[Image ID: a black woman wearing a plaid shirt and red bandana around her head. Her braided hair is coming out of the top od her head and falling in front of her. Text says "Did you know there's a black-owned stock photo company nappy.co that provides stereotype-free images of black people" /end]
Can we talk about Prince Ashitaka real quick? Cus I just rewatched Princess Mononoke and I wanna yap about this king.
This is the most perfect example of positive masculinity I've ever seen. This man spends the whole film being kind, respectful, calm and gentle to everyone he meets. And yeah he can fight, but only as a last resort. He's a diplomat, he's a gentleman, he's the goddamn catch of the day can we talk about this?
Below you'll find the calendar for the tenth (!) FTH auction.
(What is FTH?)
Our list of supported organizations for 2026 is here. Over the next week, we'll be posting more in-depth profiles of each of these organizations so that creators and bidders can make thoughtful, informed decisions.
You can also look at the Auction FAQ (which has lots of useful information for people thinking about signing up as creators, as well as dedicated sections on bidding and on nonprofit orgs.) If you’re raring to go, you can also look at our bidding policies. You'll also find the dates for our 2026 Crafts Bazaar, if you're interested in creating or receiving physical fanworks.
FTH 2026 Calendar
Monday, Jan 26th: creator signups open for both the auction and the craft bazaar
Sunday, Feb 8th: creator signups close for the main auction; craft bazaar signups remain open!
Friday, Feb 27th: browsing period begins, craft bazaar opens
Tuesday, March 3rd, 8am ET: auction bidding opens; craft bazaar signups close
Saturday, March 7th, 8pm ET: auction bidding closes
Wednesday, Mar 18th: auction donations due; craft stalls close
Thursday, Dec 31st: fanworks due
We're excited to be back for another round, and we hope you are too! After all, the world needs us more than ever: our donations, our community care, and our joyful and inspiring fanworks. We need one another right now, and FTH is a great way to make that happen.
It's Right to Read Day, celebrating libraries, highlighting the relentless attacks against them, and encouraging folks to take at least one action to defend them! The American Library Association's data on the most banned books from 2024 is now out; after 3 years in the top spot GENDER QUEER came in at second on the list with George M Johnson's beautiful queer memoir ALL BOYS AREN'T BLUE at number one. If you haven't read it yet, please go pick up this book.
Unfortunately, instead of dying down, we are now seeing the book ban movement morph into an effort to defund and destroy ALL public libraries and ALL public education, as exemplified by the Trump Administration aiming to dismantle the Department of Education and placing all employees of the Institute of Museum and Library Services on administrative leave. The IMLS is an independent federal agency that provides grants to libraries and museums across the country. According to the American Library Association, the IMLS provides “the majority of federal library funds.” The IMLS says it awarded $266 million in grants and research funding to cultural institutions last year. This money goes to help staff, fund maintenance, and create new programs. If you are curious how the termination of this grant funding will effect the state of California, here is a press release from the California State Library. Please call your state governor and representatives asking them to demand support for the IMLS!
I also wanted to share some resources to help you talk about book bans/book challenges if the topic comes up in conversation. There are a set of really common bad faith arguments which book banners make, and I helped write up a set of responses for Authors Against Book Bans (much of this was also written and compiled by superstar author and AABB leader Maggie Tokuda-Hall). Below the responses to bad faith arguments are a list of resources you can contribute to, especially if you live in a blue state and don't have a current legislative battle over books and libraries in your own backyard.
What to Say When They Say What They Always Say: an Authors Against Book Bans resource
I haven’t read this book but I don’t think it’s appropriate for children!
Please read the full book before you judge it. Passages are often presented without context.
So you want kids to have access to porn?
No. And if that is a concern of yours as a parent, install browser filters such as Google SafeSearch on your children’s devices to keep them from accessing the wealth of pornography available to them on the internet. It’s already illegal to bring pornography into schools. There are robust safeguards– from laws, to industry standards in publishing and librarianship and education– to safeguard our children from obscene materials, as determined by the Miller Test.
What about parents’ rights?
Parents already have robust rights in their children’s education. When that means limiting access to certain books parents can do so; nearly all schools have policies to this effect. But what about all the parents who WANT their kids to have access to books? Their children should not be limited by what another parent in the community decides for their own family. And what if a parent wants to limit their child’s access to something that child would benefit from? What about the child’s rights? Children are people, not possessions of their parents.
If my taxes fund the schools and libraries, I should have a say in how they’re used.
Schools and libraries serve entire communities, not just those who agree with you. Libraries and schools have professional educators and librarians with PhDs who are trained to curate collections that serve diverse populations, not just one viewpoint.
LGBTQ+ books confuse kids or make them gay/trans. They push an agenda.
