(With all fics I recommend, I encourage you to read the description and warnings.)
Breathing by stratumgermanitivum
36K words. An angsty, slow-burn, friends to lovers fanfic. I like this fic because of how realistic it is. Neither boy is OOC. Best line: “But you know what, there’s plenty of people who believe in a God who’d accept him just the way he is. Scars and all. So you and your God can fuck off.”
The No Strings series By Slythaheart
19 parts ranging from 1k to 12.5k words. My favorite glee fanfiction ever. Slythaheart is probably the best smythofsky writer out there and this series? *chef’s kiss*. A fun, smutty, somewhat slow-burn series with a wonderful ending! Best line: “I’m so happy right now.”
Conventionality Belongs to Yesterday by Slythaheart
34k words. Fun! this fic is just too fun. It is a Grease rewrite but with our boys as Rizzo and Kenickie as opposed to Danny and Sandy. If you’re in the mood for a fun lighthearted read, try it out! Best line: “Well, I’ll give you seventy-five cents for the whole car, including your twink!”
****So fanfiction.net is a little rough but I swear some of the best Smythofsky fics are there******
Everything Just Happens by scarleteyes21
54k words. ANGST!! This is full of slow-burning angst and I live for it. Somewhat ooc but the story is interesting so I don’t mind. Best line: “If you decide to go to Sebastian and he is stupid enough to let you go…again, then will you let me catch you?”
The Bear and the Chipmunk by ImaginedInsanity
58.1k words. Trigger warning: Sexual assault is a major theme through the story. If that may upset you than please skip this one. If not, I highly recommend this angsty beautiful fic about two hurt people learning how to be together without hurting each other. Best line: “Because I feel like it’s special when it’s with you…”
Of meerkats and moving forward by LahLah87
55.7k words. Another fumbling, slow-burn, friends-to-lovers fic that makes this ship so great. This ship will never be the couple that everything is instantly perfect for… But it is so fun to read about them trying. Best line: “But then there was Dave; Dave, who’d looked beyond his tarnished reputation and fallen in love with the lonely, miserable boy underneath.”
Well, those were my favorite multi-chaptered Smythofsky fics! Please let me know if you are the one person that would like me to put together a rec list of oneshots for this dying ship! Xx
every person can feel freddie’s presence in their souls when they sing MAMAAAAAA UUHHHH, I DONT WANNA DIE, I SOMETIMES I WISH I’VE NEVER BEEN BORN AT ALL with all the air in their lungs i’m not joking
it’s fucking crazy to think about the amount of people who have sung bohemian rhapsody? like it’s such a unifying song, by nature of the fact that so many people know it. it holds so many good memories for me and other people. it’s a song you scream in the car with your friends while you drive around your boring hometown, it’s a song you drunkenly sing with your arm around your best friend, or a song you sing along to with strangers when it’s on in public. it’s bittersweet to think about freddie’s legacy carrying on like that through his masterpiece. freddie carries on because he’s a part of so many people’s good memories and bohemian rhapsody is a huge part of that.
Only days before my state went into lockdown, “Bohemian Rhapsody” came on in the restaurant kitchen I’d just been hired at and, no shit, every single worker in that little diner started singing along. Me (the only queer afaik), the manager, all the other kitchen workers, the dishwasher up front, the two people on the counter, all but two of the men over 30. Just belting out Freddie Mercury at the top of their lungs. And you can bet when “sometimes I wish I’d never been born at all” came around, we every single one of us ramped up the intensity and basically made sure Freddie could hear us in the afterlife.
One of the things that struck me, listening to the video, is that you cannot distinguish the original vocals from the crowd, and sometimes you can barely hear the music. And the POV is on the stage the speakers are playing the song from!
There’s good reason why, nearly fifty years after the height of their career, Queen is still considered one of the best bands of all time ever.
(And how albums left lying about in cars will eventually metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.)
Something else that’s rather incredible about this is, Bohemian Rhapsody is a very difficult song from a technical standpoint. Like–humor me, okay, go flip it on and try to sing the whole thing at the top of your voice without falling off-key, out of breath, or cracking at least once. Then come back.
Okay. You’re back? Welcome back. Unless you’re a trained singer, you probably can’t do it. There are too many long notes, too many key changes, and too many places where–if you’re singing all the parts–you’re just up and down the scale too damned fast. I’m saying this as a trained singer and I can’t do it. I always crack on “magnifico” and “leave me to die,” and I have a pretty decent range, but I know I sound ugly as hell on that final coda.
Okay. Now that we’ve established that, I want to talk a little about singing as a chorus. One of the things a lot of people learned during the pandemic is how hard it is to take twenty people, all in different places, and stitch them together to make a single coherent song with perfect pitch and timing. You’re all practicing on slightly your own tempo, slightly your own key, even if you’re all working from the same base track. (You can see this in a lot of the Wellerman compilations from Tiktok, where someone always says “Soon” a moment before everyone else on “soon may the Wellerman come.”) When you have a chorus comprised of many smaller choruses that are all traveling to be together, this is what dress rehearsal is for–to get all of you onto the same tempo so you’re starting and finishing at exactly the same time. This is a thing that normally only happens after at least several days of practice, and it is an important skill that must be taught. You’re not just born knowing how to do this.
