes (Carlos "participates" in the heist and is safe at home later)

episode 72: yes (Carlos can apparently sleep through anything!)

episode 73: yes (Carlos apparently tells Cecil not to worry about even catastrophic or paradoxical mistakes)

episode 74: yes (certain local radio hosts and scientists may have been using the Dog Park to go back and forth between Night Vale and a desert otherworld)

episode 75: yes (matching lycra shorts)

episode 76: yes (Carlos makes delicious fruit salad! also he's working on a solution to the flamingo problem)

episode 77: no

episode 78: yes (Carlos likes the gory parade + Earl is invited to dinner w/ Cecil and Carlos)

episode 79: no

episode 80: yes (Cecil tells his boyfriend he wants a beret)

episode 81: yes (Cecil spent time w/ Carlos between reeducation sessions)

episode 82: yes (sort of. Cecil mentions knowing what it's like in a long-term relationship, which is cute, and it's obvious who it's about, so I'm counting it)

episode 83: yes (Carlos does the shopping because Cecil has trouble with auctions)

episode 84: yes ("Hey there, Lonely Boy…")

episode 85: no

episode 86: no

episode 87: yes (Cecil considers the possibility of a tropical vacation w/ Carlos)

episode 88: yes (phone conversation, bunny nickname)

episode 89: yes (what Carlos is up to w/ the stranger situation)

episode 90: yes (Carlos is in the crowd against the dog/strangers)

Total count: 16

Year 5

episode 91: yes (Cecil reaches out to Carlos about the train, but he doesn't know :( )

episode 92: no

episode 93: no

episode 94: no

episode 95: no

episode 96: no

episode 97: no

episode 98: no

episode 99: no

episode 100: YES

episode 101: no

episode 102: yes (Carlos who Cecil is closest to other than Josie)

episode 103: yes (they're excited about going to the beach w/ family + they visited Josie together)

episode 104: yes (Cecil and Carlos go together to pay respects to Josie)

episode 105: yes (Carlos discusses dinner + TV viewing plans and has some concerns about the Smithwick house)

episode 106: no

episode 107: yes (Carlos arranges a task force regarding sounds heard under the earth)

episode 108: yes (tied into broken-reality weirdness)

episode 109: no

episode 110: yes (Steve brings him up - asked Carlos about space and Carlos skips away because he's so excited about science)

Total count: 9

Year 6

episode 111: yes (Carlos worries about having grown too used to Night Vale + the material testing in ep1 was an excuse to talk to Cecil)

episode 112: no

episode 113: yes (everything makes Cecil think of Carlos. Also he's out of town at a science convention)

episode 114: no

episode 115: yes (Cecil isn't concerned about robberies at labs or radio stations, but is concerned about librarian attacks on his family)

episode 116: yes (Strip uno… also "just the most vicious outfits")

episode 117: no

episode 118: yes (Cecil knows science… heck yes of course!!)

episode 119: yes (Carlos' hair is used to calibrate equipment)

episode 120: no

episode 121: no

episode 122: no

episode 123: no

episode 124: yes (A Door Ajar pt 1)

episode 125: yes (A Door Ajar pt 2)

episode 126: yes (A Door Ajar pt 3)

episode 127: yes (Carlos and Cecil plan to hold a blood matter viewing party)

episode 128: yes (the viewing party starts + Cecil and Carlos have a houseguest)

episode 129: yes (everyone, including Carlos, is surprised by the depth of the blood matter)

episode 130: no

Total count: 12

Year 7

episode 131: yes (Carlos texts Cecil about a matter of scientific accuracy)

episode 132: no

episode 133: yes (Carlos has a concern about the time situation, and also there's the Telly ending)

episode 134: yes (Cecil and Carlos attend a high school football game together + with the rest of their family)

episode 135: no

episode 136: no

episode 137: no

episode 138: no

episode 139: no

episode 140: no

episode 141: no

episode 142: no

episode 143: yes (Cecil tells Carlos he's coming home but, y'know, no one can hear)

episode 144: no

episode 145: no

episode 146: no

episode 147: yes (Carlos has been studying the moon and… there's other stuff that happens)

episode 148: no

episode 149: yes (once again a lot of stuff but Cecil remembers by the end. It's "already forgotten" apparently)

episode 150: yes (Cecil discusses their anniversary; also Carlos discovers his clock working)

Total count: 7

Year 8 (ongoing)

episode 151: no

episode 152: no

episode 153: yes (Carlos' experiments get messy so he ends up working at Steve and Abby's place)

episode 154: yes (Carlos is continuing to run experiments at Steve and Abby's and is taken in for questioning when Steve is arrested)

episode 155: yes (Carlos is really the one who figures everything out tbh)

episode 156: yes (Cecil is anxious about death/separation from Carlos, and then gets excited when he thinks there's a way for them to be together forever)

episode 157: yes (Carlos has some concerns about the proposed solution and wants to talk it out w/ Cecil)

Total count (so far): 5

#welcome to night vale #wtnv #wtnv ramblings #carlos the scientist #i mean as far as the time question #the answer is more than i probably should have #so

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eilonwiiy · 4 years

Text

Bookends ; A Witchlands AU

Chapter 7

When a relentless Evrane encourages him to be more adventurous, Aeduan explores the possibility of what life might be without Owl. Meanwhile, Iseult can't help but feel that Safi is keeping something from her.

