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First book of 2025 complete: The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Rating: What The Fuck/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
one of my favourite reads in a while
I beseech you for your Garth insight, wht personality of his do you like? Bc every version of him I've read is a little alienating to me (part of the reason why I prefer Jackson is bc Idk which Garth I'll get or wht even his backstory is now) so if I started to try and get invested in him wht stories or version would you recc?
Okay for absolute full disclosure here I’m currently getting into Aquaman comics chronologically. Primarily through the lens of Garth. And there are some things I had already read at some point, but in my current venture I’m just a little bit post-Crisis, so my knowledge of the Aquaman side of things in general is still relatively limited.
But I can definitely talk about Garth.
First things first, absolutely anything featuring a man calling himself Garth from any point later than the year 2011 is a completely different person. I can say that with full confidence even having read, like, no more than 2 comics including the Rebirth iteration of his character. It’s just not the same guy on seemingly any level, which can definitely account for the alienation aspect, and it’s very disappointing.
But on the topic of OG Garth. Let’s discuss his personality.
Something that stands out to me immediately about Garth is that he is very emotional. (Apparently a common theme among the characters I like.) But more than that, he’s emotional in like a shockingly healthy way? He does not bottle things up, if something hurts or upsets him he makes it known, if he feels betrayed or disrespected by someone he takes it up with them, and he’s not at all afraid of direct confrontation if it’s warranted.
But despite that, he remains consistently reserved, sensitive, and gentle, which is kind of a miracle among male comic book characters. He can have a temper too, but it only really comes up if something is stopping him from helping someone in trouble, or if he feels mistreated past a certain limit, and it never really feels like he’s lashing out unnecessarily. His continual willingness to stand up for himself in spite of his “softer” personality sticks with me.
And tying into all of the above he’s textually acknowledged for his talents in communication and later diplomacy, which, again, not usually traits emphasized in Superhero Men. This example is very cute:
Not that he doesn’t enjoy fighting. He definitely does. In fact, a few of his notable outbursts have been explicitly about his beef with pacifist philosophies LOL. Although he notably doesn’t go out looking for fights or starting them without good reason by any means. (I think this is a point of diversion between him and his imposter-self. Maybe. From what I’ve heard.)
Now backpedaling a bit, part of why all of his fairly healthy emotional and communicative traits are so charming to me is that he definitely is NOT without his issues. Idk how much you know about his backstory but for starters, he was abandoned and left to die as a baby, initially thought to be due to an Atlantean superstition regarding his purple eyes, surviving (mostly) on his own for a while and eventually being found by Arthur. Due to this, as well as the ambiguous and changeable state of his relationship with Arthur (whether they see each other as friends, brothers, or a father-son duo is. Complicated to say the least. It’s almost like a Jedi-Padawan type thing if you’re into star wars LMAO), Garth is kind of a walking hotbed of abandonment issues, theoretically at least. Like I said, he’s pretty healthy when it comes to expressing his needs and feelings. He's definitely more well-adjusted than Arthur ends up being.
Loneliness and a lack of belonging/identity are also huge themes with him as well. This is why the Titans are so important to Garth, even if his responsibilities and limitations prevent him from being a consistent member of the team. During maybe the first period where he genuinely doesn’t know where he stands with Arthur anymore, he goes off on his own to seek out his (purple-eyed) people and try to find his parents to give himself some sense of personal identity and find out who he is--as it turns out, he has immense trouble relating to them or even being civil with them at points, and ends up feeling like as much of an outcast with them as he does in Atlantis, ultimately realizing that his identity and who he fundamentally is are things that only he can decide for himself! Go Garth!
Some other issues he deals with are general insecurity and anxiety--these are mostly shown within the context of the Titans, where he’s often the odd one out as an Atlantean and severely limited in his abilities and effectiveness outside of the water (i.e. nearly suffocating to death all the time.) At the end of the original Teen Titans, Garth quits the team because he felt so deeply inferior and useless to them that it was making him actually severely physically ill to the point of passing out multiple times and people genuinely worrying he was going to die. That is a lot of anxiety. Though he doesn’t have nearly as much insecurity when he’s in the water, he's still shown to be A Worrier, and Tula makes fun of him for being too vigilant or in his own head, unable to loosen up and so on. Also, in his very first appearance, he is deathly afraid of fish!!!!!
