Ehhh... @d-alpha - Tumblr Blog

Gideon The Ninth- mock dustcover

I draw book covers for freelance all the time. I feel pretty lucky to do so, and wanted to create one with all my free will and spare time, to make just for me. Well, and for you lot as well. But mainly, for me.

I will be drawing book 2 and book 3 as well. And potentalially have prints of them later this year.

(For cover commissions email me at [email protected])

#gideon the ninth #the locked tomb

susiephone

if you want to read more but have trouble finishing things, i really recommend short story collections (ESPECIALLY anthologies by multiple authors) and literary magazines. if one story sucks you can just skip to the next one, and anthologies and magazines will have work by multiple authors so you get a wide variety of styles, and if you find a story you really really like, you can look to see if that author's published anything else.

i'm not as well-versed in literary magazines as i should be (trying to fix that), but here are short story collections i suggest:

lesser known monsters of the 21st century by kim fu (speculative fiction, horror). personal favorite story: "pre-simulation consultation xf007867"

the paper menagerie and other stories by ken liu (speculative fiction). personal favorite story: "the litigation master and the monkey king"

slasher girls and monster boys by various (horror). personal favorite story: "the birds of azalea street"

what we fed to the manticore by talia lakshmi kolluri (literary fiction). personal favorite story: "the hunted, the haunted, the hungry, the tame"

africa risen by various (afrofuturism, speculative fiction). personal favorite story: "a dream of electric mothers"

a small apocalypse by laura chow reeve (literary fiction). personal favorite story: "real bodies"

the secret lives of church ladies by deesha philyaw (literary fiction). personal favorite story: "dear sister"

a phoenix first must burn by various (speculative fiction). personal favorite story: "wherein abigail fields recalls her first death and, subsequently, her best life"

woman hollering creek and other stories by sandra cisneros (literary fiction). personal favorite story: "woman hollering creek"

bliss montage by ling ma (literary fiction). personal favorite story: "yeti lovemaking"

how to love a jamaican by alexia arthurs (literary fiction). personal favorite story: "the ghost of jia yi"

radicalized by cory doctorow (speculative fiction). personal favorite story: "radicalized"

life ceremony by sayaka murata (literary fiction, horror). personal favorite story: "life ceremony"

shit cassandra saw by gwen e. kirby (literary fiction). personal favorite story: "here preached his last"

through the woods by e.m. carroll (horror). personal favorite story: "his face all red"

#to read list

dogpuppy

earhartsease

artist: Vasil Woodland

ceruleanheaven

[looking at people younger than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at people older than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at myself] its over

thegenderal

even before i lived in a place with a massive population of feral cats decimating the wildlife i had read the studies and knew the data said that TNR did not work and we need to be trapping and euthanizing feral cats but now that i’ve lived in a place where there are an enormous number of feral cats it’s like, inconceivable to me that anyone supports TNR, not just for the health of the world but for the sake of the fucking cats

thegenderal

nobody will even acknowledge it not even in most conservation circles. We have a solution to a massive, massive problem that is more humane, cheaper, easier, takes less time, prevents animal suffering, and saves valuable members of our disappearing ecosystem. And nobody is even willing to theoretically acknowledge that it exists outside of a few very small circles.

thegenderal

it works. It works. It is better for the cats. It’s better for the cats. Living in a place where you cannot drive 10 minutes without seeing a new roadkill cat almost every single day really makes you think about how much suffering could have been prevented if we just dealt with the problem we have created. It’s not a pleasant way to go, being hit by a car. Or being ripped apart by a predator, or eating a poison, or starving to death, of dying of an infection, or an illness, or any of the hundred thousand ways an animal in the wild passes without human intervention. Euthanasia is simply falling asleep. It is fucking wild to me that saying you think we should take responsibility for our mistakes and ensure that cats fall asleep peacefully instead of capturing them and then hurling them back out into the world SPECIFICALLY in order to allow them to die in agony makes people treat you like a fucking serial killer.

thegenderal

And if you don’t care about cats dying in agony do you care about the world around you? There’s a species of bird we only know ever existed because someone’s cat brought home our only example. That’s horrific. We’ve lost so much biodiversity because we simply won’t listen to the research, which again, has proven that TNR is not effective.

thegenderal

a peaceful death is not the worst thing that could happen to an animal.

thegenderal

@cathartidae sources for ya!

