#whats-a-reading ask

[sanguinifex]

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[catmask]

sometimes while i think about that while a lot of adults did not treat me very well as a kid i also get a lot of 'in hindsight this person was so good to me and i didnt even realize it until now' as an adult. today i was thinking about how the first anime convention i ever went to was when i was 10 and i asked the man working the manga cafe what manga was/what a good place to start was (because the con was very overstimulating for me and i had gotten lost) and he asked how old i was before recommending yotsuba and asking if i wanted any water or something to eat. its really simple but theres a lot of bad things that couldve happened or he could've been careless in his recommendation, but instead yotsuba has remained one of my favorite manga for years, and probably a large portion of why i continue to read manga as an adult... i think adults who try to involve kids in the world safely/kindly even in little ways make so much more of a difference than they ever really know.

[anna-scribbles]

adrinette exes & marichat! part 3!

(part 1 / part 2 / part 4)

[noodles-and-tea]

Your Merthur fanart is amazing! I LOVE the way you capture their expressions!!! If you've got the spoons might I request Arthur seeing Merlin in a wedding dress and being absolutely poleaxed because since when was Merlin hot- (they're idiots in love your honor). You capture their entire like. Fundamental dynamic SO WELL; your art is expressive and beautiful and I love it.

Merlin likes t help where he can

[forgettable-au]

FORGETTABLE-AU (Page 61-64)

* I-I don't think we were talking about the same thing...

[BEGINNING] [PREVIOUS] [CONTINUE]

[lilybug-02]

highly doubt they would ever meet but I'm curious what The Hunter would write about Dewi

Dewi

A human child, the largest living creature in Hallownest. His skin is soft, but strength lurks behind his stride.

༻━━━━━━━━━━༻✧༺━━━━━━━━━━༺

Legends tell of immense godly creatures who strode through clouds and walked across the plane in times of old. Perhaps such fantastical stories are not as unthinkable as they once were...

....

A strange mountainous creature. Though he seeks the thrill of the hunt, he does not close in for the kill. Us mere bugs seem to be easy prey. To be truly hunted by a creature so vast is a bewitching thought.

༻━━━━━━━━━━༻✧༺━━━━━━━━━━༺

I absolutely love The Hunter, so of course he'd make a visit to see the beast everyone in Hallownest has been whispering about (and when I say everyone I mean like 10 people).

[choccy-milky]

sometimes you gotta lure your overly-studious ravenclaw gf into spending time with you 🥰 📚 ( from 'Every Teardrop is a Waterfall' by Kat_12739 on ao3, GO READ IT!!! the first story is about seb falling sick and still pushing himself/not admitting he's sick until he ends up in the hospital, the second story is about the birth of seb and clora's daughter and seb's reaction to clora almost dying in childbirth, and the third is about dealing with a fussy newborn lewis😭🥹THEY'RE SO GOOD AND SWEET AND SOMEWHAT SAD (not to mention beautifully written) so go check it out!!💖💖 )

[lotus-pear]

"i haven't worked you like a dog yet, as promised"

[laviejaguardia]

personally victimized by this show's soundtrack choices

[bamsara]

As a writer who doesn't often read other fics because of personal preferences, but also to focus on my own and spend a lot of time writing something completely to my own exact tastes instead I gotta ask

(This is specifically about long-fics, but short fics can work too)

Personally, I have specific preferences/squicks that make it hard for me to read certain things and prefer to write what I like instead of looking for it in other places (That's not to say that it can't be found! I just find writing it to be a lot more satisfying)

[keferon]

The tac net crash chapter is one of my favorites so far~

Ah and. Guess what. I just discovered that including this post, I made 50 pieces of fanart for Mistakes on mistakes until.. I’m so sane and normal about this story can you tell👍

[andsewingishalfthebattle]

Novice sewing pattern: Cut out shapes. Line up the little triangles on the edges. Stitch edges together. We've also included step-by-step assembly instructions with illustrations.

Novice knitting pattern: yOU MUSt uNDerstANd thE SECret cOdE CO67 (73, 87, 93) BO44 (63, 76, 90) 28 (32, 34) slip first pw repeat 7x K to end *kl (pl) 42 * until 13" (13, 13, 15) join new at 30 pl for 17 rows ssk 27 k2tog mattress lengthwise BO and sacrifice a goat to the knitting gods. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT "INSTRUCTIONS," I JUST GAVE THEM TO YOU

[deep-space-lines]

okay but like. I just had the weirdest thought about that ‘don’t look I’m naked’ comic. Which is that that’s essentially the same thing Adam and Eve did after they ate the fruit of knowledge of good&evil. So I feel like the theological implications of that could kneecap Gabe if he doesn’t think V1 is a being with free will.

yeah ok. i dunno man. is this anything

((side note. this isn’t necessarily meant to be in-character or story-accurate or take place at any particular point in time, just a way to explore some Thoughts. i was also imagining more that V1’s words aren't actually spoken, more like Gabriel’s more articulate interpretation of whatever garbled mechanical noise V1 is using to communicate. I think an angel could do that.))

and then they fucked nasty the end

[stealingpotatoes]

Hi, I remember your post in which it is mentioned, that Han won Dathomir in a game of Sabacc. Does that mean, that Talzin lost that game against him? Does she have a gambeling problem?

I haven't read the legends book the other ask was talking about, but that must be it!! talzin needs help

(commission info // kofi support!)

[bunnymedley]