made an image for when you realize that everyone is going to read your piece of writing as romantically charged
sheepfilms

JBB: An Artblog!
art blog(derogatory)

Kiana Khansmith
Cosimo Galluzzi
Three Goblin Art

izzy's playlists!
Jules of Nature

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Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

Origami Around
trying on a metaphor
Sade Olutola
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Cosmic Funnies

⁂

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Show & Tell
DEAR READER
Claire Keane
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@brandb
made an image for when you realize that everyone is going to read your piece of writing as romantically charged
like i quite literally have never been more passionate about anything than i am about the human race’s invariable desire to tell stories and the fact that we always find a way to do it, through spoken language and written language and body language and visual art and theater and poetry and oral tradition and a million other things. there are so many things we take for granted about the human experience that we never stop to think about but i really want you to take a step back and consider how fucking amazing it is that our need to tell stories transcends all boundaries of time and geography and borders and language. it is one of very few things that is legitimately intrinsic to human nature and i will never stop being completely in awe of humanity for that.
‘The Other A in LGBTQIA+’ comes out next week on May 21st!
Rachel, one of the authors, reflects on how she incorporated her lived experience in the book. Read about it on the AUREA website here: https://www.aromanticism.org/en/news-feed/aurea-book-authors.
Pre-order your copy today! https://www.aromanticism.org/aurea-book
[Image description: Light green square graphic on a white background. Text on the graphic reads: “I feel that aspec people can really lead the way when it comes to relationship boundaries. I really worked to emphasize that in the chapters that I worked on. Rachel Levi.” Below the graphic to the right is the cover of the book 'The Other A in LGBTQIA+'. At the bottom left of the image is AUREA's logo. There are squiggly patterns in the colours of the aromantic flag across the background.]
Telling the untold; preserving LGBTQ2S+ history in Alberta
Dick Bayford, Botswana's attorney general, removed anti-gay language that courts struck down years ago. (Photo courtesy of the Sunday Standa
Local LGBTIQ+ organisation LEGABIBO welcomed the government’s move, describing it as “a necessary and long-overdue step toward restoring dignity and aligning our legal framework with constitutional values of equality and human rights.” The group said the change sends “a clear message that LGBTIQ+ persons are not criminals, and that their lives and relationships deserve protection, not punishment.” LEGABIBO noted that the colonial-era provisions had long cast a shadow over the lives of LGBTIQ+ people in the country.
Big master post compiling everything I’ve done for this personal visdev project. It’s A Thousand and One Nights but it goes by Once Upon a Time (tv show) rules where most of the stories exists within the same universe and characters interact with each other in their respective stories.
pov: you're making history. you're working with the most advanced technology in the world. outlook still doesn't fucking work.
Sometimes I see people whose feet are Fucked Up by the cold or dry air or walking around in sandals or barefoot all the time. And the former sex worker in me who's sold pics of my feet wants to go. Hey, absolutely no shame, but that looks uncomfortable. Those cracked heels can feel really ick when they catch on your socks or whatever and even hurt. I want to help people fix their feet, and this is probably a weird thing to put much thought into, lol, but like. I mean it. I can drop the tutorial.
Tutorial, as requested:
You will need just a few things, none of which are particularly expensive (approx. price included) -
Epsom salt (optional), $4
Pumice stone, $3
Foot file, $10 OR
Electric/rechargeable callous remover, $25
Aquaphor, $8
Dermatologist-approved lotion, $10
Socks (you probably already have these)
1. Soak your feet (with or without epsom salt; it helps with softening calluses but isn't necessary) for about 20 minutes.
2. Scrub thoroughly with the wet pumice stone until most of the calluses and dry skin are removed. Your feet will still be rough at this point, but that's fine; you do NOT want to over-scrub until it hurts.
*Depending how thick your calluses are, you may need to repeat soaking for an extra 10 minutes after the first scrub, then scrub again.
3. Generously cover the damaged parts of your feet in aquaphor and put socks on, minimally overnight, but ideally for a full 24 hours. Let it soak in and sit.
4. Use your file or callous remover. The file is cheaper, but far slower and less effective. I prefer my electric callous remover (mine has 3 grades of sanding material on attachments--rough to fine). It is FAR more efficient and effective, which is worthwhile because this is the time and effort part. Keep using it until your feet are fairly smooth, but stop if it's causing discomfort or soreness. Your feet will still be pretty dry, but at least they're exfoliated.