Sources:

https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/UW468 “How Effective and Humane Is Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) for Feral Cats?”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6523511/ “A Case of Letting the Cat out of The Bag—Why Trap-Neuter-Return Is Not an Ethical Solution for Stray Cat (Felis catus) Management” (also has a thousand references attached that are handy)

Not a reference so much as the human society actively admitting that TNR does nothing to decrease population, actively contributes to harming wildlife, and doesn’t actually help the cats in any way, just reduces some of the nuisance behavior that people complain about: https://www.animalhumanesociety.org/resource/real-impacts-trap-neuter-return

Unscientific from here on out as i don’t feel like trying to find the studies i read in like January of last year:

https://hahf.org/awake/the-trouble-with-trap-vaccinate-neuter-return/ “The Trouble With Trap-Neuter-Re (Abandon!) from the hillsborough animal health foundation, articles also link to studies

https://abcbirds.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-Evidence-Against-TNR.pdf from the american bird conservancy, has scientific articles quoted.

thegenderal

Even More Sources on TNR being non-viable and ways that cats are impacting the world from birds to *hawai’i’s monk seals*

Animal Emergency and Referral Center of Minnesota. (2022, October 26). Indoor cats vs. outdoor cats. Animal Emergency & Referral Center of Minnesota. https://aercmn.com/indoor-cats-vs-outdoor-cats/

Campbell, V. (2017, January 25). The Obituary of the Stephens Island Wren. All About Birds. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/the-obituary-of-the-stephens-island-wren/

Castillo, D., & Clarke, A. L. (2003). Trap/neuter/release methods ineffective in controlling domestic cat “colonies” on public lands. Natural Areas Journal, 23(3).

Coe, S. T., Elmore, J. A., Elizondo, E. C., & Loss, S. R. (2021). Free-ranging domestic cat abundance and sterilization percentage following five years of a trap–neuter–return program. Wildlife Biology, 2021(1). https://doi.org/10.2981/wlb.00799

del Hoyo, J., Collar, N., Kirwan, G. M., & Sharpe, C. J. (2022, October 25). Guadalupe storm-petrel (Hydrobates Macrodactylus), version 1.2. Birds of the World. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/guspet/cur/introduction

Dickman, C. R., & Newsome, T. M. (2015). Individual hunting behaviour and prey specialisation in the house cat Felis catus: Implications for conservation and management. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 173, 76–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2014.09.021

Edge. (2019, June 19). Guadalupe storm-petrel. EDGE of Existence. https://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/guadalupe-storm-petrel/

Galbreath, R., & Brown, D. (2004). The tale of the lighthouse-keeper’s cat: Discovery and extinction of the Stephens Island wren (Traversia lyalli). Notornis, 51(4).

Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources. (2025). Feral cats. Feral Cats. https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/feral-cats/#:~:text=Feral%20cats%20on%20islands%20have,kill%20approximately%202.4%20billion%20birds.

Loss, S. R., Will, T., & Marra, P. P. (2013). The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States. Nature Communications, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2380

McGregor, H., Legge, S., Jones, M. E., & Johnson, C. N. (2015). Feral cats are better killers in open habitats, revealed by animal-borne video. PLOS ONE, 10(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133915

Medina, F. M., Bonnaud, E., Vidal, E., Tershy, B. R., Zavaleta, E. S., Josh Donlan, C., Keitt, B. S., Corre, M., Horwath, S. V., & Nogales, M. (2011). A global review of the impacts of invasive cats on Island Endangered Vertebrates. Global Change Biology, 17(11), 3503–3510. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02464.x