Summary: Iseult det Midenzi never expected to go to a top university, so when her mother falls ill and she is forced to drop out to make ends meet, life has never seemed so unfair. But when she starts working at the local library and is unexpectedly assigned in the Children’s Room, a certain monosyllabic man and his thrice-damned demon child start showing up and Iseult begins to wonder if the threads of fate have a plan for her after all.

Previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Ships: Iseult/Aeduan, Safi/Merik, and more… stay tuned!

Tags: modern AU, college setting, family, friendship, humor, fluff, slow-burn, romance, eventual smut

Read on AO3: here

Tag list: (please let me know if you’d like to be added!) @lseultdetmidenzi @twilightlegacy13

* . * . * . * .

Aeduan prowled the bookshelves in the Children’s Room barely containing his impatience. The room was unusually busy for the morning. He’d overheard one disgruntled parent grumble about the schools being closed for a teacher development day and thus every corner was crawling with rambunctious children. It didn’t help that Evrane and Owl were late. Or that the main desk was absent one black-haired librarian.

Wherever Iseult was, Aeduan envied her. The cacophony of electronic bells and whistles and high-pitched prepubescent voices migrating from the computer island was giving him a headache. Every couple minutes one of the more stern looking librarians would instruct them to keep their voices down, adding to the fray of noise as well as Aeduan’s irritation. The library should provide headphones, he thought grumpily.

“No books today?” came a voice behind Aeduan.

He turned around and found Evrane and Owl walking down the aisle.

“You’re late,” he said tersely.

“Yes, well,” Evrane breathed happily, clasping her hands together and sharing a look with Owl that he was surprised to see returned by the child, “we were finishing a puzzle.”

“A puzzle?” Aeduan stared at her incredulously. “Evrane-”

Evrane held up a finger. “Ah. Trust. Remember to trust me.”

They locked each other in a staring contest. Aeduan held in a breath, impulse strained against his chest-

He conceded with a curt nod. Evrane smiled.

“So what’s on the agenda this weekend?” Evrane asked as Aeduan knelt down to help Owl into her coat.

Aeduan shrugged. “The same as usual.” They had fallen into a post-session rhythm over the last few weeks, usually involving non-threatening topics like weekend plans or the weather.

“I’ll pick up the girls from school tomorrow and they’ll stay the weekend. Lisbet has some sort of group project she needs to go to for her science class, but other than that it should be uneventful.”

Evrane nodded, then eyed him more closely. “And what about you?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Do you have any plans?” The manner in which she asked this question suggested only innocent curiosity, but bells were going off in Aeduan’s head. He finished zipping Owl up and stood to face Evrane. He squared his shoulders.

“I just told you.”

“I mean any plans that don’t involve the girls. Or,” she added as an afterthought, “those girls, at least.”

“Owl will be-”

“Anyone who isn’t Owl, Lisbet, or Cora.”

Aeduan shook his head, confused. “Who would I-”

“I don’t know, Aeduan,” cut in Evrane, followed by a single exasperated laugh. “Perhaps a friend. Or maybe you’d like to do something on your own.”

Aeduan’s jaw locked. This was definitely outside of their mutually unspoken established topics of conversation. His chest swelled with barely controlled annoyance. “I can’t very well leave Owl at home without someone there to watch her.” Each word was pronounced with an obvious effort of forced civility.

“No, you can’t,” Evrane agreed brightly. “The people handling your adoption case will be very happy to know that you know that.”

“Then what exactly would you suggest I do? Get a babysitter?”

“Yes!”

Aeduan waved a hand between them. “Look, if you’re trying to offer-”

“No, of course I’m not volunteering. I know you would never willingly accept my help. Again,” added Evrane with a flash of her emerald eyes. Before Aeduan could bite back, she was already herding him back into her line of thought. “If not me, then someone else. Perhaps Lisbet. She’s responsible enough.”

“She’s young.”

“And perfectly capable.”

Aeduan pinched the bridge of his nose. He was suddenly very tired. Things had been going so well. Why was she pushing this? When he lowered his hand, he planned on asking her just that, but then she caught it with her own and everything inside him went quiet. The skin was warm and her touch forced his gaze to meet hers.

