Something Mysterious and Cool

Video Dames, Dinosaurs and History. Warlock Main. Mobile header by @missxdelaney and pfp by @hapicatart

[beltsquid]

Every morning I pray for a crab rave and every day the empty throne of God disappoints me

[2productive]

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

this is from "research as a leisure activity" by celine nguyen, publs. on stubstack in 2024. it's a very good read

[copperbadge]

I met someone when I was pretty young who had received a generous inheritance -- not enough to live a life of luxury, but enough to live on comfortably without working. He had chosen to simply keep going to school his whole life. He did get degrees, but he didn't use them for anything other than pleasure -- he had a Ph.D but also two Master's degrees, three BAs, and was currently serving an apprenticeship in blacksmithing while considering trying out some trade schools next. I thought, if I had the money I'd do that too, and then thought about how I still could learn all the time, it would just have to be a hobby instead of the career he'd made of it. It definitely changed the way I saw both education and leisure.

[pangur-and-grim]

Queer Books and Authors are at a Breaking Point

Authors, agents, publishers: every part of the industry is seeing the strain of five years of escalating anti-LGBTQ censorship.

[pangur-and-grim]

if you'd like to show support, here are some upcoming queer books:

When Life Gives You Corpses is a brilliant YA about a cursed praying mantis who falls for a young witch. Yield Under Great Persuasion is a raunchy, but surprisingly sweet story about two men repairing their relationship. Fabulous Bodies is a horror story about a queer rockstar rising from the dead.

This is Where the Future Bleeds is a fantasy set in a vividly imagined land, where two women (who happen to kiss) are the key to healing the broken sky. You're No Better is a story about a teen struggling in the shadow of his murderous parent. Oil on Canvas is about a woman who finds disturbing paintings in the home of her dead mother.

and then here's a list of 26 queer books by Black authors set to publish this year, and a 10 upcoming books by trans authors. if you want to fight back against queer censorship, use your wallet! or (if that's not an option) you can contact your local library and ask them to stock a copy.

[penelopepennington]

In addition: looking for indie publishers and queer bookshops is a great way to find and support queer authors and stories of so many infinite varieties! (The following suggestions are based on my UK-centric knowledge)

(Some) Queer Presses:

Lurid Editions are "a publishing project committed to intentional and conscientious acts of archival repair". They are "attentive to how marginalised histories are forgotten and remembered, [and] hungry to rediscover overlooked queer books". They've just received funding from Arts Council England to engage queer readers in a project to contribute to the archive!

Cipher Press "We’re really keen on the idea that queer and minority stories are for everybody, and we want to make our books – and the stories they tell - accessible to all" (what an amazing mission statement!)

Anamot Press "Anamot [Անամոթ] means shameless in Armenian. ⁣⁣Anamot Press publishes poetry and prose on intersecting experiences of gender, sexuality, race, migration, class, belonging and loss - with no shame."

(Some) Queer Bookshops

Queer Lit Oh man, I remember when this was just a tiny little shop, and now they're the biggest LGBT+ bookshop in Europe! They do amazing work in donating books about being trans to schools and parliament! They have a pay-it-forward board that will make you sob with its notes of love and support. (You can tell I wish I still lived nearby)

Lighthouse For Scottish friends - "a queer-owned and woman led independent community bookshop. We are an unapologetically activist, intersectional, feminist, antiracist, lgbtq+ community space"

Gay's The Word The OG Queer bookshop in the UK. One day I will make my pilgrimage!!

This really is just a tiny snapshot of all the amazing work of celebration and resistance that's being done for Queer literature at the moment. We live in frightening times, but I promise there is still lots of love and joy and hope out there in spaces like these. Support them in whatever way you can!!

[beltsquid]

Currently Neon Hemlock, a queer indie press that specializes in speculative fiction, is running a Kickstarter Campaign for their seventh novella series.

[ratsquinks]

pocket puppies

[pukicho]

I drank a shitload of honey last night and slept for 12 hours

[pukicho]

Stop calling me bear

[spin-the-wheel-polls]

you are now a cat in the warrior cats universe! Spin these wheels for your name!

Do you like it?

YES!!!

yes

eh it's okay

no.

