Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall as Megan and Graham in But I’m A Cheerleader (1999)

Kaledo Art

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2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
ojovivo
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
KIROKAZE

oozey mess
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
will byers stan first human second

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Keni
Stranger Things
occasionally subtle

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DEAR READER

JBB: An Artblog!
dirt enthusiast
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@al-wd
Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall as Megan and Graham in But I’m A Cheerleader (1999)
don't give up
makes me just think of this poem by Caitlin Seida
Hope is a bitch.
And I love her
little Sharran
girl shocked to discover that inaction can have consequences too
Just realized it's pride month. Happy pride!!!!
happy pride month dykes i love you dykes
happy Pride!
my notifications are once again devolving into a spirited debate about the ethics of actions that could potentially make someone uncomfortable, and at risk of sounding like someone about to get a lot of irate anons I think we're frankly giving way too to much moral weight to hypothetical discomfort
the thing about discomfort is that it's an extremely nebulous category that can be triggered by virtually anything and that's far too broad a category to have any inherent moral quality to it. like. my mom was mad uncomfortable when I stopped shaving. that didn't mean I was doing violence against my mom it just meant she needed to get over herself. many such cases it must be said.
there's not a single example I could give that's better than this
Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno Garcia
🧁!!
returning after a few months long break from drawing with the usual ancient greek ladies
Book 12, 2024
God I love Silvia Moreno-Garcia. "Gods of Jade and Shadow" is the third book of hers I've read and it did not let me down, while reinforcing that one of the things I love about Moreno-Garcia's writing is how uninterested she is in marrying herself to genre. She has themes and motifs she is interested in and revisits, but recognizes that the space she has to explore them is infinite.
Set in 1920s Mexico, teenaged Casiopea, resented and treated like a servant by most of her family, accidentally frees a Mayan death god whose bones were being kept in a chest in her grandfather's room. Inadvertently bound to the resurrected but depowered god, Casiopea seizes the unlikely opportunity for freedom and sets out to help Hun-Kamé find the pieces of him that are still missing and restore him to the throne taken from him by his twin brother.
The friend who was recommending it compared it to Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" and that is a good reference point, always being ware of how imprecision and marketing language can make that slide into "POPULAR THING BUT X" (my friend was not doing this, she is very wise and good of taste). A human in a tough spot becomes the guide/ally of a god on a road novel quest in a (comparatively) modern setting. But of course, Gaiman was not doing anything unique in placing figures from mythology into a contemporary setting, nor in his fundamental linking of human belief to mythology its shaping our gods (it's a recurring idea in the work of Terry Pratchett and probably stretches back to James George Frazer's "The Golden Bough", at least in the context of Euro-centric works).
Besides, it's understood that "American Gods" was essentially fanfic of Diana Wynne Jones' "Eight Days of Luke".
In some ways, the "American Gods" comparison undersells what "Gods of Jade and Shadow" is, because one of Moreno-Garcia's strengths is the sense of identity and drive and longing in her protagonists (Gaiman's Shadow is passive, witnessing and experiencing, but rarely doing). There's a ravenous hunger to Casiopea that I recognize from "Untamed Shore" and "Mexican Gothic", and I doubt it's coincidence that Moreno-Garcia, with her interest in colonialism in Mexico, sets all three of those novels in a time and place where the country and people are trying to shape themselves around historical European and contemporary American presences. It's a coming of age story and a story about identity, about how to adapt to change without losing what made you (and how you can share blood with someone while being fundamentally different and opposed). It's a hero's story (not in the Hero's Journey Call Reject the Call and all that), a questing story, a fairy tale.
It's really a perfect road novel buddy adventure with Casiopea and Kun-Kamé relying on each other and learning and growing together as they go from Casiopea's small town, eventually crossing the border into America. They encounter a few other mythological figures, including KAMAZOTZ THE GIANT DEATH BAT. Moreno-Garcia commits to the blood and bone and death of her chosen focus, complete with throat slicing and human sacrifices, without making a moral fuss about it, or indeed dwelling excessively on filling the reader in. There's a little glossary in the back, but Moreno-Garcia isn't interested in holding your hand and teaching you while she's trying to tell you a story. Imagine if you had to sit through an explanation of the Persephone myth every time it showed up in something fantasy adjacent.
Two things in particular caught my attention, distinguishing "Gods of Jade and Shadow" from similar books. The first is that the gods and myths present are entirely Mayan in nature, with one exception - Loray, a French demon, who came to Mexico with French colonialists and couldn't find his way back. There's otherwise no mention of other gods, other stories. Mexico is a country that has been colonized, its indigenous peoples suppressed by Europeans and their culture, but little of what they bring truly takes root in the new world.
The second is the matter of belief. In his Discworld novels, Pratchett presents gods being created and sustained by mortal beliefs. Gaiman similarly ties the vitality of gods and similar forces to their presence and relevance for humanity, in multiple works. Moreno-Garcia's gods are something deeper than their relationship with humanity, sustained by something deep in the earth of the country. Kun-Kamé is not weak because he is no longer worshipped in the Mexico of the 1920s, he's weak because he's had pieces of himself severed and scattered. He does not need Casiopea to believe to find them or to reassemble them; they're physical items and once found are part of him once more. That's not to say the gods are severed from humanity, but there's a sense of choice. Kun-Kamé's conflict with his brother is partially because of disagreement over how they should exist with and alongside the mortal realm, with Kun-Kamé seeing their time as being at an end, while Vucub-Kamé wants to flex their divine powers again and guide humanity back to the glory days of blood sacrifices. It doesn't even seem to be, necessarily, that this will materially change things for the gods. It's just something Vucub-Kamé wants. The divine conflict of the novel is ultimately a question with an answer balanced carefully between acknowledging the the truth of the past while also recognizing the futility in trying to return to it.