National Research Council. (1992, January 1). Scientific Bases for the Preservation of the Hawaiian Crow. U.S. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235935/

NOAA. (2024, August 29). Toxoplasmosis and its effects on Hawaiʻi Marine Wildlife. NOAA Fisheries. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/pacific-islands/endangered-species-conservation/toxoplasmosis-and-its-effects-hawaii-marine

Read, J. L., Dickman, C. R., Boardman, W. S., & Lepczyk, C. A. (2020). Reply to Wolf et al.: Why trap-neuter-return (TNR) is not an ethical solution for Stray Cat Management. Animals, 10(9), 1525. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10091525

Reed, L. (2022). The effects of free-roaming cats on native wildlife populations. Wildlife Rehabilitation Bulletin, 40(1), 17–21. https://doi.org/10.53607/wrb.v40.250

Salano, E. (2024, October 5). Eliciting the effect free roaming cats have on Native Hawaiian wildlife using stable isotope analysis. UKnowledge. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/biology_etds/103/

Steele, J. H., Thorpe, S. A., & Turekian, K. K. (2009). Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences. Academic Press.

science says it’s long past time to stop prolonging the suffering of feral cats, for the sake of the people, the native wildlife, and the goddamn cats themselves.

boundless-ennui

I was at a friend's house to check on carcasses I had macerating in his yard. A little grey cat ran up to me, yelling her head off in friendliness and wanting nothing more than to be pet. I had nothing to give her but let my friend know he should catch her since she was so friendly. I am ashamed to admit I didn't give her much thought beyond that, finishing my work and giving her a last pet before going home.

My friend told me how he'd seen her before but she always vanished before he could catch her. He works far too many hours and is always tired so he couldn't prioritize catching this cat.

Three months pass with no sign of her. I go back with my partner to check on carcasses and this same little grey cat appears. This time, however, a tooth has been snapped off and her tongue is so badly cut that she can't keep it in her mouth. She was thin and dirty and screaming to please be given some food.

This time I couldn't look away. I asked my friend's girlfriend if I could borrow a cat carrier. She loaned me one and a tin of wet food that the grey cat willingly followed into the carrier. She didn't care at all about being put into the carrier - all she wanted was a hand on her. She'd arch up against the top just so my hand would rest on her back for a moment.

We drove through rush hour traffic to the only shelter still open. We knew we couldn't keep her and I couldn't stand the thought of putting her back out on the streets to die slowly.

The shelter couldn't take her. Her ear was clipped so she was a "community cat" and outside their ability to help. They tried desperately to offer alternatives to me as I cried over her carrier, knowing I couldn't take her home but also that if I didn't I couldn't live with the thought of her back on the streets.

I made a Hail Mary call to a local friend who is very connected in our city. They didn't have my number saved but answered all the same to hear me sobbing about a cat I'd found and to please help me find a place for her. Please. If I don't find something then she'll be alone on the streets again to die.

My friend came through. I could keep the cat in their garage overnight and in the morning my friend would be back in the city and could find someone to help the cat.

The shelter folk gave me a crate and some food - their hands were tied but they didn't want to leave me with nothing. They were good people doing the best they could in their own system. Community cats were ones they weren't allowed to "waste" resources on. Ostensibly they'd been dealt with and their fate decided. There was nothing the shelter folks were allowed to do for them.

I took the cat to my friend's garage. She was settled into a crate on towels, happy as a clam to be warm and safe. This was a cat made to be loved and to love, as she immediately began trying to groom one of my friend's roommates. He stayed in the garage with her, giving her food and water and in exchange having no say on whether she was in his lap or not. She was always in his lap.

Nobby Nobbs (so named for the only other character known to man that is as scrungly as she is) was then formally adopted by my friend. Her tongue has healed, her fur remains scrungly, and she's every bit the rabid love bug I suspected her to be when she came to me yelling to be pet.

