When I was a kid, I regularly lost reading privileges for "having an attitude" and "acting out".

It wasn't as simple as being told not to read during other activities- one of the first times it happened, I remember being six years old, watching my stepfather pull fistfuls of books off my bookshelf and throw them to the floor in a heaping mess while I cried and asked him to stop.

It was weird. Every other adult I knew described me as exceptionally well-behaved, but at home, it was the opposite, and it was blamed on "learning bad habits from that shit you're reading".

Because I couldn't read at home, I spent all my free time at school in the library, reading with my friends.

When I grew up and moved away, I realized that my family life was toxic and abusive, and the "attitudes" I was being punished for were standing up for myself, standing up for my younger siblings, and resisting actual, real-life psychological abuse. Because I'd learned from what I'd read that my family wasn't normal, not like my parents said it was, and in my stories, the heroes were the people who spoke out when it was hard to.

It is insane to me that there are students right now who can't access books. It is insane that books are being outlawed. It is perverse that we are stealing away an entire generation's ability to contextualize their lives, to learn about the world around them, to develop critical thinking skills and express themselves and feel connected to the world or escape from it, whatever and whenever and however they need.

That is not how you raise a compassionate, thoughtful, powerful society.

That's how you process cattle.

It's fucking disgusting.

Hey, this is just a reminder that queer authors (me) are writing queer stories! In this case, it might not be a //good// story, but it certainly exists and I'm very proud of that.

Quick summary:

Time Traveling Lesbians save the universe, ft. pathetic twinks and buff ladies. There's one in every book.

My update schedule is terrible, but I've finished the first draft of the first book and I've committed to finishing this series even if it stabs me in the back and steals my firstborn.

Anyways enjoy my raging shit show. <3

Edit: Just realized I never linked the book lmao. I'm sorry friends. I made a whoopsies.

The defintion of hell is knowing a show is incredibly well-received in its first season, but if people don’t become machines churning out tweets, content, and rewatching 24/7, there’s no likelihood it’ll get a chance to tell its whole story. This shit is madness. Shows in different genres shouldn’t have to pit-battle for dominance. First seasons are MEANT to be baselines establishing worlds and characters, not complete storylines. The idea that this golden age of television has turned into “get it done in one or get out” is revolting.

It's been said before, it will be said again, but it's still worth saying: the fact that art centering on straight romance is allowed to just be bad, but art with queer romance in it always has to be indicative of A Serious Problem With the Way We Tell Queer Stories makes being a queer person making queer art deeply stressful

Parallel Lines and Brothers.

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A Greater Imbalance

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...oops

I hate drawing Leo so quiet oh it gives me the ~chills~ aaughh...

being an adult means we can buy or make as much self-indulgent shit (as we can afford) and unironically have trinkets of our fave things cause our teen years was bullied for liking things and hiding/denying we were ever neurodivergent to the point of suicide. sucks for anyone that thinks its weird cringe but I'm going to try and allow myself to love myself in little ways now

I made them match your honor >:) !!!

im sure its been said already but as the election draws near more and more liberals will come out of the woodwork to shame people with a conscience to give away their vote to the democrats for free. i'm already seeing posts saying "why aren't people more concerned about a trump presidency?" you want to know why? it's because people already know he's bad. everyone already knows what he is and what he's done and what he'll do. there's nothing to discuss. he's a racist despotic worm of a man. there's nothing else to say.

biden is currently president. the genocide is happening under his watch. he's the one funding isra*l and arming them; he's sidestepped congress more than once to give them weapons. by oct. 27, the biden administration already knew that "Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets." the state department/biden have engaged in atrocity propaganda, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the death toll recorded by the gaza health ministry, and so on. the united states is currently in the process of trying to pin the "war in gaza" on netanyahu (see sen. schumer's speech) after months of backing blatant genocide as a means to act as if they're "doing something" about the genocide (Instead of, say, threatening to cut off all aid to israel with the condition that all hostilities in gaza, the west bank, and occupied jerusalem are halted immediately and permanently, allowing palestinians freedom to travel, allowing aid into gaza, etc etc etc.)

