#reading to learn

[arylleth]

[catmask]

i dont consider myself a 'fashion guru' by any means but one thing i will say is guys you dont need to know the specific brand an item you like is - you need to know what the item is called. very rarely does a brand matter, but knowing that pair of pants is called 'cargo' vs 'boot cut' or the names of dress styles is going to help you find clothes you like WAAAYYYY faster than brand shopping

[inkskinned]

i love you vaccines i love you research i love you reading the book instead of having chatgpt summarize it i love you critically thinking rather than reacting to a headline i love you investigating the source material i love you science i love you math even though you are personally my enemy (math/yn slowburn) i love you writing even though you try to stab me a lot i love you Experts in Your Field i love you Using The Brain

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[carlyraejepsans]

"speak for yourself" make your own post❤️

[maibeloved]

Guess who is back in their gravity falls phase! (After it being dormant for almost a decade!)

[marzipanandminutiae]

accused 17th-century English or English colonial witches in a certain subset of modern pseudo-feminist fiction: I'm a girlboss who can read, unlike other women! I live apart from the community and use herbs to basically invent modern medicine! my views align perfectly with many modern progressive talking points! also I wear my hair down because I'm a ~free spirit~

actual accused 17th-century English or English colonial witches: I'm homeless and mentally ill and my community just kind of wants me gone. or I'm Jewish or Romani. or maybe I have property that someone else wants. I could have strong opinions but that's usually not enough to attract witchcraft charges on its own unless the community is REALLY in a mess. I might even be an unpopular MAN who someone has an interpersonal squabble with, although statistically I am more likely to be a woman (unlike in Scandinavia, where the reverse is true)

[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.

[wordwings]

*kicks down your door* It might seem like a plot hole that no one thought about the possibility of Dracula being invited into the asylum by Renfield (or any other patient) but actually it speaks to the way Renfield’s personhood is being denied mainly by Jack Seward, but also the rest of the crew in part through their reliance on Seward’s expertise. Which also ties into the way they have decided to shut out Mina at the very same time. It literally just did not occur to them that the patients living in the same building as them would have any claim to the residency that allows someone to grant the permission a vampire needs to enter a home. But of course the asylum is the patients’ home just as much as it is Jack’s! They live there! In short this fatal blow dealt to the heroes at this crucial juncture comes about through both their sexism and their ableism. Good night. *puts your door back on its hinges again and leaves*

[mebssann]

imagine you're living in the post apocalypse and your adopted dad still makes you do homework

[arylleth]

This passage reflects a deeply psychoanalytic view of love, identity, and loss. It intertwines ideas from object relations theory (a branch of psychoanalysis that developed from and alongside Freud's work) and some Lacanian concepts. Let's break it down.

── .✦ Core Ideas in the Quote:

1. "Love is letting your identity fill in around the shape of the other person" 𓍯𓂃𓏧This suggests that love is a relational act of self-definition. Your sense of self shifts, adapts, and reshapes itself around the presence of the beloved. This reflects object relations theory, particularly the work of Melanie Klein and D.W. Winnicott, who emphasized how early relationships (with primary caregivers, but later extrapolated to all relationships) structure the psyche. Loving someone here means that they become a psychological object around which your internal world organizes itself. You’re not just affected by them—you are, in part, defined by them.

2. "You love someone by defining yourself against them" 𓍯𓂃𓏧 This echoes Lacan’s mirror stage and his notion that our sense of identity is always formed in relation to an other (the “big Other” in Lacanian terms). Love, then, is not about merging or union in a simplistic way, but rather a dialectic of difference: we come to know who we are by how we are not the other, by how we orient ourselves to their presence. There's also a Hegelian undertone: identity is formed through negation and contrast—we become us in relation to not-you.

3. "Loss hurts because there's nothing holding that part of you in place anymore" 𓍯𓂃𓏧 This is psychologically astute. The passage sees grief as a kind of psychic destabilization: the person you loved was anchoring part of your identity. Their absence dislodges something within you. This aligns with Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), where he writes that in mourning, a person must slowly decathect (detach) libido from the lost object, and in the process, feel a sort of inner dismemberment.

4. "Your outline still holds... the thing you shaped yourself into by loving them, you never stop being that" 𓍯𓂃𓏧 This suggests the irreversibility of love’s psychic impact. It's not a phase you grow out of; it's an internal restructuring. This could resonate with Jacques Lacan’s idea that love leaves a kind of “scar” on the unconscious—our subjectivity is permanently marked by our significant relationships. Alternatively, it echoes Bion's idea (from object relations) that the internalized object remains alive within the psyche. Even when someone dies or leaves, the version of them you internalized continues to affect how you feel, think, love.

── .✦ Summary of Psychoanalytic Ideas Present:

Concept Source Description Object Relations Klein, Winnicott, Bion Identity is shaped in relation to internalized objects (people); love is a structuring force. Lacan’s Mirror Stage & Big Other Lacan Identity forms through recognition and difference; the beloved becomes part of how we “see” ourselves. Mourning and Melancholia Freud Loss is painful because the loved object was part of the ego; grief is ego reorganization. The Permanence of the Inner Object Bion, Fairbairn Once internalized, the psychological trace of a person remains a part of the self.

── .✦

This quote captures the melancholic beauty of love as something that doesn't just "happen to us," but rewrites who we are. Psychoanalysis teaches us that relationships aren't just about affection or companionship—they are the crucible in which the self is formed. And when someone leaves, they don’t just go; they leave a shape, a hollow, a contour in our psyche that we keep living within.

It's that what we call "love" is actually letting your identify fill in around the shape of the other person - you love someone by defining yourself against them. It says loss hurts because there's nothing holding that parte of you in place anymore. But your outline still holds, and it keeps holding. The thing you shaped yourelf into by loving them, you never stop being that. The marks are permanent, so the idea of the person you loved is permanent too.

[somewhereincairparavel]

"jason is a knockoff watered down percy" NO hear me out, jason actually parallels annabeth immensely, sharing SO many similarities with her personality, not percy, in this essay I will-

edit: my full analysis is out now! here

[tempo-takoyaki]

"It would be my pleasure to give you a proper tour and introduce you to everyone."

Here is my full illustration for @svsssbigbang for the fanfiction Night at Cang Qiong Museum by @adventure-waffles! An incredible Night at the Museum x Scum Villain AU! Don't hesitate to also check out the other two artists incredible pieces for this fanfiction: dustmeadowx and qiye!

And since I know that tumblr tends to destroy the quality of my illustrations, here are some close-ups under the cut:

[plagueislost]

i love being late to trends. my new years resolution is to be late to every trend ever. and you know im serious because im even late to new years.

(theres an inverse version of this by @chamiryokuroi , you should go check it out! i started making this before i saw theirs, but i think its cool that now theres both versions)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

HOT, SINGLE, UNSTUDIED SPONGES. 3000 NAUTICAL MILES AWAY. Come sail the distance and read Tiger Tiger!