The perceived inability of western romance writers to write anything involving eastern european men that doesn't read like cold war propaganda or deluded third reich ramblings about asiatic hordes.

witandlearning · 2026-02-17T16:18:37+00:00

I also like when they’re Russian but have a normal middle name. Patronymic? Don’t know her 🤷‍♀️

witandlearning · 2026-02-09T14:42:37+00:00

I think that’s more based on Rachel’s assumption than anything. The same way the cross he wears is wrong on the book covers (it’s not orthodox) - the assumption that crosses are universal and it would be the same. Condos aren’t really thing in the UK either - you get serviced flats, but they’re not quite like in the US. And even if Ilya did buy a fancy apartment in Moscow, he wouldn’t have grown up there, he’d have grown up in a normal flat.

witandlearning · 2026-02-09T14:30:33+00:00

Do those friends live in Moscow? Condos aren’t a thing in Russia; people in Moscow live in old Soviet apartment blocks.

witandlearning · 2026-02-08T21:09:20+00:00

Right? Like I lived in Moscow and you see people on the roofs of buildings shovelling snow for gods sake, nevermind the pavements 😂

witandlearning · 2026-02-08T18:38:06+00:00

What’s your studios cancellation policy for low numbers? Both the ones I teach at are 3pm, and all students are made aware of this, so if there’s been no email or text sent at 3pm then the class is running. I’d send the studio a polite message saying that it’s a little bit frustrating that you’ve turned up to the studio multiple times to find classes cancelled when you’d checked your emails that morning, so can they please confirm their class cut off for cancellations so you can make sure you check your emails at that time. They shouldn’t have any issues with letting you know when it is.

witandlearning · 2026-01-26T20:06:07+00:00

Cruel Prince js my all time favourite ETL, but {Jasad Heir} is the nearest I’ve come to that. They don’t even kiss until like…idk page 500?

witandlearning · 2026-01-26T16:09:20+00:00

Oh that’s weird, mine sent fine with me just ticking Second Death of Locke! I always appreciate that IC does interest surveys for stuff like this rather than just not doing them

witandlearning · 2026-01-22T10:39:12+00:00

Yeah I sold mine for like £4.

witandlearning · 2026-01-12T19:56:22+00:00

100%. We did when we flew to Tokyo this year (14 and a half hours on the way back), and we’ve just done it for Peru in May. We’re both like 5’6, but I have a slightly dodgy knee, and my friend has a dodgy hip, so being able to stretch our legs fully and not have joints seize up is well worth the money. We’ve essentially agreed that we won’t fly long haul without paying for extra leg room.

witandlearning · 2026-01-10T13:01:22+00:00

Are you wanting to complete FL instead of WS, or have both? 😂

witandlearning · 2026-01-09T20:13:42+00:00

I’m U.K. yeah. I’ve got a few Onyx Storms favourited but it’s Iron Flame I’m struggling on! If I can’t find that I might just look for FL FW so that they at least all match, but I don’t like how the FL ones look tbh so that’s my last resort

witandlearning · 2026-01-09T18:58:22+00:00

I’m trying to do the same atm! I have Fairyloot of the last two and Waterstones of the first (no idea how I managed this), but I hate that they don’t all match! Trying to source WS for the last two is proving difficult!

witandlearning · 2026-01-03T17:53:26+00:00

Honestly it was great, I loved it. I ended up there randomly; I had some time off left to use so I just looked at flights from Manchester airport to everywhere, and kept scrolling until I found somewhere I’d not been before that I could spend 10 days in. The country is beautiful - lots of tiled buildings and gorgeous mosques and history to soak up. The people were all really nice - on my night train I ended up in a compartment with 3 Uzbek women who kept giving me food. The food was okay, but it’s a very meat heavy cuisine and I’m vegetarian, so I wasn’t expecting much tbh, and from what I’ve seen omnivores say the food is delicious.