Now for recs. First of all, if you’re insane or plan on being so in the future, this is a link to a complete reading order, which is what I’ve been loosely following. More specifically, Garth’s first appearance is in Adventure Comics #269. I would also recommend Adventure Comics #270 and #278. It’s some of the cutest shit ever, but it has little bearing on his later appearances.
From then I would go to Aquaman v1 (1962). Specifically #17-18, #23, #25, #33 (Tula intro!), and #40-47 (this arc is really drawn out and silly and Garth’s segments are mostly separate from the rest of the plot so after the first one you can honestly just skip through most of it until you see Garth or Tula LOL). He’s also in Teen Titans v1 during this time, I would read the first issue and then skip to #19, #28-29, #30, #40 (kilt moment), #45-53. Also, The Brave and the Bold (2008) #10 is a very cute story that focuses on Garth and takes place during this era.
Sort of concurrent to the Titans appearances is maybe the first major Aquaman storyline which you can find as a trade paperback (on readcomiconline lol) called Aquaman: The Death of a Prince. Basically Arthur is put through a meat-grinder of facing a bunch of his villains back to back, being deposed as the King of Atlantis, losing Arthur Jr., and as a result, becoming estranged from Garth and Mera. This is where you also find the first real expansion of Garth’s backstory.
Then he pops up in New Teen Titans (1980) #23 and #33. Tales of the Teen Titans #45-47 + #50. New Teen Titans (1984) #6. And then Crisis on Infinite Earths happens wherein Tula is killed. It’s very minor and not worth reading the whole thing just to see that if you’ve never read it before. He sticks with the New Teen Titans (1984) team for a spell when almost everyone in the usual team is gone and/or going through a mental breakdown from #19-26 I believe, and the grief makes him very quiet and distant, but he breaks through it by the end. Basically right after that are the events of Teen Titans Spotlight #10 with a very odd psychedelic story where he has like a telepathic battle with Mento lol, and later in #18 of the same book.
Congratulations, you are now caught up with me. This has also gotten disturbingly long, so I’m going to cut it off here. If you actually make it through all this and would like more recommendations for Garth past this point feel free to ask again. Or if you get sick of reading these older comics and don’t care about skipping ahead/potentially not understanding shit, he shows up pretty consistently in Aquaman v5 (and the excellent Tempest (1996) miniseries where he makes the moniker-switch takes place after I think #25 of that), and Titans (1999).
Bungo Stray Dogs BL Fic Recs
Archive of our own
Disclaimers!
None of the stories linked are mine.
Some contain mature content.
Read tags. Check Ratings.
GIF not mine.
Note: If you read any of these stories and like them please let the author know with a kudos and/or comment!
Shin Soukoku (AkuAtsu)
Dragonfruit by CheeseSandwjch
Summary: Akutagawa shows up at Atsushi’s house injured from a mission; Atsushi takes care of him.
{One Shot}
Rated - Teen & Up
The Cat and the Coat by lunakoroleva
Summary: It's pretty convenient that Dazai lends Atsushi his coat when he's paired up with Akutagawa. It's pretty convenient that it's cold as hell.
Akutagawa gets his first kiss. Rashomon is warm. Atsushi acts like a cat.
{One Shot}
Rated - General Audiences
Seven Days to Fall In Love with Akutagawa Ryuunosuke by its_just_me27
Summary: “Yeah,” Atsushi looks down, purposefully avoiding eye contact. “So, you have to stay here for the next seven days,” he mumbles quickly.
“Excuse me?”
“Y—you heard me,” he huffs. “I can’t help it.”
Complete | 7 Chapters
Rated - Teen & Up
Silver Lining by maxxstrom
Summary: Finding out that a lie has pervaded years of your life isn’t exactly a great way to end a mission, especially when it results in complete ignorance about your own biology. At twenty years old, Akutagawa had thought he was done learning about himself, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. As it turns out, he hardly knows a thing.
