(ID provided in Alt)

Lore of the Wilds by Analeigh Sbrana -- available for pre-order now!

A Library with a deadly enchantment.

A fae lord who wants in.

A human woman willing to risk it all for a taste of power.

In a land ruled by ruthless Fae, twenty-one-year-old Lore Alemeyu's village is trapped in a forested prison. Lore knows that any escape attempt is futile–her scars are a testament to her past failures. But when her village is threatened, Lore makes a desperate deal with a fae lord.

She convinces him that she will risk her life for wealth, but really she’s after the one thing the Fae covet above all: magic of her own.

As Lore navigates the hostile world outside, she’s forced to rely on two fae males to survive. When undeniable chemistry ignites, she’s not just in danger of losing her life, but her heart to the very creatures she can never trust.

Release day September 5th, 2023

More pre-order links are incoming as they generate.

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Hey booklr! I'm posting this on behalf of my friend Analeigh Sbrana (@literaryxqueen on insta), who doesn't have a Tumblr. Her debut novel, Lore of the Wilds, went live for pre-order this morning, and I'd love it if we could show it some love.

Analeigh tried for two years to sell her story to trad-pub, but the vibe was that trad-pub didn't want to take the risk on a Black Fae fantasy adventure set in a breathtakingly descriptive magic kingdom in a market currently flooded with white fairy romances. So, she took matters into her own hands and joined the ranks of self-pub.

Full disclosure: I worked on this book as a proofreader, and I loved every minute of it. I kept forgetting I was supposed to be working and reading ahead. I scheduled a week to finish reading it in did it in 3 days, and the only reason it took so long was that I had to actually pause and work on it 😅.

So, if you like:

-🍄cottage core -✨fairy core -📚light/dark academia vibes -🌈a diverse cast of lgbtqia+ Black characters -💘romance -🧝🏾‍♀️ being kidnapped by a fairy prince to tidy up his cursed/enchanted library and coming into your own magical powers as a result, then Lore of the Wilds might just be for you!

Here, have a sneak peek of what the physical books will look like:

(ID in alt) The book will eventually be available in eBook, paperback, and hardback--Ana's just having a time getting the links to generate. I'll post them as soon as they're live.

Please do consider giving LoTW some love. It's such a fantastic book, and I'd love to see it thrive where trad-pub left it to fail. Thank you 💖

Hey, so Tumblr rejected the Blaze on this post, so if we could get an organic signal boost going so as many people see this as possible, that'd be great.

One thing I’ve learned about writing is ”give everything a face”. It’s no good to write passively that the nobility fled the city or that the toxic marshes were poisoning the animals beyond any ability to function. Make a protagonist see how a desperate woman in torn silks climbs onto a carriage and speeds off, or a two-headed deer wanders right into the camp and into the fire. Don’t just have an ambiguous flock of all-controlling oligarchy, name one or two representatives of it, and illustrate just how vile and greedy they are as people.

it’s bad to have characters who serve no purpose in the story, but giving something a face is a perfectly valid purpose.

This is the real heart of “show don’t tell”

My film teacher always says “write visually” and people are so confused what he means. I take it as “don’t explain the events/theme/emotion, write something that exemplifies the events/theme/emotion” ex) I am angry vs I throw the beautiful pot my grandmother made for me on the ground, and it works for me!

YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY!

reblog to make it die faster

We need to go back a few years to whatever era of depressing off-the-shits indie horror this was and I am not even remotely joking

HOW COULD I FORGET ABOUT “DISCOVER MY BODY”

Tbf it’s relatively more recent than the other 3 games so hopefully there will be more games like this soon

I’m sorry that I turned this post into a thread of weird horror that I actually like but if you’re a fan of sci-fi short stories please I beg of you read Computer Friendly by Eileen Gunn (there’s a link to the story somewhere on this page) and Patient Zero by Tananarive Due they both live in my head rent free

my favs have to be Rediger, a sound novel (similar to a visual novel without the visuals) which is about a 10 minute play

And of course, obligatory Kitty Horrorshow!! Overall interesting experiences with good good writing

I’m gonna take this as an opportunity to just. link some indie games i enjoy.

