rusty nickel

Em (she/her): queer, feminist, neurodivergent, born 1994

[inber]

Say you break your ankle. You could know everything there is to know intellectually about the injury. Even with this vast knowledge, you will still experience physical pain.

Now take this logic and apply it to things like ADHD, autism, clinical depression, and other less visible/divergent disabilities. You cannot think your way out of feeling.

That is to say: you are not a bad, lazy, or selfish person for struggling, even if you know why you are struggling.

[tacofriend]

Something that I think should be an important part of solarpunk aesthetics is screws.

Look at your smartphone. No screws. You've got to have specialized tools to get inside your phone to repair something. There are certain pieces of tech that are glued in place and glue can't be undone without permanently breaking the bond.

But screws!

You can take apart a broken old radio, repair what's broken, and, if you were careful in taking it apart, you can put it back together and have a fully functioning radio and all you need is a common screwdriver!

It's hard to build screws and other mechanical fasteners because it requires more planning than clamps and glues, but isn't that what solarpunk is all about‽ It's about care and sustainability and and a radio or a computer built carefully with repair in mind is a sustainable computer that stays out of landfills and in use.

[foone]

Screws are proof that God loves us and wants us to fix shit

[eagle-writes]

Screws are proof that god loves us and wants us to fix shit

[foone]

Awesome!

[thatsbelievable]

[sfemonster]

Empty Beasts - a selection of eight drawings from an original series of 12.

i love to draw a creature.

[emier]

Em's 2026 Reading List

Might as well start a reading thread on Tumblr to go with the one I've got on bluesky.

I use StoryGraph to keep track of my TBR & cause I'm a nerd who loves data analysis. So I'm including a link to my profile if anyone is interested.

app.thestorygraph.com/profile/emier

[emier]

Books I've read as of February 16th:

Audiobooks:

A Wizard if Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

Physical Books:

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

The King's Weaver by Novae Caelum

Books I'm Reading as of February 16th:

Physical Books:

Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman

[emier]

I meant to add to this thread more consistently. Clearly I did not succeed at this.

Books I've read as of June 7th:

Audio Books:

The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst

Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw

Dreadful Company by Vivian Shaw

City of Death: Humanitarian Warriors in the Battle of Mosul

Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World by Victoria Finlay

The Creek, the Crone, and the Crow by Leah Weiss

Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson

If the Creek Don't Rise by Leah Weiss

Physical Books:

Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman

Game Changer by Rachel Reid

Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

Never Been Shipped by Alicia Thompson

Love, Laugh, Lich by Kate Prior

Books I'm Reading as of June 7th:

Audio Books:

The Complete Ghost Stories Collection by M.R. James

Physical Books:

Second Chance Romance by Olivia Dade

[tabbbbyyyy]

Dude this page is a lifesaver Google is really bad for working out the order to read them in

[l0-k1]

thank you for this, I read “Wyrd Sisters” because I’m into the Nornir and was confused af but now I know there’s a whole series

[emier]

why can't I just add tags when I reblog things so its not nearly so daunting when I go back to try and organize shit. I have 15+ years worth of posts here and its just so much...

[emier]

On the note of me working on cross-stitch projects... I got a kit for Xmas of five bookmarks themed after Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. One of my brothers is a huge fan of JRR Tolkien, so I'm planning to give them to him one I'm done.

I already finished the one of the Hobbit door under a tree, but the rest I'm working through color by color. So, they'll all be done stitching before I start backstitching and finishing with the backing.

[emier]

I made myself a needle book/sewing kit. I hand sewed all of it mostly just cause. I do a lot of cross stitch and have been mending more of our clothes, so having an easily transported kit for all the relevant notions is helpful.

[glitterary]

We often treat commenting and kudosing as transactional, but I’d like to propose a different perspective.

A fandom is like a community garden; the plants and trees are fanworks, the paths and benches are structures like ao3 and kinkmemes and themed weeks or months. Comments, and kudos? Those are fertiliser. You don’t necessarily see them at work, but they make the trees grow stronger and the flowers bloom brighter. When you comment on a fic or piece of fanart, you are nourishing our shared garden and helping to make the soil fertile for future works.

