not kind, but necessary

c. r. || 29 || ve/vis/ver / they/them || writer || queer & autistic ♡

[crtalley]

masterlist →

the list itself is a work in progress.

i, myself, am c.r. (chandler ray) — call me whatever you'd like, i'll probably answer to it. 29 years old writing silly soft fantasy and slightly horrifying scifi.

this list will primarily be composed of those things i'm working on. currently:

UNCHOSEN

high fantasy + adult + sword and sorcery betrayal + sisterhood + let one die to save a thousand + everyone likes plants + loss as a defining moment + mother knows best ace characters + soft m/f romance

When the Chosen of Journsea is killed, her identical twin steps up and takes her place for the sake of peace. Wracked by fear and self-doubt, Maris tries to play her part well, but a budding relationship with one of her sister's retinue throws her into questioning: Is Journsea worth saving?

INDELIBLE

low fantasy + adult + explicit + vampires self-loathing + cheap motels + bloodsucking + loss as a lens to the self + shower sex + learning how to live after dying

Day has only been a vampire for three days. Shiloh has just dug himself out of a mass grave. At the intersection of history, they stand between humanity and a sea of blood threatening to overtake it. Probably. Day's more worried about telling her parents what her ex did to her.

THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS

high fantasy + adult + explicit + sword and sorcery trauma + recovery + loss as a constant + episodic adventures with overarching implications + the finest line between hate and lust complicated consent + discovering kinks + a house full of aros

After Ðalhya's home is destroyed, she's rescued by local werewolf Kathary Bright and invited to join her little band of adventurers. Together with the revenant Dead Milo, ash elemental Yev, and the unfortunately horny sorcerer Vaidas Vel, she moves on with her new life—until a heinous truth drags her back, investigating the lie behind her family's deaths.

BEARSKIN

high fantasy + adult + fairytale searching for another + searching for the self + hating what you find + loss as a form of self-harm + emotional support pigeons familial love + familial hate + the softest m/f romance

In the last weeks before a long winter, Irina hunts a snow bear that will feed her family for months. But when she finally brings it down, her catch is stolen from her and her brother kidnapped by a dangerous witch claiming to be the fabled Prince of Always Night. Irina trudges through the snow to find his palace at the end of the world, and he challenges her to a game: If she can conquer three impossible tasks, she'll get her brother back. Easy.

if you wanna be on my tag list for my works lmk <3

[crtalley]

well i'm back.

work got a little insane for a bit and i'm still recovering (i'm bone tired exhausted and working too many days straight). partner's tire went flat so i've gotten a cumulative 13 hours of sleep over the last 3 days and i am. vibing. i'm just vibing.

counting down the days to vacation, and i probably won't be writing too much until after that (i have more promises to keep + i'm beta-ing + i have books i want to read, too)

but i'm excited for what i'm working on this summer so look forward to seeing that... eventually

[redlipstickresurrected]

Toril Brancher (Norwegian, b. Oslo, Norway, based South Wales) - Photography

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

my corner store guy is a 50 year old man who's my best friend in the world and recently he was like "you're too pretty to be single I have some nephews you should meet. very handsome!" and I was like "a niece might be more up my alley" and he just got more excited and said "ah even better! I was overselling my nephews but my nieces are very beautiful"

[caustic-pixie]

OP the tags!!

[nightkitchentarot]

“They asked me to tell you what it was like to be twenty and pregnant in 1950 and when you tell your boyfriend you’re pregnant, he tells you about a friend of his in the army whose girl told him she was pregnant, so he got all his buddies to come and say, “We all fucked her, so who knows who the father is?” And he laughs at the good joke…. What was it like, if you were planning to go to graduate school and get a degree and earn a living so you could support yourself and do the work you loved—what it was like to be a senior at Radcliffe and pregnant and if you bore this child, this child which the law demanded you bear and would then call “unlawful,” “illegitimate,” this child whose father denied it … What was it like? […] It’s like this: if I had dropped out of college, thrown away my education, depended on my parents … if I had done all that, which is what the anti-abortion people want me to have done, I would have borne a child for them, … the authorities, the theorists, the fundamentalists; I would have born a child for them, their child. But I would not have born my own first child, or second child, or third child. My children. The life of that fetus would have prevented, would have aborted, three other fetuses … the three wanted children, the three I had with my husband—whom, if I had not aborted the unwanted one, I would never have met … I would have been an “unwed mother” of a three-year-old in California, without work, with half an education, living off her parents…. But it is the children I have to come back to, my children Elisabeth, Caroline, Theodore, my joy, my pride, my loves. If I had not broken the law and aborted that life nobody wanted, they would have been aborted by a cruel, bigoted, and senseless law. They would never have been born. This thought I cannot bear. What was it like, in the Dark Ages when abortion was a crime, for the girl whose dad couldn’t borrow cash, as my dad could? What was it like for the girl who couldn’t even tell her dad, because he would go crazy with shame and rage? Who couldn’t tell her mother? Who had to go alone to that filthy room and put herself body and soul into the hands of a professional criminal? – because that is what every doctor who did an abortion was, whether he was an extortionist or an idealist. You know what it was like for her. You know and I know; that is why we are here. We are not going back to the Dark Ages. We are not going to let anybody in this country have that kind of power over any girl or woman. There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness. We are not great powers. But we are the light. Nobody can put us out. May all of you shine very bright and steady, today and always.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