Buy Electric Callus Remover for feet,Rechargeable Foot File Electronic Pedicure Tools Kit for Calloused Removal, Waterproof Electric Foot Sc
(Sorry for the link to the evil website; I'm sure you can find the same or similar elsewhere but this is the exact one that I have).
5. Put on lotion (and socks again). I use Lubriderm fragrance-free daily moisture lotion because it's got glycerin and doesn't cause irritation. Eucerin is another good brand, but it costs slightly more.
Repeat steps 2-5 every few days after showering until your feet have no more callouses, are hydrated, and feel smooth. Once you just need maintenance, you can keep up w the pumice stone or file/remover on a weekly basis + daily/regular lotion before bed. You can apply aquaphor overnight as needed instead if you have deep and/or reoccurring cracks.
there’s this extremely kind soul of a woman on instagram that makes accessible recipes that don’t require standing, chopping, or a stove and she might just have a permanent place in my heart
She's on YouTube too! For non-Instagram using friends:
I love her, she's great. Her recipes are friendly for both physical and/or intellectual disabilities. And her 5-year-old helps her cook. 🥰
Link to her YouTube channel:
Celebrating the intersection of food and culture, travel tales, social commentary, grieving out loud. 🇳🇬/🇺🇸 👰🏽🧒🏽👧🏽👩🏽💼⚖️ Paid Collaboration
people on here who have been on 10-15+ years like myself...i don't know how they claim that there were never any Black bloggers on here, or that it was always such a white website. trudy gradientlair was on here. thisiswhiteprivilege was on here. there was a feminist citation project sara ahmed was involved in on here. there was someone on here whose username was wretchedoftheearth and that was how i learned who fanon was when i was 12, by googling those words. tumblr was the only place i knew i could go to get accurate & compassionate info about what happened to trayvon martin, when everyone around me irl was rabidly racist. the amount of reportage and scholarship that happened on here before the first big wave of bans was so huge and so much has been lost. where were you when it was happening??? why weren't you paying attention??
they probably don't want to own up to the fact half of them responsible for driving so many of us off. like i used to have thriving Black trans network on here, thriving Black sex worker network on here, until everyone started piling on with racism and slinging accusations of being russian bots and getting half of everyone's blog nuked 😭
Please make art. You don't have to bare your soul or make a masterpiece, you can be silly and you can be derivative if you want. You don't even have to show it to anyone. Just please make something, it's so good for you
One thing I’ve become a real extremist about is little girl’s clothing and hair styles because if your kid can’t get her hair wet, hang upside down, climb over a fence or run full out in the outfit/hair she is currently wearing then why not? And the answer better be both extremely fucking good and describe something temporary.
Hope you don't mind a story that also made me extremist about this issue.
Took my friends daughter (2.5yrs) to the park. Dressed her in practical clothing that's ok to get stained, brought an extra change of clothing. She sat in the mud at the water bank and played with rocks and mud. A little girl came over, couldn't be more than 3yrs. She was looking longingly at my friend's daughter. She has her hair in a perfect style and she's wearing a pretty dress with white socks and dressy shoes. The parents say "Sweetie don't go into the mud, you'll get your dress dirty" and pull her away, while giving me a judgmental look as they see the kid in my charge covered in mud and throwing rocks into the water. It felt really weird, like we saw eachother as aliens with completely different ideas on how to raise children. When my friends daughter was done playing, changed her into clean clothing and went back home. She had a lot of fun at the park and a day full of nature and play. The other little girl kept her dress clean.
So a couple days ago, some folks braved my long-dormant social media accounts to make sure I’d seen this tweet:
And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.
So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years. These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing. They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it. It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face. Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing. And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc. NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.
Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres. What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female. I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one. They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO. If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone. Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered. I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.
I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all. I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole. That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three. And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.
