@cassidyheart - Tumblr Blog

This year some of my favourite books I read were written by indigenous American authors and I just wanted to shout out a couple that I fell in love with

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Horror being my second most read genre, I did not think books could still get under my skin the way this one did lol. It follows four Blackfoot men who are seemingly being hunted by a vengeful... something... years after a fateful hunting trip that happened just before they went their separate ways. The horror, the dread, the something... pure nightmare fuel 10/10

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

An apocalyptic novel following an isolated Anishinaabe community in the far north who lose contact with the outside world. When two of their young men return from their college with dire news, they set about planning on how to survive the winter, but when outsiders follow, lines are drawn in the community that might doom them all. This book is all dread all the time, the use of dreams and the inevitability of conflict weighs heavy til the very end. An excellent apocalypse story if you're into that kind of thing.

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

This book follows Jade, a deeply troubled mixed race teenager with a shitty homelife who's *obsessed* with slasher movies. When she finds evidence that there's a killer running about her soon-to-be gentrified small town, she weaponises that knowledge to predict what's going to happen next. I don't think this book will work for most people, it's a little stream of consciousness, Jade's head is frequently a very difficult place to be in, but by the last page I had so much love for her as a character and the emotional rollercoaster she's on that I had to mention it here.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

Taking a bit of a left turn but this charming YA murder mystery really stuck with me this year. Elatsoe is a teenage girl living in an America where myths, monsters, and magic are all real every day occurrences. When her cousin dies mysteriously with no witnesses, she decides to do whatever she can, including using her ability to raise the spirits of dead animals, to solve the case. The worldbuilding was just really fun in this one, but the Native American myths and influence were the shining star for me, and the asexual rep was refreshing to see in a YA book too tbh

Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq

The audiobook, the audiobook, the audiobook!!!! Also the physical book because formatting and illustrations, but the audiobook!!! Tanya Tagaq is an Inuit throat singer, and this novel is a genre blending of 20 years worth of the authors journal entries, poetry, and short stories, that culminates in a truly unique story about a young girl surviving her teenage years in a small tundra town in the 70s. It is sad and beautiful and hard but an experience like nothing else I read this year.

homoquartz

i’ve warmed up significantly towards the concept of small talk ever since i learned that its sole purpose is to make friendly noises.

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

i am motivated by wanting the other person to know i am friendly, so i have gotten pretty decent at small talk when i used to hate it.

piratedgender

themisally

damnhotpocket

Gema.piano on instagram

Why are all music teachers like this 😭😭😭

inkskinned

it is tiring, being endless political just as someone existing. my teacher asks me if i’m writing more of that “feminist poetry.” a lot of it is just talking about me, being a woman, being afraid in the city. i write about walking a line, about how i am expected to choose between home and work, how each comes with a slew of its own insults; how it feels when i am wearing shorts and there are too many men outside. these are just facts of my life. someone in the comments says, “where are woman even coming up with these crazy generalizations in their feminism?”

i hold hands with the prettiest girl i’ve ever seen and someone sighs when they see me. “do they have to make everything gay?” she asks her friend, loudly, “like, do you have to force those views in my face all the time?” i can’t stop blushing. my girlfriend holds my fingers tighter, tighter, tighter, until my knuckles are white, and i let her. somehow, this is us, protesting.

my father’s cuban blood stains my skin, i think. when i am honored with a position in the dean’s private council, a boy sneers, “you only got in because you’re hispanic.” did i? i spend the rest of our meetings wondering if i was selected for my stellar academic record, for the multiple recommendations, for the clubs i lead - or if i was just a move the dean made, to make use of me. when we all take a picture, the dean brings me in the front. in the first three we take, i am not smiling.

it is odd. “i exist.” i say, “i deserve to exist.”

“oh my god,” he groans, “we get it, you’re a feminist.”

softboyshaven

Thinking about the Holmes story where a blind girl goes to him and is like "My fiancé is missing and he kept telling me the week leading up to his disappearance that he would always love me and come back for me,were anything to happen so I think he knew he was in trouble and I love him so much and I'm going to wait for him but I'd like to find him faster,ya know?" And Holmes figures out that it was this girl's parents to scam her out of money she was owed from an estate which she gave to them because she was still living at home,which she wouldn't be if she ever married,so her step father PRETENDED TO DATE HER for MONTHS to keep her from ever getting engaged to a real person and when Holmes finds out he confronts this man and this man is like "Well,you caught me! But it wasn't illegal:) so:)" and Holmes is like "No,but it was sickening and cruel and if she had a brother or good male friend he should post you up and whip you but she doesn't." And the man is like "No,she doesn't." And does the Victorian version of sticking his tongue out and Holmes is like "Well,I guess I'll do then!" And HE PULLS OUT HIS HUNTING WHIP.

darthlenaplant

Holmes really went:

getvalentined

This is what we mean when we say everyone should support people with disabilities

burnbrighterthanever

Be the Sherlock Holmes chasing domestic abusers with a riding crop that you wish to see in the world.

charlesoberonn

I should point out that her fake fiance "disappeared" on their wedding day on the way to the church.

dameronfinn

Originals First - We are a people with a past, not a people of the past.

stovetop00-deactivated20230907

We’re winning.

lilnasxvevo

I found his bio on societyofpresidentialdescendants.org and it was so delightful I had to copy paste the whole thing:

“Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave it to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale (BA, 1977), and was trained to be a museum curator in the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (MA, 1980). A decorative arts curator at the Newark Museum for thirty-seven years before he retired, Ulysses has never stopped writing for the sheer pleasure of it. Aside from books on Victorian furniture, art pottery, studio ceramics, jewelry, and the White House, Ulysses created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel, appeared in 2012. His most recent novel, Cliffhanger, was released by JMS Books in December 2020.

“Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of 45 years. They have two grown children, adopted in 1996.

“Ulysses is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant. His late mother, Julia, was the President’s last living great-grandchild; youngest daughter of Ulysses S. Grant III, and granddaughter of the president’s eldest son, Frederick. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City. He is also on the board of the U.S. Grant Presidential Library and Museum at Mississippi State University.”

wakingfromthewater

And frankly, the novels sound like they slap:

Desmond was nominated for a Lambda Award.

doctorscienceknowsfandom

“With his husband of 45 years.” You kids don’t know ... they got together before AIDS, at the peak of the Gay Glam Life. They stayed together as their generation died around them, and made through it to the point where they could marry and have a legal family. He looks like a chipper preppie who never had a serious thought or care in the world, but it took *incredible* determination, commitment, and also luck to get here.

oidheadh-con-culainn

having now read the first of this man's vampire books, you can absolutely tell that he cares a lot about historical furniture because oh my god he really wanted to tell us about all the historical furniture in this vampire's house. material culture as foreplay. seduction via theses about chairs

segamascott

mortalityplays

hi, a lot of you need a perspective reset

the average human lifespan globally is 70+ years

taking the threshold of adulthood as 18, you are likely to spend at least 52 years as a fully grown adult

at the age of 30 you have lived less than one quarter of your adult life (12/52 years)

'middle age' is typically considered to be between 45-65

it is extremely common to switch careers, start new relationships, emigrate, go to college for the first or second time, or make other life-changing decisions in middle age

it's wild that I even have to spell it out, but older adults (60+) still have social lives and hobbies and interests.

you can still date when you get old. you can still fuck. you can still learn new skills, be fashionable, be competitive. you can still gossip, you can still travel, you can still read. you can still transition. you can still come out.

young doesn't mean peaked. you're inexperienced in your 20s! you're still learning and practicing! you're developing social skills and muscle memory that will last decades!

there are a million things to do in the world, and they don't vanish overnight because an imaginary number gets too big

kosmogrl

manwhorewednesdays

This is actually such a crucial part of healing from neglect and abuse and I have to add to this.

Because indeed, people who like you will not roll their eyes and sigh at the idea of accommodating your needs, they will value your voice and be upset with you about injustice done to you, not at you for "being difficult". They will be happy when you find a way to live a better life, and help you to get there. If you are struggling, someone who loves you wants to see you smile, not tell you to smile because "you have it so good".

only-tiktoks

swan2swan

Millions of Years of Immutable Evolutionary Law: “Cats shall have litters of many offspring at one time. Some will be weak or stricken with disease--they will perish to allow the stronger siblings to escape, and to satiate other predators in order to reduce competition and encourage the existence of more capable adults.”

Human Beings:

magicalmanhattanproject

important note: this cat's full name is breakfast sandwich

thoodleoo

the world may be a dark place sometimes but there are also 1200 year old paw prints from a happy kitty cat out there

duckland

dandalfthe-gay-deactivated20251

@chatul-shachor

chatul-shachor

.......

This is the best post I've ever seen in my entire life.

Thank you.

sexhaver

i think about this a lot

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

i am delighted to inform you of the existence of the Rosefinch, which is a real actual bird that exists!

gertritude-art

nightly spiral

sigynpenniman

this is my favorite fuckin comic ever I have never seen something capture the experience so well

narwhalsarefalling

MY TA SHOT SOMEONE IN THE FOOT AND THE PROFESSOR WAS SO FUCKING QUICK LMAOOO

narwhalsarefalling

some context

1. my TA, Ralph, shot his girlfriend’s abusive ex in the foot

2. abusive ex was also a sex offender

3. he shot him when ex came buy to pick some stuff up from girlfriend and tried to take some of Ralph’s items as well

4. ex is stable and alive in a hospital

5. i didn’t do assignment 8 so i am very happy

narwhalsarefalling

some more Facts About Ralph

he is whiter then snow. this man is pure 100% american redneck in everything but the politics. this is intimidating if you dont know him because he owns like 3 different guns but also has animated discussions about “how his sister should be able to get married” when you bring up lgbt rights. his sister isnt even gay or trans or anything, he just thinks that LGBT rights also means that the lady should propose when she wants to. hes a little confused but he got the spirit. upon finding out that i am queer he said, word for word “THATS FUCKING RADICAL HOMIE”

in the first week of school he snorted a line of pepper in the cafeteria and threw up.

the only other crime hes committed before was accidently dropping a weight from his balcony and cracking the sidewalk. which is technically destruction of public property but the judge basically laughed at him and have him 10 hours of community service

this man once walked me home when i stayed late at the lab and talked to me animatedly about breeding brine shrimp for different lab purposes. absolutely captivated by this discussion. i trust him with my life