#DESPARATELY

[gojonanami]

love of my life when will you return to me 😭

[scumvillains]

ran is a grade a flirt but he would short circuit if u told him u loved him

[faithfulcat111]

Me, every time Scott Summers shows up in my read-through: It's @throttlegainwell 's boy! You got this boy!

[souvlakicocaine]

need a heavily mustached female

[estellarjj]

They look so funnysilly in this particular official art it makes me giggle like a little girl

[kotikaleo]

OH NO lizars in milk

Look at them!Look how silly they are! They are so stuck they are not getting out of the box, bcause soon i will make them into charms!

They also have a pretty back, because I decided that mirroring the design will be boring, so i drew more adorable beans and a very curte lable with a scug

I don't think I will make any more designs like that, mostly because other lizerds aten't pastel and the art will end up too dark, but I do have more ideas around milk boxes and charms and Rain World so stay tuned!

[mo-mo-ru-art]

She rolled 1

[fanfic-gremlin-ft-trauma]

Reunions (or goodbyes) :,)

[mersei47]

hear me out on this one

[oakdown]

Twelth Doctor companions/side characters + support alignment

[justaz]

merlin’s secret being a visual thing. when he is around arthur or gwen or leon or morgana or [insert whatever character here] merlin seems pale and thin, almost like a ghost or an apparition. when the sun lands on him he reflects it like a corpse, he eyes seem dark and dull. he has this ethereal beauty to him, this otherworldly visage that leads many to believe he is of fae blood. he just doesn’t seem to be 100% human. but when he is ONLY with lancelot or gaius (cough or gwaine bc gwaine DEFINITELY knew) merlin is heartachingly human. merlin shines in the sunlight, colors are brighter and more vibrant around him, and his smiles are wide and his laughs are boisterous. he takes on color and leaves everyone wanting to know him. but when other join in or interact with the two, merlin shifts before their eyes so quickly and suddenly that they aren’t sure whether or not what they saw was a trick of the light. the idea still leaves them wanting more and wanting to see the merlin who is just so full of life but that merlin only appears for a small select group of people. merlin who has a guard so high that it has an effect of other’s perception of him.

[oswinsdolma]

the merlin fandom truly are the most unhinged (affectionate) subsect of people on the internet. any other fandom you post a rambling meta post and it will get maybe like two or three notes. say that same thing and tag it #bbc merlin and a tide of furies descend upon it and rip it to shreds hungrily like starved maenads in a bacchanalia. you give these bitches something even resembling literary analysis and they become possessed by a violent hunger and go immediately insane. truly the best way to engage with fandom if you ask me

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

With the rise of booktok/booktwt, there's been this weird movement against literary criticism. It's a bizarre phenomenon, but this uptick in condemnation of criticism is so stifling. I understand that with the rise of these platforms, many people are being reintroduced into the habit of reading, which is why at the base level, I understand why many 'popular' books on booktok tend to be cozier.

The argument always falls into the 'this book means too much to me' or 'let people enjoy things,' which is rhetoric I understand -- at least fundamentally. But reading and writing have always been conduits for criticism, healthy natural criticism. We grow as writers and readers because of criticism. It's just so frustrating to see arguments like "how could you not like this character they've been the x trauma," or "why read this book if you're not going to come out liking it," and it's like...why not. That has always been the point of reading. Having a character go through copious amounts of trauma does not always translate to a character that's well-crafted. Good worldbuilding doesn't always translate to having a good story, or having beautiful prose doesn't always translate into a good plot.

There is just so much that goes into writing a story other than being able to formulate tropable (is that a word lol) characters. Good ideas don't always translate into good stories. And engaging critically with the text you read is how we figure that out, how we make sure authors are giving us a good craft. Writing is a form of entertainment too, and just like we'd do a poorly crafted show, we should always be questioning the things we read, even if we enjoy those things.

It's just werd to see people argue that we shouldn't read literature unless we know for certain we are going to like it. Or seeing people not be able to stand honest criticism of the world they've fallen in love with. I love ASOIAF -- but boy oh boy are there a lot of problems in the story: racial undertones, questionable writing decisions, weird ness overall. I also think engaging critically helps us understand how an author's biases can inform what they write. Like, HP Lovecraft wrote eerie stories, he was also a raging racist. But we can argue that his fear of PoC, his antisemitism, and all of his weird fears informed a lot of what he was writing. His writing is so eerie because a lot of that fear comes from very real, nasty places. It's not to say we have to censor his works, but he influences a lot of horror today and those fears, that racial undertone, it is still very prevalent in horror movies today. That fear of the 'unknown,'

Gone with the Wind is an incredibly racist book. It's also a well-written book. I think a lot of people also like confine criticism to just a syntax/prose/technical level -- when in reality criticism should also be applied on an ideological level. Books that are well-written, well-plotted, etc., are also -- and should also -- be up for criticism. A book can be very well-written and also propagate harmful ideologies. I often read books that I know that (on an ideological level), I might not agree with. We can learn a lot from the books we read, even the ones we hate.

I just feel like we're getting to the point where people are just telling people to 'shut up and read' and making spaces for conversation a uniform experience. I don't want to be in a space where everyone agrees with the same point. Either people won't accept criticism of their favorite book, or they think criticism shouldn't be applied to books they think are well written. Reading invokes natural criticism -- so does writing. That's literally what writing is; asking questions, interrogating the world around you. It's why we have literary devices, techniques, and elements. It's never just taking the words being printed at face value.

You can identify with a character's trauma and still understand that their badly written. You can read a story, hate everything about it, and still like a character. As I stated a while back, I'm reading Fourth Wing; the book is terrible, but I like the main character. The worldbuilding is also terrible, but the author writes her PoC characters with respect. It's not hard to acknowledge one thing about the text, and still find enough to enjoy the book. And authors grow when we're honest about what worked and what didn't work. Shadow and Bone was very formulaic and derivative at points, but Six of Crows is much more inventive and inclusive. Veronica Roth's Carve the Mark had some weird racial problems, but Chosen Ones was a much better book in terms of representation. Percy Jackson is the same way. These writers grow, not just by virtue of time, but because they were critiqued and listened to that critique. C.S. Lewis and Tolkien always publically criticized each other's work. Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes had a legendary friendship and back and forth with one another's works which provides so much insight into the conversations black authors and creatives were having.

Writing has always been about asking questions; prodding here and there, critiquing. It has always been a conversation, a dialogue. I urge people to love what they read, and read what they love, but always ask questions, always understand different perspectives, and always keep your mind open. Please stop stifling and controlling the conversations about your favorite literature, and please understand that everyone will not come out with the same reading experience as you. It doesn't make their experience any less valid than yours.

[icantdothistodaybruh]

yeah no I'm so normal about ciel phantomhive from black butler why'd you ask-

(send help)

[balladofthe101st]

speirs will lead his men out of the trenches and charge at the final gun, and he will run across the battlefield, over enemy lines and back like ares himself, but speirs will also cower at a man so deeply in love with his fiance that he won't even try fighting back when said man stops him from taking from his loot, and look at his co for help with those warm brown eyes of his but said co will ignore him and smirk to himself and return to his own looting

[cardo-de-comer]

ace attorney doodles