And it changed the face of costuming. People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries. And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.
So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart. This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.
(Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, I’m over 40 now, and yes, I’m still making costumes. And that armor is still in great shape after 17 years in a hot attic!)
In 2018 I developed a method to bind fanfiction into hardback books. Like penwiper, I was also literally working in my kitchen by myself and trying things out. This solo work was a meditative experience that allowed me to think deeply about the implications of what I was creating and what my ethics and philosophy should be. I got around to the idea that the knowledge I was building should be spread far and wide, so that together, many of us fans could bind all the wonderful fics that made our lives better in a million tiny ways, and wherever possible, create a copy to give to the authors themselves. In 2019 I wrote How to Make a Book From An AO3 Page, a free manual for how to format and bind fanfic, as a gift to fandom as a whole. It took off during the 2020 lockdown and has been going strong ever since.
Now, through the efforts of so many wonderful people, Renegade Bookbinding Guild has developed out of the Discord server I originally created just to answer questions about paper, fonts, printers and such. I figured there would be no more than 15 people joining. We have surpassed 3000.
I hope in another 20 years time my little tutorial still be kicking along out here, my bad photography and potty mouth sitting forever at the foundational level of an exploding practice of radical generosity and community, preserving the best of fanfiction from the ravages of time and digital threats and censorship, and giving authors the best thank you I know how to give.
ArmoredSuperHeavy, March 2026
i need to get into fanbinding tbh
some advice for people entering their 20s:
-dont go to the emergency room with dental problems. go to the dentist
-bagged greens are cheaper than pre-made salads
-taco bell is NOT worth the money anymore. 1/4 cup mayo, 1/4 cup sour cream, 3 tblspoons pickled jalapenos+2tblspoons of the jar liquid, 2 tsp paprika 1 tsp cumin 1 tsp garlic powder 1 tsp onion powder salt+pepper. all in your blender. creamy jalapeno sauce
-dont quit your job unless you have a bunch of job interviews lined up immediately after
-use resources. food bank, unemployment, housing assistance, financial aid, etc. yes there will be paperwork. but Do It
-dont stay awake longer than 20 hours. you Will start to become impulsive and cranky. resting for 20 minutes is better than trying to stay awake
-for every 2 hours you spend looking up close at screens, spend 20 minutes looking at something far away from you. stretch your wrists a lot
-dont do that yoga stretch where you roll your head around your shoulders. youre grinding down the joints in your neck
-be nice to your friends, bullying them as a joke gets old. if you need a ride somewhere at least offer them gas money
-brush your teeth at any time of the day but especially before you sleep. dont snack in bed if you can help it. make your bed the Clean Teeth Zone. keep floss picks by your bed
-dont tell your boss youre adhd/autism/depression/suicidal. dont trust your coworkers with that. you NEVER know how people will take it and its none of their business
-train your pets to go to the front door when they hear a fire alarm
-get regular oil changes
reblog to tell a 14 year old that these are the very, very hard years and they're not wrong to feel the way they do.
I had a fifteen minute long crying session yesternight over the fact that all I was 10 years ago, at the ripe old age of 14, is lost and lonely, and now, at 24, I am neither and that filled me with so much gratitude
reblog to tell a teenager that these aren’t actually the best years of your life and that things can and will get better when you have independance and maybe are away from your situation right now.
Its me reblog to tell me that
Same thing with young adults. It can still get better. Your thirties aren’t when you’re getting old, that’s 70s-80s and we all know old people can be cool as hell anyway.
It might take time. More than has already passed, but it will get better.
It gets better. It does, right? Yeah. Yeah it gets better.
It might take time. More
than has already passed, but
it will get better.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
actual criticisms of academia:
cost of education acting as class barrier
exploitation of graduate workers
colonialist past and present
ties to military industrial complex
danger of power structure entrenching and justifying orthodox views on social issues
criticisms of academia that get made:
those damn ivory tower academics are wasting money learning about things
"you cannot have a category of person that stops being a person or everyone that someone wants to get rid of is going to end up being put in that category" and other really fucking obvious and basic observations that everyone ignores in favor of putting people they want to get rid of into a category they think makes them stop being a person