He’d seen her every week since she reentered his life, but only now was he suddenly struck by how much Evrane had changed in the last 13 years. Nothing could take away her beauty, but there were little wrinkles branching out from the corners of her eyes like tree roots. He wondered what she was seeing on his face.

“I’m only suggesting for your own sake,” she assured him calmly. She didn’t let go of his hand. “When was the last time you had a moment to yourself?”

Aeduan swallowed painfully. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally, the confession rough against his throat.

“Well,” Evrane smiled and she gave his hand encouraging squeeze before releasing it, “maybe it’s time to start thinking about what you can do to change that.”

* . * . * . * .

“Goat tits! This is the worst.”

“If you had done it last night-”

“Iz!”

Iseult hovered by Safi’s shoulder, coffee pot in hand, as her friend tried to scribble down her 9th and final (wrong) answer on a very crumpled looking piece of paper. Her giant calculus textbook lay open on the table, the polished circular area barely big enough for her other school materials, let alone that monstrosity, as it was meant for coffee, not serious work. Well, if you could call whatever Safi was doing serious, which incidentally, Safi didn’t.

“You do know all of that is wrong, right?” Iseult asked.

“Of course it’s all wrong!” Safi snapped, hand not stopping its’ frenzied movements. “What do I look like? A mathematician?!”

No, she didn’t. In fact, she didn’t really look much like Safi either. She’d spent far more time in the bathroom getting ready that morning than she normally did, and the result was a very different image than Iseult was used to seeing at 10 A.M.. Safi’s face was bare as it always was, far too beautiful to be needlessly hindered by make-up, but it looked fresh and clean, and the long shower she had taken had given her golden cheeks a lovely rosy glow. Her hair was prettily braided and pinned around her head like a crown and, if Iseult wasn’t mistaken, she thought she caught a whiff of fruity perfume on her. To top it all off, Safi had left her sweatpants and Cleaved Man hoodie crumpled on the floor and chosen to investigate the contents of her closet, leaving Iseult open-mouthed when she came sweeping out from behind the curtain into Jitters wearing a form fitting burgundy turtle-neck and floral corduroy skirt that showcased her long, lean legs and knee-high suede boots. There was a good chance her calculus professor wouldn’t even recognize her.

“Better to hand something in than nothing and get zero marks though. This,” Safi tapped the paper with her pencil, “shows I care.”

Iseult snorted. Safi put the last finishing touches on her (wrong) answer with a flourish, then carelessly stuck the sheet of paper into her open textbook and slammed it shut.

“I’d say ‘job well done’, but we both know that’s not true.”

Safi grinned smugly at Iseult, looking more than a little satisfied with herself.

“I think I deserve another donut after all that.”

“Of course you do,” Iseult said rolling her eyes and turning to retreat behind the coffee counter. She heard the scrape of Safi’s chair as she got up and followed her. While she got another pot of coffee started, Safi no doubt went to inspect the pastry display. A sharp gasp of horror came from behind her back.

“No sprinkles? What is this? The Grapes of Wrath?”

Iseult, wiping her hands on her apron, turned around. “You know, after watching you bullshit your way through your calculus homework, it’s comforting to hear you make a literary reference.”

Safi scrunched up her nose at the display case. “John Steinbeck taking up cranial space in my head doesn’t change the fact that there are no more sprinkled donuts.”

“Reference Jane Austen and maybe they’ll magically appear.”

Safi glanced over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow at Iseult. “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”

“And you will be fine going a day without a sprinkled donut despite what you may think. Pick something else.” Iseult felt like a mother reprimanding her child.

Safi looked back at the pastries with a forlorn sort of sigh. After a moment’s careful deliberation (for these truly are some of the hardest decisions we are presented with at 10 in the morning) she slid the glass door open and reached for a banana chocolate chip muffin.

“A sensible substitute,” Iseult congratulated, waving open a brown paper bag and holding it out for Safi to deposit her muffin into. Safi dropped it in, looking resentful, but Iseult knew she was hamming it up. Safi had no issues when it came to expressing her anger.

Safi took the bag from Iseult and glared down at its sprinkle-less contents. The raw judgement burning behind her eyes, all directed at a defenseless muffin, made Iseult think of something.

“Hey, you haven’t run into that guy from the bar on campus, have you?”

The paper bag crinkled under Safi’s hands as she rolled the top closed. “What guy?”

“That asshole who,” Iseult hesitated, mentally wincing at the memory, “yelled at you.”

Safi’s hands froze. “Ah,” she merely said, then resumed twisting the paper bag, despite it being well and closed. “The ingrate thwarted by a single button.”

“Yeah, him. Have you seen him?”