Pretty much anything from Yames (growing my grandpa steam link)

FAITH: The Unholy Trinity (steam link)

PYLONS

Perfect Vermin (steam link)

How Fish is Made (steam link)

Iron Lung

It Steals

The Upturned

Papers, Please

OFF

Youtuber John Wolfe did a pretty great video essay about this subject a few months ago

Also if you want Playstation styled bloody horror check out @puppetcombo and the work they create/produce. :3

If I could swoop in with some visual novels? Scarlet Hollow (steam link) is amazing. Rich, layered characters, creepy Appalachian folklore, some very dark themes and stunning art.

There’s an upcoming game by the same artist called Slay the Princess that looks great too. I also really enjoyed Grotesque Beauty (steam link) and Cooking Companions (steam link).

And I also recommend Meeting In The Flesh and Parasite In Love for some really unique horror takes on a dating sim. (I mean REALLY, genuinely unique, I promise they aren’t a couple of Doki Doki Literature Club knockoffs.)

embracing the patterned ambiguity of gender and sex as more or less social constructs can grant you so much more precision in thinking about so many concepts in science.

like, if there was a study (and I'm just making this up as an example) showing women suffer from mosquito bites more than men do

you could do the ~"Gender Critical"~ thing and go "see!? mosquitoes get it!!"

OR

you could go "that's interesting" and start asking more questions, like:

because in fact the study i made up just then could lead to a huge variety of conclusions. from my description above you can't tell the difference between studies that show:

etc etc etc

you're just not going to understand actual Gender Science, and therefore reality, if you can't put "hmm, but what do they mean by woman this time" in your mental toolkit in a relatively neutral way.

Honestly this is a great way of presenting the kind of scientific literacy that is needed in an era of clickbait headlines and sound bites and facts that turn into memes; so much science "news" as reported by mass media distills nuanced studies into easily quotable and shocking one-liners that generally ignore the context behind the statistic.

If you’re a writer working on a world with a monarchy, tell me about your world’s coronations!

In the Young Wizards universe: The occasional royalty we’ve run across have usually been either wizards or planetary-level civil servants (or sometimes both), and don’t have coronations.

Of the Middle Kingdoms ones: Of four realms that we know about, we have pertinent data on two.

One set of royalty doesn’t have crowns. The symbols of royal authority are the Throne, and the ancient scepter the ruler is given (or sometimes achieves). Rulers undergo an overnight spiritual ordeal in which the demigod they embody signs off on them (or kills them). Some days after that comes the Enthronement, a fairly casual affair during which the ruler has to feed a huge free meal to everybody who turns up. (This would be because a king’s main job is to make sure their people are fed.*)

…The other set of royalty does have crowns, but the ruler has to appear in public every year, unguarded (except by volunteers), to hammer out their new crown out of a small ingot of plain gold. This gives their people a chance to kill them if they’ve previously proven to be no good at their job. …After that the ruler goes to lunch, and later uses the crown as a paperweight or something. (Royalty normally wear a chain of office as the symbol of their position and responsibilities.)

*…You mean that’s not your rulers’ main job? Hmm.

new post bc i really need folks to stop spreading tactics that are going to get missourians killed.

attorney general bailey has set up a website where you can report “concerns” about transgender care.

DO NOT SUBMIT PLAUSIBLE ENTRIES.

bailey will take those entries as real stories and use them as fuel to come down even harder on transgender care in missouri. instead, do what we usually don’t do and spam the absolute shit out of it. vary your submissions so they can’t just filter out certain keywords. but DO NOT submit stories that could sound real, because bailey will present them as real.

here is the link.

DO: Use a real sounding name (i.e. not "Anita Dickenmymouth" or something like that) and a real Missouri zip code in your form so it doesn't immediately get filtered out as spam or out of state. DON'T: Submit anything in the comment box that could even remotely be mistaken for a real report, because it will be used against trans people in Missouri. THAT is where you can put your spam, your copypasta, your true opinions about how horrible the order is.

^^^

Which is why it’s important to not be mean.

Their cult teaches them that the world is full of scary monster people who hate them for being so good and loved by god. If you swear at them and call them names or get in their face you’re just doing the cults work for it.

I’m not saying you have to listen to their presentation or try to debate them (and really getting into a debate without thoroughly understanding what they’re being taught will just make things worse)… I am just saying to be polite and say no thank you like if they were trying to hand you a flyer for something you don’t care about.

