#beautifully written

[artificial-condition]

Me watching tv: it’s what murderbot would have wanted

#my thoughts #murderbot #tmbd #the murderbot diaries #Martha wells #rewatching the queens gambit #good show based on an excellent novel #highly highly recommend the book #one of my favorites #beautifully written

[txttletale]

what's serious weakness? I've never heard of it

found family enemies to lovers :)

#ask #real answer: novel about a guy kidnapping another guy and then a bunch of really horrible shit happens #really emotionally compelling and powerful #beautifully written #i like it a lot but yknow. its a lot to stomach and pretty Nasty

[ohsnapitzmarvel]

I genuinely believe Echo is the best content Marvel has released in years. It blows right past all of the other recent projects and it’s a shame more people aren’t watching it

#the best thing they’ve released since Black Panther 2 imo #u can watch it on Hulu!!!! #echo #mcu echo #maya lopez #wilson fisk #kingpin #marvel #it’s beautifully shot #beautifully written #and I love biscuits sm #marvel cinematic universe #the only show worth watching disney tbh #echo series #hulu

[juthemagicalclown]

the great thief acey, real name melania ramirez

#she is so #perfect #stunning #beautiful #cute #smart #beautifully written #i love her #i would die for her #reverse 1999 melania #melania ramirez #reverse 1999 #r1999 #melania reverse 1999

[gennianydots]

raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by patpran 👀

#🙋🏽‍♀️ #Patpran #bad buddy bl #bad buddy #bad buddy the series #sorry for being depressing #I cried about a patpran fic today #in my feels #it was so beautiful #beautifully written #I’m in so much pain #also currently floating to heaven #because #I’m dead #I love bad buddy a completely normal amount #I love patpran a completely normal amount #this blog is a mess #i’m bad buddy trash and you all know it

[zot3-flopped]

Even if the articles about the engagement ring are of course not true, I would still be so happy and I really wish it for Harry.

Taylor and Harry are something very special in my opinion. And it's also somehow very different from his last relationships, I'm sure you know what I mean. She's his age, unproblematic and just a sweet, beautiful and intelligent young woman. They both seem to be at the same stage in life, want the same things and have the same interests. Both are very private, don't follow each other on Instagram, nor do they take their relationship public in any way. The fact that Taylor seems to have really liked Harry for a while makes the whole thing even more special (that she already liked his picture on Instagram for Fine Line or was there at the Gucci show). I'm just so happy for Harry that he has such a great woman like Taylor by his side and that he can experience this and just see him so happy. I think when you have a life like Harry's and you have everything, you long for a love that you can settle down with. What I also think is really great is that pretty much the "majority" of Harries think Taylor is as great as I do. Of course there are the PRs and/or Larries who are out of line (I mean you know it yourself) - but they can't be helped either.

I really hope and firmly believe that Taylor and Harry will get married at some point and start a family (what beautiful children they would be omg). I can even imagine that Harry wouldn't wait that long for the "whole thing".

Their children would be exquisite!

#👏👏👏👏👏 #harry styles #taylor russell #tayrry #beautifully written

[londonspirit]

Imagining what could have happened if the creator dared to dream bigger is fandom’s driving ethos. Whether or not the people behind the scenes expected to have the most passionate bloc of their audience fixate on a queer romance that may or may not have been intentional is irrelevant. When queerness is still on the periphery of society, it’s unsurprising that the relationships fans obsess over and seek to actualize are predominantly queer.

Our Flag Means Death, whose second season is now airing on Max, doesn’t require its fans to dream of the queer possibilities. Instead, it’s that rare breed of work that raises the romantic subtext—typically buried under bromatic jokes or subtle ambiguity—to undeniable text from the very beginning. And when fandoms and creative teams are both on the same page of the same unabashedly queer love story, as is the case for Our Flag, the experience is nothing short of sublime.

Queer media, particularly TV, has entered something of a golden age since the aughts. There are the early mainstream pioneers like The L Word and Will and Grace; the wholesome coming-of-age romcoms like Heartstopper and Love, Victor; and the adaptations taking beloved stories one big step further, like Interview with the Vampire, Good Omens, and Hannibal. There are gritty, inspired-by-real-life dramas like Orange is the New Black and Pose, murderous thrillers like Killing Eve and Orphan Black, raunchy comedies like What We Do in the Shadows and Sex Education, and many more stories featuring queer leads with fully fleshed-out storylines.

