[aeruil]

so, i don't usually do a lot of original posting on here. as a writer, posting my work online has always had its issues, and those have only worsened lately.

however, recently, i submitted this poem to a litmag supposedly specialising in works of resistance, preferably from marginalised groups, and was declined. it happens, but it made me think.

the poem draws parallels between the battle of culloden in april 1746 (which saw roughly 2,000 scots killed within a single hour, marked the end to highland culture and led to a ban on many aspects of it, such as the wearing of kilts and tartans and the speaking of the gaelic language, and was the last large-scale weaponised resistance of scots against the english) and the fight trans people face across the UK (as well as the US, and many other countries) at present. it also mentions the colours of green and purple (and white), which were the suffragette colours first, and are now the colours that make up the genderqueer flag, but have as of late been increasingly claimed by TERFs, as led by J.K. Rowling, former witch-inventor, now witch-hunter general.

i first wrote this poem in april 2025, when the whole EHRC thing first came up in the UK. i really wish it weren't still, and perhaps more than ever, relevant over a year later.

but because it is, i decided to post it on here instead. what use is it sitting in a niche litmag that maybe a hundred people are going to read. that's not what i want it to be. i want it to be a battle song. i want it to bring courage to my trans+ siblings - be it just one single person (i know my following is tiny, but sometimes, on tumblr, that's irrelevant) or however many it may reach.

wherever you are in the world, whatever struggles you're facing at the moment - remember that your mere existence is an act of radical resistance. be strong, be angry, be kind to yourself, and live. you're not alone. and pride is very much still a protest.

also, if you're in the UK, and you're a trans person or an ally of any flavour, please contact your MP before 30 june - a motion has been tabled as of 1 june that, if passed, could yet stop the new EHRC draft code from otherwise automatically becoming law. you can find more info on how to contact your MP on the trans+ solidarity alliance's instagram, and you can check the motion's progress/supporters here:

https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/65938#tab-supporters

love and rage 🏳️‍⚧️

[note: no AI was used at any point in the creation of this artwork]

[memewhore]

[cyruszecreature]

i freaking love this video sm istg

[heartstoppercomic]

Epilogue - Part 2

The end.

Thank you for everything.

Read Heartstopper Online

More info/buy the books: https://aliceoseman.com/

The Heartstopper webcomic has now concluded.

Epilogue letter in text form:

Dear Heartstopper readers,

The Heartstopper webcomic’s first update dropped on September 1st 2016. Today, on April 11th 2026, the story has concluded.

I don’t quite know how to put all of my feelings into one letter. Heartstopper means more to me than words can express, but I’ll try my best.

Heartstopper has defined the past decade of my life. It started as a fun side project and quickly grew into something much bigger, eventually becoming my career. Despite that huge and unexpected change, making the Heartstopper comic feels the same to me as it did on day one. When I sit down to make Heartstopper, I feel at peace. When the world feels so scary and difficult, I have been able to return to Heartstopper, and everything feels okay again for a little while. 

Nick and Charlie first appeared as supporting characters in my first novel, ‘Solitaire’. In Solitaire, Nick and Charlie represent the idea that hope, love, joy and connection can persist and thrive despite the trials and tribulations of being alive. So maybe it’s ironic that Nick and Charlie have come to represent this in my own life. They have brought me joy. They have given me purpose. They have given me everything, really. And I’m so grateful for every moment I have spent with them.

Heartstopper is profoundly special to me. Which makes it extremely hard to say goodbye.

But it is time. I always knew that Nick going to university would be the end point of the story. And despite how sad I am to be bidding farewell to these characters, I am so, so proud and excited to have made it to the end and concluded the story exactly the way I wanted to.

Any webcomic creator can tell you that making a webcomic requires a heavy amount of determination and endurance. To draw a page almost every day for the past ten years has required a lot of sacrifice and a lot of energy. But every moment was worth it. And now that it is complete, Nick and Charlie’s story can be experienced from beginning to end, for the rest of forever.

I wouldn’t have made it here alone. From the very start, Heartstopper’s readers have offered so much support, love, community, conversation, and enthusiasm. Knowing that there are people out there who love these characters just like I do has given me the strength to keep going. I’ve also had the support of many colleagues, friends, and family members, who’ve all helped in different ways at various points in the past decade. Thank you so, so much to everyone who has been here for the journey. 

I have no idea what I’ll make next. For now, I’m taking a break. And I know that Nick and Charlie won’t simply vanish. I expect I will always return to drawing them and writing about them, probably in smaller ways, for the rest of my life, as long as my body allows.

Nick and Charlie will forever be in my heart, hand in hand on a beach somewhere.

Thank you, everyone.

Lots of love,

Alice x

[alexyquest]

i tried that ya book trend, how’d i do?

[9e978e]

[possumnest]

i <3 tiktaalik

[aeruil]

two slightly slow divas meet

[red-the-raspberry]

My knives? Out. My onion? Glass. My dead man? Awake.

[tpwrtrmnky]

"Block this ad" isn't good enough, I need a feature that directly tells the company "this was so shit that it lowered my opinion of your product"

[brutus-stan]

Some new and previously posted marketing photos for "A Ghost Story for Christmas - The Room in the Tower" at a higher resolution.

All rights reserved to the BBC, Adorable Media and Joe Duggan.

