thegoodbutter

Latest Posts by thegoodbutter

yes & no by natalie wee

Savannah Brown, from Closer Baby Closer; “Notes on your dramatic exit from the house party”

[Text ID: “OH YOU DO LOVE THEM / YOU DO / JUST NOT / IN THE WAY THAT LETS BOTH OF YOU LIVE”]

Kinship

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Very slowly burning, the big forest tree stands in the slight hollow of the snow melted around it by the mild, long heat of its being and its will to be root, trunk, branch, leaf, and know earth dark, sun light, wind touch, bird song.

Rootless and restless and warmblooded, we blaze in the flare that blinds us to that slow, tall, fraternal fire of life as strong now as in the seedling two centuries ago.

Reading with Ru: Aug/Sept Fic Recs

I know I'm certainly in need of some positivity and escapism lately, so I'm gonna try to do semi-regular fic and book recs! Starting with a retroactive what I've been reading from the past couple of months with this account! (I might go back in time and make an all-time rec list later)

COD

starting with cod because i know most of you go here

Sergeant Squeaks by @charliemwrites - (series of one-shots ghost x reader and price x reader separately) both one of my favourite reader characters and my favourite canon setting depictions of Ghost and Price. their own weird brands of showing love are wonderful; the tension leading to getting together is fantastic, and the sex is super enjoyable.

Ghost Stories by @kneelingshadowsalome - (ghost x medic!reader) I'm repeating myself, but I love Salome's writing. This is where I was first introduced to it, and I think it's really special. Ghost POV as he struggles with developing and then accepting love. felt so real and grounded. angsty and then fluffy, and you can't help but adore the reader as well.

saltwater by @ceilidho - (ghost x reader) It's pretty unlikely any of you don't know Ceil, but on the off chance you haven't given this one a read yet, it really is a must. I lump praise on her pretty regularly, but I don't know anyone who is able to portray their character's emotions as intimately as Ceil. her ghost feels really grounded in all his complexity. there is a common theme in these recs of really enjoyable reader characters, and this is not an exception; the reader feels like a full but still ambiguous character who is vulnerable and strong and really great.

don't leave me locked in your heart by @ohbo-ohno - (ghoap x reader dark!) we all know bo, we all love bo. I always love the way she depicts ghost and soap's dynamic changing and evolving to include the reader. the descent into dark territory in this is really really fun. It's also just hot and well-written! if you haven't read it before, go read it, and then go read all of bo's drabbles and asks on here. genuinely one of my favourite dark but still fun writers. I think she balances it really well.

body electric by @yeyinde and Afterburn by @sprout-fics - (141 + Los Vaqueros x reader) a classic. I've returned to these so many times. sometimes you just want to read dirty, filthy, well done, smut and then warm cozy aftercare. not to wax poetic about pure sex (except that's exactly what one should do), but I think it can be really hard to write group sex like this and still have such insightful and individual glimpses into each character and dynamic, and Lev does it wonderfully. and then it's also hard to find good aftercare fic, and Sprout's feels like literal aftercare for both the reader character and the reader.

other fandoms

tried to curate to themes i think overlap in some of the cod works! and I think most of these can be read fandom blind.

i revisited @winterrose527's fic in August, and even though she already knows how much I love her work, I won't skip a chance to repeat it. Anna writes for asoiaf and is pretty much the queen of Robb Stark/Myrcella Baratheon, but I would say the modern AUs (my favs) can be read almost completely fandom blind. Any contemporary romance enjoyer would love her work. I'm really partial to her kid/single-parent fics. I think it's so hard to get right, and I always adore reading her kid characters and how she approaches love stories when kids are involved. anna's works are always brimming with love and incredible platonic, familiar, parent-child, and romantic relationships (if kid fic isn't your thing she also has a ton of other great fics). personal favs: We Could Be a Little Something, And There They Are, All the Same

Lawless by @goldcranes - (arthur morgan x ofc) age difference, cowboy love story, essentially a romance novel. if goldcranes has no fans, I'm dead. I encourage you to explore her work; very few people write as strongly across multiple fandoms as she does, and each of her works feels like a really strong love story with special characters.

The Odyssey by @sunlightmurdock - (bradley bradshaw x reader) 1980's roman literature prof x virgin student - no need to know top gun. katie's work is another entry in the 'feels like it stands really strongly separately from the source material' category. she has multiple ongoing AU's that I really love, but this one is a favourite. i think she does complex characters really well - their actions always feel intentional, and as flawed as they are, I always love them.

Wouldn't it be Nice by allyoops - (m/f captive ABO) if you aren't reading original works smut on ao3 you are missing out and allyoops is a great place to start for noncon, dubcon, age gap, taboo etc. enjoyers. they have a ton of works; usually one shots with lots of really delicious dynamics and different settings and tropes.

