ARE YOU hopelessly fixated on a specific fictional polycule and have way too much time on your hands? boy do i have an unnecessarily elaborate ship chart for you!
(versions with 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 characters and an example under the cut)
feel free to make any edits or add stuff to your liking :]
The combination of Claire Kann's writing and the gentle voice of Caroline Sorunke on the audiobook made If It Makes You Happy a total win! The premise would have been enough on its own even if I wasn't already a fan of Claire Kann. Queer, black, plus-size representation set to a summer vacation in a small town scene? The only other thing I could ask for it to be is one of those books where the author makes a quick cameo spot for the beloved other characters from their other work. Oh wait, it has that too! If you have read Let's Talk About Love, keep your eyes or ears peeled.
In If It Makes You Happy, Winnie is spending her last pre-college summer in Misty Haven, as she does every summer. Her queerplatonic ungirlfriend, Kara, lives in Misty Haven and is very ready to have Winnie back in person. Winnie wants to spend her summer with Kara, her brother, and working shifts at Goldeen's. Her plans start to change when she hears about a televised food competition that could really help her family. After her grandmother refuses to let her do it, their strained relationship makes itself more obvious to the both of them.
Although Winnie's summer is not the perfect one she had imagined, a brightness comes from the strangest of places. Winnie gets picked to be the Summer Queen, basically a mascot for the town for the summer. She has terrible stage fright and would not have picked this for herself, but when Dallas, a very attractive guy, volunteers to be the Summer King, Winnie might be willing to see where it goes. Over the course of the summer, she will have to decide what each relationship in her life means to her, struggle with how other people perceive both her weight and her romantic identity, and sort out what makes herself happy.
This book has a lot of gifts for its readers spread among the pages. We have Kara, a rare aromantic book character, something I'd like to see much more of. There are many nerdy references to things such as The Matrix, Pokémon, and Lord of the Rings. The book does not try to force a perfectly happy ending when it wouldn't be realistic. It allows itself to be the best it can be while letting the reader know that Winnie and those she cares about still have things ahead of them. The book never tries to romanticize the small-town, it showcases it honestly. While it has its small businesses and tight-knit community, it also has racism, fat-phobia, and gossip. I also love how much this book has to say; things about toxic masculinity, how size doesn't necessarily reflect health, how important a queerplatonic relationship can be, and generational trauma.
Although this book will leave you wondering just how Winnie got selected to be the Summer Queen, you'll be too enraptured to fuss about it. Go, enjoy the puns, gluten-free treats, and quality time spent between siblings! This book just wants to be read!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Summary: Written for Polyshipping Day 2021. A Hiccstrid+Heathstrid fic. Astrid returns home from a date with her husband already there waiting for her and he has a question for both her and her girlfriend.
Warning: /
Rating: General
Characters: Hiccup, Astrid, heather
Pairing: Hiccstrid+Heathstrid
Words: 1 421
Fandom: How To Train Your Dragon
Author’s Notes: This one was written kind of last-minute, but I like it. It's not often that I write fluff. :')
Noctis slowed his jog down to a halt, keeping a fair distance from Prompto just in case his friend wanted space. “So do you want to tell me what's wrong?”
Prompto did his best to disguise the shaky tone as he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “What do you mean?” To continue with the façade, he kept his back turned as he leaned with one arm against the nearby wall that had rotted with time and lack of care.
“Back there,” Noctis explained with a minor, hidden chuckle in his answer. “Why were you so disgruntled with the guy? You acted like he wasn't going to take good care of them.”
“Heh... I guess... you just have gotten more trusting than I have, Noct.”
His arms slapped to his sides as the former king offered a shrug at the sentiment. “In a world without trust, what do we have left?”
Prompto sputtered out a broken laugh. “Very Iggy of you to say.”
“It is very Iggy of me, because Ignis has quoted that from time to time,” Noctis reminded his friend. “Does your faith in humanity really slip so far away from you?”
The gunman felt assaulted by that comment, but he couldn't deny its truth. “What about how people view you? When they talk about how you're a monster and they fear you or just want you... want you d-dead...”
Back by popular demand, my award-winning debut science fiction novel Triptych is returning to Wattpad! Yay! I will be posting a chapter every Tuesday afternoon, until the book is done. I will then be rereleasing the novel as a paperback in the new year, with a brand new cover and some never-before seen in-print extras.
Read Part One Now on Wattpad
About the Book:
In the near future, humankind has mastered the arts of peace, tolerance, and acceptance. At least, that’s what we claim. But then they arrive. Aliens—the last of a dead race. Suffering culture shock of the worst kind, they must take refuge on a world they cannot understand; one which cannot comprehend the scope of their loss.
Taciturn Gwen Pierson and super-geek Basil Grey are Specialists for the Institute—an organization set up to help alien integration into our societies. They take in Kalp, a widower who escaped his dying world with nothing but his own life and the unfinished toy he was making for a child that will never be born.
But on the aliens’ world, family units come in threes, and when Kalp turns to them for comfort, they unintentionally, but happily, find themselves Kalp’s lovers.
And then, aliens—and the Specialists who have been most accepting of them—start dying, picked off by assassins. The people of Earth, it seems, are not quite as tolerant as they proclaim.