A lot of things are lost in the course of "Gods of Jade and Shadow" and Moreno-Garcia acknowledges those losses, but never restores things to the way they were. It makes for a beautiful, engaging novel that is never soft. The grit and pain are important.
Some alternative retro style covers for author Silvia Moreno Garcia’s books! Loved working on these! #horror
8 awesome books by Latinx/e authors to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month!
100% guarantee they will be in front of the thing you need. 🛍️🛒🤬
(A ChaosLife throwback comic!)
I would like to think that The Substance didn't win in the "major" categories because the jury members saw themselves in this shot:
Is there a polar opposite of transphobia?
Like I’m a newly transitioned trans man and suddenly everyone wants a piece of me. In a weird way. Like people have started asking me to join committees and talk to youth groups and shit so they have their “representation”. I’m now the token trans person. I live in a small lefty town. People either want to ask me allllll the questions or they are too scared to even talk to me in case they offend me. Suddenly everyone wants to be my friend. I feel like I’ve joined a club I did not agree to sign up to. Like is this normal? Is there a term for it? I have a lot of gay male friends who are awesome, no other trans people local. I’ve started connecting with people online.
I mean some people have been cunts for sure. But mostly it’s nauseating fawning. I know this is a stupid thing to be complaining about but I guess I’m curious.
I’m not that special, I’m actually just an angry little man.
My brother dear, what you are experiencing is a very common combination of the growing visibility & tokenization of being a newly out marginalized person, and the massive increased authority, social trust, social value that comes with being a man.
Welcome to male privilege baby, to put a spin on a far more undermining phrase that typically gets hurled at trans femmes. You will be considered a trustworthy authority on trans issues, a valuable contributor to panels and workshops, a needed (but also highly convenient to access) form of "diversity" for a workplace, a welcome attendee at all manner of events, and you'll be deferred to over women, especially trans women, for pretty much the entire rest of your life, if you continue to remain out about the trans side of things.
Guys like us are invited, centered, included, listened to, treated with respect, treated with WARMTH, viewed as intelligent, perceptive, sensitive, safe, trustworthy, reliable, and desirable to include. In the eyes of the cis public, we are a "safe" kind of trans person who does not make people uncomfortable to look at and who doesn't challenge their pre-existing understanding of gender hierarchy; when they listen to us, they get to trust in the certainty of a MAN giving them information, but they can also feel comfortable and safe around us as a kind of enlightened, sensitive nonthreatening figure.
We're men who can can explain sexism right back to women. We're trans people who went from being subjugated as women to being rewarded with privilege as dudes. In this way, trans men being positioned as an authority figure reinforces the existing gender hierarchy, which feels soothing and right to people's brains.
You will have to be conscious of this power differential for the rest of your life, around cis and trans women alike, because otherwise it plays out in a pretty traditionally sexist fashion: people (especially women) will go quiet when you start speaking, you will be given credit for ideas that were a collective effort, your emotions will be more likely to be taken seriously and seen as a sign of principle rather than weakness, and you will be regarded as special and memorable while dozens of other people and their concerns are passed over.
Another factor that is at play here is a phenomenon that is less specifically gendered, because it does happen to trans women too, and that's the phenomenon of cis groups making the newly-out trans person their token and educator, because typically it is the newly out person whom they have the most access to and power over.
The moment that a trans person transitions they immediately start getting singled out as an expert and resource on the trans experience, asked to lead workshops at their jobs and explain concepts to people and attend events and sit on panels. I think on some intuitive level cis people kinda *know* that the newly out are in a vulnerable, uncertain state and have fewer communities ties and less experience than more seasoned trans people do, and so they make the ideal "translator" of trans experiences to them as an audience.
In cis people's minds, you're not gonna push back, you're not going to complicate their narratives, you're not gonna be tired of answering offensive questions, and you will be freely available to them as a resource, because you've just come out. You'll put a friendly face on transition, one marked by newness and hope, rather than be jaded, complicated, or assertive at them. That's their expectation.
It makes no logical sense to make a newly out member of the community the arbiter of transness or the educator on the trans experience, but it DOES make sense that a powerful group would view such a disempowered and disconnected (relatively speaking) member of the trans community to be the most attractive to include.
Of course, this might not be true to who you actually are. But on a gut level, this is how the newly out trans person is typically seen: nonthreatening, moldable, convenient, so thankful to be included that they won't be angry. And you will be doubly rewarded for fulfilling that role if you are a man.
The only way to upend this narrative being forced onto you is for you to speak up, every single time you are invited to an event, and demand that just as many trans women be included in that event as trans men. Make sure to have a nice list of experienced, wise trans femme friends whom you can recommend as speakers and co-panelists in your pocket.
More often than not, you will be thanked by cis people and rewarded for having the brilliant idea of including women in a conversation about gender minority status. How the trans women in the equation get treated, well, you'll need to pay close attention to, and be ready to stand up and speak out the moment any passive aggressive exclusionary bio-essentialist fuckshit gets going. You can do it! And lots of times you ARE the person with the power to set things right. You're trans and you're being singled out, but you also are a man.