the long and short of it is that liberals view their own lives as being worth more than palestinians'. that's it. they'll vote for another 4 years of the guy ushering in genocide and supporting apartheid + settler colonialism because he isn't outright attacking them (despite various laws and rulings happening both at the supreme court level and at the local level all over the country that will endanger people). they'll settle for the illusion of safety and security and shame anyone with a conscience and accuse them of "supporting the republicans" when in an actual democracy you would be able to use your vote as leverage to extract concessions from those who want to be elected. that's how it's supposed to fucking work.

democrats are not owed people's vote. if biden loses, it will be biden's fault; it will be his campaign's fault; it will be the democrats' fault. trump is bad; the republicans are bad. we already know this. this is not an endorsement of either. but if democrats are too cowardly and feckless and servile to the motivations of the american empire and never do anything for their constituents then why the fuck should anyone vote for them. you want to get mad at someone, why don't you do something useful and stop worrying about team-sports with a purely selfish basis and start hounding the people in power who are supposed to serve you, the voter.

We lived.

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PSA: if you've ever wanted to play an indie game made with unity, download it before january 1st 2024 or risk losing your chance! (for a list of unity games, i found this. can't say if it's completely comprehensive but it's a start)

if you're a game dev or aspiring game dev, i would check out unreal engine. it's widely documented, pretty easy to jump into, and free until you make over $1 million and then they take 5% above that- so if you made $1,000,001, epic games takes 5 cents. epic is a big corporation so they could pull some bullshit but it's less likely. and they have protection from future bullshittery if you stay with the current or older versions. beyond that, there are a ton of other free game engines out there or engines that are on the cheaper side (game maker for ex, only requires payment on export and is the game engine used for undertale/deltarune). so if you can help it, don't waste your time on unity!

and above all: fuck unity. indie games are so important and don't deserve to be fucked over by corporate greed

Part I of a mini-sketchy comic based on this interview.

Pt. II - Pt. III incoming

And an occasion to draw Buxom Tiffany Titfucker, I feel like her and Angel's rivalry is criminally unexplored.

(on a completely different note: I'm a person who manages to draw little comics now? And posts it? And doesn't have a self-hate session even if the drawings are a bit crappy? ME?? WTF happened)

stop thinking so hard about it dude ur gnna get a headache

Another thing I liked is how Laurent's trauma is handled, because usually when a character has a Secretly Traumatic Backstory there's some kind of annoyingly maudlin scene about it. Either they get into some kind of big conflict with the love interest and are forced to explain themselves so they don't get judged or dumped, or the love interest intrudes on a vulnerable moment and sees them being abused or somehow handling the consequences of that abuse, or they are explained the circumstances by a benevolent third party, and this changes their view of the abused character because now they're god's poorest meow meow and I just fucking hate it every time.

Like, this is why I stopped reading this type of story: because the amount of crowding and backing into a corner and privacy violation that happens to abused characters in order to coax them into opening up about it and reassure them that they're okay is so annoying. I feel like I've been psychologyposting on main too much lately, so I might explain later why I feel this way or I might not but in any case I hate it.

I love that this book is the literal opposite of that, that Damen not only doesn't crowd Laurent and insist that he open up, but that Damen ensuring space and privacy and time to calm down for Laurent when he's overwhelmed is repeatedly portrayed as an act of friendship and caring and love (that Laurent later reciprocates, because they both lose their heads when something pushes their buttons and understand this about each other).

