Hi, if you're reading this you might be creating for me for the Rare Femslash Exchange. Thank you so much! I've put my general likes and DNWs on the sign-up on Ao3, but if you want more specific ideas on what to write, here it is. You don't have to adhere to it super closely though, as long as it matches up with my ships and doesn't have my DNWs I'll be super happy and appreciative.

General likes: Angst, toxic/unhealthy relationships, codependency, obsession, hurt/comfort, fluff, getting together, Canon Divergence AUs, Fantasy AUs, character studies, mutual pining, yearning please I LOVE yearning

General DNWs: Kid fics, pregnancy, pure wholesome fluff with no substance, drugs or drugging, Coffee Shop AUs, anything surrounding marriage, making the ship incest, making the ship child/adult, character bashing, MCD with the main ship

Chainsaw Man (Makima/Quanxi)

I usually like this ship one-sided with Quanxi pining after Makima, doesn't matter if it's real love or Makima manipulating her or a mix of both. But I also like if you want to make it mutual with Makima seeing her as amusing or a good pet or something like that, as long as she still feels like Makima. It's up to you.

Maybe the plot could be them meeting for the first time, or aversely them meeting after having known each other for a long time during the International Assassins arc. Or it could be Makima hiring Quanxi for a mission? Could be anything, I don't care too much about the plot itself as long as I get to see these two being fucked up.

The time setting can be during any period of Chainsaw Man, it can be pre-canon or during Part 1 or some other ambiguous time is fine. I would love to see Makima being evil and teasing Quanxi knowing Quanxi has feelings for her. AUs are okay as well.

I'm okay with Quanxi's fiend girlfriends being brought up or making appearances, but I don't want them to play a big role in the story please.

Likes: Manipulation (from Makima), power imbalance, toxicity, pining (from Quanxi)

DNWs: OOC, a healthy functioning relationship

Hazbin Hotel

Royalvelvette: I like the concept of obsession with these two. Charlie being obsessed with Velvette, or the other way around, or mutual obssesion, I'm down with whatever! It doesn't have to be that though, just a suggestion.

Maybe them having to work together because it would benefit both the Hotel and Voxtek? Charlie trying to be patient and nice while Velvette degrades her is so good. Maybe she even likes it a little. Or her trying to be angry at Vel when Vel does something evil but she keeps getting distracted by how beautiful she is and how attracted to her she is.

Charlie cheating on Vaggie would be good too, but she has to feel super duper uber guilty about it.

Charlute/Emilute/Charemilute: My tastes for these three ships are mostly the same, I just want to see their ideals clash. With Charlute I could see Charlie being angry about Lute trying to kill Vaggie. I think Emily would be slightly more patient and kind with Lute compared to Charlie, who might anger quicker.

I could see Lute being surprised when Emily shows her kindness even when they disagree, like refusing to use force on Lute (as a Seraphim I imagine she's more powerful than Lute). She hates both Charlie and Emily's naivete. Or maybe Charlie and Lute fighting when Lute tries to make good on her promise to kill Vaggie?

Like I said, I'm down for everything, I would just love to see where you take these characters.

Likes: Canon setting, canon-divergence AUs, enemies to lovers, enemies AND lovers, forced proximity, forcibly dragging Lute into becoming a better person, heteronormativity/internalised homophobia (with Velvette and Lute)

DNWs: Aside from general DNWs, I'm fine with anything

Persona 5 (Sumire/Futaba)

While NSFW for the other two fandoms is fine, I would prefer to not get sexual content for this one!

My tastes so far have been not-very-wholesome I admit, but I like fluffier and cuter stuff for this fandom. Of course if you want to add some more unhealthy dynamics here I'm not opposed to that either, so you can really take it either way.

A getting-together story would be nice for these two, whether it's post-canon or during the events of the game. Maybe Sumire the athlete trying to teach Futaba how to work out after so long holed up in her room, or Futaba sharing her interests with Sumire. Some hurt/comfort with their trauma would be cool too.

For an angstier take, I could also see Sumire pining after Joker and being attracted to Futaba because Futaba is Joker's younger sister figure and she sees Joker in her. Then by the end she realises she really likes Futaba as herself, not just a Joker "replacement". I also like Shuake so maybe Futaba having negative feelings about her older brother being in love with her mother's killer would be juicy, especially with Sumire who is close to both Joker and Akechi. Honestly any interactions with these two about anything would be good.

AUs are okay too.