[conarcoin]

hate when motherfuckers try to talk to me about AFAB Experiences and how "we were all raised as girls 🥺" like brother i was socialized as a weird thing. i didn't have a "girlhood". don't talk to me

[itsjustfish]

Day 8: Glow

For @montereybayaquarium ‘s Deep Sea December

[montereybayaquarium]

Simply radiant. 🌟

A giant siphonophore can grow up to 130 feet (40 m) long. That's longer than a blue whale, the largest animal on Earth! Though this siphonophore's body doesn't get much bigger around than a broomstick, they're still growing for gold. 🥇

[serps-up]

so happy and free

[reachartwork]

this is going to be a silly reblog but i have kind of a fixation on animal qualia and the idea of an animal's umwelt, so i ended up wondering whether pudding was actually "enjoying" this.

which meant i went and read about snail brains.

here's the bad news, at least by human standards:

snails do not have anything like a centralized brain. their nervous system is made up of small clusters of neurons (ganglia) that mostly handle very local tasks. they don't have a cortex, they don't build big integrated models of the world, and they almost certainly don't experience things like appreciation, anticipation, or savoring.

pudding is not looking at the sky and thinking it's beautiful.

snail eyes are basically light sensors - they can tell bright from dark, but not form images. snail "taste" is done through chemoreceptors on their tentacles and around their mouth. those receptors don't produce flavor the way ours do; they just detect chemical compounds and sort them into "approach," "ignore," or "avoid."

so there's no evidence that snails enjoy food, or wind, or views, the way mammals do.

and that does sound kind of sad. but then i thought that maybe we are asking the wrong question.

snails do have valence. they detect aversive things (like salt or dryness) and withdraw from them. they detect non-aversive or beneficial conditions (like moisture) and stay extended. when pudding is stretched out like this, it means his nervous system is basically saying "this is safe; nothing is wrong."

if we define pleasure not as our human experience of dopamine and reward chemicals but instead as "the absence of aversion" - a state where the organism is open to its environment instead of defending itself - then this does count as something positive, even if it's extremely nothing like human enjoyment.

pudding isn't appreciating the wind. but his body is registering humidity, safety, and the ability to keep functioning, and that matters to him in the only way his nervous system can make things matter. he does not think "this is great, this is awesome, i love the weather", because he doesn't think in the way we do at all, but the neurological action in his ganglion tell his body that he is safe, that the moisture is an acceptable level, that it's not too dry or windy, and that there's nothing imminently threatening.

i think a lot of the sadness comes from assuming that a good life has to look like ours: full of enjoyment, meaning, and aesthetic experience. but a snail isn't missing those things. its world just isn't built to include them.

snails don't have a sense of flavor. they don't even have tastebuds. this seems like a gimme, right? but again that might be asking the wrong question about what "taste" is. biologically speaking, it's chemoreception. we taste sweet because it indicates high value, high calorie sugar molecules. we taste salty for salt, umami for proteins. so in what way does pudding's chemoreceptors differ from ours instrumentally? we can say "by our human perspective, pudding can't experience "preference" or "savoring" or "anticipation of delicious food"", but from pudding's perspective we have radically overengineered ourselves for the task at hand. pudding can tell what's salty, what's high value, what has the chemicals he needs. the functional outcome is that he can discriminate food souces based on their composition. is that not taste?

so maybe the point isn't "this is sad because he can't enjoy it," but "this is a reminder that minds come in radically different shapes, and value doesn't have to be rich to be real."

[autistic-about-snails]

🥹 I'm ok I swear

[puddleorganism]

Not sure how many of these I'll be able to do, but I really wanted to draw at least one thing for @montereybayaquarium and @mbari-blog 's Deep Sea December! Ended up doing day 11: Precious (even though it's a bit late lol).

I have always had a deep appreciation for very small organisms, so I chose to portray how precious they feel to me. They're so marvelously intricate, I find them deeply charming and awe-inspiring. So, here's a bunch of little guys! Not size accurate unfortunately.

If anyone's curious as to who all I drew, look here:

(The teeny fellas that aren't labelled are miscellaneous plankton)

[teradrama-deactivated20260513]

"the best way to screw jkr over is by making her characters queer!" actually. The best way to screw jkr over is to stop engaging with the property she still profits off of and read a different fucking book

[teradrama-deactivated20260513]

we're 10 days away from the anniversary of this post breaking my blog, so reblogs are back on! maybe I can get a new blocklist out of this

[riverroan]

also, if you decide you REALLY wanna watch the new show/ movies THAT BAD, pirate that shit!!!! piracy is your best friend along with a good vpn!!!! if you wanna buy her books, thrift it! go on ebay or pangobooks or your local library or a thrift store or depop! don't give that wench your money!!!!

[fandomsandfeminism]

I'm gonna hold your hands while I say this: it's not enough.

HP Fandom isn't just a problem because of the direct financial support. It also continues to infuse the IP, and JKR as a result, with cultural capital and social influence. It gives jkr a cultural relevance that means her words are platformed more seriously and more widely than other authors whose works are not infused with this level of sustained popularity. She has said, very plainly, that she (and the people who will fund her future projects) views ALL Fandom action as support.

And also, quite frankly, the last book was published in 2007. Please read a new book.

[cruiserweight]

DO YOU HATE AI? ARE YOU TIRED OF BEING NICE ABOUT IT? THEN GET MY SHIRT!

[apolladay]

if you lost someone who was incredibly important to you (by whatever your definition may be) how long would you say your grief lasted?

1 month or less

2 months - 5 months

6 months - 11 months

a year

over a year

cant pinpoint an exact time it stopped

currently grieving this

nuance

results

if you lost someone who was incredibly important to you (by whatever your definition may be) how long would you say your grief lasted?

1 month or less

2 months - 5 months

6 months - 11 months

a year

over a year

cant pinpoint an exact time it stopped

currently grieving this

nuance

results

Voting ended onNov 12, 2025