She's a TNR cat. Someone thought they were doing her a kindness in that and if nothing else she didn't add kittens to the world but that doesn't negate the pain she suffered before I found her - the broken teeth, the lacerated tongue, the ulcerated cheeks, the flea-bald patchiness of her coat.

I say this as someone who adores this cat and has the privilege to see her loved and cherished: I wish she'd never had to suffer what she did. I wish people were alright making the harder call that leads to less misery on the side of the cats.

TNR is a polite fiction, nothing more. Just so the humans can pretend they've done right by the same cats they're letting loose to die miserably somewhere else. As long as the humans don't see it it's fine.

The shelter folks told me she's a community cat and that I could take her home and release her by my house. Then I could feed her myself and keep up with her and know where she was! I could still keep her, after a fashion.

I am not proud of how I snarled back that I would never exchange a quick death for a slow one. I would be giving her a different funeral plot, not giving her a life. Even near me she'd be just as vulnerable to the innumerable predators that find cats quite delicious, let alone cars and poisons and the other cruelties humans practice on stray cats.

She's the second stray cat I've met that when I held them the cat melted in my arms, purring and so desperately wanting to be loved. The first cat I was able to trap and take to a local shelter only to find when I called to check on him a day later that his health had been so terrible, so beyond help, that he'd been put down. All the love in that tiny body lost because the people I lived beside didn't care enough to trap the cats they had.

My partner was asleep. I woke her up to crawl into her arms and sob, my heart breaking for the stupidity of the humans who hadn't cared enough to grant this poor little cat the chance to be either an indoor cat, loved and cared for, or to grant him a quick death long before I met him. I've other stories of the cats they kept around, essentially feeding the poor souls to the predatory birds and wandering dogs that frequented our area.

TNR doesn't work. It is a lie humans tell ourselves so we can pretend we haven't failed these animals on a massive scale. Cats are invasive and cause massive harm in their turn. It is humanity who needs to deal with this crisis, this horror we've made, and I pray one day we look it square in the face and vow to make it right.

thegenderal

sorry

meangirlnurse

this is a good post, but i wanted to note that animal shelters by and large are culpable in the suffering of TNR cats.

maybe the individual workers boundless-ennui met truly had their hands tied – but the cold hard truth is that "no kill" shelters don't want to muck up their live release rate by doing the right fucking thing.

if that means cats suffering and dying, oh well. they don't care.

#tnr #it sucks but it's true #no cats should be outside

chavdog

loveridden1999

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Sensible Thing

the-big-mood

In 1997, local television in Kharkiv accidentally filmed one of the most iconic rave moments in history.

ruinedchildhood

#dancing kid meme #meme history

cypherdecypher

Animal of the Day!

Honduran White Bat (Ectophylla alba)

(Photo from WordPress)

Conservation Status- Near Threatened

Habitat- Southern Central America

Size (Weight/Length)- 4.5 cm

Diet- Fruit

Cool Facts- The leaf-cuddling Honduran white bat made quite the rounds on the internet due to their adorable sleeping arrangements. During the day, these bats group together in ‘tents’ made out of leaves by cutting them open in the midrib with their teeth. The tents are constructed by multiple bats and are lived in for multiple weeks until the leaf dies. Colonies usually consist of 1-15 individuals and their offspring. The leaves give further protection from predators by making the Honduran white bat’s fur appear green when sunlight casts onto the leaf. These bats feed almost exclusively on figs. The yellow carotenoids in the fruit result in the yellow coloration on the bat’s nose and ears, resulting in the Honduran white bat being one of the only mammals to have coloration based on their diet.

Rating- 14/10 (Baby bats are called pups. Bat puppies.)

#bats #I've of my favs #love them

may12324

Harrow The Ninth -mock dust cover

With the river in blue and with blood variations. I wanted to have some crossover from my gtn cover, making things partially destroyed , like the side flaps. As well as having the sword in the same position, Gideons presence is still there! Even if she, herself, is not 🥲

Next up will be Nona's cover!