It’s easier for them to see the world outside their bubble as less scary if they see everyday people just going about their business and being as nice to them as you are to everyone else. This goes doubly for anyone who happens to dress modestly, not swear, and not drink or smoke because whatever you believe, they’ll see you as a “good” person who happens to strangely have no interest in their “message”, and that might be enough to get some curious about the possibility of themselves living in the real world.

It’s sometimes hard to be nice to people who seem to represent something you dislike. Just remember these “elders” are sheltered young men, some of which are getting their first real contact with people of other/no faiths.

They are not your enemy. They are victims.

So I’m from a country family. Part of what I was taught as a kid was guests, no matter if you wanted them are not, are treated to a drink and hospitality. So a few years ago a few of these guys came to my door. It was a really hot day out, like high 90’s. So I invited them in for a drink but I made it very clear, I will listen to their basic conversation while they have a drink but I absolutely have no intention of converting or changing my religion. We had a pleasant conversation for about twenty minutes, then they went on their way without leaving any pamphlets or anything and I figured that was the end of it.

About six months later, I had a new group come to my door. I invited them in for a drink and the two immediately jumped back and went to check my address. They then told me they were told about me in their missionary prep class (because they do that). That I was the only actual ‘good person’ on the route because I didn’t actually yell at them, slam doors in their face, or treat them how they were taught the world was. So we once again had a conversation over tea about how sometimes people just don’t appreciate it when someone shows up to their door trying to push a religion on them. I asked them how they would feel if someone who was Heathenistic appearing on their doorstep telling them how acknowledging Odin as the high god is the only way to save them. They admitted they would be really upset and uncomfortable about that.

Long story short after about two more times of this happening I later learned I was removed from the houses the missionaries were allowed to visit. Apparently I was causing a lot of the young missionaries to question what they were taught and was deemed a concern by the elders of their church because many were asking questions after visiting me. All it took was an offer of a drink and a few kind but intellectual questions to make them ask questions and actually listen to what I was saying.

I guess my overall point is, like the above says you are going to get a lot farther by being kind then being an asshole

So Arizona launched an “education hotline” that allows “concerned parents” to report “””critical race theory””” and other things like ~gender identity~ being taught in the classroom

It would be a shame if the number and email were spread to bad actors looking to prank call the AZ Department of Education

602-771-3500 or empower @ azed .gov 🤡

and for the love of god, don’t just spam it with memes or le funny shrek jokes or whatever, they’ll just hang up

make plausible-sounding reports for things that don’t actually exist, so that they actually have to waste time/resources investigating false leads - the goal is to waste time they would otherwise be using to do their jobs, not to get tumblr clout for being an epic troll

So apparently the internet article said the superintendent wouldn't be deterred by the prank calls because they would 'taper off eventually'. It'd be a real shame if this post stayed in circulation via queues so they get a consistent list of prank calls to filter through. 😇

The butch lesbian/trans man "funky printed button down" stereotype is true but you must understand that the men's section of so many clothing stores is a bleak and miserable place. Clothing manufacturers are simply convinced that no one who wears men's clothes wants anything besides the most boring outfits possible. Often stripes are the most exciting it gets. If you want to wear clothing designed for men but happen to like "color" and "joy" in your life then often the funky printed button down or the hawaiian shirt are simply your only options, especially off the clearance rack.

Also if the above is you, I highly recommend @morningwitchy and @carmico 🙏🩵🩵

not to be a Brand and plug myself here but since i was tagged: i, nonbinary, make funky button downs in fun patterns that many have described as gender affirming/euphoric :^) they come in unisex sizing xs-4XL, 100% cotton, with button on the hips for extra room! also, i have tees/pants/jackets to match.

i wanna add @mayakern is doing button ups now and has preorders going on! and @irrel has some fun dnd themed button ups!

aww thank you! glad to be in good company, i adore all the artists tagged :’)

i’ve only just started my first foray into button up territory, but i have preorders open until march 31st! sizes XS-6X, polyester spandex blend, with extra hidden closures in the bust region to prevent gaping

Sorry as someone who teaches rhetoric this is a wonderful response to the Paradox of Tolerance. I cannot tell you how many times my students have had debates about this. This is the response. This does indeed fix it. I cannot wait to tell this to my classes now. Philosophically and rhetorically this completely resolved the Paradox of Tolerance and I am floored by its simplicity and angry I never saw it before.