LGBTQ+ representation is not an “agenda”—it’s simply a reflection of real people’s lives. If books featuring LGBTQ+ characters are “pushing an agenda,” then books featuring straight relationships or cisgender characters are as well. Reading about something does not automatically change a person’s identity, just as reading about astronauts does not turn every child into an astronaut. Reading about LGBTQ+ characters can both help kids understand themselves and build empathy and understanding towards others.
I live California. Why should I care about book bans if they’re not happening here?
We are fortunate to live in a state where book banning on the basis of discrimination has been outlawed through AB1825, which passed in 2024. However, California has still seen numerous book challenges in cities like Huntington Beach, Burbank, Lodi, and Chico—some of which continue efforts to overturn these protections. While bans are worse in red states, they still happen in blue states. Book bans are about control—not protecting children. The people banning books today will censor other forms of speech tomorrow. The right to read is a fundamental civil liberty, and we should protect it accordingly.
How Can I Help from a Blue State? For the biggest bang for your buck, we recommend that you donate to the grassroots organizations making a difference in the places where the bans are happening all the time. All the ACLU chapters listed here are currently involved in lawsuits against book banners.
We suggest:
Florida Freedom to Read Project: https://www.fftrp.org/donate
Texas Freedom to Read Project: https://www.txftrp.org/donate
Honesty for Ohio Education: https://www.honestyforohioeducation.org/donate.html
Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization (DAYLO) in South Carolina: https://patconroyliterarycenter.org/donate-today-to-pat-conroy-literary-center/
Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT): https://www.studentsengaged.org/donate
San Francisco’s Books Not Bans!: https://givebutter.com/booksnotbans
Coeur D’Alene Public Library in Idaho: https://cdalibrary.org/donate/
Let Utah Read: https://www.fundlibraries.org/letutahread
Tennessee ACLU: https://www.aclu-tn.org/en/donate
South Carolina ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/give/support-aclu-south-carolina
Southern California ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/give/support-aclu-socal
Fight for the First helps start grassroots groups all across the country: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fightforthefirst
EveryLibrary (is a national org, but they financially support many of the groups listed here, as well as AABB): https://www.everylibrary.org/donate
You can also call your state reps to express your commitment to protecting the freedom to read. Protections in blue states are just as contagious as bans in red states. The more of us who have them, the more states will follow suit. Use the 5Calls app do this, or find your rep here: https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/
And of course- if you are an author, editor, illustrator, cartoonist, translator, anthology editor, self-published author, please join Authors Against Book Bans! We could use the help! If you want to help recruit to AABB, feel free to print and pass out my recruitment zine at any literary event you attend <3
I decided to finish this after all (I totally could've done more here tbh, but I just wanted to get it done atp 😅)
I did hide shorters eyes behind the glasses, because he weirdly looked like Jackson Wang to me???? Idk why though, I never ever used a reference of him or anything 😭😭😭
Hey all! From now on, I will be blocking anyone who follows me/interacts with my posts if I suspect they're a bot. If you've been on Tumblr for a while you're probably no stranger to bots, but the reason why I'm making a full-on post is because this situation also involves AI image generation.
This post contains more in-depth information (as well as a juicy block list), but if you'd like to hear it from me: Basically, there's a strand of bot accounts going around, stealing from artists/photographers and slapping an AI filter onto their works to make it seem like the AI generated it.
Don't believe me? I did my own look-around of these accounts and noticed that they sometimes include really specific tags on their AI posts, like the kind of tags an artist would leave behind has a comment on their work. I decided to search the tags of 2 posts and found multiple bots stealing from one artist. In both images below, the original artist is the one on the left
If you still don't believe me or want to see more examples, the account @ai-art-thieves has been doing a lot of callouts lately of these kinds of accounts.
As for what you can do, I advise you to be a bit weary about the accounts that follow you or reblog your posts. So far, all of the bots have a predictable naming scheme + look to them that's seen in both the post I linked as well as my screenshots. If you see these things in the wild, please report and block them!
While reporting and blocking all of the blogs mentioned in the linked post above (please give it a read, it's good), I also browsed some of them. Some art or photos looked visually appealing and due to the screenshots above, I wanted to check for myself if I could find the original source. I did this via google image search for two posts
and
Seeing this evokes a mixture of dread and uneasy feelings. It's just so dystopian and surreal.
Hank Green made a video about this kind of thing! But yes, the TL;DW is subscribe to stuff using a browser if at all possible! Otherwise either you or the creator/company you're subscribing to is getting screwed over.
I have a lot of folders full of OCs who haven't seen the light of the internet yet and today I decided to change that...
Meet Dagnir and Ereg, two DnD OCs (my wife's and mine).
They have a story which hasn't been written in detail, but they exist, I love them and I wanted to share this image of them that came to me last night.