I also love how Damen doesn't fall in love with Laurent because Laurent is sad and fucked up, or because he's so brave to have put up with the abuse, or because Damen too is sad like Laurent (I'm physically restraining myself from going off on a rant about how shared trauma is hardly ever a good foundation for a relationship): no, he falls in love with Laurent because he's whip-smart, and a good leader, and funny, and tender once he opens up, and a lateral thinker, and a man of integrity who keeps his promises and pays back his debts (and because he's pretty and blonde and good at sporty shit that Damen likes). Some of these things may have been shaped by the awful shit that happened to Laurent, as they were also probably shaped by his station or his education or his body type or any other circumstance of his life, but it's refreshing to have a character who went through awful shit but who also has other things going on for him that make him loveable instead of being completely defined by his trauma. And even when Damen finds out, the way he thinks about Laurent literally doesn't change at all - the things he likes about Laurent are still seen in the same light as always, Laurent's personality as a whole is still the same, even his attitude towards what Laurent did to him when they first met doesn't change much (as we see in the short story epilogue). And even this last bit is really cool because Laurent is never stripped of his agency or made out into some sort of helpless victim currently, both of which would probably mortify him with how much he's trying to establish that he's not at any opportunity.

And I also like how it's not necessary for Laurent to tell Damen about it in order for them to be close, nor does Damen push him into it. And everyone else seems to agree that it's Laurent's story to tell when and how he wants it told, except for the villain of the piece, who reveals it in the most awful way possible. This is particularly important because Damen spends three books grabbing everyone in Laurent's life by the shoulders and shaking them and going, "Why do you care about this guy??? Have you noticed that he's kind of an ashole?? Why are you loyal to him?? Why???" and no one ever says anything, because they're protective of Laurent and don't want to take away his agency or privacy because it's his fucking story to tell. Even after Damen finds out, we don't see him mention it and he probably lets Laurent open up or not on his own terms, as he does with everything else that doesn't directly concern him. Even though we've seen through Laurent's dialogue time and time again that he's probably conceptualizing it in some fucked up ways in his own head and needs yet to realize that he's not some kind of twisted pervert for what happened to him, crowding him about it before he's ready won't accomplish much.

And the story itself backs all this by never being maudlin about it even though it's obvious what happened pretty early on (I figured it out really early, I remember suspecting it almost immediately and being dead sure of it by the Ancel scene in the garden); it kind of elipses around it, gives hints and parallels to other characters in similar circumstances, has Laurent say incoherent shit that makes sense in context, has other characters hint at it, but with Laurent being one of the central characters it's cool that the story gives him that respect and doesn't wallow in the tragedy of it all.

bad blood is one hell of an episode. it literally opens with mulder straight-up murdering a regular teenager via stake-through-the-heart and he and scully are like pretty sure the FBI is going to be sued and they're going to be doing some serious jail time. except both of them remember the story differently. scully's story is predictably logical and straight-forward. the killer was drugging his victims before bleeding them out, mimicking a vampire attack by wearing fake fangs (which are proven to be fake. this is crucial. this kid was wearing plastic fangs when mulder stabbed him. in the chest. with a wooden stake.) what is also crucial is that mulder was a victim of this murderer's attack and so he was tripping hard when scully intercepts the killer. mulder - whilst tripping balls - is convinced that the killer has glowing eyes and flew across the room before running out the door. and so - whilst tripping balls - he gives chase and ends up stabbing the kid through the heart with a wooden stake.

and of course this is the x files and so while scully and mulder are arguing over who gave who the hardest time in their percieved series of events, it turns out that mulder was right. the kid was a vampire and the stake didn't actually kill him. the fangs were fake because he was copying the sorts of vampires that you see in books and on tv. he was a real vampire.

and it's not just the kid. there are bunches of vampires, including the sheriff. the whole town are just. vampires. the lot of 'em. and the second they're found out, they just up and leave without a trace.

sometimes the extent to which mulder turns out to be right in this show is borderline ludicrous, it's amazing, I love it. but what was even better was that the biggest point of contention between scully and mulder's stories wasn't even the vampire thing, it was whether or not the sheriff was actually hot.

oot zelda doodle i liked :’-)))