#rachel recommended

[demonbirds-love]

Have some gorgeous fall Damirae by @chaosticbirds

[bookblr-of-nightingale]

One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig 🍁🍒🖤

[finisnihil]

Liking Webtoons and wanting to analyze them is such a nightmare because most of their fandom activity is in the comments on the episodes, and a lot of the people there love to start beating characters the minute they're too morally grey/flawed or they're considered threatening to the main ship in any way.

For example, using For My Derelict Favorite, Helios gets dragged way too much at times. Like, I see people make him out to be a purely malicious force who's just as bad as Diana as if it's not emphasized that he acknowledges his feelings are wrong and will never act on them and the main reason why he harbors them is because the subejct of those feelings, Hestia, is way more competent than his wife.

A wife who's refusing to acknowledge nuance or her fading powers out of fear and insecurity and shuts down any attempts at healthy communication he attempts to initiate to the point she chases out the woman who basically raised him when his mother died. He can't rely on her and has basically no support system but he can rely on Hestia and his feelings are more born out of a desire to have somebody close who he can rely on.

The difference between Diana and him is WILDLY big, with Diana chasing out anyone who tries to question her and replacing them with the corrupt temple, choosing to drop her husband the minute he doesn't validate her batshit wild choices. She then decides to go and steal another woman's husband, who she previously condemned to the point of him becoming suicidal, because he defied her strict moral compass. Helios chooses to protect her still because she's his wife and he loves her and doesn't want to give up on her which is an objectively bad move, but he's in an awful position where anything he does will result in some kind of loss.

But I see the comments crawling with complete vilification and ignoring the character's honestly fascinating struggles so they can piss on him for threatening the beloved main ship. I even see some people compare him to WAYYYY worse characters, like Sovieshu from The Remarried Empress, which takes some sort of mental gymnastics as they are only similar to a surface level extent. Sovieshu is unredeemable but Helios is trying and making some bad calls while under pressure along the way.

For another example lets look at Annabel Lee from the amazing comic Nevermore. Everyone in the series is morally grey to some extent and some people will piss on Annabel Lee for being cruel, selfish, etc in such a shallow way. Instead of actually looking at her, a flawed character in a really fucked up situation trying to protect the one she loves at the cost of others, some people just say she's a bitch and want her to be expelled from the narrative for it. We can analyze Annabel Lee and why she’s Like That in so many ways because she's an incredibly dynamic and round character but some people don't care about that they just care she was Super Mean in some way and deem her The Enemy.

I have so many more examples like the fighting in the Jackson's Diary comments about who was the bad guy in a situation where both characters hurt each other in awful ways (I could go on about that for hours and might make a seperate analysis on it) but I think this post is long enough and I don't feel like inciting the possible wrath of any more comic fanbases.

Anyways if you're interested in any of the mentioned comics I encourage you to check them out for yourself!

[tinknevertalks]

Oh, I said I'd show you my new hat. I got a skein of yarn back in July (I think) when I went to Bath. I'd wanted to buy fluff but they didn't sell any anymore (very annoying when their google listing made it look like they did, but whatever, we roll) so I got 100g hand dyed yarn by Uschitita - expensive but worth it.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. I'm in a knit/crochet in public day in the craft shop, working on the last of my shawl. On a whim, I pick up a ball of West Yorkshire Spinners double knit in like a lime green. It's pretty standard, nice to work with.

"I need a new hat," I tell Craft Shop Lady.

Start crocheting said hat. It is not going how I want it, and I can never shape dk beanies properly (I used to use Repeat Crafter Me's patterns, but she uses aran weight and I don't really vibe with aran weight). So even though I've done eight rows, I frog it.

Ribbit.

Because I know I have to knit it.

"But Rachel, you're a crocheter, you crochet therefore you are!" I know! But I wanted the zigzag stitches you get with knitting.

So I bought a circular needle. The wire is way too short, but Craft Shop Lady was very nice and let me swap it. Except we swapped like for like. 🙈 By the time I'd realised it was Sunday afternoon, the shop was closed and I *really* wanted to knit my hat.

Cue me not remembering how to cast on. So I google it, and remind myself and oh!

I've got some knitting on the go! Look, it's so pretty!

(Yes, I know it looks small, it's the loop.)

I kept at it, even though at the start I couldn't recognise my purls in a sea of knits, and today (well, technically yesterday but roll with it) I finished it!

I love how it looks. My one note is, if I made this again (and I probably will, as it's a comfy hat), I'd knit for a full seven inches before doing the shaping, rather than the six and a half they say in the pattern. Oh, and maybe get some double pointed needles for the last two rows? It was very fiddly decreasing down to seven stitches on the circular needle.