The tweet: https://twitter.com/Lionhearted_ben/status/1629919975203848192?t=HfF1j3BVqZMgZEIHgVnz3w&s=19

And in case Twitter is being a fool, here's the PDF itself: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PiO5JAc2_erXL9rEPU-Gj4DXQ3N0dTbe/view

Shout-out to a friend for showing me this!!

They're going to cap the cost of insulin for unisured people to $35 for a month's supply. If you don't have insurance, this is the website to see what prescribed insulins are approved and to get the discount card.

INSULINAFFORDABILITY.COM

did anyone actually ever read those animorph books

just stared at the covers for a concerningly long amount of time before putting it back where i found it

me too

Same

Here are some of the spoilers you missed out on by not reading Animorphs:

What. The. Fuck

From someone who recently read/finished this series, NONE OF THE ABOVE IS AN EXAGGERATION.

Also you can get all the PDFs here

Everybody read some animorphs you know you wanna it’s right there

Go ahead and start on book one you’ll already get some juicy terror

Oh also my gf and her gf can't return to their home state BC their existence is about to be illegal there

This isnt a fucking exaggeration btw

"Adult Cabaret" includes "male or female impersonators," and makes it illegal in public or any location children might be present. It's a misdemeanor the first offense, and a FELONY for any subsequent offenses. Trans people are about to become illegal in Tennessee, and I haven't heard fucking shit from any cis people.

I want to share something for those of you who are teaching and want your conservative students to be more open-minded to liberal ideas that you’re presenting.

I grew up in a conservative family and a conservative town, and like most conservative kids, had been told that colleges were hotbeds of liberalism, so I was already defensive politically when I started college. My first semester or two I was really skeptical of everything political that my professors presented me with.

And then I took a women’s studies course (required at my college). And on the first day, the professor said, 

“You don’t have to be a feminist. There are days when I’m not a feminist. But we’re going to discuss feminist ideas in this class, and you might find that you agree with some of them and disagree with others, and that’s fine.”

And that took the pressure off. By telling me that I didn’t HAVE to be a feminist, that I didn’t HAVE to agree, that professor started me on the road to becoming a feminist. I particularly remember her giving us information about what a huge percentage of the housework was still done by women, even in [hetero] couples where both the man and woman worked outside the home. And after that I remember saying, “I’m not a feminist, but I can see where they’re coming from.” 

Within 5 years, I was claiming the term and coming out to my mom as a feminist.

So when I taught college writing, I assigned politically liberal essays to my students, many of whom came from conservative backgrounds. And before they read the first one, I would say,

“The reading for the next class–I want you to know that you don’t have to agree with it. You don’t have to agree with anything that your professors teach you in college. But the point of a college education is to have your mind opened to other points of view. So you’re not required to agree, but you are required to approach the reading with an open mind. You might find that you agree with some things the author says and disagree with others. And that’s cool! We WANT you to use your critical thinking and decide for yourself what you think about things! But to do that, you need to give people the benefit of the doubt and be open-minded to what they have to say.”

And I have to say, it worked really well for me! I remember in particular that after I assigned the essay “Black Men and Public Space”, one of my students wrote in her reading reflection,

“I was taught in school that racism in America ended with Martin Luther King. I am appalled to discover that this is not true.”

Priming your students to be open-minded, while also encouraging them to use critical thinking, can help to break down some of the automatic defenses against new ideas that students are often taught. Approaching your students’ comments during discussion with an open-minded view yourself, validating their experiences while also making gentle counterarguments, can do a lot as well.

DO NOT LET SOCIAL MEDIA TURN YOU INTO AN AMERICAN

As an American: Seriously, please don’t

ok well i don't

"Americanization" is a real phenomenon, and how non-Americans should be cautious of it is taught in different countries at school. It's taught in Greece and people from other countries told me their elementary or middle school teachers (using the American grades, to make it make sense to the majority on the site) talked to them about it.

It's common sense here, except for USians, so I'll analyze it a bit more for the dominant demographic here. In a globalized setting, the most dominant culture affects the others and sets the trends. The way our language works, how we think, our levels of politeness and intimacy, and our levels of respect. (flash news, they are going down 😂)

I don't want to imply that there is nothing good in the US. There are plenty of positives in the country. It's just that for the rest of the cultures online it's a constant daily fight to not forget our roots, with the degree US media and brands have permeated our lives. In Greece at least we watch more US American media than Greek media nowadays, and many of our shows are rip-offs of USian ones, with little adaptation to Greek reality and culture.