An Intoxicating Presence by FormerlyIR - (mob abo haladriel) MOB. ABO. HALADRIEL. picks up with Halbrand in prison thanks to undercover FBI agent (and his mate!) Galadriel. does that sound crazy and awesome? well it is. mix it with Gal's internal struggle, the added complication of omegaverse, and overall great writing. really fun and really damn good.

civitas terrena by banalityofweevil - (darklina) angel Alina on an exploration of love in immortality with fallen angel Aleks. honestly, it's just a must-read for enjoyers of writing. incredibly creative with divine (literally and figuratively) imagery. i think one of my comments was on the precision of lulu's diction and I really stand by that.

tinsel into gold by ribbonedhare - (darklina) ddlg and cnc friends, this changed me. it is so warm and soft and my god, is it good. just scrumptious.

Be My Babydoll by KittyDruthers - (darklina) ddlg dollification need I say more

Emma Mackey and Oliver Jackson-Cohen in EMILY (2022) dir. Frances O'Conner

Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars

of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,

the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders

of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is

nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned

in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side

is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world

you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it

against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

—  In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

Glass Onion + Text Posts (part 1)

My father charged me once to give you a message if anything happened to him. He feared you might believe he distrusted you. He wanted you to know he never suspected you. He wanted you to know he always trusted you completely, always loved you and cherished you. He said he would sooner have mistrusted himself and he had but one regret—that he never made you his Duchess.

OSCAR ISAAC and REBECCA FERGUSON DUNE 2021 | Denis Villeneuve

stuff in the secret history that’s not even that abnormal like literally just a normal part of being in college

- frankly? the fact that richard becomes friends with them so quick and is like “these are the best friends of my life we will hang out forever and ever and ever” even though anyone with an outsider’s perspective would be like “bro these people are weird and toxic as hell”

- you can’t sign up for classes that seem like they would be very easy to sign up for and the only explanation an advisor will give you is that “professors are weird about this kind of stuff” and you’re like… isn’t that… your job… to get me into the class anyway???

- “ ‘were you at lunch?’ she meant had i been out of the room yet that day. i said i hadn’t.”

- when henry is like richard you were in stem for a hot minute right? can you do this extremely complex calculus/chemistry problem for me? and richard is like well first of all chemical substances are measured in moles and henry’s like what’s a mole

- that moment when richard is pacing frantically around his room thinking “oh my god i’ve been in college for three years and i still have no idea what i want to do with my life oh my god oh my god and i have to fill out these financial aid papers right fucking now because my major no longer exists” lmao that’ll happen

- the fact that simultaneously it’s the most action-packed and plot-twist-filled book ever and yet if you read closely sixty percent of the book is like “i woke up late. after class i did homework for five hours. no one talked to me. then i went and ate dinner at the dining hall. nobody talked to me there, either”. that’s exactly what college feels like!

- when richard finds out his friends committed murder and immediately has to finish his essay that’s due that day

- when they kill bunny and that’s the week that julian assigns them so much work that none of them would be able to do it even under normal circumstances

- when francis is like “richard you need to drive me to the hospital i think i’m having a heart attack” and the doctor is like “what you have is anxiety” and francis is like nah that can’t possibly be it

- “metahemeralism’s gotta be the ticket here, see?”

Getting to Know You Game

Thanks for the tag @sparrowsaidwhat

Favorite color: plum (occasionally dandelion yellow, occasionally brick; to be honest, I’m not sure what it actually is)

Currently reading: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Last song you listened to? Love U Forever by Jenny Lewis is playing right now.

Last series you watched? started the latest season of The Crown and have no plans of finishing it 

Last movie you watched? I’ve now watched Emily (2022) fourteen times.

Sweet/ Savory/ Spicy? spicyyyy  — I slather everything with hot sauce

Currently working on? Cannibals Chapter 3, Hunger and Appetite Chapter 4, and also a lil something for Christmas :)

Tagging: @cherubnoona, @babeblox, @banalityofweevil, @wingardium-fic and you know, everyone else who wants to do this should just do it. 

"my dearest emma," said he, "for dearest you will always be, whatever the event of this hour's conversation, my dearest, most beloved emma - tell me at once. say 'no', if it is to be said." she really could say nothing. "you are silent," he cried, with great animation; "absolutely silent! at present i ask no more." emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of the moment. the dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most prominent feeling.

Morgan Parker, Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night; “Greetings from Struggle City”

[Text ID: For a taste of your neck I would / burn my tongue]

July 1949.

The Myth of Innocence

by Louise Glück

One summer she goes into the field as usual stopping for a bit at the pool where she often looks at herself, to see if she detects any changes. She sees the same person, the horrible mantle of daughterliness still clinging to her.

The sun seems, in the water, very close. That’s my uncle spying again, she thinks— everything in nature is in some way her relative. I am never alone, she thinks, turning the thought into a prayer. Then death appears, like the answer to a prayer.

No one understands anymore how beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers. Also that he embraced her, right there, with her uncle watching. She remembers sunlight flashing on his bare arms.

This is the last moment she remembers clearly. Then the dark god bore her away.

She also remembers, less clearly, the chilling insight that from this moment she couldn’t live without him again.

The girl who disappears from the pool will never return. A woman will return, looking for the girl she was.