And more closeups under the cut

#tlt #harrow the ninth

kosmogrl

we talk about doing it scared and doing it alone but what about doing it uninterested

seashellronan

the person who realised you could rearrange the letters in gossip girl to read “go piss girl” truly one of the great minds of our generation, madam your legacy

#go piss girl

viola-rules

an introduction to women composers

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) from Germany 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP

Maddalena Casulana (1544-1590) from Italy 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP

Francesca Caccini (1587-1641) from Italy 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP She was friend with Artmisia Gentileschi

Barbara Strozzi (1619-1977) from Italy 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP

Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729) from France 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP

Duchess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1739-1807) from Germany 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP

Marianna Martines (1744-1812) from Austria 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP

Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831) from Poland 📚Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP

Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) from France 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP

Fanny Mendelssohn [Hensel after marriage] (1805-47) from Germany 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP Sister of Felix Mandelssohn

Clara Schumann [nee Wieck] (1819-1896) from Germany 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP Married to Robert Schumann

Elfrida Andrée (1841-1929) from Sweden 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP

Terea Carreño (1853-1917) from Venezuela 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP

Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) from France 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP She was the first female composer to be awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 1913.

Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) from England 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP Not only a suffreagette, but also a lesbian who was involved with Virginia Woolf and Violet Gordon-Woodhouse, among others

Adele aus der Ohe (1861-1937) from Germany 📚 Wikipedia 🎵IMSLP She studied with Franz Liszt. She was friends with and performed Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with him conducting.

Amy Beach (1867-1944) from the USA 📚 Wikipedia 🎵IMSLP

Dora Pejačević (1885-1923) from Croatia 📚Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP

Rebacca Clarke (1886-1879) from England 📚Wikipedia 🎵IMSLP 🌀Rebecca Clarke.org (I have access to almost all her published works, let me know if you want me to email scans of something to you)

She studied with Lionel Tertis and briefly sang under Vaughan Williams. In 1919 her Viola Sonata tied in the Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music with Ernest Bloch’s Viola Sonata. She was also friends with Frank Bridge. In 1912 she was one of the 6 female musicians allowed into the Queen’s Hall Orchestra (later became the LSO)

Florence Price (1887-1953) from the USA 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP She began studying at the New England Conservatory after she graduated high school at 14. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered her Symphony No 1 in E minor on June 15, 1933, making Price’s piece the first composition by an African-American woman to be played by a major orchestra

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) from France 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP She was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome when she was only 19, in 1912.

Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) from the USA 📚 Wikipedia 🎵 IMSLP Became the first women to be granted the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1930

Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) from England and Ireland 📚 Wikipedia 🌀Biography

Sofia Guabaidulina (1931-present) from Russia 📚 Wikipedia 🎼 YouTube

Joan Tower (1938-present) from the USA 📚 Wikipedia 🎼 YouTube She has 3 Grammy Awards and and she was a member of the Da Capo Chamber Players who won the Naumberg Award.

Kaija Saariaho (1952-present) from Finland 📚 Wikipedia 🎼 YouTube

Nicole Lizée (1973-present) from Canada 🌀 Nicole Lizee.com 🌀 CMC

Cheryl Frances-Hoad (1980-present) from England 📚 Wikipedia 🌀Cheryl FrancesHoad.co.uk

Dobrinka Tabakova (1980-present) from Bulgaria 📚 Wikipedia 🌀 Dobrinka.com

Caroline Shaw (1982-present) from the USA 📚Wikipedia 🌀Caroline Shaw.com (listen to Entre’act, I’ve played it, so GOOD!) She won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013, the youngest ever, at only 30.

Hannah Kendall (1984-present) from England & the Caribean 📚 Wikipedia 🌀Hannah Kendall.co.uk

Fjóla Evans from Iceland & Canada 📚Fjiola Evans.com 🎼 SoundCloud

Add any other women composers that you know of to this post!

#WomenInMusic #WomenComposers

#music