#i want to recommend it

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

[heartorbit]

if we could stay connected, just like this

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy one year anniversary to In Stars and Time!

[gongyussy]

if nothing else can save america this zero-year-old fairy baby otter with no gender can. chiitan's platform is love. and chaos.

[mssoapart]

12 years later, welcome back, a show about a nerdy boy and an active girl running into mysteries and occult

[nopoodles]

The Story Graph is lovely from a reader/book tracking perspective but my gosh is it a nightmare as an indie author. Not a single one of my books has been imported automatically so far and Welcome To Humanity has missing publisher info (despite the fact that I gave every detail upon importing) AND only half a cover for some reason.

On Goodreads I have an author profile, which means I can update my own books. If I have a new cover or details to include or something gets messed up and I need to fix it, I can just do that. But on Storygraph, I'm stuck emailing them or filing a ticket (which I've already done 6+ months ago for WTH and it hasn't been updated yet. Do I do it again? Do I accept that the cover is forever gonna be half?)

I know I'm not a bestseller. I know my books aren't making a huge impact on the market. And I know I'm probably the only person checking my Storygraph page. But it's frustrating anyway because it leaves me in this awkward limbo where I tell people to look for my books on the Storygraph (especially since Amazon owns Goodreads) and my stuff isn't on there or it's only got bits and pieces.

Not to mention, if I add the book myself, manually, so the details are actually in there (not all of them, for some reason) it sticks a "user added" logo on it as if it's some unverified and therefore less valuable thing (dare I even call it a book).

This post brought to you by "I've tried importing my upcoming pirate book (Not The Fighting Kind) twice already today and despite the message that reads 'it can take up to a minute' it's still not on there!"

[all-my-ocs-are-evil]

[insert poetic title here]

fun fact: this did not start out as isat fanart

(rambling in tags)

[plorpl]

Today I offer Tumblr real, undoctored screenshots from the House MD DS game, free of context:

Special awards go to:

"Would you still love me if I was a worm" core:

And my personal favorite, for all the omegaverse girlies out there:

EDIT: adding a link to my other post with more info on the game

[ciderjacks]

She’s the most like me

[spitedemon]

i really don’t think it’s “typical dragon age fandom nonsense” for people to be genuinely upset about the world state choices. combat, level design, art direction, gameplay gimmicks, those have all varied across each dragon age game. the one thing that’s remained constant are nods to our previous choices.

i wasn’t expecting my HoF to come riding in on a griffon, but i can’t find a monument dedicated to warden tabris somewhere around the anderfels? lucanis couldn’t have some lines about the time that one arainai boy was stirring up trouble in antiva city? you’re gonna tell me that making a mage the new divine wouldn’t have some impact on nevarra and antiva? on the anderfels, the supposed most devout militant andrastian nation in thedas? you’re saying nobody in the north is paying attention to who rules orlais or ferelden? come on.

[questwithambition]

Something incredibly satisfying about knowing your craft and the confidence that goes with it. Just the casual “yeah I could make that”. Want a band tee? Yeah I can embroider my own with the lyrics I want. Bridesmaid dress too long? Yeah I can hem it. Need new slippers? Yeah I can crochet a pair (and give them bunny ears). And of course it’s not perfect but nothing beats that feeling of being able to craft your own solution with your own two hands

[paintingpuff]

I'm late to the aro positivity party but thought I could shout out a manga I read this year, I Want to be a Wall!

It's about an aroace woman (who is really into BL) and a gay man being arranged into a marriage and how they navigate that, growing closer and kind of becoming a QPR.

The stuff that really got to me was the discussion of the woman's experience with her asexuality (and aromanticism though that isn't explicitly labeled), how it connects to her media tastes and the way people have hurt her in the past. It was all absolutely heartbreaking.

A fun detail I also like is how the pair act out romantic tropes (Gift of Magi style misunderstanding, paranoia about "cheating,"), but they are all done through a platonic context.

(Ex. Even though they're not in romantic love, he still feels upset at the idea of losing their bond, or her getting hurt by someone he doesn't know.)

There's not too many chapters of it out, unfortunately (only like two volumes), but the ones I read are very enjoyable and I'd love to put this on other people's radar!

(btw, I got this manga rec from this video, and there's more in it!)

Asexual Manga and their Powerful Visibility

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=urXrwYmMdgA

[captainsparklefingers]

*shows up fourteen years late to Tumblr with very cold Starbucks* So that Sherlock show is pretty good, huh!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ooh, you want to know what happens at the gay bar run by ex-pirates, ooh...You'll just have to read Tiger Tiger to find out...

(Inspired by this Disco Elysium comic)

[idliketobeatree]

merry crystal (jingle bells, if you will) to my fave kiss i drew this year in particular ‧₊°🎄✩₊°🦌⊹♡

+ a special shotout to brilliant @dear-monday who said "just thought about edwin hooking one finger into the ribbon and pulling him in for a kiss" and i went wait, i do have something just like that

[lwh-writing]

Ghost King Isn't the Only Title Danny Has

Okay, so you how monarchs can have multiple titles? Like how the heir to the English throne is both Prince/Princess and Duke/Duchess of Cornwall? And how monarchs can get titles and epithets that just stack onto their preexisting names/titles? Like "Catherine the Great" or how Daenerys gets her famous list of "Stormborn, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, etc."?

Well, there are dozens upon dozens of names for the Infinite Realms. The Ghost Zone might be what Amity Park calls it, but there have been hundreds of names for it throughout history. The Afterlife, Sheol, Heaven & Hell, Purgatory & Limbo, Valhalla, and so on and so forth.

So when Danny finally gives in and lets himself be crowned, he doesn't just become the Ghost King. Oh no. He is crowned "King Daniel Fenton, First of His Name, Protector of the Infinite Realms, Defeater of Pariah Dark, Liege of Fright Knight, Ice Mage of the Far Frozen, and Hades of the Underworld."

And then a few months later when Danny inevitably gets summoned and pops up on the Justice League's radar, there's some serious side-eyeing going on because 'Diana, why didn't you mention your uncle looked like a teenager? Why does one of the most powerful gods like to hang out in teenaged form anyway?'

Just... give me an unknowning Danny accidentally inheriting a niece along with the crown, and that niece just so happens to be Wonder Woman.