Likes: Metaverse adventures, partnership/reliance on one another, emotional hurt/comfort, introspection on mental illness, Sumire being a little fucked up as a result of her trauma (well this goes for both of them but Sumire especially), outsider POV

DNWs: Joker and Akechi with anyone except each other (if they do show up), explicit sexual content between the main ship (suggestive is okay), unhappy/bad ending

NSFW

If you want to write NSFW for CSM or Hazbin, here are my likes and dislikes for that. I also have set preferences when it comes to positions/dynamics so please respect that haha ˋ( ° ▽、° )

Likes: Size difference, overstimulation, sex pollen/aphrodisiacs, intercrural, teasing, edging, rough sex, breeding kink, virginity kink, begging, biting, Charlie lowkey being a pervert, Quanxi worshipping Makima

DNWs: Shibari, noncon, emeto, hypnosis, piss/watersports, scat, vore, feederism, underage

Preferences:
Makima: Bottom, dom
Quanxi: Top, sub
Charlie: Top, switch
Emily: Vers, switch
Lute: Bottom, sub
Velvette: Bottom, switch

And that concludes my dear creator letter! I hope it isn't too long and picky. I'm open to a lot of things, so as long as it's according to my DNWs, I'll be happy! Even if it's completely different from any ideas I suggested. Thank you! <3

I read this story a long time ago, I reckon when my brain had hardly been formed. Ten years old? Eleven? I retained the general plot, but forgot all about the rest. So when I failed to find Hamlet at the bookstore, I thought I'd pick up a Kafka collection and experience this for the first time again.

What I wasn't ready for is how extremely, heartachingly sad this story is. There were so many parts where I got close to crying, and so many parts where I actually did shed a few tears. The third person narration of Gregor rends your heart apart. His love for his family radiates through every single word and to see it met with callousness, cruelty, and fear is awful. This is an awful awful book in the best way possible.





It's through this sadness that we properly glean what the story is unsubtly trying to say about capitalism. In his family where he is the sole provider and the rest of his family is content to take from him (and which he is content to provide because he loves them so much), Gregor is only seen as their means of survival, their cash cow. He worked day in and day out, a corporate slave while his healthy father and mother did nothing. And the very first time he was late to work, all they cared about was getting him there, because to them that was all he was and all he lived to do. Which is also a view shared by Gregor himself, no doubt shaped by the world they lived in. He turned into a literal insect (I know the original simply used the word 'vermin', but my copy straight up translates it as 'cockroach') and his first thought was "How am I going to get to work?" How visceral and terrible.

There are just so many things about this. The way his sister initially wanted to take away his furniture because she saw he enjoyed crawling over the walls; but as time passed and she started caring less and less, she was fine with everyone shoving unwanted furniture and junk into his room. Every act of kindness from her is bittersweet in the way that she is trying to care, but she can't even bring herself to look at him or come close to him, her brother, her brother who had loved her so much he was going to pay to send her to the conservatory. Because he was the only one who cared about her music passion. Her parents don't, the later tenants don't, but after so long in isolation Gregor came out just to hear her play. Grete is not hateable like her parents or the other characters, especially considering she's a child, but she too lapses into hating Gregor by the end. Their relationship stabbed me all throughout this book.

Not to mention his father, throwing apples at him, and one of it literally embedding itself into his flesh. He can't move around freely or crawl anymore, one of his few pleasures taken away from him. And later on his father gets angry at his lumbering movements when it was his violence that had caused it in the first place. He laments saying that Gregor can't understand them, even though he very much can, and it's the family that never attempted to understand him.

All this embeds itself in Gregor just like the apple. The descriptions of his self-hatred were so real. He had done no crime, had never intended to hurt anyone, and yet everyone including himself hated him like he had. When his father was a useless financial burden, the rest of the family was quick to love him and be affectionate over him. But when it was Gregor's turn to be taken care of unconditionally, he was turned away, and he thinks it's his fault for the sin of existing.

And the end where he dies and his family practically rejoices, moves away, starts a new life that's better and warmer, as if the universe itself is celebrating Gregor's death. They're so much happier without him, and it's horrible. I genuinely had a pit in my stomach by the end of this story. You just don't stop feeling for Gregor. He worked and when he stopped working, he was unloved and died.

The writing style is great. Easy to understand, but no less detailed for it. Some of the descriptions of Gregor's new body were very vivid. It's dry, which fits Gregor's characterization as a man who had dedicated his life to working and providing. But despite its unfeeling style of prose, you can feel the emotion very clearly. Just like how Gregor, despite now being mostly unable to show it in a way his family can understand, still felt very strongly. He was in a cockroach's body, but his human emotions are overwhelming in the narrative.