Alternatively, asexual “beta” Akutagawa finds out that he’s actually an omega and has to figure out how to deal with his first ever heat (a series of unfortunate events that ends with Aku getting railed within an inch of his life).
{One Shot}
Rated - Explicit
A Push in the Right Direction by PocketsizedDinosaur
Summary: Five times Rashomon and Beast Beneath the Moonlight try to get their users together and one time they finally manage to do it on their own.
Complete | 2 Chapters
Rated - General Audiences
If you’re brave enough to love the ones you hate the hardest (you might find home) by bloodyhalefire
Summary: For people like Gin and Ryuunosuke, things like love, comfort, and contentment have never been anything more than pipe dreams.
However, when Gin returns home from work one night to find Atsushi and Ryuu sleeping together on the sofa, she wonders if maybe they aren’t as unattainable as she thought.
{One Shot}
Rated - Teen & Up
I'll call your name by caramelt
Summary: “Of all places to discuss the case,” Atsushi said as they made their way back to the busy crowd, voice getting louder with every step as he fought to compete with the noise around them. He had finished his chazuke not long ago. “Why a summer festival?”
“Has it not occurred to you that I'm taking you out on a date?”
Oh. Oh.
— — —
Basically Akutagawa and Atsushi get together fluff.
{One Shot}
Rated - Teen & Up
I Love You (deeply) by SapphireSunstone
Summary: Akutagawa almost wishes he hadn’t heard it.
He wishes that there wasn’t another figure pressed up against him underneath his own bedsheets. Wishes that he hadn’t invited Atsushi to stay for the night when he realised how dark it had gotten. Wishes he hadn’t opened the door when the were-tiger had knocked.
Because now he has to deal with this.
{One Shot}
Rated - General Audiences
Series: Adventures in Partnership by guyfierimpreg
Summary: Partnership is a rocky road, but with Atsushi ramming down the clutch and Akutagawa working the shifter, they might actually get somewhere.
3 Works
Rated - General Audiences and Teen & Up
Stay by Glenraven
Summary: The port is loud with the caws of sea birds, the creak and clang of cranes and shipping containers, the rough calls of workers. Atsushi’s ears pick up all of the cacophony but parse none of it. All he can focus on are the words spoken by the dark figure in front of him, quietly, almost as though he is of half a mind not to be heard.
“Go out with me.”
Atsushi blinks. His ears don’t lie, but this isn’t making any sense.
“What?”
Akutagawa growls. “You heard me. Go out with me. This weekend. Let’s go somewhere.”
A hint of red crawls over Akutagawa’s cheeks. He wouldn’t blush if this were just a joke, would he?
{One Shot}
Rated - Teen & Up
and it was you by spirallings
Summary: Rashomon was Ryuunosuke's armor and his clothing created Rashomon. Even when his relationship with Atsushi bloomed into something more intimate, there was always that hesitation, that fear; to be vulnerable was to leave himself open for pain and hurt.
And then there wasn't anymore.
{One Shot}
Rated - Explicit
i just wanna know you by Wordless_Writer
Summary: "If he knew more, he supposed, about Akutagawa, about his pasts, his tics, his wishes... he wouldn't be having such a hard time right now. He'd know what to get him. How to... congratulate him...
Akutagawa hadn't been at the 'we defeated the guild' party and hadn't been mentioned in the local newspaper. When people approached Atsushi on the street, they never mentioned the person who had helped him. Who had been right next to him in the very picture that was published but cut out from the shot.
Atsushi didn't like Akutagawa... but he had helped so much... he deserved some..."
//////////////
or post guild arc atsushi tries to figure out how to congratulate aku
{One Shot}
Rated - SFW
With the Warmth of Your Arms, you Saved Me by Glenraven
Summary: Atsushi sputtered, eyes widened and cheeks red. Ryuu could practically watch his brain malfunctioning at the nickname. Since he was still wearing his shirt, he summoned a few tendrils of Rashoumon and had them wrap loosely around Atsushi’s wrists. “Can you keep them there for me, sweetie?” he smiled. “I need the use of both my hands to worship you.” Atsushi simply nodded, tugging lightly at the restraints to test their give. He could have easily ripped through them, but Ryuu knew that he liked the resistance and needed the reminder. He tended to have trouble keeping his hands off of Ryuu, and though Ryuu preened at being so irresistible, sometimes he really did like his dessert to sit quietly. _______ Ryuu makes it very clear to Atsushi how much he treasures him.