I do not know how many people at that Green Day concert were trained singers. But I do know there is no way in hell all few thousand of them were a single group–they showed up a few at a time, maybe even flying solo for the night. Now go and listen to the video again. Listen to the ends of verses and the pickups. They’re fucking crisp as hell. Everyone is starting and ending at the same place. Not even a single note off. (And yes, you can hear when it’s a single note off, even in a crowd that big. A handful of people would be enough to throw it off.) And while a few in the crowd may be off-key, so many more are on-key that the cumulative effect is of the song being on-key. This isn’t even the band they’re there to see.
They don’t just know this song, this technically-difficult song, this long and complex song by a completely different band. They know it perfectly. They know it down to the fucking note. They know it so well that they did it in perfect synchrony, without a single chance to practice.
The part of this video that always gets me, every time I watch it, is the woman screaming, “OH MY GOD!” at the beginning, knowing she’s about to experience a moment of pure history…
Gandalf: well this raccoon found the ring and has been carrying it around. unfortunately we can’t take it off him or he gets very bite-y. so I figure, the raccoon is the ringbearer now
Elrond: what are those other three raccoons doing here
Gandalf: he brought his buddies. I call this one ‘Merry’
Saruman: Well since some fucking TREES took over Isengard I guess I’ll take over The Shire.
Farmer Maggot and ever other Halfling down to the Sacksville-Bagginses:
When you work and have a chronic illness, most of your life is dominated by your job. On days that you’re not working, you’re resting and recovering so you don’t miss your next shift. You don’t have the energy to hang out with your friends or spend time with family. Work tasks also take you longer because of symptoms like brain fog and fatigue, so you may have to put in extra hours on your nights and days off to get everything done. Work bleeds into your personal life so much more than it does for a healthy person, and saps you of your energy so much that it’s often the only thing you have the spoons to do.
Different originated adaptions of Hamliza over the years
Original Broadway: Lin-Manuel Miranda & Philipa Soo (2015)
Chicago: Miguel Cervantes & Arianna Afsar (2016)
London: Jamael Westman & Rachelle Ann Go (2017)
Philip US National Tour: Joseph Morales & Shoba Narayan (2018)
Peggy US National Tour: Julius Thomas III & Julia K Harriman (2019)
Sydney: Jason Arrow & Chloé Zuel (2021)
You want something even crazier? Animorphs ended in May 2001. She didn’t know what was coming, but damn if she didn’t give her readers a much needed dose of reality about the horrors of war right before we were really going to need it.
If you enjoy easily-digestible sci fi, and can get your hands on the animorphs books, I really recommend it. They’re fucking great and thoughtful in a lot of ways you might not have picked up on as a kid. I’ve read the first dozen or so books over the last couple of years and they’ve literally changed the way I look at the world.
Not to butt in since the series came along when I was in high school and thus a bit after my time, but I am a librarian and as such I am ALL ABOUT matching people to the books they need in whatever format is available.. You can download the entire series. It’s free.
Applegate’s statement on the piracy subject is quoted from an AMA here for those that have moral issues with it. for those that don’t want to click, she says: “We do not take them down. Or ask for them to be taken down. I think once the books are available to buy—paper or e—it would be nice if people who could afford it would buy. (our kids have very expensive tastes. You know: food and whatnot.) But for years they’ve been unavailable except by ‘pirated’ means. These men and women kept the series alive. They kept the books available. So no, we did NOT take these books down.”
I was younger than you are now, when I was given my first command
I led my men straight into a massacre, I witnessed their deaths firsthand
I made every mistake, and felt the shame rise in me
And even now I lie awake, knowing history has its eyes on me
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story hopes to illustrate how homophobia led to the loss of one of the greatest creative minds of a generation.
On one side of that coin is Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez), the household name that broke barriers with his ostentatious and bold view of fashion and his love for life and the world. On the other is Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), the charismatic murderer who seduced and murdered four other people before fatally shooting Versace in the face.
It’s a career redefining role for Darren Criss, who first entered the pop culture zeitgeist far on the other side from Cunanan as Blaine Anderson on Glee. His tenure on the musical high school show had Tumblr dub him as America’s boyfriend. Fans who remember him as the sweet-hearted, tender Blaine — and those who dismissed him because of it — will be shocked as they tune into Versace to see Criss play smarmy, manipulative and deeply disturbed. The young actor deftly makes you feel for and deeply fear Cunanan at the same time.
Episode 2 revealed how the series plans to pedals backward through Cunanan’s killer spree to show the evolution of a murderer in a new way. While Versace holds title prominence, it is Criss’ performance as Cunanan that the series hinges on for the rest of the run. TV Guide talked to Criss about sinking his teeth into the role, the weight of knowing Cunanan’s victims’ families are watching and why Glee co-creator and American Crime Story overlord Ryan Murphy handpicked him to play the game-changing part.
