Ursae Minoris

Just another Voltron fanblog. My fanfics here or on AO3 ; My fanarts voltron thoughts : my meta, headcanons, theories and other speculations about Voltron my stuff : fanfictions, fanarts and "voltron thoughts" all together my twitter

[aclarkcomics]

happy vld turning 10 to those who celebrate 🩷💚❤️💙🖤💛🧡

[is-dracula-daily-today]

July 8th

There will be a Dracula Daily update today!

[fox-bright]

Years before the covid pandemic began, author Naomi Kritzer wrote the charming, emotionally genuine short story "So Much Cooking," which was a pandemic log through the eyes of a cooking blog. The premise is that the author is a home cooking blogger raising her kids, and then a pandemic hits--and bit by bit she's feeding not only her own, but her sister's kids, some neighbors' kids, and so on, in a situation of pandemic lockdown and food shortages.

It's very good, and was prescient for a lot of the early days of the covid pandemic. I found myself returning to it often in the first couple of years because of how steadfast it was in its hopefulness.

Last year she wrote a novelette, "The Year Without Sunshine," which attacks a similar problem in a similar way; instead of pandemic, this one is about the aftereffects of a distant nuke or a massive volcano explosion (it doesn't say), which has churned a great deal of dust into the air, causing massive damage to society and agriculture. The story covers one neighborhood, pulling together to keep each other alive--not through violence, but through lawn potatoes and message pinboards and bicycle-powered oxygen concentrators.

I recommend both stories. They're uplifting in a way that a lot of what I see lately isn't. They're a bit of a panacea for constant fearmongering about intracommunity violence and grinding hatefulness. We can be good to each other, if we try.

[servantofclio]

These are both excellent stories, and I also heartily recommend her story "Better Living through Algorithms."

[mikkeneko]

[briannyssey]

some people read an awful lot, but don't read very well. deep reading is itself a skill. being able to untangle the threads of theme, subtext, characterization, narrative style, and more are all things that it takes time and intentional engagement to learn.

if you've ever watched a movie with your film buff friend and chatted about it afterwards, that friend might have pulled hours more of conversation out of the same 90 minutes of screentime, and wondered how the fuck they did that - it's not raw intelligence, it's a skill that's been honed. And I learned a lot about film from talking to friends who knew about film, and reading critique by film scholars

literature works exactly the same. so if you want to get more out of your reading, there are things you can do to train that. Find a book or short story you think you've got a pretty good grasp on, preferably from a widely read & respected author like Ursula K Le Guin or Ray Bradbury (if you're new at this don't swing for the Toni Morrison or the Samuel Beckett yet unless you feel very comfortable with the complexity of the text - the point is to develop a complicated new skill on good foundations). Then go to JSTOR, create a free account, and look up criticism on the story you've chosen. Find something that looks readable to you and at least somewhat interesting. Read that article, and look at what that writer got out of the same story you've read that you didn't get. Do you see the critic's points? Did they teach you something about the text? Go reread that story and see if the criticism has changed how you read it. Are you seeing more? Are you thinking about the implications of a line that you hadn't noticed before? Does the story feel richer now?

there are other more involved ways of finding criticism. Learning to use academic databases, going to your local library to do interlibrary loans, finding critical voices you appreciate; these are all useful subskills. Literacy isn't just being able to read words, it's being able to read words in context and think about what they tell you about the text, the author, or the time and culture in which the text was produced. Literacy is the skill of being able to look at the world with open eyes and think clearly about how its parts are connected. It'll change your life

[briannyssey]

this keeps getting shared around and ive seen some different tags responding differently so i just want to make some important clarifications and distillations

you don't have to read more deeply if you don't want to (but i'd recommend it, i genuinely think it makes you a better person)

if you want to learn to read more deeply, the resources are out there. try to find critical literature (that is, academic writing that analyzes the text) on works your familiar with so you can get a sense for how to do that analysis too

learning to deep read literature can help you deep read many areas of your life

writers tend to put a lot of work into their stories. if you learn to read that work you'll (probably) appreciate the stories you love even more. And if not, then you'll have developed your taste. This too is worth doing

[monstersinthecosmos]

one of my favorite things to do when I finish a book that I love is to go read bad reviews on Goodreads, and when I hate a book I go read good reviews. 😂 it really helps to kinda interrogate it a little and see stuff that you didn’t notice.

[dant-gm]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

HI! it's been while!