{One Shot}
Rated - Explicit
A Mind as Clear as Day by BrainRotgoBrrrrr
Summary: Atsushi woke up to nothing.
Just, plain, white, nothing at all.
He blinked. He could hear things. People. Machines. Whirring and talking.
He remembered his name. That was all. It floated around in his mind, bouncing and echoing until he heard it clearly in his ears.
or
Atsushi loses his memory and wakes up in hospital, feeling unsafe and not knowing to trust those around him
Incomplete | 5/? Chapters
Last Updated November 2023
Rated - Teen & Up
Dazai x Chuuya x Atsushi x Akutagawa
Unexpected Heat by Princess_Cherry
Summary: Akutagawa almost never even got his heat, Mori and Yosano agree that the cause is a combination of his sickness and his malnutrition as a child, his body couldn’t afford to have his heat often but once in a blue moon he got his heat and no one was ever ready for it
———————-
In which Akutagawa goes into unexpected heat and his mates need to be there for him.
One Shot | OmegaVerse
Rated - Explicit
Love to spare by Princess_Cherry
Summary: Dazai smiled, he felt blessed to have these three people in his life.
He really had love to spare. — — —
In which Akutagawa, Atsushi, Chuuya and Dazai celebrate their 2nd anniversary, it starts wholesome but quickly turns steamy.
{One Shot}
Rated - Explicit
Pretty Kitty by scribespirare
Summary: Certain things make Atsushi...well, lose control, so to speak.
{One Shot}
Rated - Explicit
electric by quitepossiblyjanuary
Summary: They're always a little sloppy, but it's one of Atsushi's favorite parts about them, that messiness. He loves the feeling of Akutagawa's nose squished up against his face, changing every few minutes because Akutagawa likes to tilt his head this way and that, testing which angle is best for sliding his tongue against Atsushi's lips. He loves the feeling of Akutagawa's lips slipping and catching on his chin, his cheeks, as they blindly move their mouths against each other, eyes closed and too happy to care about neatness.
{One Shot}
Rated - Explicit
Something, Somehow by the_cricket
Summary: Atsushi doesn't meet Dazai by the river, and he doesn't join the agency. He saves himself from starving and figures out how to live, but he still ends up involved with both the Port Mafia and the ADA. Also, it's silly.
Complete | 3 Chapters
Rated - General Audiences
Be Good by orphan_account
Summary: It came out more or less by accident.
--------
“Are you okay, Ryuu?” Atsushi’s concerned voice finally broke the silence that had descended on the table.
“Oh I think Ryuu is much better than okay,” Dazai answered for him, glancing at Atsushi out of the corner of his eye before returning his attention to the man in front of him. “Could it be that our little Ryuunosuke likes it when we tell him just how good he is?”
{One Shot}
Rated - Explicit
Pet-a-cat, pet-a-cat, mafia man by amythecinnabunny
Summary: Nakajima Atsushi has this nifty little trick where he turns into a cat to offer comfort to people. Somehow, it leads to dating Nakahara Chuuya — after an accidental Italian vacation, that is.
{One Shot}
Rated - General Audiences
Hidden Colors by we_burnin_shit_yo
Summary: Atsushi brings in a pouch of fingernail polishes and Chuuya proceeds to do their nails while Dazai and Akutagawa hang out in the kitchen for food before joining their boyfriends which results in a fluffy polysoukoku evening.
{One Shot}
Rated - n/a
Dazai x Chuuya
Of Pinot and Patience by ChaoticQuill
Summary: In the morning hours after a night with Dazai, Chuuya finds himself addled by doubts that he'll be left behind again. Dazai, in an uncharacteristic move, offers to be patient.
— — —
Or: Chuuya worries Dazai is going to leave him, and they decide not to have sex again until Chuuya has overcome those doubts. Hilarity ensues.