This is short, around 60 pages. But in those 60 pages this story makes you feel for and understand Gregor, the dynamics of his family, and how capitalism indelibly ruins our lives and our human connections. 9.5/10.

My first foray into Sylvia Plath! I've heard good things about The Bell Jar (though I never particularly felt the desire to read it myself), so when I saw her name at the library and that pretty red and blue cover I thought I'd try this story out.

And I'm grateful I did! It was a great story, and wonderfully concise especially after the behemoth that was Anna Karenina. Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom perfectly builds characters, creates an atmosphere, and conveys a plot all in the span of 40 pages.

Train stories are always a pleasure, and this one builds the vibe of it so well, even if in this case the train isn't just a setting but also an essential and core element of the story. The whole story reads like a dream, very surreal and absurd but no less gripping for it.

Initially I thought the ninth kingdom was a metaphor for death in general. But as I continued reading and neared the ending the picture that formed in my head was that the train and its ticket were suicide, that all of its passengers had killed themselves; and that the ninth kingdom was hell. The world that Mary emerges into at the end isn't the living world but rather heaven, or just another more ideal plane of existence, having successfully escaped the damnation of hell.

The train could also be, inversely, life. Considering it's Mary's parents who set her on the trip to the ninth kingdom to begin with, one could say it's more about deciding your own path in life... that instead of going to someone else's desired destination, Mary chooses for herself to escape, and she comes out of it on the other side happier.

Of course the book is very much up to interpretation though. It trusts its reader to make something out of it, which is something I enjoy. The writing style is lovely, so descriptive and atmospheric. The part leading up to Mary's escape, and her back-and-forth with the old lady, was very tense and well-written. Fast-paced as it is, it feels well built up to and appropriately exciting.

I do wish it was a bit more in-depth. If it had 10 or so more pages, I would've loved to read what Plath could've cooked up, perhaps more details that would lend itself to the picture in her head. Because while I did compliment its vagueness and how open to interpretation it was, I would have appreciated just a little more to chew on.

Regardless, what a brilliant story that gets an 8.5/10 from me.

I finished Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy today. What a ride... it feels strange to finally put a rest to the novel I've been painstakingly working through since March. I have a lot of thoughts.

Firstly, Anna and Vronsky; I don't care too much for them as a couple, to be honest. Or to be more accurate I never really saw them as a happy couple or ever rooted for them to be happily together. I really like Anna as her own character, Vronsky not so much, but together as lovers I struggle to see their chemistry and I never really delighted in their moments together. The fact that they love each other feels more told than it is shown. I have no idea whether this was the intention or not.

This in contrast to Kitty and Levin, who I liked very much. I think they're very sweet together. I love Kitty and how cheerful and enthusiastic she is. I especially enjoyed the middle chapters about her youth pre-marriage to Levin, she is just such a likeable character to follow and even from the beginning I felt very fond of her. I like Levin as well, partially maybe because I relate so much to him... I like that he's socially awkward, that he gets jealous easily, that he can at once be very knowledgeable but also clueless. I have to admit whenever the POV switched to Kitty or Levin, I internally cheered.


I loved the scene where Levin visits his brother Nicholas as he dies, as morbid as it sounds. I like how much it shows off Kitty's strength, that she is the level-headed and active one in comparison to Levin. And I find it deeply relatable how Levin was always, of course, on some level aware of the concept of death, but it is through this death of someone close to him that he suddenly becomes truly awakened to what it is and that it exists.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy the Anna/Vronsky bits at all. All I wish is that I felt a little something more for them. But I still liked reading their chapters, especially toward the end as their relationship crumbled apart. (It's during these later chapters that I dislike Vronsky more and more, even if I do get that's the point).

One part that will especially stick with me is the scene where Anna is going to the station and she looks at the world around her and can only regard it with hate. When all the pain she's suffered has clouded her vision and she can no longer see any good in anything. Even where you might expect it, she finds a way to twist it into something ugly. It feels so human and real. And the last moment before her suicide where she sees the joy in the world once more, but it still doesn't stop her from killing herself, really strikes me. Again at the risk of sounding morbid, what an amazingly written death scene.