IM MOON MOON

results/other

Remaining time: 5 days 4 hours

note: I (the owner of this blog and maker of wheels) am not into warrior cats! I just thought this would be fun to make

(prefixes and suffixes from @yarrowleef)

[spin-the-wheel-polls]

I DON'T WANNA BE DEAD WOLF

[beltsquid]

:(

[is-the-fox-video-cute]

Imagine being so braindead that you think the UK being one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world is a good thing 🤡

[the-perfect-wagnerite-again]

wtf are you talking about, they didn't "deplete" the nature of their country, they cultivated their wilderness over centuries into some of the most idyllic pastoral landscapes in the entire world. And they did such a good job of it that the phrase "English countryside" is now synonymous with beauty and serenity and peacefulness. They didn't destroy their country's nature, they became its caretaker, they're right to be proud of it. All you're doing is pretending that the only kind of nature that should count is whatever is completely untouched by human hands.

[is-the-fox-video-cute]

The UK is literally ranked in the bottom 10% of most nature-depleted countries in the world. The 2023 State of Nature report shows just how dire the situation is. A third of UK bird species have declined since the 1990s, 97% of the UK's wildflower meadows have been lost since the 1930s, raw sewage is constantly being pumped into our rivers and seas with agricultural slurry also causing massive damage to rivers, three quarters of Britain's hedgehogs have been lost in the past 20 years and UK butterfly numbers are at their lowest ever, a sign of impending ecosystem collapse. Plus people in Britain are the most disconnected from nature in Europe.

Not to mention over populated deer destroying what little is left due to a lack of predators, 60 million non-native birds released for sport shooting every year, plus huge amounts of wildlife crime, including large numbers of birds of prey being shot/poisoned.

There is nothing beautiful about a sterile, ecologically damaged landscape that contains nothing but sheep and deer. Don't comment on something you clearly know nothing about. I live in England. I can see first hand just how dire the situation is.

[graaaaceeliz]

REBLOG TO ADD WE ARE NOW IN THE

BOTTOM 5%.

:)

[metaru-lee]

[datsderbunnyblog]

This comment was left on a post about making the most of the Libby app. "Excessive use of generous lending policies" is the most absurd phrase I've ever seen anyone use to discuss libraries.

[catboycommunist]

evergreen

[beltsquid]

Looked her up and she's an "inspirational" (read: Christian) romance author, so take that as you will

[greatcheshire]

Hi everybody! I made a new video :D To celebrate Pride Month and my birthday (a month late oops), I decided to finally take a look at Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury and make a video on it in the hopes of getting others obsessed with it as well. Check it out!

[70sscifiart]

Taglines from science fiction covers

[polkadotmotmot]

Elena Wuest - An Afternoon Tea II, 2026 - Oil on canvas

[targetedknowledge]

[frankiesbullshit]

someone tell OP i did it, i spent about 3 hours on it

[anna-antoshchenkova]

Extra quick summer sketch

[boomer-mythology-destroyer]

[germanslav]

Something good finally comes from Ohio.

[thelovingdread]

Smash them thangs

[birlinterrupted]

its crazy that the old british boys school model actually existed and wasn’t invented as some sort of upper class gay guy bdsm thing

[birlinterrupted]

british boys boarding school is the closest an actually existing society has ever been to what i have heard of a/b/o

[whetstonefires]

roald dahl had a bit of his autobiography where he described being a very small child at boarding school, with a heavy focus on how he was picked out to ‘fag for’ a prefect, which seems to have consisted primarily of making the older boy toast on a toasting-fork, and being beaten with a cane for doing so badly.

i was young enough when i read this excerpt in a book of his short stories to not really grasp how fucked up this was. but i was riveted by the casual description of how you got to choose more hits with your dressing-gown on or fewer hits with it off, and he as a matter of strategy always chose on, because his dressing-gown was a heavy camel-hair thing and prevented the risk of broken skin.

it was so unavoidably real, you know? there was lots of violence against children in the children’s fiction i was reading, but it was all much more stylized in one way or another.

then i grew up and got perspective and came to understand this institutional culture was probably a large part of why the men who ran the world’s most powerful empire all those decades were like that.

[rederiswrites]

Look, I realize that the whole Schrodinger's Mitch thing has real political consequences on a national level, but since I'm not from Kentucky and have no say whatsoever in the outcome of the situation, I'm honestly just finding the entire thing grimly hilarious. Has Horrible Turtle Man died? We don't fucking know! Turns out senators can just not show up to work indefinitely and there are no consequences! What fun!

[rederiswrites]

Cannot believe this post is still relevant completely unedited. This timeline is utterly off the rails.