{One Shot}
Rated - Explicit
ART FOR EVERY BOOK I READ THIS SUMMER PART 3: THE SECRET HISTORY BY DONNA TARTT
Life got busy and I forgot about this project but now I’ve recommitted. Soon, you’ll have art for my entire 2024 summer book list!
(Guess who my favorite character was)
I worked hard to cross 6 books off of my 36 book long summer reading list. Yesterday I went to a thrift store and bought another 6 books. The breaking of my curse inevitably leads to its recreation.
Anyway! Does anyone want some pride flag art? Looking for prompts of any kind.
2.02 / my reading list is growing exponentially and now I'm playing catch up with it
I love a good medical drama. My mother, a nurse, raised me on ER and General Hospital, always pointing out all the plot lines that “would never happen in real life” but were really cool to watch on TV. My mother credits ER with pushing her toward her decades-long career in the operating room. So when I, a poor lost college sophomore who had gone to school to play French horn (French horn!) and found it wasn’t what I thought it would be, I did what I knew best to do and turned to TV. And on TV, I found House.
House had it all: a painkiller-addicted doctor with a smart mouth and a slap-worthy face, medical mysteries solved via CSI-style case-of-the-week format, and a beleaguered crew of sidekick physicians whose instincts were never quite as good as House’s. I would spend each episode studying the setup and trying to unravel what the medical culprit could be before the ultimate reveal. Instead of realizing that what I might want to be was a writer with a good plot, I missed the mark and decided I wanted to be a doctor.
Want to feel like you’re watching House, M.D. this Tuesday morning? Dig into Lisa Bubert’s new reading list on medical mysteries!
Does anyone have any reading recommendations for anarchist and communist theory stuff that focuses on disablity and disabled people
classic scifi novels by men r always like. page 1 here’s a cool scifi idea i had. page 2 i hate women so much it’s unreal
My new reading list! So far, I’ve got 杀破狼 done.
hunxi’s danmei awards 2.0! (aka 2022 edition)
Featuring the return of some categories such as:
Best Worldbuilding
Best Interrogation of Themes (aka the “Rent-Free Award”)
Best Moment That Wrecked Me (aka the Knifiest Award)
Best Beleaguered Side Character Award
Best Unreliable Narrator
As well as never-before-seen categories like:
Best Himbo
Most Brilliant Moment of Backstabbery
Most Ambitious Scope
Most Heartwrenching Line Delivery in an Audiodrama
…and more!
This year’s candidates in the running:
《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu by 一十四洲 Yi Shi Si Zhou
《不小心救了江湖公敌》 Bu Xiao Xin Jiule Jianghu Gong Di by 六木乔 Liu Muqiao (有声漫画 audiomanhua season 1)
《无双》 Wu Shuang by 梦溪石 Meng Xishi
《问鹿三千》 Wen Lu San Qian by 光合积木 Voicegem, 吼浪文化 Houlang Studio, and 斗木獬编剧工作室 Doumuxie Screenwriting Studio
《师弟还不杀我灭口》 Shidi Hai Bu Sha Wo Mie Kou by 子鹿 Zi Lu
《默读》 Mo Du by priest
《督主有病》 Du Zhu You Bing by 杨溯 Yang Su
《海中爵》 Hai Zhong Jue by 七药 Qi Yao
《哏儿》 Gen’er by 南北逐风 Nan Bei Zhu Feng
《杀破狼》 Sha Po Lang by priest
《金牌助理之弯弯没想到》 Jin Pai Zhu Li zhi Wan Wan Mei Xiang Dao by (nominally) 非天夜翔 Fei Tian Ye Xiang and (mostly) 传奇火箭队 The Legendary Rocket Team
(unmarked spoilers, including but not limited to these titles, under the cut. for introductions of these titles, click here. for last year’s danmei awards, click here)
Keep reading
Nighttime brain snacks
Calling all comic fan!!
Let’s give each other recs! I recommend World’s Finest by Mark Wait and a really cool comic series called Astro City.
The first comic in Astro City is of a family moving into a superhero city, it’s about an average family in a superhero world.