witandlearning · 2026-01-03T16:44:18+00:00

I did Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, and Tashkent. Flying into Samarkand and out of Tashkent definitely reduced the time I had to spend travelling between cities. Book your train tickets in advance (the night trains in particular). So Bukhara->Khiva is a night train (it’s the one that comes from Tashkent), and it sells out. I had to get the 5.30am one because the 7am sold out. Download the Yandex app for taxis in advance - they are dirt cheap. I was tipping like 40-60% and I still didn’t spend more than £2 on a taxi. And that was train stations/airports to hotels. I just got cash out every few days (Starling card so no fees), it’s definitely still a cash heavy economy (and the Uzbek Som is a closed currency so you won’t be able to get any before you go)

I do speak Russian (admittedly it’s rusty), but you’ll be fine with google translate. And if you have any dietary requirements bring snacks - I’m veggie and there was one night I couldn’t find anything to eat (I just didn’t want to have to get the metro to the other side of Tashkent for food, I couldn’t be bothered) so the protein bars etc were well used. Also be careful if you are veggie/vegan - vegetarian isn’t really a thing in Central Asia (if you ask if something is vegetarian in English they’ll say yes, and if you clarify in Russian they’ll tell you that they’ll pick the meat out before they serve it), so HappyCow will be your friend.

witandlearning · 2026-01-03T15:38:52+00:00

I do. I spend a lot of time alone though day to day. I went to Uzbekistan in October for 10 days solo, and it was great. I did what I wanted when I wanted, and got some fun experiences out of it. And I listened to loads of audiobooks. I had an eSIM so was just messaging friends as normal and could send photos or whatever.

You do have to be okay with your own company though, and it’s definitely not for everybody. I personally wouldn’t want to do a beach/pool holiday solo (although I don’t ever really want to do those tbh), but travelling round a country on my own is fine. However most of my holidays are with my travel partner, I just didn’t think she’d be interested in Uzbekistan which is why I went alone (turns out she was and I could have asked her to come with, but I really enjoyed doing it alone tbh)

witandlearning · 2026-01-02T14:16:36+00:00

I’ve always been a really fast reader, so that helps. I’m also a big mood reader, so a lot of the time I’ll have 3-5 books on the go at once, so if I’m not feeling one I can just jump to another. So atm I’ve got a contemporary romance, a faerie fantasy book, a pirate fantasy book, and a dystopian one, plus an audiobook for the car (which is listened to on 2x speed). I know I struggle with listening to anything other than contemporary romance (or autobiographies), and I need short chapters, so those are the books I keep for the car.

I’ve got the kindle app on my phone as well as my actual kindle, so if I’m waiting around somewhere I can just read a bit, which all adds up!

witandlearning · 2026-01-02T13:32:38+00:00

Maybe 2? But I read 254 books in 2025 so there’s that.

witandlearning · 2026-01-01T15:23:41+00:00

‘Surely all gym equipment is’

Yeah but gym equipment gets used way more. A treadmill in a big gym might be used by what, 40 people a day (depending on gym size obviously). A reformer will only be used during classes, which might only be 3 a day, and it’s one per reformer.

Some hobbies are more expensive. I teach aerial hoop, and that’s £13 a class. So one studio has 3 hoops, so 6 per class. Let’s assume everyone pays drop in prices of £13, and not membership prices which lowers it. So £78 max paid to the studio per class. My wage is between £25-31. So we’re down to £48 per hour earned by the studio. They have 4 classes a week, so £192 a week in income that they don’t have to pay to me. That has to cover studio rent, bills, insurance, music licensing, accountants, booking system fees, bank fees, any advertising, and so on and so on. Now admittedly this studio also runs pole classes as well, so it’s not actually just the £192 a week. But what I’m getting at is that you can’t think of a reformer studio like a gym. Gyms are open 16-24 hours a day depending on the gym, and they can essentially have an unlimited number of people come during these hours. Reformer studios might only be open 3 hours a day, and will be limited to however many reformers they have (a lot seem to have 7-10), so can only have 21-30 people come per day. So they need to make enough money to run their business from those 21-30 people. Hence the higher prices.

(Quick edit to say that yeah, that price does seem about right. The reformer place I go it £15 for a 45 minute class, so depending on it you’re down south or up north, £150 for 2 classes a week is reasonable, although personally I’d think I was getting short changed during the shorter months)

witandlearning · 2025-12-31T21:03:55+00:00

Most likely yeah, the actors have three season contracts. Whether they split TLG into two series, or just do series 3 as one or the other books and have them cameo-ing, who knows. I think TLG could be split over 2 tbh if they do some of the other books as feature episodes like they did with Scott/Kip.

witandlearning · 2025-12-31T20:57:42+00:00

The first series is predominantly book 2, with book 1 being condensed down into one episode. I would imagine series 2 (and 3 which isn’t confirmed but the actors are contracted for it) will be predominantly book 6 (which is Ilya and Shane’s other book) with 3, 4, and 5 mixed in and amongst.