You’re a little bit too good, if you know what I mean, at playing a serial killer.
Darren Criss: Well, I am not thinking of it in terms of playing a serial killer. That’s not how I would wake up going to work. So when people say that, it’s odd to me because I forget that’s something he did.
How did you think of it then?
Criss: I thought of an excitable, ambitious, hungry, young man whose obsessions got the better of him and other people. And he had very basic desires that were pushed to huge extremes. So I would try to not focus on the things we do know and focus more on the things that we didn’t get to see and the things that one could like Andrew for, which made those horrible things much harder to ingest because you are coming from a point of entry that’s much more palatable, ideally.
Do you want people to sympathize with him, or is that dangerous?
Criss: No. No, no, no, no, no. We have to. First of all, I can say this because I am very cognizant of somebody reading this or hearing this or seeing something. Every day, I walked into work with the weight of the family and friends of his victims, who are very much alive, who are very much around, who are very much, I’m sure, familiar of the TV zeitgeist that this show will be and how difficult this will be for them to have something they’ve tried to make some kind of peace with over 20 years and all of a sudden it’s water cooler talk.
That really weighs heavy on me, so I say that as a prologue to, as an actor, it is my job to sympathize with Andrew. I’m in the business of empathy. That is my livelihood. That is what I do for my living and for my livelihood. It’s so hard to do that with somebody like Andrew, but it’s necessary, not only for me but… I’m not asking people to sympathize with him. I challenge them to see what happens when they put aside the worst things that a human being can do and not think about, I guess, the end horrible products and seeing where they came from and really questioning at what point could this have been you or could’ve been any of us, as hard as that is to grasp.
And it is in that journey that we can really start exploring larger issues about obsession and about things that come from good places that can turn into dark endings. That’s what I’m hoping happens. It’s not as simple as asking people to just sympathize with somebody. It’s more about questioning themselves and seeing how much they can find in common with a conventional monster.
Did Ryan Murphy tell you why he thought that you would be the best person for this?
Criss: No…I mean, look, I’m half Filipino, in the same age range as Andrew, and I’m very lucky to be in Ryan Murphy’s camp. So part of me jokingly was like, “Ryan, while I know there’s plenty of wonderful half-Filipino actors out there, as far as finding another person that kind of looks like him, is in the same age range, and is in your Rolodex of actors, I defy you to find somebody else, man.” I would say that jokingly as almost like holding him hostage. Like, “If you want to do this, let’s do this together.”
So while I’m sure there are a lot of other people that could’ve done this, I think he stuck with me because I was probably the one closest to his world that was not only game but kind of fit the bill. I also think that if they didn’t get a half-Filipino actor to do this, I think the Filipino community would’ve cried bloody murder, and rightly so. So here we are.
How much research did you do for it beyond the book the series is based on? Or did you kind of want to stay within the script?
Criss: I’m glad you asked that. There’s only so much research one can do for somebody like Andrew because he was a hundred different people to a thousand different people, so even the people that I have talked to who have approached me, that knew Andrew in different capacities, even different stages of his life, knew him at different moments, so there’s only so much you can glean from that.
fun thing about king James, this guy was fairly public about his bf (more public than what was acceptable). He threw lots of extravagant parties with his man on his arm. It pissed off the church obviously so to get them off his back, he’s the one that ordered the third translation of the Bible from Hebrew to English (the King James Version aka the Authorized Version) so the Bible every hot blooded all American Christian reads today was literally just written so a very gay king could fuck his boyfriend in peace.
Okay, it's official. I'm going crazy over this. I read a fic a while back ago, and I could've sworn I bookmarked it but I'm unable to find it again. I'm having trouble remembering most of the details, but I do remember this one scene. I'm pretty sure Kurt and Blaine (maybe it was Darren and Chris? I honestly forget) were roommates, and I'm pretty sure they're both out of high school. I just remember that they aren't dating but they're best friends and secretly like each other (cont. in next ask)
(cont.) and that they’re always showing signs of affection (like cuddling). I forget how it all starts, but at some point in the story they start doing things to the other to see how far they’ll go before declaring the other the winner/surrendering. In this one scene, I think Kurt’s getting ready in the bathroom (possibly for a date?) and one of their little battle things start. Blaine starts kissing Kurt’s neck, then Kurt retaliates by grabbing his ass (or something like that) until things get really heated and they both give up (I think that’s what happens). I don’t really remember much more than that, but I’m 99% positive it’s a bestfriends!Klaine + roommates!Klaine fic. I already checked your roommate tag and didn’t find it, so you may not know of this fic. But if anybody does, I’m dying to figure out which fic it is and read it again, so any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you! (sorry this ask is so long)
That definitely sounds like:
Wandering Around Back To You by munchkinpandas
From strangers to floormates to best friends, to roommates, to the closest two people can be. This is the story of two boys who found each other and never let go.