Safi gave the bag a final twist, then looked up at Iseult, offering her a closed-lip smile. Her shoulders bounced once and she shook her head. “Nope,” she said brightly. She strolled out from behind the counter and back to her table. “His tits probably fell off from frost exposure and he’s holed up in some hospital somewhere awaiting reconstructive surgery.”

Iseult watched Safi carefully. For whatever reason, her tone had snagged on something in Iseult and held her in place. Somewhere wrong. A lie, possibly.

But never, in all their years of friendship, had Safi lied to Iseult. And never had Iseult lied to Safi. They told each other everything. Safi had told Iseult about her uncle and the years she spent growing up with an alcoholic. She had told her about Chiseled Cheater and the false kisses they’d shared. She had told her about her parents and how she missed them and would trade anything to have them back. Anything, except Iseult.

And Iseult had told Safi about Gretchya. A childhood filled with loneliness and endless beratement. She had told her about not being able to make ends meet and needing to drop out of school. She had even told her that she had never been kissed until last summer.

Now, suddenly, Iseult was wishing she hadn’t asked about the Nubrevnan. The snag was no longer a snag, but twisting itself into a tangled web of wrongness with no obvious beginning or end.

“I have a proposition for you,” Safi announced, slicing through Iseult’s thoughts, though, the knot remained fully intact. A living, breathing thing now. The shift in topic seemed to feed it, pull it tighter into submission, so that all Iseult could do to contain it was stare at her friend.

“How would you like to go to a party on Friday night?”

“Well, you know how much I like parties,” Iseult managed to reply deadpanned.

“I know, but it’s at Vaness’ and I’ve always considered her parties more like sophisticated soirees, you know? She doesn’t put up with the bullshit you get at other parties on campus.”

“I guess.” Safi wasn’t wrong. Now busy working on her masters, Vaness didn’t have time to involve herself in the antics of college. In truth, she never had. It’s how she’d earned herself the title of the “Iron Bitch” in just the first week of her freshman year. Even before she graduated, she’d displayed a low tolerance for her peers and the debauchery they would find themselves in every weekend. Her parties always had an air of opulence around them and were strictly invitation only. Except for her infamous end-of-the-year party. That was open to everyone and it almost always ended with the cops shutting it down by sunrise. At least, they had last year. Iseult had been so drunk, she didn’t even remember how she��d gotten home that night.

“Are the Hell-Bards playing?” she asked, diverting her mind from racing off to memories she didn’t quite have the mental energy to duel with so early in the day.

“I said it was going to be a classy affair. Classy.”

“So, no?”

“No.”

“Good. At least the soundtrack to the evening won’t suck.”

Safi’s face brightened. “So you’ll come?”

Iseult relinquished a nod. “Yeah, I’ll go. If only to watch Vaness skewer Leopold with one of her nails.”

Safi bellied a laugh as she pulled on her coat. “I think he rather enjoys it. One may say he encourages it.”

“You think?” Iseult asked, genuinely curious.

Safi shrugged, then paused. A dangerous smile crawled onto her lips. “Jealous?”

“I could ask the same to you,” Iseult volleyed back. “Don’t even try to deny that you’ve never thought about Vaness in that way.”

Safi feigned insult. “I wouldn’t dream of it! There isn’t a soul among us that hasn’t fallen under her spell.” She started to back away towards the door. “Are we still on for dinner tonight?”

“Yep! But hold on, I have a favor I need to ask.”

Safi stopped her descent and took a couple calculated steps back towards the counter. “A favor?”

“A proposition,” Iseult amended, co-opting Safi’s earlier choice word.

“If it’s for me to ditch class and run away to Marstok with you, then the answer is yes. You’ve never had a better idea.”

“I was wondering,” Iseult went on pointedly, “if you’d be willing to go to Ryber and Tanzi’s book club with me next month.”

“I already said I would.”

“You did? When?”

Realization burst across Safi’s face. “Oh that’s right! I told Ryber and Tanzi last week. When we had lunch together.”

Iseult felt the line between her brow form before she could stop it. “You had lunch together?”

“Yeah, last week. Tuesday, maybe? We ran into each other on the way to the dining commons and ended eating together. They’re really great. I like them a lot.”

“Yeah,” Iseult was barely able to say. The image of Safi, Ryber, and Tanzi sitting at the dining commons, laughing together, without her made the knot in her chest from earlier drop into her stomach and melt into something different entirely. “I like them too."

“When is it again?” Safi asked.

Iseult swallowed hard. “She said they meet the second Friday of every other month.”

Safi whipped out her phone and tapped the screen a couple times before her eyebrows bounced in surprise. “Oh. So, Valentine’s Day?”

“Oh. Um, I guess,” Iseult replied. She hadn’t known that. Not that it made a difference. She’d never had a date for Valentine’s Day, nor any other calendar day of the year for that matter. Nothing in the last month had indicated that this year would be any different.