I want commenters to feel proud of that contribution. Whether you turn up with a wheelbarrow of the stuff to tip on your favourite flowerbed or just drop a heart emoji in the donations box, you are helping to make the soil richer, the garden more beautiful.

And you know what? Sometimes you need to just sit in the garden without feeling obliged to do anything to maintain it. That’s okay. It’s your garden too! As an author, I don’t want people coming to my stories with a sense of obligation; I want them to be able to enjoy them and be restored by them. If they don’t have the energy to comment right now, that’s okay.

But a comment isn’t the price of an entry ticket to someone else’s garden; it’s an investment in your garden, in your community. You won’t always see it bear fruit, won’t always know what part of the whole it helped grow. But you can know what you put in, and feel proud of being part of the team nourishing and maintaining this wonderful space we all share.

And whatever you do, please—don’t litter, or tell other people they’re enjoying the garden wrong.

[liberaljane]

[haridraws]

Keep thinking about this Austin Walker post that now lives in my brain. It's a reply to people saying genAI can help creators 'develop concepts' and waste less time on research (x)

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ Fuck off and give me the ball . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

[scorpionlafemme]

[emier]

So. I'm 100% on board with the whole conversation around commenting on art or sending positive feedback to artists. But I am a chronic enjoyer who lurks. And commenting means people will probably notice me and then I face the ordeal of being known.

But I had a realization the other day. Apparently, it is easier for me to wrap my brain around commenting when I think about it like those service surveys at the bottom of receipts. For most businesses, they place a ton of value on the survey results as a metric for how well a store or team is doing. In my experience, the only time people complete a survey is when they are dissatisfied. There could be 99 happily satisfied customers, but the only feedback given is from 1 customer who was having a bad day and maybe 1 customer that doesn't realize that any rating under 9 or 10 is considered neutral. And that's all the business sees, and that's the only way they can gauge customer satisfaction. So, in the artist context, without comments from happy audience members, the only metrics are negative or silence.

This is obviously not a completely accurate comparison. But my core take away is that the importance of leaving positive comments is to improve the metrics balance for my favorite creators. Which is such an "i love admin" way of looking at things...

[bisonwares]

Crafting some mini fishies out of small scraps!! 🎣💫

[bethanyactually]

I don't wanna @ anyone because I understand how fast things seem to move in today's landscape of streaming shows dropping entire seasons in one day, and networks pumping out new series constantly to try to attract more subscribers with no intent to actually maintain those shows over time but I just saw someone self-deprecatingly lament that they are still thinking about a show that ended almost a year ago, making fan art and playlists for it, and I want to be very clear:

you can still create fanworks when it comes to old media!! PLEASE do!! there are always going to be new fans who will appreciate it, and veteran fans who are dying for new content and new perspectives. also, less than a year is NOTHING. the original Star Trek series was on TV six decades ago and there are still people losing their minds over it, writing stories and reblogging gifsets daily, and that's only one example.

a fandom lasts as long as there are people who love a thing, even if it's only a handful of people. love what you love and write and draw and make gifs and playlists about it!

[racethewind10]

raise your hand if you still have brainrot about a show that isn't airing

[rqbossman]

How have you been, Mr. Bossman?

Honestly? Not great but far from terrible. Just going through my quarterly "gosh life would be easier if I was normal" breakdown. My "god normal people are the worst" followup revelation should be due in the next couple of days. Hope you are well?

[emier]

The one* RQ/Alex J Newell thing that has had the longest hold over for me is the "munts" bit in the Apocalypse one-shot special on RQG. And Torque's whole thing was literally "strange". I have to stop myself from using "munts" in conversations at work when I'm trying to talk about breaking things down into their components. Which happens so much more than you'd think.

*There are so many RQ things that have impacted me since finding them a little over a year ago. But this happens to be the one that comes up in my life a lot.