[sashayed]

has anyone figured out how to turn off the thing where you love your pet so much it slides inexorably into grief-borrowing

[boomstab-papa]

[your-cosmic-creature]

“For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

[thedreadpiratecam]

microdosing hell by being awake and literate

[bamsara]

"youve already written that trope" yesss. i like it a lots. i will be writing it again. 1000 stories of the same trope over and over again for ten million years

[distinguishedbaloney]

[eilooxara]

Non cooking spray stick

[eilooxara]

Non spray stick cooking

[that-house]

Non cooking stick spray

[yeahokayillreblogthat]

yeah okay ill reblog that

[autism-official]

[greymvs]

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

I keep seeing this post about how Knives Out went to these insane lengths to allow Benoit Blanc to wear glasses and it drives me nuts. Because it is honestly not that hard to account for lens glare on glasses while filming a movie. What Knives Out did is markedly more batshit.

They built special rigging to make the glare on the lense accurate to the space in which he's supposed to be. Mindblowingly unhinged. Special lighting rigs to add the most minute sense of realism to the film. I can not emphasize enough how ungodly insane that is as a lighting choice. It is a fucking chef's kiss of filmmaking. It is fucking showing off. It is iconic and is honest to got something lighting teachers are gonna be teaching film students for decades.

[spikedru]

girl vampires are so cool we need more girl vampires in general

[spikedru]

and like. girl vampires who are given the same kind of depth as male vampires of reconciling their own monstrous desires with how human they still are or not. and not like. vapid sexy temptresses or whatever. they have their time and place but i want a girl vampire desperately gripping the sink looking into the mirror just to see what isnt there anymore

[guiigemar]

never met a sentence i couldn't make incredibly long

[quasi-normalcy]

Solarpunk has failed. It's time for the Solar Gothic. Show me an environmentally conscious world that is haunted by its past; where its failures still intrude upon the present. Where the characters live in the shadow of a decadent but much more materially wealthy past whose crumbling edifices mock them with the waste and the missed opportunities they represent. Show me characters who remember the promise of modernity, the story of ever-growing progress, and either lament that it is not for them or continue to cling to it like madmen. Show me a world that's trapped, claustrophobically, in an anthropocene that they are only gradually learning to manage, and where all former illusions of mastery or permanence have been dispelled.

[rainbow-femme]

Hi yes hello it’s me the local wizard, and I- Ok well “evil” feels like a strong word but yes, that’s me. Anyway, I need your help. I know I stole away the kingdoms 12 princesses, that’s my bad. Listen, I didn’t think this through. It didn’t occur to me that having a dozen angry young women from early teen to early 20s and giving them giant powerful wings would be a bad idea.

I know I’m the one who cast the curse but it can still only be broken with true love. I’m begging you, somebody, please come and fall in love with these girls and make them leave, I can’t take it anymore, it sucks so bad. I can’t keep getting viciously bullied by one of the largest living species of waterfowl anymore. I’ve tried running away but they can fly so they just find me. I’m getting nothing done.

I’ll pay you, I’ll grant you wishes, I don’t care, please just come and fall in love with the mean angry women who live in my yard and hate me so bad

[withdreamsofhereafter]

Hexagonal growth in a black olive tree

[peppermintsolarpunk]

Let's play: Is it AI or Real?

Red flags: Unbelievable nature you've never seen before!, no external source cited, low image quality could be hiding AI artifacts, lacks scientific name for plant, OP is an aesthetic blog (no offense, I see you credit most of the artists you post, OP <3).

Green flags: Common name of the tree provided (although the leaves don't look like any olive tree I've ever seen).

Reverse image searches and citation trails all seem to lead back to now-deleted Reddit posts. Google Images says it's this one in r/NatureIsFuckingLit, and TinEye says it's this one in r/interestingasfuck. Both were posted back in 2020. This is important because the rise of AI images was in 2022.

People in the comments of places this image is posted throw around botanical terms like "dichotomous branching" [branches split into two at the nodes] and "divaricated" [branches grow far apart from each other], which are cool, but don't tell me what the tree is.

Searching up "Black Olive" on iNaturalist finally got me some answers, and it turns out that YES. This is a real tree! This tree is a Dwarf Black Olive (Terminalia molinetii, Formerly Bucida spinosa). The above photos are some particularly nicely framed shots of a tree with particularly small leaves, which really highlights the branching structure. I really wish we knew the photographer's name. Here are some more photos of the same species:

Terminalia molinetii by jriveracruz50 on iNaturalist, posted under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

This tree is native to Southern Mexico, Belize, the southern tip of Florida, and Cuba. Dwarf Black Olives are completely unrelated to Olive trees in the Olea genus that I'm more familiar with (the former is in Order Myrtales [Myrtles, Evening Primroses, and Allies], and the latter is in Order Lamiales [Mints, Plantains, Olives, and Allies]).

Stay critical, and –more importantly– curious, y'all! The world is a beautiful place, we don't need fictional plants passed off as real ones for that to be true.

[100493503004422]

refusal to participate due to self consciousness is actually more embarrassing than participating. it took me a very long time to figure that out. abject fear of embarrassment is actually causing you to do things that are more embarrassing than what you fear. you are gonna be embarrassed anyway. let go and be free

[norahsdove]

Orson Welles on Woody Allen