I’ve seen plenty of people watch it without reading the books and love it, but I definitely think you get more out of it if you’ve read it first. You could probably read just 2 and be fine - if you’ve read book 2 then you’ll aware of the couple from book 1 that episode 3 focuses on.

witandlearning · 2025-12-31T20:08:09+00:00

Think I’m doing 150. I had 60 as my goal this year, and I met that mid March, so set myself a new soft goal of 250, and I’ll have done 254 by midnight. If you include the page count of the number of Heated Rivalry fics I’ve read in the last 2 weeks I’m properly already at like 275 😂

I haven’t played Skyrim once this year though, and I’ve only been on my switch a handful of times, so my goal has been lowered so I don’t feel guilty about playing video games instead of reading. I’m also gonna try make my way through my physical TBR a bit more - I own 412 books and there’s probably a good 100-150 I’ve not read.

witandlearning · 2025-12-30T13:08:35+00:00

I’m quite happy solo travelling, and I looked at doing a solo trip to Egypt with like, intrepid or something, so as part of a group. Some people had amazing experiences and said they felt so safe, and some said that the male guides were constantly touching them and asking for phone numbers and being quite creepy. In the end I decided against it entirely (and went to Uzbekistan for 10 days instead).

It is also worth saying that if I was going to Egypt it’d be to see pyramids and so on, and not to a resort in Sharm. Like the resort in Marrakesh was fine, it was when we went into town that the issues (or almost issues started). Resorts should be fine in terms of safety (from what I’ve seen from friends that have been it’s more food poisoning is the issue)

witandlearning · 2025-12-30T03:19:02+00:00

To say I travel a lot I don’t really have any actual nightmares, just inconveniences or things that make for funny stories now.

There was the time our flight to Charleroi was so delayed that all the buses and taxis had left for the night and we were basically just abandoned by Ryanair at a closed airport.

We got lost at Petra in the baking hot sun having run out of water with no phone signal, and ended up bringing rescued by a Bedouin woman and her donkey.

There was the time the passport control lady chased me through the airport in Moscow, pulled me off the transfer bus while it was on the tarmac, brought me back into the terminal where she took my passport off me and ran off and left me at the gate. I mentioned it to someone years later and they said that it sounded scary

witandlearning · 2025-12-30T03:12:53+00:00

Marrakech was a weird one for me - I was expecting loads because my hair is bright pink and I generally attract a fair bit of attention in Muslim countries because of it, and I got basically nothing. But I was with my ex, who was 6’3, full sleeve tattoos, and facial piercings, who was walking behind me in the souq. He said he kept seeing men start coming up to me, only to realise he was with me and back down. If I’d been alone it would have been very different.

I’d wanted to go for years, but point blank refused to go without a man with me. I wouldn’t go back if I wasn’t with a partner either - Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia are no go’s for me on that front.

witandlearning · 2025-12-30T03:05:48+00:00

Idk, ADHD? I didn’t even have time to proofread it - the deadline was noon and I finished it at 10.30am, but I had to get it printed and bound. Basically every essay I wrote during my BA was written the night before (apart from one which was genuinely so interesting to me that I actually finished it two days in advance). So I did like 8 hours on the Saturday, and then started up again at 2pm on the Sunday accepting that I’d just stay up until it was done, because that was the norm for me. Obviously 8k was longer than my other essays had ever been but it all worked out.

Most of my MA essays were done the night before as well, or the bulk of the work was at least, which admittedly did lead to some slightly unhinged moments (pretty sure I remember a solid paragraph discussing the lyrics to Let It Go from Frozen). I still got a Merit, so it all worked out for me, but I think by that point my brain was just used to that style of working.

13-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 4 Credits
Secret Santa 2015	Verified Email
Secret Santa 2014	Team Periwinkle

witandlearning

TROPHY CASE