I had the chance to work with @bitterdesert again for this edition of the Reverse Bang @deadbangdetectives

As always, she's an incredible storyteller ✨️💕

This time, our summer romance turned into something a little more wintry and mysterious

[bitterdesert]

It was so wonderful to work with @dant-gm and her inspirational art again!!

chase the shadows away

Chapter 1: Prologue: Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)

Rating: M

Chapter Length: 5.7k

Relationships: Edwin Payne/Charles Rowland

Characters: Charles Rowland, Edwin Payne

Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, 1990s, Sharing a Bed, Canon-Typical Violence, Mystery, Blood and Injury, Supernatural Elements, Magic, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Eventual Smut, Hurt/Comfort, testing the limits of codependence, part-time inkeeper and part-time detective charles and edwin

Fic summary:

Another gust blew by, whistling in Edwin’s ears through the tiny holes in his knit hat. In the faintest whisper, the wind spoke in a commanding rasp that prickled up Edwin’s spine. “It’s time to give it back.” Edwin grasped onto the arm of Charles’ coat before he could take another step forward. “Edwin?” Charles said, glancing back. Against his better judgement, Edwin ignored Charles and took the bait. “Give what back?” “It was never yours to keep.”

Or, sometimes you escape Hell, inexplicably turn up alive, and make a peaceful life for yourself and your best mate in a little village on the coast of Wales. It's hard to know what's more aggravating for Edwin--that Hell has come knocking again, or that all of a sudden he can't stop heart from beating out of his chest whenever Charles catches his eye.

[shop5]

let’s be real the pressure to use AI as an adult is exactly what they said the pressure the do drugs as a teenager would be like but the people that told us that caved immediately for the AI and definitely did not just say no

[lumpatronics]

SERVICE DOG PSA

So today I tripped. Fell flat on my face, it was awful but ultimately harmless. My service dog, however, is trained to go get an adult if I have a seizure, and he assumed this was a seizure (were training him to do more to care for me, but we didn’t learn I had epilepsy until a year after we got him)

I went after him after I had dusten off my jeans and my ego, and I found him trying to get the attention of a very annoyed woman. She was swatting him away and telling him to go away. So I feel like I need to make this heads up

If a service dog without a person approaches you, it means the person is down and in need of help

Don’t get scared, don’t get annoyed, follow the dog! If it had been an emergency situation, I could have vomited and choked, I could have hit my head, I could have had so many things happen to me. We’re going to update his training so if the first person doesn’t cooperate, he moves on, but seriously guys. If what’s-his-face could understand that lassie wanted him to go to the well, you can figure out that a dog in a vest proclaiming it a service dog wants you to follow him

[thetenderpassion]

[orufreyweek]

【Orufrey Week 2026】

13th July - 19th July

[wintersoldierfell]

you've heard of death of the author, now get ready for death of the audience: where instead of basing your reaction on a thousand uninformed opinions online, you actually read the text and engage with it

[wintersoldierfell]

girl help there's people on this post who can't actually read my text

[mastergir]

This is absolutely the funniest spam email I've ever gotten.

[lokineko]

A very late Sheith Week 2026 fill. Day one - AU

Keith is a dhampir working with former thrall Shiro to hunt down Zarkon and the vampires that Zircon has turned.

Blathering below the cut

~8x12 Arches hot press

Mixed media, watercolor, gouache, pastels (I used some fluorescing watercolors, and red sparkles)

I used some metallic sparkly paint, which doesn't really show up in the scan, so I might add a video of it. Also, it fluoresces, which is cool, but hard to scan.

I've been on a bit of a hiatus these past few years. I feel like I came out of retirement just to paint some Keith and Shiro. I have sketches for the most of the rest of Sheith Week, but since each piece seems to take at least a month, it's going to take me the rest of the year to do it. At least more Sheith? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Of course, like an idiot, I decided to do my first piece this year on hard mode and went with hot press paper and black paint. And then I had to learn gouache real quick because I messed up the faces. And I relearned why I don't do architectural pieces.

Anyway, thanks to @bangsheith for luring me back into painting! Sorry I'm late.

Original sketch:

Procreate clean up:

Inks:

Initial wash:

The slow progression of towers:

Blocked in Keith:

Blocked in Shiro:

And then the final, above.

[alphacrone]

“use ai or fall behind” why are you acting like asking copilot to write an email is a particularly sought-after skillset

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

[sternfleck]

Thoughts and prayers to my European mutuals suffering under their omega heat

[ralfmaximus]

do NOT google "omega heat"

[chocomiking]

prayers for the people googling "omega heat" for the first time

[technoturian]

[xoddballx]

I'm back!

saw the ocean and got a bit sunburnt it was fun!

have a sunburnt Keith with Shiro trying to help him out :D

I wanted to do more but I unfortunately only have enough energy for a doodle T. T

[duckchaw]

Day 22 - Downtime

I wonder what song they'd be listening to

@dbdpromptober