And to demonstrate the amount of this exposure, a 22-year-old Greek asked me the other day "if something happens we call 911, right?" This might have literally cost them their life, in a dangerous situation! Because all the movies and songs they consumed (not an unusual thing for the Greek youth) were what they knew. And I found a similar comment in this comment thread.

Lots of Americans in the notes failing to understand this post. It's not about not liking the US. It's not about you feeling ashamed or guilty for being American. It's not about you.

It's about American media drowning out native language media all over the world, and workplaces requiring the English language in your repertoire more and more. It's about proper translations and foreign language dubbing of films disappearing because "everyone speaks/should speak English anyway." All of this is leading to the deterioration of native speaker groups of languages worldwide.

In my country, Dutch language courses can't find enough people who want to study the language, while English language courses are overflowing with people who want to study the language. There is even widespread distaste for the Dutch language for being crude or sounding rough or what have you. That's our native language!!! That is our culture in its purest form!!! That is knowledge we inherit from our parents as they did from theirs!!! That is how we learned fairytales and folk stories and myths!!! That is the language that shapes our communication and our way of thinking!!! To hate your native language is to hate yourself at the deepest level.

And yet it's so normalised. Droves of foreigners living in the Netherlands will never learn a word of Dutch, because "everyone speaks English anyway." We are the world's leaders in non-native understanding of English, but it comes at a cost. A grave cost we will continue to pay.

If you're looking to support your non-American friends in any way that is not performatively shouting "I hate being an American" into the void, first of all, unlearn that hatred of yourself and your culture. You are of no help self-flagellating, and there is a difference between holding your country accountable for its issues, and denying yourself your culture because your country is doing and has done bad things.

(I am not going to get into arguments about whether or not US American culture exists. It does, and if you think differently you are welcome to change your mind.)

Secondly, learn about other countries. Learn a bit of Chinese. Take an interest in the Italian political system. Ask your friends about their countries' folklore. Watch documentaries about art from Nigeria. Absorb information that is not fed to you by American media.

And thirdly, quit expecting your non-American friends to communicate in a way that appeals to you. The French and Dutch will always seem rude to you because our way of communicating is far more direct than the way you communicate. People from other cultures may seem vague to you because their way of communicating is far more indirect, and you're not used to that either. Quit being frustrated when you don't get what we mean exactly. Quit assuming we mean the absolute worst thing you could imagine just because you didn't get what we meant the first time. Ask us to explain if you need us to, and learn to accept that we are different from you.

We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It's your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.

We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It's your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.

historical note- the beginning of most LGBT rights in law started with the MIME RIOTS of 1968 over the right to preform lewd plays (it was about a candlestick maker and was openly bisexual, the candles used were exactly what you are imagining) enshrining public displays of sexual identity under the right to free speech aggressively clowning to destroy the systems of oppression is a noble tradition to keep alive, and historically speaking it works

Of course. In storytelling, that's the Trickster archetype and it's as old as the human race.

Americans love Disneyland because it’s a walkable city

That's actually a really popular analogy. Howard Kunstler wrote about Disneyland as a "capital of unreality," where "the public realm is packaged for sale as a commodity."

"Through the postwar decades Americans happily allowed their towns to be destroyed. They’d flock to Disneyland at Anaheim, or later to Disney World in Florida, and walk down Main Street, and think, gee, it feels good here. Then they’d go back home and tear down half the old buildings downtown and pave them over for parking lots, throw a parade to celebrate a new K Mart opening—even when it put ten local merchants out of business—turn Elm Street into a six-lane crosstown expressway, pass zoning laws that forbade corner grocery stores in residential neighborhoods and setback rules that required every new business to locate on a one-acre lot until things became so spread out you had to drive everywhere. They’d build the new central school four miles out of town on a busy highway so that kids couldn’t walk there. They’d do every fool thing possible to destroy good existing relationships between things in their towns, and put their local economies at the mercy of distant corporations whose officers didn’t give a damn whether these towns lived or died. And then, when vacation time rolled around, they’d flock back to Disney World to feel good about America."

If anyone's interested, The Geography of Nowhere is unrivaled as a crash course on and scathing critique of American postwar urban planning.