But even among these big names, this silly gay pirate show stands out by taking what these shows do best and fulfilling a particular need few have met before. The reasons are myriad: It refuses to use queer subtext as a prop or ransom for audience loyalty. It eschews the will-they-won’t-they dance that positions love as an end rather than a beginning. It defies the trope that you must renounce your past in order to move on. It scoffs at the notion of a ceiling for complex queer characters and relationships in a single show. And it demonstrates that depicting the experiences of queer people (and, just as importantly, people of color) don’t always have to center brutality and trauma—that healing can come from making acceptance the norm and bigotry the butt of ridicule, and that being kind doesn’t necessitate being passive.

As a show that didn’t explicitly market itself as “LGBTQ,” one of Our Flag’s most striking aspects is how it subverts the way this genre typically approaches romance. You could argue that the love story begins when Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) is recognized as the pirate he wants to be—while three-quarters of the way dead—by none other than the dread Blackbeard (Taika Waititi). Or you could say it begins when Blackbeard, a.k.a Ed Teach, is seen, for the first time, as someone who deserves softness and finery by the epitome of softness and finery himself. Or when Stede comforts Ed as he curls up in a bathtub reliving his worst memories. Or when Stede picks roasted snake out of Ed’s beard. Or when Ed gives himself up to the British to save Stede’s life. Or when…

You get my drift. There’s an entire season’s worth of scenes that make up the foundations of a fandom: moments of intimacy and connection that gesture toward the possibility of something more. These are the planks and rigs of a ship sturdy enough to outpace the fleet of fanworks chasing such moments down until feelings are admitted, consummated, and set sailing off into the sunset. In hindsight, Our Flag was undoubtedly heading in this direction. But it wasn't until the most incontrovertible on-screen gesture of romance happened—a kiss—that fans heaved a sigh of relief. Because fandom, for all its capacity to will alternative universes into being, is inherently bound to the media from which it springs, and many have only ever cast queer love as bait.

But with Our Flag, most fans aren’t at all concerned about what direction the story will take. And the key difference is that they trust the creators wholeheartedly.

For many queer fans, it’s a novel experience to interface with a creative team that is not only aware of exactly who the audience is and what they care about, but also proudly and vocally celebrates them. In interviews, producer and lead actor Taika Waititi has stated that he collects fan art on his phone. Vico Ortiz (who plays the nonbinary pirate Jim Jimenez) has shared that fan art encouraged them to get gender-affirming top surgery. Creator and showrunner David Jenkins once remarked that fan discussions are so spot-on, it was as if they had “been in the writers’ room.” And several queer actors on the show have expressed that the fandom has made them feel even more connected to the LGBTQ+ community.

Our Flag is one of the rare cases where fans and creators share the same vision for a given work. There are no calls for the figurative death of the overly originalist author, nor strict separation of the "canon" of the original work from the "fanon" interpretations of the audience. There is no need for fans to dig for subtext, because what they’ve been searching for has been on board with them all along—not as a blink-and-miss-it pantomime or a nothing-left-to-lose Hail Mary, but a queer love story that was intentionally, thoughtfully crafted from the beginning.

Our Flag presents fans with a vibrant world where everything is mostly beautiful and almost nothing hurts—at least, not yet. Fans can surmise the shape of the second act and the close of the third, even if they don’t know exactly how they’ll get there. But with full confidence in the creators, fans have the opportunity to stretch their imagination beyond tallying evidence and righting wrongs—and it makes for a fandom experience less a eulogy at a funeral of another buried gay, more a toast at the most extravagant and absurd cruise-ship wedding to ever grace the seven seas.

We are all on the same page of the same story, and the experiences of everyone involved is so much richer for it. Or, as Stede would say, treasure is the real treasure.

Fandom, like being a pirate, is in many respects a very queer enterprise. It centers on abandoning the rules so you can survive; grabbing every scrap of home you can find and making it your own; sharing the spoils with the people who see and accept you for who you are and who you want to be. Or, in the words of the show’s pseudo-antagonist, Izzy Hands (Con O’Neill), it's about belonging to something—a something that, I believe, could be enough to help you fall back in love with life and the world.

I think often of the scene that first drew me into Our Flag: Stede asks his former wife, Mary (Claudia O’Doherty), what it feels like to be in love. Looking back at it now, I realize her response describes what the experience of being a part of a community a show like Our Flag creates can feel like. Because love, she tells him, is as easy as breathing. It’s understanding each other’s idiosyncrasies and seeing the charm in them. It’s exposing each other to new things and laughing a lot. It’s passing the time so well together.

To every queer fan out there: I hope you find that, too. I hope you can name it without fear. And I hope you will be embraced for that revelation, and all the wonder and joy it brings.

#our flag means death season 2 #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #spoiler #our flag means death #ofmd #beautifully written #and so very spot on #and now I am NOT crying here #YOU ARE!!! #ofmd s2 press

[maybe-emily-something]

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.

-Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

#existential crisis #sylvia plath #poetry #writer community #beautifully written #mental health #spilled thoughts #book quote #life quote tumblr #quoteoftheday #relatable quotes #beautiful quote #quotes

[andreai04]

There's no life like youth, no love like first love, no friends like teammates.

#reading #books read in 2024 #bookblr #books #book photography #book blog #bibliophile #books reading #books and reading #the winners #fredrik backman #beartown series #last book #heartbreaking 💔 #devastating #heavy #beautiful story #beautifully written #i love you benji #benji ovich #maya andersson #i have no words #this is not for the fainthearted #there’s violence #and love #and hope #i mean damn #review #five stars #january reads

[gloryofwinter]

I was reading a recap of The Pacific episode 10 ("Home") by Emily St. James from when the show first premiered and omg this excerpt:

"But what we really can never understand is that these men were young once, too, and they, in many cases, gave that up.

You will get older, and I will too, and the things we wish to block out will grow brighter and brighter, until we're approaching death and thinking back on what was and what could have been. But those guys were young and old all at once, men who spent the rest of their lives thinking that one step, one second of difference could have changed everything, men who spent the rest of their lives either racing from that fact or trying to block it out. They tried to find ways to push that aside as they could, seeking joy where they could find it - in the pleasures of a summer's day or the pretty blue of their lover's eyes - but the world forgot, as it does, and the men they were became a series of dusty memories, tucked away in an attic somewhere. The Pacific is not a time machine, not exactly, but it is a sort of window. They can be young again, and the world can be as it was. We go into the attic. We open the box. We remember."

#hbo war #band of brothers #the pacific #masters of the air #beautifully written #these shows get at something so profound in terms of life and love and witnessing and remembering

[aureentuluva70]

Lay of Leithian Part 14: The Quest for the Silmaril Begins

Part 13<<<< >>>>Part 14

Art by Jenny Dolfen

#silmarillion #tolkien #leithian #lay of leithian #beren #luthien #doriath #menegroth #thingol #melian #daeron #i love the description of the halls of menegroth as short as it is #beautifully written #also daeron whispering 'DEATH' and luthien gasping dramatically is the funniest thing #you cannot tell me that melian did not facepalm at least once during the conversation. #and thingol your wife is literally a prophet so maybe you should oh i dont know LISTEN TO HER ADVICE #leithianedit #silmedit #tolkienedit

[desdasiwrites]

– Claire Daverley, Talking at Night

#book quote of the day #claire daverley #Talking At Night #contemporary literature #romance novels #chick lit #debut novel #beautifully written

[prydefulhunts]

Very fond of the characterization Jadzia Axelrod gave Power Girl in her Hawkgirl series.

#jadzia axelrod #hawkgirl #power girl #karen start #beautifully written

[thedoorsofmyheart]

“I would have come for you. And if I couldn't walk, I'd crawl to you. And no matter how broken we were, we'd fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that's what we do. We never stop fighting.” - Leigh Bardugo

#quotes #beautifully written #leigh bardugo #six of crows #kaz brekker #kanej

[sixofravens-reads]

also if you're looking at that poll and you're like "golly, someone sure likes Terri Windling!"

......yeah, Bordertown basically saved my life in college and I've been slowly but surely collecting her books ever since 😅

#if you're not into anthologies/short stories i highly recommend checking out her novel The Wood Wife #beautifully written

[rose-ellis]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Merlin (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin) Characters: Merlin (Merlin), Arthur Pendragon (Merlin) Additional Tags: Merlin's Magic Revealed (Merlin), Good Morgana (Merlin), Canon Era, First Kiss, Character Study, Powerful Merlin (Merlin) Summary:

Tonight they raise the pyre. Tomorrow someone dies. Ever since he knew shapes he could pick them from the landscape – the gallows, the pyre, the drowning pond – Arthur is an expert of them all.

He has seen the flames go up – seen the crackle spark of tinder, the rush of flame to fire – heard the screams and the sobs and the pleas for mercy. He has even heard the prayers. He pretends he has not heard the prayers – focuses instead on the sharp slice of wood catching light, the flames that dance, and leap, and crawl – ember-clawed – up leg and arm and chest and torso. He can pick the point when hair catches light – knows the temperature at which skin melts, the point at which the prayers stop – when the syllables fall to wails to sobs to silence. It takes days to wash the smoke from his skin.

Faced with Merlin's magic, Arthur must chose -- His or his father's Camelot.

#such an incredible fic #beautifully written #merlin fic rec #merthur fic rec #merthur #bbc merlin