Iseult noted the small frown that appeared on Safi’s face as she looked down at her phone’s calendar for a moment too long before slipping it back into her coat pocket. With some effort, she smiled at Iseult.

“That should work for me. Unless I get roped into a shift at the Cleaved Man. Lord knows Stix probably has eight dates lined up for the evening.” Safi bristled with a resentful huff. She caught Iseult’s eye.

“So… are we going to Marstok or not?”

* . * . * . * .

Aeduan’s boots hit the concrete hard, his conversation with Evrane replaying over and over again in his head. He wished she hadn’t said anything. He wasn’t angry, but now that the idea was out there, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. A list was beginning to form with all the things he would do if he didn’t have to keep an eye on Owl every second of the day. Simple things, like going for a run in the evenings. Or taking a ride on his motorcycle when he needed to blow off steam. He missed the adrenaline, missed cutting through the air like nothing could hurt him. Maybe Evrane was right. Maybe Lisbet wasn’t too young to watch Owl. If not her, then who else could he trust with that responsibility?

A whimper broke out behind Aeduan. He’d been, without even realizing it, walking much too fast for Owl. Monster. 10 minutes and he was already forgetting the child.

“Sorry,” he murmured, stopping and kneeling down to make sure she’d heard him. Passersby walked around them on the busy sidewalk. He adjusted Owl’s scarf. Her eyes rolled down to the concrete.

Avoidance. She was avoiding him.

Aeduan’s heart sank, all fantasies of his motorcycle whooshing out of his head. How much of his conversation with Evrane had she understood?

“What would you like to do this weekend?” he asked her, his big hands curled around her scarf. “I think it’s supposed to snow overnight tomorrow. Want to build another fort for Blueberry? The other one is almost all melted.”

Owl said nothing.

“Or maybe we could have a snowball fight with Cora and Lisbet. I bet we can take them.”

Nothing.

Aeduan brought his forehead close to hers so that their noses were almost touching. “Maybe,” he whispered, drawing out the word, “we could make a decision over a muffin?”

Owl sour expression cracked. Relief flooded Aeduan’s heart when her black eyes made contact with his.

Stopping at Jitters after a session with Evrane was becoming somewhat of a weekly tradition. More than once he’d been tempted to pay a visit on days when they didn’t have an appointment at the library. There was something comforting about starting off the morning with a fresh pastry and hot cup of coffee. Or maybe he’d mooched off of Owl’s bowl of Cheerios for his own breakfast one too many times.

It wasn’t long before the bell above Jitters’ entrance door was jingling its welcome, but just as Aeduan stepped inside, he froze.

It wasn’t the grouchy barista from his first trip (though he had, unfortunately, seen her since then). No, it was Iseult behind the counter. Wearing an apron. Pouring coffee.

Iseult.

Her round face shone like the moon, as much of her chin length hair as possible pulled back in a messy bun and a headband resting on top of her head. Wisps of stray hairs fell around her face and in her eyes as she wiped her hands on her apron and pulled out a pile of receipts from the front pocket. Aeduan had never seen her so relaxed. Or with so much color in her face. Cheeks rosy pink, like she’d just finished with the lunch rush. It softened her somehow.

The bell hanging above Aeduan’s head stopped swaying and went silent. Waiting for the verdict.

He could run. Turn around and leave and the girl would be none the wiser. He’d have to make up some excuse to Owl, but how hard would that be?

Idiot, he cursed himself. He was a former police officer. The son of Ragnor Amalej. What would his father say if he saw him running for the hills because of a simple librarian? His mother would have smiled. She would have told him again the story of another man who was kind and quiet. A man who had stumbled over words and given her no choice but to fall in love with him.

That woke him up. He was not his father. And he certainly did not - and would never - have feelings for this plain girl, this librarian. That thought was enough encouragement to get him through the door.

Iseult’s head rose at the sound of the door slamming and the violent jangle of ringing that came with it. Her expression, so ordinarily cool and unreadable, popped with surprise at the sight of him.

“Aeduan.”

His name sounded breathless on her lips. Had he been paying attention to anything outside of her lovely, pale face, he would have felt the something it stirred inside him.

“I didn’t know you worked here,” remarked Aeduan matter-of-factly as he approached the counter.

Iseult’s features smoothed back into place. “Yes. I work here and-” Her gaze fluttered up to the ceiling for a second, then back down. She brushed her hair out of her eyes, possibly a nervous tick. “And at the library.”

Aeduan nodded. She was staring at him thoughtfully. Expectantly. He was here for a reason, wasn’t he?

“I was at the library today.”

“You were?”