She stands by the pool saying, from time to time, I was abducted, but it sounds wrong to her, nothing like what she felt. Then she says, I was not abducted. Then she says, I offered myself, I wanted to escape my body. Even, sometimes, I willed this. But ignorance

cannot will knowledge. Ignorance wills something imagined, which it believes exists.

All the different nouns— she says them in rotation. Death, husband, god, stranger. Everything sounds so simple, so conventional. I must have been, she thinks, a simple girl.

She can’t remember herself as that person but she keeps thinking the pool will remember and explain to her the meaning of her prayer so she can understand whether it was answered or not.

Can you do a web about the crossing of foreign languages, like two people of different translations meeting and communicating despite the barrier? Just generally linguistics I suppose.

Robert A. Johnson, The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden

Andrew Sean Greer, Less

Wiktionary definition of the Irish Gaelic word for ‘pulse’, chuisle

  Jack Gilbert, The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

Call the Midwife (2012–), 1x01

Andrés Neuman, ‘Translating Each Other’ in World Literature Today (trans. George Henson)

Erich Segal, The Class

Nizar Qabbani, Language

Love, Actually (2003) dir. Richard Curtis

Peter Newmark, A Textbook of Translation

Kim Thúy, Ru

 R. F. Kuang, Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence

Luigi Pirandello, One, None and a Hundred Thousand (trans. Samuel Putnam)

Sierra Demulder, ‘Heart Apnea’ from The Bones Below

Andrea Gibson, Maybe I Need You

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Anaïs Nin, from Incest: From a Journal of Love [ID in alt text]

will you be my tumblr fren pls

I'll be your friend everywhere, darling

his big wet eyes and loser boy personality have captivated me

There’s something ungodly about you. In your writing. In your poetry. I feel it when we’re together.

I'm (still) into you!

🐦

No. Laurie. What? You’re being mean. What? How am I being mean? Stop it! Stop it! I have been second to Jo my whole life in everything, and I will not be the person you settle for just because you cannot have her. I won’t do it. I won’t. Not when I’ve spent my entire life loving you.

hi may I request a web on grandmas? missing mine very much right now ♥

Jaki Shelton Green, for grandma

Nickole Brown, For Our Grandmothers

Bill Withers, Grandma’s Hands

My grandma and me at the beach, c. 2001

Naomi Shibah Nye, The Words Under the Words

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Florence + The Machine, Only If For A Night

Yolanda Wisher, no more grandma poems

Philip Schultz, Grandma Climbs

Nikita Gill, On Love

Jaki Shelton Green, i know the grandmother one had hands

Blind Melon, Vernie

Crystal Wilkinson, Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts

Jericho Brown, Heart Condition

Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina

Taylor Swift, marjorie

JP Infante, Yasica, Puerto Plata

Kathleen Flinn, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good

John Denver, Grandma’s Feather Bed

Not a request exactly but I was wondering, what are some of your top quotes / poems from this past year? Things that stuck with you, whether new or not; things that resonated deep inside you, that got you through another year?

Okay, so, it turns out that I actually have quite a few of these because I have read a lot more since I started this blog, so I'm just going to link a fuckton of poems and miscellanea that I liked enough to bookmark as I made webs and hope you like them too:

LET YOUR DAD DIE ENERGY DRINK by Daniel Lavery and Cecilia Corrigan, and it's follow up WIRE MOTHER ENERGY DRINK

I love all of @animauxing's gorgeous ACNH comics, but especially these two

Great Things Have Happened by Alden Nowlan

Crystal Wilkinson's article Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts

The lyrics to Hiding All Away by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

The full version of The Old Astronomer by Sarah Williams, which I had only ever read a single stanza from before this year

Obedience, or the Lying Tale by Jennifer Chang

Holly Warburton. Just... all of her artwork. All of it.

I knew about Ocean Vuong a while ago, and I knew he was good - really good - but I never quite comprehended how good until I read Prayer for the Newly Damned for the first time and immediately burst into tears

Betrayal by William Hathaway

The Death of Antinoüs by Mark Doty

Jared Singer's spoken word poem The Last Love Letter From an Entomologist (and a transcript for those like me who need to have something to read along with)

@billypotts's epiphany about love and personhood

acknowledgments by Danez Smith

Leila Chatti's poem about grief, What Willl Happen, which was the first thing in twelve years that let me forgive myself for the way I reacted to the death of a girl I knew when I was ten years old. If I had to pick a single thing I read that changed me in 2021, this would be it

Planning Ahead Can Make a Difference in the End by Aaron Freeman

Saturday's Child by Countee Cullen

Cavetown’s Boys Will Be Bugs, which will likely be the song of 2021 in my memory

Feel free to reblog or reply with your own favourites! I'd love to see them <3

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) // Tom and Greg: Succession S02 E08 "Dundee" (2019)

— Sunrise, by Louise Glück

Aemond Targaryen + little things that make me feel like I need to be tranquilized.

oh dorianne laux we're really in it now

[photo credit]