This book came with notes, ones that compared Levin and Vronsky, no doubt because they're both the "males" of the two main couples. But in my opinion, it feels more appropriate to compare Anna and Levin. Because they are the two main protagonists who we spend the most time with, yes, but also because the paralleling arcs feel to me centred around their inner world. Anna's search for passionate love, which ends in tragedy, against Levin's simple way of living and the hopeful note it ends on despite his numerous existential crises (though perhaps it would be more accurate to say this book is one singular long existential crisis for Levin). Regardless of whether it's luck or fate, Levin finds an answer to the question he asks, even if it's not an absolute one. Anna does not, or maybe she does but she cannot bring herself to live with it.

And I know some people say that Levin is the true protagonist, but I don't think that's true either... he seems more in-depth because he was in part Tolstoy's self-insert and thus a lot of his thoughts are the author's own, but I think they complete each other, much the way their stories do. Without one, the other one's symbolic autobiography is incomplete.

Other characters and aspects I liked were Dolly and Karenin. I thoroughly enjoyed Dolly's perspective whenever it switched to her, especially her views on motherhood and her own war with herself, admiring Anna for acting on her heart's desires, something Dolly could not do. I think it's a really realistic depiction of these two noblewomen stuck in an oppressive society. Karenin's chapters were sometimes more boring I admit, but I do enjoy that Tolstoy also made him a sympathetic character. The tone of his narrative was robotic and unfeeling and it really fit Karenin's own personality.

When it comes to writing style, I like how realistic it feels. This may just be the general state of Russian literature at the time, but it feels distinct from Dostoevsky... I can't put my finger on it, but it's there. It tells us through excruciating detail every single feeling and thought a character has. It makes you feel like you know the characters so intimately. Of course this does result in lots of meandering, chapters upon chapters focused on just one happening, and I don't blame anyone who may find it a bit of a slog (I too got a bit frustrated in the less interesting chapters), but in the end I think it's mostly a plus of the novel. They feel like real people that could have existed.

Related to that, I do have mixed feelings on how absurdly long this book is. As I've seen many people point out, I feel like this book could convey much the same message and characters while being 200 pages shorter. This is my main gripe with the book, that there are many chapters that feel too boring, superfluous even. But also, I don't know that I would feel as deeply about it in the end if it lacked pages upon pages of detail and character study and thought. So while I do wish it was easier to read and more concise with what it was trying to say, I also can't say concretely "Man, Tolstoy should've written this way shorter". It probably wouldn't be Tolstoy in that case xd.

I feel that there's a lot in this book that I missed largely because I'm totally ignorant when it comes to Russian history and politics, which is a shame and probably contributed to me not being entertained as I could have been. I also think I would understand it better and be able to pick up on more of its intended themes if I reread it. But 800 pages... if I ever end up giving it a second read, it'll be a long time from now.

Overall, I liked it. It was a good read, especially toward the end when everything started to come together. I devoured the last 300 pages in less than a week! If you can get past its intimidating length and the fact that it's very much a product of its time with its commentary on Russian society and philosophy, I would recommend it. A solid 7.5/10!

There are academic strikes today so class has been cancelled. I'm getting a video of a lecture instead, which is in some ways worse. But at least I can lounge around at home for just a day later, which is what I'm best at.

I missed some work that I was supposed to submit a few days ago (oops) and I have to drill it into myself that it won't happen again. I have a presentation due tomorrow but the work seems really simple so far and I'm already halfway done with my part, so it shouldn't be any stress. I also need to work on readings for Law, but that's a problem for future me.

Once I'm done with this work I'm going to make Buldak and continue reading Anna Karenina. I'm on page 590-ish so I hope to be done by the end of the year. I have a lot of thoughts on it, so I'm thinking I might write a review of it as well on here; I could do it on Storygraph as well but I like that this journal is more personal and it's way easier to keep track of my own thoughts.

If I can resist the urge to play Minecraft some more, which I doubt, I might continue writing the Reynazel fic or get started on the Frank/Nico one-shot. If I don't... well.

for 10trueloves
Character claim: Frank Zhang (Heroes of Olympus)
Progress: 1/10

Suffering from writers' block recently and I want an excuse to write more Frank rarepairs, so hopefully doing something fun like this will help me feel less wonky.

01.	Heartbeat.	02.	Music.	03.	Memory.	04.	Food.	05	Insomnia.
06.	Afterglow.	07.	Holiday.	08.	Moonlight.	09.	Rainbow.	10.	Playful.

made this mostly to keep track of fandom events and such. might post more if i like the feel of it :) yay