“Yes.” Aeduan paused, then thinking that perhaps he should say something else, continued. “I wanted to get the next book in the My Father’s Dragon series… but you weren’t there.”

A small frown crinkled at the edge of Iseult’s eyes. “Was Hilga there? Or Rosa?”

“I-” Well, this was more than a little embarrassing. Good thing she didn’t know he was a former cop, top of his precinct, destined to make detective, and incapable of finding a book.

“I didn’t have time to ask,” he lied.

“Oh.” Such a small word. It carried the weight of thought that could not be read on her face. “I can look for it tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to-”

“It’s no trouble-”

“We’re only a couple chapters in-”

“I really don’t mind,” Iseult insisted. She hesitated, then added, “I can give you a call and let you know whether or not it’s in.”

“Oh. Well...” Aeduan took a bracing breath and tore a napkin from the basket on top of the display case, then grabbed one of the pens from the chipped mug sitting next to the register acting as a pencil holder. He clicked the top of the pen with his thumb, bent over the counter, and started writing. When he was finished, he slid it across the counter to Iseult.

“My number,” he explained.

Iseult peeled the napkin from the counter and held it up with both her hands. The way she held it made it look fragile, like it might break if she were to drop it. Her lips rolled inward, and for the first time since meeting her, she seemed to have trouble meeting his eyes.

“Thank you,” she finally said. Finally looking at him. “But I have your contact information at the library. From when you registered for a card.”

Aeduan could practically feel the inferno of embarrassment that ignited in his blood. He half-expected her to shove his number back to him or, hell-gates, what if she crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash? But instead she surprised him: she folded the napkin carefully and slipped it into the front pocket of her apron.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Aeduan swallowed. Once. Twice. Then shook his head. “No,” he muttered, his voice little more than a rasp.

Iseult blinked. Confused. “You don’t want anything?”

“Want?” It took a moment for her meaning to penetrate his abnormally thick skull. “Right. Yes. Hot Coffee. Medium. And two blueberry lemon muffins.”

“To go?”

And away from this devastating conversation? “Yes.”

There would be no more attempt at conversing from his end. He was spent. While Iseult prepared his coffee, Aeduan busied himself with observing the cafe even though he’d seen it a dozen times before. It was emptier than usual. The same nondescript instrumental music played from the old stereo behind the counter. The only thing out of place was the smoldering mound of charred wood and ash in the fireplace. The normally popping fire seemed to have died and was in need of more wood.

“Do you want hazelnut?”

Aeduan jerked his head over his shoulder. “Excuse me?”

“Do you want hazelnut with your coffee? I sometimes like to top mine off with it. It goes really well with this blend.”

Aeduan split his gaze between Iseult and the small jar of ground hazelnut in her hand. He wasn’t even sure why she was asking him, but without his permission, his mouth was forming a succinct ‘sure’ and he returned his attention back to the cafe.

“Oh!”

Aeduan swung around at the sound of Iseult’s startled gasp. She wasn’t there.

Taking an urgent step forward, he braced his hands on the counter and craned his neck over the display case. “Iseult?”

“I-I’m alright,” a muffled voice came and a split-second later, she popped back up from behind the pastries. Color had blossomed on her cheeks, fanning out across the bridge of her nose. “S-she just startled me. That’s all.”

Aeduan’s eyes narrowed. “Who?” he demanded. And then he noticed Iseult’s downturned gaze traveling to a place next to him. Oh. Oh.

Owl was looking more red in the face than Iseult. It was alarming how much tension those two chubby cheeks could conjur. He knew this look. It was the same one she gave the car seat the moment before he would force her down in it and buckle her up.

Well, no time like the present. They’d been to the library enough times that he supposed it was time for a proper introduction, so he scooped her up in his arms, then angled them both to face Iseult.

“Owl, this is Iseult.” Iseult. He’d never said her name out loud before. It poured like honey from his mouth. He licked his lips; it took him a moment to form more words. “She works with Evrane at the library. She’s the librarian who picked out all your books we’ve been reading together.” When Owl made no show of having understood a word he said, he tried to coax some reaction out of her with a gentle bounce on his hip and an encouraging, “Wasn’t that nice of her?”

Owl twisted her head and hid her face in the crook of Aeduan's neck.

Well, it was a reaction. Just not the one he was hoping for.

He shifted on his feet and forced himself to look at Iseult. “Sorry,” he apologized gruffly. “She’s… shy.”

“That’s alright,” Iseult murmured, and Aeduan could have sworn he saw her lips harbor a small smile as she fidgeted with the strings of her apron. “I’m shy too.” Then, her lips quivered. “Is s-she... your daughter?”

No.

That’s what he was supposed to say. It was the truth, wasn’t it? Owl was nothing to him unless the adoption succeeded. Yet nothing had felt so wrong to him.

No.