(This is mostly just me trying to get comic recs from people so I can make a reading list for the summer.)
if you're looking for further antipsych readings, i heavily recommend bruce cohen's psychiatric hegemony: a marxist theory of mental illness.
it would be one of the published academic books on the topic of psychiatry i would have the least amount of caveats for - together with anne harrington's mind fixers: psychiatry's troubled search for the biology of mental illness.
if you are already convinced that psychiatry, together with other sciences, evolved alongside capitalist development to serve bourgeois interests, ensure social control and legitimize the hegemonic world order - and that no amount of intradisciplinary reform can change this, short of total abolition - then you will likely not be learning much from this book. it does however lay the arguments very clearly, together with concise, clearly explained marxist theory about labor. it then goes on to tie psychiatry with other hegemonic structures - the family, most notably.
interestingly enough, it manages to completely avoid two of the most common pitfalls of this kind of text: it never places the issue with the use of drugs themselves, but with forced medication and lack of available information - and it never blames capitalism itself for the coercive and punishing character of psychiatry, inventing a precapitalistic mythical past where crazy people were fine.
a solid recommendation if you are trying to give an introduction to antipsychiatry concepts to someone!
YEEAAAAHHH I’ve been looking for more WEIRD books. I need some fucked up and confusing recommendations please.
Contemporary weird fiction reading list
A chart of New Weird books and other bizarre, unsettling, and uncanny literature published in the last 30 years or so. This is a follow-up to my previous chart of classic weird fiction and another selection from my list of over 200 works of weird literature.
Could you recommend other Latin American communists than José Carlos Mariátegui?
I should preface this by saying I’m mostly familiar with Mexican Marxism.
Ricardo Flores Magón and Enrique Flores Magón (extremely influential, communists in the rest of Latin America basically saw them as the ideologues of the Mexican Revolution),
César Vallejo (poet and associate of Mariátegui, his political writings are neglected),
M.N. Roy (very influential for the development of international communist anticolonial strategy),
Tristán Marof (was cooking some kind of insane things about Tawantinsuyu but interesting because of that),
Aníbal Ponce (historian and critic of education, a big missing piece if people only look at European critical theory and some of his takes on it precede Paulo Freire),
Aimé Césaire (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land is one of the greatest poems about the Caribbean)
José Revueltas (great analysis of the world significance of the Mexican Revolution and the repression of the social revolutionary elements of it),
Che Guevara of course (you’d be surprised how little Anglophone people actually read anything by him),
Walter Rodney (Groundings with my Brothers is a great book)
Pablo González Casanova (great sociologist, a lot of what he wrote goes well with Henri Lefebvre, influenced the EZLN),
Ruy Mauro Marini (one of the greatest dependency theorists, does a lot of interesting things with Marx’s Capital),
Beatriz Nascimento (one of the main theorists of the Movimiento Negro in Brazil and influenced a lot of the reassessment of maroons),
Michael Löwy (great for connecting critical theory, Latin American Marxism, and the concept of utopia),
Gustavo Esteva (critic of developmentalism and one of the better radical democracy theorists), René Zavaleta Mercado (also a great theorist of radical democracy),
Andaiye (formerly worked with Walter Rodney and influential for the development of feminist social reproduction theory),
Álvaro García Linera (one of the theorists who I think is the most consistent defending Lenin’s position on governance, for better or worse, and a meeting point between autonomist Marxism and indianismo), and
Aníbal Quijano (great work on the world historical significance of colonialism and imperialism in the Americas)
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (revolutionary decolonial theorist and critic of North American academic decolonial theory, has some very interesting interpretations of abstract labor and language)
Weekly Reading Challenge!
So, my summer break starts now and let's say that I'm gonna do this challenge. Basically, I'll try to finish the books given below :))
It's basically my reading list now xD
A Court Of Frost And Starlight - Sarah J Maas
Stalking Jack The Ripper series - Kerri Maniscalco (I have to start from the 3rd book)
Escaping from Houdini (3) (✓)
Becoming the dark prince (3.5) (✓)
Capturing the devil (4)
Let's see if i can complete it :D