But yeah, that's my new hat. I'm tempted to make cat ears to put on it but I'm lazy so I doubt I will. 😂

[literarymerritt]

The friendship between a space witch and a shapeshifter is something that can actually be so personal 🥺🥺

Art Tumblr || Twitter

[ceejthedeej]

[swedishwatermelon]

has anyone made one of those posts where it's a list of every movie mentioned in suits? because please 🙏

[superducky800]

i need book recommendations to help me fill the void that The Shepard King series once filled. i am utterly empty and alone without the nightmare’s oil slick voice soothing my mind and im rapidly going insane

[averagesawfan]

I love house's girl dad arc

[radishly]

Screaming and shaking and crying and throwing up cause all I want is a good Hank centric fic

[amber-jinx]

Another Before the Storm book find!

Pointed out by @woeismyhoe ^^

I didn't even notice this, guess remastered wanted her to shift her focus from Chloe to having an affair apparently 😑 (in the OG it was Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, the book Chloe read & liked)

Other book/plays from BTS

[wizardysseus]

reactor mag dot com heroically doing its duty to remind us that beauty and the beast is a "weird" and "messed up" story, if you think about it (don't you know that fathers willingly trading their daughters to beasts is, like... bad parenting?? and i mean helloooo ever heard of stockholm syndrome??) even though no one asked.

2011 ass article

[picturebookshelf]

Ghost Hunters Adventure Club and the Secret of the Grande Chateau (2020)

Story: Dr. Cecil H. H. Mills (Game Grumps) -- Art: Paul Mann & Rachel L. Allen

[rachelsfav-queer]

Can I have the link to the transmasc Wednesday fic? I love reading those for this fandom but there are so few of them : ( when I finish the current fic I'm writing I'm gonna write a transmasc Wednesday fic next

I shall give you the link but you’re gonna have to promise to come back here with a link to that transmasc Wednesday fic once you’re done writing it lmaoooo. I WANNA READ ITTTT!!!

Now, it’s technically only a single chapter in a fic of different oneshots, but it’s still absolutely worth the read. It’s not explicitly transmasc Wednesday, but it’s like,,,,, really close lol. Please give this fic some love and tell them you came from here, give them comments and kudos!! They deserve them!!

[notlayingroses]

honestly the one of the things that makes me the most sad about this hockey romance / booktok drama is that now so many hockey fans have a negative impression of hockey romances and sports romances. There are so, so many wonderful, queer romances out there that are doing wonderful, nuanced, and intentional things within the sports romance genre, and I hate that now people are looking down on them.

Here's some reasons that I love sports romances:

It’s a celebrity romance, but more of a niche celebrity romance. This isn’t a Hollywood super star that everyone in the world knows their name, BUT they often do have a dedicated fan base and are still in the public eye. It brings up really interesting discussions of fame and power and how much of yourself you keep private. So you get a lot of the good celebrity romance tropes and settings (like secret relationship, having to do interviews, traveling to new cities) but on a more niche and interesting scale

And bouncing off of that, with queer sports romances you get a lot of really interesting discussions of coming out, how you present your queerness to the world, how much of yourself is “owed” to the people around you vs yourself, which is very interesting when explored through a sports culture lense and I really enjoy the discussions of queer identity, culture, and community that come out of it. And particularly if it a romance between two players, there's a lot of really interesting queer nuances to explore

There are so many different pairings that can happen, but most of them kind of boil down to player/player, player/sports professional, player/normie, and each of these dynamics are interesting to me every time, especially when exploring teammate dynamics! And exploring how fame affects each of these things!

Found family! Your team is your family! And everyone has silly nicknames and rituals with each other and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy

With every romance, you pretty much know that it’s gonna end with a Happily Ever After, which is why we love the genre. But sometimes that can take the “surprise” out of a romance and its structure. Within sports romances, you don’t know how the game is going to go! They could win! They could lose! That affects the characters either way! And there’s been several sports romances that had me on the edge of my seat cause I genuinely had no idea which way the championship game was gonna go! I like that extra plot element to keep things interesting 

I also like it when you can tell the author is a big fan of their sport, and even if EYE don’t know anything about the sport, they’re generally good at writing things in a makes sense and makes the action interesting and keeps me hooked. It’s also just nice to step into the world the author loves!

Genuinely I just think that queer sports romances are doing so many interesting things, and have such interesting niches and nuances to the stories they’re telling! And they should not be looked down upon by hockey fans OR romance fans who have witnessed this booktok drama go down and now don’t want to touch hockey romances with a ten foot pole.

Here are some of the queer sports romances I recommend for anyone who wants to get into the genre:

[gettingmoneyontour]

any recs for movies like shiva baby?? something sapphic maybeee 🙃🙃🙃 pls help