The word stopped his heart. Sent his stomach to roil.

“I would like her to be,” Aeduan heard himself admit. A slow rasp. Like something heavy being dragged over concrete. “I… I’m applying for adoption.”

Aeduan watched Iseult’s pupils dilate. The tremble in her lips quieted. Then: “That is admirable.”

Aeduan exhaled. Warmth spread in his chest. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t even notice Iseult tapping the keys on her register. He barely understood what she was saying when she said, “Your total comes to $5.79.”

Numbly, Aeduan pulled out his wallet from his back pocket with one hand while his other arm was full of Owl. He managed to pull out several bills and handed them across the counter. When she handed him back his change, he dropped it into the tip mug next to the register.

Owl seemed intent on staying hidden in his neck, so he did his best to pick up the bag of muffins and his coffee with one hand without dropping everything. The transaction was over, but Aeduan found himself staring at Iseult, her staring back at him, her hands folded over each other in front of her as though it was taking some effort not to fidget with her apron strings. It relaxed him somehow, seeing those delicate pearly white fingers locked together. She was nervous; he wasn’t alone.

Aeduan's wrist rolled at his side. He sucked in a breath. “Do you-”

The bell jangled as the entrance door swung open and a stick figure of a boy came flying in.

“Sorry, sorry I know I’m late!”

He was a blur of gangly limbs and patchwork colored skin - some dark, some light - as he skidded to halt behind the counter, heaping apologies onto Iseult like his life depended on it. On and on it went and Aeduan just stood there, despite the fact that he had nothing to do with whatever this stranger was babbling about. In the midst of the boy’s mounting hysteria, his voice pitching higher as it went on, Iseult’s eyes slid to Aeduan’s, her expression as quiet as ever. Something passed between them, but Aeduan wasn’t sure what.

“It’s alright, Cam,” Iseult finally interjected over the boy’s apologies. Again, she glanced over at Aeduan. She looked like she wanted to say something. But for some reason, Aeduan spared her the chance. He forced a rough cough from his lungs and, giving her a brusque nod, spun away from her entirely and made a beeline to the cream and sugar station. Behind his back, the boy’s voice piped up again, and Aeduan heard the shuffle of feet and voices trailing away as though they were moving their conversation to the back. Iseult obviously had her hands full with an incompetent employee. There was no reason he had to trap her in another staring match that would inevitably go nowhere.

Those eyes. Aeduan gritted his teeth as he uncovered his coffee thinking of them, how they had looked at him when she’d called him admirable. Him. Admirable. She had no right calling him that. She didn’t even know him.

Well, he reasoned, stirring cream into his coffee and watching the flecks of hazelnut Iseult added spin around and around and eventually become swallowed by the whirlpool, she hadn’t exactly called him admirable. She was only commending what he was doing with Owl admirable. Admirable. That was one word for it. Or stupid. Impulsive. Completely insane and beyond his reach.

The bells over the entrance door tinkled and Owl, who had been glued to his side for the last 5 minutes, stirred slightly in his arms, her tiny frame expanding and drooping with a sleepy sigh.

Hell-gates, what was he doing? Trying to adopt a kid? Who was he kidding? It didn’t matter who his father was or what family he came from or that Iseult thought it was admirable. He was still Aeduan Amalej. He may not wear the badge or carry a gun anymore, but he still had his reputation as the demon of his precinct who had given up his soul for the cause, for justice. That was something he couldn’t shed so easily.

Aeduan popped the lid back on his coffee cup and his hand froze. Cold crawled across the back of his neck like a spider. It was only when a familiar voice spoke from behind him did he know why.

“Well, well, if it isn’t my partner in justice.”

#the witchlands #baeseult #iseult det midenzi #aeduan #safiya fon hasstrel #owl #aeduan x iseult #truthwitch #bookends #my fics #mine

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houseki-no-suffering · 5 years

Text

The gems’ economic system

yet another analysis no one asked for, but you know me at this point

so, the lunarians seem to live under some sort of capitalistic system, the admirabilis seem to have a feudal/subsistence one or something like that, what about the lustrous?

these rocks dont produce food and there is no state, which makes everything trickier. so here’s my best attempt at classifying something that was probably never meant to be classified

disclaimer: despite studying some of these things and having a good bg in sociology, i’m not a political science or economics major. take this post with a grain of salt and correct me where im wrong. this is just for fun.

i’ve already touched on the gems’ social and political systems. the simplest, roughest scheme i can write for an economic system is this one:

what is produced and in what quantities?

how is it produced? by whom?

who benefits from what is produced? how are produces distributed?

in the gems’ case:

tangible goods (tables, chairs, paper, clothes, swords...) and services (provided by doctors, teachers, scholars, statisticians/strategists, fighters, librarians...)

by all of the gems, sensei included, through natural resources, labor and human (well, gem) capital (im oversimplifying here, bear with me)

produces are distributed equally to all of the gems and sensei according to need, with great emphasis on not wasting goods (both tangible and intangible). goods are primarily produced according to need (tables and chairs, paper, swords), more rarely for leisure (books, hibernation clothes).

additionally, an economic system also has:

Methods of control over the means of production: the gems do not seem to know private property and, except for sensei’s leadership, there is no actual state. we can assume all goods are held in common

A decision-making system and coordination mechanisms: these are not economically specific in the gems’ case. sensei decides who does what and, after that, the laborers plan and decide over their craft (ie peridot decides who can and cannot have spare paper), always supervised by Sensei and/or Euclase (or Jade)

An incentive system: it’s usually moral persuasion (the social prestige that comes from being a fighter, praise from sensei for a job well done etc.)

Actors (all of the gems since they all produce goods and services) and regulators (the single gems responsible for a task, authority figures like sensei, Euc/Jade)

A distribution system: hard to tell cause the gems do not use money, there is no form of income for their work and no taxes because there is no state.

A mechanism for establishing rules, norms and standards: once again, this is left to the single gems and to Sensei, sometimes to Euc and Jade because they are authority figures

Economic systems are classified according to the property of the means of production and by the main mechanisms of resource allocation.

since the gems do not have a concept of private property and goods are usually held in common, the means are socially owned. so capitalism et similia are a huge no-no.

i tried looking at economic systems with socially-owned property according to resource allocation, but the fact that the gems do not produce food and do not possess a state (they’re only 28!) complicates the picture.

is theirs an economy of subsistence? they have no money, no trade, lack of surplus, they have bronze-age technology, there’s a huge pressure not to waste resources and energies.

but how do you define what counts as subsistence when you have a society that’s made up of 28 individuals and one leader, doesnt produce or need food and doesnt have other societies to interact with and create a market? these rocks dont produce just the bare essentials they need to live because, well, they’re barely alive. they feed on daylight.

still, you could argue that the lunarians showed the moon gems new and cooler ways to feed on daylight, as if the earth gems were barely scratching the surface of what they could be able to do, produce and consume with better technology or by trading with other cultures. as a result, the moon gems adapted themselves to a new (capitalistic) economic system.

a lot of elements fit and you could make a case that it’s an economy of subsistence, but since i’m pedantic, i’m gonna go over a few other systems just in case.

for example, an economy of subsistence doesnt really do justice to how much these gems are culturally and socially expected to conform and be all the same. communism and socialism on the other hand are, at least in theory, built on the utopia of equality.

goods belong to the working class, everyone works toward the same goal (ie fighting the lunarians), all people are equal, which results in a few issues about (among other things) individuality, independence and self-fulfillment.

yet both systems contemplate the existence of money and private property (especially socialism). also, socialism and communism seek to abolish social classes, while gem society has them (ie the fighters and the diamonds are elite classes).

since they lack a proper state, money and a market, it seems to me that the gems’ socioeconomic system can also be compared to a participatory economy or some form of anarchist economy, like anarcho-communism or inclusive democracy.

here’s a brief overview, i did my best to sum it up but if i made some mistakes dont hesitate to tell me:

participatory economy: people come together for all decisions, they determine which goods to produce and which goods go to whom. it’s like self-management but your say in a certain matter is proportionate to how affected you’ll be by the decision. focus is on transparency and little hierarchy to encourage cooperation.

anarcho-communism: no state and no private property, money is abolished, guiding principle is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Goods are used, not owned, and each person works whatever job they find most fulfilling (which is similar to how Sensei assigns gems a job according to their temperament)

inclusive democracy: this i included cause it can only be actualized in a small, self-sufficient community, like that of the gems. once again, no state, no money, no market, so no privileges and no accumulation of wealth. however there is a form of currency, labour vouchers, and it gets complicated. The idea of micro, self-sufficient community (domos) is v close to how the lustrous work tho, especially when private and public life kind of become the same thing.

it seems to me that the gems’ system is a mixture of a bunch of different systems. it looks like subsistence economy (social classes, lack of surplus, primitive tech) with a hint of socialism and communism (sameness, no property etc) and the stress on equality and lack of structure that comes with anarchism.

one major thing is that, even if there is no currency, personal value is still assigned (or at least perceived) according to how much you can contribute to society through work.

to wrap this all up: is it legit to speak of economic systems when the gems dont have private property, currency, food, or a market? ehhhh. they still produce and use stuff so why not. still, classifying their system is pretty tricky. let me know what you think and how many things i got wrong

#houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous #hnk #meta #hello welcome to economics 101 #aka i should have taken micro and macro ecs when i had a chance now i look like a fool

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